Death and the Maiden (20 page)

He rose, and almost fled from her presence. Mrs Bradley ordered coffee and brandy, and when Thomas brought the tray she looked up to see Miss Carmody come into the room.

‘You will be in time for dinner, I think, if you go straight in,' said Mrs Bradley. Miss Carmody shook her head and dropped wearily into a chair. The weariness was exaggerated, Mrs Bradley thought, but, without doubt, Miss Carmody showed signs of pessimism.

‘I don't want any dinner. Connie has gone for good!' Miss Carmody said tragically. ‘I've looked in at my flat. I've looked everywhere! I've questioned or rung up her friends. She was always a thoughtless, selfish girl, but I really can't understand her going off like this without a word. I am worried and displeased. I feel very tired after my long, fruitless day. I shall go to bed. I think she must have caught a touch of the sun. Nothing else would excuse her!'

‘Are you still determined not to consult the police?'

‘Oh, she can't be in any
danger
, wherever she is. But I will still think that over. It is not a step that one takes lightly. There is something degrading in going to the police to find one's relatives. I do not like the idea of it at all.'

Mrs Bradley agreed that it was not a very pleasant idea, and again suggested that Miss Carmody would be much better off if she dined. Miss Carmody allowed herself to be persuaded of this, and went off to the dining-room. Mrs Bradley was about to go to her bedroom when Thomas came into the lounge to say that she was wanted on the telephone.

The telephone was in a little kiosk in the hall. Mrs Bradley discovered herself to be in communication with Scotland Yard.

‘That naiad of yours,' said the voice from the other end. ‘We don't think we like her much, and the local police seem to think she comes from London. Whom would you suggest we sent down? You know our bright young men.'

‘It had better be someone who knows all about dry-fly fishing,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘And nymph-fishing, surely?' said the voice at the other end with a happy chuckle. ‘I'd like to come down myself. I'm due for some furlough. What do you say? Shall I come?'

‘Well, if you think you will be of any use,' said Mrs Bradley. The voice replied with further laughter, and said that if Mrs Bradley felt like that, it would send young Gavin, and not risk its own reputation.

‘Seriously, though,' it added, ‘two boys in a fortnight is overdoing it. We'll send Gavin in time for the inquest. It's all right. As I said, the local people have asked for us. The bishop or the precentor, or, maybe, the dean and chapter, have been a bit terse with them, it seems. Why couldn't both the deaths have been accidents?'

‘How do you know they were not?'

‘The bumps on the heads had nothing to do with phrenology. Don't be naughty! Oh, and please speak kindly to young Gavin. He's apt to burst into tears if roughly handled. I had dinner with Ferdinand last night. What on earth induced you to give your only son such a name? A bit tempestuous, surely?'

‘He isn't my only son,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘And his father named him, not I. He was
his
only son, but that's not what you said. I remember Detective-Inspector Gavin, bless his heart, and shall be very glad, and very much relieved, to see him. Is he going to stay at the
Domus
?'

‘No. At a pub nearby. He hasn't chosen it yet. No doubt he'll go round and take samples. We hope you'll be nice to the boy. And whatever he does, don't shoot him. Remember, he's doing his best.'

That night Mrs Bradley had another visit from the ghost. It had long since been discovered that she and Connie had changed rooms. The management had been discreetly reticent, but not secretive, when various guests
had enquired the reason for the blocking-up of the entrances to the air-raid shelter, but the real reason did not come out. Argument, therefore, was brisk, for the
Domus
had several residents, elderly invalids for the most part, whose subjects of controversy and conversation were strictly limited by a narrow environment. These had held some exhaustive and lengthy discussions upon the subject of the air-raid shelter entrances, and several schools of thought had their adherents. Mrs Bradley told nobody the facts, but the change of rooms became known by the time that Connie went away.

For some days prior to her second visit from the ghost, Mrs Bradley had removed all obstacles to its ingress, and had waited patiently for its reappearance, for, although its easiest bolt-holes were now filled in, there remained the original priest-holes by which it could reach and leave the bedroom. She had deduced that the ghost she had hit with the hard edge of the nail-brush might possibly have been Crete Tidson, but it might equally well have been Miss Carmody. Both had shown bruises in the morning. Mrs Bradley dismissed Mr Tidson from her thoughts because she was almost certain that the intruder had been a woman (although she was also of the opinion that Connie's own squeaking nun might have been a man), and because his black eye, she decided, was a far more serious injury than any the small, light nail-brush might have inflicted.

Of course, the nail-brush might have left no mark on the person who had been struck, but, in that case, the arm of coincidence which had blacked the eyes of Miss Carmody, Connie, Crete and Mr Tidson would seem to have been ungainly long. The notion that the ghost had been entirely spirit, and not flesh at all, Mrs Bradley dismissed. There had been something definitely tangible about the figure struck by the flying nail-brush, and she was not a believer in ghosts when these made noises. The spirit world, she felt, should be silent unless it could produce sounds in keeping with its own mysterious dimension. Gasps and squeaks were, to her mind, automatically excluded from the list of sounds which any genuine spirit ought to be able
to make. She would not have found it at all easy to defend this theory, but she held to it very firmly. Poltergeists, of course, came outside her argument.

The ghost paid its third visit at, in Mrs Bradley's view, an inopportune time, for its arrival must have corresponded with Mrs Bradley's trip downstairs to answer the telephone call of which a sleepy, dressing-gowned, slightly reproachful chambermaid apprised her at just before midnight.

Mrs Bradley had not gone to bed. She was seated at the small table she had asked to have in the room, and was writing an article for the Psycho-Antiquarian Society on the probable neuroses of Saint Simon Stylites, an unprofitable and idiotic task which gave her considerable enjoyment, for contemplation of the extraordinary and complicated psychological make-up of the more anti-social of the saints had always been to her a most fascinating way of wasting time.

When the call came through, she answered it in good faith, although this faith was considerably shaken when a voice at the other end said:

‘I am speaking for Miss Constance Carmody. Will you hold on, please? I have to let her know you are on the line.'

The message perturbed Mrs Bradley, but she held on dutifully. In due course the voice continued:

‘Are you there?'

‘Yes,' replied Mrs Bradley. ‘Who is speaking?'

‘The janitor at the flats. Hold on, please. Miss Connie is just coming down.'

Mrs Bradley put down the receiver, and went thoughtfully back to the staircase. Her faithful servants, she knew well, would not have permitted Connie to return to the flats without at once communicating to Mrs Bradley the fact that she had left the Stone House at Wandles Parva. The call, therefore, was bogus. She wondered idly what message would have come through if she had not replaced the receiver.

She went back to the little telephone booth in the hall, and rang up the Exchange. The call, it appeared, had come from a public telephone booth in Southampton.

‘Very odd,' said Mrs Bradley to Thomas, who, in a respectable brown dressing-gown so long that it concealed all but the last three inches of his pyjamas, had appeared like an archiepiscopal wraith in the hotel vestibule. ‘Very odd indeed, it seems to me.'

‘Ay,' replied Thomas, shaking his head. ‘Ye'll hae feenished wi' the light the noo? Then I'll just switch it off. There's mair things queer than a wee telephone ca' in the deid o' the night, maybe, madam. There's folk that dinna sleep in their beds. Ay, and no in ither folks' beds, either, gin that's what ye're after speiring.'

‘I never said a word,' said Mrs Bradley. She regarded the intelligent man with trustful gravity. ‘But something lies behind that speech of yours, and something, I can see, of peculiar moment. What is your news?'

‘I was takin' the wee draught to yon Tidson for his cough, the way ye were saying I should, but he isna in his room,' said Thomas, lowering his voice so that its tone should be in keeping with Mr Tidson's mysterious activities. ‘His bed hasna been slept in the night! Onyway, no yet! Ye'll ken, maybe, he changed tae a single when he came? And Henry – ye'll mind Henry, the knife and boots? – Henry was saying the wee mon was awa' oot o' here the minute before I came by to lock up the hoose. He gave Henry a shilling tae keep his mouth shut, but a shilling's no muckle tae laddies these days, and Henry thought I should ken he was awa'. I am refairing tae this Mr Tidson. Weel, Henry ca'd Mr Tidson a name I wadna repeat in the lug o' a leddy the like o' yoursel', and I ran after him tae bring him tae a sense o' decency and his duty, but ye ken what lads are – he was just too supple for me. I'll hae mair tae say tae Henry the morn's morn, the wee haverin' skelpie, but there is that which wis in it, as I telt ye!'

‘But what did Henry call Mr Tidson?' Mrs Bradley felt compelled to enquire. ‘My lug is hardened, Thomas. Tell me the worst.'

‘Na, na,' said Thomas, with a high, free giggle. ‘We'll just say he ca'd him a dirty auld mon, and leave it at that the noo.'

‘I see,' said Mrs Bradley. She went thoughtfully back to her room and unlocked the door with the key which she had carried away with her. There was no doubt that during her absence the room had received a visitor; one, moreover, who had provided his own entertainment. The room had been ransacked. All the contents of her chest-of-drawers and her wardrobe had been flung on to the bed, and her suitcases were open on the floor. ‘Somebody would like to know Connie's address, I should think,' she said to herself with a shrug.

She put the room to rights, put the barricades across the fireplace and the wardrobe as she had had them the previous week, and placed the bedroom utensils underneath the window. Then she got into bed and slept her usual light but infinitely refreshing sleep until seven o'clock the next morning.

Detective-Inspector Gavin, a light-haired young man in a tweed suit, brogues and heather-mixture socks of a colour-scheme so uncompromising that it could be assumed that his easiest way of disguising himself would be to leave them off in favour of more sober-hued hose, dropped into the cocktail lounge of the
Domus
at the following mid-day and asked for beer.

Mrs Bradley had no difficulty in recognizing him, although she had met him only once before. They took no notice of one another, however, and, when he had finished his beer, Gavin lit a pipe and sauntered into the vestibule of the hotel. When the Tidsons went in to lunch, Mrs Bradley strolled to the front entrance as though to look at the weather.

Gavin joined her in a very casual manner, smoked for a moment, and then said:

‘Inquest to-morrow morning. Important developments. Boy had been dead some days when he was found. How do you like that, Mrs Bradley?'

‘What beautiful weather we're having,' said Mrs Bradley. She had become aware of the approach of Crete Tidson. She smiled at the dark-eyed, greenish-haired and very beautiful woman.

‘Edris is having champagne. He wants to know whether you'll join us,' said Crete at once. She did not appear to include the inspector in the invitation, but he promptly said:

‘Why, thanks very much, I think I will. Very good of you. I think I know your husband. Wasn't he in bananas?'

Mrs Bradley, who had witnessed some entertaining incidents in her time, was now entertained by this one, and she helped matters (to her own satisfaction, at least) by exclaiming with great cordiality:

‘Oh, good! Yes, of course, Mrs Tidson, you know Mr Gavin, don't you?'

‘Gavin? Oh –
Gavin!
' said Crete. She smiled winningly upon the young man.

‘Mr Gavin,' said Mrs Bradley, with a peculiarly evil grin, ‘is an old Etonian. You understand what that implies?'

‘Please?' said Crete, looking bleak. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘There is something about your stockings, Mr Gavin,' she added, as she eyed those Hebridean horrors with great respect and liking, ‘which suggests the complete angler, and that fact, I know, will fascinate Mr Tidson even more than the now rather shameful disclosure that you paid for your education.'

‘I
do
do a little fishing,' Gavin admitted. Crete's smile returned.

‘Then you will please drink champagne with Edris!' she exclaimed. ‘Edris will fall on your neck, do you say? I think he will. Why not?'

‘And so will Crete, if she can make the grade,' said Laura rudely, when the gist of this conversation came to her ears in Mrs Bradley's rich and beautiful voice a little later in the day. ‘We must wait and see. Is this Gavin susceptible, do you think, to nymphomaniacs?'

‘To what?' enquired Mrs Bradley, very much startled. Laura shrugged, and then laughed.

‘Well, granted that Crete Tidson is, in any case, a bit of a leper,' she said, ‘it would, after all, explain a good deal if she were a nymphomaniac. Mr Tidson's banana profits would all have been needed for hush-money, very likely.'

‘You ought to be careful, Dog,' said Kitty soberly, when she heard these outrageous remarks. ‘You could be had up and fined for saying such things as that.'

‘I shouldn't wonder,' said Laura languidly. ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel, don't they say? Illogical, but the law's often that. Anyway, this Gavin has gone off fishing for tiddlers, and old Tidson's gone off with him. I wonder what they will catch?'