Death and the Maiden

Chapter Ten

‘Our little Spark runs better and better and is full of his gibberish.’

RALPH PALMER to RALPH VERNEY

(The Verney Letters)

BY THE morning post a letter arrived from Connie. She had put no address at the top, but the postmark was London, W.4.

‘Chiswick,’ said Mrs Bradley, to whom the letter was addressed. Laura looked interested but said nothing. Mrs Bradley cocked a bird-bright eye at her.

‘Great West Road,’ said Laura, in response to this glance. Mrs Bradley nodded.

‘Interesting; whether significant or not we shall know, perhaps, when we have tracked Connie down.’

‘Do you propose to do that?’

‘Yes, child. Or, rather, I propose to allow you to do it.’

‘And Kitty?’

‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind, I would sooner keep Kitty here. I only wish Alice were at liberty, too. I think we might be glad of her help.’

‘I should think she must be free by now. The schools round here have broken up. I’ll wire the old scout. She’d love to come along and join the party.’

‘She may have fixed up her summer holiday, though,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘She can unfix it, then,’ said Laura. ‘Dash it all, it’s a time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. I’ll wire to her home address.’

She did this, and prepaid the reply.

‘And now,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘off with you. I don’t say bring Connie back, but you must find out why she went, and whether she is short of money. You know the kind of thing.’

‘Sure,’ said Laura, with great cordiality.

‘You have gone to London on business for me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘That is our official story, and true enough, too, in its way. It gives a reason for your departure. As one of my former students it will seem quite natural for you to be sent off on my affairs. Get back as soon as you can, and good luck, child.’

‘I may need it! Talk about a needle in a bundle of hay!’

Laura caught a morning train and had lunch in town. Then she went on the local line to Chiswick station, and, having decided upon her line of approach, she went first to the Public Library and consulted the Directory.

Connie’s name was Carmody, the same as that of her aunt, and it appeared in the Directory at several addresses. Laura copied out all these, and spent the afternoon and early evening in trying them all. She had no success whatsoever. None of the Chiswick Carmodys were connected with Connie or her aunt.

Laura went for dinner to Mrs Bradley’s Kensington house, was welcomed by Henri and Célestine, who liked her, spent the night in her own bed, and had breakfast at seven the next morning.

She needed very little sleep, and during the night had turned over in her mind the next move towards finding Connie. The bizarre and the adventurous always appealed to Laura, and she was never short of ideas.

She went out after breakfast and, visiting various shops, she purchased a couple of dozen pairs of boot and shoe laces. She returned to the house, begged a light tray with handles from Célestine, put on an old beret and her shabbiest gardening clothes, including a pair of shoes which received dubbin from time to time but never any polish, and set off for Chiswick Empire.

Here she sat on the steps until the cleaners moved her away, and then loitered up the broad alley between the side of the music-hall and the line of shops, and, with the tray on a length of webbing and the bootlaces prominently displayed, she watched the Turnham Green bus stops on either side of the high road, prudently retiring into a side doorway whenever she saw a policeman.

She had some time to wait, but, as the clock on the church showed eleven, Connie came strolling from the Hammersmith direction and stood in the queue for buses travelling westwards.

‘Got you!’ said Laura to herself. She thrust the bootlaces into her pockets, unshipped the tray, and, going into the booking office of Chiswick Empire, thrust it at the astonished clerks, and said:

‘Mind it until I get back!’

She then crossed the road and joined the bus queue, to find herself conveniently separated from Connie by three stout women carrying shopping baskets. Connie went on top and Laura sat just inside the bus, ready to get out the moment the quarry appeared on the conductor’s platform. She did not know what fare to pay, so compromised on a twopenny ticket, and had the satisfaction of seeing Connie get off at the stop which was nearest to the Great West Road.

‘The boy guessed right the very first time!’ muttered Laura, flattening herself against a telephone box as Connie, who seemed in a hurry, glanced about her before crossing the road. Laura let her cross, and then sauntered after her, avoiding by an inch or two a car which came swiftly along the high road.

At the bus stop Connie hesitated, and for a moment Laura thought that she was going to wait for a bus. There was no cover available, and Laura believed she would have to declare herself and demand to be told why Connie had run away. After a pause lasting less than a second, however, Connie walked on again. Laura followed behind, but did not close up.

Connie quickened her pace. Laura increased hers so that the distance between the two of them remained approximately the same. They crossed a narrow turning and then came to one still narrower. Connie dived up this turning and walked still faster. Laura, afraid that she might lose her in a maze of side-streets, hastened her steps. They crossed a narrow bridge over a railway, and then Connie dived to the left into a long lane paved with stone which led alongside the line. Three wide, rough steps led down to it. Connie galloped down these, and then went on running.

Laura continued to walk until Connie had turned a slight bend, then she flew like the wind and almost caught her.

‘I say!’ she called; for she was sure by this time that Connie had intended to follow the Great West Road, and had altered course when she discovered that Laura was trailing her. There seemed no further need for taking cover.

By way of response to the shout from Laura, Connie sprinted again. Laura, seriously handicapped for running by her gardening shoes, lost ground at first, and, by the time they had passed another bend in the lane, Connie was no longer to be seen.

Laura was not long deceived. A footbridge crossed the railway. Connie must have used it. Laura spurted, and saw Connie disappearing down a twisting path which reason informed her must come out somewhere along that part of the Great West Road which the two girls had already traversed.

She soon found herself in a small park or pleasure ground where children were playing. Of Connie there was still no sign, and it took Laura several minutes to find the gate. She came on to the Great West Road again, but still could see nothing of Connie.

She cursed herself briefly for not having closed up on her sooner, but wasted little time in regrets. She walked to the bus stop and waited. Less than a quarter of an hour later she was again at the block of flats she had visited with Mrs Bradley, and was ringing the bell marked Brown.

Connie opened the door. Laura thrust her way in, although Connie tried hard to keep her out. She might as well have tried to stop a tank as Laura’s ten-stone-nine of bone and muscle. She had to give way, tall and strong though she was, and Laura stood in the hall and closed the front door behind her with her heel.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, aware of Connie’s terrified eyes. ‘I’ve come from Mrs Bradley. She’s worried about you. Why did you run off like that?’

‘You lent me the money. You can’t stop me now,’ said Connie.

‘Who wants to stop you, you little fathead? I want to know what you think you’re doing, that’s all.’

‘I’m running away from Uncle Edris.’

‘Uncle? That’s a new one, isn’t it?’

‘No. Of course he’s my uncle. He’s a nearer relation, actually, than Aunt Prissie. He wants me to live with him and Crete, and I won’t. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Look here,’ said Laura, who felt certain that Connie was lying, ‘what is behind all this? Let’s go inside somewhere, and sit down, and then you can tell me all about it. It sounds a lot of boloney to me. You don’t have to live with Mr Tidson and his wife if you don’t want to. Anyway, Miss Carmody doesn’t want you to, does she? I thought you were starting a job?’

She took Connie by the arm and bundled her into the room which opened on the left of the hall.

‘It began with the ghost,’ said Connie. ‘Well, actually, I suppose, it began a lot before that. But don’t fuss me! I’m not going to tell you!’

Alice Boorman, Laura’s and Kitty’s friend and Mrs Bradley’s third Musketeer, arrived in Winchester in response to the telegram from Laura, and appeared at the Domus, whose obliging management contrived to accommodate her with a top-floor single bedroom, almost immediately Laura had set out for London. She invited Kitty to her room for a council of war.

‘Now what’s it all about?’ asked Alice. In contrast to the plump Kitty and the Amazonian Laura, this third member of their trio was small, thin and wiry, and was the only one of the triumvirate who had taken up the work for which she had been trained. She was the Physical Training specialist at a large school in north London and was, as Laura was fond of pointing out, equally compounded of guts, indiarubber, and the sort of innocent, practical disposition which Jezebel may have had before she encountered the theory of Jehovah and learned to sin.

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t the foggiest,’ Kitty frankly replied. ‘There’s been a murder of sorts, and I gather we’re expecting another, but what it’s all about is more than I can say. You know me – Dopey’s little sister. I am completely befogged. Pity old Dog isn’t here. She pushed off just before you came, and we don’t know when she’ll get back. She’d have told you all about it in no time. But she’s off on a toot for the Old Lizard. Chiswick, or somewhere. Ever been to Chiswick, young Alice? Famous for a house and the boat-race and all that. Dog says—’

‘I see,’ said Alice, following her usual custom of discounting Kitty’s vapourings. ‘But what’s all this about the Tidsons, and what do you want me to do?’

‘Ah, there you have me,’ said Kitty. ‘According to old Dog – who, of course, may be talking through her hat; she often is – we have to stalk these Tidsons like leopards, report upon what they’re up to if it’s nefarious, and stop them committing any murders if they seem to be so inclined.’

‘Ah, stalk the Tidsons,’ said Alice, with quiet satisfaction. ‘Do the Tidsons go about together?’

‘No, they don’t. Would you rather go into the nice fresh air and keep an eye on him, or stay in the sun-lounge and watch her?’

‘Him, for choice. But you choose.’

‘Me for the sun-lounge. I’d much rather. I’m not one for the wide-open spaces. I’d far sooner stay behind glass or in the garden. Don’t you really mind doing the field work?’

Alice, who very much preferred it, said that she did not.

‘I hope you’ll get back in time for tea, but I rather doubt it,’ said Kitty. ‘Still, he always comes in for his dinner, that’s one good thing about him. About the only one, I should think.’ She shuddered with feminine distaste.

Alice, who had enjoyed the discreet and satisfying meal the hotel had provided at lunch-time, said that she thought so too, and did not mind missing her tea. She went up to her room, changed her costume for a shirt, a skirt and a blazer, and her stockings for a pair of tennis socks, came down to the hall, and, standing modestly behind a couple of men who were gossiping just inside the smoking-room doorway, she waited for Mr Tidson, hoping desperately that he would choose this afternoon to go out.

At half-past two he came down the stairs, his fishing rod in his hand and his other appurtenances festooned adroitly about him. Alice followed him out of the hotel, soon lost him in the crowded High Street, picked him up again in the Square, followed him past the west entrance of the Cathedral and then saw him trotting under Kings Gate. She stood beneath Kings Gate arches to make sure that he went down College Street, and then again she followed.

When he reached College Walk she dropped behind. She could pick him up, she thought, anywhere over the water-meadows. She had not been introduced to either of the Tidsons and only to Miss Carmody off-handedly as ‘Miss Boorman, who was at College with us,’ by Kitty. She had sat at a separate table for lunch, and the inference was that the acquaintanceship between Kitty and herself was slight and cool. Moreover, Mr Tidson had not shown himself attracted by her slight, wiry, muscular physique, thin face and observant eyes. Her clothes were what Kitty called ‘tweedy,’ her shoes were stout and sensible, and already she bore the hall-mark of a profession as individual as that of a sailor, a pugilist or a horse-coper, (all of whom it resembled in some measure), and which had the merit, as she saw it in this instance, of discouraging the opposite sex.

When she came through the wicket-gate on to the meadow she could not at first see Mr Tidson. Numbers of children and other holiday-makers were on the footpath and by the water, and the small figure of Mr Tidson was not to be discerned. Alice quickened her steps. She had a long, lithe stride and she covered the ground very quickly.

She had a fair knowledge of the environs of Winchester because she had taken a party of children there on a school journey earlier in the summer. She knew that Mr Tidson might have swung to the left at the bridge over the stream called Logie, and taken the College path across the water-meadows, so she glanced in that direction when she came near the wooden bridge, but there was still no sign of Mr Tidson.

Alice began to feel baffled. The people had thinned out considerably, for many of them, the small children with their parents, particularly, had not come so far along the path, but had remained near the trees on the grassy sloping bank at the edge of the river where the two streams separated.

Alice hurried on, for she decided that Mr Tidson had increased his pace whilst she had sauntered, and that he must by now have reached the road. A modern bridge carried the road over the river. One end of the road joined the Winchester by-pass and the other the St Cross and Southampton Road.

On the other side of the bridge the path alongside the water was very much narrower, and, until she came to the children’s paddling pool, Alice met only two people. It occurred to her that Mr Tidson must have been in hiding somewhere along the route, and she must have passed him without knowing it. Perhaps even now he was in cover preparing to fish. There were tall reeds in plenty which might have screened him, both from her and from the brown trout of Itchen.

She retraced her steps, and scanned the river banks, but no trace of Mr Tidson or his fishing rod was to be seen. Patiently she went back to the bridge, crossed the road, and, breaking into a trot, soon covered the distance between the bridge and St Cross Hospital.

Here she met with unexpected good fortune – or so she thought at the time. Against the only seat was set a fishing rod. Two urchins were examining without touching it. Alice went up to them.

‘Is it yours?’ she asked.

‘No, missis. An old man left it here, and give us fourpence to keep our eye on it,’ responded one of the boys.

‘Which way did he go?’

‘Over there. Most of ’em goes in through the gate, and then round to the archway.’ Obligingly they pointed out the wicket-gate in a short piece of railing. Alice went through, saw the gatehouse of St Cross, turned in under the archway, paid her sixpence, received a ticket, and, directed by the custodian, walked across a large courtyard to the splendid twelfth-century transitional Norman church which is the greatest glory of the Hospital.

She entered the church with a silk scarf tied Polish peasant fashion over her head, and received a smile from the cleaner, who jerked her black hat towards the east and said:

‘He’s through there. You’ll catch him before he gets telling about the lectern, miss, I shouldn’t wonder. He hasn’t hardly started. He’s done the tiles and the circumference and heighth of these yere pillars, but that’s about all. You haven’t missed much.’

Alice thanked her. She could hear the voice of the guide, and found that he and his party of docile visitors were standing before a triptych in one of the side chapels. Hastily she cast her eye over the party. There were the guide, a kindly, respectable old fellow in the black habit and silver cross of the Brethren, a lady with two children, a Naval officer and his wife, and a couple of elderly women. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign. Genuflecting profoundly as she came in front of the high altar, Alice made for the door by which she had entered. The voice of the guide became more audible.

‘You can’t get into the dining ’all without me, you know, missie, so it’s no use you being so impatient,’ he called out after her. ‘You best come and listen to me ’ere.’

Alice realized from this that Mr Tidson could not be in the dining hall unless there was a second guide. Ignoring the black-gowned pensioner, she went back to the cleaner and said:

‘I’ve lost track of my uncle. Is there another party going round? I made certain I should find him in the church.’

‘No; this is the only party this afternoon,’ the woman replied. Alice thanked her again, dropped some money into the box near the door, and went into the open again. The custodian called out blithely from the gatehouse:

‘Don’t you want the wayfarer’s dole, then, young lady? Pity to go away without it. It’s historical, you know. You’d like to go home and say you’ve had it. I didn’t ought to offer it to you really. You’d ought to ask. But here you are.’

Alice felt compelled to accept the gift of bread and ale, and to pass some observations upon the beauty of the church. She got away as quickly as she could, went back to the seat, and found the boys and the fishing rod still there.

She sat down on the seat to think. Then she looked around. There was only one conclusion she could come to about Mr Tidson. He must have known he was being followed, and she had been tricked deliberately. She worked out how it had been done. Mr Tidson, she thought, must have taken to the road at the bridge, sprinted along it, come round to St Cross from the Southampton Road, planted the fishing rod and had his word with the boys, and then he must have hidden in the entrance to the private house which was opposite the St Cross gatehouse. From there, he had watched her go in, and then had gone off about his own business, intending to come back later for the rod.

‘Missis,’ said one of the boys plaintively, ‘we reckon we done our fourpence-worth minding the rod, and we want to go now.’

‘Cut along, then,’ said Alice absently. She glanced at her watch. She had lost a great deal of time. Whatever his business might have been, Mr Tidson had obtained, either by accident or cunning – and Alice was inclined to think it had been the latter – just over twenty minutes’ grace. Alice got up and began to run. She ran well, and was soon at the bridge. She turned to the right and crossed the water, and then, still running, she followed the road towards the Winchester by-pass.

Having gained the railway bridge she was uncertain which way to turn. There were five or six possible routes. Some children were paddling, and one or two were splashing and swimming, in a wide, shallow bend of the river beside the further bridge. Hoping that one of them had noticed him, she spoke of Mr Tidson to two girls who were seated on the bank in charge of the younger children’s clothes.

‘Did you see a rather small gentleman in a grey tweed suit and without a hat go by here?’

‘There’s been a lot of people go by,’ replied one of the girls.

‘I seen a man in them baggy knickerbockers,’ said the other.

Alice had to decide for herself which way to go. Then she was blessed with an idea. She passed under the railway arch and crossed the by-pass; then she began to climb Saint Catherine’s Hill. She went up by the most direct way, regardless of the steepness of the slope by which she had chosen to ascend, and, in a remarkably short space of time, from the earthworks where Mrs Bradley had stood beside Mr Tidson not so many days before, she was able to survey the scene below her, and search the landscape for the small, plump, hurrying figure of her quarry.

Her eyes were exceptionally keen, but there was no one in the least like Mr Tidson. In any case, from that height and with the very slight knowledge she had of his appearance and the way in which he moved, she was not at all sure that she would have been able to recognize him. There was, however, something else which interested her.

While she had been scanning the landscape around and below her, a man had mounted to the small square platform of a railway signal which lay a hundred yards down the line. She could see his gesticulating figure. Something had attracted his attention, for, having pointed downwards, away towards the farther side of the track, he scrambled down from his platform and Alice immediately lost sight of him.

She trotted upon the short turf which had been worn into a path above the ditch of the earthworks, and then, when she was opposite the signal (as nearly as she could judge), she descended the sharp slope, came under another railway arch and soon found herself again beside the water.

This stream, however, was very different from the clear and beautiful river which flowed through the flowering meadows, for it was shallow, neglected and unsavoury.

A little further downstream from where Alice was standing was a roughly-constructed weir. Wooden sluice-gates controlled the flow of the water, and below them the river dropped six feet. Below the sluice was a concrete platform, and beyond this again was a waterfall to a depth of about three feet to the continuance of the stream. It was the place past which Connie Carmody had run on the day that she had gone walking with Mrs Bradley.

On the same side as the path and the railway line was a kind of ledge made of brick, and as it was a drop of nearly ten feet from the edge of this to the lowest level of the water, and about six or seven to the concrete platform (over which the water had a depth of inches only before it cascaded over the broken stone edge of the waterfall), a wooden railing had been erected, presumably for the safety of those passing by along the bank.

Alice climbed this fence, and the next moment the horrid presentiment she had had since she had first lost sight of Mr Tidson, and which had gradually become stronger when she failed to catch up with him or to find him, came back again in full force.

Lying on the slab of concrete was a body. Instinct told her that it was a dead body, and the horribly unnatural position in which it was lying seemed to confirm this atavistic guess. Habit, however, was all-compelling. She took off her shoes, socks and blazer, and climbed down the brickwork to see whether there was anything she could do in the way of First Aid or artificial respiration.

She bent over the body, which was that of a barefoot lad of about fifteen, but that same sub-reasoning power which had caused her to know at once that the boy was dead now refused to permit her to touch him. He was sprawled on his face with the left leg so curiously bent that it was obvious it must be broken, and his arms were flung out, one sideways and the other one close to the head, as though, having fallen, he had not moved his limbs or his head.

As Alice stood up – with some difficulty, for the stone was slippery and the water, although it was extremely shallow, poured rapidly over the concrete towards the fall – she saw that two men in railway uniform were standing on the brickwork above, and were looking down. A young policeman was with them.

‘What be up to down there?’ asked the policeman.

‘Give me a hand, please,’ said Alice. They hauled her to the top of the brickwork. The policeman had his notebook out and was moistening the lead of his pencil.

‘Get down there first and see whether he’s really dead,’ said Alice peremptorily. ‘I shan’t run away. You can ask me all the questions afterwards.’

The policeman nodded, and, the official boots scraping purposefully on the brickwork, he lowered himself to the concrete, and, regardless of the water, knelt on one knee beside the corpse.

‘Nothing to do for him,’ he announced at once. ‘I’ve sent for the doctor. He’ll be here in a minute. Haul me up.’ The railwaymen hauled him up. ‘And now, miss,’ he said, ‘to your account. Name and address, please, first. And then you can say how you come to be finding this corpse.’

‘You can have my name and address, of course,’ said Alice, ‘but I wasn’t the first person to find the body, you know. One of these gentlemen did that. He saw it from that little platform on the signal.’

‘Right enough,’ agreed the constable. ‘I’ve had his story, which is the corpse came slithering down the bank. Poor kid must have had a heart attack, shouldn’t wonder. Now, miss, what about you?’

Alice gave her name and that of the Domus, and explained how she had seen the signalman waving.

‘I don’t know whether you’re right about a heart attack, though,’ she added. ‘This boy has been dead some time, and I think there’s a lump on his head. And where are his shoes?’

‘Ah, I noticed them bare feet,’ replied the policeman. ‘That’s why I say it’s Heart. Been paddling, and the cold water done for him. Like ice, that water is. Well, thank you, miss. Perhaps I’d better have your home address as well, just in case.’ His tone had become less official and much more friendly. Alice gave her home address. She was impatient to be gone. There was no time to be lost, she felt, in acquainting Mrs Bradley with the results of her afternoon’s hunting.

Tea was still being served at the Domus when she arrived. She went straight into the sun-lounge and had the great good luck to find Mrs Bradley alone. She seated herself at a separate table, ordered tea, scribbled a note, walked casually towards the double doors which led on to the garden, dropped the note in Mrs Bradley’s lap as she passed, and opened the double doors.

It was neatly, adroitly and unobtrusively done, but Alice was a neat, adroit and unobtrusive young woman. Mrs Bradley took no more notice of the note than she would have done of a flower-petal blown, as Tagore has said, upon the breeze, and Alice, satisfied that the manœuvre had not been observed by any one of the few remaining guests, went into the garden. There she saw Thomas coming out of the dining-room French doors. She grinned at him and went back again to the sun-lounge and her table.

Mrs Bradley had read the note. She grimaced at Alice, and then invited her in a loud tone to come and sit at her table and give her opinion of a crossword puzzle which Mrs Bradley had almost completed.

Alice moved over, and Mrs Bradley showed her the newspaper. They discussed the crossword until Alice’s tea arrived. The sun-lounge emptied. The waiter disappeared.

‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Bradley. Alice gave a brief, accurate and lucid account of the afternoon she had spent in pursuit of Mr Tidson.

‘He came back at four,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I saw him come in.’

‘But that means he left his fishing rod at St Cross and came back here by road!’

‘It seems so.’

‘Ah, then he couldn’t have had anything to do with the affair at the weir,’ said Alice, with great relief.

‘Why should he have had anything to do with it? You have not been told how long the body had been there, and the death, in any case, was most probably the result of an accident. You don’t even know yet who the boy was. How old a boy, should you say?’

‘I don’t know. Sixteen, or perhaps even younger. I think, really, not more than fifteen. And his leg was broken.’

‘How was he dressed?’

‘Oh, he had on flannel trousers and a shirt and a tweed jacket. No shoes. He couldn’t have been there for more than a matter of minutes. Somebody would have seen him long before the signalman spotted him. The man said he slithered down the bank, but I don’t see how he could have done. He hadn’t – he hadn’t just died. He’d been hit on the head. That’s certain.’

‘But why should the signalman invent the story of the corpse sliding down the bank? I must take a look at the place. Don’t you think what he said must have been the truth?’

‘I don’t see how a corpse could suddenly slide down the bank. Well, not at that spot. If you saw it you’d know what I mean.’

‘I do know what you mean,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I believe the signalman, too. If it didn’t slide down it was pushed down, and that might bring Mr Tidson into the picture, don’t you think? He’d have had time to give it a push before coming on here.’

‘I don’t know what to think. Please, where is Kitty?’

‘I don’t know. She’s out.’

‘I thought she was guarding Mrs Tidson?’

‘Yes, but Miss Carmody altered those plans by inviting Kitty to accompany her to Andover on the bus.’

‘Andover? Why Andover?’

‘Miss Carmody pointed out that there was charming scenery along the bus route, which happens to be true, and that Andover is a typical Hampshire country town and well worth visiting,’ said Mrs Bradley, with no expression in her tone.

‘I see,’ said Alice, registering the idea that Mrs Bradley believed Miss Carmody to be not less villainous than the Tidsons.

‘Do you?’ Mrs Bradley looked interested and felt slightly amused, for Alice’s mental processes were artless.

‘I mean,’ said Alice, with her usual gravity, ‘that I see – at least, I think I see – why Kitty had to go with her. One thing, she couldn’t have had anything to do with it, either – Miss Carmody, I mean. You know – the body at the weir.’

‘But why should she have had anything to do with it? I repeat that we do not know who the boy was, or how he met his death. He may have stumbled on the brickwork you have described, and fallen on to his head, and his companions may have hidden the body, afraid of being blamed for the death. Such cases, although uncommon, have been known. But do boys of that age usually fall on their heads from a height of six feet, you will ask – and I don’t know the answer. Even if he were pushed—’

‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘It’s difficult. His leg was broken, you know, as I said before.’

‘So you did. Ah, well, no doubt the inquest will tell us more about it, and perhaps whether the signalman was the first person to see the body. Was Mr Tidson wearing a hat?’

‘No, he wasn’t. Does he usually wear a hat, then?’

‘Well, he used to, and thereby, we think, may hang a tale. If you see him in a hat you might let me know. Our next task, as I see it, is to find out where he went and what he did. His behaviour may or may not have been suspicious. We cannot tell in the present state of our knowledge.’

‘No,’ said Alice, who felt (although incorrectly) that she was being blamed. ‘I’m awfully sorry I lost track, but I did lose all trace of him so completely that I think he must have known he was being followed, and I think he dodged me deliberately, which doesn’t really look too good.’

‘The majority of people resent being followed, child, and most of them are nervous about it, I believe. I’ll tell you what. You and I must take an early morning walk, and see whether we can find out where he went. Would you care to come with me? – If so, when?’

‘First thing to-morrow, I should think,’ said Alice, gaining heart again in the undertaking.

‘To-morrow? Right. I wonder when Laura will get back, and with what tidings?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Something very strange must have happened for Connie to have run off like that. I think I can guess what it was, but time will show. And now this boy . . . I wonder how long he has been dead?’