WHEREVER he had been during the previous night, whether to put through a bogus telephone call or on some other private business, perhaps of an amorous kind, Mr Tidson had appeared at breakfast, Mrs Bradley had been interested to note, in very good time, in a light grey suit, with a cheerful morning countenance, and certainly with the appearance of one who had taken his usual night’s rest in a guileless bed.
It was not until the following breakfast time, however, that Mrs Bradley recounted to him, across the short distance which separated her table from that of Miss Carmody and the Tidsons, the tale of the telephone and the ghost. Mr Tidson expressed surprise and Crete amusement. Miss Carmody showed deep and obvious concern. No one gave any indication that it was known that Mr Tidson had left the hotel after dark on the night in question, but, as soon as the meal was over, Mr Tidson earnestly requested Mrs Bradley to show him the spot along the river from which she had seen the nymph.
There was a solitary fisherman on the bank as they made their way across the water-meadows. It was Detective-Inspector Gavin. He was in cover behind high reeds from which he made a very pretty cast just as they approached along the path.
‘Don’t let us go too close,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘There is a man who knows what he is doing. Let us leave him in peace to do it.’
Mrs Bradley was only too willing to do this. She had an appointment with Laura at the pool below the little wooden bridge, and she did not want her secretary to catch cold. The morning, although well advanced, was fairly chilly.
Cresses at the mouths of the drains lay close and thick, but not sufficiently so to check the bubbling flow of the water. There were startwort, dropwort and water crows-foot to be recognized by those who knew them; the grass, hiding boggy holes and the plashy flats and marshes, gave place to the stiff, thick reeds at the edge of the river. Beyond the bridge a line of dark woods hid the road. The river wound and turned. There were cattle along its banks, and the rough yellow flowers of the fleaban were thrusting up between cowpats and soggy hoof-marks. Every stream was marked by its line of willows, and, as the fisherman cast, a kingfisher swooped like a jewel.
There were slow swans stately on the main stream, and a very old willow tree leaned out over the water. The current distorted the green and silver reflections, and carried the image of hawthorn bushes as shadows under the bank. Beyond this dusk the grey-green waters were bright, and those in the fullest light were iridescent, like crystal, or solidly flowing like clear, green, moulded glass.
‘A morning for gods and maidens,’ said Mr Tidson, rapturously sniffing the air. ‘She cannot resist such a day! You really believe you saw her?’
‘I know I did,’ said Mrs Bradley positively. ‘What’s more, I can see her again.’
She pointed. They had almost gained the bridge. There was the flash of a white body followed by the sound of a splash.
‘Somebody bathing,’ said Mr Tidson uneasily. ‘That was no nymph, dear lady.’
‘I wonder?’ said Mrs Bradley. They took the narrow path which led to the bridge, but, by the time they got to the broad wooden planks, there was nobody anywhere to be seen.
Mr Tidson stood in the middle of the bridge and gazed downstream. Mrs Bradley crossed to the opposite bank of the river, and, disregarding the mud, the cowpats and the grey-spined thistles around her, walked in the direction of some willows from whose shade she could keep Mr Tidson and the whole of the plank bridge in view.
There was a short but dramatic sequence of events. From the brimming blue-grey carrier, which cut the meadows with a beautiful, swift-running arc of clearest water, came Laura Menzies like an otter. She was wearing a brief green bathing suit, and she moved with barefoot noiselessness, crouching behind the stiff reeds. She crossed a slip of the meadow behind Mr Tidson and the bridge, waded into the river, walked to the wooden supports, climbed up, and, just as the little man turned to see her (for the bridge shook under her antics), she came behind him, seized him by the leg, and, with the heave of a coalman emptying a two-hundred-weight sack, she tipped him with strength and celerity into the six-foot pool.
The ripples round Mr Tidson widened and shimmered. They gurgled in eddies under the holes in the bank. They slapped with shivering ecstasy into the tree-roots, and danced among the stems of the reeds.
Laura leaned over the rail and studied the patterns on the water. Then, finding that Mr Tidson, when he came to the surface, merely submerged himself again, and was, moreover, choking and in distress, she ducked under the rail, grinned evilly, gave him a last, pleased glance, dropped carelessly into the pool and scooped him out.
She dragged him up the bank through the mud, and laid him face downward on the grass. She then raised his head and turned it sideways, and set to work to pump the water out of him, displaying a horrid skill and unfeeling aptness. She propped open his little mouth with a hard piece of stick, and seemed to be doing her best to break his ribs. She got up at last, grimaced at Mrs Bradley (who had come near enough to obtain a close view of the proceedings), tossed the back of a rosy heel at Mr Tidson, took a gentle run, and dived deeply into the pool.
By the time Mr Tidson had managed to scramble to his feet, she had come up out of the stream and was dressing behind a willow tree near by. Mrs Bradley assisted Mr Tidson to wring the water out of his suit. A moment later there lay on the path, tossed out from behind Laura’s willow, a dry suit of clothing, some shoes and socks, and a towel.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, pouncing upon this gift. She dried her hands on the towel, handed it over, indicated another clump of willows, gave him the dry clothes, and made her way back to the hotel. Laura, coming up at a gentle trot, joined her at the mill near College Walk.
‘Barbaric but effective, child,’ said Mrs Bradley comfortably, referring to the ducking of Mr Tidson. ‘I think we may conclude, from this morning’s demonstration, that, whatever Mr Tidson’s other gifts, he certainly cannot swim.’
‘I hope all his past came before him,’ said Laura roundly. ‘I regard that little man with great dislike.’
Mr Tidson reappeared at the Domus in a very bad temper for his mid-morning glass of whisky, and to Thomas’ tactlessly blunt enquiry as to what he had been doing to fall into the river again, he returned a squeak of rage as he handed him over the bundle of sodden clothes.
‘Dried and pressed, and as soon as possible,’ he said.
‘A word with you,’ said Mrs Bradley, waylaying Mr Tidson at the door of the cocktail lounge. ‘Come back, and I will order another whisky.’
Mr Tidson went back, and, as soon as the whisky was ordered, he began a long and querulous complaint against Laura Menzies, citing instances of cramps and sudden heart-failure. Mrs Bradley listened sympathetically, nodding her head and observing that girls would be girls, and that she was sure that the boisterous Laura intended no harm, and that the bridge had a rickety handrail, although this last was not strictly the truth and had had nothing to do with the affair.
A couple of whiskies improved Mr Tidson’s outlook. He modified his reasonably peevish point of view. Finding him mellowed, Mrs Bradley suddenly demanded, with almost wifely menace, and with no leading up to the subject:
‘And what have you done with your hat?’
‘My panama?’ said Mr Tidson, who did not seem to be taken aback by the question but might have prepared an answer to it. ‘It is so annoying! I lost it fishing, you know. I cast very badly – oh, very badly. It really was quite a disgraceful cast, I am afraid; and, before I realized what had happened, I had struck! – but in my hat and not in a fish! Off came the hat, and into the river it went, and that was the end of the hat, for it was not well hooked and the current soon floated it away.
‘I pursued it, needless to say, but—’ he spread his little plump hands – ‘to no avail. I was obliged to abandon it to Peneas, and write it off a dead loss. A pity! I was much attached to it.’
‘You carried your flies in its band?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Tidson, looking suspicio
usly at her, ‘of course I did.’
‘Especially your hackle caperers,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, ‘not to mention your fisherman’s curses.’
Mr Tidson permitted himself to cackle.
‘What a wit you are!’ he said in sycophantic admiration. He patted her yellow claw. It was like a toad patting a raven, thought Laura, who had entered the smoke-room in quest of a half-pint of beer. Seeing the room thus occupied, and fearful of breaking in upon Mrs Bradley’s interrogation of Mr Tidson, she tip-toed out again.
‘I don’t wonder she’s ashamed to come near me,’ said Mr Tidson, thankful to return to his complaints. Mrs Bradley smiled gently, like a crocodile contemplating food, and Mr Tidson, to his own surprise, gave a sudden gulp as though he had bitten his tongue, and forbore to enlarge upon his grievance.
‘And I have found out Connie’s address,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Her aunt will be so much relieved. The only trouble is that I’m asked to keep it a secret.’
If Mr Tidson had any particular reaction to this last statement he did not show it. He merely replied:
‘You will relieve Prissie’s mind. I know she has been most anxious about the girl.’ Then he added, in the tones of a mourner, ‘I suppose you have not given further consideration to what I said about the death of that boy, Bobby Grier?’
‘Oh, yes, I have thought about it often,’ Mrs Bradley truthfully replied.
‘Ah, well, it appears I was mistaken. I’m glad they’ve got the man who did it,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘What a scoundrel to have deceived his wife like that! And with such a woman!’
Mrs Bradley wished with all her heart that there could have been witnesses to Mr Tidson’s last sentence. She wondered how he came to remark upon Mrs Grier so understandingly. He might, of course, have been fishing for information. If so, he had put the fly to a very wily trout who refused to take it.
Kitty and Alice came back to Winchester with the welcome news that Connie was still at the Stone House and was prepared to stay there quietly until she received further orders.
‘Well, that’s something,’ Mrs Bradley observed. She told Miss Carmody that Connie was safe and well, but that she preferred to keep her whereabouts a secret.
‘She seems,’ said Mrs Bradley in explanation, ‘to have formed a poor opinion of Mr Tidson.’
‘Ah!’ said Miss Carmody. It was a sigh of acquiescence; a reproachful verdict of Guilty; Mrs Bradley very much admired it. She liked economy in words, and felt that Miss Carmody had achieved this.
‘It is good of you to take it so sensibly,’ she said.
Matters were thus in a state of comparative suspension and remained very quiet and uneventful for nearly another week, during which the party contrived to re-book their rooms. At the end of that time Miss Carmody announced that her expenses at the Domus had already mounted to more than she had been prepared to pay, and that, nymph or no nymph, she and the Tidsons must return to London. They had stayed, she added, a good deal longer than she had ever, in her wildest estimates, intended. She spoke with sorrowful severity, as though it were Mrs Bradley’s fault that she had stayed so long.
Mr Tidson was almost broken-hearted. This fact he confided to Laura, with whom he was soon on speaking terms again. Laura regarded with suspicion this sudden and kindly forgiveness of her high-handed action in pushing him into the river, but she kept her thoughts to herself and returned Mr Tidson smile for smile.
On Thursday morning of the week in which Miss Carmody had announced that they must take their departure, her party decided to go to Dorchester for the day. Mrs Bradley went to see them off, and the last that she and Laura saw of them was the flash of the August sunshine on the spare wheel at the back of their car as they turned at the top of the street.
Miss Carmody had made no further mention of Connie, and the moment the car was round the bend Mrs Bradley was at the telephone booth in the hotel vestibule, and was putting through a call to Wandles Parva. Connie Carmody, driven by the faithful George, Mrs Bradley’s chauffeur, was at the Domus in time for lunch.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘where is your job?’
‘In Lewes,’ Connie replied, ‘and I have to go in on Monday. I must dodge Uncle Edris until then.’
It turned out that Connie had not been nearer Lewes than Brighton, and had been to Brighton only for the day. Mrs Bradley rang up Miss Carmody’s London flat to make certain that she and the Tidsons had not deceived her, but really had gone out for the day, and, receiving no reply, thought that all would be well.
Immediately lunch at the Domus was over, she bundled Connie into the car and on to the back seat, climbed in beside her, waved a skinny claw to the Three Musketeers who were collected at the front door of the hotel, sat back and ordered George to drive on.
The car took the route through Petersfield and Midhurst to Lewes, and Mrs Bradley and Connie went to an hotel in the High Street. After coffee they walked, at Mrs Bradley’s suggestion, down the steep hill through the lower part of the town, and then crossed the main road at the foot of the slope and climbed up the rough path past the memorial, and on to the golf course, and beyond it.
In a field of stubble they sat down, and, after a period of silence during which they took in the view, Mrs Bradley remarked:
‘And now to business. I want you to tell me all you know.’
‘About what?’ Connie naturally enquired.
‘First, about your parents; secondly, about yourself; thirdly, about Mr Tidson; fourthly, about your aunt; fifthly, about the ghost; sixthly—’
‘Oh, dear!’ cried Connie, flushing and then becoming pale. ‘I can’t remember all those!’
‘Oh, yes, you can. They are named in a logical sequence which you ought to be the first to appreciate. You could even, if you wished, tell me what the sixth account is to be.’
‘Yes,’ said Connie, ‘I suppose so. You mean Ronald.’
‘Very well, then, I mean Ronald, although I should have thought that I meant the Preece-Harvards. Isn’t that the name I’ve heard mentioned?’
Connie, with a scared expression, agreed that it was, but muttered that she was going to live with Ronald, whatever anyone might say, and that her relatives (and, she inferred, Mrs Bradley) could mind their own business.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘This young man is of independent means, I perceive.’
‘He’s an artist,’ said Connie defiantly. ‘I went to a show he had in Town.’
‘I’m sure it was most successful,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Well, yes,’ Connie doubtfully replied. ‘I suppose it was. It was held in Pimlico. Wasn’t there a Pimlico Mystery? I seem to remember hearing something about it, although—’ she attempted an unsuccessful giggle – ‘I’m afraid it only makes me think of sausages. Was there a Pimlico Mystery?’
‘Yes, a very atrocious murder,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Were you, by any chance, born in Pimlico, I wonder?’
‘Of course not!’ said Connie, surprised into sudden confession. ‘I thought you knew I was born down here, near Alresford.’
‘I had guessed as much. Go on.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore . . .’
DANIEL DEFOE (Robinson Crusoe)
‘MY FATHER and mother died,’ said Connie, without betraying emotion, ‘when I was six years old, and until I was thirteen I lived with the Preece-Harvards. Of course, they are quite rich, but so was my father, until the smash in 1931. I was only four then. At the Preece-Harvards’ I had a governess, and my little cousin Arthur shared her with me until I had to come and live with Aunt Prissie and he was sent to his prep. school.’
‘He’s a good deal younger than you, then?’
‘Not so very much younger, really. Three years, that’s all. But, of course, he was rather spoilt, and that made him precocious, and even older than he was.’
‘An only child, I imagine?’
&
nbsp; ‘Oh, yes, and I was treated as his sister until Colonel Preece-Harvard died. It was then that Aunt Prissie gave me a home with her, for Mrs Preece-Harvard turned me out. She said that, after all, I was no relation of hers, and she did not feel that she could be responsible for me. It was a dreadful shock to me. I felt I should never get over it.’
‘You minded the change very much, then?’ said Mrs Bradley, noting with interest the featurelessness of the narrative.
‘I was heartbroken. You see, I missed Arthur so terribly. That was one thing. In fact, I think it was the worst.
I was fond of Arthur. We meant a great deal to one another.’
‘But he was going to be sent to school in any case, I thought you said.’
‘Oh, yes, but only because I was leaving to live with Aunt Prissie. I – you see—’ She began to flounder. Mrs Bradley was glad of the change to an unrehearsed effort.
‘But surely a boy of ten would have been sent to school whether you were staying with his mother or not?’ she enquired.
‘Oh, well, perhaps. If so, I didn’t know. I wasn’t told. The whole thing was a really dreadful shock. I was a sensitive child, I suppose,’ said Connie, returning to her first lifeless voice, and looking to see the effect.
‘No doubt. Lots of children are sensitive, particularly where their convenience is involved,’ said Mrs Bradley sharply and in very unsympathetic tones. There was a pause, for Connie, after giving her a surprised and resentful glance, gazed over the distant hills and preserved an offended silence.
‘And your aunt has had you with her for the past six years,’ said Mrs Bradley, changing her tone to one of casual interest. ‘You must feel that you owe her a good deal.’
Connie turned her head sharply as though to repudiate this theory, but she must have thought better of it, for she turned her face away again, pulled at a few stalks of the stubble, and said, in quiet tones:
‘I suppose I do. Poor Aunt Prissie! But it did mean a very great change.’
‘No doubt. But now that change has given place to another. You are about to live your life in your own way, I believe, during the time that must elapse before your marriage.’
Death and the Maiden mb-20 Page 15
