This business of changing his clothes took Mick so long, apparently, that when all the chairs were stacked, the platform cleared and the piano moved, he still had not joined the others.
‘He must have stuck too much glue on that beard, or something,’ said the photographer, who was becoming restless. ‘Could one of you go and hurry him up a bit? I’ve got another assignment to cover.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Peggy immediately. She darted away before anyone else could offer to go, and banged the heavy door shut behind her. Ten more minutes went by and the photographer said that he proposed to make do with the pictures he had already taken, and promptly removed himself and his camera. Giles, who had bounded towards the dressing-room, returned to find him gone. He had news for his team.
‘Not a sign of either of them,’ he said. ‘Mick must have got changed, because his girl-outfit has gone and his flannels and bells and things are on the floor in the little washroom. I can’t think what has happened.’
‘I can,’ said Pippa and Willie in unison. They looked at one another and Willie continued, ‘She was always after him. I reckon it was a put-up job between them. He is a weak, soft-hearted fellow, so she’s had her own way at last and taken him off with her. She swore to Judy that she would have him all to herself one day, and I think she’s proved herself right.’
‘Well, some girls in one of the forest cabins have offered to take Pippa for the night,’ said Giles to the others, ‘but the rest of us have got to get to the next hostel and that’s forty miles off. Be hanged to those two idiots! They’ll have either the tandem or Peggy’s own bike and one of ours. They must have slipped out by the back door. It was open when I went in.’
The bicycles had been left in an unlocked shed near the main door of the hall, so the party went out that way. The tandem was gone, but the trailer which held the properties was still there.
‘We’ll have to leave it here for a day or two,’ said Giles to the caretaker. ‘I’ll get it picked up as soon as I can. Willie, you’ll have to put up the saddle on Peggy’s bike and ride that, I’m afraid. It’s no good cursing. Come on, or we shall hardly make the hostel by ten and that’s the deadline.’
‘What’s that on your shoe?’ asked Peter. Giles glanced down and said, ‘Looks as though I trod on a tube of red greasepaint in the changing-room. Somebody must have dropped it. Come on! Come on! Pippa, you know the way to the forest and they gave you the number of the cabin, didn’t they? Be seeing you!’
‘I want to go with you.’
‘No, no. You be a good girl and go to that forest cabin for the night. They’ll be expecting you. We shall be better on our own. We’re going to scorch. You would never be able to keep up.’
‘Oh, all right.’ She mounted her bicycle, waved good-bye and cycled northwards to where Erica was preparing a hot supper for the four young women and the two visitors they expected, for Peggy had also been offered a bed in the cabin.
‘I’m sorry for those boys,’ Tamsin had said, ‘but we’re doing our bit, anyway.’
‘Oh, who cares about boys?’ retorted Isobel. ‘They are simply little things which are sent to try us. You’d know, if you had them in school, as I have.’
‘I have them on building-sites, and I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Erica.
‘Fancy John turning up like that! ’ said Tamsin. ‘I was awfully glad.’
‘A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place,’ said Hermione. Tamsin picked up a lump of dough from Erica’s pastryboard and flung it at her.
Chapter 11: BLOOD-CAP
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Innocent and ignorant of what had actually happened to Mick and Peggy, and attaching quite the wrong explanation to the wide-open back door which led out of their changing-room, Giles and the others pedalled away like racing cyclists, and as the caretaker had gone out with them to the shed, he had no idea that the back door, which he always kept bolted on the inside to frustrate mischievous boys, had been opened and left open. He saw the party off, and accepted their view that the missing pair had sneaked round to the bicycle shed, taken the tandem and gone off together. He went back by the main door into the hall.
Although the Wild Thyme party had stacked the chairs, moved the piano, cleared the platform and done their best to clear up the litter left by their audience — litter inseparable, apparently, from any place of entertainment, indoors or out, patronised by the British public — he still had his own sweeping and dusting to do, and his table-tennis trestles and boards to set up.
Thankful to see the last of the dancers, he pocketed the tip Giles had given him and went into the changing-room to get his broom and duster. These, with the rest of his cleaning materials, were kept in the deep, commodious cupboard which took up almost half of the wall-space next to the washroom. It was never kept locked. It was thought most unlikely that anyone would want to steal brooms and buckets or the Sunday School hymn-books which were on a high shelf at the back.
The first thing he noticed was the open back door. He went over to close and bolt it, thinking (as Giles had thought) that the runaway couple had used it as their exit. When he reached it, however, he saw a stockinged foot protruding from one of the sooty, sour-looking bushes which formed part of the untended sideway.
He went over to investigate and thought at first that he was looking at a dead body. As he bent over it, however, it gave a faint groan. Then he noticed that it was wearing a heavy flaxen wig which had slipped partly over the face.
‘It’s the young chap that doubled as a girl,’ he thought, for he had watched part of the rehearsal in which no time had been spent on costume-changes. The hall was not on the telephone, but one of the churchwardens lived close at hand. He raced over there to telephone for a doctor and the police. He was himself an ex-policeman and some blood which had seeped into the flaxen wig convinced him that the youth had been attacked.
He made his telephone call and the churchwarden went back with him to the hall and suggested that they should carry Mick into the building.
‘I wouldn’t touch him, sir,’ the caretaker replied, ‘not until the doctor has seen him. Well, until he comes, I’d best get on. It’s Youth Club night.’
Peggy’s body fell forward out of the cupboard as he opened its unlocked door.
The doctor called an ambulance and Mick was taken to hospital. Ribble and Sergeant Nene turned up in time to see the boy carried off and then they turned their attention to the dead girl. The caretaker was allowed to get on with his chores, but was told not to leave until the police had questioned him. Meanwhile the doctor made his report, photographs and fingerprints were taken by the experts Ribble had brought with him and then the caretaker was questioned, although Ribble soon realised that the man could tell him little that was of much help.
Ribble knew him to have been a member of the Force and treated him accordingly.
‘So you didn’t expect to find the back door open,’ he said.
‘That I didn’t, sir. Kids like to play in and out of those bushes, so I never give them the chance to sneak in. I don’t know what’s come over the youngsters nowadays. Don’t seem happy unless they’re wrecking something.’
‘So one of the song-and-dance lot must have opened the door. I see that the bolts are all on the inside as usual.’