As Alice stood up – with some difficulty, for the stone was slippery and the water, although it was extremely shallow, poured rapidly over the concrete towards the fall – she saw that two men in railway uniform were standing on the brickwork above, and were looking down. A young policeman was with them.
‘What be up to down there?’ asked the policeman.
‘Give me a hand, please,’ said Alice. They hauled her to the top of the brickwork. The policeman had his notebook out and was moistening the lead of his pencil.
‘Get down there first and see whether he’s really dead,’ said Alice peremptorily. ‘I shan’t run away. You can ask me all the questions afterwards.’
The policeman nodded, and, the official boots scraping purposefully on the brickwork, he lowered himself to the concrete, and, regardless of the water, knelt on one knee beside the corpse.
‘Nothing to do for him,’ he announced at once. ‘I’ve sent for the doctor. He’ll be here in a minute. Haul me up.’ The railwaymen hauled him up. ‘And now, miss,’ he said, ‘to your account. Name and address, please, first. And then you can say how you come to be finding this corpse.’
‘You can have my name and address, of course,’ said Alice, ‘but I wasn’t the first person to find the body, you know. One of these gentlemen did that. He saw it from that little platform on the signal.’
‘Right enough,’ agreed the constable. ‘I’ve had his story, which is the corpse came slithering down the bank. Poor kid must have had a heart attack, shouldn’t wonder. Now, miss, what about you?’
Alice gave her name and that of the Domus, and explained how she had seen the signalman waving.
‘I don’t know whether you’re right about a heart attack, though,’ she added. ‘This boy has been dead some time, and I think there’s a lump on his head. And where are his shoes?’
‘Ah, I noticed them bare feet,’ replied the policeman. ‘That’s why I say it’s Heart. Been paddling, and the cold water done for him. Like ice, that water is. Well, thank you, miss. Perhaps I’d better have your home address as well, just in case.’ His tone had become less official and much more friendly. Alice gave her home address. She was impatient to be gone. There was no time to be lost, she felt, in acquainting Mrs Bradley with the results of her afternoon’s hunting.
Tea was still being served at the Domus when she arrived. She went straight into the sun-lounge and had the great good luck to find Mrs Bradley alone. She seated herself at a separate table, ordered tea, scribbled a note, walked casually towards the double doors which led on to the garden, dropped the note in Mrs Bradley’s lap as she passed, and opened the double doors.
It was neatly, adroitly and unobtrusively done, but Alice was a neat, adroit and unobtrusive young woman. Mrs Bradley took no more notice of the note than she would have done of a flower-petal blown, as Tagore has said, upon the breeze, and Alice, satisfied that the manœuvre had not been observed by any one of the few remaining guests, went into the garden. There she saw Thomas coming out of the dining-room French doors. She grinned at him and went back again to the sun-lounge and her table.
Mrs Bradley had read the note. She grimaced at Alice, and then invited her in a loud tone to come and sit at her table and give her opinion of a crossword puzzle which Mrs Bradley had almost completed.
Alice moved over, and Mrs Bradley showed her the newspaper. They discussed the crossword until Alice’s tea arrived. The sun-lounge emptied. The waiter disappeared.
‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Bradley. Alice gave a brief, accurate and lucid account of the afternoon she had spent in pursuit of Mr Tidson.
‘He came back at four,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I saw him come in.’
‘But that means he left his fishing rod at St Cross and came back here by road!’
‘It seems so.’
‘Ah, then he couldn’t have had anything to do with the affair at the weir,’ said Alice, with great relief.
‘Why should he have had anything to do with it? You have not been told how long the body had been there, and the death, in any case, was most probably the result of an accident. You don’t even know yet who the boy was. How old a boy, should you say?’
‘I don’t know. Sixteen, or perhaps even younger. I think, really, not more than fifteen. And his leg was broken.’
‘How was he dressed?’
‘Oh, he had on flannel trousers and a shirt and a tweed jacket. No shoes. He couldn’t have been there for more than a matter of minutes. Somebody would have seen him long before the signalman spotted him. The man said he slithered down the bank, but I don’t see how he could have done. He hadn’t – he hadn’t just died. He’d been hit on the head. That’s certain.’
‘But why should the signalman invent the story of the corpse sliding down the bank? I must take a look at the place. Don’t you think what he said must have been the truth?’
‘I don’t see how a corpse could suddenly slide down the bank. Well, not at that spot. If you saw it you’d know what I mean.’
‘I do know what you mean,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I believe the signalman, too. If it didn’t slide down it was pushed down, and that might bring Mr Tidson into the picture, don’t you think? He’d have had time to give it a push before coming on here.’
‘I don’t know what to think. Please, where is Kitty?’
‘I don’t know. She’s out.’
‘I thought she was guarding Mrs Tidson?’
‘Yes, but Miss Carmody altered those plans by inviting Kitty to accompany her to Andover on the bus.’
‘Andover? Why Andover?’
‘Miss Carmody pointed out that there was charming scenery along the bus route, which happens to be true, and that Andover is a typical Hampshire country town and well worth visiting,’ said Mrs Bradley, with no expression in her tone.
‘I see,’ said Alice, registering the idea that Mrs Bradley believed Miss Carmody to be not less villainous than the Tidsons.
‘Do you?’ Mrs Bradley looked interested and felt slightly amused, for Alice’s mental processes were artless.
‘I mean,’ said Alice, with her usual gravity, ‘that I see – at least, I think I see – why Kitty had to go with her. One thing, she couldn’t have had anything to do with it, either – Miss Carmody, I mean. You know – the body at the weir.’
‘But why should she have had anything to do with it? I repeat that we do not know who the boy was, or how he met his death. He may have stumbled on the brickwork you have described, and fallen on to his head, and his companions may have hidden the body, afraid of being blamed for the death. Such cases, although uncommon, have been known. But do boys of that age usually fall on their heads from a height of six feet, you will ask – and I don’t know the answer. Even if he were pushed—’
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘It’s difficult. His leg was broken, you know, as I said before.’
‘So you did. Ah, well, no doubt the inquest will tell us more about it, and perhaps whether the signalman was the first person to see the body. Was Mr Tidson wearing a hat?’
‘No, he wasn’t. Does he usually wear a hat, then?’
‘Well, he used to, and thereby, we think, may hang a tale. If you see him in a hat you might let me know. Our next task, as I see it, is to find out where he went and what he did. His behaviour may or may not have been suspicious. We cannot tell in the present state of our knowledge.’
‘No,’ said Alice, who felt (although incorrectly) that she was being blamed. ‘I’m awfully sorry I lost track, but I did lose all trace of him so completely that I think he must have known he was being followed, and I think he dodged me deliberately, which doesn’t really look too good.’