‘Now what’s it all about?’ asked Alice. In contrast to the plump Kitty and the Amazonian Laura, this third member of their trio was small, thin and wiry, and was the only one of the triumvirate who had taken up the work for which she had been trained. She was the Physical Training specialist at a large school in north London and was, as Laura was fond of pointing out, equally compounded of guts, indiarubber, and the sort of innocent, practical disposition which Jezebel may have had before she encountered the theory of Jehovah and learned to sin.
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t the foggiest,’ Kitty frankly replied. ‘There’s been a murder of sorts, and I gather we’re expecting another, but what it’s all about is more than I can say. You know me – Dopey’s little sister. I am completely befogged. Pity old Dog isn’t here. She pushed off just before you came, and we don’t know when she’ll get back. She’d have told you all about it in no time. But she’s off on a toot for the Old Lizard. Chiswick, or somewhere. Ever been to Chiswick, young Alice? Famous for a house and the boat-race and all that. Dog says —’
‘I see,’ said Alice, following her usual custom of discounting Kitty’s vapourings. ‘But what’s all this about the Tidsons, and what do you want me to do?’
‘Ah, there you have me,’ said Kitty. ‘According to old Dog – who, of course, may be talking through her hat; she often is – we have to stalk these Tidsons like leopards, report upon what they’re up to if it’s nefarious, and stop them committing any murders if they seem to be so inclined.’
‘Ah, stalk the Tidsons,’ said Alice, with quiet satisfaction. ‘Do the Tidsons go about together?’
‘No, they don’t. Would you rather go into the nice fresh air and keep an eye on
‘Him, for choice. But you choose.’
‘Me for the sun-lounge. I’d much rather. I’m not one for the wide-open spaces. I’d far sooner stay behind glass or in the garden. Don’t you really mind doing the field work?’
Alice, who very much preferred it, said that she did not.
‘I hope you’ll get back in time for tea, but I rather doubt it,’ said Kitty. ‘Still, he always comes in for his dinner, that’s one good thing about him. About the only one, I should think.’ She shuddered with feminine distaste.
Alice, who had enjoyed the discreet and satisfying meal the hotel had provided at lunch-time, said that she thought so too, and did not mind missing her tea. She went up to her room, changed her costume for a shirt, a skirt and a blazer, and her stockings for a pair of tennis socks, came down to the hall, and, standing modestly behind a couple of men who were gossiping just inside the smoking-room doorway, she waited for Mr Tidson, hoping desperately that he would choose this afternoon to go out.
At half-past two he came down the stairs, his fishing rod in his hand and his other appurtenances festooned adroitly about him. Alice followed him out of the hotel, soon lost him in the crowded High Street, picked him up again in the Square, followed him past the west entrance of the Cathedral and then saw him trotting under Kings Gate. She stood beneath Kings Gate arches to make sure that he went down College Street, and then again she followed.
When he reached College Walk she dropped behind. She could pick him up, she thought, anywhere over the water-meadows. She had not been introduced to either of the Tidsons and only to Miss Carmody off-handedly as ‘Miss Boorman, who was at College with us,’ by Kitty. She had sat at a separate table for lunch, and the inference was that the acquaintanceship between Kitty and herself was slight and cool. Moreover, Mr Tidson had not shown himself attracted by her slight, wiry, muscular physique, thin face and observant eyes. Her clothes were what Kitty called ‘tweedy,’ her shoes were stout and sensible, and already she bore the hall-mark of a profession as individual as that of a sailor, a pugilist or a horse-coper, (all of whom it resembled in some measure), and which had the merit, as she saw it in this instance, of discouraging the opposite sex.
When she came through the wicket-gate on to the meadow she could not at first see Mr Tidson. Numbers of children and other holiday-makers were on the footpath and by the water, and the small figure of Mr Tidson was not to be discerned. Alice quickened her steps. She had a long, lithe stride and she covered the ground very quickly.
She had a fair knowledge of the environs of Winchester because she had taken a party of children there on a school journey earlier in the summer. She knew that Mr Tidson might have swung to the left at the bridge over the stream called Logie, and taken the College path across the water-meadows, so she glanced in that direction when she came near the wooden bridge, but there was still no sign of Mr Tidson.
Alice began to feel baffled. The people had thinned out considerably, for many of them, the small children with their parents, particularly, had not come so far along the path, but had remained near the trees on the grassy sloping bank at the edge of the river where the two streams separated.
Alice hurried on, for she decided that Mr Tidson had increased his pace whilst she had sauntered, and that he must by now have reached the road. A modern bridge carried the road over the river. One end of the road joined the Winchester by-pass and the other the St Cross and Southampton Road.
On the other side of the bridge the path alongside the water was very much narrower, and, until she came to the children’s paddling pool, Alice met only two people. It occurred to her that Mr Tidson must have been in hiding somewhere along the route, and she must have passed him without knowing it. Perhaps even now he was in cover preparing to fish. There were tall reeds in plenty which might have screened him, both from her and from the brown trout of Itchen.
She retraced her steps, and scanned the river banks, but no trace of Mr Tidson or his fishing rod was to be seen. Patiently she went back to the bridge, crossed the road, and, breaking into a trot, soon covered the distance between the bridge and St Cross Hospital.
Here she met with unexpected good fortune – or so she thought at the time. Against the only seat was set a fishing rod. Two urchins were examining without touching it. Alice went up to them.
‘Is it yours?’ she asked.
‘No, missis. An old man left it here, and give us fourpence to keep our eye on it,’ responded one of the boys.
‘Which way did he go?’
‘Over there. Most of ’em goes in through the gate, and then round to the archway.’ Obligingly they pointed out the wicket-gate in a short piece of railing. Alice went through, saw the gatehouse of St Cross, turned in under the archway, paid her sixpence, received a ticket, and, directed by the custodian, walked across a large courtyard to the splendid twelfth-century transitional Norman church which is the greatest glory of the Hospital.
She entered the church with a silk scarf tied Polish peasant fashion over her head, and received a smile from the cleaner, who jerked her black hat towards the east and said:
‘He’s through there. You’ll catch him before he gets telling about the lectern, miss, I shouldn’t wonder. He hasn’t hardly started. He’s done the tiles and the circumference and heighth of these yere pillars, but that’s about all. You haven’t missed much.’
Alice thanked her. She could hear the voice of the guide, and found that he and his party of docile visitors were standing before a triptych in one of the side chapels. Hastily she cast her eye over the party. There were the guide, a kindly, respectable old fellow in the black habit and silver cross of the Brethren, a lady with two children, a Naval officer and his wife, and a couple of elderly women. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign. Genuflecting profoundly as she came in front of the high altar, Alice made for the door by which she had entered. The voice of the guide became more audible.
‘You can’t get into the dining ’all without me, you know, missie, so it’s no use you being so impatient,’ he called out after her. ‘You best come and listen to me ’ere.’
Alice realized from this that Mr Tidson could not be in the dining hall unless there was a second guide. Ignoring the black-gowned pensioner, she went back to the cleaner and said:
‘I’ve lost track of my uncle. Is there another party going round? I made certain I should find him in the church.’
‘No; this is the only party this afternoon,’ the woman replied. Alice thanked her again, dropped some money into the box near the door, and went into the open again. The custodian called out blithely from the gatehouse:
‘Don’t you want the wayfarer’s dole, then, young lady? Pity to go away without it. It’s historical, you know. You’d like to go home and say you’ve had it. I didn’t ought to offer it to you really. You’d ought to ask. But here you are.’
