Death and the Maiden (14 page)

‘An excellent idea,' said Mr Tidson, eyeing the buxom Kitty with almost as much approval as if she had been his nymph. Kitty smiled brilliantly upon him, and observed to Laura, when they were clear of the sun-lounge, that she thought him a horrid old man, and one perfectly capable of murder.

‘Would you say that?' asked Laura. ‘Off here to the left, I imagine, from what I remember of our passage downstairs before dinner. Can't say I see it, quite. Childish and rather spoilt, I should have thought.'

‘Well, that's what I mean. It's all the same thing,' said Kitty. ‘You know, irresponsible and pink and a bit bald-headed.'

‘Don't babble,' observed her friend. ‘Now, then, where's this room of ours? You'd think our forefathers were descended from rabbits, wouldn't you, to build these complicated domiciles!'

‘What shall we do about the sightseeing?' demanded Kitty. ‘Do we
have
to barge round the Cathedral?'

‘Sure,' replied Laura. ‘I'll show you.'

They spent the following morning in ecstatic exploration of the Cathedral. Nothing escaped their fascinated contemplation, and Kitty enjoyed herself more than she had expected to do. Conversation was brisk, although they had to carry it on in low tones.

‘Look, Dog! Fancy having your skeleton for a memorial!'

‘They're called rebuses. The guide book says they are quaint. After all, there's nothing like understatement.'

‘The Communion rails are quite the nicest thing here, Dog. Don't you think so?'

‘Late seventeenth-century. Yes, but what about the choir stalls? And those wall-paintings in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre?'

‘The thing is that people
couldn't
have looked like that. Let's go and see whether the verger is going to open the crypt. Then perhaps we could go up the tower and look at the view. Cathedrals give me a headache.'

Laura, after an hour or so of this, took her friend back to lunch, and announced, on the way, that she had found out where the boy Grier had been drowned, and that they would go in search of information directly the meal was over.

Accordingly, they lunched, and then went down the High Street to the bridge and the mill, and took a side-turning. After five minutes' walking, Laura suddenly observed:

‘I was told there was a Youth Hostel somewhere about. Do you see one?'

‘We passed it. It's the old mill. You should use your eyes, Dog,' said Kitty, with the triumph of the down-trodden.

‘I did – on the lie of the land. Oh, well, if we've passed the Youth Hostel, we're on the right track, and that's something. I imagine, then, these are the houses.'

They soon encountered some children. In fact, there seemed to be a considerable number.

‘It's the boys we want,' muttered Kitty, ‘not the girls. Boys will know what took that other poor kid to the river late at night. Girls wouldn't know anything like that.'

‘Late at night? Lord, K.! You remembered that?'

‘You're not the only person who can take an interest, Dog,' said Kitty with great complacence. ‘Wait till someone asks us the time, and we'll make our grab. Kids always ask strangers the time. I believe it's an obscure form of cheek.'

As they came to the bridge, they were stopped by three little boys who were playing with an orange box on perambulator wheels.

‘Please can you tell me the right time, missis?' asked the leader. Kitty consulted her watch. It was very tiny, and excited immediate interest.

‘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 S
ARAH
H
ARRISON
(
The Housekeeper's
Pocket Book, etc.
)

 

‘Y
ou 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?'