Death and the Maiden

Chapter One

‘Nothing happened till nearly half-past eight, and then pale watery began to trickle down, followed by tall blue-winged olives, and a fish or two rose tentatively. As I worked my way up, I saw, round a corner through the long grasses, such a commotion as must assuredly be a rat or a waterhen: but, no, it was not . . .’

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

‘IT BEARS investigation,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘It bears investigation, my dear Prissie.’

‘Very well, Edris. Investigate by all means, as long as it isn’t too expensive,’ said Miss Carmody; and she smiled at the eager little man.

Among the numerous persons washed into her life by the irresponsible tides of consanguinity, Mr Tidson was a late but interesting piece of flotsam. He was the elderly Miss Carmody’s second cousin, and had been living in Tenerife since his marriage. The fortunes of war had put off until late his retirement from his business, which was that of a banana grower, but he and his wife had at last come to England to live. It had transpired that they purposed to live with Miss Carmody, an arrangement which, she had confided to Connie Carmody, her niece and ward, she hoped would be readjusted.

Connie concurred in this hope. She had watched, with growing jealousy and alarm, the gradual settling-down of her Uncle Edris and his wife and the consequent disruption of the quiet life which she and her aunt had been leading, and she was becoming accustomed to think of Mr Tidson as an interloper and a nuisance.

‘What is it that bears investigation, though?’ Miss Carmody enquired. She and her ward were seated in the window of her eighteenth-century drawing-room in South-West London. The drawing-room was discreetly, comfortably but not expensively furnished, and formed part of a four-roomed flat which had housed Miss Carmody and her niece admirably, but which provided such close quarters for four people that Connie had been obliged, since the invasion (as she savagely but excusably termed it) to share a bedroom with her aunt, an arrangement which she, naturally, disliked.

Mr Tidson, who was occupying most of the settee, straightened himself and looked with exasperating benevolence upon Connie before replying to Miss Carmody’s question.

‘There is a newspaper report of something singular in the River Itchen,’ he said. ‘It seems, from this report, that a man has alleged that he saw a naiad or water-sprite below one of the bridges not very far from Winchester. Very interesting, if true. I should like to go and look into it.’

He went on to describe some extraordinary experiences of his own in connection with the folk-lore of the Canary Islands, and stated that these had caused him to become a keen student of primitive survivals and manifestations. Connie listened impatiently, and Miss Carmody with a blend of kindly but obvious incredulity mingled with slight disapproval, for some of Mr Tidson’s recollections seemed unsuited to the ears of his niece.

By the time he had concluded his remarks, the fact that he should show excitement at a silly-season report of a water-sprite in a Hampshire chalk stream which ordinarily offered a habitat to nothing more sinister than a pike, more beautiful than the grayling or more intelligent than the brown trout, occasioned the disdainful Connie no surprise; neither was she surprised by Mr Tidson’s experiences. He was, she knew already, rather a salacious little man.

‘Let me see the paragraph,’ said Miss Carmody; for she could scarcely believe that the newspapers, short as they were of newsprint, would devote space to a report upon anything quite so unlikely as the classic visitant. It was true that, the war being over and the Loch Ness monster having made no peace-time reappearance, even that single sheet of newsprint which formed the daily paper had somehow to be filled, but it seemed to her quite ridiculous that space should be devoted to the naiad.

Connie appeared to share her views.

‘You must have misread it,’ she said, ‘or else it’s rot!’

Miss Carmody took the paper which Mr Tidson handed her and read the marked column without comment. She observed, however, that it was not a newspaper report but merely a letter to the editor, and was clearly from the kind of person who claims to have heard the first cuckoo in Spring. Connie remarked upon this. Mr Tidson ignored her. She smiled, then, and asked to see the paper.

‘Crete would accompany me if you did,’ Mr Tidson observed, looking at Miss Carmody expectantly. Miss Carmody, having seen nothing of him for almost thirty-five years, had not found it difficult to revive her previous interest in the earnest and persistent little man, and it was with a certain degree of sympathy that she had begun to realize that time was already hanging on his hands, and that his young wife, Greek by extraction and extremely beautiful, was not proving the ideal companion of his leisure.

‘Very well, Edris,’ she said. ‘There is nothing I need attend to until early September except my Working Men’s Eldest Daughters, and I shall be glad to gather strength for them. Let us go and investigate. It will make as good a summer holiday as any other. Tell me your plans whilst I put these flowers in water, and then you shall teach Elsie how to make a Madras curry in place of the Ceylon one which you did not care for yesterday.’

‘A summer holiday in quest of a naiad?’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Charming, my dear Prissie! Quite delightful! And we shall go to Winchester – when? I mean, how soon? Could you manage Monday? I do not want the scent to grow cold, and, besides, I want to hear the Cathedral choir doing Gray in A. Do you think it is likely that they will?’

‘Monday? Admirable. Toogood is using the last of the petrol to take two of my Mothers to the seaside to-morrow, but by Monday he can get the next allowance,’ responded Miss Carmody, ignoring Gray in A, a key she did not care for very much, preferring Church music in E flat. ‘On Monday, then. Very pleasant.’

‘Good,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Or, of course, we could go by train this afternoon. What do you think?’

Perceiving that he was impatient to be upon the scene and obtain first-hand information of the naiad, Miss Carmody agreed to lose no time, but (rather to her relief, for it was inconvenient to arrange to leave home at not more than four hours’ notice, and she knew that Connie, who did the packing, would not like it, and, in any case, disliked Mr Tidson) this decision was overridden, for at that moment Crete came in, and, catching the last remarks of the parties concerned, vetoed the notion that they could go without preparations.

‘We have to arrange at Winchester to stay somewhere,’ Crete pointed out, ‘and I have to get my hair done, and you have to find enough coupons (I suppose from my book) for at least two shirts before you can go anywhere. Do be reasonable, Edris. You are a very foolish old man.’

She turned away from him contemptuously and looked at herself in the glass.

Crete Tidson was twenty years younger than her husband. She was a slender woman with greenish-gold hair, large dark eyes like those shown in early seventeenth-century portraits, the curling mouth and proudly-carried head of her race, and a rounded, wilful chin. She erred on the side of severity towards her husband, but encouraged him in the free expression of his tastes. She had a well-founded although critical respect for his ability to get his own way, and seldom trusted him out of her sight, for Mr Tidson had developed to a marked degree the foible (noted by St Paul in the Athenians) of desiring always some new thing, and in pursuit of these novelties he was inclined to get into mischief.

‘At any rate,’ said Mr Tidson, ‘I can and will send for a local newspaper, which should contain a fuller account than the one I have just shown Connie.’ He beamed amiably upon his niece, who scowled in return. ‘And I will also go to the public library for information about Winchester, the River Itchen, naiads, fishing, and the folk-lore of Hampshire. I do so love anything new, and this will be delightfully new. I could do the preliminary research this afternoon, before we leave London, couldn’t I?’

Glad for him to have something to do which would innocently dispose of his time, his wife and Miss Carmody immediately agreed that he could, although Connie remained aloof, and (considering that he had introduced her to the naiad at her own request) unreasonably scornful.

‘I will wire for the rooms,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘We will stay at the Domus. Connie and I always do. An excellent hotel in every way, although, of course, not cheap.’

‘But what is it really all about?’ asked Crete, who had not been present when Mr Tidson had looked up from the newspaper and announced the great discovery. ‘What could we do in Winchester? It is a mare’s nest, is it not?’

‘It is a naiad in Hampshire, my dear Crete,’ said Mr Tidson.

‘Nonsense, Uncle Edris,’ said Connie, annoyed to think of any more of her aunt’s money being thrown away on the Tidsons. ‘There are no naiads in Hampshire. There never have been, and there never will be. Hampshire was part of Wessex. You know that as well as I do!’

‘King Alfred,’ agreed Miss Carmody, ‘not to speak of his pious father, Aethelwulf, would not have permitted naiads in country already menaced by the Danes.’

‘Red-haired, horrid people,’ said Crete, who had known two modern Danes on Tenerife, and had found that they rivalled her in beauty. ‘I do not like the Danes.’

‘There were Roman settlements in Hampshire, though,’ went on Miss Carmody pacifically. ‘May not the Romans, with their flair for appropriations, have introduced a stolen Greek naiad into the waters of Venta Belgarum?’

‘It is possible,’ Crete admitted, losing interest. ‘In any case, Edris seems determined to take a holiday, and he might as well pursue a naiad as butterflies or tit-mice – or the daughter of Señor Don Alvarez Pedilla y Lampada, as happened last time,’ she added darkly. ‘He has immoral itches.’

‘How soon do we go?’ demanded Connie, who disliked Crete almost as much as she disliked Mr Tidson, and was jealous of her beauty and charm.

‘On Monday, if we can have the rooms. They are likely to be full at this time of year, however,’ said her aunt. ‘I have been before, and I know.’

The fear expressed in the last sentences proved to be unfounded. By the evening, accommodation for the party had been arranged, and Mr Tidson, deep in the chronicles of Winchester College, seemed certain of a fortnight’s pleasurable nymph-hunting (in the classical and not the piscatorial sense) and the rest of the party of a peaceful and interesting holiday. Connie studied the Ordnance map, Miss Carmody revived her recollections of Winchester Cathedral, the Domus hotel, and the walks which could be taken from the city, and Crete arranged a personal orgy of embroidery, for it was her practice, it seemed, to remain within doors in a climate she neither liked nor trusted, and she therefore would need something to do.

The few days soon passed. On the Saturday morning preceding the Monday on which the party were to motor down to Winchester, Mr Tidson put into his notebook a passage which pleased him mightily. It was, he explained, an extract from a diary of the time of the Civil War, and, read in the evening by his wife and by Miss Carmody, ran thus:

‘He wase by perswation of my ffather-in-lawe then putt to schoole at Winchestor and stayed 6 yeres and wase beten for the trwe reason that he tawlked lewdely and with littell discretion of a nakid mayd wett in the feldes where shee doe lye abedd, and hee not aschamed even att such tinder edge to saye itt.’

‘You see?’ said Mr Tidson triumphantly. ‘Even in the seventeenth century she was known. What do you say now to my naiad?’

‘Amazing,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘May I have another look at that?’ She took the notebook from Crete’s hands and perused the passage again. ‘The spelling puts me in mind of something, although I can’t remember quite what.’

‘I think you should share your knowledge,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Think, my dear Prissie, think! We must learn to control our verbal memories.’

Connie leaned over and took the book from her aunt. She flicked over the pages contemptuously. Mr Tidson looked at Miss Carmody and smiled.

‘Women have very inaccurate notions of history, I believe,’ he remarked with conversational inoffensiveness. ‘Except you, of course, my dear Prissie.’

‘I don’t know about inaccurate,’ said Connie, tossing the book at him so that a sharp edge hit him on his little round paunch, ‘but I do know that there’s a book of seventeenth-century memoirs in auntie’s bureau bookcase in which you could find all these words.’

‘Is there indeed?’ said Mr Tidson. ‘And is it your custom to peer into your aunt’s bureau bookcase?’

‘Really, Edris!’ remonstrated Crete. ‘You must not speak to Connie like that. It is not kind. Perhaps she does not know that she should not peer. What is it – peering? It is an offensive word, I think. Snoop, do you say?’

Connie crimsoned and got up. She looked so threatening that Mr Tidson actually drew his knees up a little as though to protect his stomach from further assault. Miss Carmody seemed to suffer fears on his behalf, too, for she held on to Connie’s arm, said that she detested the word ‘snooping,’ and added with unwonted sharpness that Connie had had the run of her bureau bookcase for years, ever since she had been old enough to be trusted with her aunt’s favourite volumes, and that no question of prying, peering or snooping entered into the matter.

Mr Tidson smiled sweetly, and observed that Connie ought not to be touchy, and that she knew as well as he did that he had been joking. He also upheld Miss Carmody’s pronouncement that snooping was a vulgar synonym.

‘I don’t like his ways,’ said Connie, when he and Crete had gone. ‘Half the time he says nasty, spiteful things, and the other half he’s trying to paw me about. I think him a disgusting old man.’

‘Not so very old,’ said Miss Carmody.

‘He’s old enough to know better than to go chasing nymphs in rivers,’ said Connie stoutly, ‘although, of course, it’s only on a par with his other activities, I suppose.’

Miss Carmody, in the day or two that followed, confessed herself worried by Mr Tidson’s enthusiasm for the naiad. He was alternately in high spirits at the thought (or so he said) of adding to his repertory of folk-lore, or cast down because the naiad might have left Hampshire before he had an opportunity to see her. The possibility that the letter to the paper might be either a practical joke or the gibberings of a maniac he appeared to disregard.

‘I can’t make him out,’ said Connie. ‘His business life, I expect, was a mixture of cadging, sharp practice and double-dealing, and I should think he was a menace to his employees and unpopular with the other banana growers.’

There was something frightening, she went on, in the fact that Mr Tidson should suddenly leap at this ridiculous newspaper communication as an excuse to go to Winchester. Why Winchester, she wanted to know; and held her aunt’s gaze.

Miss Carmody said nothing, but she was sufficiently perturbed, it appeared, to go to the telephone next morning, before her uninvited guests were astir, and call up a psychiatrist, a sound and talented old lady whose name was Bradley. She gave the facts, and added that she thought it would do no harm to obtain an expert opinion upon Mr Tidson’s mental condition before he went down to Winchester in search of his naiad.

‘You understand that I don’t want him to suspect that we think there might be anything odd about him,’ she said anxiously, ‘because, of course, there probably isn’t. His interest may be quite genuine, and probably is. I just thought that, if you could spare the time . . . Well, look here! I mustn’t thwart him. Could you possibly come to Winchester? I – we have met, you know – a mutual friend, Miss Carroll, at Cartaret College—’

‘I quite understand,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and I am most intrigued. I shall be in Winchester and at the Domus by Monday lunch-time. Your naiad may be full of possibilities.’

‘Yes, that is what I fear,’ said Miss Carmody. Very much cheered, however, by Mrs Bradley’s comforting promise, she expressed her gratitude and rang off. She then sent Connie to the bank for a Statement, and knit her brows over this when it came. Mr and Mrs Tidson were costing her rather dear. They had already spent six weeks at her house, and the Domus, as she herself had advertised, was not a cheap hotel. However, it was where she had always stayed, particularly during the blitz on London, and she had always said that she could not contemplate staying anywhere else. Connie reminded her of this almost snappishly when she put forward a tentative suggestion that, to save expense, the party might take furnished lodgings for the holiday. Connie disliked furnished lodgings, and said so roundly.

‘And, in the end, what with one thing and another, you won’t be a bit better off,’ she added ill-temperedly.

Miss Carmody sighed; but she reminded herself that Connie had been accustomed to better things than she could offer her, and also that the Domus was indeed a most comfortable and kindly hotel, and not even actually in the city.

Mr Tidson enjoyed his drive to Winchester, and, by the time the car was passing Basingstoke on road A30 to rejoin A33 en route for the string of villages on the somewhat uninteresting journey past Micheldever and Kingsworthy to the lane on the north side of Winchester, where the Domus hotel is to be found, he had remembered and remarked upon a nephew of his who, he believed, went to school in Winchester but would now be on holiday, he supposed.

‘What nephew would that be, Uncle Edris?’ enquired Connie, who had been bidden privately by Miss Carmody to be civil to Mr Tidson, although not to countenance or encourage his oddities.

‘Why, Polly’s girl’s boy,’ replied Mr Tidson unhelpfully. ‘What’s the name, now?’

‘Preece-Harvard,’ said Connie, through her teeth. ‘I ought to know!’

‘Preece-Harvard is the name,’ agreed Miss Carmody, ‘and it is nothing to do with Polly, as you very well know. They live not very far from Winchester. We had better look them up while we are there.’

‘Don’t ask me to go!’ said Connie.

‘I must look up the address,’ said Mr Tidson.

‘You will hardly have time to look the boy up, though,’ observed Crete, not without malice. ‘You will be too busy looking up your nymph.’

Mr Tidson became silent, and looked out of the car window at College Wood, distant half a mile from the road.

‘We should be passing Bradley Farm about now,’ said Connie, who had the map open on her knees. She was seated between her aunt and Crete Tidson on the back seat of the car. Mr Tidson was in front, beside Toogood.

‘Bradley? Ah, that reminds me,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘My friend Mrs Bradley is also proposing to stay at the Domus with us. Miss Carroll took her place at Cartaret College, Connie, you remember, when she relinquished the post of Warden of Athelstan Hall.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Connie. ‘That terrifying, black old lady who always wore dreadful colours and did indescribable knitting. We heard her lecture. I should hardly have thought you could call her a friend of yours, though. We only knew Miss Carroll very slightly, and although you spoke to Mrs Bradley—’

‘Black?’ said Mr Tidson, turning his head.

‘She has black hair and black eyes,’ Miss Carmody sharply replied. ‘There is nothing else black about her, of course. Connie is given to wilful and misleading exaggeration at times.’

‘Exaggeration is always misleading,’ said Crete. Mr Tidson, who did not believe this, resumed his contemplation of the landscape, and the car swept smoothly past Dodsley Wood and a couple of tumuli, and then along a stretch of what had once been a Roman road, and so past Abbots Barton towards Winchester.

‘And although you spoke to Mrs Bradley after her lecture on hereditary tendencies,’ said Connie, who disliked to be cut off in the middle of a sentence, ‘I don’t see that that could exactly make her a friend of yours, Aunt Prissie, and I don’t want to meet her again! I didn’t like her.’

‘Put that rug back, dear,’ replied her aunt. ‘You won’t need that in the hotel. Well, here we are, Crete,’ she added, turning to the slightly more bearable of her parasitic guests. ‘I wonder how you will like it now we’re here?’

‘Oh, I shall like it,’ said Crete. ‘Edris will have his nymph, you will have your friend the black woman, Connie will walk and go early, very early, to bed, and I shall enjoy myself alone. But how is this the hotel? We are not yet in Winchester.’