Death and the Maiden

‘Of course you do! Outraged male vanity, because she won’t look at you!’ said Laura.

‘It may interest you to hear,’ said Gavin, ‘that I had some difficulty in getting her out of my hair in the early stages of our acquaintance. She found me handsome, manly and sunburnt, if you really want to know.’

Laura hooted rudely, and startled a gull which had come inland ahead of a gale which had not yet reached the coast.

‘Hush!’ said Gavin. ‘The next thing you’ll frighten is the naiad, and, if you do, we shan’t see her.’

‘I was the naiad myself once,’ said Laura.

‘So I’ve heard. What about a demonstration?’

‘After we’re married, with pleasure. It was quite fun.’

‘It must have been. Rather chilly fun, too, I should have thought. Anyway, here’s the stretch of the river where she’s supposed to have been seen most recently. Ought we to go to ground, and hide behind the willow trees, do you think?’

‘Whatever you say . . . You know, it wouldn’t be quite an impossibility, would it?’

‘What wouldn’t?’

‘To see her. In fact—’ Laura suddenly caught Gavin’s arm – ‘what’s that? See? Over by the reeds in that carrier.’

‘A swan.’

‘I don’t mean the swan. I mean whatever made the swan angry. There’s something or somebody there, and, what’s more, she’s seen us, I think.’

‘Well, we’re here to solve mysteries. Good thing I’ve brought my waders.’ Gavin seated himself and pulled on the thigh-high boots. ‘Here goes. Remember me to Mrs Bradley if I get pulled under and become a little merman or something, won’t you?’

Laura, who had no intention of being left out of any excitement which was being provided, promptly pulled off her shoes, put on a pair of plimsolls and unfastened her skirt. Under it she was wearing shorts. She had no stockings.

‘Stay where you are,’ said Gavin.

‘Rot,’ retorted Laura. ‘Don’t be an oaf.’

Her swain made no rejoinder, and together they entered the water. The stream flowed fast, and it was difficult work to get across it.

‘Hope nobody sees us who has fishing rights here,’ said Laura.

‘Police work,’ grunted Gavin. ‘Can’t help the trout at a time like this. Give me your hand and get a move on.’

‘Right. I’ll pull.’ This was not what Gavin had meant.

She started forward hastily, grabbed at his arm, and fell flat on her face. ‘Oh, Lord! That’s done it!’ she added, as she scrambled to her feet with Gavin’s assistance. ‘Hullo! Neptune’s trident or something!’ She came up holding a forked stick cut from a cherry tree. ‘That’s from no willow bush, cully!’

‘Why the deuce can’t you look what you’re doing?’ demanded her companion. ‘Whoever it was has had time to sheer off by now.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Laura, grimly, as she dropped the branch and scrambled up the opposite bank, her plimsolls slithering wildly on the mud. ‘I think there’s somebody here, and I’m pretty sure—’

She did not finish the sentence. The naked body of Crete Tidson was lying half in and half out of the water in the swiftly-rushing carrier. Her head was under. The two of them dragged her on to the herb-strewn grass, and laid her among the coarse flowers of the lush, late summer.

‘Prop open her mouth,’ said Laura. Gavin’s training had been as thorough as her own. They disposed Crete, glorious in all her pagan loveliness, and then, as the textbooks and not the legends had taught them, they knelt athwart her and took turns at indelicately pumping the river water out of her lungs.

‘Coming,’ said Gavin at last. ‘Hope I’m not bruising her ribs.’

‘So long as you don’t break them,’ said Laura, taking his place and spreading her wide, brown, strong-fingered hands on Crete’s white body. ‘Glad I don’t earn my living doing this!’

‘Don’t talk. It’s waste of strength,’ said Gavin briefly.

Both he and Laura, indeed, were almost exhausted by the time their patient was able to be wrapped up in Gavin’s jacket and placed with her back against a willow.

‘Clothes!’ said Laura. ‘You go.’

‘A car,’ said Gavin. ‘I told Soames to meet us at the bridge. I thought we might not want to walk back. He’ll have rugs and probably an overcoat. I’ll go and get him to help me carry her. You keep moving. Don’t worry about her. You’re soaking wet. I shan’t be long, but I don’t want a wife with pneumonia.’

‘Wife!’ said Laura with a shudder. ‘The one thing I always swore I’d never be. Oh, well, it hasn’t happened yet. All right, I’ll run about and keep warm.’

‘And, look, think this one over: don’t keep holding out on me about Connie. You’re not at your girls’ school now. Well, so long! See you soon!’

It so soon became evident that Crete either could not or would not give any circumstantial account of her dramatic reappearance in the neighbourhood that, at Mrs Bradley’s suggestion, sent by telegram from London (for she had not left for Hereford), Gavin gave up questioning her. He had elicited the statement that Crete had come without her husband, and without Miss Carmody’s knowledge, to have a last look for the naiad after what she had read in the papers, but Crete refused to say more.

‘Where is your husband?’ had been Gavin’s most persistent question. It was one of those which Crete did not answer.

‘I don’t know any more,’ she said. ‘It’s no use to ask me. I don’t know. And, anyway, what does it matter? I suppose I got cramp. I think I did. That’s all.’

Gavin had to leave it at that, and directed his energies to finding Mr Tidson. This did not prove at all difficult. He was back in Miss Carmody’s flat after having been on a short visit to Mrs Preece-Harvard. Arthur had gone to stay with a friend in Cheshire, and was not expected home for a week. Mr Tidson had stayed to lunch, and had heard the news about Crete on his return to London. He could give no information about his wife. She had left him in Alresford, and had said that she was going on to Winchester. He had seen her on to the bus. Apart from this, he knew nothing.

Mrs Preece-Harvard confirmed all this, including the facts that she and Mr Tidson had had lunch together and that he had been in her company until he left for Miss Carmody’s flat. In other words, if he had been suspected of trying to drown his wife, his alibi was perfect, for there seemed no reason why Mrs Preece-Harvard should lie. There was also no reason, as Gavin pointed out moodily to Laura, why Tidson should have wanted to drown his wife, or why she should have wanted to save him by her silence if he had.

‘Besides,’ said Gavin, ‘we should have seen that something was up. He couldn’t have got away. We were right on the spot.’

‘But that’s just what’s so extraordinary,’ said Laura.

‘What is?’

‘That we got there in time to save her. It couldn’t be just coincidence. She’s playing some game.’

‘She’s got me licked if she is. There’s not much doubt she was pretty well finished when we found her.’

‘Yes, I know. But she’s clever, is Crete Tidson. Artistic, too, I expect, and pretty unscrupulous. She wouldn’t spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar.’

‘She’s got generous ideas of a ha’porth, then,’ said Gavin.

‘Granted. We agreed she’s extravagant.’

Their eyes met like swords flickering, and then they began to laugh.

‘Well, I’m not extravagant,’ added Laura.

Chapter Nineteen