Death and the Maiden (7 page)

‘But why invent something as impossible as a water-nymph?' argued Laura. ‘If I wanted to go to Winchester – or anywhere else, come to that! – I could invent a dozen better excuses! Let's not talk rot about this!' She eyed her employer with a good deal of solemn reproachfulness. ‘See here, we know perfectly well that water-nymphs are all moonshine, and can be dismissed as such, so why a water-nymph? Why not invent a monster trout? A monster trout in the Itchen would be sheer Isaak Walton, but a naiad—! This Mr Tidson
must
be bats, and you could write him off as such, I should have said. Of course, a murderer – that's another matter.'

‘Well and bravely spoken,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘But Mr Tidson, if I have summed him up at all successfully, is perfectly capable not only of inventing but of producing a water-nymph, and of wishing her on to sceptics like yourself. So, if you do come to Winchester, don't you press him too far, or I won't be answerable for the consequences.'

‘As though you haven't foreseen the consequences, weighed them up, and decided how to deal with them!' said Laura, hooting rudely to rob this speech of its otherwise complimentary aspect. ‘I'm not getting anywhere with all this banana stuff, dash it! We must go and get ready for dinner. Grub omnia vincit, don't you think?'

Chapter Five

‘Take the Leaves of Rue, pick'd from the Stalks, and bruise them . . .'

‘N.B.
You may occasionally change the Conserve of Rue for that of Roman Wormwood, which is rather more agreeable, and nearly as efficacious.'

Mrs S
ARAH
H
ARRISON OF
D
EVONSHIRE
(
The Housekeeper's Pocket Book, etc.
)

 

T
HE
reference to the naiad would have taken Mrs Bradley back to Winchester without the telegram from Miss Carmody which arrived whilst she and Laura were at dinner, but, as the telegram did come, Mrs Bradley's decision was confirmed.

‘Return at once fear worst frantic,' the telegram ran. A prepaid reply form accompanied the message. Mrs Bradley filled it in and returned to Winchester early enough on the Friday morning to attend the inquest on the drowned boy. Miss Carmody insisted upon going with her, and whispered, just before the inquest opened, that she did not expect there to be any hope at all.

‘Hope of what?' Mrs Bradley enquired. Miss Carmody did not reply, and Mrs Bradley wondered whether she had connected Mr Tidson with the boy's death because of the reference to the naiad, and whether, in making the connection, she had jumped to the same unreasonable conclusion as Laura.

The proceedings soon came to an end. There was little to be learned from them except the age of the boy which,
given in the newspaper as thirteen, turned out to be only twelve. This discrepancy was explained, amid tears of contrition, by the boy's mother – or, rather, foster-mother – who confessed that the family had moved to Winchester just before the war, and that the boy was the child of some friends who had sent him away from Southampton. They themselves had been killed, six months later, during a raid. She confessed that she had given the boy's age as a year more than it was, so that he could go to work a year sooner than the law allowed. Her tears, Mrs Bradley thought, were from the mainspring of greed rather than grief, for the family, although humble, were comfortably circumstanced enough, and the woman's only regret was for the money now never to be earned. Apart from that, it seemed more than likely that she was glad to be rid of the boy, for the billeting money, she declared, was insufficient for his keep.

‘Not much love lost in that household!' said Miss Carmody, as she and Mrs Bradley walked back towards the
Domus
for lunch.

‘And not much explanation as to how the boy came to be drowned,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘I wonder whether I could get permission to see the body? Not, I imagine, that that would tell me much. But it seems rather odd—'

‘I will find out when the funeral is to be,' said Miss Carmody readily. ‘One thing, I shall scarcely feel, after what that unpleasant woman said, that I am intruding on the sanctity of grief! By the way, I ought to tell you about the sandal.'

‘Did the dead boy wear sandals?' Mrs Bradley immediately enquired. ‘I thought we were told it was boots.'

‘Yes, yes. He had boots. This was just something very peculiar that Edris did. You remember I warned you he was given to odd ideas . . .' She recounted how Mr Tidson had shown them the sandal, told of the way he had disposed of it, and mentioned Connie's reactions.

‘And, of course, he was out that night, and got very, very wet, and he was out very early next morning,' she
said in conclusion, and explained how she knew all this. ‘His arm and hand had abrasions,' she added, ‘which seems strange in a six-foot pool.'

The family on whom the dead child had been billeted occupied a small house, one of a compact, uninteresting row, in a street alongside a stream on the north side of the city. Far from experiencing any difficulty in getting in to see the dead child, Miss Carmody and Mrs Bradley discovered that his home was open from front to back so that the whole neighbourhood, if it wished, could file past to look at the body.

Mrs Bradley and Miss Carmody, stared at with un-resentful curiosity by the neighbourhood, had only to join the small single-file queue of morbid sightseers in the street outside, to find themselves at the end of an hour at the bedside of the dead boy. He had been laid out in the sitting-room, and a collecting-box for money to be spent on wreaths and (if the appearance of the foster-father gave any guide) upon alcoholic comfort for the relatives, was displayed at the foot of the bed.

Death had given to the child the strange and awful beauty of the departed. His eyes were closed, his fair hair, now carefully dried and combed, was long and curled slightly on his brow, and his arms had been crossed upon his narrow and bony chest. Mrs Bradley drew back the covers to see this. The people in front of her had done the same thing, and had muttered, ‘Don't he look peaceful,' before they drew the covers back again, so she knew that she would be violating none of the customs if she followed their example. She even passed a claw gently over the top of his head, on which was an unexplained lump – referred to by the doctor at the inquest – which indicated that the lad had been struck before he was drowned, or had fallen on something hard before he tumbled into the extremely shallow water where he was found.

Mrs Bradley's bright eyes and beaky mouth did not betray her thoughts. She put money in the collecting-box, gave a
last look round, and, followed by Miss Carmody, went out at the back door of the house. They found themselves in a narrow alley, beyond the fencing of which they could see a bend of the river. Mrs Bradley collared a little girl who was playing with a skipping-rope nearby.

‘I want to see where Bobby was drowned,' she said. The child, who was only too willing to display to strangers what had become the site of a nine days' wonder, nodded intelligently and said with emphasis:

‘I'm going to the pictures after the funeral, if I can get the money.'

‘But do you think that is right?' demanded Miss Carmody, shocked by this juxtaposition of entertainment.

‘It's a sad picture,' said the child defensively. She turned from the unsympathetic Miss Carmody, and said importantly to Mrs Bradley:

‘It's over the bridge and down along 'ere it was. My father found 'im.'

Mrs Bradley had already heard the evidence of the man who had found the body. He had come upon it at just after five in the morning, on the way to his work. The medical evidence – the doctor had seen the body at six o'clock – showed that the lad had been dead for less than twelve hours. Mrs Bradley looked at the shallow water. It was wide and sedgy, but one would scarcely have thought it could be fatal, especially to a twelve-year-old boy. (Still, the bump on the head explained all.)

‘When will your father be home from work?' Mrs Bradley asked the little girl. It appeared that he was expected within half an hour, and, the gift of sufficient money for the pictures having established their right to her services, the child led the way to a house in the same row as that in which the dead child lay. The village, an offshoot of Winchester proper, consisted of a single long main street in which the houses were almost all alike. The child turned the handle of the front door, invited the two ladies into the parlour, left them just inside the room, and went through to the kitchen for her mother.

‘Mum, they've come about Bobby Grier,' she called out.

The mother, an anxious soul, came in looking thoroughly frightened.

‘Are you sociable ladies?' she enquired.

‘Yes,' said Miss Carmody, who felt that she could claim this description for herself. ‘We came to find out whether there was anything we could do. The poor little laddie, you know . . .'

‘For the Griers?' enquired their hostess, with a sniff. ‘I daresay they'll
let
you, but, although I wouldn't talk against
any
of the neighbours, because that don't do, and things gets around so quick, I don't say it 'ud be
necessary
. Not what sociable ladies wouldn't call necessary, any'ow. Very grabbing she is, although I'd take it a favour you didn't tell 'er I said so. We've got reasons to 'ave our differences.'

She spoke breathlessly, Mrs Bradley noticed. This was explained a moment later.

‘Ted – that's my 'usband – the police haven't been very nice to 'im about poor Bobby Grier. Don't leave you a chance to tell the honest truth. I feel frightened every knock at the door, and so I tell you. It's 'ard not to be believed. Ted couldn't 'elp it if'e found 'im. You'd think the poor child 'ad been murdered and Ted 'ad done it, the way they've kept all on. It's been really cruel. And, of course—' The pause was awkward. Mrs Bradley filled it.

‘And, of course, the police want such full explanations,' she said, ‘that our lives become scarcely our own.'

The woman agreed, and seemed about to enlarge on the point, but at this moment Mr Potter, the husband, was heard. He scraped his feet beside the front door of the house, and then walked into the parlour, which opened directly off the street.

He looked a little shy, and not particularly gratified, when he saw that there was company in the house. He said, ‘Servant, ladies,' in what Miss Carmody referred to afterwards as a delightfully old-fashioned way, went through to the kitchen, and dumped his bag of tools on the floor. He looked a good deal younger than the woman, and was well-set-up and good-looking.

‘You got to go back, Ted,' said his wife, who had followed
him out. There was a lengthy and muttered colloquy, and then the wife added loudly, ‘It's some sociable ladies come to see you about the Griers. There ain't nothing for you to be afraid of. Not as you deserve I should say it, but there it is.'

Mr Potter observed that he had better clean himself, then, and proceeded, from the sounds, to sluice himself vigorously under the kitchen tap. He reappeared at the end of ten minutes with damp front hair and wearing, to Miss Carmody's gratification, a rather tight collar.

‘A mark of
real
respect,' she muttered to Mrs Bradley.

‘Not newspapers, I suppose?' he said nervously as he sat down and put his large hands on his knees. ‘You wouldn't come from the newspapers, I suppose?'

‘I don't know but what it will come to that,' said Mrs Bradley, before Miss Carmody could speak. ‘I'm worried about the death of that boy, Mr Potter. Why was it such a long time before he was found?'

‘Ah!' said Mr Potter, lifting one hand and bringing it back into place with a fearful whack. ‘What did I tell you, Lizzie? “Funny I'd have looked,” I said, “if that boy 'ad 'appened to be murdered,” I said. Didn't I say that, Lizzie? You're my witness to that, my gal. I said it the minute I come in when I'd fetched the police. Now didn't I?' He looked at his wife with a kind of hang-dog defiance not very pretty to see.