Death and the Maiden

aptness. She propped open his little mouth with a hard piece of stick, and seemed to be doing her best to break his ribs. She got up at last, grimaced at Mrs Bradley (who had come near enough to obtain a close view of the proceedings), tossed the back of a rosy heel at Mr Tidson, took a gentle run, and dived deeply into the pool.

By the time Mr Tidson had managed to scramble to his feet, she had come up out of the stream and was dressing behind a willow tree near by. Mrs Bradley assisted Mr Tidson to wring the water out of his suit. A moment later there lay on the path, tossed out from behind Laura’s willow, a dry suit of clothing, some shoes and socks, and a towel.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, pouncing upon this gift. She dried her hands on the towel, handed it over, indicated another clump of willows, gave him the dry clothes, and made her way back to the hotel. Laura, coming up at a gentle trot, joined her at the mill near College Walk.

‘Barbaric but effective, child,’ said Mrs Bradley comfortably, referring to the ducking of Mr Tidson. ‘I think we may conclude, from this morning’s demonstration, that, whatever Mr Tidson’s other gifts, he certainly cannot swim.’

‘I hope all his past came before him,’ said Laura roundly. ‘I regard that little man with great dislike.’

Mr Tidson reappeared at the Domus in a very bad temper for his mid-morning glass of whisky, and to Thomas’ tactlessly blunt enquiry as to what he had been doing to fall into the river again, he returned a squeak of rage as he handed him over the bundle of sodden clothes.

‘Dried and pressed, and as soon as possible,’ he said.

‘A word with you,’ said Mrs Bradley, waylaying Mr Tidson at the door of the cocktail lounge. ‘Come back, and I will order another whisky.’

Mr Tidson went back, and, as soon as the whisky was ordered, he began a long and querulous complaint against Laura Menzies, citing instances of cramps and sudden heart-failure. Mrs Bradley listened sympathetically, nodding her head and observing that girls would be girls, and that she was sure that the boisterous Laura intended no harm, and that the bridge had a rickety handrail, although this last was not strictly the truth and had had nothing to do with the affair.

A couple of whiskies improved Mr Tidson’s outlook. He modified his reasonably peevish point of view. Finding him mellowed, Mrs Bradley suddenly demanded, with almost wifely menace, and with no leading up to the subject:

‘And what have you done with your hat?’

‘My panama?’ said Mr Tidson, who did not seem to be taken aback by the question but might have prepared an answer to it. ‘It is so annoying! I lost it fishing, you know. I cast very badly – oh, very badly. It really was quite a disgraceful cast, I am afraid; and, before I realized what had happened, I had struck! – but in my hat and not in a fish! Off came the hat, and into the river it went, and that was the end of the hat, for it was not well hooked and the current soon floated it away.

‘I pursued it, needless to say, but—’ he spread his little plump hands – ‘to no avail. I was obliged to abandon it to Peneas, and write it off a dead loss. A pity! I was much attached to it.’

‘You carried your flies in its band?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Tidson, looking suspiciously at her, ‘of course I did.’

‘Especially your hackle caperers,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, ‘not to mention your fisherman’s curses.’

Mr Tidson permitted himself to cackle.

‘What a wit you are!’ he said in sycophantic admiration. He patted her yellow claw. It was like a toad patting a raven, thought Laura, who had entered the smoke-room in quest of a half-pint of beer. Seeing the room thus occupied, and fearful of breaking in upon Mrs Bradley’s interrogation of Mr Tidson, she tip-toed out again.

‘I don’t wonder she’s ashamed to come near me,’ said Mr Tidson, thankful to return to his complaints. Mrs Bradley smiled gently, like a crocodile contemplating food, and Mr Tidson, to his own surprise, gave a sudden gulp as though he had bitten his tongue, and forbore to enlarge upon his grievance.

‘And I have found out Connie’s address,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Her aunt will be so much relieved. The only trouble is that I’m asked to keep it a secret.’

If Mr Tidson had any particular reaction to this last statement he did not show it. He merely replied:

‘You will relieve Prissie’s mind. I know she has been most anxious about the girl.’ Then he added, in the tones of a mourner, ‘I suppose you have not given further consideration to what I said about the death of that boy, Bobby Grier?’

‘Oh, yes, I have thought about it often,’ Mrs Bradley truthfully replied.

‘Ah, well, it appears I was mistaken. I’m glad they’ve got the man who did it,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘What a scoundrel to have deceived his wife like that! And with such a woman!’

Mrs Bradley wished with all her heart that there could have been witnesses to Mr Tidson’s last sentence. She wondered how he came to remark upon Mrs Grier so understandingly. He might, of course, have been fishing for information. If so, he had put the fly to a very wily trout who refused to take it.

Kitty and Alice came back to Winchester with the welcome news that Connie was still at the Stone House and was prepared to stay there quietly until she received further orders.

‘Well, that’s something,’ Mrs Bradley observed. She told Miss Carmody that Connie was safe and well, but that she preferred to keep her whereabouts a secret.

‘She seems,’ said Mrs Bradley in explanation, ‘to have formed a poor opinion of Mr Tidson.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Carmody. It was a sigh of acquiescence; a reproachful verdict of Guilty; Mrs Bradley very much admired it. She liked economy in words, and felt that Miss Carmody had achieved this.

‘It is good of you to take it so sensibly,’ she said.

Matters were thus in a state of comparative suspension and remained very quiet and uneventful for nearly another week, during which the party contrived to re-book their rooms. At the end of that time Miss Carmody announced that her expenses at the Domus had already mounted to more than she had been prepared to pay, and that, nymph or no nymph, she and the Tidsons must return to London. They had stayed, she added, a good deal longer than she had ever, in her wildest estimates, intended. She spoke with sorrowful severity, as though it were Mrs Bradley’s fault that she had stayed so long.

Mr Tidson was almost broken-hearted. This fact he confided to Laura, with whom he was soon on speaking terms again. Laura regarded with suspicion this sudden and kindly forgiveness of her high-handed action in pushing him into the river, but she kept her thoughts to herself and returned Mr Tidson smile for smile.

On Thursday morning of the week in which Miss Carmody had announced that they must take their departure, her party decided to go to Dorchester for the day. Mrs Bradley went to see them off, and the last that she and Laura saw of them was the flash of the August sunshine on the spare wheel at the back of their car as they turned at the top of the street.

Miss Carmody had made no further mention of Connie, and the moment the car was round the bend Mrs Bradley was at the telephone booth in the hotel vestibule, and was putting through a call to Wandles Parva. Connie Carmody, driven by the faithful George, Mrs Bradley’s chauffeur, was at the Domus in time for lunch.

‘And now,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘where is your job?’

‘In Lewes,’ Connie replied, ‘and I have to go in on Monday. I must dodge Uncle Edris until then.’

It turned out that Connie had not been nearer Lewes than Brighton, and had been to Brighton only for the day. Mrs Bradley rang up Miss Carmody’s London flat to make certain that she and the Tidsons had not deceived her, but really had gone out for the day, and, receiving no reply, thought that all would be well.

Immediately lunch at the Domus was over, she bundled Connie into the car and on to the back seat, climbed in beside her, waved a skinny claw to the Three Musketeers who were collected at the front door of the hotel, sat back and ordered George to drive on.

The car took the route through Petersfield and Midhurst to Lewes, and Mrs Bradley and Connie went to an hotel in the High Street. After coffee they walked, at Mrs Bradley’s suggestion, down the steep hill through the lower part of the town, and then crossed the main road at the foot of the slope and climbed up the rough path past the memorial, and on to the golf course, and beyond it.

In a field of stubble they sat down, and, after a period of silence during which they took in the view, Mrs Bradley remarked:

‘And now to business. I want you to tell me all you know.’

‘About what?’ Connie naturally enquired.