Death and the Maiden (3 page)

‘Why, Polly's girl's boy,' replied Mr Tidson unhelpfully. ‘What's the name, now?'

‘Preece-Harvard,' said Connie, through her teeth. ‘I ought to know!'

‘Preece-Harvard is the name,' agreed Miss Carmody, ‘and it is nothing to do with Polly, as you very well know. They live not very far from Winchester. We had better look them up while we are there.'

‘Don't ask
me
to go!' said Connie.

‘I must look up the address,' said Mr Tidson.

‘You will hardly have time to look the boy up, though,' observed Crete, not without malice. ‘You will be too busy looking up your nymph.'

Mr Tidson became silent, and looked out of the car window at College Wood, distant half a mile from the road.

‘We should be passing Bradley Farm about now,' said Connie, who had the map open on her knees. She was seated between her aunt and Crete Tidson on the back seat of the car. Mr Tidson was in front, beside Toogood.

‘Bradley? Ah, that reminds me,' said Miss Carmody. ‘My friend Mrs Bradley is also proposing to stay at the
Domus
with us. Miss Carroll took her place at Cartaret College, Connie, you remember, when she relinquished the post of Warden of Athelstan Hall.'

‘Yes, I remember,' said Connie. ‘That terrifying, black old lady who always wore dreadful colours and did indescribable knitting. We heard her lecture. I should hardly have thought you could call her a friend of yours, though. We only knew Miss Carroll very slightly, and although you spoke to Mrs Bradley—'

‘
Black?
' said Mr Tidson, turning his head.

‘She has black hair and black eyes,' Miss Carmody sharply replied. ‘There is nothing else black about her, of course. Connie is given to wilful and misleading exaggeration at times.'

‘Exaggeration is always misleading,' said Crete. Mr Tidson, who did not believe this, resumed his contemplation of the landscape, and the car swept smoothly past Dodsley Wood and a couple of
tumuli
, and then along a stretch of what had
once been a Roman road, and so past Abbots Barton towards Winchester.

‘And although you spoke to Mrs Bradley after her lecture on hereditary tendencies,' said Connie, who disliked to be cut off in the middle of a sentence, ‘I don't see that that could exactly make her a friend of yours, Aunt Prissie, and I don't want to meet her again! I didn't like her.'

‘Put that rug back, dear,' replied her aunt. ‘You won't need that in the hotel. Well, here we are, Crete,' she added, turning to the slightly more bearable of her parasitic guests. ‘I wonder how you will like it now we're here?'

‘Oh, I shall like it,' said Crete. ‘Edris will have his nymph, you will have your friend the black woman, Connie will walk and go early, very early, to bed, and I shall enjoy myself alone. But how is this the hotel? We are not yet in Winchester.'

Chapter Two

‘. . . which is to inform such Housekeepers as are not in the Higher Rank of Fortune, how to Eat, or Entertain Company, in the most elegant Manner, at a reasonable Expence.'

Mrs S
ARAH
H
ARRISON OF
D
EVONSHIRE
(
The
House-Keeper's Pocket Book and Complete
Family Cook, 1760
)

 

T
HE
Domus
hotel was in a side-turning and free of the main road traffic. It was approached by way of a lane south-west of the broad arterial road from which A33 debouched before appearing, out of a maze of tributary meanderings, as the main Southampton Road beyond St Cross.

The
Domus
had been in turn a monastery, an Elizabethan mansion devoted to the cause and hiding of Jesuit priests, an eighteenth-century town house, a nineteenth-century nunnery, and, lastly, a hotel, and it showed traces of all these adventures. The car had been driven past a long garden whose wall still carried stigmata in the form of a small Cross and the date 1872, relics of the nunnery, and was now drawn up before a glassed-in entrance-lounge containing a wicker-chair, an iron shoe-scraper, two plants in pots, a fibre mat, a model of Winchester Cathedral, and the hotel cat.

Further doors led into the hall, and a door to the right showed the reception desk. A tall, cadaverous porter of Scottish extraction jerked a Wee Free thumb towards the office and took charge of the smallest piece of luggage which Toogood had dumped on the tiled floor. Miss Carmody, followed by Mr Tidson, went to the reception desk, and the
porter put down the smallest piece of luggage, glanced about him as though in deep suspicion of the whole party, and asked lugubriously of Connie:

‘You'll be staying long, no doubt?'

‘Oh, not so long as all that,' said Connie, glancing uncertainly at Crete.

‘For a fortnight,' said Crete.

‘Ou, ay,' said the porter, as though this confirmed his worst fears. A voice from the desk said:

‘Twenty-nine, thirty-three and seven, Thomas.'

‘Twenty-nine, therrty-three and seven,' repeated the porter. ‘You'll follow me.
Fifteen
, therrty-three and seven is what I was tellt this morning, but ye'll suit yoursel's, nae doubt!'

Twenty-nine, a pleasant little room in the oldest part of the house, was assigned by Miss Carmody to Connie. Thirty-three, containing twin beds and a double wardrobe, was for the Tidsons, and was on the same floor. Number seven was on the ground-floor of the annexe, and was gained by going through the sun-lounge into a bungalow building, very modern and pleasant. Seven was Miss Carmody's room, and when she found that it was exactly what she had asked for – for she suffered slightly from pyromania and disliked to sleep above ground level in strange houses – she was extremely pleased. Crete was
not
pleased. She demanded a separate room.

The four met in the cocktail lounge and were served by the severe Thomas with excellent sherry, except for Connie, who preferred gin and Vermouth. They had not been there long when Miss Carmody, putting down her glass, said that they must find out whether her friend Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch. She asked Connie to go and see.

‘They won't know,' said Connie, ‘and, if they did, I wouldn't dare to ask. This place always did terrify me, and Thomas makes me feel as though I'd jam on my face. I call him an awful sort of man.'

‘Oh, nonsense,' said Miss Carmody. ‘I will send for him and enquire.' She summoned Thomas, to the admiration of her niece, by pressing the bell. Thomas, who had added to his first impressiveness by putting their drinks before
them as though he knew full well that they were jeopardizing the safety of their immortal souls with every sip they took, acceded civilly, with an inclination of the head and a ‘Verra guid' uttered like a curse, to Miss Carmody's request that he would find out whether Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch, and returned in due course with the information that she was.

‘And a verra clever body,' he added, looking pontifical as he gazed over Mr Tidson's head at the red geraniums in the garden. ‘A verra clever body. Just that.'

It sounded like an epitaph, and all found themselves gravely inclining their heads. The rite was interrupted by the entrance of a small, black-haired, black-eyed woman in a hairy heliotrope tweed costume and a green felt hat. She was of witch-like aspect, and heralded her coming with a harsh cackle which sounded oddly from her beaky little mouth.

‘Mrs Bradley!' exclaimed Miss Carmody, getting up. Thomas made way respectfully for the new arrival, and, without being asked, went out and shortly returned with another glass of sherry.

‘Your Amontillado, madam,' he said. As this title had not, so far, been bestowed upon the other ladies of the party, it was particularly impressive, and when Thomas went away (which he did without taking notice of being yelled at as ‘Waiter!' by a young officer in the uniform of the Royal Air Force), Crete Tidson, having, with her husband and Connie, been introduced to the witch, enquired whether Mrs Bradley had often stayed at the
Domus
.

‘Once, some time before the war,' Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Are you familiar with the country in and around the New Forest?'

The gong for lunch interrupted the flow of conversation which followed these last magic words, and the party of four were allotted an excellent table at the garden end of the dining-room and were provided with copies of the menu. Mrs Bradley was conducted to a table for one by a window.

‘Pig's face!' said Mr Tidson, enraptured, when he had read the menu. ‘I haven't eaten pig's face since I was a little tiny boy.'

He began to hum under his breath until his wife prodded him sharply. The waitress, a nice girl, perceiving his excitement, saw to it that he received a generous portion. She took his order for bottled beer, and decided, in the security of her small alcove between the sideboard and the serving-table, that the little man had picked the wrong wife and was henpecked. She made up her mind to make his stay as pleasant as she could. He reminded her of her uncle from America.

‘I like it here,' said Connie, looking favourably upon a plate of excellent cold beef and the salad and boiled potatoes which came with it. ‘What are we going to do this afternoon?'

‘What you like,' replied her aunt. ‘Crete? Edris? What are your suggestions?'

‘I shall explore the city,' said Mr Tidson, ‘and possibly I shall seek an interview with the editor of the local paper. I shall be happiest alone.'

‘I shall sit in the sun lounge, which appears to be warm and pleasant, and get on with my embroidery,' said Crete.

‘Then you and I will walk to St Cross,' said Miss Carmody, ‘if you would like that, Connie.'

Connie said that she would like it very much, and Crete asked what there was to see at St Cross. Whilst Miss Carmody (interrupted often by Mr Tidson, who had read up St Cross in a guide book before he had left London) was answering this question, the plates were changed and the party received jam roll and custard, or, if they preferred it, plum tart.

Mr Tidson finished his beer, and, before anyone could prevent it, he had crossed over to Mrs Bradley's table and was soon in a deep discussion upon cheese, for she had chosen cheese and biscuit rather than the sweet course. Mr Tidson was inclined to reproach her for declining the excellent jam roll, and they had a pleasant and inspiring conversation before he returned to his place.

After lunch Mrs Bradley accepted an invitation from Miss Carmody to accompany herself and her niece to St Cross, and none of them saw any more of the Tidsons until dinner.

‘I hope you are staying a good long time,' said Connie, to the great surprise of her aunt.

‘I hope to stay as long as you all do,' Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I am very fond of Winchester, and, besides, Miss Carmody and I have much to talk about.'

‘You'll have more still if Uncle Edris finds his water-nymph,' said Connie. Mrs Bradley looked interested and asked for an explanation, although she had already, on the telephone, received tidings of the water-nymph from Miss Carmody. She could perceive, however, that Connie was even more in need of help than Mr Tidson.

‘Ah,' she said, when Connie, who had some wit and a gift of mimicry, had given a lively picture of Mr Tidson's raptures, ‘that explains the expression in his eye. He looks gleeful, a sign I have learned to dread in my patients. But all is now made clear. Clear as the waters of the Itchen,' she added, regarding the crystal river with great favour, for they had made short work of the distance between the
Domus
and College Walk.

‘You don't think Edris is mad?' asked Miss Carmody anxiously. ‘I shouldn't mind in the ordinary way, but I don't much want him mad in an hotel.'

‘No, it is not the place,' Mrs Bradley gravely agreed. ‘But, indeed, no such thought had crossed my mind. I remarked upon my patients because, with the exception of very small children engaged upon very dark deeds, I do not see gleeful persons unless they are in some degree abnormal.'