Death and the Maiden mb-20

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I suppose you recognize this?’ she said. Crete smiled.

  ‘Poor Edris! I rated him soundly, the silly old man. He loses his hat when he is fishing, and then goes out very early on the morning that little boy is found dead and brings it back with him. Can you imagine anything so silly? I tell him to lose it again. He does, and the kind English bobbies have found it. Now, I suppose, they will accuse him of murdering the boy. It is incredible, the stupidity of the police!’

  ‘And, in the end, of murderers,’ retorted Mrs Bradley. ‘Why did you fish with the old boot down by the weir?’

  ‘To amuse the poor children,’ said Crete. ‘And I do not like to kill fish. I do not like to kill anything. It is just as much fun with a boot. But how do you know about the boot? It was just a game. Why were we spied on? It was a holiday foolishness, that is all.’

  Mrs Bradley felt a growing appreciation of this redoubtable foe. She got up.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t you who entered Connie’s room and whom I caught on the side of the head with the nailbrush, was it?’

  ‘I entered Connie’s room?’ exclaimed Crete. ‘But why should I do that, please?’

  ‘To pour vitriol into her ear, I imagine. You’ve had a letter by hand from her since she went to Lewes, haven’t you?’

  ‘It is the first time I have heard she is in Lewes.’

  ‘Maybe, but she wrote to you from Lewes, all the same.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Crete. ‘I must not lie. I must not make a denial. But you do not judge jealousy too harshly, I think, do you?’

  ‘I never judge it at all,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘When does young Preece-Harvard return to school?’

  ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘By hearsay only, I think. The nephew, you know. Young Arthur.’

  ‘Arthur? Ah, yes, of course. Edris speaks sometimes of Arthur. He is a clever boy, and inherits money, I think.’

  ‘An impeccably-phrased description.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Let it go,’ said Mrs Bradley, employing a phrase she had learned from Laura Menzies.

  ‘You are intelligent,’ said Crete, raising herself from the pillows and giving her tormentor a rare and very sweet smile. ‘Sometimes I think devilish. You have sewn me up into a parcel. Isn’t that what the English say? Well, I had better come clean. That is an American expression. We had Americans often on Tenerife. I like them because they have energy. I think Connie Carmody tried to ensnare my husband, and, you know, she is younger than I, and Edris is an old man and not quite a good old man sometimes. Therefore I am jealous, and when Edris wishes to learn where Connie has gone, I think I would like to know too. I affect to help him, but really I am helping myself.’

  ‘He put through the telephone call that took me out of my room, and you ransacked my belongings,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Yes, we guessed all that.’

  ‘Then Connie telephoned telling me where to meet her,’ Crete went on. ‘But it was not Connie. It was a stupid letter, all accusations. A madness.’

  ‘But why should Connie telephone?’

  ‘We advertised. She is a murderer. What do you say about that?’

  ‘I bring murderers to justice,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘And sometimes to that travesty of justice, the gallows.’

  ‘You speak in the English way, with humour,’ said Crete. ‘And the English humour has facets. It is like heaven.’

  ‘Well, the English justice isn’t very much like heaven,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘although more so, perhaps, than the Greek or the Spanish justice, of which I believe you have some knowledge.’

  ‘I will discuss all three with my husband,’ said Crete, ‘and meanwhile I would be grateful for his hat.’

  ‘The police will buy him another,’ said Mrs Bradley. She walked out, spinning the deplorable wreck of a panama on her hand.

  ‘But how do we get him?’ cried Gavin. ‘And if she won’t say that he pushed her in, we can’t do anything about it unless somebody else saw him do it, and that’s unlikely. And we can’t even call it attempted suicide. Nobody is going to believe that a woman stripped herself naked before trying to drown herself in a respectable river like the Itchen. It doesn’t hold water.’

  ‘Crete did, quite a lot,’ said Laura, who was listening not particularly sympathetically to this tale of woe. ‘What’s more, Crete expects to be arrested.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ enquired the inspector, looking interested and alert, like a thrush within sight of a worm.

  ‘Just an idea,’ said Laura. ‘What’s more, you’d better arrest her,’ she added darkly. ‘The plot thickens, it seems to me, and, as soon as young Arthur P-H. gets down to Winchester, we shall be pretty near the climax. That’s quite certain.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Gavin. ‘But we haven’t even the most superficial circumstantial evidence that any harm is intended to young Preece-Harvard.’

  ‘Well, you arrest Crete for bathing without a costume, and see what happens,’ said Laura. ‘She won’t have thought of that, and it ought to flummox her properly. She wants to be arrested for attempted suicide, I’d say, and any other charge will spike her guns.’

  ‘But what about the hat?’ demanded Gavin. ‘Can’t you get one of your experts to tell you how long it’s been in the water? She may be telling the truth about the hat. If she wanted to accuse her husband of attempted murder she’d have come across with it, I should think. The hat is either an accident or a red-herring.’

  Gavin chuckled.

  ‘You’re an ass,’ he said. ‘Or are you, perhaps, a genius?’

  ‘Occasionally,’ Laura replied. ‘And on this occasion definitely not an ass. You think it over, sonny, and get your hooks on Crete. Then we shall see what we shall see.’

  ‘Signs and wonders,’ said her swain, ‘but nothing that’s any good to a plodding police officer, believe me.’

  ‘All right. What price Mrs Croc. trying to get Crete’s goat, then?’

  ‘Did she?’ He looked interested. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, I would if you felt sympathetic, but I’m not here to waste my sweetness on the desert air.’

  ‘Say on, sweet chuck.’

  ‘All right. From Mrs Croc’s account of the interview – and I will say for the old duck that what she tells you is gospel and certainly isn’t intended to mislead – at least, not often! – it seems pretty clear that she indicated where the Tidsons got off. That ought to produce repercussions. I feel we are on the verge of getting action.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gavin gloomily. ‘I feel it, too, and I’m not so certain I like the idea of it, either. You see the way that particular cat is likely to jump, I suppose?’

  ‘At Mrs Croc’s throat, I suppose you mean. But I think that’s what she intended.’

  ‘Very likely. But, hang it all, she’s an old lady and I can’t have her expose herself to such danger. I thought we were agreed about that. If Tidson and Crete are already responsible for two murders, they are not likely to stick at a third, particularly if it’s a case of shutting somebody’s mouth. They’ve nothing to lose either way, and they’ve shut young Biggin’s mouth already, if what we think is true.’

  ‘I know, but there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘Except keep a weather eye lifting. But I don’t like it, Laura. It isn’t good enough.’

  ‘That’s if we’re right about the Tidsons. But, if you remember, you queried that yourself some weeks ago. And, after all, what have we to go on? There’s Tidson’s hat, of course, but that’s a red herring, I think, and, if Crete won’t accuse him, we can’t. Besides, he’s probably got a water-tight alibi, anyhow.

  ‘I know. But we don’t want to get him for having a stab at Crete. We want to get him for those boys.’

  ‘But that’s where we’re absolutely stuck.’

  ‘Not absolutely, now that child’s mentioned the hat. Do you know what we’ve got to do? We’ve got to get Tidson to the station on some charge or other—’r />
  ‘American film stuff?’

  ‘Yes, if you like. Spitting on the sidewalk over there; drunk and disorderly over here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t find Mr Tidson drunk and disorderly. He’s far too respectable for that! He wouldn’t dream of getting drunk.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, no.’

  ‘But suppose he did, and the local police pulled him in, what could you do? He’d only be fined ten bob or something, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I’d confront him with one or two people – identification parade and all that. They’ve got a man now at the station for pestering women. We could line old Tidson up in the same parade, and see whether any of the witnesses picked him out; not, of course, for pestering people, but on any other score. For instance, if only we could show that he’d ever been anywhere near the Griers’ house it might help us quite a bit.’

  ‘Well, I still say those children I met at the house proved that, but it’s a long shot, isn’t it? And a bit unfair, if he’s innocent of the murders.’

  ‘I know. But we’ve got to do something. It’s stalemate so far, and I’ve been down here for several weeks now. My superiors are getting fed up, and an about-to-be-married man can’t afford to have his superiors raising their eyebrows because he doesn’t get action.’

  ‘I quite agree. All the same—’

  ‘All the same, you don’t like a frame-up. Neither do I. On the other hand, I can’t have Mrs Bradley getting bashed over the head with a stone, and the body slung into the river. I’m worried, Laura. I feel she’s started something which I may not be able to stop.’

  ‘She’ll take care of herself,’ said Laura. ‘And I’ll dog her footsteps and so forth. Does it matter if we murder the Tidsons if it stops them murdering us?’

  Gavin grinned.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Ferdinand Lestrange would be called for the defence in that case, I should imagine, and he doesn’t very often lose the day. But you be careful. I don’t want an idiot wife. Being bashed over the head is apt to produce some effect on the intelligence, you know, and if Tidson were to get busy again with a brickbat—’

  ‘To change the subject,’ said Laura, ‘don’t you think something more could be done from the Bobby Grier end of this business? I believe Mrs Grier is frightened. Couldn’t you frighten her a bit more? And those kids who said a man with a panama hat took Bobby away and drowned him – Oh, yes, I know the baby one said it was a lady, but that doesn’t count for anything.’

  Gavin looked dubious.

  ‘I might get something,’ he agreed, ‘but what would it be worth if I did? I can’t bring kids into court with a tale like that, and, if I could, I wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘Who’s asking you to bring them into court? You’ve only got to get them to recognize Tidson as the man in the panama hat, and then you get on with your proofs. They’re bound to be circumstantial, but you can’t help that.’

  ‘Not good enough. Haven’t you read any witchcraft trials? Kids will say anything if the idea is put into their heads. And, suppose the kid sticks to his “lady,” where is that going to get me?’

  ‘So the hat’s no good? And I got all wet and muddy retrieving the beastly thing!’

  ‘I’m not saying the hat’s no good. Crete has agreed that it’s Tidson’s. He’ll have to explain how it got there at a time when Crete was half drowned.’

  ‘Which he will like a shot, the same as Crete did. She was much too fly to be caught out over the hat. He’ll say it blew off when he was fishing, or else that he took it off, and then, in the excitement of hooking a trout, forgot all about where he’d left it. You’d have to believe him. And, if you didn’t, a jury would. You’re right. The hat is a washout.’

  ‘I’m going to have a go at him,’ said Gavin. ‘Drunk and disorderly? I wonder?’

  But, as it happened, there was no need for any such charge. Mr Tidson was apprehended, and charged the very next day, for travelling on a train without a ticket.

  ‘There’s something damned phony about this,’ said Gavin, when he heard of it from the police station; for Mr Tidson had added to his misdeed by striking the ticket collector on the nose. ‘What the devil is he up to? He’s done this for the purpose, I should guess, and the purpose was not to save his railway fare. Something’s blowing up. I wonder what?’

  ‘I should say it’s blown,’ said Laura. ‘Crete’s told him about her two talks with Mrs Croc. and something about them has scared him. You go and sort him, my lad. This might be a gift from the gods. I wonder what Mrs Croc. has got to say? Oh, and I’ve got a job to do.’

  She picked up an attaché case, opened it, and displayed a transparent light-green waterproof, a wrap-over skirt and a blouse.

  ‘What the hell?’ enquired Gavin. Laura grinned and pushed the clothes into the case.

  ‘Three guesses,’ she said, ‘and you ought to get it first pip.’

  ‘But where did you get them?’

  ‘They’re mine, duck. I’m going along to the river to find out how easy it is to sink clothes in some deepish pool. Then I’m going to find exactly where Crete parked hers. That wasn’t a suicide attempt. It was some elaborate eyewash. You wait and see what she does next.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘He rushed through a long bed of weeds, and then walloped about distractingly . . .’

  J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)

  CRETE’S next action was somewhat astonishing. Mrs Bradley remarked that as Arthur Preece-Harvard would be in Winchester on the morrow, Crete had arranged with the management of the Domus to have a private nurse, or, rather, two nurses, who would be with her night and day.

  ‘But what’s she afraid of?’ enquired Gavin. ‘It almost looks as though she’s afraid of her husband, after all. Do you think he did push her in? It seems queer if he did, considering she went prepared to be the nymph, and—’

  ‘No, I don’t think he did. And I don’t think she’s afraid of him. The nurses will provide her with an alibi, of course, if young Preece-Harvard comes to any harm in Winchester. That is partly what the nurses are for, and that, I imagine, is what the semi-suicide was for. Crete is not going to involve herself any further in her husband’s affairs.’

  ‘But this means she knows an attempt will be made on the boy, and fairly soon! Who are the nurses? Do you know?’

  ‘One has been provided by the doctor whom the hotel called in for Crete, and who usually attends at the Domus if anyone on the staff or among the visitors is suddenly taken ill, and the other is the sister of Lucy, the chambermaid. This sister is well known to the management, and has obliged in this way before.’

  ‘I’d better have a look at them, I think, although they both sound innocent enough. Still, it wouldn’t do to take chances. But, tell me, what do you make of Tidson? I could understand him cheating the railway company, but what about him slugging a ticket collector?’

  ‘I know,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘It isn’t in character. And what isn’t in character is always interesting. Have you interviewed him since he was arrested?’

  ‘No. It’s the local beak’s job. He’s being held on the charge of assault. He paid up the money for the fare, apologized, referred to sudden temptation and said he’d always been honest. I don’t suppose the railway company will prosecute, but for the assault he’ll get forty shillings or seven days, I should think. It wasn’t really a serious case.’

  ‘It’s a very curious one. I wonder what Connie Carmody is doing?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s doing anything much. She’s with her aunt at the flat in London, isn’t she?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Laura to Gavin, a little later on, ‘I still say it’s a pity we can’t prove what was in that letter that was handed to Crete from that car, and I still say it’s a pity we don’t know a little bit more about that flat on the Great West Road that Connie went to when she fled from the Domus.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. She had nowhere to run to except there or to Miss Carmody’s pla
ce, and she guessed we should find her if she went back to where she had come from. She knew old Tidson wasn’t very likely to turn up, and she couldn’t have foreseen that you would. The only part of the business that seems suspicious to me is that she had enough sense not to throw the stone into the river, so that the fingerprints and the dog’s blood were still on it for us to test. That does look guilty.’

  ‘Yes, it’s altogether too clever.’

  ‘I’m going to bounce the secret of that dog-killing out of Connie. It couldn’t have been done for revenge. She never even saw Tidson with the dog!’

  ‘You’d much better leave her to Mrs Bradley, you know.

  You can’t possibly hold her for questioning, although I agree she deserves it.’

  ‘Oh, there are ways and means,’ said Gavin, easily. ‘We can charge her with stealing the dog. I suppose she did steal it, in a way. It will be enough reason for questioning her a bit. We can say that we think the death of the dog may have some bearing on the murders. That won’t be untruthful, will it?’

  Laura looked doubtful, and said:

  ‘The old lizard told her about the dog, hoping she’d make it a substitute for Tidson, and she did. And I don’t believe you could arrest her for stealing it unless Mr Tidson makes a charge, and you know he won’t!’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort!’

  ‘All right, all right. You know your own business best, and I don’t need to agree with all you say. To my mind it’s a frame-up, and I’ve said so. Still, if you have to do it, that must be that. I admit that I feel rather sorry for this Connie. She’s an under-weather, nervy sort of piece, and I wish you could leave her alone.’

  ‘She’s got to come across,’ said Gavin briefly. ‘We’re after a murderer, and a pretty beastly one. Can’t spare people’s feelings if it means we’ve got to let him go.’

  ‘I know. But it’s beastly, all the same, that the innocent should have their lives spoilt because of nasty old men like Mr Tidson.’