Death and the Maiden

didn’t sound as though Tidson had ever been fabulously wealthy. Certainly not wealthy enough to tempt a female who could have married the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, or anyone else she pleased. She’s a woman who’d make a painter scream with joy.’

‘Perhaps she wanted British nationality. Some foreigners will do anything to get it. She’d have got it by marrying Tidson,’ suggested Alice.

‘The fate worse than death, I should have thought, to marry Tidson. Still, something, perhaps, in what you say. It doesn’t account for the murders of two perfectly ordinary boys.’

‘You don’t know whether it does or not,’ said Alice. ‘And were they such ordinary boys? The second one was a delinquent. I don’t call that frightfully ordinary.’

Laura picked up the soap from the washstand and threw it.

‘Good Lord!’ she said, starting up. ‘I’m awfully sorry, young Alice! Did it hurt?’

‘Nothing to signify,’ said Alice, tidily retrieving the soap and replacing it in the soap-dish before putting a hand to her head.

‘Where did it catch you? In the eyeball?’

‘Not quite. Don’t fuss. I’ve had far worse knocks from people’s elbows in netball.’

‘You’ll have a black eye to-morrow, I shouldn’t wonder. The others did, according to Mrs Croc.’

‘What others?’

Laura explained.

‘Wish I’d been here to see,’ she regretfully added. ‘It appears the bruises soon wore off, but they must have been fun while they lasted. Do you bruise easily, young Alice?’

‘Fairly easily. Don’t keep on. I’ve no beauty to spoil, thank goodness.’

‘A Christian attitude,’ said Laura. ‘Nevertheless, accept our sincere apologies.’

‘Rather funny if she didn’t bruise,’ said Kitty, thoughtfully. Laura looked at her in surprise, but Kitty’s bland expression betrayed no detective faculties, and Laura, who had been in close association with her friend from their early school days, knew better than to suspect her of having any. It was a chance and frothy remark, made merely on the spur of the moment, but it put such a wild idea into Laura’s head that she felt she could scarcely wait until Mrs Bradley’s return to confide it, nor for the next morning to prove whether Kitty could possibly be right. If she were right, such vistas of crime and counter-crime rose before Laura’s inward eye that she felt staggered at the implications which they evoked.

‘Let’s go out and chase naiads,’ she suggested. ‘Crete will be out of that bathroom in two or three minutes. Let’s not be here when she comes back.’

‘Let’s go to the place where the body was found,’ said Kitty. ‘I might get an idea. Who knows?’

‘I do,’ said Laura rudely. ‘Sherlock Holmes might, but I’m pretty sure you won’t, duck. It’s a mistake to go out of your age-group.’

The thought of a walk was welcome, and an objective seemed desirable. Laura put her head in at the doorways of all three lounges and into the smoking-room, too, and Alice went into the garden. Miss Carmody was in the garden with some crochet and the hotel bore who had engaged her as audience, and so was safe, thought Alice, for at least another hour. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign anywhere. Alice joined the others without having been seen by Miss Carmody, and Laura waylaid Thomas in the vestibule and asked for Mr Tidson.

‘He was awa’ wi’ his fishin’ rod,’ said Thomas. ‘Mabel was speirin’ wad he be in tae his dinner, and he said he thought he wad, and for his tea, too. He was verra, very pleased wi’ himsel’, was yon wee mannie, although whit way he would be so, I dinna ken.’

‘I thought Mr and Mrs Tidson and Miss Carmody had left the hotel,’ said Laura.

‘We didna think tae see them syne,’ said Thomas, ‘although they didna tak’ their luggage. Bad bawbees aye turn up again, I’ll be thinking!’ He went off to the kitchen, and the girls went up the marble steps to the hotel entrance, and were soon in the street.

‘I wish I knew where to ’phone Mrs Croc.,’ said Laura. ‘I feel she ought to know about the Tidsons and Miss Carmody coming straight back. I wonder how long she’ll be away? They could never have intended to leave. It was some sort of blind. I wonder what the scheme is, anyway? Well, never mind! Come on.’

* Mr Anthony Buxton’s fox-terrier. Chapter 4 of Fisherman Naturalist.

Chapter Fifteen

‘He will have had much experience: and this is necessary if you are to describe so varied a pursuit as angling, where the possibilities are so many that some incidents only repeat themselves once or twice in a life-time.’

J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)

Along the edges of the carriers the water-mint and the loosestrife were in flower. Meadow-sweet, with its large, dense cymes; the meadow-rue, with its spreading stamens and smooth, tripartite leaves; the lance-leaved Ragged Robin; the watercress; the hollow-stemmed angelica; the fertile water dropwort, and, in a tiny pond, the yellow water-lily, clothed the fields and the river banks and tinged the streams with red, white, purple, green and gold.

The sun was hot, but thunder hung in the air. Laura glanced at the sky and then at the hills.

‘We’ll probably get wet,’ she observed. ‘It’s going to rain.’

‘Oh, rot!’ said the urban Kitty. ‘There isn’t a cloud!’

‘It will rain,’ said Laura, with conviction, ‘and you haven’t a hat. Will that coiffure of yours come unstuck if we get a downpour?’

‘Lord, no, Dog. It’s a perm. Besides, it won’t rain. You’ll see. And, talking of hats, we could have a look for old Tidson’s.’

Alice made no remark. The three, sauntering and loitering, took nearly an hour to reach the brickwork banking on the weir. Laura, astride on the verge, surveyed the concrete platform.

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‘Nasty sort of place,’ she said. ‘Why have we come?’

‘To watch Mr Tidson fishing,’ Alice replied. She indicated a lone fisherman occupied with what seemed a heavy line.

‘In this water? Has he gone crazy?’ Laura demanded. ‘I don’t know. That’s a boot on his line,’ said Alice simply.

They watched, from the cover of some bushes. Suddenly Alice touched Laura’s arm. Crete Tidson was coming along the railway path. She walked with a long, free stride and was softly whistling the Soldier’s Chorus from Faust.

‘Now what?’ muttered Laura, drawing her companions deeper into the bushes. ‘Look out, Kitty! Don’t fall backwards down the bank. The water’s filthy down there.’

The unsuspecting Crete soon joined her husband, and then they walked towards the girls and stood on the brick-work. Their antics were instructive and peculiar. First one and then the other would toss the boot into the water. It was retrieved every time with the fishing line, on the end of which was a meat-hook. As soon as this hook took hold of a piece of bent wire which had been fastened between the eyelet-holes of the boot to form an arch, the line was reeled in and the catch removed from the hook. Each partner did this in turn.

A group of little boys came along and inspected the strange proceedings. At one time there must have been a dozen of them or more. They were difficult to count because they were hardly ever still, for they followed the adventures of the boot, and occasionally waded into the stream to retrieve it for the Tidsons when it fell over the edge of the concrete slab and into the rapids below.

On the approach of some grown-up people, Mr Tidson, whose turn it was to fish, and who had just hooked the boot for the fourth time since the girls and the audience of children had been watching, took the trophy and