Death and the Maiden (35 page)

‘I should say it's blown,' said Laura. ‘Crete's told him about her two talks with Mrs Croc. and something about them has scared him. You go and sort him, my lad. This might be a gift from the gods. I wonder what Mrs Croc. has got to say? Oh, and I've got a job to do.'

She picked up an attaché case, opened it, and displayed a transparent light-green waterproof, a wrap-over skirt and a blouse.

‘What the hell?' enquired Gavin. Laura grinned and pushed the clothes into the case.

‘Three guesses,' she said, ‘and you ought to get it first pip.'

‘But where did you get them?'

‘They're mine, duck. I'm going along to the river to find out how easy it is to sink clothes in some deepish pool. Then I'm going to find exactly where Crete parked hers. That wasn't a suicide attempt. It was some elaborate eyewash. You wait and see what she does next.'

Chapter Twenty

‘He rushed through a long bed of weeds, and then walloped about distractingly . . .'

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

 

C
RETE'S
next action was somewhat astonishing. Mrs Bradley remarked that as Arthur Preece-Harvard would be in Winchester on the morrow, Crete had arranged with the management of the
Domus
to have a private nurse, or, rather, two nurses, who would be with her night and day.

‘But what's she afraid of?' enquired Gavin. ‘It almost looks as though she's afraid of her husband, after all. Do you think he
did
push her in? It seems queer if he did, considering she went prepared to be the nymph, and—'

‘No, I don't think he did. And I don't think she's afraid of him. The nurses will provide her with an alibi, of course, if young Preece-Harvard comes to any harm in Winchester. That is partly what the nurses are for, and that, I imagine, is what the semi-suicide was for. Crete is not going to involve herself any further in her husband's affairs.'

‘But this means she knows an attempt will be made on the boy, and fairly soon! Who are the nurses? Do you know?'

‘One has been provided by the doctor whom the hotel called in for Crete, and who usually attends at the
Domus
if anyone on the staff or among the visitors is suddenly taken ill, and the other is the sister of Lucy, the chambermaid. This sister is well known to the management, and has obliged in this way before.'

‘I'd better have a look at them, I think, although they both sound innocent enough. Still, it wouldn't do to take
chances. But, tell me, what do you make of Tidson? I could understand him cheating the railway company, but what about him slugging a ticket collector?'

‘I know,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘It isn't in character. And what isn't in character is always interesting. Have you interviewed him since he was arrested?'

‘No. It's the local beak's job. He's being held on the charge of assault. He paid up the money for the fare, apologized, referred to sudden temptation and said he'd always been honest. I don't suppose the railway company will prosecute, but for the assault he'll get forty shillings or seven days, I should think. It wasn't really a serious case.'

‘It's a very curious one. I wonder what Connie Carmody is doing?'

‘I don't suppose she's doing anything much. She's with her aunt at the flat in London, isn't she?'

‘I'll tell you what,' said Laura to Gavin, a little later on, ‘I still say it's a pity we can't prove what was in that letter that was handed to Crete from that car, and I still say it's a pity we don't know a little bit more about that flat on the Great West Road that Connie went to when she fled from the
Domus
.'

‘Oh, I don't know. She had nowhere to run to except there or to Miss Carmody's place, and she guessed we should find her if she went back to where she had come from. She knew old Tidson wasn't very likely to turn up, and she couldn't have foreseen that
you
would. The only part of the business that seems suspicious to me is that she had enough sense not to throw the stone into the river, so that the fingerprints and the dog's blood were still on it for us to test. That does look guilty.'

‘Yes, it's altogether too clever.'

‘I'm going to bounce the secret of that dog-killing out of Connie. It couldn't have been done for revenge. She never even
saw
Tidson with the dog!'

‘You'd much better leave her to Mrs Bradley, you know.

You can't possibly hold her for questioning, although I agree she deserves it.'

‘Oh, there are ways and means,' said Gavin, easily. ‘We can charge her with stealing the dog. I suppose she did steal it, in a way. It will be enough reason for questioning her a bit. We can say that we think the death of the dog may have some bearing on the murders. That won't be untruthful, will it?'

Laura looked doubtful, and said:

‘The old lizard told her about the dog, hoping she'd make it a substitute for Tidson, and she did. And I don't believe you could arrest her for stealing it unless Mr Tidson makes a charge, and you know he won't!'

‘I don't know anything of the sort!'

‘All right, all right. You know your own business best, and I don't need to agree with all you say. To my mind it's a frame-up, and I've said so. Still, if you have to do it, that must be that. I admit that I feel rather sorry for this Connie. She's an under-weather, nervy sort of piece, and I wish you could leave her alone.'

‘She's got to come across,' said Gavin briefly. ‘We're after a murderer, and a pretty beastly one. Can't spare people's feelings if it means we've got to let him go.'

‘I know. But it's beastly, all the same, that the innocent should have their lives spoilt because of nasty old men like Mr Tidson.'

‘Talking of Tidson, I wish I knew what he's playing at, to get himself arrested like this. It almost looks as though he has reason to need protection, and, if that's so—Well, I wish I could see through his game.'

It was not at all easy to find out Mr Tidson's game. He was brought up in front of a kindly and puzzled justice of the peace next day, and, having made a bitter little speech to which the bench listened gravely and with great courtesy, he refused to pay a forty-shilling fine. The magistrate, clicking his tongue, was about to proffer the alternative of seven days' imprisonment when an official whispered in
his ear. Mr Tidson's fine, it appeared, had already been paid, and Mr Tidson, looking dazed and frightened, was dismissed. He began another speech, but any protest he may have seen fit to make was smothered by the fatherly hand and arm of a gigantic police constable, who removed him almost bodily from the court as the next case came up for hearing.

‘Did
you
pay the fine?' enquired Gavin of Mrs Bradley.

‘I was about to put the same question to Laura,' she replied. ‘We are on the verge of interesting disclosures. The plot thickens to breaking point.'

‘I certainly didn't pay it,' said Laura. ‘I should think Crete must have sent the money. She'd hardly want her husband in jug.'

Enquiry, set on foot by Gavin, proved that the philanthropist who had paid the two pounds was a young lady. The description, which followed, of her size, appearance and apparent age, certainly would not fit Crete but might have fitted Connie Carmody.

Gavin immediately telephoned to Miss Carmody, and discovered, as he had expected, that Connie was no longer in the flat. Her bed had not been used, and her aunt could not account for her disappearance.

‘Well, that beats everything,' said Gavin. ‘I suppose she had better be found at once. And now, what about this Tidson?'

‘He has gone to see Crete, at the
Domus
,' Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Let us both go to see him.'

Mr Tidson, Mrs Bradley was interested to discover, was in a remarkable state of terror. He could not answer any questions. He merely begged them to save him, but omitted to mention from what.

Gavin commented on this. ‘That chap,' he said confidentially, ‘will cut his own throat before we hang him if we're not mighty careful. What do
you
think?'

‘As you do,' Mrs Bradley responded. ‘Nevertheless, I am inclined to leave him to his fate.'

‘Yes, but why should suicide
be
his fate? What's he been up to? How do you account for the wind-up?'

‘Well, I doubt if it means a guilty conscience. I don't believe Mr Tidson is troubled by conscience at all. No, I think we are watching the unfolding of an interesting logical sequence of events.'

‘But where the devil is Connie?'

‘Here in Winchester, I imagine, lying in wait for the unfortunate Mr Tidson, instead of (as he had hoped and planned) for her half-brother, Arthur Preece-Harvard. I let the boy come back to school here because I knew he was not in danger from Connie, and Mr Tidson, who has such a powerful motive for putting him out of the way, will never dare to touch him while we're here. It is a situation I shall watch with peculiar relish.'

‘What are you getting at?' asked Gavin. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘Once upon a time,' she said, ‘there was a man who incited another man to murder their mutual enemy. But the second man, victim of the fearful poison engendered by the promptings of the first, killed, not his enemy, but the man who had slain his conscience. What do you think about that?'

‘I see the point of it,' Gavin answered. ‘You believe he's been inciting Connie Carmody to kill young Preece-Harvard, and has spent his time in Winchester demonstrating to her how easy it is to commit a murder without being found out.'

‘Well,' said Mrs Bradley, careful not to express agreement with this, ‘I don't know about that. No doubt it would suit Mr Tidson very nicely if Connie (or anyone else) would put Arthur out of the way and leave him to inherit the money. But, of course, he made a mistake if he supposed that Connie entertained feelings of hatred for the boy. Connie, in point of fact, adores him, as she has done from their earliest years.'

‘Then why in the name of goodness hasn't she given old Tidson away to us weeks ago? If she'd spilt the beans we could have acted upon her information.'

‘Connie, you must remember, is not only young; she is unversed in the ways of the world. She did not think we
should believe her. She distrusts people – who can blame her? The world has not treated her too well. Besides, she is intelligent enough to realize that we could scarcely interfere with Mr Tidson's plans until something more than she could tell us was proved against him.

‘In other ways she is not a clever girl, and she is also remarkably obstinate. It was not easy to persuade her that her best course was to go away from Winchester for a bit, and she would not have consented (even although she was terrified of Mr Tidson) if Arthur had not been safely tucked away in Bournemouth. I knew she would return to Winchester as soon as the College re-opened after the summer, and I have no doubt that she is here, that she paid Mr Tidson's fine, and has turned the tables on him by making him fear her as much as – in fact, a good deal more than – at one point she feared him.'

‘Do you think she led Tidson up the garden, then, and allowed him to believe that she
would
kill Preece-Harvard when the time came?'

‘I don't know. She was evidently horrified by him, not only because of his motive for having Arthur murdered, but sexually, of course, as well. I don't think a young man like yourself can begin to fathom the depths of that kind of horror, which is far more than merely physical. She probably allowed him to think that she would act in accordance with his suggestions.'

‘Both kinds? Ah, I begin to see daylight. I suppose that accounts for the visit of the “ghost”, after which she insisted on changing rooms with you.'

‘The “nun” was undoubtedly Mr Tidson.'

‘Oh, yes, the apparition that squeaked. Always a very phony story.'