‘A dead animal?’ she said very thoughtfully. ‘And the Tidsons and Miss Carmody are back? Very interesting, all of it. What have you done with Inspector Gavin, by the way?’
‘I expect he’s fishing,’ said Laura. ‘Have you had tea?’
‘No. Let us have it together.’
‘I don’t know that I feel like tea,’ said Laura mournfully. ‘My stomach’s been turned, that’s what.’
‘You said it would rain,’ said Alice, to change the subject. She looked up at the sky above the square white Georgian house on the opposite side of the street. ‘See? Here it comes.’
Great drops, proving her assertion, fell on the pavement and splashed on the roof of the car. The party went into the hotel and through to the lounge, and in a very few minutes the episcopal Thomas appeared with a laden tray, followed by one of his myrmidons, a small, black-trousered individual called Pollen, with another, larger tray.
‘It’s guid tae see ye,’ Thomas announced as he set the tray down. ‘Pit the tray dune, mon,’ he added to Pollen, ‘and bring over the wee table. The night’s settin’ in real weet. I’ll just pit a light tae the fire.’
Brushing aside such guests as were in his way, he did this, and the fire, recognizing the master-touch, crackled cheerily.
‘And very nice, too,’ observed Laura. ‘I feel hungry now, after all, and a fire’s always jolly when it’s wet. How’s Connie?’
‘Still in the land of the living,’ Mrs Bradley cautiously replied. She greeted the Tidsons and Miss Carmody with a very nice blend of surprise and pleasure when she saw them come in from the garden. Miss Carmody explained that London was dusty and hot, and that Edris feared for his asthma.
‘So here we are, back again,’ she concluded, ‘and now, of course, it’s going to set in wet. If the rain continues over to-morrow, we shall go back to London after all. Strange, was it not, that we all forgot to have the luggage put into the car when we left!’
‘Not so very strange,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘It is a Freudian symbol.’
‘It is?’ said Mr Tidson, joining in the discussion with frankness, benevolence, and curiosity. ‘Pray explain, my dear Mrs Bradley. I am afraid it only seems to me like carelessness, both on our own part and on the part of the hotel. But, of course, I thought Prissie had looked to it, and she thought I had. But Freud—?’
‘It is very simple,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Freud thinks—’
‘Thought,’ said Miss Carmody, ‘surely?’
‘Thinks,’ Mrs Bradley firmly but courteously reiterated. ‘There is no past tense in the conjugation of genius, especially when it has left us whatever of itself can be conveyed by the printed page; and there is no past tense in heaven, which Freud undoubtedly inherits.’ She eyed her cowed audience benignly, and then continued, ‘Freud thinks that we leave objects necessary or dear to us in the place where we leave our hearts. You desired to be in Winchester, not in London (and I admire and applaud your choice), and so you left your luggage here. That is all.’
This speech left all her female hearers with nothing to say. Mr Tidson, however, was not so handicapped.
‘Allow me to point out,’ he began; but he was interrupted by the entrance of Thomas, who bore in his arms a fine log of wood, and was followed by Pollen carrying a bucket of coal.
‘Ye’ll pardon me, madam,’ said Thomas, pausing in his stride and holding the log in the experienced but slightly absent-minded and off-hand manner of the officiating clergyman with a baby at its baptism, ‘but there is a kind of a body wishing tae speak wi’ ye in the smoke-room. I wad hae shown him in here, but he isna fit for the lounge carpets. That yin in the smoke-room is no great matter.’
‘Has he been fishing, Thomas?’
‘I dinna ken. He has nae rod. He is after fa’ing into the burn, mair like, frae the look o’ him. But ye’d better gae and speir at him yoursel’ whit way he’s as weet as he is.’
‘It sounds like you, Mr Tidson,’ said Mrs Bradley, preparing to take her departure. ‘Didn’t you fall into the river? I had better see him at once. One figures to oneself that he MUST HAVE SEEN THE NAIAD!’
She suddenly bellowed these words into the unfortunate Mr Tidson’s right ear, so that he jumped like a gaffed salmon and had the same expression on his face as one sometimes sees on a dead fish – at once surprised and peevish.
‘Really!’ he said, when Mrs Bradley had gone. He rubbed his ear and then stared angrily at the door through which she had passed, and then more angrily at Alice, who was struggling with a sudden fit of hiccups, with her a nervous reaction which was apt to appear at awkward moments. ‘Really! You know, Prissie,’ he added, turning round on Miss Carmody, ‘I don’t understand Mrs Bradley! I don’t understand her at all.’
The visitor, of course, was Detective-Inspector Gavin, as Mrs Bradley had supposed.
‘I’ve got something, I think,’ he said.
‘Yes, so have I,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Swop?’
‘Swop.’
‘Well, then, you know this second boy’s home was in Southampton? I’ve been there and interviewed the parents. They swear they had no idea that the kid had gone to Winchester. He’d run away from an Approved School the night he was killed. That all came out at the inquest, of course, as you know. But that isn’t all. I’ve also found out that the parents were very glad to be quit of the boy. He was always a difficult kid, and it also appears that his grandfather left him a bit of money. Not much – forty-five pounds, to be exact. Curiously enough, the father was in debt, and the forty-five pounds, which he took from under the floorboards in the boy’s room, will clear him nicely, and give him twenty pounds to spare. I had to bounce the information out of him, but there it is. What do you think about that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I can’t see why he didn’t steal the boy’s money before. Is there any evidence that the creditors were pressing him to pay?’
‘Well, he owed it to a bookie at Brighton, and there had been some loose conversation about a razor-slashing gang. It all adds up, you know, doesn’t it? The whole family are rather bad hats. The father’s been in quod twice for house-breaking, and it seems that the boy was taking after him.’
‘I’m still more surprised that the father left the money under the floor, and did not steal it sooner.’
‘He may have been scared of the kid. You never know. But it does all add up, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t think it adds up with the unopened tins I found on Saint Catherine’s Hill, but, of course, it might,’ said Mrs Bradley, without much enthusiasm. ‘And housebreaking isn’t murder, although I know there have been cases of violence lately. Still, the money, no doubt, was very useful if the father was mixed up with a race-gang, and apart from any question of foul play, may be one of the reasons for not reporting the death. My own news is rather different.’ She referred to the strange behaviour of the Tidsons and Miss Carmody in affecting to leave the hotel and coming back to it next day, and then mentioned the discovery of the dead animal among the bushes beside the weir, and the Tidsons’ fishing with the boot.
‘But you haven’t told me yet how you come to be half-drowned,’ she added. ‘I do hope you won’t catch cold.’
‘I never do, thanks, and that bit of news isn’t very important, I’m afraid. It’s interesting, though, in its way. I saw the nymph, and went in after her. No, please don’t laugh! I really did think it was she. It couldn’t have been, of course, but it gives some colour to old Tidson’s raptures, doesn’t it?’
‘But what did you see? – And how do you account for having seen it, and been deceived?’