‘Yes, sir. I noticed, soon as I went in, that the back door was wide open.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘Most unusual, being that it’s always kept bolted on the inside.’
‘Why is that?’
‘We get tramps, sir, and boys up to mischief. There’s a fair bit of waste ground outside that door. There’s trees and bushes.’
‘To whom does it belong?’
‘I reckon it belongs to the hall, sir, but nobody tends it and children use it as a playgound. If I left the back door of the hall unlocked, tramps might use that room as a doss-down or boys could get in and do damage. It’s happened, sir, so I had vicar order the bolts to be put on. The window is too high up to be reached without a ladder, and the little window in the washroom adjoining is too small even for a thin boy to get through, so vicar and me have found the bolts quite adequate.’
‘But not on this occasion.’
‘One of the party as hired the hall opened the door from the inside — must have done, sir. There’s no other way.’
‘Well, as whoever did that is not present…’
‘No, he’s in hospital and won’t be available yet for questioning,’ said Ribble from his seat.
‘Thank you, Inspector.’ The coroner turned again to the witness. ‘After you had found the deceased’s body…’
‘That there body found him, as I understand it,’ put in a juryman.
‘Just so. The point is immaterial.’
‘Begging your leave, it ent nothing of sort. Ask him how long that corpse would have stayed in cupboard if he hadn’t happened to go to it for his broom.’
‘Well, Dexter, you may answer the question,’ said the coroner.
‘I reckon it would have stayed there till Wednesday, when I should have needed my broom to sweep the hall for the Women’s Institute Keep Fit, them doing some of their exercise laying on the floor. The hall wasn’t let to any outsiders this week, so I could make one sweep-up sufficient.’
‘Sufficient for several days?’ asked a woman juror.
‘I don’t sweep up after the Saturday Youth Club, the man that runs it being an ex-sergeant who don’t allow smoking nor litter, and, if the hall ent let, there’s no need to sweep up after the Sunday school until the W.I.’s on Wednesday. Then it does again until the Saturday, those being my orders and by arrangement with the churchwardens.’
‘Well, your question seems to have been relevant, after all,’ said the coroner to the juror. ‘Now, Dexter, how did you come to discover the injured man?’
‘When I went to close the back door, sir, thinking it unwise to leave it open, I saw his foot sticking out from under a bush on that bit of waste ground I mentioned. Then I phoned about him and the body.’
‘You seem to have acted very promptly and sensibly all through. Well, I think we have heard enough. The jury may consider their verdict.’
‘Person or persons unknown,’ said Ribble to Dame Beatrice, when they had left the court. ‘Unanimous, too, as it could hardly fail to be. I thought that one or two of them would have liked to ask something more about this boy who’s in hospital. I’m applying again for permission to question him. I’ve seen him, but they wouldn’t let me stay. He doesn’t know yet that the girl is dead. That will have to be broken to him because he will have to give evidence when the inquest is resumed. I hope you will accompany me, ma’am, when I go to see him. What he has to say may help to prove whether your ideas are right. I still have a kind of liking for my own.’
The meeting with the injured boy took place on that same afternoon. Mick was sitting up and smiled when he saw them.
‘Does this mean I can get out of this place?’ he asked. ‘I’m perfectly all right, you know.’
‘You won’t be here much longer, I’m sure, sir. You know who I am, don’t you?’
‘I haven’t lost my memory. Have you come to grill me again?’
‘Just to put a few questions. This is Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.’
‘Good Lord! They haven’t told you I’m crazy, have they? Have I been babbling while I was unconscious? You have to get two doctors, don’t you? I know Dame Beatrice is a supremo, but—’
‘Calm yourself,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I am not here as a psychiatrist, but as one who is deeply concerned to prove the identity of the person who attacked you and who killed Mrs Tyne.’
‘And you and Mrs Tyne are not his only victims,’ said Ribble, ‘so tell us everything you know. First, did you know that Miss Peggy Raincliffe followed you into the changing-room?’
‘Trust her! She would!’
‘Steady on with your strictures, sir. I am afraid she pursued you once too often. The poor young lady is dead… Take it easy, sir. I thought you might have guessed.’
‘I had no idea, of course I hadn’t! All I know is that I opened the back door and went outside to get a breath of air. Besides, I thought I heard somebody knock.’
‘This was after you had changed your dance costume at the end of the show?’
‘Yes. The sword-dance team, with me in my whites and that stinking beard, had been photographed, and then they wanted a picture of the other dancers. Well, the other men didn’t have to change because they had kept on most of the morris gear for the last item — it’s a sword-dance, as I said — and Peggy didn’t have to change, either, because she played for the last item, she didn’t dance in it, so that only left me. Well, I changed in the washroom and then opened the door and just stepped out into that shrubbery bit, and before I knew anything about it, some frightful lout must have come up behind me and hit me over the head.’
‘And that is really all you remember, sir?’
‘Of course it is. I say, tell me about Peggy, will you?’
‘You were a long time gone, sir, so I understand that she volunteered, in an impetuous manner which forestalled anybody else among your company, to go into the changing-room to hurry you up. We think she must have been a witness to the assault on you.’
‘And this crazy devil turned on her…’
‘That is about the size of it, sir. He dared not leave her alive when he knew she had seen him.’
‘But why should the fellow want to attack me?’
‘We think that, once you had changed your clothes for the last photograph, he mistook you for your sister,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘But why should he knock on the door?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Ribble, ‘if Dame Beatrice is right, he must have seen you through the window when you came out of the washroom.’
‘The window is too high up.’
‘Too high up for anybody to get in by without a ladder, yes, sir.’
‘But not so high up that a lissom person could not leap up and take a look at the room,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He probably heard you moving about and was actuated at first simply out of curiosity. When he saw what he thought was your sister who, so far as he knew, had no reason to suspect him of evil intentions, he knocked on the door which, for your own reasons, you had already decided to open.’
‘But why didn’t I see him?’
‘He had already taken cover.’
‘But what did he have against Pippa? — that is, if he mistook me for her.’
‘A deep wound to his vanity,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘But what about Judy? Why was she killed that day on the moors?’
‘The inference is that he met her, waylaid her and was repulsed, as your sister repulsed him. Mrs Tyne did not want his company, I think. He then knocked her off her bicycle and assaulted her, an assault which ended in her death. We shall never prove this, but it is a tenable hypothesis.’
‘But, if you know all this, why can’t you arrest him?’