slightly wet, and slipped as she let it go. She picked up the nailbrush and let fly. There was a muffled yelp as the nailbrush got home, and the next instant the ghost had disappeared, apparently through the bedroom wall.
Mrs Bradley came out from behind the towel rail. She partly closed the window and drew the blind. Then she switched on the light and spent the next two hours in searching and sounding every part of the room. She gave it up in the end, as being a task more suitable to daylight than to the unequal lighting given to the room by the dressing- table and bedhead switches. She then went to bed and slept soundly.
Next morning she sought out Miss Carmody.
‘Let us leave Mr Tidson to hunt alone,’ she said, ‘and take Connie with us to visit Bournemouth. Why not?’
‘I shall look rather odd at Bournemouth,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I knocked into the edge of my bedroom door last night whilst I was groping for the switch in the dark. Just look at my eye! People will think I have been fighting!’
Mrs Bradley had been unable to keep a fascinated and glittering eye off Miss Carmody’s contused face ever since she had first encountered her, and she welcomed this frank reference to a large and interesting bruise.
‘I wondered what you had been doing,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t really your eye. It is more to the side. I don’t think it would notice any more at Bournemouth than it does here. But just as you like.’
‘Oh, I should like above all things to visit Bournemouth,’ exclaimed Miss Carmody. ‘Do let us find Connie and tell her. I expect she is still in her room. As a matter of fact, I think Bournemouth a most restful idea! No one will question me there!’
The two ladies were in the garden. Breakfast had been in progress for an hour, and Mrs Bradley had already had toast and coffee. Miss Carmody usually waited for Crete and Mr Tidson, and sometimes for Connie, who, like nearly all girls of her age, was either out of bed before six or fast asleep until ten unless somebody woke her.
Not at all anxious that Miss Carmody should discover so soon that she and Connie had changed rooms, Mrs Bradley began to frame an excuse for keeping Miss Carmody with her, and was pleased to see Crete coming out of the sun-parlour towards them. As she drew nearer, the two ladies raised a questioning cry, for Crete, like Miss Carmody, had an interestingly-tinted contusion just between the eyebrow and the temple.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I did a stupid thing. I tripped on the bath mat and caught my head against the edge of that silly little shelf below the mirror. You know the one I mean?’
‘Ah?’ said Mrs Bradley, immensely intrigued by this revelation. But further matter for speculation was in store when they encountered Mr Tidson in the hall.
‘Good heavens!’ Miss Carmody exclaimed. ‘Have
Mr Tidson warily touched the bruise at the edge of his cheek-bone.
‘Crete gave me this,’ he said, with some natural annoyance. ‘I asked her to pass some cold-cream from her room to mine. Instead of handing it to me, she flung it – positively hurled it – in the direction in which I was standing, supposing, she said, that I should catch it.’
‘I hope she apologized,’ said Mrs Bradley solemnly. She went close up to Mr Tidson and examined his wound minutely.
‘Well?’ he said, resentfully backing away. Mrs Bradley cackled. Mr Tidson was about to add to this one tart observation when it dawned on him that Miss Carmody and his wife were both adorned with facial bruises not remarkably different from his own. The expression on his face as he made this discovery gave Mrs Bradley great pleasure. She watched the Tidsons go into breakfast, followed by Miss Carmody and Connie, and then glanced at the letters on the hall table, for the
‘Naething for ye,’ said Thomas, coming to rest beside her.
‘I am not sorry,’ she said. ‘Tell me, have you had any complaints about people slipping and hurting themselves in this hotel?’
Thomas took time to consider this question.
‘Weel,’ he said cautiously, ‘there was Sir William, wha slippit on the soap in 1925, and there was a wee shrappit body by the name of Wemyss, I mind, in 1932, who was knockit over on the staircase by a professor from Harvard Univairsity. I dinna recollect ony mair.’
‘Strange! Miss Carmody and Mr and Mrs Tidson have all been injured either last night or this morning. Have you not noticed their bruises?’
Thomas clicked his tongue, but more in wordless condemnation of their carelessness than for regret at the accidents, Mrs Bradley decided. She went out to find George, her chauffeur, and, upon re-entering the hotel, she came face to face with Connie Carmody, who was just descending the stairs. Connie had her hand to her eye. She took it away to disclose an already purple swelling. Mrs Bradley could have cried ‘Eureka,’ but restrained herself.
By ten Miss Carmody and Connie were ready, and at lunchtime the party found themselves at a hotel on the front at Bournemouth and in full enjoyment of the yellow sand, the sparkling sea, the combes, the cliffs, the balmy air and all else that the queen of watering places has to offer.
When lunch was over, Connie took herself off to Christ-church Priory with the remark that she would be back in Bournemouth in time for a bathe before tea, and the two elderly ladies, left alone, sat in deck-chairs on the sand. They indulged in some lazy conversation and some even lazier knitting, and thoroughly enjoyed their time beside the sea. It was an ideal afternoon. The front was crowded, the air was warm, a band was playing, and there were plenty of people to look at; there was even time, if they cared for it, to sleep.
Mrs Bradley, who cared nothing for an afternoon nap, and minded the immoderate heat not a bit more than a lizard does, gazed out to sea and thought deeply and constructively on the subject of the ghost and the bruises. Miss Carmody, giving up both knitting and conversation, soon dozed off, and was no liability to anyone.
Connie came back at a quarter to four and woke Miss Carmody up by searching for her bathing things in Miss Carmody’s bag. When she had entered the water and could not be distinguished, except by the eye of love and faith, from the dozens of other swimmers, Mrs Bradley said to Miss Carmody:
‘Does Connie inherit anything under your will?’
‘Oh, yes, of course, dear girl!’ said Miss Carmody, opening her eyes.
‘And what about Mr Tidson?’
‘Edris?’
‘Yes. I have reasons for asking.’
‘Oh, Edris gets nothing from me.’
‘Does he know that?’
‘Yes. I made it clear soon after they came. As a matter of fact, he asked me. You would scarcely believe that, would you?’
Mrs Bradley, who was beginning to think that she would believe anything, either good or bad, of Mr Tidson, did not answer this question. She said:
‘I’d like to get it quite clear. Do I understand that under no circumstances whatever does Mr Tidson come into your will?’
‘You mean if Connie – if anything happened to Connie?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘If anything happens to Connie, either before or after my death, the money goes to charity. In any case, it isn’t much, you know. But why—?’
‘Yes, I know these blunt enquiries must be puzzling,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘but, after all, you did bring me down to Winchester, didn’t you? And upon a special mission.’
‘And how thankful I am that I did!’ said Miss Carmody roundly. ‘You don’t mean that Edris is dangerous to Connie, I hope?’
‘Well, no, I don’t say I mean that. But I thought it as well to inform myself of what he might have to expect from you, that is all.’
‘I
‘Perhaps we shall find a way,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘By “both of them” you refer, of course, to Mr and Mrs Tidson, and not to Mr Tidson and Connie.’
‘Oh, Connie will soon be quit of me, anyhow,’ said Miss Carmody, with a hard and hurt little laugh. ‘Connie
