‘Well, that’s what I mean. It’s all the same thing,’ said Kitty. ‘You know, irresponsible and pink and a bit bald-headed.’
‘Don’t babble,’ observed her friend. ‘Now, then, where’s this room of ours? You’d think our forefathers were descended from rabbits, wouldn’t you, to build these complicated domiciles!’
‘What shall we do about the sightseeing?’ demanded Kitty. ‘Do we have to barge round the Cathedral?’
‘Sure,’ replied Laura. ‘I’ll show you.’
They spent the following morning in ecstatic exploration of the Cathedral. Nothing escaped their fascinated contemplation, and Kitty enjoyed herself more than she had expected to do. Conversation was brisk, although they had to carry it on in low tones.
‘Look, Dog! Fancy having your skeleton for a memorial!’
‘They’re called rebuses. The guide book says they are quaint. After all, there’s nothing like understatement.’
‘The Communion rails are quite the nicest thing here, Dog. Don’t you think so?’
‘Late seventeenth-century. Yes, but what about the choir stalls? And those wall-paintings in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre?’
‘The thing is that people couldn’t have looked like that. Let’s go and see whether the verger is going to open the crypt. Then perhaps we could go up the tower and look at the view. Cathedrals give me a headache.’
Laura, after an hour or so of this, took her friend back to lunch, and announced, on the way, that she had found out where the boy Grier had been drowned, and that they would go in search of information directly the meal was over.
Accordingly, they lunched, and then went down the High Street to the bridge and the mill, and took a side-turning. After five minutes’ walking, Laura suddenly observed:
‘I was told there was a Youth Hostel somewhere about. Do you see one?’
‘We passed it. It’s the old mill. You should use your eyes, Dog,’ said Kitty, with the triumph of the down-trodden.
‘I did – on the lie of the land. Oh, well, if we’ve passed the Youth Hostel, we’re on the right track, and that’s something. I imagine, then, these are the houses.’
They soon encountered some children. In fact, there seemed to be a considerable number.
‘It’s the boys we want,’ muttered Kitty, ‘not the girls. Boys will know what took that other poor kid to the river late at night. Girls wouldn’t know anything like that.’
‘Late at night? Lord, K.! You remembered that?’
‘You’re not the only person who can take an interest, Dog,’ said Kitty with great complacence. ‘Wait till someone asks us the time, and we’ll make our grab. Kids always ask strangers the time. I believe it’s an obscure form of cheek.’
As they came to the bridge, they were stopped by three little boys who were playing with an orange box on perambulator wheels.
‘Please can you tell me the right time, missis?’ asked the leader. Kitty consulted her watch. It was very tiny, and excited immediate interest.
‘The right time?’ said Kitty, squinting down at it. ‘Oh, Lord! I must get my glasses.’ She did not wear glasses. Her sight was remarkably good.
‘I’ll tell it, missis! Let me ’ave a look!’ urged one of the children at once. Kitty let him look. She even took the watch off and let the three boys handle it. Laura looked on, expecting every moment that one of them would let the watch fall, and smash it, but it was passed from one pair of dirty paws to another without disaster. At the end, the leader strapped it on to Kitty’s wrist. It was not very hard after this to ask the boys the necessary questions.
‘The boys all made a raft out of pieces of packing case, and hid it in the reeds, and this drowned kid, they think, went and sneaked it away,’ said Laura thoughtfully, as they turned back over the bridge to gain the long lane and the hotel. ‘Well, that’s quite a likely reason for a kid to be prowling about late at night. Pity there’s no evidence as to how he was hit on the head.’
‘If there were, we’d know who murdered him, wouldn’t we?’ Kitty enquired. ‘Still, the raft says something, doesn’t it?’
Both of them, Kitty in particular, received Mrs Bradley’s compliments as soon as Laura imparted the facts after tea.
‘And they are your due, too,’ said Laura cordially, sitting on the end of Kitty’s bed before she went to her own room for the night. ‘The way you handled those kids was masterly. The profession lost a promising recruit in you when you took up this hairdressing business.’
‘Oh, rot, Dog! I’d never have made a teacher. Kids never behave themselves with me, and I never think of ticking ’em off or telling ’em not to until it’s too late and they’ve done it.’
‘Yes, there is that,’ agreed Laura. ‘What do you make of the infant who tags about after that Carmody woman, and calls her Aunt Prissie or something? The one whose closer acquaintance we’re scheduled to make. Not such a pill as she looks.’
‘Connie Carmody? I suppose she’s all right.’
‘Ah, but you ought to attune yourself, K., to her reactions. Ask me, that girl’s scared for her life.’
‘Literally, Dog, do you mean?’
‘Pretty nearly literally, I should say. Didn’t you notice she made some excuse not to go upstairs by herself, and that in broad daylight? Not normal, K., in a wench of nineteen summers. And didn’t you notice how quickly Mrs Croc. took the hint and went up with her? There’s something got on the girl’s nerves, and Mrs Croc. guesses what, I think, and believes there’s something in it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Some people are fearfully nervous. I know I was when I was eight. Nothing on earth would induce me—’
‘Eight ain’t nineteen, duck. Besides, this Connie is scared of something definite. And do you know what I think?’
‘Yes, of course. Tidson,’ said Kitty.
‘Tidson?’ said Laura, the wind taken out of her sails.
‘Yes. He’s a nasty old thing. I expect he’s made an improper advance, or what-not.’
‘You haven’t gone all nymphomaniac, have you?’ asked Laura, eyeing her friend with keen interest. Kitty was about to deal with this libellous enquiry when Laura got up off the bed and went softly to the door. Twisting the handle suddenly, she pulled the door open with a jerk. Connie Carmody stood there, a suitcase on the floor beside her.
‘I say, I’ve got to get up to Town,’ she whispered. ‘Can either of you lend me any money?’
Chapter Nine
‘Break off the dirty Ends, put Salt to them.’
Mrs SARAH HARRISON (The Housekeeper’s
Pocket Book, etc.)
‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ said Kitty vehemently. Laura surveyed her friend’s comely proportions with amusement, Mrs Bradley with courteous interest.
‘Honest?’ asked Laura, with much more point than kindness.
‘I’m not talking to you, Dog,’ said Kitty with splendid dignity. ‘Don’t butt in.’
‘The floor’s yours,’ agreed Laura, taking out a cigarette and regarding it thoughtfully before she put it into her mouth. ‘Say on; but be brief. I smell Tidson, so we’d better pipe down.’
It proved to be Crete, who came dispiritedly into the lounge, her embroidery frame in one hand and a handbag dangling from the other. She had a cigarette in her mouth, and when she put down her things and took it out, its lipsticked extremity might have been covered in blood.