Death and the Maiden (22 page)

A couple of whiskies improved Mr Tidson's outlook. He modified his reasonably peevish point of view. Finding him mellowed, Mrs Bradley suddenly demanded, with almost wifely menace, and with no leading up to the subject:

‘And what have you done with your hat?'

‘My panama?' said Mr Tidson, who did not seem to be taken aback by the question but might have prepared an answer to it. ‘It
is
so annoying! I lost it fishing, you know. I cast very badly – oh,
very
badly. It really was quite a disgraceful cast, I am afraid; and, before I realized what had happened, I had struck! – but in my hat and not in a fish! Off came the hat, and into the river it went, and that was the end of the hat, for it was not well hooked and the current soon floated it away.

‘I pursued it, needless to say, but—' he spread his little plump hands – ‘to no avail. I was obliged to abandon it to Peneas, and write it off a dead loss. A pity! I was much attached to it.'

‘You carried your flies in its band?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Tidson, looking suspiciously at her, ‘of course I did.'

‘Especially your hackle caperers,' pursued Mrs Bradley, ‘not to mention your fisherman's curses.'

Mr Tidson permitted himself to cackle.

‘What a wit you are!' he said in sycophantic admiration. He patted her yellow claw. It was like a toad patting a raven, thought Laura, who had entered the smoke-room in quest of a half-pint of beer. Seeing the room thus occupied, and fearful of breaking in upon Mrs Bradley's interrogation of Mr Tidson, she tip-toed out again.

‘I don't wonder she's ashamed to come near me,' said Mr Tidson, thankful to return to his complaints. Mrs Bradley smiled gently, like a crocodile contemplating food, and Mr Tidson, to his own surprise, gave a sudden gulp as though he had bitten his tongue, and forbore to enlarge upon his grievance.

‘And I have found out Connie's address,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Her aunt will be so much relieved. The only trouble is that I'm asked to keep it a secret.'

If Mr Tidson had any particular reaction to this last statement he did not show it. He merely replied:

‘You will relieve Prissie's mind. I know she has been most anxious about the girl.' Then he added, in the tones
of a mourner, ‘I suppose you have not given further consideration to what I said about the death of that boy, Bobby Grier?'

‘Oh, yes, I have thought about it often,' Mrs Bradley truthfully replied.

‘Ah, well, it appears I was mistaken. I'm glad they've got the man who did it,' said Mr Tidson. ‘What a scoundrel to have deceived his wife like that! And with such a woman!'

Mrs Bradley wished with all her heart that there could have been witnesses to Mr Tidson's last sentence. She wondered how he came to remark upon Mrs Grier so understandingly. He might, of course, have been fishing for information. If so, he had put the fly to a very wily trout who refused to take it.

Kitty and Alice came back to Winchester with the welcome news that Connie was still at the Stone House and was prepared to stay there quietly until she received further orders.

‘Well, that's something,' Mrs Bradley observed. She told Miss Carmody that Connie was safe and well, but that she preferred to keep her whereabouts a secret.

‘She seems,' said Mrs Bradley in explanation, ‘to have formed a poor opinion of Mr Tidson.'

‘Ah!' said Miss Carmody. It was a sigh of acquiescence; a reproachful verdict of Guilty; Mrs Bradley very much admired it. She liked economy in words, and felt that Miss Carmody had achieved this.

‘It is good of you to take it so sensibly,' she said.

Matters were thus in a state of comparative suspension and remained very quiet and uneventful for nearly another week, during which the party contrived to re-book their rooms. At the end of that time Miss Carmody announced that her expenses at the
Domus
had already mounted to more than she had been prepared to pay, and that, nymph or no nymph, she and the Tidsons must return to London. They had stayed, she added, a good deal longer than she had ever, in her wildest estimates, intended. She spoke with
sorrowful severity, as though it were Mrs Bradley's fault that she had stayed so long.

Mr Tidson was almost broken-hearted. This fact he confided to Laura, with whom he was soon on speaking terms again. Laura regarded with suspicion this sudden and kindly forgiveness of her high-handed action in pushing him into the river, but she kept her thoughts to herself and returned Mr Tidson smile for smile.

On Thursday morning of the week in which Miss Carmody had announced that they must take their departure, her party decided to go to Dorchester for the day. Mrs Bradley went to see them off, and the last that she and Laura saw of them was the flash of the August sunshine on the spare wheel at the back of their car as they turned at the top of the street.

Miss Carmody had made no further mention of Connie, and the moment the car was round the bend Mrs Bradley was at the telephone booth in the hotel vestibule, and was putting through a call to Wandles Parva. Connie Carmody, driven by the faithful George, Mrs Bradley's chauffeur, was at the
Domus
in time for lunch.

‘And now,' said Mrs Bradley, ‘where is your job?'

‘In Lewes,' Connie replied, ‘and I have to go in on Monday. I must dodge Uncle Edris until then.'

It turned out that Connie had not been nearer Lewes than Brighton, and had been to Brighton only for the day. Mrs Bradley rang up Miss Carmody's London flat to make certain that she and the Tidsons had not deceived her, but really had gone out for the day, and, receiving no reply, thought that all would be well.

Immediately lunch at the
Domus
was over, she bundled Connie into the car and on to the back seat, climbed in beside her, waved a skinny claw to the Three Musketeers who were collected at the front door of the hotel, sat back and ordered George to drive on.

The car took the route through Petersfield and Midhurst to Lewes, and Mrs Bradley and Connie went to an hotel in the High Street. After coffee they walked, at Mrs Bradley's suggestion, down the steep hill through the lower part of
the town, and then crossed the main road at the foot of the slope and climbed up the rough path past the memorial, and on to the golf course, and beyond it.

In a field of stubble they sat down, and, after a period of silence during which they took in the view, Mrs Bradley remarked:

‘And now to business. I want you to tell me all you know.'

‘About what?' Connie naturally enquired.

‘First, about your parents; secondly, about yourself; thirdly, about Mr Tidson; fourthly, about your aunt; fifthly, about the ghost; sixthly—'

‘Oh, dear!' cried Connie, flushing and then becoming pale. ‘I can't remember all those!'

‘Oh, yes, you can. They are named in a logical sequence which you ought to be the first to appreciate. You could even, if you wished, tell me what the sixth account is to be.'

‘Yes,' said Connie, ‘I suppose so. You mean Ronald.'

‘Very well, then, I mean Ronald, although I should have thought that I meant the Preece-Harvards. Isn't that the name I've heard mentioned?'

Connie, with a scared expression, agreed that it was, but muttered that she was going to live with Ronald, whatever anyone might say, and that her relatives (and, she inferred, Mrs Bradley) could mind their own business.

‘I see,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘This young man is of independent means, I perceive.'

‘He's an artist,' said Connie defiantly. ‘I went to a show he had in Town.'

‘I'm sure it was most successful,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Well, yes,' Connie doubtfully replied. ‘I suppose it was. It was held in Pimlico. Wasn't there a Pimlico Mystery? I seem to remember hearing something about it, although—' she attempted an unsuccessful giggle – ‘I'm afraid it only makes me think of sausages. Was there a Pimlico Mystery?'

‘Yes, a very atrocious murder,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Were you, by any chance, born in Pimlico, I wonder?'

‘Of course not!' said Connie, surprised into sudden confession. ‘I thought you knew I was born down here, near Alresford.'

‘I had guessed as much. Go on.'

Chapter Fourteen

‘It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore . . .'

D
ANIEL
D
EFOE
(
Robinson Crusoe
)

 

‘M
Y FATHER
and mother died,' said Connie, without betraying emotion, ‘when I was six years old, and until I was thirteen I lived with the Preece-Harvards. Of course, they are quite rich, but so was my father, until the smash in 1931. I was only four then. At the Preece-Harvards' I had a governess, and my little cousin Arthur shared her with me until I had to come and live with Aunt Prissie and he was sent to his prep. school.'

‘He's a good deal younger than you, then?'

‘Not so very much younger, really. Three years, that's all. But, of course, he was rather spoilt, and that made him precocious, and even older than he was.'

‘An only child, I imagine?'

‘Oh, yes, and I was treated as his sister until Colonel Preece-Harvard died. It was then that Aunt Prissie gave me a home with her, for Mrs Preece-Harvard turned me out. She said that, after all, I was no relation of hers, and she did not feel that she could be responsible for me. It was a dreadful shock to me. I felt I should never get over it.'

‘You minded the change very much, then?' said Mrs Bradley, noting with interest the featurelessness of the narrative.

‘I was heartbroken. You see, I missed Arthur so terribly. That was one thing. In fact, I think it was the worst.

I was fond of Arthur. We meant a great deal to one another.'

‘But he was going to be sent to school in any case, I thought you said.'

‘Oh, yes, but only because I was leaving to live with Aunt Prissie. I – you see—' She began to flounder. Mrs Bradley was glad of the change to an unrehearsed effort.

‘But surely a boy of ten would have been sent to school whether you were staying with his mother or not?' she enquired.

‘Oh, well, perhaps. If so, I didn't know. I wasn't told. The whole thing was a really dreadful shock. I was a sensitive child, I suppose,' said Connie, returning to her first lifeless voice, and looking to see the effect.

‘No doubt. Lots of children are sensitive, particularly where their convenience is involved,' said Mrs Bradley sharply and in very unsympathetic tones. There was a pause, for Connie, after giving her a surprised and resentful glance, gazed over the distant hills and preserved an offended silence.

‘And your aunt has had you with her for the past six years,' said Mrs Bradley, changing her tone to one of casual interest. ‘You must feel that you owe her a good deal.'

Connie turned her head sharply as though to repudiate this theory, but she must have thought better of it, for she turned her face away again, pulled at a few stalks of the stubble, and said, in quiet tones:

‘I suppose I do. Poor Aunt Prissie! But it did mean a very great change.'

‘No doubt. But now that change has given place to another. You are about to live your life in your own way, I believe, during the time that must elapse before your marriage.'

‘Well, as soon as you let me
go
my own way,' said Connie, with a certain amount of justifiable resentment. ‘I mean, I know you intend it for the best, and want me to be safe, and all that, but, after all, who would harm me, so long as I keep away from Uncle Edris? And even that doesn't matter now.'

‘Mr Brown might harm you,' said Mrs Bradley. Connie gave a gasp, almost as though she had been stabbed, and Mrs Bradley saw her stiffen as though to resist another blow.

‘So that's what you think?' she said. ‘I tell you you're wrong! I know nothing of any Mr Brown!'

Facing her, and keeping her alert black eyes on the girl's perspiring forehead, Mrs Bradley began a slow and rhythmic nodding.