Death and the Maiden (32 page)

‘I doubt it,' said Laura, grimly, as she dropped the branch and scrambled up the opposite bank, her plimsolls slithering wildly on the mud. ‘I think there's somebody here, and I'm pretty sure—'

She did not finish the sentence. The naked body of Crete Tidson was lying half in and half out of the water in the swiftly-rushing carrier. Her head was under. The two of them dragged her on to the herb-strewn grass, and laid her among the coarse flowers of the lush, late summer.

‘Prop open her mouth,' said Laura. Gavin's training had been as thorough as her own. They disposed Crete, glorious in all her pagan loveliness, and then, as the textbooks and not the legends had taught them, they knelt athwart her and took turns at indelicately pumping the river water out of her lungs.

‘Coming,' said Gavin at last. ‘Hope I'm not bruising her ribs.'

‘So long as you don't break them,' said Laura, taking his place and spreading her wide, brown, strong-fingered hands on Crete's white body. ‘Glad I don't earn my living doing this!'

‘Don't talk. It's waste of strength,' said Gavin briefly.

Both he and Laura, indeed, were almost exhausted by the time their patient was able to be wrapped up in Gavin's jacket and placed with her back against a willow.

‘Clothes!' said Laura. ‘You go.'

‘A car,' said Gavin. ‘I told Soames to meet us at the bridge. I thought we might not want to walk back. He'll have rugs and probably an overcoat. I'll go and get him to help me carry her. You keep moving. Don't worry about
her. You're soaking wet. I shan't be long, but I don't want a wife with pneumonia.'

‘Wife!' said Laura with a shudder. ‘The one thing I always swore I'd never be. Oh, well, it hasn't happened yet. All right, I'll run about and keep warm.'

‘And, look, think this one over: don't keep holding out on me about Connie. You're not at your girls' school now. Well, so long! See you soon!'

It so soon became evident that Crete either could not or would not give any circumstantial account of her dramatic reappearance in the neighbourhood that, at Mrs Bradley's suggestion, sent by telegram from London (for she had not left for Hereford), Gavin gave up questioning her. He had elicited the statement that Crete had come without her husband, and without Miss Carmody's knowledge, to have a last look for the naiad after what she had read in the papers, but Crete refused to say more.

‘Where
is
your husband?' had been Gavin's most persistent question. It was one of those which Crete did not answer.

‘I don't
know
any more,' she said. ‘It's no use to ask me. I don't
know
. And, anyway, what does it matter? I suppose I got cramp. I think I did. That's all.'

Gavin had to leave it at that, and directed his energies to finding Mr Tidson. This did not prove at all difficult. He was back in Miss Carmody's flat after having been on a short visit to Mrs Preece-Harvard. Arthur had gone to stay with a friend in Cheshire, and was not expected home for a week. Mr Tidson had stayed to lunch, and had heard the news about Crete on his return to London. He could give no information about his wife. She had left him in Alresford, and had said that she was going on to Winchester. He had seen her on to the bus. Apart from this, he knew nothing.

Mrs Preece-Harvard confirmed all this, including the facts that she and Mr Tidson had had lunch together and that he had been in her company until he left for Miss
Carmody's flat. In other words, if he had been suspected of trying to drown his wife, his alibi was perfect, for there seemed no reason why Mrs Preece-Harvard should lie. There was also no reason, as Gavin pointed out moodily to Laura, why Tidson should have wanted to drown his wife, or why she should have wanted to save him by her silence if he had.

‘Besides,' said Gavin, ‘we should have seen that something was up. He couldn't have got away. We were right on the spot.'

‘But that's just what's so extraordinary,' said Laura.

‘What is?'

‘That we got there in time to save her. It couldn't be just coincidence. She's playing some game.'

‘She's got me licked if she is. There's not much doubt she was pretty well finished when we found her.'

‘Yes, I know. But she's clever, is Crete Tidson. Artistic, too, I expect, and pretty unscrupulous. She wouldn't spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar.'

‘She's got generous ideas of a ha'porth, then,' said Gavin.

‘Granted. We agreed she's extravagant.'

Their eyes met like swords flickering, and then they began to laugh.

‘Well,
I'm
not extravagant,' added Laura.

Chapter Nineteen

‘But a green reed, inspired by divine inspiration, with a gracious tune and melody, spoke to her and said, “Oh, Psyche, I pray thee not to trouble or pollute my water by the death of thee.”'

W
ILLIAM
A
DLINGTON
(
The Golden Ass of
Lucius Apuleius, edited by
F. J. Harvey Darton
)

 

M
rs
BRADLEY
, summoned to Winchester by an anxious secretary immediately she had disposed of her noble bachelor (whose foible, it seemed, was to keep a young pig in his bedroom), agreed wholeheartedly with Laura that the fact of their presence on the spot at the moment of Crete Tidson's mishap was the most extraordinary point in the affair. She added that she would be with them as soon as she could.

‘I hope it will be very soon,' said Laura. ‘I don't like this part of the business.'

‘I hope she'll come soon, too,' said Gavin, ‘and I hope she'll be able to give us the dope. If it weren't for that hat, confound it! – and Tidson making that telephone call, and the pricking of Mrs Bradley's thumbs, I'd have been back at the Yard by now. But the Assistant Commissioner has put his shirt on the old lady, so here I'm left kicking my heels while the locals get through an immense amount of what must seem to them damned foolish work. If only she hadn't entirely cleared that chap Potter I'd still be wondering what bee she had got in her bonnet.'

‘It's one that will lay eggs,' said Laura.

‘More likely to sting her in the eye,' retorted Gavin.

‘However, I haven't any choice, and I like the old girl, so here I stay. Luckily, the superintendent plays a jolly good game of billiards, and, of course, there's always you – when you happen to be here! But think of the fun we could have in London!'

Laura refused to consider the fun they could have in London.

‘Don't worry. Mrs Croc. has something up her sleeve all right,' she said. ‘I think I know what she's after, and what she's afraid of.'

‘Mrs Bradley afraid? A contradiction in terms,' said Gavin, grinning. ‘I don't think she knows what fear is. Anyway, if she
has
got something up her sleeve, I think she might tell me what it is. Dash it, it's my case as well as hers, and I've got my living to earn.'

‘She can't
prove
anything, duck. That's her trouble. Apparently the psychological proof is there all right, but there's no material proof whatsoever. Of course,' added Laura, eyeing her swain reprovingly, ‘you police have made a muck of the thing, don't you think?'

‘Honestly,' said Gavin, taking the question with a Scotsman's seriousness, ‘I don't know what I think. I don't think we've missed anything, Laura. That's one of the things that makes me believe that Mrs Bradley's right about the murders, and that they haven't been done by a local person, but are part of some special scheme.'

‘Planned by a fox,' said Laura. ‘One thing, whatever Connie Carmody was supposed to do hasn't come off.'

‘I don't think we know that,' said Gavin. ‘But I wish we could solve the whole thing. They're so beastly, these murders of kids. I'd like to get Tidson if he did them.'

‘He did them all right, if she says so.'

‘She doesn't altogether say so, Laura. Mind you, if that young Preece-Harvard had been murdered there wouldn't be very much doubt about Tidson's guilt. But even allowing that she's given us the tip, and that Tidson did kill those two boys, we've hunted in vain for the evidence. A panama hat was mentioned, I believe. Tidson has worn one down here, and there seems no doubt that he has lost it, because
he's had to buy himself another, but whether Potter's story is true, and the lost hat was underneath Bob Grier's body and later on disappeared, is another matter. One would have thought that those people who live near the Griers and the Potters would have noticed a man in a panama hat. They're not the usual wear in poorer districts. Well, we've questioned them pretty closely and we can't get a thing. And that's how it's been all the time.'

‘I know, But there
must
be some evidence somewhere. Somebody must know something and have seen something. The only thing is –
who?
'

‘
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
– well, little Tidson must be an artist, I suppose. You find them in all walks of life and in all professions, and, certainly, the naiad was a poetic conception. I wonder what made him think of her? – Although we don't even know for certain that he
was
the one to think of her. That hasn't been proved, you know.'

‘Oh, well, I don't know about that! Connie did make a beeline for that flat on the Great West Road. And, actually, Potter didn't call it a
panama
hat. Think that one over!'

‘Yes, I know. But she hated Tidson and he scared her. Flies don't usually make direct for the spider's web.'

‘Mrs Croc. says that, psychologically, they do. By the way, I wonder how much Connie likes Crete? She's supposed to hate her as much as she hates old Tidson, but that might not prove to be true.'

‘Crete hates Connie, anyway. That's quite certain, I thought.'

‘Yes. Well, now: I know we can't get Crete to give evidence against her husband, but, supposing he
is
the murderer, do you think we could get at anything through her?'

‘Well, we've saved her life, I suppose. She might be disposed to tell us one or two facts about her movements since she first came to Winchester, and that might implicate her husband.'

‘I shouldn't have thought she made many movements. She seemed to do nothing but all that embroidery. And, even if she
could
help us, she won't incriminate herself.'

‘No . . . I still think, though, as I have thought ever since I saw both of them, that there can't be any love lost between them. Besides, who would half-drown Crete except her husband—'

‘Or Connie Carmody? I agree; although there again—'

‘Well, there's Miss Priscilla Carmody, of course, and the Preece-Harvards, mother and son.'

‘Oh, but—'

‘You can't cut out any of them, or put in any of them. There isn't any evidence either way, any more than there is for the murders. All you can say is that, as the Tidsons have no other English connections—'

‘So far as we know. That's the catch. We really know most about them from the Canary Islands end.'

‘I don't think it's much of a catch. Thirty-five years is a pretty good long time, and Crete, so far as we know, hasn't been in England before.'

‘Even that we can't prove, though, can we, unless Miss Carmody knows, and Crete had an English mother.'

‘I shall be glad when Mrs Bradley gets down here. Perhaps
she
can get something out of Crete.'

‘Perhaps she can. She can see further through a brick wall than most people, can Mrs Croc. But Crete's a dark horse all right, and as for the drowning—'

‘Not a put-up job from her point of view, you know. She was full of nasty unfiltered river water. There was nothing phony about that. I've seen half-drowned people before. It's a habit we have in the police force, and I think I know most of the signs.'