heaven, which Freud undoubtedly inherits.’ She eyed her cowed audience benignly, and then continued, ‘Freud thinks that we leave objects necessary or dear to us in the place where we leave our hearts. You desired to be in Winchester, not in London (and I admire and applaud your choice), and so you left your luggage here. That is all.’
This speech left all her female hearers with nothing to say. Mr Tidson, however, was not so handicapped.
‘Allow me to point out,’ he began; but he was interrupted by the entrance of Thomas, who bore in his arms a fine log of wood, and was followed by Pollen carrying a bucket of coal.
‘Ye’ll pardon me, madam,’ said Thomas, pausing in his stride and holding the log in the experienced but slightly absent-minded and off-hand manner of the officiating clergyman with a baby at its baptism, ‘but there is a kind of a body wishing tae speak wi’ ye in the smoke-room. I wad hae shown him in here, but he isna fit for the lounge carpets. That yin in the smoke-room is no great matter.’
‘Has he been fishing, Thomas?’
‘I dinna ken. He has nae rod. He is after fa’ing into the burn, mair like, frae the look o’ him. But ye’d better gae and speir at him yoursel’ whit way he’s as weet as he is.’
‘It sounds like you, Mr Tidson,’ said Mrs Bradley, preparing to take her departure. ‘Didn’t
She suddenly bellowed these words into the unfortunate Mr Tidson’s right ear, so that he jumped like a gaffed salmon and had the same expression on his face as one sometimes sees on a dead fish – at once surprised and peevish.
‘Really!’ he said, when Mrs Bradley had gone. He rubbed his ear and then stared angrily at the door through which she had passed, and then more angrily at Alice, who was struggling with a sudden fit of hiccups, with her a nervous reaction which was apt to appear at awkward moments. ‘Really! You know, Prissie,’ he added, turning round on Miss Carmody, ‘I don’t understand Mrs Bradley! I don’t understand her at all.’
The visitor, of course, was Detective-Inspector Gavin, as Mrs Bradley had supposed.
‘I’ve got something, I think,’ he said.
‘Yes, so have I,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Swop?’
‘Swop.’
‘Well, then, you know this second boy’s home was in Southampton? I’ve been there and interviewed the parents. They swear they had no idea that the kid had gone to Winchester. He’d run away from an Approved School the night he was killed. That all came out at the inquest, of course, as you know. But that isn’t all. I’ve also found out that the parents were very glad to be quit of the boy. He was always a difficult kid, and it also appears that his grandfather left him a bit of money. Not much – forty-five pounds, to be exact. Curiously enough, the father was in debt, and the forty-five pounds, which he took from under the floorboards in the boy’s room, will clear him nicely, and give him twenty pounds to spare. I had to bounce the information out of him, but there it is. What do you think about that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I can’t see why he didn’t steal the boy’s money before. Is there any evidence that the creditors were pressing him to pay?’
‘Well, he owed it to a bookie at Brighton, and there had been some loose conversation about a razor-slashing gang. It all adds up, you know, doesn’t it? The whole family are rather bad hats. The father’s been in quod twice for house-breaking, and it seems that the boy was taking after him.’
‘I’m still more surprised that the father left the money under the floor, and did not steal it sooner.’
‘He may have been scared of the kid. You never know. But it
‘I don’t think it adds up with the unopened tins I found on Saint Catherine’s Hill, but, of course, it might,’ said Mrs Bradley, without much enthusiasm. ‘And housebreaking isn’t murder, although I know there have been cases of violence lately. Still, the money, no doubt, was very useful if the father was mixed up with a race-gang, and apart from any question of foul play, may be one of the reasons for not reporting the death. My own news is rather different.’ She referred to the strange behaviour of the Tidsons and Miss Carmody in affecting to leave the hotel and coming back to it next day, and then mentioned the discovery of the dead animal among the bushes beside the weir, and the Tidsons’ fishing with the boot.
‘But you haven’t told me yet how you come to be half-drowned,’ she added. ‘I do hope you won’t catch cold.’
‘I never do, thanks, and that bit of news isn’t very important, I’m afraid. It’s interesting, though, in its way. I saw the nymph, and went in after her. No, please don’t laugh! I really did think it was she. It couldn’t have been, of course, but it gives some colour to old Tidson’s raptures, doesn’t it?’
‘But what
‘Oh, I hardly know how to describe it. Just some trick of the light and shade upon the river, and somebody talking near by. I’d like to tell you more about it later. Now, I should think this dead animal must be a coincidence, shouldn’t you? Still, it wouldn’t hurt to go and take a look. What animal was it – a dog?’
‘I haven’t been told. I don’t think the girls stayed to see. They didn’t like the smell, I imagine. But there’s one other thing. I am wondering whether it could possibly be the dog Mr Tidson lost some days ago.’
‘Really? Well, if you’re game, let’s go and investigate. It would be interesting to find out why the animal died so near to where Biggin’s body was found, whether it’s Tidson’s dog or not.’ He glanced at the rain. ‘At seven to- morrow?’ He glanced at his clothes. ‘And now I’d better go and get changed.’
They were descending the High Street next morning at seven o’clock, and, crossing it, they walked past the west door of the Cathedral and were soon in the Close. After the rain the day was flawless, although there were pools and puddles everywhere, for the night had been very wet.
‘So Miss Menzies tried ducking Tidson?’ said the Inspector. He chuckled in an unpolicemanlike way. ‘What exactly was the object of that?’
‘To give him due warning,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and to persuade him that we know he’s a liar. All pure kindness really. Unfortunately, he seems disinclined to profit by it, and at present we should find it embarrassing to be more explicit, I fear.’
‘A nod and a wink to a blind horse?’
‘Exactly. Well, he should have resisted the temptation to come here and look for his naiad. Trouble was bound to follow, either for himself or the nymph. But possibly I wound you? You, too, have sighted the naiad.’ She cackled harshly. They turned at the end of College Street and were soon beside the water. The Inspector suddenly laughed.
‘I may see her again! This seems the place for naiads. It certainly isn’t the spot for two murders, is it? I do think Cathedral cities, and these water-meadows, ought to be immune from horrors, and policemen, and nasty little brutes like Tidson.’
‘Not every policeman would confess to having glimpsed a naiad,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And these murders are not native to the place. They have been planted here by the devil, or some of his agents.’
‘By the power of witchcraft, more likely. Strange, when you come to think of it, how many people must have believed in witches.’
‘I had a remote ancestress who was a witch,’ said Mrs Bradley with great complacence. The inspector, stealing a glance at her black eyes, and at the yellow countenance whose bones had been the architecture of a beauty now fallen into decay, felt very much inclined to believe it.
‘She was tried in Scotland in the time of James I,’ Mrs Bradley continued, ‘but was let off by the favour of the presiding magistrate, whose paramour she was said to be when the devil was occupied elsewhere and her incubus not in the mood. It’s a very odd story. Rather well documented, too.’
‘Was she young?’ the inspector enquired.
‘Oh, yes. At the time of her trial she was barely nineteen, it is said. One day I ought to get someone to write her story.’*
‘I shall look forward to reading the book,’ said the inspector. He looked abroad upon the lovely waters, their sedgy meadows, the hill beyond the meadows, the Winchester College playing-fields, the wet long grass and the
