‘Thank you, darling. And now I shall need my glasses,’ said his mother.
‘There is just one point, though,’ said Mrs Bradley, as soon as Arthur had gone. ‘Connie would have been two years old at your marriage. Would she retain any memories of those two years which might lead her to discover the truth for herself, do you think?’
‘Oh, she lived with Priscilla until my marriage,’ said Mrs Preece-Harvard. ‘That is why Priscilla was ready to have her back. She is very fond of Connie. She always has been.’
When tea was cleared, Mrs Bradley suggested that the mother and son might care for a drive in her car before she returned to Winchester. Mrs Preece-Harvard, who had taken an enormous, although, on the whole, an irrational fancy to Mrs Bradley (since she liked and admired her for just those qualities which Mrs Bradley did not possess, but with which she had, with some histrionic ability, endowed herself for the afternoon), accepted on behalf of her son, but excused herself from the outing on the plea of a necessary rest before she dressed for dinner.
Arthur had thawed at the prospect of inspecting the car, and seemed pleased, in a reserved fashion, to go for a drive. He himself selected the route from George’s maps, and they drove alongside the River Stour to Blandford St Mary and then to Puddleton, and came back through Bere Regis to Bournemouth.
Arthur sat beside Mrs Bradley for the outward journey, and by George on the return one. He was a well- informed boy, and conversation did not flag. By the time they reached the furthest outward point, and left the car whilst they explored Puddletown, the
It was when they came out of the church that he mentioned Connie Carmody, and asked how she was.
‘She is pretty well, I think,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Is she – does she – has she forgiven us yet?’ asked the boy, with a sidelong glance. He kicked a stone out of his path in an attempt to give a lightness to the question which, it was easy to tell, it did not hold for him.
‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Bradley answered. ‘What should you do if you met her suddenly?’
‘I don’t know. We used to have pretty good times together when we were small. Of course, that was some time ago.’
‘Yes, so I understand,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘When you do cross-country running, are you always alone?’
‘Oh, no, I’m never alone. And, in any case, Connie isn’t likely to be about in the winter, is she? Anyway, I don’t do much running, you know, except perhaps on a
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley. She asked no more questions, and Arthur, at her suggestion, with which he seemed eager to comply, sat beside George in front on the homeward run.
‘What do you make of him, George?’ she asked, as George put the rug over her knees preparatory to beginning the journey back to Winchester.
‘I could not say, madam. He seems a pleasant enough young gentleman, but I couldn’t quite make him out.’
‘No. I feel like that myself. Poor boy! I do not envy him his mother, his riches, his relatives, or his vocation.’
‘He goes to a very fine school, madam.’
‘Yes. We will envy him his school, then.’
‘Straight back to Winchester, madam?’
‘Please, and as quickly as we can.’
‘I say,’ said Laura, when Mrs Bradley had concluded a very late dinner, ‘what do you think of Alice’s eye? Take a deck.’
‘What am I supposed to think of it?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, examining a slight, purplish bruise just above Alice’s left cheekbone.
‘I chucked the soap at her,’ went on Laura, ‘and that’s the result. We wondered how it compared with the Tidson and Carmody bruises, that’s all. Remember? You told us about your piece of soap and young Connie Carmody and the ghost.’
‘I remember. But bruises prove very little.’
Laura looked disappointed.
‘I thought it might be a jolly good clue,’ she argued. ‘Not that I meant to hurt her. I suppose it wasn’t Connie you hit with the soap that night, by the way?’
‘I’ve wondered that myself,’ said Mrs Bradley, untruthfully. ‘Incidentally – although I dislike to disconcert you – it was the nailbrush, and not a piece of soap, which struck the ghost. I cannot help feeling that one would bruise more easily from the one than from the other.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Laura grinning. ‘That experiment of ours washes out, then.’
Mrs Bradley cackled, and the subject was dropped. When she got to her room that night she locked the door, closed up the other entrances, and settled down to re-read George’s notes on the Preece-Harvard will. They disclosed nothing that was now new. One way and another, she had learned from other sources all that the will could tell her, and the fact that Connie was young Preece-Harvard’s half-sister she had been able to guess and had had the guess confirmed. The important point was that, if Arthur Preece-Harvard died, the entailed estate passed to Mr Tidson, who happened to be the nearest male heir. This was the clue to the whole strange business, Mrs Bradley conjectured, but was not one which could be translated into anything at all suspicious unless Arthur Preece-Harvard should be murdered.
She burnt the notes in the fireplace, scuffled the thin, black, curled-over sheets together, looked out of the window, and then prepared herself for bed. She was almost immediately asleep, and nothing occurred to disturb her.
Next morning she went out early and saw, at the bottom of the High Street, the long-striding, hatless, beautiful figure of Crete Tidson. Mrs Bradley took great care not to catch up with her. She could not help wondering what it was which had tempted Crete out and at such an early hour.
Crete stood on the bridge for a time and watched the passage of the water under the old mill. Then she crossed the road, but, almost immediately she had done so, she seemed to change her mind, and, instead of following the riverside path, she struck eastwards along the main road, and, walking extremely fast, had soon rounded a bend.
Mrs Bradley, abandoning her original project of walking as far as Saint Cross alongside the water, set out in Crete’s wake and discovered that she was in for a longish walk – or so she thought at first.
The matter, however, became more mysterious than this. About a mile beyond the town a by-road branched southward from the main road, and then made a right-angle turn to the east, so that, by following it, one could get back into the town.
Crete followed this road. In the bend a car was drawn up. Crete began to whistle the tune of a popular song. Out from the car came a man’s hand, and out of the hand fell a letter. The car, which was facing the same way as Crete and the advancing Mrs Bradley, then drove off. Crete stooped, picked up the letter, and walked straight on in the wake of the car.
Greatly intrigued by these man?uvres, Mrs Bradley, who felt that she had seen all there would be to see, turned at once, and returned to Winchester by the way she and Crete had both come. By the time Crete reached the hotel, Mrs Bradley was upstairs, and she descended, as though for the first time that morning, to discover Crete at the vestibule sideboard on which it was Thomas’ custom to place the newspapers and the letters of the guests.
Crete looked up and wished Mrs Bradley a very bright good-morning. It was clear she did not know she had been followed. Mrs Bradley responded with suitable enthusiasm, and, immediately after breakfast, rang up Gavin at his hotel. He came round to the
‘But that’s what you thought,’ said Gavin, referring to all Mrs Bradley’s conclusions. Mrs Bradley agreed.
‘Have you found the stone with which the dog was killed? And have you found out who moved the dog and when?’ she enquired. ‘I shall be interested to see the stone when you find it. It will certainly – well,
