Death and the Maiden (24 page)

‘Well, what makes you think my husband knows anything about a poor boy? – and what poor boy does he know about?' she demanded.

‘Well, it was very funny,' said Alice. ‘You see, on that afternoon when the boy's body was found – the one by the railway signal box, you know—'

‘It was you who found it,' said Crete. ‘What has that to do with my husband?'

‘He was known to have been in the neighbourhood,' Alice replied. ‘In fact, I was trying to catch up with him. He dodged me, I'm almost certain, and then he deceived me into thinking he'd visited the Hospital at St Cross—'

‘Oh, he had been fishing, as usual,' Crete replied. She allowed her sardonic eyes to rest on Alice's thin, hard arms and freckled, plain, honest little face. ‘He cannot always be bothered with young girls. You must make some allowance for a man accustomed to cosmopolitan society.'

Alice grinned – an English reaction which appeared to
ruffle Crete. She stooped to gather up her sponge bag and towel.

‘Do you swim?' asked Laura suddenly, as Crete straightened herself and stood up, her face rather flushed.

‘I was swimming a good deal at Santa Cruz,' replied Crete sitting down again and pulling her dressing-gown together. ‘Deep water, and very warm. We could bathe for hours.'

‘From rafts, or just from the beach?'

‘We bathed in every way that one can. Once I swam five miles for a bet.'

‘Hm! Not bad,' said Laura carelessly. ‘Talking of young girls, did you know I went all girlish myself the other morning, and shoved Mr Tidson off the bridge?'

‘He told me – yes. It is a habit of yours, this rough play? – this practical joking?'

‘Well, it was like your own stunt, a bet,' said Laura, eyeing her. ‘I bet old K. here that Mr Tidson couldn't swim. Didn't he swim with you off Tenerife?'

‘I swim with
young
men,' said Crete.

‘Well, didn't Mr Tidson swim with young women, then?' asked Kitty.

‘I don't know.' Crete got up again, but paused at the door. Her brown eyes lingered a moment on Laura's blue ones. ‘I saw very little of my husband on Tenerife. He was, of course, very busy.'

‘The bananas?' enquired Kitty, with sorrowful sympathy. Crete looked at her as though she suspected the question of having two meanings, but Kitty's bland gaze gave nothing away, and Crete, in the end, retreated on the excuse that she had heard the bathroom door being opened and shut, and did not want to lose her turn.

‘A bit funny, her using the bathroom on this floor,' said Alice dispassionately. ‘How much had she heard when she came in?'

‘Everything, of course,' said Laura, ‘and a good thing, too, I rather think. Soon we shall know where we stand, and that's always worth something, even if it only means getting a black eye to be going on with. It's all very well
for Alice to trail old Tidson along to St Cross, and for me to push him into six feet of water, and for you, K., to exercise his libido or whatever it is that Mrs Croc. sets store by, but we haven't rumbled him yet, and it's my belief we never shall, except by more drastic methods. What about trying to make the little horror confess, as you suggested yourself a while ago?'

‘But he wouldn't, except from fright, and what's the good of that?' demanded Kitty. ‘If you ask me, Dog, we'd do better to let well alone until we get further orders. You'll only muck things up if you try to proceed on your own. Where did you get with that drowning stuff? Simply nowhere.'

‘I don't know so much,' said Laura. ‘According to old Tidson, that's the bridge he fell off trying to see his nymph on the night little Grier got drowned. Well, it couldn't have been! And now Crete—'

‘What's she got to do with it, Dog?'

‘Well, she doesn't want me trying the same stunt on her. Not that she'd make a bad nymph. I
will
say that for her. She's got classical lines all right. Wonder why she married old Tidson?'

‘Oh, nymphs and satyrs,' said Kitty. ‘But it isn't the nymph who drowns the boys, or is it? Could be, you mean, if Crete can swim.'

‘It could be. And we don't always know what Crete does while we've all been out.'

‘Still—'

‘Oh, I admit it's unlikely. I can't see her bothering herself, and that's a fact. Still, she
is
a bit unaccountable. Why did she marry old Tidson, I still demand. I should think she could have had her pick, shouldn't you?'

‘Perhaps he was rich when she married him,' Alice deferentially suggested. ‘Rich husbands can always get wives, whatever you may say to the contrary.'

‘But I don't say anything to the contrary, duck,' said Laura. ‘I'm with you every time, especially in statements of fact, of which that undoubtedly was one. Only, you see, from what K. and I could learn on our visit to Liverpool,
it didn't sound as though Tidson had ever been fabulously wealthy. Certainly not wealthy enough to tempt a female who could have married the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, or anyone else she pleased. She's a woman who'd make a painter scream with joy.'

‘Perhaps she wanted British nationality. Some foreigners will do anything to get it. She'd have got it by marrying Tidson,' suggested Alice.

‘The fate worse than death, I should have thought, to marry Tidson. Still, something, perhaps, in what you say. It doesn't account for the murders of two perfectly ordinary boys.'

‘You don't know whether it does or not,' said Alice. ‘And were they such ordinary boys? The second one was a delinquent. I don't call that frightfully ordinary.'

Laura picked up the soap from the washstand and threw it.

‘Good Lord!' she said, starting up. ‘I'm awfully sorry, young Alice! Did it hurt?'

‘Nothing to signify,' said Alice, tidily retrieving the soap and replacing it in the soap-dish before putting a hand to her head.

‘Where did it catch you? In the eyeball?'

‘Not quite. Don't fuss. I've had far worse knocks from people's elbows in netball.'

‘You'll have a black eye to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. The others did, according to Mrs Croc.'

‘What others?'

Laura explained.

‘Wish I'd been here to see,' she regretfully added. ‘It appears the bruises soon wore off, but they must have been fun while they lasted. Do you bruise easily, young Alice?'

‘Fairly easily. Don't keep on. I've no beauty to spoil, thank goodness.'

‘A Christian attitude,' said Laura. ‘Nevertheless, accept our sincere apologies.'

‘Rather funny if she
didn't
bruise,' said Kitty, thoughtfully. Laura looked at her in surprise, but Kitty's bland
expression betrayed no detective faculties, and Laura, who had been in close association with her friend from their early school days, knew better than to suspect her of having any. It was a chance and frothy remark, made merely on the spur of the moment, but it put such a wild idea into Laura's head that she felt she could scarcely wait until Mrs Bradley's return to confide it, nor for the next morning to prove whether Kitty could possibly be right. If she
were
right, such vistas of crime and counter-crime rose before Laura's inward eye that she felt staggered at the implications which they evoked.

‘Let's go out and chase naiads,' she suggested. ‘Crete will be out of that bathroom in two or three minutes. Let's not be here when she comes back.'

‘Let's go to the place where the body was found,' said Kitty. ‘I might get an idea. Who knows?'

‘
I
do,' said Laura rudely. ‘Sherlock Holmes might, but I'm pretty sure
you
won't, duck. It's a mistake to go out of your age-group.'

The thought of a walk was welcome, and an objective seemed desirable. Laura put her head in at the doorways of all three lounges and into the smoking-room, too, and Alice went into the garden. Miss Carmody was in the garden with some crochet and the hotel bore who had engaged her as audience, and so was safe, thought Alice, for at least another hour. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign anywhere. Alice joined the others without having been seen by Miss Carmody, and Laura waylaid Thomas in the vestibule and asked for Mr Tidson.

‘He was awa' wi' his fishin' rod,' said Thomas. ‘Mabel was speirin' wad he be in tae his dinner, and he said he thought he wad, and for his tea, too. He was verra, very pleased wi' himsel', was yon wee mannie, although whit way he would be so, I dinna ken.'

‘I thought Mr and Mrs Tidson and Miss Carmody had left the hotel,' said Laura.

‘We didna think tae see them syne,' said Thomas, ‘although they didna tak' their luggage. Bad bawbees aye turn up again, I'll be thinking!' He went off to the kitchen,
and the girls went up the marble steps to the hotel entrance, and were soon in the street.

‘I wish I knew where to 'phone Mrs Croc.,' said Laura. ‘I feel she ought to know about the Tidsons and Miss Carmody coming straight back. I wonder how long she'll be away? They could never have intended to leave. It was some sort of blind. I wonder what the scheme is, anyway? Well, never mind! Come on.'

*
Mr Anthony Buxton's fox-terrier. Chapter 4 of
Fisherman Naturalist
.

Chapter Fifteen

‘He will have had much experience: and this is necessary if you are to describe so varied a pursuit as angling, where the possibilities are so many that some incidents only repeat themselves once or twice in a life-time.'

J. W. H
ILLS
(
A Summer on the Test
)

 

Along the edges of the carriers the water-mint and the loosestrife were in flower. Meadow-sweet, with its large, dense cymes; the meadow-rue, with its spreading stamens and smooth, tripartite leaves; the lance-leaved Ragged Robin; the watercress; the hollow-stemmed angelica; the fertile water dropwort, and, in a tiny pond, the yellow water-lily, clothed the fields and the river banks and tinged the streams with red, white, purple, green and gold.

The sun was hot, but thunder hung in the air. Laura glanced at the sky and then at the hills.

‘We'll probably get wet,' she observed. ‘It's going to rain.'

‘Oh, rot!' said the urban Kitty. ‘There isn't a cloud!'

‘It will rain,' said Laura, with conviction, ‘and you haven't a hat. Will that coiffure of yours come unstuck if we get a downpour?'

‘Lord, no, Dog. It's a perm. Besides, it won't rain. You'll see. And, talking of hats, we could have a look for old Tidson's.'

Alice made no remark. The three, sauntering and loitering, took nearly an hour to reach the brickwork banking on the weir. Laura, astride on the verge, surveyed the concrete platform.

161

‘Nasty sort of place,' she said. ‘Why have we come?'

‘To watch Mr Tidson fishing,' Alice replied. She indicated a lone fisherman occupied with what seemed a heavy line.

‘In
this
water? Has he gone crazy?' Laura demanded. ‘I don't know. That's a boot on his line,' said Alice simply.

They watched, from the cover of some bushes. Suddenly Alice touched Laura's arm. Crete Tidson was coming along the railway path. She walked with a long, free stride and was softly whistling the Soldier's Chorus from
Faust
.

‘Now what?' muttered Laura, drawing her companions deeper into the bushes. ‘Look out, Kitty! Don't fall backwards down the bank. The water's filthy down there.'

The unsuspecting Crete soon joined her husband, and then they walked towards the girls and stood on the brick-work. Their antics were instructive and peculiar. First one and then the other would toss the boot into the water. It was retrieved every time with the fishing line, on the end of which was a meat-hook. As soon as this hook took hold of a piece of bent wire which had been fastened between the eyelet-holes of the boot to form an arch, the line was reeled in and the catch removed from the hook. Each partner did this in turn.