Death and the Maiden mb-20

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘The right time?’ said Kitty, squinting down at it. ‘Oh, Lord! I must get my glasses.’ She did not wear glasses. Her sight was remarkably good.

  ‘I’ll tell it, missis! Let me ’ave a look!’ urged one of the children at once. Kitty let him look. She even took the watch off and let the three boys handle it. Laura looked on, expecting every moment that one of them would let the watch fall, and smash it, but it was passed from one pair of dirty paws to another without disaster. At the end, the leader strapped it on to Kitty’s wrist. It was not very hard after this to ask the boys the necessary questions.

  ‘The boys all made a raft out of pieces of packing case, and hid it in the reeds, and this drowned kid, they think, went and sneaked it away,’ said Laura thoughtfully, as they turned back over the bridge to gain the long lane and the hotel. ‘Well, that’s quite a likely reason for a kid to be prowling about late at night. Pity there’s no evidence as to how he was hit on the head.’

  ‘If there were, we’d know who murdered him, wouldn’t we?’ Kitty enquired. ‘Still, the raft says something, doesn’t it?’

  Both of them, Kitty in particular, received Mrs Bradley’s compliments as soon as Laura imparted the facts after tea.

  ‘And they are your due, too,’ said Laura cordially, sitting on the end of Kitty’s bed before she went to her own room for the night. ‘The way you handled those kids was masterly. The profession lost a promising recruit in you when you took up this hairdressing business.’

  ‘Oh, rot, Dog! I’d never have made a teacher. Kids never behave themselves with me, and I never think of ticking ’em off or telling ’em not to until it’s too late and they’ve done it.’

  ‘Yes, there is that,’ agreed Laura. ‘What do you make of the infant who tags about after that Carmody woman, and calls her Aunt Prissie or something? The one whose closer acquaintance we’re scheduled to make. Not such a pill as she looks.’

  ‘Connie Carmody? I suppose she’s all right.’

  ‘Ah, but you ought to attune yourself, K., to her reactions. Ask me, that girl’s scared for her life.’

  ‘Literally, Dog, do you mean?’

  ‘Pretty nearly literally, I should say. Didn’t you notice she made some excuse not to go upstairs by herself, and that in broad daylight? Not normal, K., in a wench of nineteen summers. And didn’t you notice how quickly Mrs Croc. took the hint and went up with her? There’s something got on the girl’s nerves, and Mrs Croc. guesses what, I think, and believes there’s something in it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some people are fearfully nervous. I know I was when I was eight. Nothing on earth would induce me—’

  ‘Eight ain’t nineteen, duck. Besides, this Connie is scared of something definite. And do you know what I think?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Tidson,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Tidson?’ said Laura, the wind taken out of her sails.

  ‘Yes. He’s a nasty old thing. I expect he’s made an improper advance, or what-not.’

  ‘You haven’t gone all nymphomaniac, have you?’ asked Laura, eyeing her friend with keen interest. Kitty was about to deal with this libellous enquiry when Laura got up off the bed and went softly to the door. Twisting the handle suddenly, she pulled the door open with a jerk. Connie Carmody stood there, a suitcase on the floor beside her.

  ‘I say, I’ve got to get up to Town,’ she whispered. ‘Can either of you lend me any money?’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Break off the dirty Ends, put Salt to them.’

  Mrs SARAH HARRISON (The Housekeeper’s

  Pocket Book, etc.)

  ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ said Kitty vehemently. Laura surveyed her friend’s comely proportions with amusement, Mrs Bradley with courteous interest.

  ‘Honest?’ asked Laura, with much more point than kindness.

  ‘I’m not talking to you, Dog,’ said Kitty with splendid dignity. ‘Don’t butt in.’

  ‘The floor’s yours,’ agreed Laura, taking out a cigarette and regarding it thoughtfully before she put it into her mouth. ‘Say on; but be brief. I smell Tidson, so we’d better pipe down.’

  It proved to be Crete, who came dispiritedly into the lounge, her embroidery frame in one hand and a handbag dangling from the other. She had a cigarette in her mouth, and when she put down her things and took it out, its lipsticked extremity might have been covered in blood.

  ‘You know,’ said Kitty abruptly, addressing her sternly, ‘it’s quite the wrong colour on you. Come up to my room and I’ll show you. That lipstick is three shades too dark.’

  Crete looked taken aback.

  ‘You see?’ said Kitty, inspired, as always, by the tactless zeal of the artist. She took a little mirror from her handbag. ‘Look in this and smile. Wider. Why, you don’t even know where to stop, or how far you ought to take the colour. For goodness’ sake let me get at you! You’ve got—’

  Her voice faded away as she thrust the astonished Crete outside the door. Laura grinned at Mrs Bradley and gave her a chair.

  ‘Alone at last,’ she observed. ‘Now what’s all this about Connie? Lost, stolen or strayed, should you suppose? Judging from last night’s encounter—’

  ‘The last, for choice,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I’m rather worried about Connie. I want to put the police on her track, but, so far, Miss Carmody won’t hear of it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have given her any money, I suppose,’ said Laura. ‘But she came and asked for it, and I had it, and old K. also subbed up, and off she went. We thought she had a date, as a matter of fact, and, after all—’ she squinted solemnly down at her shoes – ‘we’ve all been young once.’ She glanced at the door and then added, ‘What do you think is happening hereabouts, and what did you make of the raft?’

  ‘To answer the second question first, I make nothing of the raft except what you do, child,’ Mrs Bradley replied with a shrug. ‘It may well explain what the boy was doing down by the river, and if it does – and I think it does – it disposes of one of our problems. The question is where is the raft?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Laura, ‘there’s no question of his having been – I mean, of his having met with an accident anywhere but where he was found?’

  ‘The point did not arise at the inquest,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘But what—?’

  ‘I just wondered. Lots of places round here where a kid could be drowned, I take it.’

  ‘I saw him, you know. The water is very shallow and muddy where he was found, and there were no abrasions on the face or hands, and not on the knees, according to the doctor who examined him. Still, if the boy had been knocked on the head and somebody laid him down gently, no matter how stony it was—’

  ‘Pity the whole thing happened while you were in London,’ said Laura, ‘except, I suppose, that’s the point.’

  ‘Of course, the most extraordinary accidents can happen,’ Mrs Bradley observed. ‘Now, what can we do about Connie?’

  ‘Well, isn’t she entitled to run off on her own if she wants to?’

  ‘She is under certain obligations to her aunt.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. Has she met any earnest young men since she’s been in Winchester?’

  ‘Who can tell? Girls are fairly good at keeping that kind of thing from their guardians. I shouldn’t have thought she’d have had much opportunity to make contacts, but, of course, these things can be managed, and she’s often been out on her own.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ said Laura, grinning. ‘Have you sounded Thomas? These factota – is that the right word? – very often have inside dope on the clients, don’t you know. They notice things, and can usually put two and two together. It’s a matter of experience, I fancy. They must get to know hundreds of people, and be able to sum them up.’

  ‘I have sounded Thomas,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and I think he knows something, but his remarks were laconic and obscure. Further, they were couched in the Doric, which, like all dialects, is rich, dark and fruity, but,
to me, a trifle indigestible.’

  ‘Tell me. I can translate.’

  ‘Very well, child. This was it.’ She repeated the observation as accurately as though she had written it down.

  ‘So she’s awa,’ Thomas had said. ‘Weel, weel! There’s a chiel the noo wull be speiring tae ken whit way the wind blaws tae fill toom pooch, I’ll be thinking.’

  ‘Had Connie any money of her own?’ enquired Laura, at once. ‘Doesn’t sound like it if she had to borrow ours, but, of course, her cash might be held in trust until she’s twenty-one or something, I suppose. Thomas’ remarks, in translation, are: “So she’s gone! Well, well! There’s somebody now who wishes to know which way the wind blows to fill empty pockets.” Does that make any sense, either?’

  Mrs Bradley cackled. It was not a mirthful sound, and Laura, who had learnt to regard it as a war-cry, looked at her rather in the manner of stout Cortez regarding the Pacific.

  ‘It begins to add up?’ she asked. ‘One thing, I thought, stuck out a mile. This Connie’s been scared since we’ve been here. I should say that something must have happened almost as soon as we came, or just before. We wondered whether perhaps she suspects Mr Tidson of base designs, or whether she thinks somebody has the goods on her, somehow. Or does she think that the mermaid Crete might stick her with an embroidery stiletto or something? And I still think there’s always the aunt. Suppose Miss Carmody stood to gain something by getting rid of this Connie – Oh, no, that wouldn’t work out. Talking of getting rid, I suppose it’s the Tidsons Miss Carmody wants to get rid of. Oh, Lord, it’s like groping in the dark. What do you think we ought to do? I mean, why should Connie disappear?’

  ‘Well, there’s just one thing which might be useful,’ said Mrs Bradley, ignoring the question of Connie’s disappearance, and confining herself to what they ought to do.

  ‘I know! Keep tabs on the Tidsons and Miss Carmody to make sure they don’t put in some dirty work. We ought to dog their footsteps! We ought to pop out from unexpected corners and get in their hair and on their nerves. They’re bound to give themselves away if we get them thoroughly rattled. What do you say?’

  ‘You could try it,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘but I think a less picturesque but equally useful task would be to find Connie before she gets into any more mischief.’

  ‘Bother this Connie! Bags I watch the Tidsons!’ said Laura.

  ‘You could try it,’ said Mrs Bradley again. ‘But don’t be annoying, will you? There is no more reason to connect them with Connie’s disappearance than with the death of the boy.’

  Laura grinned and promised, and went off to break the news to Kitty. That heroine was still in conference with Crete Tidson, but she came out at last, looking pleased, and was promptly waylaid by Laura, who took her off to her bedroom and spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Oh, Lord, Dog, speak up!’ said Kitty. ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

  Laura, cursing her briefly, outlined the plan of campaign.

  ‘Yes, but it’s gaga,’ said Kitty. ‘It isn’t the Tidsons or Miss Carmody. It’s some awful man at the lower end of the town. He’s been arrested.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fact. Name of Potter. Thomas told me when I sent him out for some setting combs.’

  ‘You – what?’

  ‘He said he knew a shop where they had some. His daughter bought some yesterday,’ said Kitty serenely. ‘Don’t look so moon-struck. You’ve heard of setting combs before.’

  ‘Yes, but not of Thomas being sent out to buy some,’ said Laura. She wasted no time in discussing this phenomenon, however, but sought the earliest opportunity of acquainting Mrs Bradley with what had happened.

  ‘Potter?’ said Mrs Bradley, deeply interested. ‘Hm! The man who found the body, of course. I wonder what else they have against him?’

  The arrest was reported in the evening papers, but there was nothing else to be learned. The papers gave a résumé of the circumstances of the boy’s death, so far as they were known, but gave no hint of the ground the police had covered before they arrested Potter.

  That evening Mrs Bradley left Laura and Kitty to their self-imposed, and, she thought, unproductive task of keeping an eye on the Tidsons and Miss Carmody, and went to the lower end of the town and along the narrow street to Potter’s house.

  The small front parlour was as neat, dead and frowsty as before. Mrs Potter was in. Mrs Bradley had ascertained this before she knocked at the door. The village women were gossiping at their front doors, for none of the houses along the village street had front gardens.

  ‘Is Mrs Potter at home?’ she had asked the next-door neighbour, interrupting her in what seemed to be the already twice-told tale of Potter’s villainy and of how the neighbours had always expected that he would be found out some fine day.

  ‘Ah, she’s home,’ the woman had replied, giving her a stare out of a curiosity more bovine than offensive.

  ‘What is she doing? Is she busy?’

  ‘No. Just sitting.’

  It was upon receipt of this information that Mrs Bradley had knocked at the door. The woman who stood there looked twenty years older than the wife and mother whom Mrs Bradley and Miss Carmody had met such a short time before.

  ‘I got nothing to say,’ said the woman.

  ‘Don’t put me off,’ said Mrs Bradley, promptly walking past her into the house. ‘You know he didn’t do it, so why do you worry?’ Mrs Potter dusted a chair, automatically it seemed. Mrs Bradley sat down.

  ‘Don’t you reckon so?’ asked Mrs Potter. She seemed to have no interest in the subject.

  ‘I feel fairly certain about it. He isn’t that kind of man.’

  ‘That’s what I would have said,’ said poor Mrs Potter, looking at her now in puzzled misery. ‘But neither wouldn’t he have been the kind to go along of that trollopsing Gert Grier. If he could do that, and me all in the dark, and thinking I’d got a good husband and my little Dorrie a good father, he could do any dreadful thing, I reckon.’

  ‘So you think he killed Bobby Grier?’

  ‘I do, too and all.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He went with Gert Grier. That’s the reason for all this trouble – all of it,’ said the woman. She still intoned her words as though for her they had no meaning. ‘Bobby Grier knowed, and Potter, he knowed Bobby knowed. Gert Grier let it all out as soon as the police took her up.’

  ‘So you believe Mrs Grier? What does your husband say?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t much trouble.’

  ‘Does he know you think like that?’

  ‘I don’t care what he thinks. And I don’t know for why you’ve come ’ere.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Bradley, getting up. ‘I ought to be with Mrs Grier, I suppose. Where is your little girl?’

  ‘Gone to stay with her auntie in Andover.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that her father has been arrested?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t know. I wouldn’t ’ave her know for anything.’

  ‘Good. Well, goodbye, Mrs Potter. Don’t believe all that Mrs Grier says. I think she’s lying.’

  The woman’s face did not change.

  ‘Her wouldn’t tell lies without there was something in ’em,’ she said obstinately. ‘And the police wouldn’t have come ’ere if there ’adn’t been nothing to come for. Good-day to you. Mean well, you do, but I don’t take no truck in sociable ladies no more. I don’t take no truck in nothing never no more.’

  With these heavy and lack-lustre negatives she opened the door and Mrs Bradley walked out. She went straight to the Griers’ house. Here her reception was cordial, suspiciously so, she felt, considering the way she had last been received. She came to the point without going into the house.

  ‘What put the police on to Potter?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Grier, with an arch smile, ‘his own doing that was, but it ain’t no business of anybody’s ’cepting me. Still, of course, I’m ready to answer questions. Nothin
g to ’ide, I ’aven’t.’

  ‘I see. The police, no doubt, have asked you a good many questions?’

  ‘As may be,’ responded Mrs Grier. ‘I said what I’m going to hold to, and Potter, ’e ’asn’t got an alibi, that’s what I say.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Tell me, have you seen anything more of the little man in the panama hat? It isn’t safe to have too much to do with him, you know.’

  She bestowed on Mrs Grier a grin which caused the woman to retreat a step, but the door remained open.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mrs Grier, indicating clearly that she did not want the conversation to terminate.

  ‘Don’t you? Well, he knows you, even if you don’t know him. How did Bobby come to be out so late that night?’

  ‘You better come in,’ said the woman. Mrs Bradley went inside the dark little parlour.

  ‘Why do you keep the blinds drawn?’ she enquired. It was the room in which Bobby had been laid out, and it retained a funereal air.

  ‘Getting dark, ain’t it?’ said the woman. ‘And people stare in as soon as you’ve got the light on.’

  ‘Do you use this room much, then?’

  ‘On and off we do.’

  ‘You know,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘I think you would do much better to tell me the truth. You must know that Potter didn’t do it.’

  At this Mrs Grier became shrill. Mrs Bradley listened patiently to the spate of blasphemy, protest, vituperation and self-vindication which ensued, and then walked composedly to the door. The woman watched her go, but, before the door was pulled open, she had started forward.

  ‘What you going to do?’ she demanded, trying to insert her bulk between Mrs Bradley and the opening.

  ‘I am going to wait and see what happens,’ said Mrs Bradley in her calm and beautiful voice. ‘The question is, what are you going to do, I should have thought. You are a very vindictive woman. Have you heard of Potiphar’s wife?’

  The woman gave way before Mrs Bradley’s black eyes and triumphantly beaky little mouth. Mrs Bradley went back to Mrs Potter.

  ‘Why did you believe her?’ she asked.