The week-end passed, and Mr Tidson, to his great pleasure, heard Bach at the Cathedral and spent nearly all Saturday afternoon watching nymphs at the local swimming pool. It was not until after dinner on Sunday evening that, wishing to take his dog for a stroll, he found that Kelvin was missing.
Henry, the knife, boots and kennel boy, questioned closely, revealed that the dog had slipped his collar whilst Henry was finishing serving teas in the lounge – for the Wee Free Thomas served nothing after two o’clock on Sundays – and that nothing more had been heard or seen of him. The Inspector had happened to come round, and Henry had let him take away the collar.
‘Don’t tell Mr Tidson that! He will think the worst!’ said Mrs Bradley; but she did not explain what she meant.
Mr Tidson, after broadcasting his loss to those who seemed interested, and after being the recipient of advice from such of the guests as cared whether his dog were lost or not (a surprisingly high number), gave up the enquiry and reported his loss at the police station to a lack-lustre sergeant on duty who already knew all about it.
Time passed again. The dog did not return, and Mr Tidson continued to fret for him and looked each day for the naiad. Miss Carmody, consulting Crete as a matter of form and Mrs Bradley as a matter of inclination, again announced her intention of leaving Winchester.
‘A pity Arthur’s term does not begin earlier,’ she said, ‘but I am really afraid we must go.’
Mr Tidson, subdued since the loss of his dog, offered no objection, and the party ordered their car and set off for London.
Mrs Bradley and Laura watched them go. Mrs Bradley noticed, divided between interest and amusement, that they did not appear to have taken any luggage. She ordered her own car, and drove off to Lewes to visit Connie. Laura’s inference that Connie could not be short of money had not escaped Mrs Bradley’s notice, but, whether Connie were short of money or not, Mrs Bradley had made herself responsible for Connie’s hotel bills, and this gave her all the excuse she needed for looking the girl up and finding out what she was doing. The job Connie spoke of had been regarded by Mrs Bradley from the first as purely mythical.
After Mrs Bradley had left again for Lewes, Laura sought out her friends and laid before them a plan of campaign. The coast, she pointed out, was clear of Tidsons, and no time ought to be wasted.
‘Look here, though, young Alice,’ she remarked compassionately, ‘don’t you stay in on this if you’d rather be elsewhere. It seems a bit too thick to expect you to put your summer holiday in the bag. You hop off to the moors and mountains, if you’d rather. Old K. and I can manage, can’t we, K.? And I know Mrs Croc. won’t mind. She didn’t expect you to stop.’
‘Thank you,’ said the trim Alice sedately. ‘Keep all your pity for yourself, Dog, and don’t butt in on my pleasures. You need not think you’re going to get rid of me and have all the fun of hunting Mr Tidson by yourself. If you do think that you can think again! He dodged me once, but he’s not going to dodge me a second time!’
‘But we ain’t hunting Tidson! We’re hunting a nymph, duck. Don’t you know the difference?’
‘I don’t believe in the nymph, and I’m positive Mr Tidson knows something about that poor boy,’ said Alice stoutly.
‘We ought to challenge him, and see,’ suggested Kitty.
‘Be your age,’ said Laura. ‘All the same, I’d like to get hold of something, if we could. Sort of confront Mrs Croc., when she returns, with the evidence we’ve collected. Come on, both of you! Any ideas, young Alice?’
‘I have one,’ said Crete Tidson, from the doorway. ‘May I come in? I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help hearing your voices. I was just going along to have a bath, but someone forestalled me, so, if you’ve no objection, I’ll wait in here. It’s a long way back to my room.’
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘I thought you three had gone to London!’
‘Oh, we came back,’ said Crete, carelessly. ‘Edris doesn’t like London in August.’ She came into the bedroom, dropped her sponge bag and towel on the floor, took a seat on the bed, and surveyed the three girls maliciously, resting on each in turn her large dark eyes.
‘Well, what makes you think my husband knows anything about a poor boy? – and what poor boy does he know about?’ she demanded.
‘Well, it was very funny,’ said Alice. ‘You see, on that afternoon when the boy’s body was found – the one by the railway signal box, you know—’
‘It was you who found it,’ said Crete. ‘What has that to do with my husband?’
‘He was known to have been in the neighbourhood,’ Alice replied. ‘In fact, I was trying to catch up with him. He dodged me, I’m almost certain, and then he deceived me into thinking he’d visited the Hospital at St Cross—’
‘Oh, he had been fishing, as usual,’ Crete replied. She allowed her sardonic eyes to rest on Alice’s thin, hard arms and freckled, plain, honest little face. ‘He cannot always be bothered with young girls. You must make some allowance for a man accustomed to cosmopolitan society.’
Alice grinned – an English reaction which appeared to ruffle Crete. She stooped to gather up her sponge bag and towel.
‘Do you swim?’ asked Laura suddenly, as Crete straightened herself and stood up, her face rather flushed.
‘I was swimming a good deal at Santa Cruz,’ replied Crete sitting down again and pulling her dressing-gown together. ‘Deep water, and very warm. We could bathe for hours.’
‘From rafts, or just from the beach?’
‘We bathed in every way that one can. Once I swam five miles for a bet.’
‘Hm! Not bad,’ said Laura carelessly. ‘Talking of young girls, did you know I went all girlish myself the other morning, and shoved Mr Tidson off the bridge?’
‘He told me – yes. It is a habit of yours, this rough play? – this practical joking?’
‘Well, it was like your own stunt, a bet,’ said Laura, eyeing her. ‘I bet old K. here that Mr Tidson couldn’t swim. Didn’t he swim with you off Tenerife?’
‘I swim with young men,’ said Crete.
‘Well, didn’t Mr Tidson swim with young women, then?’ asked Kitty.
‘I don’t know.’ Crete got up again, but paused at the door. Her brown eyes lingered a moment on Laura’s blue ones. ‘I saw very little of my husband on Tenerife. He was, of course, very busy.’
‘The bananas?’ enquired Kitty, with sorrowful sympathy. Crete looked at her as though she suspected the question of having two meanings, but Kitty’s bland gaze gave nothing away, and Crete, in the end, retreated on the excuse that she had heard the bathroom door being opened and shut, and did not want to lose her turn.
‘A bit funny, her using the bathroom on this floor,’ said Alice dispassionately. ‘How much had she heard when she came in?’
‘Everything, of course,’ said Laura, ‘and a good thing, too, I rather think. Soon we shall know where we stand, and that’s always worth something, even if it only means getting a black eye to be going on with. It’s all very well for Alice to trail old Tidson along to St Cross, and for me to push him into six feet of water, and for you, K., to exercise his libido or whatever it is that Mrs Croc. sets store by, but we haven’t rumbled him yet, and it’s my belief we never shall, except by more drastic methods. What about trying to make the little horror confess, as you suggested yourself a while ago?’
‘But he wouldn’t, except from fright, and what’s the good of that?’ demanded Kitty. ‘If you ask me, Dog, we’d do better to let well alone until we get further orders. You’ll only muck things up if you try to proceed on your own. Where did you get with that drowning stuff? Simply nowhere.’