Death and the Maiden

Chapter Two

‘. . . which is to inform such Housekeepers as are not in the Higher Rank of Fortune, how to Eat, or Entertain Company, in the most elegant Manner, at a reasonable Expence.’

Mrs SARAH HARRISON OF DEVONSHIRE (The

House-Keeper’s Pocket Book and Complete

Family Cook, 1760)

THE Domus hotel was in a side-turning and free of the main road traffic. It was approached by way of a lane south-west of the broad arterial road from which A33 debouched before appearing, out of a maze of tributary meanderings, as the main Southampton Road beyond St Cross.

The Domus had been in turn a monastery, an Elizabethan mansion devoted to the cause and hiding of Jesuit priests, an eighteenth-century town house, a nineteenth-century nunnery, and, lastly, a hotel, and it showed traces of all these adventures. The car had been driven past a long garden whose wall still carried stigmata in the form of a small Cross and the date 1872, relics of the nunnery, and was now drawn up before a glassed-in entrance-lounge containing a wicker-chair, an iron shoe-scraper, two plants in pots, a fibre mat, a model of Winchester Cathedral, and the hotel cat.

Further doors led into the hall, and a door to the right showed the reception desk. A tall, cadaverous porter of Scottish extraction jerked a Wee Free thumb towards the office and took charge of the smallest piece of luggage which Toogood had dumped on the tiled floor. Miss Carmody, followed by Mr Tidson, went to the reception desk, and the porter put down the smallest piece of luggage, glanced about him as though in deep suspicion of the whole party, and asked lugubriously of Connie:

‘You’ll be staying long, no doubt?’

‘Oh, not so long as all that,’ said Connie, glancing uncertainly at Crete.

‘For a fortnight,’ said Crete.

‘Ou, ay,’ said the porter, as though this confirmed his worst fears. A voice from the desk said:

‘Twenty-nine, thirty-three and seven, Thomas.’

‘Twenty-nine, therrty-three and seven,’ repeated the porter. ‘You’ll follow me. Fifteen, therrty-three and seven is what I was tellt this morning, but ye’ll suit yoursel’s, nae doubt!’

Twenty-nine, a pleasant little room in the oldest part of the house, was assigned by Miss Carmody to Connie. Thirty-three, containing twin beds and a double wardrobe, was for the Tidsons, and was on the same floor. Number seven was on the ground-floor of the annexe, and was gained by going through the sun-lounge into a bungalow building, very modern and pleasant. Seven was Miss Carmody’s room, and when she found that it was exactly what she had asked for – for she suffered slightly from pyromania and disliked to sleep above ground level in strange houses – she was extremely pleased. Crete was not pleased. She demanded a separate room.

The four met in the cocktail lounge and were served by the severe Thomas with excellent sherry, except for Connie, who preferred gin and Vermouth. They had not been there long when Miss Carmody, putting down her glass, said that they must find out whether her friend Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch. She asked Connie to go and see.

‘They won’t know,’ said Connie, ‘and, if they did, I wouldn’t dare to ask. This place always did terrify me, and Thomas makes me feel as though I’d jam on my face. I call him an awful sort of man.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I will send for him and enquire.’ She summoned Thomas, to the admiration of her niece, by pressing the bell. Thomas, who had added to his first impressiveness by putting their drinks before them as though he knew full well that they were jeopardizing the safety of their immortal souls with every sip they took, acceded civilly, with an inclination of the head and a ‘Verra guid’ uttered like a curse, to Miss Carmody’s request that he would find out whether Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch, and returned in due course with the information that she was.

‘And a verra clever body,’ he added, looking pontifical as he gazed over Mr Tidson’s head at the red geraniums in the garden. ‘A verra clever body. Just that.’

It sounded like an epitaph, and all found themselves gravely inclining their heads. The rite was interrupted by the entrance of a small, black-haired, black-eyed woman in a hairy heliotrope tweed costume and a green felt hat. She was of witch-like aspect, and heralded her coming with a harsh cackle which sounded oddly from her beaky little mouth.

‘Mrs Bradley!’ exclaimed Miss Carmody, getting up. Thomas made way respectfully for the new arrival, and, without being asked, went out and shortly returned with another glass of sherry.

‘Your Amontillado, madam,’ he said. As this title had not, so far, been bestowed upon the other ladies of the party, it was particularly impressive, and when Thomas went away (which he did without taking notice of being yelled at as ‘Waiter!’ by a young officer in the uniform of the Royal Air Force), Crete Tidson, having, with her husband and Connie, been introduced to the witch, enquired whether Mrs Bradley had often stayed at the Domus.

‘Once, some time before the war,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Are you familiar with the country in and around the New Forest?’

The gong for lunch interrupted the flow of conversation which followed these last magic words, and the party of four were allotted an excellent table at the garden end of the dining-room and were provided with copies of the menu. Mrs Bradley was conducted to a table for one by a window.

‘Pig’s face!’ said Mr Tidson, enraptured, when he had read the menu. ‘I haven’t eaten pig’s face since I was a little tiny boy.’

He began to hum under his breath until his wife prodded him sharply. The waitress, a nice girl, perceiving his excitement, saw to it that he received a generous portion. She took his order for bottled beer, and decided, in the security of her small alcove between the sideboard and the serving-table, that the little man had picked the wrong wife and was henpecked. She made up her mind to make his stay as pleasant as she could. He reminded her of her uncle from America.

‘I like it here,’ said Connie, looking favourably upon a plate of excellent cold beef and the salad and boiled potatoes which came with it. ‘What are we going to do this afternoon?’

‘What you like,’ replied her aunt. ‘Crete? Edris? What are your suggestions?’

‘I shall explore the city,’ said Mr Tidson, ‘and possibly I shall seek an interview with the editor of the local paper. I shall be happiest alone.’

‘I shall sit in the sun lounge, which appears to be warm and pleasant, and get on with my embroidery,’ said Crete.

‘Then you and I will walk to St Cross,’ said Miss Carmody, ‘if you would like that, Connie.’

Connie said that she would like it very much, and Crete asked what there was to see at St Cross. Whilst Miss Carmody (interrupted often by Mr Tidson, who had read up St Cross in a guide book before he had left London) was answering this question, the plates were changed and the party received jam roll and custard, or, if they preferred it, plum tart.

Mr Tidson finished his beer, and, before anyone could prevent it, he had crossed over to Mrs Bradley’s table and was soon in a deep discussion upon cheese, for she had chosen cheese and biscuit rather than the sweet course. Mr Tidson was inclined to reproach her for declining the excellent jam roll, and they had a pleasant and inspiring conversation before he returned to his place.

After lunch Mrs Bradley accepted an invitation from Miss Carmody to accompany herself and her niece to St Cross, and none of them saw any more of the Tidsons until dinner.

‘I hope you are staying a good long time,’ said Connie, to the great surprise of her aunt.

‘I hope to stay as long as you all do,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I am very fond of Winchester, and, besides, Miss Carmody and I have much to talk about.’

‘You’ll have more still if Uncle Edris finds his water-nymph,’ said Connie. Mrs Bradley looked interested and asked for an explanation, although she had already, on the telephone, received tidings of the water-nymph from Miss Carmody. She could perceive, however, that Connie was even more in need of help than Mr Tidson.

‘Ah,’ she said, when Connie, who had some wit and a gift of mimicry, had given a lively picture of Mr Tidson’s raptures, ‘that explains the expression in his eye. He looks gleeful, a sign I have learned to dread in my patients. But all is now made clear. Clear as the waters of the Itchen,’ she added, regarding the crystal river with great favour, for they had made short work of the distance between the Domus and College Walk.

‘You don’t think Edris is mad?’ asked Miss Carmody anxiously. ‘I shouldn’t mind in the ordinary way, but I don’t much want him mad in an hotel.’

‘No, it is not the place,’ Mrs Bradley gravely agreed. ‘But, indeed, no such thought had crossed my mind. I remarked upon my patients because, with the exception of very small children engaged upon very dark deeds, I do not see gleeful persons unless they are in some degree abnormal.’

‘But Uncle Edris is a small child engaged upon dark deeds,’ observed Connie. Mrs Bradley disregarded this, and looked expectantly at Miss Carmody.

‘Yes, I am afraid that Edris is abnormal. He has lived thirty-five years surrounded by nothing but bananas,’ Miss Carmody explained with great simplicity.

‘I see,’ Mrs Bradley replied. She looked thoughtful. ‘No doubt that would make a great impression, especially on a sensitive spirit. Has Mr Tidson a sensitive spirit?’

Connie glanced at her to find out whether she could be laughing, but Mrs Bradley was gazing benignly upon the prospect of St Catherine’s Hill, which could be seen half a mile away on the further side of the river. Her expression gave no clue to her thoughts, but, whatever these may have been, it hardly seemed likely, judging from her profile, that they were of a humorous nature.

The conversation turned to earthworks, and then to thirteenth-century architecture, and the subject of Mr Tidson’s peculiarities was not resumed. The three ladies had an interesting hour at the medieval hospital, over which they were conducted by one of the brothers, and then they returned to the city by the way they had come, and, at Connie’s request, had tea not at the hotel but at tea-rooms which were partly supported by the only remaining pillar of William the Conqueror’s Norman palace, a relic which Connie found romantic.

It was half-past five before they returned to the Domus. Crete Tidson had given up her embroidery and was reading an evening paper brought to her by a young man who had already fallen in love with her greenish hair, slim body and (as he said) fathomless eyes. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign.

‘You might be the naiad yourself, Crete,’ said Miss Carmody, greeting her. ‘Has Edris come in yet from his walk?’

Crete, who had looked startled by the reference to the naiad, resumed her expression of remoteness and slight boredom, and replied that Edris had come in to tea at half-past four and had eaten everything on the tray except the one piece of brown bread and butter which had fallen to his wife’s portion. She added that he had then gone out again.

‘He is as pleased as a child with Winchester,’ she remarked at the conclusion of this narrative.

‘I should not have supposed that a child would have been particularly pleased with Winchester. I should have thought it was an adult person’s heaven,’ Mrs Bradley thoughtfully observed. Crete gave her the same kind of sharp and startled glance as she had bestowed upon Miss Carmody at mention of the naiad, but Mrs Bradley remained in bland contemplation of the scarlet geraniums which, apart from smooth lawn, brown earth, a gravel path, a disused chicken coop and an aristocratic mound which covered the out-of-date air-raid shelter, formed the chief attraction of the somewhat unimaginative garden.

‘Well, Edris is rather like a child, in many ways, when he is pleased. That was what I meant,’ said Crete. ‘Have you all had tea? And is there a bookshop near? I cannot embroider all the time.’

Connie told her where to find a bookshop, and said that there was a lending library at the back of it.

‘You go through the shop,’ she added helpfully.

‘No, thank you!’ said Crete. ‘I only like new books. By that I mean books which have not been handled by others.’

‘But I expect they have. The new ones, I mean,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘People handle the new books to see what they want in exchange for their book tokens. No one ever knows what to do with a book token. I’ve noticed it.’

‘Oh, I do!’ cried Connie. ‘All my friends give me book tokens, and I give them book tokens, too. It saves all the bother of presents.’

‘But it isn’t the same fun,’ said Miss Carmody, who had certain old-fashioned ideas, although not very many.

‘Well, I must have a book, and it must be a new one. Edris will have to find me something,’ said Crete. ‘He will know what to get, no doubt. I am not hard to please.’

Confronted upon his return with the task of finding her a book which should be both light and sensible, Mr Tidson, who seemed to be in great good humour, promised to attend to it in the morning, as the shop would most certainly be shut at that time of the evening.

‘I will get you a guide book,’ he said. ‘It will save you the trouble of visiting the places of interest, and will last you longer than a novel.’

Miss Carmody, to whom these uses of a guide book had not previously occurred, looked somewhat surprised. Mrs Bradley cackled, and Crete observed that Edris sometimes had very good ideas. She added that she had had no intention whatsoever of visiting the places of interest, but that one should be informed upon matters of cultural and historic importance, and that a guide book would be most welcome.

Upon this note of conjugal understanding and felicity, husband and wife went up to dress for dinner, and Connie, who did not think much of the walk she had had that afternoon, went out, as she said, to stretch her legs. Miss Carmody, with a grateful sigh, sat down beside Mrs Bradley.

‘Well, what do you make of Edris and Crete?’ she enquired.

‘They seem well matched,’ replied Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. This comment seemed to cause Miss Carmody some surprise. ‘Will they enjoy their stay in England, do you think?’ Mrs Bradley went on.

‘It is not a stay. It is permanent,’ Miss Carmody replied. She hesitated, and then added, ‘Edris has retired from his banana plantation, although not as comfortably, I believe, as he had hoped. He has had losses, I understand, and then I suppose trade must have suffered somewhat during the war. I believe they have not much to live on, and as I believe they propose to live on me, that will not be much for them, either.’

Politeness forbade Mrs Bradley to ask more, and she turned the conversation on to Connie, who seemed, she said, an interesting child. Certainly Connie’s ill-humour, which had been most marked since the advent of the Tidsons, seemed to have disappeared. Miss Carmody commented on this, and added that she was very fond of Connie.

‘She is my cousin’s child. I took her for his sake, but I keep her now for my own,’ she said with apparent sincerity.

Mrs Bradley understood from this that Miss Carmody supported Connie, and she was surprised that so independent-seeming a girl should be content to live on an aunt past middle age.

‘She is technically illegitimate,’ said Miss Carmody, as though she were explaining away Mrs Bradley’s uncharitable thoughts. ‘A very sad case. My cousin – Arthur Preece-Harvard, you know – was very deeply in love with Connie’s mother. There was no dishonour attached. They intended to marry. Connie is the first-fruits of impatience.’

‘And the mother?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, perceiving that Miss Carmody wished to develop the conversation.

‘A sweet, sweet girl,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘She died, I am sorry to say, in giving birth to Connie. Arthur was broken-hearted for a time, and, of course, the whole thing has made life hard for the child. I wish she got on with Edris better. They dislike one another very much. It is so awkward at times. Of course, Connie has suffered great hardship and some injustice. It has made her rather bitter, I’m afraid. I do what I can, but, of course, it isn’t what she was used to. It is very wrong to treat a child unfairly.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley; and the thoughts engendered by this conversation lasted her all the time that she was dressing.

The party met for cocktails at half-past six, and spent a pleasant time until dinner, which was at seven. Mr Tidson, who, from his own account, had spent a delightful afternoon in roving all over the town from the Westgate to the river bridge, and from Hyde Abbey gateway to the farthest boundary of St Mary’s College, invited Mrs Bradley to sit at their table for the meal, but she pleaded that there were papers she proposed to study during dinner, and produced an impressive brief-case which did, indeed, contain papers of a sort, although not anything of immediate or first-rate importance.

Mr Tidson led the way into the dining-room, made a pleasant remark to the waitress, pulled Mrs Bradley’s chair out for her and even, rather officiously, cleared a space beside her plate for her documents. Then he saw his own party seated, flipped open his table napkin, said ‘Ha! Oxtail soup!’ and called boisterously for the wine list. There was no doubt that he was in great holiday spirits, and there was no doubt, either, thought Mrs Bradley, that the wine would appear in due course on Miss Carmody’s bill.

‘You are enjoying Winchester, sir?’ asked the waitress, when she came to bring the bottle and change the plates.

‘Winchester,’ declared Mr Tidson, ‘is the queen of cities. And you, my dear, are the queen of Winchester.’

‘My home’s in Southampton,’ said the girl, registering a theory that Mr Tidson was an old sport but would bear watching. Anecdotes about Southampton, Liverpool and Bristol, from all of which his banana boats had sailed, then lasted Mr Tidson until coffee, and the waitress decided that she was wrong, and that the poor old bloke was harmless after all, thus confirming her first impression of him.

‘I shall hope,’ he said, changing the conversation when all five of them were seated in the lounge after dinner, ‘to have your company, Mrs Bradley, in my exploration of the city and its environs. I am, as you may imagine, a little out of touch with details of English architecture after so long a sojourn abroad. Would you care to accompany me tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day?’

‘It would give me great pleasure,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Shall we say to-morrow afternoon? And where would you like to go?’

‘I should like to go to Alresford,’ Mr Tidson replied, ‘but as my nymph is not there I shall postpone my visit in her honour, and we will walk as far as Shawford, if you are willing.’

‘Alresford?’ said Connie, startled. ‘Oh, but you can’t go there!’

‘That is what I said,’ replied Mr Tidson. ‘Moreover, I did not address the remark to you!’