Death and the Maiden

Chapter Twenty

‘He rushed through a long bed of weeds, and then walloped about distractingly . . .’

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

CRETE’S next action was somewhat astonishing. Mrs Bradley remarked that as Arthur Preece-Harvard would be in Winchester on the morrow, Crete had arranged with the management of the Domus to have a private nurse, or, rather, two nurses, who would be with her night and day.

‘But what’s she afraid of?’ enquired Gavin. ‘It almost looks as though she’s afraid of her husband, after all. Do you think he did push her in? It seems queer if he did, considering she went prepared to be the nymph, and—’

‘No, I don’t think he did. And I don’t think she’s afraid of him. The nurses will provide her with an alibi, of course, if young Preece-Harvard comes to any harm in Winchester. That is partly what the nurses are for, and that, I imagine, is what the semi-suicide was for. Crete is not going to involve herself any further in her husband’s affairs.’

‘But this means she knows an attempt will be made on the boy, and fairly soon! Who are the nurses? Do you know?’

‘One has been provided by the doctor whom the hotel called in for Crete, and who usually attends at the Domus if anyone on the staff or among the visitors is suddenly taken ill, and the other is the sister of Lucy, the chambermaid. This sister is well known to the management, and has obliged in this way before.’

‘I’d better have a look at them, I think, although they both sound innocent enough. Still, it wouldn’t do to take chances. But, tell me, what do you make of Tidson? I could understand him cheating the railway company, but what about him slugging a ticket collector?’

‘I know,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘It isn’t in character. And what isn’t in character is always interesting. Have you interviewed him since he was arrested?’

‘No. It’s the local beak’s job. He’s being held on the charge of assault. He paid up the money for the fare, apologized, referred to sudden temptation and said he’d always been honest. I don’t suppose the railway company will prosecute, but for the assault he’ll get forty shillings or seven days, I should think. It wasn’t really a serious case.’

‘It’s a very curious one. I wonder what Connie Carmody is doing?’

‘I don’t suppose she’s doing anything much. She’s with her aunt at the flat in London, isn’t she?’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Laura to Gavin, a little later on, ‘I still say it’s a pity we can’t prove what was in that letter that was handed to Crete from that car, and I still say it’s a pity we don’t know a little bit more about that flat on the Great West Road that Connie went to when she fled from the Domus.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. She had nowhere to run to except there or to Miss Carmody’s place, and she guessed we should find her if she went back to where she had come from. She knew old Tidson wasn’t very likely to turn up, and she couldn’t have foreseen that you would. The only part of the business that seems suspicious to me is that she had enough sense not to throw the stone into the river, so that the fingerprints and the dog’s blood were still on it for us to test. That does look guilty.’

‘Yes, it’s altogether too clever.’

‘I’m going to bounce the secret of that dog-killing out of Connie. It couldn’t have been done for revenge. She never even saw Tidson with the dog!’

‘You’d much better leave her to Mrs Bradley, you know.

You can’t possibly hold her for questioning, although I agree she deserves it.’

‘Oh, there are ways and means,’ said Gavin, easily. ‘We can charge her with stealing the dog. I suppose she did steal it, in a way. It will be enough reason for questioning her a bit. We can say that we think the death of the dog may have some bearing on the murders. That won’t be untruthful, will it?’

Laura looked doubtful, and said:

‘The old lizard told her about the dog, hoping she’d make it a substitute for Tidson, and she did. And I don’t believe you could arrest her for stealing it unless Mr Tidson makes a charge, and you know he won’t!’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort!’

‘All right, all right. You know your own business best, and I don’t need to agree with all you say. To my mind it’s a frame-up, and I’ve said so. Still, if you have to do it, that must be that. I admit that I feel rather sorry for this Connie. She’s an under-weather, nervy sort of piece, and I wish you could leave her alone.’

‘She’s got to come across,’ said Gavin briefly. ‘We’re after a murderer, and a pretty beastly one. Can’t spare people’s feelings if it means we’ve got to let him go.’

‘I know. But it’s beastly, all the same, that the innocent should have their lives spoilt because of nasty old men like Mr Tidson.’

‘Talking of Tidson, I wish I knew what he’s playing at, to get himself arrested like this. It almost looks as though he has reason to need protection, and, if that’s so—Well, I wish I could see through his game.’

It was not at all easy to find out Mr Tidson’s game. He was brought up in front of a kindly and puzzled justice of the peace next day, and, having made a bitter little speech to which the bench listened gravely and with great courtesy, he refused to pay a forty-shilling fine. The magistrate, clicking his tongue, was about to proffer the alternative of seven days’ imprisonment when an official whispered in his ear. Mr Tidson’s fine, it appeared, had already been paid, and Mr Tidson, looking dazed and frightened, was dismissed. He began another speech, but any protest he may have seen fit to make was smothered by the fatherly hand and arm of a gigantic police constable, who removed him almost bodily from the court as the next case came up for hearing.

‘Did you pay the fine?’ enquired Gavin of Mrs Bradley.

‘I was about to put the same question to Laura,’ she replied. ‘We are on the verge of interesting disclosures. The plot thickens to breaking point.’

‘I certainly didn’t pay it,’ said Laura. ‘I should think Crete must have sent the money. She’d hardly want her husband in jug.’

Enquiry, set on foot by Gavin, proved that the philanthropist who had paid the two pounds was a young lady. The description, which followed, of her size, appearance and apparent age, certainly would not fit Crete but might have fitted Connie Carmody.

Gavin immediately telephoned to Miss Carmody, and discovered, as he had expected, that Connie was no longer in the flat. Her bed had not been used, and her aunt could not account for her disappearance.

‘Well, that beats everything,’ said Gavin. ‘I suppose she had better be found at once. And now, what about this Tidson?’

‘He has gone to see Crete, at the Domus,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Let us both go to see him.’

Mr Tidson, Mrs Bradley was interested to discover, was in a remarkable state of terror. He could not answer any questions. He merely begged them to save him, but omitted to mention from what.

Gavin commented on this. ‘That chap,’ he said confidentially, ‘will cut his own throat before we hang him if we’re not mighty careful. What do you think?’

‘As you do,’ Mrs Bradley responded. ‘Nevertheless, I am inclined to leave him to his fate.’

‘Yes, but why should suicide be his fate? What’s he been up to? How do you account for the wind-up?’

‘Well, I doubt if it means a guilty conscience. I don’t believe Mr Tidson is troubled by conscience at all. No, I think we are watching the unfolding of an interesting logical sequence of events.’

‘But where the devil is Connie?’

‘Here in Winchester, I imagine, lying in wait for the unfortunate Mr Tidson, instead of (as he had hoped and planned) for her half-brother, Arthur Preece-Harvard. I let the boy come back to school here because I knew he was not in danger from Connie, and Mr Tidson, who has such a powerful motive for putting him out of the way, will never dare to touch him while we’re here. It is a situation I shall watch with peculiar relish.’

‘What are you getting at?’ asked Gavin. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘Once upon a time,’ she said, ‘there was a man who incited another man to murder their mutual enemy. But the second man, victim of the fearful poison engendered by the promptings of the first, killed, not his enemy, but the man who had slain his conscience. What do you think about that?’

‘I see the point of it,’ Gavin answered. ‘You believe he’s been inciting Connie Carmody to kill young Preece-Harvard, and has spent his time in Winchester demonstrating to her how easy it is to commit a murder without being found out.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Bradley, careful not to express agreement with this, ‘I don’t know about that. No doubt it would suit Mr Tidson very nicely if Connie (or anyone else) would put Arthur out of the way and leave him to inherit the money. But, of course, he made a mistake if he supposed that Connie entertained feelings of hatred for the boy. Connie, in point of fact, adores him, as she has done from their earliest years.’

‘Then why in the name of goodness hasn’t she given old Tidson away to us weeks ago? If she’d spilt the beans we could have acted upon her information.’

‘Connie, you must remember, is not only young; she is unversed in the ways of the world. She did not think we should believe her. She distrusts people – who can blame her? The world has not treated her too well. Besides, she is intelligent enough to realize that we could scarcely interfere with Mr Tidson’s plans until something more than she could tell us was proved against him.

‘In other ways she is not a clever girl, and she is also remarkably obstinate. It was not easy to persuade her that her best course was to go away from Winchester for a bit, and she would not have consented (even although she was terrified of Mr Tidson) if Arthur had not been safely tucked away in Bournemouth. I knew she would return to Winchester as soon as the College re-opened after the summer, and I have no doubt that she is here, that she paid Mr Tidson’s fine, and has turned the tables on him by making him fear her as much as – in fact, a good deal more than – at one point she feared him.’

‘Do you think she led Tidson up the garden, then, and allowed him to believe that she would kill Preece-Harvard when the time came?’

‘I don’t know. She was evidently horrified by him, not only because of his motive for having Arthur murdered, but sexually, of course, as well. I don’t think a young man like yourself can begin to fathom the depths of that kind of horror, which is far more than merely physical. She probably allowed him to think that she would act in accordance with his suggestions.’

‘Both kinds? Ah, I begin to see daylight. I suppose that accounts for the visit of the “ghost”, after which she insisted on changing rooms with you.’

‘The “nun” was undoubtedly Mr Tidson.’

‘Oh, yes, the apparition that squeaked. Always a very phony story.’

‘And it accounts, too, for the visitant at whom I hurled the nailbrush. That was undoubtedly Miss Carmody, who came to find out what was going on.’

‘Then why the black eyes of the others?’

‘Thereby, I fancy, hangs a tale. Anyhow, that ludicrous situation spiked poor Miss Carmody’s guns, as Mr Tidson knew it would. An elderly maiden lady cannot afford to look ridiculous if she values her self-respect. I saved her by taking her off to Bournemouth for the day.’

‘Not knowing that the Preece-Harvards were there?’

‘Not knowing at that time that the Preece-Harvards were there. It must have given Mr Tidson a shock when he knew where we had been, for I have little doubt he knew where Arthur was.’

‘What about that flat on the Great West Road? An address of convenience, no doubt?’

‘Yes. The letter about the naiad came from there, and Connie had a key which Mr Tidson may or may not have given her at some time.’

Laura groaned.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘quite a horrid person, Mr Tidson, and Connie is—’

‘Connie must be a dope,’ said Laura roundly. ‘The thing is, we ought to find her before she can do Mr Tidson any harm.’

‘I’d leave him to it,’ said Gavin. ‘The wicked old villain!’

‘For murdering the boys, hoping that Connie would kill Arthur, or for trying to seduce Connie?’ Mrs Bradley ironically enquired.

‘The last, of course,’ Gavin vigorously and honestly replied. Mrs Bradley and Laura laughed, and the latter observed, as she tucked her strong arm into his and affectionately dug her elbow into his side:

‘Spoken like a man and a mutt!’

‘Yes, well now,’ said Gavin, ‘after all that, what about him?’

‘I think,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘that our best plan might be to await him. He’s bound to turn up.’

The person, to everyone’s surprise, who turned up first, was young Preece-Harvard. They found him at tea with Crete, with whom he seemed to get on very well. The surprise was partly on Crete’s side. It was evident she had not realized that Mrs Bradley already knew the boy. She recovered at once, and said quickly:

‘I was very anxious to meet him. We are related, as you know, by marriage.’

Arthur gave his own explanation, which coincided with hers.

‘I had leave,’ he said, smiling at Crete, ‘as Mrs Tidson is my aunt and is going back to Tenerife so soon. I have to be back for chapel, of course. I am disappointed not to see Uncle Edris.’

‘Oh, he will be back before you go,’ said Crete, with a half-glance at Mrs Bradley. ‘He had to visit your Aunt Priscilla in London. I expect him at any moment now.’

But Arthur was obliged to leave without meeting his uncle and heir.

‘It is sad,’ said Crete, accompanying him to the outer door of the hotel. ‘He has missed his train. It is like him. If you met him you would perhaps know him. You must say prayers for me, please, to your saint. You are quite the nicest boy. You must come to Tenerife and stay with me. I shall have a new playfellow for you, and one you will like.’

‘A Spaniard?’ exclaimed Mrs Bradley. Crete smiled and pressed Arthur’s arm into which she had slipped her own.

‘Arthur knows that I jest and make fun for him,’ she said; but when she had waved farewell to the boy and he had gone striding off down the narrow street with his black gown flying and his long grey-flannelled legs making it look even shorter than it was, she turned to Mrs Bradley and said:

‘I think poor Edris is in danger.’

‘I think he is,’ Mrs Bradley agreed. ‘But it’s of no use to ask me to help him out of it. I don’t even know what help he needs.’

‘Nor I. He is with poor Prissie.’

‘Is he? I did not know that. He is very lucky not to be in prison.’

‘He sent me a telegram.’ She produced it. Mrs Bradley took it, seated herself on an oak settle which was against the vestibule wall, and read the telegram.

‘In London join you soon,’ Mr Tidson had written for transmission.

‘He comes this evening, no doubt,’ said Crete.

But at ten o’clock that night there was still no sign of Mr Tidson. Crete, shrugging, gave him up and announced her intention of going to bed. At half-past ten Thomas came into the lounge to tell Mrs Bradley that she was wanted on the telephone. It was Gavin.

‘So you’re still up and about?’ he said.

‘Yes. The vultures gather,’ said Mrs Bradley, cackling mirthlessly into the receiver.

‘Is Tidson there?’

‘No.’

‘Expected?’

‘I gather that he is.’

‘Crete Tidson isn’t with you, is she?’

‘She is at the hotel, but she has gone to bed.’

‘She has quite recovered, I take it?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Well, look, I’ve got a clue to the murder of that second boy. Can’t tell you over the telephone. When can I meet you to-morrow?’

‘As early as you like.’

‘At half-past ten, then. I’ll come to the smoke-room and wait there until you turn up. I think we’ve got him cold. To-morrow, then. Good-night.’

As it happened, this appointment did not materialize at that place and time. Mrs Bradley woke early on a beautiful morning, rose at six, and by seven was walking between the lime trees towards the west front of the Cathedral.

From the riverside path Saint Catherine’s Hill showed a long slope interrupted only by the dark shadow of the fosse, which made a sudden sharp dip in the smoothly-flowing contours of the turf. The grove of trees on the summit of the hill looked almost black. The greenish willows along the edges of the river, and marking its brooks and carriers, leaned, heavily foliaged, towards the swift, clear water; and the sedges showed the traces of yellowing autumn.

The air was clear and fairly cold, so that Mrs Bradley, walking, not fast, but faster than she had at first intended to do, did not see Mr Tidson until she was coming back towards the city. Feeling considerably warmer by the time she had walked up and over the hill, and had come opposite the wooden bridge, she turned and walked up the path to stand on the bridge and gaze at the water flowing so deeply below her.

It was then that she saw Mr Tidson. He was lying on his back with his head on a rolled-up coat. A cowman stood beside him as though on guard.

‘The young lady tried to save him,’ said the cowman. ‘I come up as soon as I could, but too late to give her any help. Her couldn’t do nothen for the poor old gentleman, her said. Her weren’t too strong a swimmer, and, in the end, her had to letten him go. Hers gone off now to get help. I offered to go, but her wouldn’t have none of that, and seeing how wet she was, I thought maybe the run ud do her good. I’m afeared there’s nothing ee can do, mum. Us pump-’andled him all us knew. He’s gone, I be afraid. Got his legs all tangled in the weeds, I reckon. Wasn’t no help for him at all. The young lady said she got there too late to do him any good.’

Mrs Bradley thought it extremely unlikely that the weeds which she could see in the river were of the kind to twine round Mr Tidson’s legs and drown him, but she did not say so to the cowman. She knelt beside Mr Tidson, gripped his nose with a steel thumb and finger, and pressed her other hand over his mouth.

This unorthodox treatment had on the corpse a most extraordinary effect. Mr Tidson began to writhe and struggle.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bradley, in brisk congratulation, ‘that’s much better.’ She helped Mr Tidson to his feet and regarded him thoughtfully. ‘How wet you are! You had better run home and change.’

‘Well!’ said the cowherd admiringly. ‘If ever I see the beat of that there! You’d be a doctor, no doubt, mum?’

‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Mrs Bradley, gazing benignly after the rapidly retreating form of Mr Tidson.

‘And that ud be the new-fangled treatment, no doubt?’

‘Well, the old-fangled treatment, I think,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Which way did the young lady take?’

‘Same as the drownded gentleman, mum. That way. I feel as if I’d seed a meracle.’

‘I think perhaps you have,’ said Mrs Bradley. She turned and, picking up her skirts, went hastily after Mr Tidson.

Mr Tidson, on the unimpeachable evidence of Thomas, had not returned to the Domus. Mrs Bradley rang up Gavin and asked him to meet her without delay under Kings Gate.

‘This is where we practise a little mild deception,’ she said. ‘Your part is to back me up by saying little and wearing a look of deep concern.’ She then explained what had happened, and, as she talked, she hurried him along to the Domus.

‘Well, that finishes the naiad, I presume,’ he said, grinning broadly when he had heard all. ‘Mrs Tidson will have to be told. Can I leave you to break the news?’

‘I shall be glad to do so,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘We must find out first, though, how much she knows already.’

Crete appeared to know nothing. She took the news very calmly.

‘So the naiad embraces him at last,’ she said, smiling slightly and focusing her large, dark eyes on the window. ‘Ah, well, it could be expected, I suppose.’ She evidently took it for granted that Mr Tidson was dead, although Mrs Bradley had not said as much.

‘Why did he kill those two boys?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

‘It was experimental, like atom bombs,’ said Crete, with a sidelong glance at her and a very slight shrug. ‘He wished to show that it could be done. It is dangerous, that mood. But he proved his point. One needs to take pains, that is all.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘One needs to take pains. And what do you think happened to-day?’

‘Oh, I think there was a fight with the nephew, perhaps,’ answered Crete. ‘Or maybe he just tumbled in. Or maybe Connie Carmody killed him. She did not like us. We were displacing her with her aunt. There was jealousy there, do you think?’

‘It would be interesting to know,’ said Mrs Bradley, even more interested in Crete’s attitude towards Mr Tidson’s mishap than in the actual occurrence itself, which, from the cowman’s account of the matter, she had little doubt had been brought about by Connie. ‘I feel you need more sunshine and less criticism than we have here,’ she went on. ‘How would you like to return to Tenerife as soon as the inquest is over?’

‘I must get my fare from Prissie,’ said Crete in cool, business-like tones. ‘She will like to get rid of me, no doubt.’

Mrs Bradley agreed with this estimate of Miss Carmody’s probable reactions, but did not say so. She merely observed in an offhand way and with her snake-like grin:

‘Will you need to borrow your husband’s fare, too?’

‘Oh, Edris!’ said Crete with something very like contempt in her tone. ‘He must be buried in England. Here in the city, no doubt. I could not support him on a ship. Suppose perhaps someone should fall in love with me on the vessel? With one’s husband dead in the baggage room—’

‘Well, one’s husband is not dead yet,’ said Mrs Bradley. Crete looked at her enquiringly.

‘It is a joke?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no. He was not quite dead when I found him,’ said Mrs Bradley. Crete, after taking a minute at least to absorb these obviously unwelcome tidings, took them philosophically, much to Mrs Bradley’s appreciative admiration.

‘Drowning was too good for him,’ she remarked. ‘What has been done with him now?’

‘He fled from the scene of the contretemps, and is now at large. I hardly anticipated that he would return to the Domus,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘I expect, though, that Detective-Inspector Gavin will want to find him.’

‘For the murders? I am afraid I have given him away. Do you think so? No matter. I take back everything I said, and I will not make any statements.’

‘They would be valueless,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘The evidence of a wife will not be sought for.’

‘So?’ Crete smiled. ‘Then I think I ask Thomas for champagne. You will pay for me for a bottle and we shall share it?’

‘Very well,’ Mrs Bradley agreed. Laura came in whilst they were talking. She gave them a glance, caught Mrs Bradley’s eye, and went out again, to find Gavin in the hotel vestibule. She buttonholed him at once.

‘So it’s up to you to look for proof,’ said she. ‘I rather hope you’ll find it.’

‘Proof of what?’

‘Of the fact that Connie Carmody tried to murder this Tidson.’

‘We can’t possibly prove it. According to Mrs Bradley the only witness was the cowherd, and he was quite certain that Connie did her best to rescue the fellow. There isn’t any doubt about that. Besides, you’ll find that Tidson won’t accuse her.’

‘How do you mean – won’t accuse her? I’d have thought, for his own safety, that he would.’

‘If he does, he will have to explain why she should want to murder him. Still, that might not fickle a downy old bird like Tidson.’

‘I don’t think he’d risk telling lies, in case Connie should tell the truth about Arthur Preece-Harvard.’

‘But there isn’t any truth about Arthur.’

‘So far, no. But if you think Tidson’s guns are spiked, you’ve got another thought coming. He doesn’t want to kill the kid himself, but he means to have the fortune, I should say.’

‘Guesswork, my sweet. Don’t be feminine.’

‘I hardly ever am,’ returned the Amazonian Laura. ‘And that’s why I’ll make a far better grandmother than wife. Anyhow, I don’t see why you want to worry this Connie. Haven’t you ever said you wanted to murder someone?’

‘Rather a lot of difference between saying it and trying to do it, don’t you think?’

‘Not according to Scripture,’ said Laura, ‘and, in any case, it’s only an academic difference, isn’t it? It simply means you haven’t got the pluck.’

‘I can’t allow that. The difference between committing a murder and not committing one is fundamental,’ argued Gavin. ‘And as for Scripture – well, never mind about that.

You’ve got something to tell me about Crete’s clothes, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, I got them all right. They were weighted with stones, all small ones.’

‘In the river?’

‘Yes. I can show you the place.’