Death and the Maiden

Chapter Fifteen

‘He will have had much experience: and this is necessary if you are to describe so varied a pursuit as angling, where the possibilities are so many that some incidents only repeat themselves once or twice in a life-time.’

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

Along the edges of the carriers the water-mint and the loosestrife were in flower. Meadow-sweet, with its large, dense cymes; the meadow-rue, with its spreading stamens and smooth, tripartite leaves; the lance-leaved Ragged Robin; the watercress; the hollow-stemmed angelica; the fertile water dropwort, and, in a tiny pond, the yellow water-lily, clothed the fields and the river banks and tinged the streams with red, white, purple, green and gold.

The sun was hot, but thunder hung in the air. Laura glanced at the sky and then at the hills.

‘We’ll probably get wet,’ she observed. ‘It’s going to rain.’

‘Oh, rot!’ said the urban Kitty. ‘There isn’t a cloud!’

‘It will rain,’ said Laura, with conviction, ‘and you haven’t a hat. Will that coiffure of yours come unstuck if we get a downpour?’

‘Lord, no, Dog. It’s a perm. Besides, it won’t rain. You’ll see. And, talking of hats, we could have a look for old Tidson’s.’

Alice made no remark. The three, sauntering and loitering, took nearly an hour to reach the brickwork banking on the weir. Laura, astride on the verge, surveyed the concrete platform.

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‘Nasty sort of place,’ she said. ‘Why have we come?’

‘To watch Mr Tidson fishing,’ Alice replied. She indicated a lone fisherman occupied with what seemed a heavy line.

‘In this water? Has he gone crazy?’ Laura demanded. ‘I don’t know. That’s a boot on his line,’ said Alice simply.

They watched, from the cover of some bushes. Suddenly Alice touched Laura’s arm. Crete Tidson was coming along the railway path. She walked with a long, free stride and was softly whistling the Soldier’s Chorus from Faust.

‘Now what?’ muttered Laura, drawing her companions deeper into the bushes. ‘Look out, Kitty! Don’t fall backwards down the bank. The water’s filthy down there.’

The unsuspecting Crete soon joined her husband, and then they walked towards the girls and stood on the brick-work. Their antics were instructive and peculiar. First one and then the other would toss the boot into the water. It was retrieved every time with the fishing line, on the end of which was a meat-hook. As soon as this hook took hold of a piece of bent wire which had been fastened between the eyelet-holes of the boot to form an arch, the line was reeled in and the catch removed from the hook. Each partner did this in turn.

A group of little boys came along and inspected the strange proceedings. At one time there must have been a dozen of them or more. They were difficult to count because they were hardly ever still, for they followed the adventures of the boot, and occasionally waded into the stream to retrieve it for the Tidsons when it fell over the edge of the concrete slab and into the rapids below.

On the approach of some grown-up people, Mr Tidson, whose turn it was to fish, and who had just hooked the boot for the fourth time since the girls and the audience of children had been watching, took the trophy and flung it into a clump of bushes on the other side of the stream. Then he put up the rod, and, accompanied by his wife (after he had distributed some coppers among the children), walked under the railway arch, so that the girls lost sight of both of them.

The children followed him. Very soon some of them returned. They seemed half-inclined to paddle across the stream in search of the boot. This scheme was abandoned, however, and after about ten minutes the children went away again.

‘So that’s how it could have been done,’ said Alice thoughtfully.

‘What could?’ Kitty enquired.

‘Enticement, duck,’ said Laura. ‘You could collect fifty kids as easy as winking, and look them over and decide upon the victim. You could bet kids would fall for a silly stunt like that boot business. They’re like sheep when there’s something daft or dangerous to look at.’

‘Doesn’t sound to me like sheep,’ objected Kitty.

‘Well, you know what I mean. I’m going to nab the Inspector if Mrs Croc. isn’t back, and put him wise to this. Otherwise there may be another murder before we know where we are. I can’t understand why Tidson shows his hand like this, though, and, unless he’a a homicidal maniac, I can’t see the point in what he’s doing.’

‘What a wicked old man!’ cried Kitty. ‘How dare he murder little boys!’

‘Of course, we don’t know that he does, duck. Alice only said that’s how the victim could have been chosen, and I agreed with her. I do think he might be the murderer, but we’ve still to prove it.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘If he’s the murderer he’s a fool to show his hand so openly, but, all the same, as I say, it just proves how easy it is to get hold of children, and I think Mrs Bradley ought to know about it.’

‘And the Inspector,’ reiterated Laura. ‘Goodness knows when Mrs Croc. will be back, and now we have these suspicions I don’t think we ought to hold our horses. Even one more day might may make a difference.’

‘Before we leave the place,’ said Kitty, ‘what about retrieving the boot?’

‘Not a bad idea. What about fingerprints, though? We don’t want to superimpose ours on Mr Tidson’s,’ said Alice. To her astonishment and discomfort, Laura suddenly slapped her on the back.

‘That’s it! Of course!’ she cried. ‘Oh, no, though, it isn’t, at that, unless they knew we were watching, and I don’t think they did.’

‘What on earth are you babbling about, Dog?’ asked Kitty resentfully.

‘Be prepared for a great thought, duck,’ Laura responded. ‘Supposing there were some reason – some subtle and horrible reason – why Tidson’s or Crete’s fingerprints were on that boot before this afternoon – that second boy was barefoot, you know, when he was found – it would be to their advantage to have witnesses to this afternoon’s little game. Well, they’ve got their witnesses, although the audience was mostly a gang of kids. All the same, our first idea may be right – you know, a way of deciding which kid to pick out for the next little bump on the head.’

‘With a half-brick,’ said Kitty, without foreseeing the result of these words. Laura gazed at her spellbound, then spoke in reverent tones:

‘Not your own unaided thought? Attababy! We’ll go after that boot! The half-brick may be over there, too. By the way, we think this boy was wearing sandals, but never mind that. Go on, young Alice! Watch your step. There are old tin cans below the weir, or my eyes deceive me.’

‘We’ll all go,’ said Alice firmly. ‘I’m not going alone to a bank where bodies slide out of the bushes!’

‘I shan’t go,’ said Kitty, with a shudder. ‘You’ll need someone on this side to look after your shoes and stockings. Go with her, Dog. Don’t be so lazy. And both of you mind how you go. There might be something horrid again in those bushes. I’m sure there’s a nasty smell.’

Laura sniffed the air. ‘You’re about right at that,’ she agreed. ‘I thought at first it was merely the “unforgettable, unforgotten” mentioned by R. Brooke, but I don’t believe it’s the river, after all. It’s a much worse stink than any river could manage. I thought something put those kids off. Kids are apt to have delicate noses. Of course, the local council’s rubbish dump isn’t so far away, but, all the same—’

‘I’m not going to be made responsible for finding another body,’ said Alice, with a shudder. ‘One is enough. I’m not going over there, Dog. You had better go and fetch the police.’

‘Fie, fie upon thee!’ replied Laura, sitting down upon the brickwork and removing her shoes and stockings. ‘Here goes. It’s probably a dead rabbit the stoats have had, that’s all.’

Without another word Alice sat down beside her, and, stony-eyed but loyal, immediately followed her example, and removed her stockings and shoes.

‘Now don’t go to sleep, K.,’ said the leader of the expedition, lowering herself to the concrete with its inch or two of swiftly-running water. ‘We may want help, and we may want a message taken. Come on, young Alice, and look out, because it’s hellishly slippery on this stone stuff, and if you fall you may easily crack a bone.’

‘Don’t worry. I feel like a dog on a tight-rope,’ said Alice. This striking simile caused Laura to choke with surprise and she missed her footing. Slipping wildly on the slimy concrete, she flung herself at the opposite bank, determined not to fall down.

‘Oh, gosh!’ she cried, as a cloud of flies, of a green-winged nauseating kind, rose up in a cloud like bees from an overturned hive. ‘It’s a – I think it’s a dead animal of some sort. No, definitely nothing human, but I should go back, if I were you. It isn’t terribly nice, and there’s not more than half of it left!’

‘Phew!’ said Alice. ‘I hope we shan’t be poisoned! How long do you think it’s been dead?’

‘Days, Days and days, I should say. Come on. Let’s go.’ They retreated, and, at Alice’s suggestion, took the long way home.

‘I feel I need a breath of fresh air,’ she explained. The consequence was that they reached the hotel at five, and dead-heated with Mrs Bradley, who had returned to the Domus from Lewes.

‘A dead animal?’ she said very thoughtfully. ‘And the Tidsons and Miss Carmody are back? Very interesting, all of it. What have you done with Inspector Gavin, by the way?’

‘I expect he’s fishing,’ said Laura. ‘Have you had tea?’

‘No. Let us have it together.’

‘I don’t know that I feel like tea,’ said Laura mournfully. ‘My stomach’s been turned, that’s what.’

‘You said it would rain,’ said Alice, to change the subject. She looked up at the sky above the square white Georgian house on the opposite side of the street. ‘See? Here it comes.’

Great drops, proving her assertion, fell on the pavement and splashed on the roof of the car. The party went into the hotel and through to the lounge, and in a very few minutes the episcopal Thomas appeared with a laden tray, followed by one of his myrmidons, a small, black-trousered individual called Pollen, with another, larger tray.

‘It’s guid tae see ye,’ Thomas announced as he set the tray down. ‘Pit the tray dune, mon,’ he added to Pollen, ‘and bring over the wee table. The night’s settin’ in real weet. I’ll just pit a light tae the fire.’

Brushing aside such guests as were in his way, he did this, and the fire, recognizing the master-touch, crackled cheerily.

‘And very nice, too,’ observed Laura. ‘I feel hungry now, after all, and a fire’s always jolly when it’s wet. How’s Connie?’

‘Still in the land of the living,’ Mrs Bradley cautiously replied. She greeted the Tidsons and Miss Carmody with a very nice blend of surprise and pleasure when she saw them come in from the garden. Miss Carmody explained that London was dusty and hot, and that Edris feared for his asthma.

‘So here we are, back again,’ she concluded, ‘and now, of course, it’s going to set in wet. If the rain continues over to-morrow, we shall go back to London after all. Strange, was it not, that we all forgot to have the luggage put into the car when we left!’

‘Not so very strange,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘It is a Freudian symbol.’

‘It is?’ said Mr Tidson, joining in the discussion with frankness, benevolence, and curiosity. ‘Pray explain, my dear Mrs Bradley. I am afraid it only seems to me like carelessness, both on our own part and on the part of the hotel. But, of course, I thought Prissie had looked to it, and she thought I had. But Freud—?’

‘It is very simple,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Freud thinks—’

‘Thought,’ said Miss Carmody, ‘surely?’

‘Thinks,’ Mrs Bradley firmly but courteously reiterated. ‘There is no past tense in the conjugation of genius, especially when it has left us whatever of itself can be conveyed by the printed page; and there is no past tense in heaven, which Freud undoubtedly inherits.’ She eyed her cowed audience benignly, and then continued, ‘Freud thinks that we leave objects necessary or dear to us in the place where we leave our hearts. You desired to be in Winchester, not in London (and I admire and applaud your choice), and so you left your luggage here. That is all.’

This speech left all her female hearers with nothing to say. Mr Tidson, however, was not so handicapped.

‘Allow me to point out,’ he began; but he was interrupted by the entrance of Thomas, who bore in his arms a fine log of wood, and was followed by Pollen carrying a bucket of coal.

‘Ye’ll pardon me, madam,’ said Thomas, pausing in his stride and holding the log in the experienced but slightly absent-minded and off-hand manner of the officiating clergyman with a baby at its baptism, ‘but there is a kind of a body wishing tae speak wi’ ye in the smoke-room. I wad hae shown him in here, but he isna fit for the lounge carpets. That yin in the smoke-room is no great matter.’

‘Has he been fishing, Thomas?’

‘I dinna ken. He has nae rod. He is after fa’ing into the burn, mair like, frae the look o’ him. But ye’d better gae and speir at him yoursel’ whit way he’s as weet as he is.’

‘It sounds like you, Mr Tidson,’ said Mrs Bradley, preparing to take her departure. ‘Didn’t you fall into the river? I had better see him at once. One figures to oneself that he MUST HAVE SEEN THE NAIAD!’

She suddenly bellowed these words into the unfortunate Mr Tidson’s right ear, so that he jumped like a gaffed salmon and had the same expression on his face as one sometimes sees on a dead fish – at once surprised and peevish.

‘Really!’ he said, when Mrs Bradley had gone. He rubbed his ear and then stared angrily at the door through which she had passed, and then more angrily at Alice, who was struggling with a sudden fit of hiccups, with her a nervous reaction which was apt to appear at awkward moments. ‘Really! You know, Prissie,’ he added, turning round on Miss Carmody, ‘I don’t understand Mrs Bradley! I don’t understand her at all.’

The visitor, of course, was Detective-Inspector Gavin, as Mrs Bradley had supposed.

‘I’ve got something, I think,’ he said.

‘Yes, so have I,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Swop?’

‘Swop.’

‘Well, then, you know this second boy’s home was in Southampton? I’ve been there and interviewed the parents. They swear they had no idea that the kid had gone to Winchester. He’d run away from an Approved School the night he was killed. That all came out at the inquest, of course, as you know. But that isn’t all. I’ve also found out that the parents were very glad to be quit of the boy. He was always a difficult kid, and it also appears that his grandfather left him a bit of money. Not much – forty-five pounds, to be exact. Curiously enough, the father was in debt, and the forty-five pounds, which he took from under the floorboards in the boy’s room, will clear him nicely, and give him twenty pounds to spare. I had to bounce the information out of him, but there it is. What do you think about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I can’t see why he didn’t steal the boy’s money before. Is there any evidence that the creditors were pressing him to pay?’

‘Well, he owed it to a bookie at Brighton, and there had been some loose conversation about a razor-slashing gang. It all adds up, you know, doesn’t it? The whole family are rather bad hats. The father’s been in quod twice for house-breaking, and it seems that the boy was taking after him.’

‘I’m still more surprised that the father left the money under the floor, and did not steal it sooner.’

‘He may have been scared of the kid. You never know. But it does all add up, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t think it adds up with the unopened tins I found on Saint Catherine’s Hill, but, of course, it might,’ said Mrs Bradley, without much enthusiasm. ‘And housebreaking isn’t murder, although I know there have been cases of violence lately. Still, the money, no doubt, was very useful if the father was mixed up with a race-gang, and apart from any question of foul play, may be one of the reasons for not reporting the death. My own news is rather different.’ She referred to the strange behaviour of the Tidsons and Miss Carmody in affecting to leave the hotel and coming back to it next day, and then mentioned the discovery of the dead animal among the bushes beside the weir, and the Tidsons’ fishing with the boot.

‘But you haven’t told me yet how you come to be half-drowned,’ she added. ‘I do hope you won’t catch cold.’

‘I never do, thanks, and that bit of news isn’t very important, I’m afraid. It’s interesting, though, in its way. I saw the nymph, and went in after her. No, please don’t laugh! I really did think it was she. It couldn’t have been, of course, but it gives some colour to old Tidson’s raptures, doesn’t it?’

‘But what did you see? – And how do you account for having seen it, and been deceived?’

‘Oh, I hardly know how to describe it. Just some trick of the light and shade upon the river, and somebody talking near by. I’d like to tell you more about it later. Now, I should think this dead animal must be a coincidence, shouldn’t you? Still, it wouldn’t hurt to go and take a look. What animal was it – a dog?’

‘I haven’t been told. I don’t think the girls stayed to see. They didn’t like the smell, I imagine. But there’s one other thing. I am wondering whether it could possibly be the dog Mr Tidson lost some days ago.’

‘Really? Well, if you’re game, let’s go and investigate. It would be interesting to find out why the animal died so near to where Biggin’s body was found, whether it’s Tidson’s dog or not.’ He glanced at the rain. ‘At seven to-morrow?’ He glanced at his clothes. ‘And now I’d better go and get changed.’

They were descending the High Street next morning at seven o’clock, and, crossing it, they walked past the west door of the Cathedral and were soon in the Close. After the rain the day was flawless, although there were pools and puddles everywhere, for the night had been very wet.

‘So Miss Menzies tried ducking Tidson?’ said the Inspector. He chuckled in an unpolicemanlike way. ‘What exactly was the object of that?’

‘To give him due warning,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and to persuade him that we know he’s a liar. All pure kindness really. Unfortunately, he seems disinclined to profit by it, and at present we should find it embarrassing to be more explicit, I fear.’

‘A nod and a wink to a blind horse?’

‘Exactly. Well, he should have resisted the temptation to come here and look for his naiad. Trouble was bound to follow, either for himself or the nymph. But possibly I wound you? You, too, have sighted the naiad.’ She cackled harshly. They turned at the end of College Street and were soon beside the water. The Inspector suddenly laughed.

‘I may see her again! This seems the place for naiads. It certainly isn’t the spot for two murders, is it? I do think Cathedral cities, and these water-meadows, ought to be immune from horrors, and policemen, and nasty little brutes like Tidson.’

‘Not every policeman would confess to having glimpsed a naiad,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And these murders are not native to the place. They have been planted here by the devil, or some of his agents.’

‘By the power of witchcraft, more likely. Strange, when you come to think of it, how many people must have believed in witches.’

‘I had a remote ancestress who was a witch,’ said Mrs Bradley with great complacence. The inspector, stealing a glance at her black eyes, and at the yellow countenance whose bones had been the architecture of a beauty now fallen into decay, felt very much inclined to believe it.

‘She was tried in Scotland in the time of James I,’ Mrs Bradley continued, ‘but was let off by the favour of the presiding magistrate, whose paramour she was said to be when the devil was occupied elsewhere and her incubus not in the mood. It’s a very odd story. Rather well documented, too.’

‘Was she young?’ the inspector enquired.

‘Oh, yes. At the time of her trial she was barely nineteen, it is said. One day I ought to get someone to write her story.’*

‘I shall look forward to reading the book,’ said the inspector. He looked abroad upon the lovely waters, their sedgy meadows, the hill beyond the meadows, the Winchester College playing-fields, the wet long grass and the willows. He sighed deeply. Mrs Bradley said no more, and very soon, crossing the bridge from which Mr Tidson had been translated into something new and strange, an animal scarcely aquatic and certainly terrified, they reached the further stream and took the narrow path beside it to the road-bridge nearer the hill.

They dropped down on the other side of the road-bridge and walked, rapidly still, along an asphalt path to the weir.

The inspector, regardless of his natty shoes, lowered himself to the concrete platform and crossed the swiftly-rushing but shallow water.

‘It’s a dog all right!’ he called back from the bushes amongst which he had plunged after scrambling up the bank on the opposite side of the stream. ‘He’s not very nice. The rats have been at him, I think.’

‘Has he been knocked on the head?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

‘Difficult to say. I shouldn’t come, if I were you. He isn’t any sight for a lady, and the smell is enough to make you ill!’

But Mrs Bradley was already halfway across.

‘Yes, I could smell him some distance away,’ she said calmly.

‘A post-mortem on a dog, ma’am?’ said the local superintendent dubiously. ‘Well, yes, I daresay he would, if you thought it necessary.’

‘I do think it necessary. I want him to check my findings.’

‘And those, ma’am, are—’

‘I prefer not to say until the police doctor has examined him.’

‘Very good, ma’am. I’ll have him come along. We can’t take the dog to the mortuary, though, I’m afraid. Was Inspector Gavin having a joke when he suggested it?’

‘Oh, yes. He’ll do very well here. We shall want a deal table, of course, and, for your own sakes, you had better spray some disinfectant about.’

‘Practice makes perfect,’ said Gavin. ‘That’s what was said, I believe. I don’t know how you could stick that postmortem! I’m thankful to get away from that dog, and that’s a fact. Knocked on the head like the boys? I wonder what the murderer uses?’

‘I don’t think there’s very much doubt. It must be a fairly heavy stone. We can’t tell whether the same hand killed the dog and the boys, you know, but a stone was used in both cases.’

‘Thanks for the information, which had occurred to us as a probability after the earlier reports. The local people have made a preliminary search, and they’ll find that stone eventually if they have to examine every pebble between here and Southampton. They’re particularly keen to have an end to this beastly business. And when they do find it? What then?’ And he shrugged his shoulders.

They parted, and on the way back to the hotel Mrs Bradley met her chauffeur in Jewry Street, where he was gazing in at the window of a confectioner’s shop.

‘Yes, the chocolates are excellent here,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You are well advised to consider parting with your personal points, George. I also have a few left. Let us go inside, and, in the shop, you can give me what I would not take from you yesterday at the hotel.’

The document changed hands whilst the shop-assistant was weighing out the sweets.

‘I sometimes feel I am dogged by Mr Tidson,’ Mrs Bradley continued, as they left the shop and began to walk back to the hotel. ‘For a short time I have shaken him off. I would not like him to know what I have in my possession. It might look to him a little odd, and to Miss Carmody, too, that I should possess the facts of the Preece-Harvard will. I shall want the car after lunch, George. We must go to Alresford and then, very likely, we shall need to go on to Andover. Do you think we could make a détour, as though we were going somewhere entirely different? I am pretty certain to be watched, and we must not give too much away.’

‘Certainly, madam,’ said George. ‘And there is Mr Tidson coming along the street. I think he has been buying himself a hat. And the boys have identified that raft.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Bradley. She greeted Mr Tidson warmly, and walked back with him after offering him one of her chocolates.

George took her to Alresford by the unusual route of the Botley Road and through Bishop’s Waltham, Corhampton and the crossroads north of West Meon. They did not need to go to Andover. The first person they met on the road between New and Old Alresford – it happened to be a greengrocer’s lad on a bicycle – told them where the Preece-Harvards lived and exactly how to find the house. It was more than two miles outside the village, and along a lane, but the car could find a track and went bumpily towards its destination.

* A suggestion made recently by Mr Jeremy Scott.