Death and the Maiden

man knew what he was talking about, or else you’re here under false pretences. Besides, there’s an American woman in the lounge who’s got a hair-style I’ve never seen before, and I want to find out how it’s done.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ said Laura. ‘All right. As it happens, I know where he’s staying. He tried to date me up for dinner, and told me the name of his hotel.’

‘Well, of all the cheek!’ said Kitty wrathfully. ‘I look tons nicer than you, and, besides, I’m more the right size.’

‘Right size be sugared,’ said Laura, who stood a brawny and solid five-foot ten. ‘Small men often like large women. Besides, I told you you were getting too fat, you lazy rotter. This proves me right. It’s time you took some exercise, and laid off the starchy foods.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Kitty, good-temperedly. ‘Well, when do we call upon this Mormon?’

‘To-morrow, if you say the word. But I can’t see what we can ask him. Dash it, he’s told us all he knows. I can’t go along there and pump him. It isn’t decent.’

‘Be yourself, Dog. Surely you can think of something! You’ve got to make him prove he knew this Tidson.’

‘Well, he knew Crete. That’s obvious. And—’

‘She was probably the talk of the town. He’d be sure to have heard of her. I expect all the Dagos fell for her, for one thing. If she’s really as good-looking as he says, you could hardly not hear of her if you’d been to the Canaries at all. Doesn’t prove he knew Mr Tidson, does it?’

‘All right, all right! I’ll think of something during the night.’

As Kitty knew that Laura would most certainly think of something during the night, she felt that the matter could be left safely in her friend’s hands, and was not disappointed, for Laura, at breakfast, produced a simple and workable plan. She conducted the docile Kitty to the young man’s hotel and proceeded, over cocktails in the lounge, to canvas his views on the desirability of visiting the Canary Islands for a holiday.

He was immediately and deeply interested, and gave them a vivid and attractive picture of life in the Islands to which Laura listened with close and earnest attention. Then she suddenly said:

‘Ah! But what proof have we that you’ve ever lived in the Canaries? Still less that you ever knew the Tidsons!’

‘Proof? Oh, but, surely, after all that I’ve said—’ He looked astounded and somewhat hurt, and then began to laugh. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re after, but I can assure you that poor little Tidson isn’t wanted by the police, or anything of that sort. As for having known the Tidsons, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you like. I’ll give you the address of a fellow in Las Palmas who knew them well when he was on Tenerife.’

He wrote out this address, which Laura later sent on to Mrs Bradley.

‘And now,’ said Laura, with great satisfaction, when she and Kitty had left the young man, ‘what about the Lakes, after all? Or, of course, Blackpool, as Mrs Croc. suggests. There’s nothing to keep us here, once we’ve returned the hospitality of this spy of ours, and that we can do tomorrow morning.’

‘I’d like to go to Winchester,’ said Kitty, ‘if we shouldn’t be in the way. Write and ask Mrs Bradley, will you? I should think she might be rather glad of two intelligent sort of females like us on the trail without anyone being the wiser.’

‘Golly!’ said Laura reverently, struck by the extraordinary intelligence (as she saw it) of this suggestion. ‘Not your own idea? I’m dying to get to Winchester, but I thought you’d loathe it.’

‘Of course it’s my own idea! I’m dashed if I see, Dog, why you always think nobody gets ideas but yourself! You’d sound conceited if people didn’t already know you were!’

* * *

Mrs Bradley, not at all displeased at the thought of some lively company for Connie, and delighted, in any case, at the thought of seeing Laura and Kitty, answered Laura’s telegram by another, inviting them forthwith to Winchester.

They arrived before tea, for they had left Liverpool very early in the morning and had had a whirlwind journey from which Laura emerged fresh as paint, and Kitty as though she had spent the afternoon in her bedroom making up her face and doing her hair. Of fatigue, or the rigours of travel, neither of the young women showed a trace in appearance or bearing.

Mrs Bradley was careful not to greet them. It had been agreed that they should contrive to make Connie’s acquaintance, and, through her, meet Miss Carmody and the Tidsons. Kitty, who was sometimes gifted with ideas so brilliantly simple that she left Laura gaping with that insulting amazement with which genius is often greeted by its friends, suggested that their best plan might be to go to the place where the body had been found and make some independent enquiries among the dead child’s playfellows.

‘Kids always talk to me,’ she said, with a confidence which Laura had reason to know was not in the least misplaced. ‘They’d probably run a mile, and screaming at that, at the sight of Mrs Croc., but they always seem to think I’m harmless.’

This statement did Mrs Bradley considerable injustice, as Laura immediately pointed out, but there was certainly something attractive in Kitty’s suggestion. It could not be carried out, however, until the following day, so they had tea at the Domus, arranged to stay for a fortnight at the hotel, took a short walk, had dinner, and then took coffee in the sun-lounge, in order, as Laura observed, to ‘get an angle on the Tidsons and the other impedimenta of Mrs Croc., and decide which way the cat jumped’.

Mrs Bradley came into the sun-lounge with Miss Carmody’s party at just after eight, and Kitty and Laura, from a table which was modestly in the background between a fig-tree and a fifteenth-century holy-water stoup (a relic of the monastery, not of the later nunnery which had existed on the site of the hotel), obtained what Kitty termed ‘an eyeful’ of Edris and Crete Tidson, Connie and Miss Carmody, for they had not quite liked to study them too closely in the dining-room. Then Laura sauntered over to Mrs Bradley.

‘I do know you, don’t I?’ she enquired. ‘If not, I’ve seen your photograph in the papers. Am I wrong in thinking that you are Mrs Lestrange Bradley, of Cartaret?’

‘Sure you’re not wrong, Dog,’ said Kitty, backing her up. ‘What’s more, I feel pretty certain Mrs Bradley remembers that we were at Athelstan Hall.’

‘Of course!’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Cartaret? You must, I think, be Miss Menzies. And you—?’

‘Trevelyan is the name, Warden,’ said Kitty, with a face of brass, using the title which Mrs Bradley, as head of a hostel, had had bestowed on her at the college.

‘Yes, yes, of course! How stupid of me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Miss Carmody, do let me introduce two of my former students. Are you staying in Winchester?’ she continued, when the introductions had been made, and Connie warily, Mr Tidson enthusiastically, Crete languidly and Miss Carmody gushingly, had acknowledged the new acquaintance.

‘Oh, here to-day and gone to-morrow, more or less, I expect, you know,’ said Laura. ‘Thought we’d barge round the Cathedral and all that sort of thing. Never seen Winchester and thought perhaps we ought to. See Naples and die,’ she added vaguely.

‘An excellent idea,’ said Mr Tidson, eyeing the buxom Kitty with almost as much approval as if she had been his nymph. Kitty smiled brilliantly upon him, and observed to Laura, when they were clear of the sun-lounge, that she thought him a horrid old man, and one perfectly capable of murder.

‘Would you say that?’ asked Laura. ‘Off here to the left, I imagine, from what I remember of our passage downstairs before dinner. Can’t say I see it, quite. Childish and rather spoilt, I should have thought.’

‘Well, that’s what I mean. It’s all the same thing,’ said Kitty. ‘You know, irresponsible and pink and a bit bald-headed.’

‘Don’t babble,’ observed her friend. ‘Now, then, where’s this room of ours? You’d think our forefathers were descended from rabbits, wouldn’t you, to build these complicated domiciles!’

‘What shall we do about the sightseeing?’ demanded Kitty. ‘Do we have to barge round the Cathedral?’

‘Sure,’ replied Laura. ‘I’ll show you.’

They spent the following morning in ecstatic exploration of the Cathedral. Nothing escaped their fascinated contemplation, and Kitty enjoyed herself more than she had expected to do. Conversation was brisk, although they had to carry it on in low tones.

‘Look, Dog! Fancy having your skeleton for a memorial!’