Death and the Maiden

Chapter Twelve

‘More and more each year does nymph fishing become a part of the modern angler’s equipment, and he who does not possess the art is gravely handicapped.’

J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)

‘IT IS curious and instructive,’ said Mrs Bradley, regarding Mr Tidson benignly, ‘how loth I was to believe you when you said you had seen the naiad.’

‘I don’t know that I ever went so far as to say that I had actually seen her,’ Mr Tidson replied, regarding her with a cautious, propitiatory smile. ‘Ah, thank you, my dear.’ He turned with some relief to the waitress who had brought him, at his request, a box of matches.

‘Ah, then I must claim to be further on in my researches than you are with yours,’ said Mrs Bradley. She continued to look at him thoughtfully and with the kindliness of a gourmet giving eye to a dish which presently he knows he will devour. Her manner appeared to disconcert Mr Tidson, for he pulled the matchbox open so suddenly and clumsily that half the contents were spilt on to the cloth.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said feebly. ‘You are not trying to tell me—?’

‘Oh, but I am,’ said Mrs Bradley earnestly. ‘That is just what I am trying to tell you. I saw the water-nymph, and not longer ago than this morning. At least, to be accurate—’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Tidson, giving up rescuing his matches and bestowing on her a look in which artfulness, innocence and triumph were nicely blended. ‘You propose to be accurate? I see.’ His manner was less offensive than his words.

‘Yes. I saw the naiad when she was pointed out to me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I was not the first to see her.’

‘You really mean—But what did she look like?’ There was no doubt that he was badly startled at last.

‘Oh,’ replied Mrs Bradley, waving a yellow claw, ‘she looked exactly like the poem, you know. Sabrina fair, the green, pellucid wave, and all the rest of it.’

Mr Tidson spilt the rest of his matches, deliberately this time, and began to make patterns with them, moving them about on the cloth.

‘I don’t quite follow you,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me you actually saw her?’

‘You mean you don’t believe me,’ said Mrs Bradley serenely. ‘Perhaps you don’t think me the kind of person to whom a naiad would think it worth while to appear?’

‘I – I don’t think so at all,’ said Mr Tidson, frowning in concentration upon the matches. ‘I can’t understand, as I say, but, then, one doesn’t pretend to understand miracles. I – Where did you say you saw her?’

‘Come with me whenever you like, and I will show you the exact spot. You must often have passed it, I am sure.’

She rose from her table, and, followed by the enquiring gaze of those guests who had been fortunate enough to overhear the conversation, she went out of the dining-room followed by Mr Tidson. Crete had not come in to dinner. She had pleaded a headache. Miss Carmody, who owned to considerable anxiety on Connie’s behalf, had caught the mid-morning train to Waterloo and had not yet come back to the Domus, and Alice, who had now joined forces openly with Laura and Kitty, had, in their company, left the dining-room some ten minutes before Mrs Bradley’s conversation with Mr Tidson. The two of them were therefore alone.

‘Would you like coffee?’ Mr Tidson enquired. ‘Perhaps we’d better have it in the lounge.’

‘I should like coffee very much,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and I should also like some brandy. I wonder what Thomas can do? We had better find out. What about this walk? Would to-night be the best time? Perhaps not. The naiad might be resting. What do you think?’

‘Not brandy for me,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘And I think, on the whole, that coffee so near my bedtime would not be the wisest thing. Some other time, perhaps. And the naiad—? Perhaps to-morrow – I don’t think to-night. No, I really do not think to-night!’

He rose, and almost fled from her presence. Mrs Bradley ordered coffee and brandy, and when Thomas brought the tray she looked up to see Miss Carmody come into the room.

‘You will be in time for dinner, I think, if you go straight in,’ said Mrs Bradley. Miss Carmody shook her head and dropped wearily into a chair. The weariness was exaggerated, Mrs Bradley thought, but, without doubt, Miss Carmody showed signs of pessimism.

‘I don’t want any dinner. Connie has gone for good!’ Miss Carmody said tragically. ‘I’ve looked in at my flat. I’ve looked everywhere! I’ve questioned or rung up her friends. She was always a thoughtless, selfish girl, but I really can’t understand her going off like this without a word. I am worried and displeased. I feel very tired after my long, fruitless day. I shall go to bed. I think she must have caught a touch of the sun. Nothing else would excuse her!’

‘Are you still determined not to consult the police?’

‘Oh, she can’t be in any danger, wherever she is. But I will still think that over. It is not a step that one takes lightly. There is something degrading in going to the police to find one’s relatives. I do not like the idea of it at all.’

Mrs Bradley agreed that it was not a very pleasant idea, and again suggested that Miss Carmody would be much better off if she dined. Miss Carmody allowed herself to be persuaded of this, and went off to the dining-room. Mrs Bradley was about to go to her bedroom when Thomas came into the lounge to say that she was wanted on the telephone.

The telephone was in a little kiosk in the hall. Mrs Bradley discovered herself to be in communication with Scotland Yard.

‘That naiad of yours,’ said the voice from the other end. ‘We don’t think we like her much, and the local police seem to think she comes from London. Whom would you suggest we sent down? You know our bright young men.’

‘It had better be someone who knows all about dry-fly fishing,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘And nymph-fishing, surely?’ said the voice at the other end with a happy chuckle. ‘I’d like to come down myself. I’m due for some furlough. What do you say? Shall I come?’

‘Well, if you think you will be of any use,’ said Mrs Bradley. The voice replied with further laughter, and said that if Mrs Bradley felt like that, it would send young Gavin, and not risk its own reputation.

‘Seriously, though,’ it added, ‘two boys in a fortnight is overdoing it. We’ll send Gavin in time for the inquest. It’s all right. As I said, the local people have asked for us. The bishop or the precentor, or, maybe, the dean and chapter, have been a bit terse with them, it seems. Why couldn’t both the deaths have been accidents?’

‘How do you know they were not?’

‘The bumps on the heads had nothing to do with phrenology. Don’t be naughty! Oh, and please speak kindly to young Gavin. He’s apt to burst into tears if roughly handled. I had dinner with Ferdinand last night. What on earth induced you to give your only son such a name? A bit tempestuous, surely?’

‘He isn’t my only son,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And his father named him, not I. He was his only son, but that’s not what you said. I remember Detective-Inspector Gavin, bless his heart, and shall be very glad, and very much relieved, to see him. Is he going to stay at the Domus?’

‘No. At a pub nearby. He hasn’t chosen it yet. No doubt he’ll go round and take samples. We hope you’ll be nice to the boy. And whatever he does, don’t shoot him. Remember, he’s doing his best.’

That night Mrs Bradley had another visit from the ghost. It had long since been discovered that she and Connie had changed rooms. The management had been discreetly reticent, but not secretive, when various guests had enquired the reason for the blocking-up of the entrances to the air-raid shelter, but the real reason did not come out. Argument, therefore, was brisk, for the Domus had several residents, elderly invalids for the most part, whose subjects of controversy and conversation were strictly limited by a narrow environment. These had held some exhaustive and lengthy discussions upon the subject of the air-raid shelter entrances, and several schools of thought had their adherents. Mrs Bradley told nobody the facts, but the change of rooms became known by the time that Connie went away.

For some days prior to her second visit from the ghost, Mrs Bradley had removed all obstacles to its ingress, and had waited patiently for its reappearance, for, although its easiest bolt-holes were now filled in, there remained the original priest-holes by which it could reach and leave the bedroom. She had deduced that the ghost she had hit with the hard edge of the nail-brush might possibly have been Crete Tidson, but it might equally well have been Miss Carmody. Both had shown bruises in the morning. Mrs Bradley dismissed Mr Tidson from her thoughts because she was almost certain that the intruder had been a woman (although she was also of the opinion that Connie’s own squeaking nun might have been a man), and because his black eye, she decided, was a far more serious injury than any the small, light nail-brush might have inflicted.

Of course, the nail-brush might have left no mark on the person who had been struck, but, in that case, the arm of coincidence which had blacked the eyes of Miss Carmody, Connie, Crete and Mr Tidson would seem to have been ungainly long. The notion that the ghost had been entirely spirit, and not flesh at all, Mrs Bradley dismissed. There had been something definitely tangible about the figure struck by the flying nail-brush, and she was not a believer in ghosts when these made noises. The spirit world, she felt, should be silent unless it could produce sounds in keeping with its own mysterious dimension. Gasps and squeaks were, to her mind, automatically excluded from the list of sounds which any genuine spirit ought to be able to make. She would not have found it at all easy to defend this theory, but she held to it very firmly. Poltergeists, of course, came outside her argument.

The ghost paid its third visit at, in Mrs Bradley’s view, an inopportune time, for its arrival must have corresponded with Mrs Bradley’s trip downstairs to answer the telephone call of which a sleepy, dressing-gowned, slightly reproachful chambermaid apprised her at just before midnight.

Mrs Bradley had not gone to bed. She was seated at the small table she had asked to have in the room, and was writing an article for the Psycho-Antiquarian Society on the probable neuroses of Saint Simon Stylites, an unprofitable and idiotic task which gave her considerable enjoyment, for contemplation of the extraordinary and complicated psychological make-up of the more anti-social of the saints had always been to her a most fascinating way of wasting time.

When the call came through, she answered it in good faith, although this faith was considerably shaken when a voice at the other end said:

‘I am speaking for Miss Constance Carmody. Will you hold on, please? I have to let her know you are on the line.’

The message perturbed Mrs Bradley, but she held on dutifully. In due course the voice continued:

‘Are you there?’

‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘Who is speaking?’

‘The janitor at the flats. Hold on, please. Miss Connie is just coming down.’

Mrs Bradley put down the receiver, and went thoughtfully back to the staircase. Her faithful servants, she knew well, would not have permitted Connie to return to the flats without at once communicating to Mrs Bradley the fact that she had left the Stone House at Wandles Parva. The call, therefore, was bogus. She wondered idly what message would have come through if she had not replaced the receiver.

She went back to the little telephone booth in the hall, and rang up the Exchange. The call, it appeared, had come from a public telephone booth in Southampton.

‘Very odd,’ said Mrs Bradley to Thomas, who, in a respectable brown dressing-gown so long that it concealed all but the last three inches of his pyjamas, had appeared like an archiepiscopal wraith in the hotel vestibule. ‘Very odd indeed, it seems to me.’

‘Ay,’ replied Thomas, shaking his head. ‘Ye’ll hae feenished wi’ the light the noo? Then I’ll just switch it off. There’s mair things queer than a wee telephone ca’ in the deid o’ the night, maybe, madam. There’s folk that dinna sleep in their beds. Ay, and no in ither folks’ beds, either, gin that’s what ye’re after speiring.’

‘I never said a word,’ said Mrs Bradley. She regarded the intelligent man with trustful gravity. ‘But something lies behind that speech of yours, and something, I can see, of peculiar moment. What is your news?’

‘I was takin’ the wee draught to yon Tidson for his cough, the way ye were saying I should, but he isna in his room,’ said Thomas, lowering his voice so that its tone should be in keeping with Mr Tidson’s mysterious activities. ‘His bed hasna been slept in the night! Onyway, no yet! Ye’ll ken, maybe, he changed tae a single when he came? And Henry – ye’ll mind Henry, the knife and boots? – Henry was saying the wee mon was awa’ oot o’ here the minute before I came by to lock up the hoose. He gave Henry a shilling tae keep his mouth shut, but a shilling’s no muckle tae laddies these days, and Henry thought I should ken he was awa’. I am refairing tae this Mr Tidson. Weel, Henry ca’d Mr Tidson a name I wadna repeat in the lug o’ a leddy the like o’ yoursel’, and I ran after him tae bring him tae a sense o’ decency and his duty, but ye ken what lads are – he was just too supple for me. I’ll hae mair tae say tae Henry the morn’s morn, the wee haverin’ skelpie, but there is that which wis in it, as I telt ye!’

‘But what did Henry call Mr Tidson?’ Mrs Bradley felt compelled to enquire. ‘My lug is hardened, Thomas. Tell me the worst.’

‘Na, na,’ said Thomas, with a high, free giggle. ‘We’ll just say he ca’d him a dirty auld mon, and leave it at that the noo.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. She went thoughtfully back to her room and unlocked the door with the key which she had carried away with her. There was no doubt that during her absence the room had received a visitor; one, moreover, who had provided his own entertainment. The room had been ransacked. All the contents of her chest-of-drawers and her wardrobe had been flung on to the bed, and her suitcases were open on the floor. ‘Somebody would like to know Connie’s address, I should think,’ she said to herself with a shrug.

She put the room to rights, put the barricades across the fireplace and the wardrobe as she had had them the previous week, and placed the bedroom utensils underneath the window. Then she got into bed and slept her usual light but infinitely refreshing sleep until seven o’clock the next morning.

Detective-Inspector Gavin, a light-haired young man in a tweed suit, brogues and heather-mixture socks of a colour-scheme so uncompromising that it could be assumed that his easiest way of disguising himself would be to leave them off in favour of more sober-hued hose, dropped into the cocktail lounge of the Domus at the following mid-day and asked for beer.

Mrs Bradley had no difficulty in recognizing him, although she had met him only once before. They took no notice of one another, however, and, when he had finished his beer, Gavin lit a pipe and sauntered into the vestibule of the hotel. When the Tidsons went in to lunch, Mrs Bradley strolled to the front entrance as though to look at the weather.

Gavin joined her in a very casual manner, smoked for a moment, and then said:

‘Inquest to-morrow morning. Important developments. Boy had been dead some days when he was found. How do you like that, Mrs Bradley?’

‘What beautiful weather we’re having,’ said Mrs Bradley. She had become aware of the approach of Crete Tidson. She smiled at the dark-eyed, greenish-haired and very beautiful woman.

‘Edris is having champagne. He wants to know whether you’ll join us,’ said Crete at once. She did not appear to include the inspector in the invitation, but he promptly said:

‘Why, thanks very much, I think I will. Very good of you. I think I know your husband. Wasn’t he in bananas?’

Mrs Bradley, who had witnessed some entertaining incidents in her time, was now entertained by this one, and she helped matters (to her own satisfaction, at least) by exclaiming with great cordiality:

‘Oh, good! Yes, of course, Mrs Tidson, you know Mr Gavin, don’t you?’

‘Gavin? Oh – Gavin!’ said Crete. She smiled winningly upon the young man.

‘Mr Gavin,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a peculiarly evil grin, ‘is an old Etonian. You understand what that implies?’

‘Please?’ said Crete, looking bleak. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘There is something about your stockings, Mr Gavin,’ she added, as she eyed those Hebridean horrors with great respect and liking, ‘which suggests the complete angler, and that fact, I know, will fascinate Mr Tidson even more than the now rather shameful disclosure that you paid for your education.’

‘I do do a little fishing,’ Gavin admitted. Crete’s smile returned.

‘Then you will please drink champagne with Edris!’ she exclaimed. ‘Edris will fall on your neck, do you say? I think he will. Why not?’

‘And so will Crete, if she can make the grade,’ said Laura rudely, when the gist of this conversation came to her ears in Mrs Bradley’s rich and beautiful voice a little later in the day. ‘We must wait and see. Is this Gavin susceptible, do you think, to nymphomaniacs?’

‘To what?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, very much startled. Laura shrugged, and then laughed.

‘Well, granted that Crete Tidson is, in any case, a bit of a leper,’ she said, ‘it would, after all, explain a good deal if she were a nymphomaniac. Mr Tidson’s banana profits would all have been needed for hush-money, very likely.’

‘You ought to be careful, Dog,’ said Kitty soberly, when she heard these outrageous remarks. ‘You could be had up and fined for saying such things as that.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Laura languidly. ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel, don’t they say? Illogical, but the law’s often that. Anyway, this Gavin has gone off fishing for tiddlers, and old Tidson’s gone off with him. I wonder what they will catch?’

‘The flying hours,’ said Mrs Bradley absently. ‘That boy you found had been dead for some time, as you thought,’ she added, with apparent inconsequence, to Alice. ‘He certainly could not have been killed on Mr Tidson’s afternoon outing, which may bring us back to that raft.’

‘Have they found out who he was?’ demanded Alice.

‘Yes. His name was Hugh Biggin, and his home was in Southampton. He came to Winchester about a fortnight ago, but although his parents were worried at having no news of him, they did not inform the police because the boy had run away from a Borstal institution and they were afraid they would get into trouble because they had given him shelter.’

‘Then when did the parents tell the police he was missing?’

‘That has not been made public. I doubt whether they told the police anything. I think the police themselves have found out who the boy was. The verdict at the inquest this time was murder by persons unknown.’

‘It’s all so horrible! Two boys for no reason! What are your own ideas? You’ve got some theory, haven’t you? I mean, apart from the fact that you think Mr Tidson did it!’

‘But I have never said that I thought Mr Tidson did it!’ Mrs Bradley protested. ‘I have never said anyone did it! I have three theories, child, and one complete conviction, but I cannot prove anything. The deaths, if they are murders, seem motiveless, unless Potter murdered the first boy for the reason that Potter’s wife gave me, and I’m perfectly certain he did not.’

‘This second boy had been knocked on the head and killed.’

‘He had been struck dead, yes. There was no doubt, in this case, about that. Further, the lump on his skull was approximately in the same position as that on Bobby Grier’s head. Further, his leg, as you know, and two of his fingers were broken. He was a weakly boy, and did not look as old as his age, which was nearly eighteen. The police searched the place where he was found, and have concluded that someone (who may or may not have been the murderer) thrust the body on to the concrete after it had been dead for some days. The boy Biggin must have been killed only a very short time after little Grier – possibly on the same night—’

‘Possibly to shut his mouth,’ said Alice, ‘and that Tidson—’

‘I am not, as I tell you, accusing Mr Tidson, although much of his behaviour has been suspicious,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You see—’

‘Don’t bother about me,’ said Alice. ‘I’m not at all squeamish; you can tell me anything. And I’ve read all the morbid psychology books, you know. Umbrellas and things,’ she added helpfully. Mrs Bradley cackled, but refused to be drawn by this remark.

‘It is all a question of motive,’ she said. ‘No-one except Potter can be shown to have had any motive for killing either of the boys, and at present the death of this second boy has not predisposed the police in Potter’s favour. They think, like you, that the second murder was an attempt to screen the first, but they cannot, of course, at present, show any connection whatever between little Grier and this boy Biggin. Still, that may not be necessary. Another task awaits us, and ought to be dealt with soon. I want to find out what Connie Carmody is doing. I had a telephone message which mentioned her name, and the caller apparently thought I could be persuaded to believe that she could be in two places at once.’

Alice looked intelligent, and said, ‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Bradley responded. ‘You wouldn’t care to go down with Miss Trevelyan to my house in the country, and find out whether Connie has escaped from the clutches of my servants, and, if so, where she’s gone, and, if not, how she is feeling, I suppose?’

‘Leaving Laura here?’

‘Well, yes, I have work for Laura.’

‘Oh, well, I’d like to go, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a sudden screech of laughter. ‘Of course! Of course! Your enthusiasm overwhelms me.’

‘No, really,’ said Alice, bewildered. ‘I only meant—’

‘Off with you, then. You know the address, and so does Kitty Trevelyan. Don’t say a word to the Tidsons or to Miss Carmody, and don’t write letters to me here. When (or if) you see Connie, give her my regards and ask whether there is anything she needs. We must try to make plans to amuse her, and help her to pass the time. Whatever you find out you must tell me over the telephone, but only if it seems of any importance. The pass-word,’ Mrs Bradley added, ‘is Buttercup, but if you forget, and say Daisy, we shall manage.’

Alice looked at her wildly, received a poke in the ribs for encouragement, and went off to find Kitty and acquaint her in private of their errand.