Death and the Maiden

Chapter Eight

‘If any soft or perished Place appear on the Outside, try how deep it goes, for the greater Part may be hid within.’

Mrs SARAH HARRISON (The Housekeeper’s

Pocket Book, etc.)

THE second seaport of England and the greatest cotton market of Europe seemed at first to Laura Menzies dirty, congested, dull and inextricably confused. She had set out, however, in the spirit of adventure which characterized her outlook, and the hotel and Kitty, between them, reconciled her to the greyness of an atmosphere which seemed to be compounded in equal parts of drizzle and soot.

‘Well, Dog,’ said Kitty with candour, ‘I don’t know why on earth you brought me here.’

‘As I told you, young K., to improve your education and give you food for thought,’ replied Laura, summing up the sandwiches with which she had provided herself before retiring to rest, and then selecting the largest. ‘Anyway, the grub’s all right. What are you beefing about? Don’t you want to help your Auntie Laura?’

‘Yes, if I knew what you were up to. But I don’t. What’s all this about water nymphs? It sounds a bit Picasso to me.’

‘Oh, Lord! Did you see that show?’

‘Yes, I did. And I’ll tell you what, Dog. I got a new hair-style out of it.’

‘Not off Pop-Eye?’

‘Off one of the Ladies in Grey. And that Fish-Hat, Dog. An idea.’

‘Maybe. You’re welcome to it, if so. But the water-nymph, K., is Mrs Croc’s latest murderer. It’s killed someone already, she thinks, and repercussions are expected hourly.’

‘But that was at Winchester, you said. What’s Liverpool got to do with it?’

‘Have patience, duck, and I’ll explain. It seems that the water-nymph is sponsored by a rather odd, Mr Pym Passes By sort of bloke by the name of – Oh, well, that doesn’t matter.’

‘Name of what?’ asked Kitty, who preferred her friend’s narrative complete and the characters labelled.

‘Name of Tidson, then.’

‘I used to know someone named Tidson,’ said Kitty. ‘Or was it McCallahan? Anyway, he married a Chinese girl and inherited an opium den.’

‘Oh, do dry up!’

‘Sorry. Go on, then. But, you know, Dog, my word-associations are very free. That’s why I get on in my job.’

‘I’ll bet they are, if Tidson reminds you of McCallahan. Well, this Tidson read in the paper about the water-nymph, swallowed the story whole, and insisted on going down to Winchester to see whether he could spot the bally thing.’

‘How does Mrs Croc. come into it?’

‘Well, this Tidson’s relations were worried, and Mrs Croc. was drawn in to find out whether he was quite right in the head, and, if not, whether dangerous or only goofy.’

‘Oh, I see. Go on. What about Liverpool, then? – And when you’ve done turning over all the sandwiches and taking the tops off I think I’ll have one.’

‘Eh? – Oh, sorry! Here you are. Yes, well, this Tidson used to grow bananas, and as his boats sometimes came to Liverpool, Mrs Croc. sent me down to consort with any of his pals who might happen to hang out in the vicinity of the docks or elsewhere to find out whether he’s likely to have murdered this boy.’

‘Oh, heavens, Dog! Don’t be such an ass! I don’t see any point in what you’re saying.’

‘To tell the truth, duck, I don’t either. But let that pass. Shall I order another plate of sandwiches?’

‘Not for me. I’m going to bed.’

‘Not an unsound scheme,’ said Laura, getting up. ‘“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” In other words, I shall take a ride on the overhead electric railway, which, my spies inform me, is the best if not the only way of getting a birds-eye view of the docks. During our tour I shall formulate my plans for obtaining the low-down on this Tidson.’

They enjoyed their ride next morning, and were given a free pass to visit a Cunarder, then in dock. It was on board this ship that Laura experienced a stroke of that luck which, as she modestly explained in a letter to Mrs Bradley, was always apt to dog her footsteps.

She was standing on the port side of the orlop deck and was talking in her usual confident, hearty tones when a young man near by came up and raised his hat.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘but I think I heard you mention the name Tidson.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Laura, scanning him frankly. ‘A man who used to keep a banana plantation on Tenerife.’

‘Yes. One of our managers. Just retired. He had charge of San Sábado, on Puerta de Orotava, hadn’t he?’

‘I don’t think so. My Tidson was a banana grower in his own right.’

‘Scarcely likely, if you don’t mind my saying so. The banana plantations belong to us, you know. He managed San Sábado for us until this last year. I wondered what had happened to the old chap. We used to think him unlucky.’

‘Unlucky? Why?’

‘Well, his men used to die on him, you know. They got so superstitious, in the end, that he couldn’t get enough labour to keep San Sábado going. Everybody said he had the evil eye. Personally, I think it was the wife.’

‘The wife?’

‘Crete Tidson. Beautiful woman. Half Greek.’

‘Tell me,’ said Laura, earnestly. ‘Was there ever any suspicion of foul play? Among the labourers, you know.’

‘Good Lord, no! The chaps died naturally enough. Girls, too. We employ a lot of female labour. It’s an amazing thing to see what some of these Island girls can carry. Make some of your Covent Garden porters open their eyes, I can tell you.’

‘Is your Mr Tidson queer at all?’ enquired Laura. ‘He’s in the care, more or less, of an alienist at present, and we wondered – I’m her secretary – whether he’d ever shown any signs of anything (so to speak) peculiar.’

‘Oh, the old bloke was as mad as a hatter,’ said the young man cheerfully. ‘Ask anybody on Tenerife or Orotava. Used to climb the mountains to look for the boogie-woogies jumping out of the volcanoes. Harmless as a child, of course, but definitely bughouse. No doubt whatever about that.’

‘But nothing sinister?’ persisted Laura.

‘Not a thing. Used to borrow and not pay back, which didn’t make for popularity exactly, but people soon got wise to that, and simply didn’t lend him anything. He spent a fortune on his wife. That’s where the money went, all right. Can’t think, for my part, why she married him. Quite staggeringly beautiful, you know. The Spaniards used to call her Doña Alba.’

‘Well, talk about pennies from heaven!’ said Laura, when she and Kitty were on shore again. She spoke regretfully. ‘That’s the end of our holiday, duck. I shall embody what I’ve just learnt in an official letter to Mrs Croc. this afternoon, and she’ll probably reply with a telegram recalling me at once to her side.’

Mrs Bradley, however, had far too much right feeling to do this. She told Laura to go on to the Lakes or to Blackpool with Kitty if she liked, and to be sure to enjoy herself. She would expect her when she saw her, she added, and expense need not be spared.

‘So what!’ said Laura, handing over the message.

‘So nothing,’ said Kitty firmly. ‘You’d better forget the Lakes, Dog. As I see it, we’ve got work to do here.’

‘Such as?’

‘Track down this banana person again, and make him produce his affidavits.’

‘His what?’

‘His affidavits. A business precaution. You know, like making people pay a deposit when they book their permanent wave.’

‘Lord, K., don’t be such an ass! We’re off to the Lakes as soon as we can book a couple of rooms.’

‘Oh, Dog, don’t please be awkward. You can’t leave this in the air. Either you’ve got to get evidence that this man knew what he was talking about, or else you’re here under false pretences. Besides, there’s an American woman in the lounge who’s got a hair-style I’ve never seen before, and I want to find out how it’s done.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ said Laura. ‘All right. As it happens, I know where he’s staying. He tried to date me up for dinner, and told me the name of his hotel.’

‘Well, of all the cheek!’ said Kitty wrathfully. ‘I look tons nicer than you, and, besides, I’m more the right size.’

‘Right size be sugared,’ said Laura, who stood a brawny and solid five-foot ten. ‘Small men often like large women. Besides, I told you you were getting too fat, you lazy rotter. This proves me right. It’s time you took some exercise, and laid off the starchy foods.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Kitty, good-temperedly. ‘Well, when do we call upon this Mormon?’

‘To-morrow, if you say the word. But I can’t see what we can ask him. Dash it, he’s told us all he knows. I can’t go along there and pump him. It isn’t decent.’

‘Be yourself, Dog. Surely you can think of something! You’ve got to make him prove he knew this Tidson.’

‘Well, he knew Crete. That’s obvious. And—’

‘She was probably the talk of the town. He’d be sure to have heard of her. I expect all the Dagos fell for her, for one thing. If she’s really as good-looking as he says, you could hardly not hear of her if you’d been to the Canaries at all. Doesn’t prove he knew Mr Tidson, does it?’

‘All right, all right! I’ll think of something during the night.’

As Kitty knew that Laura would most certainly think of something during the night, she felt that the matter could be left safely in her friend’s hands, and was not disappointed, for Laura, at breakfast, produced a simple and workable plan. She conducted the docile Kitty to the young man’s hotel and proceeded, over cocktails in the lounge, to canvas his views on the desirability of visiting the Canary Islands for a holiday.

He was immediately and deeply interested, and gave them a vivid and attractive picture of life in the Islands to which Laura listened with close and earnest attention. Then she suddenly said:

‘Ah! But what proof have we that you’ve ever lived in the Canaries? Still less that you ever knew the Tidsons!’

‘Proof? Oh, but, surely, after all that I’ve said—’ He looked astounded and somewhat hurt, and then began to laugh. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re after, but I can assure you that poor little Tidson isn’t wanted by the police, or anything of that sort. As for having known the Tidsons, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you like. I’ll give you the address of a fellow in Las Palmas who knew them well when he was on Tenerife.’

He wrote out this address, which Laura later sent on to Mrs Bradley.

‘And now,’ said Laura, with great satisfaction, when she and Kitty had left the young man, ‘what about the Lakes, after all? Or, of course, Blackpool, as Mrs Croc. suggests. There’s nothing to keep us here, once we’ve returned the hospitality of this spy of ours, and that we can do tomorrow morning.’

‘I’d like to go to Winchester,’ said Kitty, ‘if we shouldn’t be in the way. Write and ask Mrs Bradley, will you? I should think she might be rather glad of two intelligent sort of females like us on the trail without anyone being the wiser.’

‘Golly!’ said Laura reverently, struck by the extraordinary intelligence (as she saw it) of this suggestion. ‘Not your own idea? I’m dying to get to Winchester, but I thought you’d loathe it.’

‘Of course it’s my own idea! I’m dashed if I see, Dog, why you always think nobody gets ideas but yourself! You’d sound conceited if people didn’t already know you were!’

* * *

Mrs Bradley, not at all displeased at the thought of some lively company for Connie, and delighted, in any case, at the thought of seeing Laura and Kitty, answered Laura’s telegram by another, inviting them forthwith to Winchester.

They arrived before tea, for they had left Liverpool very early in the morning and had had a whirlwind journey from which Laura emerged fresh as paint, and Kitty as though she had spent the afternoon in her bedroom making up her face and doing her hair. Of fatigue, or the rigours of travel, neither of the young women showed a trace in appearance or bearing.

Mrs Bradley was careful not to greet them. It had been agreed that they should contrive to make Connie’s acquaintance, and, through her, meet Miss Carmody and the Tidsons. Kitty, who was sometimes gifted with ideas so brilliantly simple that she left Laura gaping with that insulting amazement with which genius is often greeted by its friends, suggested that their best plan might be to go to the place where the body had been found and make some independent enquiries among the dead child’s playfellows.

‘Kids always talk to me,’ she said, with a confidence which Laura had reason to know was not in the least misplaced. ‘They’d probably run a mile, and screaming at that, at the sight of Mrs Croc., but they always seem to think I’m harmless.’

This statement did Mrs Bradley considerable injustice, as Laura immediately pointed out, but there was certainly something attractive in Kitty’s suggestion. It could not be carried out, however, until the following day, so they had tea at the Domus, arranged to stay for a fortnight at the hotel, took a short walk, had dinner, and then took coffee in the sun-lounge, in order, as Laura observed, to ‘get an angle on the Tidsons and the other impedimenta of Mrs Croc., and decide which way the cat jumped’.

Mrs Bradley came into the sun-lounge with Miss Carmody’s party at just after eight, and Kitty and Laura, from a table which was modestly in the background between a fig-tree and a fifteenth-century holy-water stoup (a relic of the monastery, not of the later nunnery which had existed on the site of the hotel), obtained what Kitty termed ‘an eyeful’ of Edris and Crete Tidson, Connie and Miss Carmody, for they had not quite liked to study them too closely in the dining-room. Then Laura sauntered over to Mrs Bradley.

‘I do know you, don’t I?’ she enquired. ‘If not, I’ve seen your photograph in the papers. Am I wrong in thinking that you are Mrs Lestrange Bradley, of Cartaret?’

‘Sure you’re not wrong, Dog,’ said Kitty, backing her up. ‘What’s more, I feel pretty certain Mrs Bradley remembers that we were at Athelstan Hall.’

‘Of course!’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Cartaret? You must, I think, be Miss Menzies. And you—?’

‘Trevelyan is the name, Warden,’ said Kitty, with a face of brass, using the title which Mrs Bradley, as head of a hostel, had had bestowed on her at the college.

‘Yes, yes, of course! How stupid of me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Miss Carmody, do let me introduce two of my former students. Are you staying in Winchester?’ she continued, when the introductions had been made, and Connie warily, Mr Tidson enthusiastically, Crete languidly and Miss Carmody gushingly, had acknowledged the new acquaintance.

‘Oh, here to-day and gone to-morrow, more or less, I expect, you know,’ said Laura. ‘Thought we’d barge round the Cathedral and all that sort of thing. Never seen Winchester and thought perhaps we ought to. See Naples and die,’ she added vaguely.

‘An excellent idea,’ said Mr Tidson, eyeing the buxom Kitty with almost as much approval as if she had been his nymph. Kitty smiled brilliantly upon him, and observed to Laura, when they were clear of the sun-lounge, that she thought him a horrid old man, and one perfectly capable of murder.

‘Would you say that?’ asked Laura. ‘Off here to the left, I imagine, from what I remember of our passage downstairs before dinner. Can’t say I see it, quite. Childish and rather spoilt, I should have thought.’

‘Well, that’s what I mean. It’s all the same thing,’ said Kitty. ‘You know, irresponsible and pink and a bit bald-headed.’

‘Don’t babble,’ observed her friend. ‘Now, then, where’s this room of ours? You’d think our forefathers were descended from rabbits, wouldn’t you, to build these complicated domiciles!’

‘What shall we do about the sightseeing?’ demanded Kitty. ‘Do we have to barge round the Cathedral?’

‘Sure,’ replied Laura. ‘I’ll show you.’

They spent the following morning in ecstatic exploration of the Cathedral. Nothing escaped their fascinated contemplation, and Kitty enjoyed herself more than she had expected to do. Conversation was brisk, although they had to carry it on in low tones.

‘Look, Dog! Fancy having your skeleton for a memorial!’

‘They’re called rebuses. The guide book says they are quaint. After all, there’s nothing like understatement.’

‘The Communion rails are quite the nicest thing here, Dog. Don’t you think so?’

‘Late seventeenth-century. Yes, but what about the choir stalls? And those wall-paintings in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre?’

‘The thing is that people couldn’t have looked like that. Let’s go and see whether the verger is going to open the crypt. Then perhaps we could go up the tower and look at the view. Cathedrals give me a headache.’

Laura, after an hour or so of this, took her friend back to lunch, and announced, on the way, that she had found out where the boy Grier had been drowned, and that they would go in search of information directly the meal was over.

Accordingly, they lunched, and then went down the High Street to the bridge and the mill, and took a side-turning. After five minutes’ walking, Laura suddenly observed:

‘I was told there was a Youth Hostel somewhere about. Do you see one?’

‘We passed it. It’s the old mill. You should use your eyes, Dog,’ said Kitty, with the triumph of the down-trodden.

‘I did – on the lie of the land. Oh, well, if we’ve passed the Youth Hostel, we’re on the right track, and that’s something. I imagine, then, these are the houses.’

They soon encountered some children. In fact, there seemed to be a considerable number.

‘It’s the boys we want,’ muttered Kitty, ‘not the girls. Boys will know what took that other poor kid to the river late at night. Girls wouldn’t know anything like that.’

‘Late at night? Lord, K.! You remembered that?’

‘You’re not the only person who can take an interest, Dog,’ said Kitty with great complacence. ‘Wait till someone asks us the time, and we’ll make our grab. Kids always ask strangers the time. I believe it’s an obscure form of cheek.’

As they came to the bridge, they were stopped by three little boys who were playing with an orange box on perambulator wheels.

‘Please can you tell me the right time, missis?’ asked the leader. Kitty consulted her watch. It was very tiny, and excited immediate interest.

‘The right time?’ said Kitty, squinting down at it. ‘Oh, Lord! I must get my glasses.’ She did not wear glasses. Her sight was remarkably good.

‘I’ll tell it, missis! Let me ’ave a look!’ urged one of the children at once. Kitty let him look. She even took the watch off and let the three boys handle it. Laura looked on, expecting every moment that one of them would let the watch fall, and smash it, but it was passed from one pair of dirty paws to another without disaster. At the end, the leader strapped it on to Kitty’s wrist. It was not very hard after this to ask the boys the necessary questions.

‘The boys all made a raft out of pieces of packing case, and hid it in the reeds, and this drowned kid, they think, went and sneaked it away,’ said Laura thoughtfully, as they turned back over the bridge to gain the long lane and the hotel. ‘Well, that’s quite a likely reason for a kid to be prowling about late at night. Pity there’s no evidence as to how he was hit on the head.’

‘If there were, we’d know who murdered him, wouldn’t we?’ Kitty enquired. ‘Still, the raft says something, doesn’t it?’

Both of them, Kitty in particular, received Mrs Bradley’s compliments as soon as Laura imparted the facts after tea.

‘And they are your due, too,’ said Laura cordially, sitting on the end of Kitty’s bed before she went to her own room for the night. ‘The way you handled those kids was masterly. The profession lost a promising recruit in you when you took up this hairdressing business.’

‘Oh, rot, Dog! I’d never have made a teacher. Kids never behave themselves with me, and I never think of ticking ’em off or telling ’em not to until it’s too late and they’ve done it.’

‘Yes, there is that,’ agreed Laura. ‘What do you make of the infant who tags about after that Carmody woman, and calls her Aunt Prissie or something? The one whose closer acquaintance we’re scheduled to make. Not such a pill as she looks.’

‘Connie Carmody? I suppose she’s all right.’

‘Ah, but you ought to attune yourself, K., to her reactions. Ask me, that girl’s scared for her life.’

‘Literally, Dog, do you mean?’

‘Pretty nearly literally, I should say. Didn’t you notice she made some excuse not to go upstairs by herself, and that in broad daylight? Not normal, K., in a wench of nineteen summers. And didn’t you notice how quickly Mrs Croc. took the hint and went up with her? There’s something got on the girl’s nerves, and Mrs Croc. guesses what, I think, and believes there’s something in it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Some people are fearfully nervous. I know I was when I was eight. Nothing on earth would induce me—’

‘Eight ain’t nineteen, duck. Besides, this Connie is scared of something definite. And do you know what I think?’

‘Yes, of course. Tidson,’ said Kitty.

‘Tidson?’ said Laura, the wind taken out of her sails.

‘Yes. He’s a nasty old thing. I expect he’s made an improper advance, or what-not.’

‘You haven’t gone all nymphomaniac, have you?’ asked Laura, eyeing her friend with keen interest. Kitty was about to deal with this libellous enquiry when Laura got up off the bed and went softly to the door. Twisting the handle suddenly, she pulled the door open with a jerk. Connie Carmody stood there, a suitcase on the floor beside her.

‘I say, I’ve got to get up to Town,’ she whispered. ‘Can either of you lend me any money?’