Death and the Maiden (25 page)

A group of little boys came along and inspected the strange proceedings. At one time there must have been a dozen of them or more. They were difficult to count because they were hardly ever still, for they followed the adventures of the boot, and occasionally waded into the stream to retrieve it for the Tidsons when it fell over the edge of the concrete slab and into the rapids below.

On the approach of some grown-up people, Mr Tidson, whose turn it was to fish, and who had just hooked the boot for the fourth time since the girls and the audience of children had been watching, took the trophy and flung it into a clump of bushes on the other side of the stream. Then he put up the rod, and, accompanied by his wife (after he had distributed some coppers among the children),
walked under the railway arch, so that the girls lost sight of both of them.

The children followed him. Very soon some of them returned. They seemed half-inclined to paddle across the stream in search of the boot. This scheme was abandoned, however, and after about ten minutes the children went away again.

‘So that's how it
could
have been done,' said Alice thoughtfully.

‘What could?' Kitty enquired.

‘Enticement, duck,' said Laura. ‘You could collect fifty kids as easy as winking, and look them over and decide upon the victim. You could bet kids would fall for a silly stunt like that boot business. They're like sheep when there's something daft or dangerous to look at.'

‘Doesn't sound to
me
like sheep,' objected Kitty.

‘Well, you know what I mean. I'm going to nab the Inspector if Mrs Croc. isn't back, and put him wise to this. Otherwise there may be another murder before we know where we are. I can't understand why Tidson shows his hand like this, though, and, unless he'a a homicidal maniac, I can't see the point in what he's doing.'

‘What a wicked old man!' cried Kitty. ‘How
dare
he murder little boys!'

‘Of course, we don't know that he does, duck. Alice only said that's how the victim could have been chosen, and I agreed with her. I
do
think he might be the murderer, but we've still to prove it.'

‘Yes,' said Alice. ‘If he's the murderer he's a fool to show his hand so openly, but, all the same, as I say, it just proves how easy it is to get hold of children, and I think Mrs Bradley ought to know about it.'

‘And the Inspector,' reiterated Laura. ‘Goodness knows when Mrs Croc. will be back, and now we have these suspicions I don't think we ought to hold our horses. Even one more day might may make a difference.'

‘Before we leave the place,' said Kitty, ‘what about retrieving the boot?'

‘Not a bad idea. What about fingerprints, though? We don't
want to superimpose ours on Mr Tidson's,' said Alice. To her astonishment and discomfort, Laura suddenly slapped her on the back.

‘That's it! Of course!' she cried. ‘Oh, no, though, it isn't, at that, unless they knew we were watching, and I don't think they did.'

‘What on earth are you babbling about, Dog?' asked Kitty resentfully.

‘Be prepared for a great thought, duck,' Laura responded. ‘Supposing there were some reason – some subtle and horrible reason – why Tidson's or Crete's fingerprints were on that boot
before
this afternoon – that second boy was barefoot, you know, when he was found – it would be to their advantage to have witnesses to this afternoon's little game. Well, they've got their witnesses, although the audience was mostly a gang of kids. All the same, our first idea may be right – you know, a way of deciding which kid to pick out for the next little bump on the head.'

‘With a half-brick,' said Kitty, without foreseeing the result of these words. Laura gazed at her spellbound, then spoke in reverent tones:

‘Not your own unaided thought? Attababy! We'll go after that boot! The half-brick may be over there, too. By the way, we think this boy was wearing sandals, but never mind that. Go on, young Alice! Watch your step. There are old tin cans below the weir, or my eyes deceive me.'

‘We'll all go,' said Alice firmly. ‘I'm not going alone to a bank where bodies slide out of the bushes!'

‘
I
shan't go,' said Kitty, with a shudder. ‘You'll need someone on this side to look after your shoes and stockings. Go with her, Dog. Don't be so lazy. And both of you mind how you go. There might be something horrid again in those bushes. I'm sure there's a nasty smell.'

Laura sniffed the air. ‘You're about right at that,' she agreed. ‘I thought at first it was merely the “unforgettable, unforgotten” mentioned by R. Brooke, but I don't believe it's the river,
after all. It's a much worse stink than any river could manage. I thought something put those kids off. Kids are apt to have delicate noses. Of course, the local council's rubbish dump isn't so far away, but, all the same—'

‘I'm not going to be made responsible for finding another body,' said Alice, with a shudder. ‘One is enough. I'm not going over there, Dog. You had better go and fetch the police.'

‘Fie, fie upon thee!' replied Laura, sitting down upon the brickwork and removing her shoes and stockings. ‘Here goes. It's probably a dead rabbit the stoats have had, that's all.'

Without another word Alice sat down beside her, and, stony-eyed but loyal, immediately followed her example, and removed her stockings and shoes.

‘Now don't go to sleep, K.,' said the leader of the expedition, lowering herself to the concrete with its inch or two of swiftly-running water. ‘We may want help, and we may want a message taken. Come on, young Alice, and look out, because it's hellishly slippery on this stone stuff, and if you fall you may easily crack a bone.'

‘Don't worry. I feel like a dog on a tight-rope,' said Alice. This striking simile caused Laura to choke with surprise and she missed her footing. Slipping wildly on the slimy concrete, she flung herself at the opposite bank, determined not to fall down.

‘Oh, gosh!' she cried, as a cloud of flies, of a green-winged nauseating kind, rose up in a cloud like bees from an overturned hive. ‘It's a – I think it's a dead animal of some sort. No, definitely nothing human, but I should go back, if I were you. It isn't terribly nice, and there's not more than half of it left!'

‘Phew!' said Alice. ‘I hope we shan't be poisoned! How long do you think it's been dead?'

‘Days, Days
and
days, I should say. Come on. Let's go.' They retreated, and, at Alice's suggestion, took the long way home.

‘I feel I need a breath of fresh air,' she explained. The consequence was that they reached the hotel at five, and
dead-heated with Mrs Bradley, who had returned to the
Domus
from Lewes.

‘A dead animal?' she said very thoughtfully. ‘And the Tidsons and Miss Carmody are back? Very interesting, all of it. What have you done with Inspector Gavin, by the way?'

‘I expect he's fishing,' said Laura. ‘Have you had tea?'

‘No. Let us have it together.'

‘I don't know that I feel like tea,' said Laura mournfully. ‘My stomach's been turned, that's what.'

‘You said it would rain,' said Alice, to change the subject. She looked up at the sky above the square white Georgian house on the opposite side of the street. ‘See? Here it comes.'

Great drops, proving her assertion, fell on the pavement and splashed on the roof of the car. The party went into the hotel and through to the lounge, and in a very few minutes the episcopal Thomas appeared with a laden tray, followed by one of his myrmidons, a small, black-trousered individual called Pollen, with another, larger tray.

‘It's guid tae see ye,' Thomas announced as he set the tray down. ‘Pit the tray dune, mon,' he added to Pollen, ‘and bring over the wee table. The night's settin' in real weet. I'll just pit a light tae the fire.'

Brushing aside such guests as were in his way, he did this, and the fire, recognizing the master-touch, crackled cheerily.

‘And very nice, too,' observed Laura. ‘I feel hungry now, after all, and a fire's always jolly when it's wet. How's Connie?'

‘Still in the land of the living,' Mrs Bradley cautiously replied. She greeted the Tidsons and Miss Carmody with a very nice blend of surprise and pleasure when she saw them come in from the garden. Miss Carmody explained that London was dusty and hot, and that Edris feared for his asthma.

‘So here we are, back again,' she concluded, ‘and now, of course, it's going to set in wet. If the rain continues over to-morrow, we shall go back to London after all. Strange,
was it not, that we all forgot to have the luggage put into the car when we left!'

‘Not so very strange,' replied Mrs Bradley. ‘It is a Freudian symbol.'

‘It is?' said Mr Tidson, joining in the discussion with frankness, benevolence, and curiosity. ‘Pray explain, my dear Mrs Bradley. I am afraid it only seems to me like carelessness, both on our own part and on the part of the hotel. But, of course, I thought Prissie had looked to it, and she thought I had. But Freud—?'

‘It is very simple,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Freud thinks—'

‘Thought,' said Miss Carmody, ‘surely?'

‘Thinks,' Mrs Bradley firmly but courteously reiterated. ‘There is no past tense in the conjugation of genius, especially when it has left us whatever of itself can be conveyed by the printed page; and there is no past tense in heaven, which Freud undoubtedly inherits.' She eyed her cowed audience benignly, and then continued, ‘Freud thinks that we leave objects necessary or dear to us in the place where we leave our hearts. You desired to be in Winchester, not in London (and I admire and applaud your choice), and so you left your luggage here. That is all.'

This speech left all her female hearers with nothing to say. Mr Tidson, however, was not so handicapped.

‘Allow me to point out,' he began; but he was interrupted by the entrance of Thomas, who bore in his arms a fine log of wood, and was followed by Pollen carrying a bucket of coal.

‘Ye'll pardon me, madam,' said Thomas, pausing in his stride and holding the log in the experienced but slightly absent-minded and off-hand manner of the officiating clergyman with a baby at its baptism, ‘but there is a kind of a body wishing tae speak wi' ye in the smoke-room. I wad hae shown him in here, but he isna fit for the lounge carpets. That yin in the smoke-room is no great matter.'

‘Has he been fishing, Thomas?'

‘I dinna ken. He has nae rod. He is after fa'ing into the burn, mair like, frae the look o' him. But ye'd better
gae and speir at him yoursel' whit way he's as weet as he is.'

‘It sounds like you, Mr Tidson,' said Mrs Bradley, preparing to take her departure. ‘Didn't
you
fall into the river? I had better see him at once. One figures to oneself that he MUST HAVE SEEN THE NAIAD!'

She suddenly bellowed these words into the unfortunate Mr Tidson's right ear, so that he jumped like a gaffed salmon and had the same expression on his face as one sometimes sees on a dead fish – at once surprised and peevish.

‘Really!' he said, when Mrs Bradley had gone. He rubbed his ear and then stared angrily at the door through which she had passed, and then more angrily at Alice, who was struggling with a sudden fit of hiccups, with her a nervous reaction which was apt to appear at awkward moments. ‘Really! You know, Prissie,' he added, turning round on Miss Carmody, ‘I don't understand Mrs Bradley! I don't understand her at all.'

The visitor, of course, was Detective-Inspector Gavin, as Mrs Bradley had supposed.

‘I've got something, I think,' he said.

‘Yes, so have I,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘Swop?'

‘Swop.'

‘Well, then, you know this second boy's home was in Southampton? I've been there and interviewed the parents. They swear they had no idea that the kid had gone to Winchester. He'd run away from an Approved School the night he was killed. That all came out at the inquest, of course, as you know. But that isn't all. I've also found out that the parents were very glad to be quit of the boy. He was always a difficult kid, and it also appears that his grandfather left him a bit of money. Not much – forty-five pounds, to be exact. Curiously enough, the father was in debt, and the forty-five pounds, which he took from under the floorboards in the boy's room, will clear him nicely,
and give him twenty pounds to spare. I had to bounce the information out of him, but there it is. What do you think about that?'

‘I don't know,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘I can't see why he didn't steal the boy's money before. Is there any evidence that the creditors were pressing him to pay?'

‘Well, he owed it to a bookie at Brighton, and there had been some loose conversation about a razor-slashing gang. It all adds up, you know, doesn't it? The whole family are rather bad hats. The father's been in quod twice for house-breaking, and it seems that the boy was taking after him.'

‘I'm still more surprised that the father left the money under the floor, and did not steal it sooner.'

‘He may have been scared of the kid. You never know. But it
does
all add up, don't you think?'

‘I don't think it adds up with the unopened tins I found on Saint Catherine's Hill, but, of course, it might,' said Mrs Bradley, without much enthusiasm. ‘And housebreaking isn't murder, although I know there have been cases of violence lately. Still, the money, no doubt, was very useful if the father was mixed up with a race-gang, and apart from any question of foul play, may be one of the reasons for not reporting the death. My own news is rather different.' She referred to the strange behaviour of the Tidsons and Miss Carmody in affecting to leave the hotel and coming back to it next day, and then mentioned the discovery of the dead animal among the bushes beside the weir, and the Tidsons' fishing with the boot.