‘But what did Henry call Mr Tidson?’ Mrs Bradley felt compelled to enquire. ‘My lug is hardened, Thomas. Tell me the worst.’
‘Na, na,’ said Thomas, with a high, free giggle. ‘We’ll just say he ca’d him a dirty auld mon, and leave it at that the noo.’
‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. She went thoughtfully back to her room and unlocked the door with the key which she had carried away with her. There was no doubt that during her absence the room had received a visitor; one, moreover, who had provided his own entertainment. The room had been ransacked. All the contents of her chest-of-drawers and her wardrobe had been flung on to the bed, and her suitcases were open on the floor. ‘Somebody would like to know Connie’s address, I should think,’ she said to herself with a shrug.
She put the room to rights, put the barricades across the fireplace and the wardrobe as she had had them the previous week, and placed the bedroom utensils underneath the window. Then she got into bed and slept her usual light but infinitely refreshing sleep until seven o’clock the next morning.
Detective-Inspector Gavin, a light-haired young man in a tweed suit, brogues and heather-mixture socks of a colour-scheme so uncompromising that it could be assumed that his easiest way of disguising himself would be to leave them off in favour of more sober-hued hose, dropped into the cocktail lounge of the Domus at the following mid-day and asked for beer.
Mrs Bradley had no difficulty in recognizing him, although she had met him only once before. They took no notice of one another, however, and, when he had finished his beer, Gavin lit a pipe and sauntered into the vestibule of the hotel. When the Tidsons went in to lunch, Mrs Bradley strolled to the front entrance as though to look at the weather.
Gavin joined her in a very casual manner, smoked for a moment, and then said:
‘Inquest to-morrow morning. Important developments. Boy had been dead some days when he was found. How do you like that, Mrs Bradley?’
‘What beautiful weather we’re having,’ said Mrs Bradley. She had become aware of the approach of Crete Tidson. She smiled at the dark-eyed, greenish-haired and very beautiful woman.
‘Edris is having champagne. He wants to know whether you’ll join us,’ said Crete at once. She did not appear to include the inspector in the invitation, but he promptly said:
‘Why, thanks very much, I think I will. Very good of you. I think I know your husband. Wasn’t he in bananas?’
Mrs Bradley, who had witnessed some entertaining incidents in her time, was now entertained by this one, and she helped matters (to her own satisfaction, at least) by exclaiming with great cordiality:
‘Oh, good! Yes, of course, Mrs Tidson, you know Mr Gavin, don’t you?’
‘Gavin? Oh – Gavin!’ said Crete. She smiled winningly upon the young man.
‘Mr Gavin,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a peculiarly evil grin, ‘is an old Etonian. You understand what that implies?’
‘Please?’ said Crete, looking bleak. Mrs Bradley cackled.
‘There is something about your stockings, Mr Gavin,’ she added, as she eyed those Hebridean horrors with great respect and liking, ‘which suggests the complete angler, and that fact, I know, will fascinate Mr Tidson even more than the now rather shameful disclosure that you paid for your education.’
‘I do do a little fishing,’ Gavin admitted. Crete’s smile returned.
‘Then you will please drink champagne with Edris!’ she exclaimed. ‘Edris will fall on your neck, do you say? I think he will. Why not?’
‘And so will Crete, if she can make the grade,’ said Laura rudely, when the gist of this conversation came to her ears in Mrs Bradley’s rich and beautiful voice a little later in the day. ‘We must wait and see. Is this Gavin susceptible, do you think, to nymphomaniacs?’
‘To what?’ enquired Mrs Bradley, very much startled. Laura shrugged, and then laughed.
‘Well, granted that Crete Tidson is, in any case, a bit of a leper,’ she said, ‘it would, after all, explain a good deal if she were a nymphomaniac. Mr Tidson’s banana profits would all have been needed for hush-money, very likely.’
‘You ought to be careful, Dog,’ said Kitty soberly, when she heard these outrageous remarks. ‘You could be had up and fined for saying such things as that.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Laura languidly. ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel, don’t they say? Illogical, but the law’s often that. Anyway, this Gavin has gone off fishing for tiddlers, and old Tidson’s gone off with him. I wonder what they will catch?’
‘The flying hours,’ said Mrs Bradley absently. ‘That boy you found had been dead for some time, as you thought,’ she added, with apparent inconsequence, to Alice. ‘He certainly could not have been killed on Mr Tidson’s afternoon outing, which may bring us back to that raft.’
‘Have they found out who he was?’ demanded Alice.
‘Yes. His name was Hugh Biggin, and his home was in Southampton. He came to Winchester about a fortnight ago, but although his parents were worried at having no news of him, they did not inform the police because the boy had run away from a Borstal institution and they were afraid they would get into trouble because they had given him shelter.’
‘Then when did the parents tell the police he was missing?’
‘That has not been made public. I doubt whether they told the police anything. I think the police themselves have found out who the boy was. The verdict at the inquest this time was murder by persons unknown.’
‘It’s all so horrible! Two boys for no reason! What are your own ideas? You’ve got some theory, haven’t you? I mean, apart from the fact that you think Mr Tidson did it!’
‘But I have never said that I thought Mr Tidson did it!’ Mrs Bradley protested. ‘I have never said anyone did it! I have three theories, child, and one complete conviction, but I cannot prove anything. The deaths, if they are murders, seem motiveless, unless Potter murdered the first boy for the reason that Potter’s wife gave me, and I’m perfectly certain he did not.’
‘This second boy had been knocked on the head and killed.’
‘He had been struck dead, yes. There was no doubt, in this case, about that. Further, the lump on his skull was approximately in the same position as that on Bobby Grier’s head. Further, his leg, as you know, and two of his fingers were broken. He was a weakly boy, and did not look as old as his age, which was nearly eighteen. The police searched the place where he was found, and have concluded that someone (who may or may not have been the murderer) thrust the body on to the concrete after it had been dead for some days. The boy Biggin must have been killed only a very short time after little Grier – possibly on the same night—’
‘Possibly to shut his mouth,’ said Alice, ‘and that Tidson—’
‘I am not, as I tell you, accusing Mr Tidson, although much of his behaviour has been suspicious,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You see—’
‘Don’t bother about me,’ said Alice. ‘I’m not at all squeamish; you can tell me anything. And I’ve read all the morbid psychology books, you know. Umbrellas and things,’ she added helpfully. Mrs Bradley cackled, but refused to be drawn by this remark.
‘It is all a question of motive,’ she said. ‘No-one except Potter can be shown to have had any motive for killing either of the boys, and at present the death of this second boy has not predisposed the police in Potter’s favour. They think, like you, that the second murder was an attempt to screen the first, but they cannot, of course, at present, show any connection whatever between little Grier and this boy Biggin. Still, that may not be necessary. Another task awaits us, and ought to be dealt with soon. I want to find out what Connie Carmody is doing. I had a telephone message which mentioned her name, and the caller apparently thought I could be persuaded to believe that she could be in two places at once.’