‘Is that all, then?’
‘Oh, yes. Would you send in Mr Nicolson?’
‘I have given the matter some thought, as is the way of it with me,’ said Willie, when he had seated himself, ‘and my thought is that the tandem is at the root of the mystery.’
‘That is interesting, Mr Nicolson. Would you care to enlarge upon that statement?’
‘I’ll do that. The theft of the tandem was no wanton matter of person or persons concerned with stealing a means of transport. It was calculated to deceive the police into thinking that two persons were involved in the crime.’
‘And from this you deduce?’
‘Ask yourself, woman! At the time when Peggy was killed and wee Micky injured — and if ever I get my hands on whoever did that—!’
‘Yes, at the time when…?’ Dame Beatrice prompted him.
‘Well, now, there were the two of them, away from the rest of the party, leaving six of us in the main hall. The photographer was getting impatient and soon left us, we five men and the lassie. Do you not think it would have been very noticeable if another of us had absented and gone into the changing-room just then?’
‘You are going on the assumption that the attacks on Miss Raincliffe and Mr Marton took place at approximately the same time, are you?’
‘They could only have been minutes apart and I will be prepared to swear, in court or anywhere else, that the six of us were together in the hall while those attacks were taking place.’
‘How long was Miss Raincliffe absent before you all decided that she and Mr Marton had taken the tandem and gone off together?’
Willie shook his head. A matter of minutes, he thought. He added that he, for one, could not bring himself to accept what, at the time and before Peggy’s body was found, the others had thought, that the two had gone off together.
‘He could not thole the lassie any one way,’ he said, ‘but there it was. No sign of either of them and, when we went to get our cycles, the tandem gone. What were the others to think? And the back door to the changing-room wide open at that.’
‘Miss Raincliffe’s body was hidden in the cupboard, of course, a cupboard to which, I understand, Mr Tranmire and Mr Redman had had separate access before the performance began.’ She waited for a response to this statement, but Willie remained impassive, so she went on: ‘As the back door was wide open, was it not strange that the caretaker seems to have found Mr Marton unconscious in the bushes, whereas none of the rest of you noticed him there?’
‘When we found the dressing-room empty and the door open which had been shut and bolted before the show began, the others jumped to conclusions. Then, when we found the tandem gone, too, and the time getting on and ourselves due at Lostrigg by ten o’clock and forty miles to go, well, I could understand what the rest of them thought, loth though I was to believe it, as I will be telling you.’
‘But surely you must have believed what appeared to be the evidence of your own eyes?’
‘The lassie was strong-willed and resolute. I was all the while trying to put out of my mind a suspicion that she had killed Judy, but the others thought maybe she had asserted herself over Mick and carried him away.’
‘The captive of her bow and spear?’
‘The tongue that lassie had on her you would scarce believe. She could wheedle, aye, and she could scold. The others doubted whether she had been too much for the poor laddie. As for the caretaker, we have been told very little, but I would take it as a mathematical certainty that from the first he had his suspicions of that open back door and went out to see what it was all about, and had a better-look round than Giles had done.’
‘Yes, the back door is interesting. Who opened it, do you suppose? It must have been one of your own party. Nobody else had access to it from the inside.’
‘That will have been Mick. He is claustrophobic. He rallied when the rest of us were there, but, left by himself, my theory would be that he not only opened the door, but stepped outside to get some air and found the murderer lurking.’
‘But why? Why should he have been lurking?’
‘Is it that you think I can read his mind? Maybe he was hoping the door would be opened and he to get inside and steal any money we had.’
‘Well, that didn’t seem to yield much,’ said Laura, when the rest of the members of Wild Thyme had been interviewed. ‘What comes next?’
‘My recommendation to Inspector Ribble to check on the home addresses these young people will have given him and then to release them. If anything more transpires he can always apply to them again. It was purely for our convenience that they were gathered together here. There is really no good reason for detaining them any longer.’
‘If I had to pick one of them out for further questioning, it would be my compatriot Nicolson, sorry though I am to say so. I always think there’s something not too healthy about this ‘wee laddie’ protective stuff. It’s all right when it’s women. Most of us, I guess, have a strong mother-complex, but between men it’s more than a bit fishy, don’t you think?’
‘Miss Marton stated, without being asked, that Nicolson and Marton were not ‘gay’, but I think your point is a valid one. We have to face the fact that both the women who wanted to mother Mr Marton have been murdered, and, after all, murder is a final solution when it comes to getting unwanted persons out of the way.’
‘All the same,’ said Laura, ‘you don’t think Nicolson did it, do you?’
‘I have Inspector Ribble’s notes to go on. First, it seems that it could have been only by the most extraordinary coincidence either that the two men met Mrs Tyne on the moors that Thursday and killed her, or that one or other of them did.’
‘Yes, you let me see the notes, but there doesn’t seem any proof of how Nicolson and Marton actually spent that Thursday. Some bits of their story Ribble seems to have been able to check, but there still seems to be a lot of time unaccounted for, except for their own uncorroborated explanations.’
‘True, but I would be far more suspicious of a story which dove-tailed in every particular. As for the affair at the Gledge End church hall, we are given no evidence whatever that Nicolson could have killed that woman, still less that he would have injured his protégé.’
‘Do you think claustrophobia accounted for that door being opened?’
‘It is possible. Far more likely, though, that the murderer knocked and Mr Marton let him in.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘To place Miss Pippa Marton under police protection as soon as Inspector Ribble, under directions, no doubt, from his Chief Constable, tells these young people that they are free to go. Then I want to talk to Miss Tamsin Lindsay, John Trent and my great-niece. I have a feeling that they are the people who can convince me that I have come to the correct conclusion.’
‘Do you mean that you can name the murderer?’
‘I can produce a name, yes. Proof is a different matter. The evidence I have gathered is purely psychological and would never be accepted in a court of law. This is a classic case of rejection followed by vengeance.’
‘So it’s a woman’s crime?’ asked Laura. ‘I could believe that if I didn’t know that both the obvious murderers are dead.’
Chapter 15: TROMPETTE DES MORTS
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‘I don’t see why Erica should know something the rest of us weren’t told,’ said Hermione, when she and Isobel were in the latter’s London flat, ‘or why my great-aunt made us promise not to ask her any questions.’
‘Erica wouldn’t have answered them, anyway,’ said Isobel. ‘She has been trained to keep her head closed when delicate negotiations are to be undertaken. I can tell you one thing, if you really want to know. I’m pretty sure Dame Beatrice told her the name of the chief suspect.’