‘The murder?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Nobody mentioned murder! The newspaper certainly does not; and, so far as I can see, there is no reason in the world why Mr Tidson should have had anything to do with the boy’s death, if that’s what you mean, or that we should in any way suspect him, even if murder were proved.’
‘Ticked off soundly! Yet this Mr Tidson came into your mind as the deus ex machina, didn’t he?’ said Laura shrewdly. ‘Is that because the paper mentions the naiad? And why should they call it a local rumour? I thought that was just what it wasn’t!’
‘True, child, it was not a local rumour, and I see no reason why the naiad should have been mentioned, but I’m not going further than that until after the inquest, so please don’t leap to conclusions or put ideas into my head!’
‘Do you think,’ asked Laura, not at all abashed, ‘that Mr Tidson himself wrote that first letter to the Vanguard?’
‘It is strangely probable, child, although there is at least one other equal probability, especially as we are told that the tenant of the flat is a woman.’
‘Why should anyone write it, anyway?’
‘I have the glimmerings of a notion about that.’
‘You mean Mr Tidson wanted an excuse to go to Winchester?’
‘You are too intelligent, child,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘That is one theory, certainly.’
‘But why invent something as impossible as a water-nymph?’ argued Laura. ‘If I wanted to go to Winchester – or anywhere else, come to that! – I could invent a dozen better excuses! Let’s not talk rot about this!’ She eyed her employer with a good deal of solemn reproachfulness. ‘See here, we know perfectly well that water-nymphs are all moonshine, and can be dismissed as such, so why a water-nymph? Why not invent a monster trout? A monster trout in the Itchen would be sheer Isaak Walton, but a naiad—! This Mr Tidson must be bats, and you could write him off as such, I should have said. Of course, a murderer – that’s another matter.’
‘Well and bravely spoken,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But Mr Tidson, if I have summed him up at all successfully, is perfectly capable not only of inventing but of producing a water-nymph, and of wishing her on to sceptics like yourself. So, if you do come to Winchester, don’t you press him too far, or I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’
‘As though you haven’t foreseen the consequences, weighed them up, and decided how to deal with them!’ said Laura, hooting rudely to rob this speech of its otherwise complimentary aspect. ‘I’m not getting anywhere with all this banana stuff, dash it! We must go and get ready for dinner. Grub omnia vincit, don’t you think?’
Chapter Five
‘Take the Leaves of Rue, pick’d from the Stalks, and bruise them . . .’
‘N.B. You may occasionally change the Conserve of Rue for that of Roman Wormwood, which is rather more agreeable, and nearly as efficacious.’
Mrs SARAH HARRISON OF DEVONSHIRE
(The Housekeeper’s Pocket Book, etc.)
THE reference to the naiad would have taken Mrs Bradley back to Winchester without the telegram from Miss Carmody which arrived whilst she and Laura were at dinner, but, as the telegram did come, Mrs Bradley’s decision was confirmed.
‘Return at once fear worst frantic,’ the telegram ran. A prepaid reply form accompanied the message. Mrs Bradley filled it in and returned to Winchester early enough on the Friday morning to attend the inquest on the drowned boy. Miss Carmody insisted upon going with her, and whispered, just before the inquest opened, that she did not expect there to be any hope at all.
‘Hope of what?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. Miss Carmody did not reply, and Mrs Bradley wondered whether she had connected Mr Tidson with the boy’s death because of the reference to the naiad, and whether, in making the connection, she had jumped to the same unreasonable conclusion as Laura.
The proceedings soon came to an end. There was little to be learned from them except the age of the boy which, given in the newspaper as thirteen, turned out to be only twelve. This discrepancy was explained, amid tears of contrition, by the boy’s mother – or, rather, foster-mother – who confessed that the family had moved to Winchester just before the war, and that the boy was the child of some friends who had sent him away from Southampton. They themselves had been killed, six months later, during a raid. She confessed that she had given the boy’s age as a year more than it was, so that he could go to work a year sooner than the law allowed. Her tears, Mrs Bradley thought, were from the mainspring of greed rather than grief, for the family, although humble, were comfortably circumstanced enough, and the woman’s only regret was for the money now never to be earned. Apart from that, it seemed more than likely that she was glad to be rid of the boy, for the billeting money, she declared, was insufficient for his keep.
‘Not much love lost in that household!’ said Miss Carmody, as she and Mrs Bradley walked back towards the Domus for lunch.
‘And not much explanation as to how the boy came to be drowned,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I wonder whether I could get permission to see the body? Not, I imagine, that that would tell me much. But it seems rather odd—’
‘I will find out when the funeral is to be,’ said Miss Carmody readily. ‘One thing, I shall scarcely feel, after what that unpleasant woman said, that I am intruding on the sanctity of grief! By the way, I ought to tell you about the sandal.’
‘Did the dead boy wear sandals?’ Mrs Bradley immediately enquired. ‘I thought we were told it was boots.’
‘Yes, yes. He had boots. This was just something very peculiar that Edris did. You remember I warned you he was given to odd ideas . . .’ She recounted how Mr Tidson had shown them the sandal, told of the way he had disposed of it, and mentioned Connie’s reactions.
‘And, of course, he was out that night, and got very, very wet, and he was out very early next morning,’ she said in conclusion, and explained how she knew all this. ‘His arm and hand had abrasions,’ she added, ‘which seems strange in a six-foot pool.’
The family on whom the dead child had been billeted occupied a small house, one of a compact, uninteresting row, in a street alongside a stream on the north side of the city. Far from experiencing any difficulty in getting in to see the dead child, Miss Carmody and Mrs Bradley discovered that his home was open from front to back so that the whole neighbourhood, if it wished, could file past to look at the body.
Mrs Bradley and Miss Carmody, stared at with un-resentful curiosity by the neighbourhood, had only to join the small single-file queue of morbid sightseers in the street outside, to find themselves at the end of an hour at the bedside of the dead boy. He had been laid out in the sitting-room, and a collecting-box for money to be spent on wreaths and (if the appearance of the foster-father gave any guide) upon alcoholic comfort for the relatives, was displayed at the foot of the bed.
Death had given to the child the strange and awful beauty of the departed. His eyes were closed, his fair hair, now carefully dried and combed, was long and curled slightly on his brow, and his arms had been crossed upon his narrow and bony chest. Mrs Bradley drew back the covers to see this. The people in front of her had done the same thing, and had muttered, ‘Don’t he look peaceful,’ before they drew the covers back again, so she knew that she would be violating none of the customs if she followed their example. She even passed a claw gently over the top of his head, on which was an unexplained lump – referred to by the doctor at the inquest – which indicated that the lad had been struck before he was drowned, or had fallen on something hard before he tumbled into the extremely shallow water where he was found.