Death and the Maiden (16 page)

‘I should think she must be free by now. The schools round here have broken up. I'll wire the old scout. She'd love to come along and join the party.'

‘She may have fixed up her summer holiday, though,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘She can unfix it, then,' said Laura. ‘Dash it all, it's a time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. I'll wire to her home address.'

She did this, and prepaid the reply.

‘And now,' said Mrs Bradley, ‘off with you. I don't say bring Connie back, but you must find out why she went, and whether she is short of money. You know the kind of thing.'

‘Sure,' said Laura, with great cordiality.

‘You have gone to London on business for me,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘That is our official story, and true enough, too, in its way. It gives a reason for your departure. As one of my former students it will seem quite natural for you to be sent off on my affairs. Get back as soon as you can, and good luck, child.'

‘I may need it! Talk about a needle in a bundle of hay!'

Laura caught a morning train and had lunch in town. Then she went on the local line to Chiswick station, and, having decided upon her line of approach, she went first to the Public Library and consulted the Directory.

Connie's name was Carmody, the same as that of her aunt, and it appeared in the Directory at several addresses. Laura copied out all these, and spent the afternoon and early evening in trying them all. She had no success whatsoever. None of the Chiswick Carmodys were connected with Connie or her aunt.

Laura went for dinner to Mrs Bradley's Kensington house, was welcomed by Henri and Célestine, who liked her, spent the night in her own bed, and had breakfast at seven the next morning.

She needed very little sleep, and during the night had turned over in her mind the next move towards finding Connie. The bizarre and the adventurous always appealed to Laura, and she was never short of ideas.

She went out after breakfast and, visiting various shops, she purchased a couple of dozen pairs of boot and shoe laces. She returned to the house, begged a light tray with handles from Célestine, put on an old beret and her shabbiest gardening clothes, including a pair of shoes which received dubbin from time to time but never any polish, and set off for Chiswick Empire.

Here she sat on the steps until the cleaners moved her away, and then loitered up the broad alley between the side
of the music-hall and the line of shops, and, with the tray on a length of webbing and the bootlaces prominently displayed, she watched the Turnham Green bus stops on either side of the high road, prudently retiring into a side doorway whenever she saw a policeman.

She had some time to wait, but, as the clock on the church showed eleven, Connie came strolling from the Hammersmith direction and stood in the queue for buses travelling westwards.

‘Got you!' said Laura to herself. She thrust the bootlaces into her pockets, unshipped the tray, and, going into the booking office of Chiswick Empire, thrust it at the astonished clerks, and said:

‘Mind it until I get back!'

She then crossed the road and joined the bus queue, to find herself conveniently separated from Connie by three stout women carrying shopping baskets. Connie went on top and Laura sat just inside the bus, ready to get out the moment the quarry appeared on the conductor's platform. She did not know what fare to pay, so compromised on a twopenny ticket, and had the satisfaction of seeing Connie get off at the stop which was nearest to the Great West Road.

‘The boy guessed right the very first time!' muttered Laura, flattening herself against a telephone box as Connie, who seemed in a hurry, glanced about her before crossing the road. Laura let her cross, and then sauntered after her, avoiding by an inch or two a car which came swiftly along the high road.

At the bus stop Connie hesitated, and for a moment Laura thought that she was going to wait for a bus. There was no cover available, and Laura believed she would have to declare herself and demand to be told why Connie had run away. After a pause lasting less than a second, however, Connie walked on again. Laura followed behind, but did not close up.

Connie quickened her pace. Laura increased hers so that the distance between the two of them remained approximately the same. They crossed a narrow turning and then
came to one still narrower. Connie dived up this turning and walked still faster. Laura, afraid that she might lose her in a maze of side-streets, hastened her steps. They crossed a narrow bridge over a railway, and then Connie dived to the left into a long lane paved with stone which led alongside the line. Three wide, rough steps led down to it. Connie galloped down these, and then went on running.

Laura continued to walk until Connie had turned a slight bend, then she flew like the wind and almost caught her.

‘I say!' she called; for she was sure by this time that Connie had intended to follow the Great West Road, and had altered course when she discovered that Laura was trailing her. There seemed no further need for taking cover.

By way of response to the shout from Laura, Connie sprinted again. Laura, seriously handicapped for running by her gardening shoes, lost ground at first, and, by the time they had passed another bend in the lane, Connie was no longer to be seen.

Laura was not long deceived. A footbridge crossed the railway. Connie must have used it. Laura spurted, and saw Connie disappearing down a twisting path which reason informed her must come out somewhere along that part of the Great West Road which the two girls had already traversed.

She soon found herself in a small park or pleasure ground where children were playing. Of Connie there was still no sign, and it took Laura several minutes to find the gate. She came on to the Great West Road again, but still could see nothing of Connie.

She cursed herself briefly for not having closed up on her sooner, but wasted little time in regrets. She walked to the bus stop and waited. Less than a quarter of an hour later she was again at the block of flats she had visited with Mrs Bradley, and was ringing the bell marked
Brown
.

Connie opened the door. Laura thrust her way in, although Connie tried hard to keep her out. She might as well have tried to stop a tank as Laura's ten-stone-nine of bone and muscle. She had to give way, tall and strong
though she was, and Laura stood in the hall and closed the front door behind her with her heel.

‘It's all right,' she said, aware of Connie's terrified eyes. ‘I've come from Mrs Bradley. She's worried about you. Why did you run off like that?'

‘You lent me the money. You can't stop me now,' said Connie.

‘Who wants to stop you, you little fathead? I want to know what you think you're doing, that's all.'

‘I'm running away from Uncle Edris.'

‘
Uncle?
That's a new one, isn't it?'

‘No. Of course he's my uncle. He's a nearer relation, actually, than Aunt Prissie. He wants me to live with him and Crete, and I won't. That's all there is to it.'

‘Look here,' said Laura, who felt certain that Connie was lying, ‘what is behind all this? Let's go inside somewhere, and sit down, and then you can tell me all about it. It sounds a lot of boloney to me. You don't have to live with Mr Tidson and his wife if you don't want to. Anyway, Miss Carmody doesn't want you to, does she? I thought you were starting a job?'

She took Connie by the arm and bundled her into the room which opened on the left of the hall.

‘It began with the ghost,' said Connie. ‘Well, actually, I suppose, it began a lot before that. But don't fuss me! I'm not going to tell you!'

Alice Boorman, Laura's and Kitty's friend and Mrs Bradley's third Musketeer, arrived in Winchester in response to the telegram from Laura, and appeared at the
Domus
, whose obliging management contrived to accommodate her with a top-floor single bedroom, almost immediately Laura had set out for London. She invited Kitty to her room for a council of war.

‘Now what's it all about?' asked Alice. In contrast to the plump Kitty and the Amazonian Laura, this third member of their trio was small, thin and wiry, and was the only one of the triumvirate who had taken up the work
for which she had been trained. She was the Physical Training specialist at a large school in north London and was, as Laura was fond of pointing out, equally compounded of guts, indiarubber, and the sort of innocent, practical disposition which Jezebel may have had before she encountered the theory of Jehovah and learned to sin.

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I haven't the foggiest,' Kitty frankly replied. ‘There's been a murder of sorts, and I gather we're expecting another, but what it's all about is more than I can say. You know me – Dopey's little sister. I am completely befogged. Pity old Dog isn't here. She pushed off just before you came, and we don't know when she'll get back. She'd have told you all about it in no time. But she's off on a toot for the Old Lizard. Chiswick, or somewhere. Ever been to Chiswick, young Alice? Famous for a house and the boat-race and all that. Dog says—'

‘I see,' said Alice, following her usual custom of discounting Kitty's vapourings. ‘But what's all this about the Tidsons, and what do you want me to do?'

‘Ah, there you have me,' said Kitty. ‘According to old Dog – who, of course, may be talking through her hat; she often is – we have to stalk these Tidsons like leopards, report upon what they're up to if it's nefarious, and stop them committing any murders if they seem to be so inclined.'

‘Ah, stalk the Tidsons,' said Alice, with quiet satisfaction. ‘Do the Tidsons go about together?'

‘No, they don't. Would you rather go into the nice fresh air and keep an eye on
him
, or stay in the sun-lounge and watch
her
?'

‘Him, for choice. But you choose.'

‘Me for the sun-lounge. I'd much rather. I'm not one for the wide-open spaces. I'd far sooner stay behind glass or in the garden. Don't you really mind doing the field work?'

Alice, who very much preferred it, said that she did not.

‘I hope you'll get back in time for tea, but I rather doubt it,' said Kitty. ‘Still, he always comes in for his dinner, that's one good thing about him. About the only one, I should think.' She shuddered with feminine distaste.

Alice, who had enjoyed the discreet and satisfying meal
the hotel had provided at lunch-time, said that she thought so too, and did not mind missing her tea. She went up to her room, changed her costume for a shirt, a skirt and a blazer, and her stockings for a pair of tennis socks, came down to the hall, and, standing modestly behind a couple of men who were gossiping just inside the smoking-room doorway, she waited for Mr Tidson, hoping desperately that he would choose this afternoon to go out.

At half-past two he came down the stairs, his fishing rod in his hand and his other appurtenances festooned adroitly about him. Alice followed him out of the hotel, soon lost him in the crowded High Street, picked him up again in the Square, followed him past the west entrance of the Cathedral and then saw him trotting under Kings Gate. She stood beneath Kings Gate arches to make sure that he went down College Street, and then again she followed.

When he reached College Walk she dropped behind. She could pick him up, she thought, anywhere over the water-meadows. She had not been introduced to either of the Tidsons and only to Miss Carmody off-handedly as ‘Miss Boorman, who was at College with us,' by Kitty. She had sat at a separate table for lunch, and the inference was that the acquaintanceship between Kitty and herself was slight and cool. Moreover, Mr Tidson had not shown himself attracted by her slight, wiry, muscular physique, thin face and observant eyes. Her clothes were what Kitty called ‘tweedy,' her shoes were stout and sensible, and already she bore the hall-mark of a profession as individual as that of a sailor, a pugilist or a horse-coper, (all of whom it resembled in some measure), and which had the merit, as she saw it in this instance, of discouraging the opposite sex.

When she came through the wicket-gate on to the meadow she could not at first see Mr Tidson. Numbers of children and other holiday-makers were on the footpath and by the water, and the small figure of Mr Tidson was not to be discerned. Alice quickened her steps. She had a long, lithe stride and she covered the ground very quickly.

She had a fair knowledge of the environs of Winchester because she had taken a party of children there on a school journey earlier in the summer. She knew that Mr Tidson might have swung to the left at the bridge over the stream called Logie, and taken the College path across the water-meadows, so she glanced in that direction when she came near the wooden bridge, but there was still no sign of Mr Tidson.

Alice began to feel baffled. The people had thinned out considerably, for many of them, the small children with their parents, particularly, had not come so far along the path, but had remained near the trees on the grassy sloping bank at the edge of the river where the two streams separated.

Alice hurried on, for she decided that Mr Tidson had increased his pace whilst she had sauntered, and that he must by now have reached the road. A modern bridge carried the road over the river. One end of the road joined the Winchester by-pass and the other the St Cross and Southampton Road.

On the other side of the bridge the path alongside the water was very much narrower, and, until she came to the children's paddling pool, Alice met only two people. It occurred to her that Mr Tidson must have been in hiding somewhere along the route, and she must have passed him without knowing it. Perhaps even now he was in cover preparing to fish. There were tall reeds in plenty which might have screened him, both from her and from the brown trout of Itchen.

She retraced her steps, and scanned the river banks, but no trace of Mr Tidson or his fishing rod was to be seen. Patiently she went back to the bridge, crossed the road, and, breaking into a trot, soon covered the distance between the bridge and St Cross Hospital.