Death and the Maiden mb-20

by Gladys Mitchell

  Gradually all sound was hushed, but Mrs Bradley sat on in the quiet darkness. It was a warm night, and she had raised her window halfway up at the bottom as soon as she had entered the room. She knew when the lights in the public rooms went out, for they cast no more reflections on the lawn. She saw the lights in the glassed-in corridor which led to the annexe flick out one by one as a distant clock struck a quarter past eleven, and Thomas made his solemn nocturnal rounds – a Presbyterian elder sentencing the household to slumber.

  Mrs Bradley sat on. All was silent and dark. She strained her ears. At last came the sound that she was waiting for. She got up noiselessly, tip-toed over to the towel rail, which she had moved out a few inches from the wall, and squeezed herself quietly behind it. She was wearing a black dress which was wide and easy-fitting. She bent and crouched so that only her eyes and the top of her head appeared above the screen she had selected, and then, with grim patience, waited, watching the chimney.

  The ghost, however, came gliding in from the built-in cupboard which served the room as a wardrobe. It had to open the door of the cupboard, Mrs Bradley noted, a human trait which gave her confidence. Having entered the room, it went unhesitatingly up to the bed, which it leaned over, making a very faint mewing noise, more like a kitten than a cat. It was white and tall, but the movements it made were not menacing. Mrs Bradley started forward. The towel rail fell with a muffled sound owing to its smothering of towels. It made just sufficient noise to frighten the ghost, which turned, with a flourish of draperies.

  Mrs Bradley picked up a piece of soap from the side of the bedroom basin, and flung it hard, but it was slightly wet, and slipped as she let it go. She picked up the nailbrush and let fly. There was a muffled yelp as the nailbrush got home, and the next instant the ghost had disappeared, apparently through the bedroom wall.

  Mrs Bradley came out from behind the towel rail. She partly closed the window and drew the blind. Then she switched on the light and spent the next two hours in searching and sounding every part of the room. She gave it up in the end, as being a task more suitable to daylight than to the unequal lighting given to the room by the dressing-table and bedhead switches. She then went to bed and slept soundly.

  Next morning she sought out Miss Carmody.

  ‘Let us leave Mr Tidson to hunt alone,’ she said, ‘and take Connie with us to visit Bournemouth. Why not?’

  ‘I shall look rather odd at Bournemouth,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I knocked into the edge of my bedroom door last night whilst I was groping for the switch in the dark. Just look at my eye! People will think I have been fighting!’

  Mrs Bradley had been unable to keep a fascinated and glittering eye off Miss Carmody’s contused face ever since she had first encountered her, and she welcomed this frank reference to a large and interesting bruise.

  ‘I wondered what you had been doing,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t really your eye. It is more to the side. I don’t think it would notice any more at Bournemouth than it does here. But just as you like.’

  ‘Oh, I should like above all things to visit Bournemouth,’ exclaimed Miss Carmody. ‘Do let us find Connie and tell her. I expect she is still in her room. As a matter of fact, I think Bournemouth a most restful idea! No one will question me there!’

  The two ladies were in the garden. Breakfast had been in progress for an hour, and Mrs Bradley had already had toast and coffee. Miss Carmody usually waited for Crete and Mr Tidson, and sometimes for Connie, who, like nearly all girls of her age, was either out of bed before six or fast asleep until ten unless somebody woke her.

  Not at all anxious that Miss Carmody should discover so soon that she and Connie had changed rooms, Mrs Bradley began to frame an excuse for keeping Miss Carmody with her, and was pleased to see Crete coming out of the sun-parlour towards them. As she drew nearer, the two ladies raised a questioning cry, for Crete, like Miss Carmody, had an interestingly-tinted contusion just between the eyebrow and the temple.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I did a stupid thing. I tripped on the bath mat and caught my head against the edge of that silly little shelf below the mirror. You know the one I mean?’

  ‘Ah?’ said Mrs Bradley, immensely intrigued by this revelation. But further matter for speculation was in store when they encountered Mr Tidson in the hall.

  ‘Good heavens!’ Miss Carmody exclaimed. ‘Have you got a black eye, too?’

  Mr Tidson warily touched the bruise at the edge of his cheek-bone.

  ‘Crete gave me this,’ he said, with some natural annoyance. ‘I asked her to pass some cold-cream from her room to mine. Instead of handing it to me, she flung it – positively hurled it – in the direction in which I was standing, supposing, she said, that I should catch it.’

  ‘I hope she apologized,’ said Mrs Bradley solemnly. She went close up to Mr Tidson and examined his wound minutely.

  ‘Well?’ he said, resentfully backing away. Mrs Bradley cackled. Mr Tidson was about to add to this one tart observation when it dawned on him that Miss Carmody and his wife were both adorned with facial bruises not remarkably different from his own. The expression on his face as he made this discovery gave Mrs Bradley great pleasure. She watched the Tidsons go into breakfast, followed by Miss Carmody and Connie, and then glanced at the letters on the hall table, for the Domus had no letter-rack.

  ‘Naething for ye,’ said Thomas, coming to rest beside her.

  ‘I am not sorry,’ she said. ‘Tell me, have you had any complaints about people slipping and hurting themselves in this hotel?’

  Thomas took time to consider this question.

  ‘Weel,’ he said cautiously, ‘there was Sir William, wha slippit on the soap in 1925, and there was a wee shrappit body by the name of Wemyss, I mind, in 1932, who was knockit over on the staircase by a professor from Harvard Univairsity. I dinna recollect ony mair.’

  ‘Strange! Miss Carmody and Mr and Mrs Tidson have all been injured either last night or this morning. Have you not noticed their bruises?’

  Thomas clicked his tongue, but more in wordless condemnation of their carelessness than for regret at the accidents, Mrs Bradley decided. She went out to find George, her chauffeur, and, upon re-entering the hotel, she came face to face with Connie Carmody, who was just descending the stairs. Connie had her hand to her eye. She took it away to disclose an already purple swelling. Mrs Bradley could have cried ‘Eureka,’ but restrained herself.

  By ten Miss Carmody and Connie were ready, and at lunchtime the party found themselves at a hotel on the front at Bournemouth and in full enjoyment of the yellow sand, the sparkling sea, the combes, the cliffs, the balmy air and all else that the queen of watering places has to offer.

  When lunch was over, Connie took herself off to Christ-church Priory with the remark that she would be back in Bournemouth in time for a bathe before tea, and the two elderly ladies, left alone, sat in deck-chairs on the sand. They indulged in some lazy conversation and some even lazier knitting, and thoroughly enjoyed their time beside the sea. It was an ideal afternoon. The front was crowded, the air was warm, a band was playing, and there were plenty of people to look at; there was even time, if they cared for it, to sleep.

  Mrs Bradley, who cared nothing for an afternoon nap, and minded the immoderate heat not a bit more than a lizard does, gazed out to sea and thought deeply and constructively on the subject of the ghost and the bruises. Miss Carmody, giving up both knitting and conversation, soon dozed off, and was no liability to anyone.

  Connie came back at a quarter to four and woke Miss Carmody up by searching for her bathing things in Miss Carmody’s bag. When she had entered the water and could not be distinguished, except by the eye of love and faith, from the dozens of other swimmers, Mrs Bradley said to Miss Carmody:

  ‘Does Connie inherit anything under your will?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, dear girl!’ said Miss Carmody, opening her eyes.

  ‘And what about Mr Tidson?’

  ‘Edris?’


  ‘Yes. I have reasons for asking.’

  ‘Oh, Edris gets nothing from me.’

  ‘Does he know that?’

  ‘Yes. I made it clear soon after they came. As a matter of fact, he asked me. You would scarcely believe that, would you?’

  Mrs Bradley, who was beginning to think that she would believe anything, either good or bad, of Mr Tidson, did not answer this question. She said:

  ‘I’d like to get it quite clear. Do I understand that under no circumstances whatever does Mr Tidson come into your will?’

  ‘You mean if Connie – if anything happened to Connie?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘If anything happens to Connie, either before or after my death, the money goes to charity. In any case, it isn’t much, you know. But why—?’

  ‘Yes, I know these blunt enquiries must be puzzling,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘but, after all, you did bring me down to Winchester, didn’t you? And upon a special mission.’

  ‘And how thankful I am that I did!’ said Miss Carmody roundly. ‘You don’t mean that Edris is dangerous to Connie, I hope?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t say I mean that. But I thought it as well to inform myself of what he might have to expect from you, that is all.’

  ‘I wish I could get rid of them both!’ cried Miss Carmody. ‘It is really too much of a strain on my resources to keep them all this time! But I don’t know how to make them go! And for Connie’s sake . . . Oh, dear! I would love to be rid of them!’

  ‘Perhaps we shall find a way,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘By “both of them” you refer, of course, to Mr and Mrs Tidson, and not to Mr Tidson and Connie.’

  ‘Oh, Connie will soon be quit of me, anyhow,’ said Miss Carmody, with a hard and hurt little laugh. ‘Connie has made up her mind, as you surely must have heard her saying, to leave me as soon as she can. I really do not understand her.’

  ‘Well, children will be children,’ said Mrs Bradley indulgently, ‘and part of being children is that they have to pretend to grow up. You are not going to let that worry you? What about when she gets married? You’d lose her, in any case, then.’

  ‘I don’t know that she would find it so easy as all that to get married,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘Do you call her attractive? I hardly think I should if I had not become her foster-parent, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know whether she is attractive,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘She is very young. I am interested in all young things, and feel very sorry for most of them.’

  ‘There is good reason to be sorry for Connie, I suppose,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘She has had some disappointments which have gone very deep, I am afraid. They have spoilt her nature. She is rather irritable and selfish. Still, I should not like to be without her, and I am hoping she will soon tire of this adventure of launching out on her own, and come back to live at my flat. Of course, Edris and Crete are the trouble. One cannot expect her to like them, and, as I say, I don’t know how to get rid of them. Edris has really no scruples, and secrets are not secrets to him.’

  Mrs Bradley volunteered no advice, except to say:

  ‘If I had to choose between them and Connie, I think I know what I would do, and, if you will forgive me for saying so, I think you should have made it clear before.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Carmody. ‘It sounds very simple, put like that, but, you know, Mrs Bradley, it is not at all easy to dislodge people, particularly when they are one’s own relations and have made up their minds to stay. And I’m rather afraid of Edris. He is a strange person – this business of the naiad, for example – and, of course, he drowned that little boy. I have no doubt whatever about that. But, then, he has lived abroad for so long that his ideas are not quite ours.’

  ‘His ideas of morality, you mean?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Yes, I do not understand him. And Crete, as you know, is half Greek – the wrong half.’

  ‘The wrong half?’

  ‘Her father was Greek. That counts for a good deal with me. One can smother up a foreign mother, I always think, but not a foreign father.’

  Mrs Bradley professed interest in this view, and they discussed it at some length. In the animated talk on heredity which followed, Connie and the Tidsons were forgotten, and it was with surprise that Miss Carmody, upon noticing that Connie had come out of the water and was walking up the beach towards them, glanced at her watch and saw that they had been sitting there for more than an hour.

  ‘Ought you to have stayed in the water so long, dear?’ she enquired, as Connie, in a two-piece bathing suit of which her aunt almost violently disapproved but in whose defence Connie had long ago been victorious, came up to them shell-pink from the sea.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been in and out several times,’ said Connie. ‘I’ll dress now. What about tea?’

  ‘As soon as you’re ready, dear. Wipe yourself quite dry, for fear of rheumatism.’

  ‘She certainly does not look unattractive now,’ remarked Mrs Bradley, as Connie, tall and well-made, walked back to her dressing cubicle and disappeared into its interior.

  ‘No, indeed,’ Miss Carmody, agreed. ‘I see why Venus was, perhaps, well-advised to rise from the waves.’

  Mrs Bradley disguised her reactions to this remark, but she could not help remembering Mr Tidson’s extraordinary outburst against spinsters, monomaniacs and curates. The ivory tower might be delicately constructed and to a mild, Edwardian pattern, but its secret inventory remained the same, it appeared.

  George picked them up at just after six. They spent half an hour at Wimborne Minster, and the drive home through the New Forest was a delightful ending to the day. They came back through Ringwood to Fordingbridge, thence by way of Romsey to Winchester.

  The Tidsons, it seemed, had finished dinner by the time the travellers returned, and were found – Mr Tidson behind an evening paper, Crete with her embroidery – enjoying their coffee in the lounge in that polite dissociation from one another which, as Mrs Bradley pointed out when Connie, indiscreetly, made a rather loud remark on it, is the hall-mark of a well-matched, middle-aged couple.

  That her explanation, also loud, was not one whit more tactful than Connie’s remark was shown very clearly by Crete, who, upon hearing herself referred to as middle-aged (an obvious libel) turned upon both of them a dark, bleak stare of intense loathing before proceeding with her embroidery. Between her temple and her left eyebrow was still an inch of black and yellow bruise, a mild edition of Mr Tidson’s now very impressive black eye. Withdrawing from all four of the mysteriously ill-starred group, Mrs Bradley escaped to her room. She had locked it that morning and had unlocked it only to wash her hands before dinner. She now unlocked it again, and, once inside, she re-locked the door behind her.

  She then made sure that the window was fastened before she began to go over the interior of the wardrobe cupboard.

  She soon found a button to press; the wall at the back of the cupboard swung away, and a passage opened before her.

  She scarcely needed to explore it. She could deduce where it led. Still, to assure herself of all the possibilities, she followed it. It led into the air-raid shelter, and it was a fair piece of deduction that both Connie and Miss Carmody could have known of it, but the Tidsons probably did not. There was one more passage to find. She tapped and pressed for twenty minutes or more. She guessed that the passage opened somewhere between the dressing-table and that end of the fireplace wall which was nearest the window. This part of the room formed a wide recess the depth of the chimney-breast, and the wall area measured at least a hundred square feet, half of which could be discounted as being too high. Almost another quarter could also be disregarded because of the position of the dressing-table.

  About thirty square feet of the lower half of the wall were therefore to be explored. Mrs Bradley tried every dodge which she knew of, or of which she had ever read, but for a long time all was in vain. Then, in the way things often are brought about, she leaned against the wall to take the crick out of her back,
and immediately precipitated herself into the secret – or not so secret – passage.

  It led into the air-raid shelter, and was parallel with the passage from the wardrobe cupboard. It was an old passage reconditioned. Mrs Bradley kept watch that night but was not disturbed. Next morning, after she had had an interview with the management, workmen sealed off both the passages which led from the air-raid shelter to her room.

  ‘Who comes now, comes down the chimney,’ thought Mrs Bradley. The idea gave her great satisfaction. She thought it extremely unlikely that the Tidsons or Carmodys knew of the way in by the chimney.

  ‘Yes, we used to notify our guests of a passage through one of the principal bedrooms on every floor if they did not want to run across the lawn to reach the shelter,’ the manageress had said. ‘Of course, we have had no raids to speak of in this neighbourhood, but we did get the warning sometimes, and in winter, I must say, the guests were very thankful that they did not need to come outside the house to reach the shelter. We are most anxious, however, that no one should be disturbed now the war is over. We really ought to have blocked up the passages before this.’

  Mrs Bradley agreed that the comfort of the guests was the first and last consideration in any well-managed hotel, and slept remarkably soundly that night, for a complicated booby trap was in the hearth to discourage ghostly invasions. Before she slept she mused again upon the Carmody and Tidson bruises. She had come to a very definite conclusion about them.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘If any soft or perished Place appear on the Outside, try how deep it goes, for the greater Part may be hid within.’

  Mrs SARAH HARRISON (The Housekeeper’s

  Pocket Book, etc.)

  THE second seaport of England and the greatest cotton market of Europe seemed at first to Laura Menzies dirty, congested, dull and inextricably confused. She had set out, however, in the spirit of adventure which characterized her outlook, and the hotel and Kitty, between them, reconciled her to the greyness of an atmosphere which seemed to be compounded in equal parts of drizzle and soot.