willows. He sighed deeply. Mrs Bradley said no more, and very soon, crossing the bridge from which Mr Tidson had been translated into something new and strange, an animal scarcely aquatic and certainly terrified, they reached the further stream and took the narrow path beside it to the road-bridge nearer the hill.
They dropped down on the other side of the road-bridge and walked, rapidly still, along an asphalt path to the weir.
The inspector, regardless of his natty shoes, lowered himself to the concrete platform and crossed the swiftly-rushing but shallow water.
‘It’s a dog all right!’ he called back from the bushes amongst which he had plunged after scrambling up the bank on the opposite side of the stream. ‘He’s not very nice. The rats have been at him, I think.’
‘Has he been knocked on the head?’ asked Mrs Bradley.
‘Difficult to say. I shouldn’t come, if I were you. He isn’t any sight for a lady, and the smell is enough to make you ill!’
But Mrs Bradley was already halfway across.
‘Yes, I could smell him some distance away,’ she said calmly.
‘A post-mortem on a dog, ma’am?’ said the local superintendent dubiously. ‘Well, yes, I daresay he would, if you thought it necessary.’
‘I do think it necessary. I want him to check my findings.’
‘And those, ma’am, are—’
‘I prefer not to say until the police doctor has examined him.’
‘Very good, ma’am. I’ll have him come along. We can’t take the dog to the mortuary, though, I’m afraid. Was Inspector Gavin having a joke when he suggested it?’
‘Oh, yes. He’ll do very well here. We shall want a deal table, of course, and, for your own sakes, you had better spray some disinfectant about.’
‘Practice makes perfect,’ said Gavin. ‘That’s what was said, I believe. I don’t know how you could stick that postmortem! I’m thankful to get away from that dog, and that’s a fact. Knocked on the head like the boys? I wonder what the murderer uses?’
‘I don’t think there’s very much doubt. It must be a fairly heavy stone. We can’t tell whether the same hand killed the dog and the boys, you know, but a stone was used in both cases.’
‘Thanks for the information, which had occurred to us as a probability after the earlier reports. The local people have made a preliminary search, and they’ll find that stone eventually if they have to examine every pebble between here and Southampton. They’re particularly keen to have an end to this beastly business. And when they do find it? What then?’ And he shrugged his shoulders.
They parted, and on the way back to the hotel Mrs Bradley met her chauffeur in Jewry Street, where he was gazing in at the window of a confectioner’s shop.
‘Yes, the chocolates are excellent here,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You are well advised to consider parting with your personal points, George. I also have a few left. Let us go inside, and, in the shop, you can give me what I would not take from you yesterday at the hotel.’
The document changed hands whilst the shop-assistant was weighing out the sweets.
‘I sometimes feel I am dogged by Mr Tidson,’ Mrs Bradley continued, as they left the shop and began to walk back to the hotel. ‘For a short time I have shaken him off. I would not like him to know what I have in my possession. It might look to him a little odd, and to Miss Carmody, too, that I should possess the facts of the Preece-Harvard will. I shall want the car after lunch, George. We must go to Alresford and then, very likely, we shall need to go on to Andover. Do you think we could make a detour, as though we were going somewhere entirely different? I am pretty certain to be watched, and we must not give too much away.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ said George. ‘And there is Mr Tidson coming along the street. I think he has been buying himself a hat. And the boys have identified that raft.’
‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Bradley. She greeted Mr Tidson warmly, and walked back with him after offering him one of her chocolates.
George took her to Alresford by the unusual route of the Botley Road and through Bishop’s Waltham, Corhampton and the crossroads north of West Meon. They did not need to go to Andover. The first person they met on the road between New and Old Alresford – it happened to be a greengrocer’s lad on a bicycle – told them where the Preece-Harvards lived and exactly how to find the house. It was more than two miles outside the village, and along a lane, but the car could find a track and went bumpily towards its destination.
* A suggestion made recently by Mr Jeremy Scott.
Chapter Sixteen
Mrs SARAH HARRISON (
J. W. HILLS (
THE PREECE-HARVARDS, as Mrs Bradley had expected, were away from home. The housekeeper, impressed by the car and also by the staid respectability of the uniformed George, readily supplied their address as soon as Miss Carmody’s name was mentioned. She remembered Miss Carmody well. Miss Carmody had called there not so long ago, and had been told that the Preece-Harvards were in Bournemouth.
‘I suppose you remember Miss Connie Carmody, too?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. ‘Although no doubt it is some time since you saw her?’
‘Oh, I remember Miss Connie clearly,’ the housekeeper answered; and then closed her lips in the manner of her kind when they intend to indicate that they could add to their replies if they chose, and hope to be asked to do so.
‘A dear girl,’ said Mrs Bradley carelessly.
‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ replied the housekeeper; and, with this sidelight upon the relationship between Connie and the housekeeper, Mrs Bradley went back to the car.
‘How long will it take us to get to Bournemouth, George?’ she demanded.
‘A matter of an hour and a quarter, if I am to push along ordinary, madam. I could do it in less, but—’
‘That will do charmingly, George. We shall get there in time for tea at the hotel. I have a feeling that a widow with a schoolboy son will go in to tea at her hotel, especially in Bournemouth, where the teas are often so good. Very convenient indeed.’
Mrs Bradley’s deductions proved to be correct. It was a quarter to four when she went into the lounge of Mrs Preece-Harvard’s hotel, and at five minutes to four a tall, thin woman accompanied by a tall, fair boy of the required age came and sat at a table near by. Mrs Bradley immediately joined them, a proceeding which, much to her surprise, was welcomed and not resented.
‘Ah!’ said the woman. ‘So nice of you. Hotels are rather lonely places, aren’t they? Are you staying here long? I do hope so.’
‘I have only just arrived,’ said Mrs Bradley with truth. ‘I have been staying in Winchester at the
‘Good gracious! You must know Priscilla Carmody! My late husband’s cousin. A dear person. Hasn’t she been staying there too?’
‘Yes, with a Mr and Mrs Tidson, I believe.’
