Death and the Maiden

Chapter Fourteen

‘It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore . . .’

DANIEL DEFOE (Robinson Crusoe)

‘MY FATHER and mother died,’ said Connie, without betraying emotion, ‘when I was six years old, and until I was thirteen I lived with the Preece-Harvards. Of course, they are quite rich, but so was my father, until the smash in 1931. I was only four then. At the Preece-Harvards’ I had a governess, and my little cousin Arthur shared her with me until I had to come and live with Aunt Prissie and he was sent to his prep. school.’

‘He’s a good deal younger than you, then?’

‘Not so very much younger, really. Three years, that’s all. But, of course, he was rather spoilt, and that made him precocious, and even older than he was.’

‘An only child, I imagine?’

‘Oh, yes, and I was treated as his sister until Colonel Preece-Harvard died. It was then that Aunt Prissie gave me a home with her, for Mrs Preece-Harvard turned me out. She said that, after all, I was no relation of hers, and she did not feel that she could be responsible for me. It was a dreadful shock to me. I felt I should never get over it.’

‘You minded the change very much, then?’ said Mrs Bradley, noting with interest the featurelessness of the narrative.

‘I was heartbroken. You see, I missed Arthur so terribly. That was one thing. In fact, I think it was the worst.

I was fond of Arthur. We meant a great deal to one another.’

‘But he was going to be sent to school in any case, I thought you said.’

‘Oh, yes, but only because I was leaving to live with Aunt Prissie. I – you see—’ She began to flounder. Mrs Bradley was glad of the change to an unrehearsed effort.

‘But surely a boy of ten would have been sent to school whether you were staying with his mother or not?’ she enquired.

‘Oh, well, perhaps. If so, I didn’t know. I wasn’t told. The whole thing was a really dreadful shock. I was a sensitive child, I suppose,’ said Connie, returning to her first lifeless voice, and looking to see the effect.

‘No doubt. Lots of children are sensitive, particularly where their convenience is involved,’ said Mrs Bradley sharply and in very unsympathetic tones. There was a pause, for Connie, after giving her a surprised and resentful glance, gazed over the distant hills and preserved an offended silence.

‘And your aunt has had you with her for the past six years,’ said Mrs Bradley, changing her tone to one of casual interest. ‘You must feel that you owe her a good deal.’

Connie turned her head sharply as though to repudiate this theory, but she must have thought better of it, for she turned her face away again, pulled at a few stalks of the stubble, and said, in quiet tones:

‘I suppose I do. Poor Aunt Prissie! But it did mean a very great change.’

‘No doubt. But now that change has given place to another. You are about to live your life in your own way, I believe, during the time that must elapse before your marriage.’

‘Well, as soon as you let me go my own way,’ said Connie, with a certain amount of justifiable resentment. ‘I mean, I know you intend it for the best, and want me to be safe, and all that, but, after all, who would harm me, so long as I keep away from Uncle Edris? And even that doesn’t matter now.’

‘Mr Brown might harm you,’ said Mrs Bradley. Connie gave a gasp, almost as though she had been stabbed, and Mrs Bradley saw her stiffen as though to resist another blow.

‘So that’s what you think?’ she said. ‘I tell you you’re wrong! I know nothing of any Mr Brown!’

Facing her, and keeping her alert black eyes on the girl’s perspiring forehead, Mrs Bradley began a slow and rhythmic nodding.

‘But you can’t prove anything!’ said Connie, breaking away with difficulty from the hypnotic effect of this performance. Mrs Bradley stopped nodding, and gazed at her with mild interest.

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘I cannot prove anything, at present. Perhaps I never shall. But I suggest that you stay here as long as you can, and on no account write any letters. It is a pity you cannot bring yourself to tell me the truth, but I think I understand your point of view.’

‘You don’t agree with it, though,’ retorted Connie. ‘But I wouldn’t be safe for a day if I told you everything.’

‘Bless you, child, I know everything!’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Are you going straight back to Winchester?’ asked Connie.

‘Or London,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I have not made up my mind.’

They walked down the rough turf path at the side of the rutted track towards Cliffe High Street and the shops and houses of Lewes.

‘Suppose,’ said Connie, ‘you could prove anything? What then? You see, it’s the absence of motive that makes the difficulty, isn’t it? You’d find it almost impossible to pin a murder on anybody if you couldn’t show a motive, wouldn’t you? That’s what I’ve always understood.’

‘Your understanding was well-founded,’ Mrs Bradley admitted. ‘But there is such a motive as that practice makes perfect, don’t you think? I believe that might hold good in law, although I’ve never had occasion to test it.’

Connie looked startled, and almost missed her footing. Mrs Bradley grasped her elbow as she stumbled. Her yellow fingers were steel on the girl’s plump arm, and she hitched her roughly sideways, for there was a drop of two hundred feet to the houses below.

‘A suicide complex,’ thought Mrs Bradley, with interest.

‘I see you’ve got something to go on,’ Connie said as they reached Cliffe High Street. ‘Do you think – does psychology tell you – whether anything more will happen?’

‘More murders, do you mean?’ asked Mrs Bradley. ‘It depends on the murderer’s commonsense, I imagine.’

‘Then psychology doesn’t really help?’

‘I don’t know. I only find that few murderers seem to be blessed with commonsense.’

‘Suppose there were no more murders—’

‘The police would continue to investigate the Winchester deaths. There is no doubt at all about that.’

‘They would? Ah, but they’ll never be able to get any further with those, and neither will you. As I see it, if nobody else gets murdered, it will be impossible to show a motive for the deaths of those two boys.’

‘And a very well-reasoned conclusion,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘In other words,’ said Connie, ‘the reason for those boys being killed is so far-fetched that nobody would believe it, and I am the only person to have worked it out.’

‘What is the reason? Let us see whether I can believe it.’

‘That wouldn’t help. Besides, once you knew, I don’t believe I’d be safe.’

‘Safety is a comparative term, I feel. “Safe where all safety’s lost; safe where men fall.” You can finish the quotation, I presume?’ said Mrs Bradley.

In spite of the warmth of the sun and the effort of walking uphill, for there was a steep ascent through Cliffe to Lewes High Street, Connie gave a shudder.

‘Somebody walking over your grave,’ said Mrs Bradley absently. ‘I shall say good-bye for the present, as soon as we reach your hotel. If you find you must communicate with me, write to the Stone House and not to the Domus. And here we are.’

‘Sauve qui peut,’ said Connie. ‘And honi soit qui mal y pense. Good-bye.’ She managed to smile.

‘Winchester, madam?’ asked George, who had brought the car round to the front of the hotel.

‘No. London. The will, the will. We will see Cæsar’s will.’

‘Very good, madam.’ He paused. ‘I could do that for you, madam, if you wished. There is no need to put yourself to fatigue.’

‘Very well, George. To Winchester, then, and, as we go, I will tell you what I want to know. Preece-Harvard is the name of the testator. He died in 1933, if the information at my command is correct and my faculty of simple arithmetic not at fault. Anyhow, I’m fairly sure of the name. However, since all men are liars, if no Preece-Harvard is available, try Carmody and also Tidson. One never knows.’

‘They are not uncommon names, madam. Could I have the address to assist my researches? The county, perhaps?’

‘Hampshire. The town might be Alresford and it might be Andover. Alresford is the more likely.’

‘Thank you, madam. I will do my very best.’

‘Yes, George, I’m certain you will.’

George drove Mrs Bradley back through Havant and Fareham, and then turned north for Bishop’s Waltham. They reached Winchester at just after five. Most of the guests at the Domus were finishing tea. Mr Tidson was not among them. Crete, at a table between two young men (strangers to Mrs Bradley), and Kitty, Alice and Laura, who were sharing a table, greeted Mrs Bradley as she entered the sun-lounge, and the Three Musketeers made room for her at their table.

‘How’s Connie?’ Laura enquired.

‘Not in an optimistic frame of mind,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘What have you done with Miss Carmody and Mr Tidson?’

‘They’ve gone to see a man about a dog,’ responded Laura. ‘No, honestly! Mr Tidson conceived this idea of purchasing a hound, and Miss Carmody went with him to choose it. It appears that he saw an advertisement in the local paper, and has gone off to take his pick.’

‘What sort of a dog?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, interested.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t show us the advertisement. Will the management let him keep a dog?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘There are kennels out in the yard in front of the lock-up garages.’

Mr Tidson came back at six accompanied by Miss Carmody and a half-grown dog of mixed ancestry. Mrs Bradley who, although not in the strict sense a dog-lover, was knowledgeable about breeds, could not help wondering why anyone with quite such a curate’s egg to dispose of should have spent money on an advertisement.

The mystery was soon solved.

‘Oh, I didn’t care for the Sealyhams,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘I really want a watch-dog, you know.’

‘And I didn’t care for the price!’ Miss Carmody added. Mr Tidson hastily continued his remarks.

‘So we went to Oliver’s Battery, as I remembered hearing somebody in the bus talking about puppies for sale at one of the new houses up there. The puppies were golden retrievers, very beautiful, but this was the little chap which took my fancy! He is the son of the yard-dog, and as soon as I saw him I said to Prissie here, “That is the fellow for me!” Did I not say that, Prissie?’

‘Yes, you did,’ Miss Carmody replied.

‘And for five shillings, including the collar and a piece of string, he was mine,’ said Mr Tidson, in triumph. ‘I shall, of course, buy him another collar and a lead. And now to obtain a kennel in which he can be left for the night.’

‘You will never be able to go fishing with a dog like that!’ said Crete, regarding the animal with contempt and a certain amount of dislike.

‘He will not disturb the fish,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Some dogs learn to retrieve fish.’* He took the dog under his arm and rang the bell.

‘Thomas,’ he said, when the old man appeared in the doorway, ‘what about a kennel for – what shall I call him?’ he added, turning to Mrs Bradley.

‘Pedigree Kelvin Grove,’ she responded at once. Mr Tidson pulled at his lower lip and looked like a little boy who knows he is being teased but does not see the point of the joke. ‘The song,’ Mrs Bradley kindly explained. ‘“Through its mazes let us rove,” you remember.’

Thomas gave vent to a high giggle, took the dog from Mr Tidson and said, with unusual heartiness:

‘I’ll tak’ him tae Henry mysel’, and bring ye the number of his kennel.’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Tidson, retrieving the dog. ‘No, I thank you, Thomas. I will speak to Henry myself. Come, Kelvin.’ And he carried the dog through the french doors of the sun-lounge into the garden and took the narrow path beside the air-raid shelter which led round into the yard.

Mrs Bradley rang up Connie from the inn at which Gavin was staying, told her of Mr Tidson’s dog, and observed that Miss Carmody seemed easier in her mind. Connie, who had been anxious about her aunt, replied with great cordiality, said that she looked forward to taking up her new post, and added that she had hired a horse in Lewes and had had some good gallops on the Downs.

‘Doesn’t sound as though she were short of money,’ said Laura. ‘I say, I don’t like that tyke of Tidson’s. It’s a nasty, snappy, yappy little beast.’

Mrs Bradley expressed her concern, and invited Laura to walk to the bus station with her to catch a bus for Oliver’s Battery.

‘Don’t tell me you’re inquiring into the antecedents of Tidson’s hound,’ said Laura, grinning.

‘No, no, child. I want nothing except a walk. The air is good up there, and there is a barrow I would like to inspect.’

The ride to Oliver’s Battery was a short one, and the walk from the bus stop fulfilled Mrs Bradley’s promise, for the air was fresh and keen, and the walking, although rough, was rewarding. Laura smoked a couple of cigarettes whilst Mrs Bradley poked around in a declivity which might have been an accident of nature, the opening to a Neolithic flint mine, the burial chamber of a badly excavated round barrow, or a partly-worked modern chalk-pit, and they returned to the Domus satisfied, pleasantly tired and very hungry.

The week-end passed, and Mr Tidson, to his great pleasure, heard Bach at the Cathedral and spent nearly all Saturday afternoon watching nymphs at the local swimming pool. It was not until after dinner on Sunday evening that, wishing to take his dog for a stroll, he found that Kelvin was missing.

Henry, the knife, boots and kennel boy, questioned closely, revealed that the dog had slipped his collar whilst Henry was finishing serving teas in the lounge – for the Wee Free Thomas served nothing after two o’clock on Sundays – and that nothing more had been heard or seen of him. The Inspector had happened to come round, and Henry had let him take away the collar.

‘Don’t tell Mr Tidson that! He will think the worst!’ said Mrs Bradley; but she did not explain what she meant.

Mr Tidson, after broadcasting his loss to those who seemed interested, and after being the recipient of advice from such of the guests as cared whether his dog were lost or not (a surprisingly high number), gave up the enquiry and reported his loss at the police station to a lack-lustre sergeant on duty who already knew all about it.

Time passed again. The dog did not return, and Mr Tidson continued to fret for him and looked each day for the naiad. Miss Carmody, consulting Crete as a matter of form and Mrs Bradley as a matter of inclination, again announced her intention of leaving Winchester.

‘A pity Arthur’s term does not begin earlier,’ she said, ‘but I am really afraid we must go.’

Mr Tidson, subdued since the loss of his dog, offered no objection, and the party ordered their car and set off for London.

Mrs Bradley and Laura watched them go. Mrs Bradley noticed, divided between interest and amusement, that they did not appear to have taken any luggage. She ordered her own car, and drove off to Lewes to visit Connie. Laura’s inference that Connie could not be short of money had not escaped Mrs Bradley’s notice, but, whether Connie were short of money or not, Mrs Bradley had made herself responsible for Connie’s hotel bills, and this gave her all the excuse she needed for looking the girl up and finding out what she was doing. The job Connie spoke of had been regarded by Mrs Bradley from the first as purely mythical.

After Mrs Bradley had left again for Lewes, Laura sought out her friends and laid before them a plan of campaign. The coast, she pointed out, was clear of Tidsons, and no time ought to be wasted.

‘Look here, though, young Alice,’ she remarked compassionately, ‘don’t you stay in on this if you’d rather be elsewhere. It seems a bit too thick to expect you to put your summer holiday in the bag. You hop off to the moors and mountains, if you’d rather. Old K. and I can manage, can’t we, K.? And I know Mrs Croc. won’t mind. She didn’t expect you to stop.’

‘Thank you,’ said the trim Alice sedately. ‘Keep all your pity for yourself, Dog, and don’t butt in on my pleasures. You need not think you’re going to get rid of me and have all the fun of hunting Mr Tidson by yourself. If you do think that you can think again! He dodged me once, but he’s not going to dodge me a second time!’

‘But we ain’t hunting Tidson! We’re hunting a nymph, duck. Don’t you know the difference?’

‘I don’t believe in the nymph, and I’m positive Mr Tidson knows something about that poor boy,’ said Alice stoutly.

‘We ought to challenge him, and see,’ suggested Kitty.

‘Be your age,’ said Laura. ‘All the same, I’d like to get hold of something, if we could. Sort of confront Mrs Croc., when she returns, with the evidence we’ve collected. Come on, both of you! Any ideas, young Alice?’

‘I have one,’ said Crete Tidson, from the doorway. ‘May I come in? I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help hearing your voices. I was just going along to have a bath, but someone forestalled me, so, if you’ve no objection, I’ll wait in here. It’s a long way back to my room.’

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘I thought you three had gone to London!’

‘Oh, we came back,’ said Crete, carelessly. ‘Edris doesn’t like London in August.’ She came into the bedroom, dropped her sponge bag and towel on the floor, took a seat on the bed, and surveyed the three girls maliciously, resting on each in turn her large dark eyes.

‘Well, what makes you think my husband knows anything about a poor boy? – and what poor boy does he know about?’ she demanded.

‘Well, it was very funny,’ said Alice. ‘You see, on that afternoon when the boy’s body was found – the one by the railway signal box, you know—’

‘It was you who found it,’ said Crete. ‘What has that to do with my husband?’

‘He was known to have been in the neighbourhood,’ Alice replied. ‘In fact, I was trying to catch up with him. He dodged me, I’m almost certain, and then he deceived me into thinking he’d visited the Hospital at St Cross—’

‘Oh, he had been fishing, as usual,’ Crete replied. She allowed her sardonic eyes to rest on Alice’s thin, hard arms and freckled, plain, honest little face. ‘He cannot always be bothered with young girls. You must make some allowance for a man accustomed to cosmopolitan society.’

Alice grinned – an English reaction which appeared to ruffle Crete. She stooped to gather up her sponge bag and towel.

‘Do you swim?’ asked Laura suddenly, as Crete straightened herself and stood up, her face rather flushed.

‘I was swimming a good deal at Santa Cruz,’ replied Crete sitting down again and pulling her dressing-gown together. ‘Deep water, and very warm. We could bathe for hours.’

‘From rafts, or just from the beach?’

‘We bathed in every way that one can. Once I swam five miles for a bet.’

‘Hm! Not bad,’ said Laura carelessly. ‘Talking of young girls, did you know I went all girlish myself the other morning, and shoved Mr Tidson off the bridge?’

‘He told me – yes. It is a habit of yours, this rough play? – this practical joking?’

‘Well, it was like your own stunt, a bet,’ said Laura, eyeing her. ‘I bet old K. here that Mr Tidson couldn’t swim. Didn’t he swim with you off Tenerife?’

‘I swim with young men,’ said Crete.

‘Well, didn’t Mr Tidson swim with young women, then?’ asked Kitty.

‘I don’t know.’ Crete got up again, but paused at the door. Her brown eyes lingered a moment on Laura’s blue ones. ‘I saw very little of my husband on Tenerife. He was, of course, very busy.’

‘The bananas?’ enquired Kitty, with sorrowful sympathy. Crete looked at her as though she suspected the question of having two meanings, but Kitty’s bland gaze gave nothing away, and Crete, in the end, retreated on the excuse that she had heard the bathroom door being opened and shut, and did not want to lose her turn.

‘A bit funny, her using the bathroom on this floor,’ said Alice dispassionately. ‘How much had she heard when she came in?’

‘Everything, of course,’ said Laura, ‘and a good thing, too, I rather think. Soon we shall know where we stand, and that’s always worth something, even if it only means getting a black eye to be going on with. It’s all very well for Alice to trail old Tidson along to St Cross, and for me to push him into six feet of water, and for you, K., to exercise his libido or whatever it is that Mrs Croc. sets store by, but we haven’t rumbled him yet, and it’s my belief we never shall, except by more drastic methods. What about trying to make the little horror confess, as you suggested yourself a while ago?’

‘But he wouldn’t, except from fright, and what’s the good of that?’ demanded Kitty. ‘If you ask me, Dog, we’d do better to let well alone until we get further orders. You’ll only muck things up if you try to proceed on your own. Where did you get with that drowning stuff? Simply nowhere.’

‘I don’t know so much,’ said Laura. ‘According to old Tidson, that’s the bridge he fell off trying to see his nymph on the night little Grier got drowned. Well, it couldn’t have been! And now Crete—’

‘What’s she got to do with it, Dog?’

‘Well, she doesn’t want me trying the same stunt on her. Not that she’d make a bad nymph. I will say that for her. She’s got classical lines all right. Wonder why she married old Tidson?’

‘Oh, nymphs and satyrs,’ said Kitty. ‘But it isn’t the nymph who drowns the boys, or is it? Could be, you mean, if Crete can swim.’

‘It could be. And we don’t always know what Crete does while we’ve all been out.’

‘Still—’

‘Oh, I admit it’s unlikely. I can’t see her bothering herself, and that’s a fact. Still, she is a bit unaccountable. Why did she marry old Tidson, I still demand. I should think she could have had her pick, shouldn’t you?’

‘Perhaps he was rich when she married him,’ Alice deferentially suggested. ‘Rich husbands can always get wives, whatever you may say to the contrary.’

‘But I don’t say anything to the contrary, duck,’ said Laura. ‘I’m with you every time, especially in statements of fact, of which that undoubtedly was one. Only, you see, from what K. and I could learn on our visit to Liverpool, it didn’t sound as though Tidson had ever been fabulously wealthy. Certainly not wealthy enough to tempt a female who could have married the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, or anyone else she pleased. She’s a woman who’d make a painter scream with joy.’

‘Perhaps she wanted British nationality. Some foreigners will do anything to get it. She’d have got it by marrying Tidson,’ suggested Alice.

‘The fate worse than death, I should have thought, to marry Tidson. Still, something, perhaps, in what you say. It doesn’t account for the murders of two perfectly ordinary boys.’

‘You don’t know whether it does or not,’ said Alice. ‘And were they such ordinary boys? The second one was a delinquent. I don’t call that frightfully ordinary.’

Laura picked up the soap from the washstand and threw it.

‘Good Lord!’ she said, starting up. ‘I’m awfully sorry, young Alice! Did it hurt?’

‘Nothing to signify,’ said Alice, tidily retrieving the soap and replacing it in the soap-dish before putting a hand to her head.

‘Where did it catch you? In the eyeball?’

‘Not quite. Don’t fuss. I’ve had far worse knocks from people’s elbows in netball.’

‘You’ll have a black eye to-morrow, I shouldn’t wonder. The others did, according to Mrs Croc.’

‘What others?’

Laura explained.

‘Wish I’d been here to see,’ she regretfully added. ‘It appears the bruises soon wore off, but they must have been fun while they lasted. Do you bruise easily, young Alice?’

‘Fairly easily. Don’t keep on. I’ve no beauty to spoil, thank goodness.’

‘A Christian attitude,’ said Laura. ‘Nevertheless, accept our sincere apologies.’

‘Rather funny if she didn’t bruise,’ said Kitty, thoughtfully. Laura looked at her in surprise, but Kitty’s bland expression betrayed no detective faculties, and Laura, who had been in close association with her friend from their early school days, knew better than to suspect her of having any. It was a chance and frothy remark, made merely on the spur of the moment, but it put such a wild idea into Laura’s head that she felt she could scarcely wait until Mrs Bradley’s return to confide it, nor for the next morning to prove whether Kitty could possibly be right. If she were right, such vistas of crime and counter-crime rose before Laura’s inward eye that she felt staggered at the implications which they evoked.

‘Let’s go out and chase naiads,’ she suggested. ‘Crete will be out of that bathroom in two or three minutes. Let’s not be here when she comes back.’

‘Let’s go to the place where the body was found,’ said Kitty. ‘I might get an idea. Who knows?’

‘I do,’ said Laura rudely. ‘Sherlock Holmes might, but I’m pretty sure you won’t, duck. It’s a mistake to go out of your age-group.’

The thought of a walk was welcome, and an objective seemed desirable. Laura put her head in at the doorways of all three lounges and into the smoking-room, too, and Alice went into the garden. Miss Carmody was in the garden with some crochet and the hotel bore who had engaged her as audience, and so was safe, thought Alice, for at least another hour. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign anywhere. Alice joined the others without having been seen by Miss Carmody, and Laura waylaid Thomas in the vestibule and asked for Mr Tidson.

‘He was awa’ wi’ his fishin’ rod,’ said Thomas. ‘Mabel was speirin’ wad he be in tae his dinner, and he said he thought he wad, and for his tea, too. He was verra, very pleased wi’ himsel’, was yon wee mannie, although whit way he would be so, I dinna ken.’

‘I thought Mr and Mrs Tidson and Miss Carmody had left the hotel,’ said Laura.

‘We didna think tae see them syne,’ said Thomas, ‘although they didna tak’ their luggage. Bad bawbees aye turn up again, I’ll be thinking!’ He went off to the kitchen, and the girls went up the marble steps to the hotel entrance, and were soon in the street.

‘I wish I knew where to ’phone Mrs Croc.,’ said Laura. ‘I feel she ought to know about the Tidsons and Miss Carmody coming straight back. I wonder how long she’ll be away? They could never have intended to leave. It was some sort of blind. I wonder what the scheme is, anyway? Well, never mind! Come on.’

* Mr Anthony Buxton’s fox-terrier. Chapter 4 of Fisherman Naturalist.