Death and the Maiden (17 page)

Here she met with unexpected good fortune – or so she thought at the time. Against the only seat was set a fishing rod. Two urchins were examining without touching it. Alice went up to them.

‘Is it yours?' she asked.

‘No, missis. An old man left it here, and give us fourpence to keep our eye on it,' responded one of the boys.

‘Which way did he go?'

‘Over there. Most of 'em goes in through the gate, and then round to the archway.' Obligingly they pointed out the wicket-gate in a short piece of railing. Alice went through, saw the gatehouse of St Cross, turned in under the archway, paid her sixpence, received a ticket, and, directed by the custodian, walked across a large courtyard to the splendid twelfth-century transitional Norman church which is the greatest glory of the Hospital.

She entered the church with a silk scarf tied Polish peasant fashion over her head, and received a smile from the cleaner, who jerked her black hat towards the east and said:

‘He's through there. You'll catch him before he gets telling about the lectern, miss, I shouldn't wonder. He hasn't hardly started. He's done the tiles and the circumference and heighth of these yere pillars, but that's about all. You haven't missed much.'

Alice thanked her. She could hear the voice of the guide, and found that he and his party of docile visitors were standing before a triptych in one of the side chapels. Hastily she cast her eye over the party. There were the guide, a kindly, respectable old fellow in the black habit and silver cross of the Brethren, a lady with two children, a Naval officer and his wife, and a couple of elderly women. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign. Genuflecting profoundly as she came in front of the high altar, Alice made for the door by which she had entered. The voice of the guide became more audible.

‘You can't get into the dining 'all without me, you know, missie, so it's no use you being so impatient,' he called out after her. ‘You best come and listen to me 'ere.'

Alice realized from this that Mr Tidson could not be in the dining hall unless there was a second guide. Ignoring the black-gowned pensioner, she went back to the cleaner and said:

‘I've lost track of my uncle. Is there another party going round? I made certain I should find him in the church.'

‘No; this is the only party this afternoon,' the woman replied. Alice thanked her again, dropped some money into the box near the door, and went into the open again. The custodian called out blithely from the gatehouse:

‘Don't you want the wayfarer's dole, then, young lady? Pity to go away without it. It's historical, you know. You'd like to go home and say you've had it. I didn't ought to offer it to you really. You'd ought to ask. But here you are.'

Alice felt compelled to accept the gift of bread and ale, and to pass some observations upon the beauty of the church. She got away as quickly as she could, went back to the seat, and found the boys and the fishing rod still there.

She sat down on the seat to think. Then she looked around. There was only one conclusion she could come to about Mr Tidson. He must have known he was being followed, and she had been tricked deliberately. She worked out how it had been done. Mr Tidson, she thought, must have taken to the road at the bridge, sprinted along it, come round to St Cross from the Southampton Road, planted the fishing rod and had his word with the boys, and then he must have hidden in the entrance to the private house which was opposite the St Cross gatehouse. From there, he had watched her go in, and then had gone off about his own business, intending to come back later for the rod.

‘Missis,' said one of the boys plaintively, ‘we reckon we done our fourpence-worth minding the rod, and we want to go now.'

‘Cut along, then,' said Alice absently. She glanced at her watch. She had lost a great deal of time. Whatever his business might have been, Mr Tidson had obtained, either by accident or cunning – and Alice was inclined to think it had been the latter – just over twenty minutes' grace. Alice got up and began to run. She ran well, and was soon at the bridge. She turned to the right and crossed the water, and then, still running, she followed the road towards the Winchester by-pass.

Having gained the railway bridge she was uncertain which way to turn. There were five or six possible routes. Some children were paddling, and one or two were splashing and swimming, in a wide, shallow bend of the river beside the further bridge. Hoping that one of them had noticed him, she spoke of Mr Tidson to two girls who were seated on the bank in charge of the younger children's clothes.

‘Did you see a rather small gentleman in a grey tweed suit and without a hat go by here?'

‘There's been a lot of people go by,' replied one of the girls.

‘I seen a man in them baggy knickerbockers,' said the other.

Alice had to decide for herself which way to go. Then she was blessed with an idea. She passed under the railway arch and crossed the by-pass; then she began to climb Saint Catherine's Hill. She went up by the most direct way, regardless of the steepness of the slope by which she had chosen to ascend, and, in a remarkably short space of time, from the earthworks where Mrs Bradley had stood beside Mr Tidson not so many days before, she was able to survey the scene below her, and search the landscape for the small, plump, hurrying figure of her quarry.

Her eyes were exceptionally keen, but there was no one in the least like Mr Tidson. In any case, from that height and with the very slight knowledge she had of his appearance and the way in which he moved, she was not at all sure that she would have been able to recognize him. There was, however, something else which interested her.

While she had been scanning the landscape around and below her, a man had mounted to the small square platform of a railway signal which lay a hundred yards down the line. She could see his gesticulating figure. Something had attracted his attention, for, having pointed downwards, away towards the farther side of the track, he scrambled down from his platform and Alice immediately lost sight of him.

She trotted upon the short turf which had been worn into a path above the ditch of the earthworks, and then,
when she was opposite the signal (as nearly as she could judge), she descended the sharp slope, came under another railway arch and soon found herself again beside the water.

This stream, however, was very different from the clear and beautiful river which flowed through the flowering meadows, for it was shallow, neglected and unsavoury.

A little further downstream from where Alice was standing was a roughly-constructed weir. Wooden sluice-gates controlled the flow of the water, and below them the river dropped six feet. Below the sluice was a concrete platform, and beyond this again was a waterfall to a depth of about three feet to the continuance of the stream. It was the place past which Connie Carmody had run on the day that she had gone walking with Mrs Bradley.

On the same side as the path and the railway line was a kind of ledge made of brick, and as it was a drop of nearly ten feet from the edge of this to the lowest level of the water, and about six or seven to the concrete platform (over which the water had a depth of inches only before it cascaded over the broken stone edge of the waterfall), a wooden railing had been erected, presumably for the safety of those passing by along the bank.

Alice climbed this fence, and the next moment the horrid presentiment she had had since she had first lost sight of Mr Tidson, and which had gradually become stronger when she failed to catch up with him or to find him, came back again in full force.

Lying on the slab of concrete was a body. Instinct told her that it was a dead body, and the horribly unnatural position in which it was lying seemed to confirm this atavistic guess. Habit, however, was all-compelling. She took off her shoes, socks and blazer, and climbed down the brickwork to see whether there was anything she could do in the way of First Aid or artificial respiration.

She bent over the body, which was that of a barefoot lad of about fifteen, but that same sub-reasoning power which had caused her to know at once that the boy was dead now refused to permit her to touch him. He was sprawled on his face with the left leg so curiously bent that it was obvious
it must be broken, and his arms were flung out, one sideways and the other one close to the head, as though, having fallen, he had not moved his limbs or his head.

As Alice stood up – with some difficulty, for the stone was slippery and the water, although it was extremely shallow, poured rapidly over the concrete towards the fall – she saw that two men in railway uniform were standing on the brickwork above, and were looking down. A young policeman was with them.

‘What be up to down there?' asked the policeman.

‘Give me a hand, please,' said Alice. They hauled her to the top of the brickwork. The policeman had his notebook out and was moistening the lead of his pencil.

‘Get down there first and see whether he's really dead,' said Alice peremptorily. ‘I shan't run away. You can ask me all the questions afterwards.'

The policeman nodded, and, the official boots scraping purposefully on the brickwork, he lowered himself to the concrete, and, regardless of the water, knelt on one knee beside the corpse.

‘Nothing to do for
him
,' he announced at once. ‘I've sent for the doctor. He'll be here in a minute. Haul me up.' The railwaymen hauled him up. ‘And now, miss,' he said, ‘to your account. Name and address, please, first. And then you can say how you come to be finding this corpse.'

‘You can have my name and address, of course,' said Alice, ‘but I wasn't the first person to find the body, you know. One of these gentlemen did that. He saw it from that little platform on the signal.'

‘Right enough,' agreed the constable. ‘I've had his story, which is the corpse came slithering down the bank. Poor kid must have had a heart attack, shouldn't wonder. Now, miss, what about you?'

Alice gave her name and that of the
Domus
, and explained how she had seen the signalman waving.

‘I don't know whether you're right about a heart attack, though,' she added. ‘This boy has been dead some time, and I think there's a lump on his head. And where are his shoes?'

‘Ah, I noticed them bare feet,' replied the policeman. ‘That's why I say it's Heart. Been paddling, and the cold water done for him. Like ice, that water is. Well, thank you, miss. Perhaps I'd better have your home address as well, just in case.' His tone had become less official and much more friendly. Alice gave her home address. She was impatient to be gone. There was no time to be lost, she felt, in acquainting Mrs Bradley with the results of her afternoon's hunting.

Tea was still being served at the
Domus
when she arrived. She went straight into the sun-lounge and had the great good luck to find Mrs Bradley alone. She seated herself at a separate table, ordered tea, scribbled a note, walked casually towards the double doors which led on to the garden, dropped the note in Mrs Bradley's lap as she passed, and opened the double doors.

It was neatly, adroitly and unobtrusively done, but Alice was a neat, adroit and unobtrusive young woman. Mrs Bradley took no more notice of the note than she would have done of a flower-petal blown, as Tagore has said, upon the breeze, and Alice, satisfied that the manœuvre had not been observed by any one of the few remaining guests, went into the garden. There she saw Thomas coming out of the dining-room French doors. She grinned at him and went back again to the sun-lounge and her table.

Mrs Bradley had read the note. She grimaced at Alice, and then invited her in a loud tone to come and sit at her table and give her opinion of a crossword puzzle which Mrs Bradley had almost completed.

Alice moved over, and Mrs Bradley showed her the newspaper. They discussed the crossword until Alice's tea arrived. The sun-lounge emptied. The waiter disappeared.

‘Tell me,' said Mrs Bradley. Alice gave a brief, accurate and lucid account of the afternoon she had spent in pursuit of Mr Tidson.

‘He came back at four,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘I saw him come in.'

‘But that means he left his fishing rod at St Cross and came back here by road!'

‘It seems so.'

‘Ah, then he couldn't have had anything to do with the affair at the weir,' said Alice, with great relief.

‘Why should he have had anything to do with it? You have not been told how long the body had been there, and the death, in any case, was most probably the result of an accident. You don't even know yet who the boy was. How old a boy, should you say?'

‘I don't know. Sixteen, or perhaps even younger. I think, really, not more than fifteen. And his leg was broken.'

‘How was he dressed?'

‘Oh, he had on flannel trousers and a shirt and a tweed jacket. No shoes. He couldn't have been there for more than a matter of minutes. Somebody would have seen him long before the signalman spotted him. The man said he slithered down the bank, but I don't see how he could have done. He hadn't – he hadn't just died. He'd been hit on the head. That's certain.'

‘But why should the signalman invent the story of the corpse sliding down the bank? I must take a look at the place. Don't you think what he said must have been the truth?'

‘I don't see how a corpse
could
suddenly slide down the bank. Well, not at that spot. If you saw it you'd know what I mean.'

‘I do know what you mean,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I believe the signalman, too. If it didn't
slide
down it was
pushed
down, and that might bring Mr Tidson into the picture, don't you think? He'd have had time to give it a push before coming on here.'

‘I don't know what to think. Please, where is Kitty?'

‘I don't know. She's out.'

‘I thought she was guarding Mrs Tidson?'