Death and the Maiden

Chapter Nineteen

‘But a green reed, inspired by divine inspiration, with a gracious tune and melody, spoke to her and said, “Oh, Psyche, I pray thee not to trouble or pollute my water by the death of thee.”’

WILLIAM ADLINGTON (The Golden Ass of

Lucius Apuleius, edited by

F. J. Harvey Darton)

Mrs BRADLEY, summoned to Winchester by an anxious secretary immediately she had disposed of her noble bachelor (whose foible, it seemed, was to keep a young pig in his bedroom), agreed wholeheartedly with Laura that the fact of their presence on the spot at the moment of Crete Tidson’s mishap was the most extraordinary point in the affair. She added that she would be with them as soon as she could.

‘I hope it will be very soon,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t like this part of the business.’

‘I hope she’ll come soon, too,’ said Gavin, ‘and I hope she’ll be able to give us the dope. If it weren’t for that hat, confound it! – and Tidson making that telephone call, and the pricking of Mrs Bradley’s thumbs, I’d have been back at the Yard by now. But the Assistant Commissioner has put his shirt on the old lady, so here I’m left kicking my heels while the locals get through an immense amount of what must seem to them damned foolish work. If only she hadn’t entirely cleared that chap Potter I’d still be wondering what bee she had got in her bonnet.’

‘It’s one that will lay eggs,’ said Laura.

‘More likely to sting her in the eye,’ retorted Gavin.

‘However, I haven’t any choice, and I like the old girl, so here I stay. Luckily, the superintendent plays a jolly good game of billiards, and, of course, there’s always you – when you happen to be here! But think of the fun we could have in London!’

Laura refused to consider the fun they could have in London.

‘Don’t worry. Mrs Croc. has something up her sleeve all right,’ she said. ‘I think I know what she’s after, and what she’s afraid of.’

‘Mrs Bradley afraid? A contradiction in terms,’ said Gavin, grinning. ‘I don’t think she knows what fear is. Anyway, if she has got something up her sleeve, I think she might tell me what it is. Dash it, it’s my case as well as hers, and I’ve got my living to earn.’

‘She can’t prove anything, duck. That’s her trouble. Apparently the psychological proof is there all right, but there’s no material proof whatsoever. Of course,’ added Laura, eyeing her swain reprovingly, ‘you police have made a muck of the thing, don’t you think?’

‘Honestly,’ said Gavin, taking the question with a Scotsman’s seriousness, ‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t think we’ve missed anything, Laura. That’s one of the things that makes me believe that Mrs Bradley’s right about the murders, and that they haven’t been done by a local person, but are part of some special scheme.’

‘Planned by a fox,’ said Laura. ‘One thing, whatever Connie Carmody was supposed to do hasn’t come off.’

‘I don’t think we know that,’ said Gavin. ‘But I wish we could solve the whole thing. They’re so beastly, these murders of kids. I’d like to get Tidson if he did them.’

‘He did them all right, if she says so.’

‘She doesn’t altogether say so, Laura. Mind you, if that young Preece-Harvard had been murdered there wouldn’t be very much doubt about Tidson’s guilt. But even allowing that she’s given us the tip, and that Tidson did kill those two boys, we’ve hunted in vain for the evidence. A panama hat was mentioned, I believe. Tidson has worn one down here, and there seems no doubt that he has lost it, because he’s had to buy himself another, but whether Potter’s story is true, and the lost hat was underneath Bob Grier’s body and later on disappeared, is another matter. One would have thought that those people who live near the Griers and the Potters would have noticed a man in a panama hat. They’re not the usual wear in poorer districts. Well, we’ve questioned them pretty closely and we can’t get a thing. And that’s how it’s been all the time.’

‘I know, But there must be some evidence somewhere. Somebody must know something and have seen something. The only thing is – who?’

‘Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts – well, little Tidson must be an artist, I suppose. You find them in all walks of life and in all professions, and, certainly, the naiad was a poetic conception. I wonder what made him think of her? – Although we don’t even know for certain that he was the one to think of her. That hasn’t been proved, you know.’

‘Oh, well, I don’t know about that! Connie did make a beeline for that flat on the Great West Road. And, actually, Potter didn’t call it a panama hat. Think that one over!’

‘Yes, I know. But she hated Tidson and he scared her. Flies don’t usually make direct for the spider’s web.’

‘Mrs Croc. says that, psychologically, they do. By the way, I wonder how much Connie likes Crete? She’s supposed to hate her as much as she hates old Tidson, but that might not prove to be true.’

‘Crete hates Connie, anyway. That’s quite certain, I thought.’

‘Yes. Well, now: I know we can’t get Crete to give evidence against her husband, but, supposing he is the murderer, do you think we could get at anything through her?’

‘Well, we’ve saved her life, I suppose. She might be disposed to tell us one or two facts about her movements since she first came to Winchester, and that might implicate her husband.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought she made many movements. She seemed to do nothing but all that embroidery. And, even if she could help us, she won’t incriminate herself.’

‘No . . . I still think, though, as I have thought ever since I saw both of them, that there can’t be any love lost between them. Besides, who would half-drown Crete except her husband—’

‘Or Connie Carmody? I agree; although there again—’

‘Well, there’s Miss Priscilla Carmody, of course, and the Preece-Harvards, mother and son.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘You can’t cut out any of them, or put in any of them. There isn’t any evidence either way, any more than there is for the murders. All you can say is that, as the Tidsons have no other English connections—’

‘So far as we know. That’s the catch. We really know most about them from the Canary Islands end.’

‘I don’t think it’s much of a catch. Thirty-five years is a pretty good long time, and Crete, so far as we know, hasn’t been in England before.’

‘Even that we can’t prove, though, can we, unless Miss Carmody knows, and Crete had an English mother.’

‘I shall be glad when Mrs Bradley gets down here. Perhaps she can get something out of Crete.’

‘Perhaps she can. She can see further through a brick wall than most people, can Mrs Croc. But Crete’s a dark horse all right, and as for the drowning—’

‘Not a put-up job from her point of view, you know. She was full of nasty unfiltered river water. There was nothing phony about that. I’ve seen half-drowned people before. It’s a habit we have in the police force, and I think I know most of the signs.’

‘Then either she was attempting suicide or—’

‘Exactly. Or. But we should have spotted the party of the other part. We couldn’t have helped it. My own view is that it was an attempt at suicide. I don’t think murder comes into it, somehow, you know.’

‘Didn’t another point strike you?’ Laura enquired.

‘I can’t say it did. What?’

‘Well, it’s against the suicide theory and very much in favour of murder.’

‘Go on.’ He looked anxiously at her.

‘Where were Crete’s clothes? We didn’t see any.’

‘Well, we didn’t look for any. We were more concerned with bundling her up and getting her into the car.’

‘Would a suicide undress first? And, if she did, and the clothes are still there, well, you left a policeman on duty to keep off sightseers and avoid—’

‘Having people leave extraneous clues,’ said Gavin, grinning. ‘I did. So we go along and look for Crete’s garments. Do you know, so much have I become inoculated in favour of the naiad that I never even thought about clothes. It seemed natural to find Crete naked.’

‘It had better not seem natural when you’re married to me,’ said Laura. ‘Now, look. Somebody has got to stay here at the Domus to meet Mrs Croc. and take her to hear Crete’s depositions or whatever you call any information she’s likely to give. Any objection if I point out that that is your job, and that the search for Crete’s clothes is mine?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Gavin. ‘I’ll give you an O.K. for Sandbank.’

‘Sandbank?’

‘Our P.C. I left him on duty at the spot.’

‘Oh, yes. Thanks. All right, then. I’ll be back in an hour to report.’

But she was not back in an hour. She made her way quickly to the place on the river bank from which they had first seen Crete. She was aware at once of Police-Constable Sandbank, and went over to him with her written authority from Gavin.

‘Very good, miss,’ he said, saluting, ‘but I don’t think you’ll find much. I’ve had a look round myself, but I can’t see nothing. It’s hard to decide how the poor lady could have come here naked, though. She, or somebody else, may have hidden her clothes away, of course. There’s plenty of places to search. But it’s queer, to my way of thinking.’

‘Yes, it is queer. I’m going across.’ She went back to the bridge and crossed it. It was soggy on the opposite bank, but, regardless of mud and water, she searched the ground carefully, exploring the reeds and bushes and squelching hopefully through pasture full of waterlogged hoof-prints.

She came out on to the causeway at last, and explored the banks of the brooks on either side. Nothing could be seen of any clothes, although she went as far as the lasher before she turned back.

‘No good going further afield,’ thought Laura. ‘Nobody could have walked naked all over these fields without being spotted by somebody. What about a raincoat, I wonder? You could easily wear just a raincoat and a pair of shoes. No one would notice that. But what could have been the idea?’

She continued her search, but not even a raincoat could be found. She returned to Police-Constable Sandbank.

‘Nothing doing,’ she said briefly. ‘This means an attempt at murder. Somebody must have brought her and chucked her in. Drugged her first, I should imagine, and the cold water brought her round.’

‘Ah, very like,’ said the constable. ‘Times do change. Times past, we didn’t have nothing like this in the city. ’Tis the war, I reckon. Rouses the original in people, war do, so I say.’

Laura considered this opinion.

‘One thing, this wasn’t a Winchester woman,’ she remarked. ‘Well, I’d better get back to report. No, I won’t! I’ll have one more hunt.’

She was bending down poking into reeds when a young voice hailed her from the opposite bank of the river.

‘Missus, was you lookin’ for the old gentleman’s hat?’

‘Eh?’ said Laura, straightening. Opposite her stood a small boy, another in close attendance. The spokesman held out an object which, in spite of the fact that it had been in the water, she had no difficulty in recognizing as the remains of a white straw panama.

‘Yes! Hold on! I’ll come round by the bridge!’ she shouted. She skirted the stolid policeman and cast at him over her shoulder the tidings that things were moving.

The two boys were standing on the bridge by the time she reached it. She gave them sixpence for the hat and thanked them.

‘He’ll be looking for that,’ she said.

‘Not him,’ said the youngster who had held it. ‘He knowed he dropped it in the water, and he made out to catch it with his stick, but he pretended he couldn’t reach it. Us went paddlin’ after it, but the water was deep, so us come on out again, and it fetched up in the roots of the old willow tree, so us brought it back, but he’d gone. He run when he seed us coming.’

‘Would you know him again?’ asked Laura, who had been examining the inside of the hat for traces of an owner’s name, but had found none.

‘Sure us ’ud know him again,’ declared the boy.

Another thought struck Laura, who was fascinated by the story of the hat.

‘You said he saw you. Did you speak to him?’ she enquired. The youngster shook his head.

‘Don’t reckon he wanted us to, missus, and he wasn’t there when we got back. We seed him running away.’

‘Which way did he go from here?’

‘Over towards St Cross. Us hollered, but he never took no notice.’

‘Well, you’d better give me your names and addresses,’ said Laura. ‘Then, if he gives the five shillings reward, I’ll see that you boys get it. Don’t speak to him again. Run like bally rabbits if you see him. He kills little kids like you.’

She hastened towards the hotel with her trophy, the hat, but by the time she had reached College Walk she had been visited by what she considered to be an inspiration. Instead of turning up College Street she continued to follow the river. She walked past the walls of Wolvesey Castle and so to the bridge at the eastern end of the High Street. She then crossed the High Street and was soon walking down the narrow road which led to the offshoot of Winchester where lived the Potters and the Griers.

She stopped the first group of children she met, and asked for Mrs Grier’s house. Two of them escorted her to it, and lingered beside her as she knocked on the door.

‘All right. That’s all, thanks,’ said Laura. But her audience had no mind to give up their entertainment, and remained almost within arm’s length during the succeeding interview. The door was opened by a grubby little girl of about ten, who was reinforced by an even dirtier child, a boy, a year or two younger.

‘Mother in?’ Laura enquired. The little girl shook her head.

‘Father?’

Another shake of the head.

‘Ah,’ said Laura, ‘then this hat is no good at present, is it?’ She was turning away when the younger child began to cry. Laura turned round again, and the little girl, flinching, said anxiously:

‘He didn’t mean nothing. He didn’t like the lady what wore it.’

‘What lady?’ Laura enquired. ‘What was she like?’

But the little girl shut the door. Laura turned to the boys who were standing beside her.

‘What does she mean?’ she asked.

‘Why, the little ’un seen a lady – well, that’s what ’e said–what took Bobbie Grier away and drownded ’im.’

‘He couldn’t!’ said Laura sharply. The boy was silent. ‘Did he say that?’ she demanded. The boy began to whistle a tune. He made a sign to his mate, and the two of them suddenly fled. Laura hesitated. Then she went round to the back of the Grier’s house.

The garden was very tiny and was bounded by the river, here very shallow. There was nothing to be seen of the two Grier children. Laura, who had been obliged to walk some distance away from the front door and along the street before she gained the dirty little passage which led to the backs of the houses, had counted the front doors as she passed them, so she knew she had reached the right house.

She stepped over the broken stone wall which separated the garden from a muddy little path beside the river, and walked up to the back door. On this she tapped. She was immediately aware of two small noses pressed against the inside of the kitchen window. She stepped back from the door, smiled at the children and took out a piece of chocolate which she happened to have in her handbag.

Before anything decisive could result from this manœuvre there was the sound of a door being slammed. The children disappeared. Laura disappeared, too, and with considerable celerity, so that by the time the newcomer to the house had encountered the children, the self-invited visitor was out of sight from the back windows.

Doubtful as to the wisdom of her proceedings, but feeling that honour demanded the completion of her programme, Laura returned immediately to the front door and knocked.

This time the door was opened by a woman, the slat-ternly, unchaste, disreputable Mrs Grier.

‘Not to-day, thanks,’ said Mrs Grier, ‘and you leave my Billy alone! I wonder at you, pesterin’ poor children when their mum ain’t at ’ome to look after ’em! You ’op it, or I’ll call a policeman!’

‘I am a policeman,’ said Laura calmly. She held out the hat. ‘And I’m here on official business. What do you know about this?’

It was evident that Mrs Grier was too wary to be caught by so transparent a question. It was equally evident that, where the police were concerned, she had a guilty conscience.

‘What I says I says to a uniformed officer,’ she replied. ‘’Ow do I know who you are?’

‘Very well,’ said Laura. She took out a thin notebook which she used for recording small commissions or memoranda. ‘Obstructing the police in the execution of their duty,’ she said aloud as she scribbled in the book. ‘You’d better come along to the station, then. We thought you’d prefer this, that’s all. I didn’t come in uniform with good reason.’

‘Good reason is you ’aven’t got one!’ said Mrs Grier with great perspicacity before she slammed the door. She then opened the sitting-room window and shouted out of it, ‘Go and tell your — newspaper to —! I’m — sick of — reporters and swine like you!’

Laura departed amid jeers (and a stone or two) from children playing in the street, and walked thoughtfully back to the Domus.

‘The beginnings of proof against Mr Tidson,’ she said, when she met David Gavin and found that Mrs Bradley had arrived and was at Crete’s bedside, ‘although the little kid thought he was a woman. He is a bit effeminate, of course.’

Gavin shook his head, but took the hat.

‘Identification by a child of seven or eight isn’t good enough when it comes to hanging a man,’ he replied. ‘We shall need to do better than that. Still, it’s a pointer, and gives us something to start from, I’m bound to agree.’

‘There is one other point,’ said Mrs Bradley, when the matter had been put to her by Laura. ‘We do not know for certain that the hat belongs to Mr Tidson. Still, I think you have done very well,’ she added, observing that her secretary wore a somewhat crestfallen expression. ‘Particularly as I can get nothing out of Crete. Perhaps the hat will help, although I’m not sanguine.’

‘She was half-drowned, wasn’t she?’ said Laura.

‘There is no doubt of that, child. But she won’t say, at present, how she came to be half-drowned.’

‘Annoying of her. She could help us a lot, if she liked.’

‘She may have some old-fashioned ideas, child.’

‘Oh, heavy loyalty to husband, and that sort of tosh,’ said Laura scornfully.

‘Possibly. I was thinking of self-preservation,’ said Mrs Bradley flatly. ‘It is one of the primary instincts.’

‘In that case, you’d think she’d tell.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Well, well, time will show. It usually does, if you don’t interfere, but are content to sit still and let it pass.’

‘Yes, but with that Preece-Harvard boy coming back here to school—’

‘True. But events are shaping well, and if there is the slightest chance of getting the hat recognized as Mr Tidson’s I am sure your young man will manage it, although, when he does, it won’t help him. And now, child, to quiet our minds you and I will visit the Cathedral and gaze upon the remains of Saxon kings. It would be a fascinating and perhaps not impossible task to reassemble the bones correctly,’ she added. ‘I confess I should like to try.’

‘How do you mean, correctly?’ Laura enquired.

‘Well, the contents of the mortuary chests, which now, as you know, rest on top of the screens of pierced stonework erected by Bishop Fox, were desecrated by Cromwell’s soldiers, who, with Puritan frenzy and sadly misdirected zeal, flung the bones of Edred, Edmund, Canute, William Rufus, Emma, Ethelwulf and certain other persons including the Saxon bishops Wina, Alwyn and others, through the stained-glass windows of the Cathedral. The bones were collected and re-housed, but who knows whether correctly? I would give a good deal to be allowed to examine the contents of those chests. However, I don’t suppose it will make much difference, in the long run, whether the bones are correctly reassembled or not.’

‘I wonder what the odds would be in millions of chances to one that the bones are reassembled correctly?’ suggested Laura. Discussion of this eminently insoluble exercise in mathematics lasted them until they reached the west front of the Cathedral.

Once inside, Mrs Bradley confined her attention to the mortuary chests, the Early Decorated oak choir stalls and the carved vine of Bishop Langton’s chantry chapel. Laura wandered about by herself, chiefly in the north transept, and beside the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre with its wall-paintings depicting the Passion.

She encountered Mrs Bradley once in the retro-choir, where she found her employer gazing, apparently in abstraction, at the small entrance to the Sanctum Sanctorum and apparently oblivious of her presence. That this was not the case, however, Laura realized as Mrs Bradley addressed her.

‘Corpore sanctorum sunt hic in pace sepulto,

Ex meritis quorum fulgent miracula multa.’

quoted Mrs Bradley into her secretary’s ear.

‘You’ve been inside!’ said Laura. Mrs Bradley, impeccably reverent, did not cackle. She merely nodded confidentially, and fell to a further study of the entrance to the Holy Hole.

‘The vault, and not the Feretory, lies within,’ she said; and they neither spoke nor met again until they came across one another at Izaak Walton’s black marble slab. They left the Cathedral together.

‘Well, that has cleared our minds,’ said Mrs Bradley. Laura could not agree, but did not say so, and, without more words, they returned to the Domus and Crete.

Laura remained downstairs, but Mrs Bradley went up to the bedroom to which Crete had been taken, and, without invitation, drew a chair to the bedside and sat down.

Crete turned her head and looked at her persecutor distastefully. She had recovered as much colour as she usually had, and her greenish hair, now dry, was partly covered by a very charming boudoir cap which gave her the appearance of an exquisite early sixteenth-century portrait.

Her wide, strange eyes were without expression. Her red mouth neither betrayed nor illumined her thoughts. Mrs Bradley produced the panama hat more as one who produces rabbits from toppers than as one who confronts a suspect with Exhibit A, and proffered it for inspection.

‘I suppose you recognize this?’ she said. Crete smiled.

‘Poor Edris! I rated him soundly, the silly old man. He loses his hat when he is fishing, and then goes out very early on the morning that little boy is found dead and brings it back with him. Can you imagine anything so silly? I tell him to lose it again. He does, and the kind English bobbies have found it. Now, I suppose, they will accuse him of murdering the boy. It is incredible, the stupidity of the police!’

‘And, in the end, of murderers,’ retorted Mrs Bradley. ‘Why did you fish with the old boot down by the weir?’

‘To amuse the poor children,’ said Crete. ‘And I do not like to kill fish. I do not like to kill anything. It is just as much fun with a boot. But how do you know about the boot? It was just a game. Why were we spied on? It was a holiday foolishness, that is all.’

Mrs Bradley felt a growing appreciation of this redoubtable foe. She got up.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t you who entered Connie’s room and whom I caught on the side of the head with the nailbrush, was it?’

‘I entered Connie’s room?’ exclaimed Crete. ‘But why should I do that, please?’

‘To pour vitriol into her ear, I imagine. You’ve had a letter by hand from her since she went to Lewes, haven’t you?’

‘It is the first time I have heard she is in Lewes.’

‘Maybe, but she wrote to you from Lewes, all the same.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Crete. ‘I must not lie. I must not make a denial. But you do not judge jealousy too harshly, I think, do you?’

‘I never judge it at all,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘When does young Preece-Harvard return to school?’

‘Do I know him?’

‘By hearsay only, I think. The nephew, you know. Young Arthur.’

‘Arthur? Ah, yes, of course. Edris speaks sometimes of Arthur. He is a clever boy, and inherits money, I think.’

‘An impeccably-phrased description.’

‘Please?’

‘Let it go,’ said Mrs Bradley, employing a phrase she had learned from Laura Menzies.

‘You are intelligent,’ said Crete, raising herself from the pillows and giving her tormentor a rare and very sweet smile. ‘Sometimes I think devilish. You have sewn me up into a parcel. Isn’t that what the English say? Well, I had better come clean. That is an American expression. We had Americans often on Tenerife. I like them because they have energy. I think Connie Carmody tried to ensnare my husband, and, you know, she is younger than I, and Edris is an old man and not quite a good old man sometimes. Therefore I am jealous, and when Edris wishes to learn where Connie has gone, I think I would like to know too. I affect to help him, but really I am helping myself.’

‘He put through the telephone call that took me out of my room, and you ransacked my belongings,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Yes, we guessed all that.’

‘Then Connie telephoned telling me where to meet her,’ Crete went on. ‘But it was not Connie. It was a stupid letter, all accusations. A madness.’

‘But why should Connie telephone?’

‘We advertised. She is a murderer. What do you say about that?’

‘I bring murderers to justice,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘And sometimes to that travesty of justice, the gallows.’

‘You speak in the English way, with humour,’ said Crete. ‘And the English humour has facets. It is like heaven.’

‘Well, the English justice isn’t very much like heaven,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘although more so, perhaps, than the Greek or the Spanish justice, of which I believe you have some knowledge.’

‘I will discuss all three with my husband,’ said Crete, ‘and meanwhile I would be grateful for his hat.’

‘The police will buy him another,’ said Mrs Bradley. She walked out, spinning the deplorable wreck of a panama on her hand.

‘But how do we get him?’ cried Gavin. ‘And if she won’t say that he pushed her in, we can’t do anything about it unless somebody else saw him do it, and that’s unlikely. And we can’t even call it attempted suicide. Nobody is going to believe that a woman stripped herself naked before trying to drown herself in a respectable river like the Itchen. It doesn’t hold water.’

‘Crete did, quite a lot,’ said Laura, who was listening not particularly sympathetically to this tale of woe. ‘What’s more, Crete expects to be arrested.’

‘How do you know that?’ enquired the inspector, looking interested and alert, like a thrush within sight of a worm.

‘Just an idea,’ said Laura. ‘What’s more, you’d better arrest her,’ she added darkly. ‘The plot thickens, it seems to me, and, as soon as young Arthur P-H. gets down to Winchester, we shall be pretty near the climax. That’s quite certain.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Gavin. ‘But we haven’t even the most superficial circumstantial evidence that any harm is intended to young Preece-Harvard.’

‘Well, you arrest Crete for bathing without a costume, and see what happens,’ said Laura. ‘She won’t have thought of that, and it ought to flummox her properly. She wants to be arrested for attempted suicide, I’d say, and any other charge will spike her guns.’

‘But what about the hat?’ demanded Gavin. ‘Can’t you get one of your experts to tell you how long it’s been in the water? She may be telling the truth about the hat. If she wanted to accuse her husband of attempted murder she’d have come across with it, I should think. The hat is either an accident or a red-herring.’

Gavin chuckled.

‘You’re an ass,’ he said. ‘Or are you, perhaps, a genius?’

‘Occasionally,’ Laura replied. ‘And on this occasion definitely not an ass. You think it over, sonny, and get your hooks on Crete. Then we shall see what we shall see.’

‘Signs and wonders,’ said her swain, ‘but nothing that’s any good to a plodding police officer, believe me.’

‘All right. What price Mrs Croc. trying to get Crete’s goat, then?’

‘Did she?’ He looked interested. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Well, I would if you felt sympathetic, but I’m not here to waste my sweetness on the desert air.’

‘Say on, sweet chuck.’

‘All right. From Mrs Croc’s account of the interview – and I will say for the old duck that what she tells you is gospel and certainly isn’t intended to mislead – at least, not often! – it seems pretty clear that she indicated where the Tidsons got off. That ought to produce repercussions. I feel we are on the verge of getting action.’

‘Yes,’ said Gavin gloomily. ‘I feel it, too, and I’m not so certain I like the idea of it, either. You see the way that particular cat is likely to jump, I suppose?’

‘At Mrs Croc’s throat, I suppose you mean. But I think that’s what she intended.’

‘Very likely. But, hang it all, she’s an old lady and I can’t have her expose herself to such danger. I thought we were agreed about that. If Tidson and Crete are already responsible for two murders, they are not likely to stick at a third, particularly if it’s a case of shutting somebody’s mouth. They’ve nothing to lose either way, and they’ve shut young Biggin’s mouth already, if what we think is true.’

‘I know, but there’s nothing we can do.’

‘Except keep a weather eye lifting. But I don’t like it, Laura. It isn’t good enough.’

‘That’s if we’re right about the Tidsons. But, if you remember, you queried that yourself some weeks ago. And, after all, what have we to go on? There’s Tidson’s hat, of course, but that’s a red herring, I think, and, if Crete won’t accuse him, we can’t. Besides, he’s probably got a water-tight alibi, anyhow.

‘I know. But we don’t want to get him for having a stab at Crete. We want to get him for those boys.’

‘But that’s where we’re absolutely stuck.’

‘Not absolutely, now that child’s mentioned the hat. Do you know what we’ve got to do? We’ve got to get Tidson to the station on some charge or other—’

‘American film stuff?’

‘Yes, if you like. Spitting on the sidewalk over there; drunk and disorderly over here.’

‘You wouldn’t find Mr Tidson drunk and disorderly. He’s far too respectable for that! He wouldn’t dream of getting drunk.’

‘I’m afraid not, no.’

‘But suppose he did, and the local police pulled him in, what could you do? He’d only be fined ten bob or something, wouldn’t he?’

‘I’d confront him with one or two people – identification parade and all that. They’ve got a man now at the station for pestering women. We could line old Tidson up in the same parade, and see whether any of the witnesses picked him out; not, of course, for pestering people, but on any other score. For instance, if only we could show that he’d ever been anywhere near the Griers’ house it might help us quite a bit.’

‘Well, I still say those children I met at the house proved that, but it’s a long shot, isn’t it? And a bit unfair, if he’s innocent of the murders.’

‘I know. But we’ve got to do something. It’s stalemate so far, and I’ve been down here for several weeks now. My superiors are getting fed up, and an about-to-be-married man can’t afford to have his superiors raising their eyebrows because he doesn’t get action.’

‘I quite agree. All the same—’

‘All the same, you don’t like a frame-up. Neither do I. On the other hand, I can’t have Mrs Bradley getting bashed over the head with a stone, and the body slung into the river. I’m worried, Laura. I feel she’s started something which I may not be able to stop.’

‘She’ll take care of herself,’ said Laura. ‘And I’ll dog her footsteps and so forth. Does it matter if we murder the Tidsons if it stops them murdering us?’

Gavin grinned.

‘I shouldn’t think so. Ferdinand Lestrange would be called for the defence in that case, I should imagine, and he doesn’t very often lose the day. But you be careful. I don’t want an idiot wife. Being bashed over the head is apt to produce some effect on the intelligence, you know, and if Tidson were to get busy again with a brickbat—’

‘To change the subject,’ said Laura, ‘don’t you think something more could be done from the Bobby Grier end of this business? I believe Mrs Grier is frightened. Couldn’t you frighten her a bit more? And those kids who said a man with a panama hat took Bobby away and drowned him – Oh, yes, I know the baby one said it was a lady, but that doesn’t count for anything.’

Gavin looked dubious.

‘I might get something,’ he agreed, ‘but what would it be worth if I did? I can’t bring kids into court with a tale like that, and, if I could, I wouldn’t want to.’

‘Who’s asking you to bring them into court? You’ve only got to get them to recognize Tidson as the man in the panama hat, and then you get on with your proofs. They’re bound to be circumstantial, but you can’t help that.’

‘Not good enough. Haven’t you read any witchcraft trials? Kids will say anything if the idea is put into their heads. And, suppose the kid sticks to his “lady,” where is that going to get me?’

‘So the hat’s no good? And I got all wet and muddy retrieving the beastly thing!’

‘I’m not saying the hat’s no good. Crete has agreed that it’s Tidson’s. He’ll have to explain how it got there at a time when Crete was half drowned.’

‘Which he will like a shot, the same as Crete did. She was much too fly to be caught out over the hat. He’ll say it blew off when he was fishing, or else that he took it off, and then, in the excitement of hooking a trout, forgot all about where he’d left it. You’d have to believe him. And, if you didn’t, a jury would. You’re right. The hat is a washout.’

‘I’m going to have a go at him,’ said Gavin. ‘Drunk and disorderly? I wonder?’

But, as it happened, there was no need for any such charge. Mr Tidson was apprehended, and charged the very next day, for travelling on a train without a ticket.

‘There’s something damned phony about this,’ said Gavin, when he heard of it from the police station; for Mr Tidson had added to his misdeed by striking the ticket collector on the nose. ‘What the devil is he up to? He’s done this for the purpose, I should guess, and the purpose was not to save his railway fare. Something’s blowing up. I wonder what?’

‘I should say it’s blown,’ said Laura. ‘Crete’s told him about her two talks with Mrs Croc. and something about them has scared him. You go and sort him, my lad. This might be a gift from the gods. I wonder what Mrs Croc. has got to say? Oh, and I’ve got a job to do.’

She picked up an attaché case, opened it, and displayed a transparent light-green waterproof, a wrap-over skirt and a blouse.

‘What the hell?’ enquired Gavin. Laura grinned and pushed the clothes into the case.

‘Three guesses,’ she said, ‘and you ought to get it first pip.’

‘But where did you get them?’

‘They’re mine, duck. I’m going along to the river to find out how easy it is to sink clothes in some deepish pool. Then I’m going to find exactly where Crete parked hers. That wasn’t a suicide attempt. It was some elaborate eyewash. You wait and see what she does next.’