‘I’ve wondered that myself,’ said Mrs Bradley, untruthfully. ‘Incidentally – although I dislike to disconcert you – it was the nailbrush, and not a piece of soap, which struck the ghost. I cannot help feeling that one would bruise more easily from the one than from the other.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Laura grinning. ‘That experiment of ours washes out, then.’
Mrs Bradley cackled, and the subject was dropped. When she got to her room that night she locked the door, closed up the other entrances, and settled down to re-read George’s notes on the Preece-Harvard will. They disclosed nothing that was now new. One way and another, she had learned from other sources all that the will could tell her, and the fact that Connie was young Preece-Harvard’s half-sister she had been able to guess and had had the guess confirmed. The important point was that, if Arthur Preece-Harvard died, the entailed estate passed to Mr Tidson, who happened to be the nearest male heir. This was the clue to the whole strange business, Mrs Bradley conjectured, but was not one which could be translated into anything at all suspicious unless Arthur Preece-Harvard should be murdered.
She burnt the notes in the fireplace, scuffled the thin, black, curled-over sheets together, looked out of the window, and then prepared herself for bed. She was almost immediately asleep, and nothing occurred to disturb her.
Next morning she went out early and saw, at the bottom of the High Street, the long-striding, hatless, beautiful figure of Crete Tidson. Mrs Bradley took great care not to catch up with her. She could not help wondering what it was which had tempted Crete out and at such an early hour.
Crete stood on the bridge for a time and watched the passage of the water under the old mill. Then she crossed the road, but, almost immediately she had done so, she seemed to change her mind, and, instead of following the riverside path, she struck eastwards along the main road, and, walking extremely fast, had soon rounded a bend.
Mrs Bradley, abandoning her original project of walking as far as Saint Cross alongside the water, set out in Crete’s wake and discovered that she was in for a longish walk – or so she thought at first.
The matter, however, became more mysterious than this. About a mile beyond the town a by-road branched southward from the main road, and then made a right-angle turn to the east, so that, by following it, one could get back into the town.
Crete followed this road. In the bend a car was drawn up. Crete began to whistle the tune of a popular song. Out from the car came a man’s hand, and out of the hand fell a letter. The car, which was facing the same way as Crete and the advancing Mrs Bradley, then drove off. Crete stooped, picked up the letter, and walked straight on in the wake of the car.
Greatly intrigued by these manœuvres, Mrs Bradley, who felt that she had seen all there would be to see, turned at once, and returned to Winchester by the way she and Crete had both come. By the time Crete reached the hotel, Mrs Bradley was upstairs, and she descended, as though for the first time that morning, to discover Crete at the vestibule sideboard on which it was Thomas’ custom to place the newspapers and the letters of the guests.
Crete looked up and wished Mrs Bradley a very bright good-morning. It was clear she did not know she had been followed. Mrs Bradley responded with suitable enthusiasm, and, immediately after breakfast, rang up Gavin at his hotel. He came round to the Domus at a quarter past eleven, so that it looked as though he had merely dropped in for a drink. She outlined to him the provisions of the will, and detailed her conversations with Arthur and Mrs Preece-Harvard.
‘But that’s what you thought,’ said Gavin, referring to all Mrs Bradley’s conclusions. Mrs Bradley agreed.
‘Have you found the stone with which the dog was killed? And have you found out who moved the dog and when?’ she enquired. ‘I shall be interested to see the stone when you find it. It will certainly – well, almost certainly, let us say – be found at the bottom of the river. To-morrow I shall go fishing.’
‘I could come with you.’
‘No, no. To-morrow perhaps you had better come nowhere near me at all.’
‘Right. Forgive me for asking, but have you ever done any fishing?’
‘A little. Enough to know how to make a cast.’
‘I’ll let you have some of my flies. Do you want to borrow a rod? Tell me what your idea is.’
‘I think it is time the murderer realized that I am dangerous, and had the chance to knock me on the head.’
‘Oh, but look here, I say, you must be careful! It wouldn’t do—’
Mrs Bradley cackled, and poked the young man in the ribs.
‘Talking of accidents,’ she said, ‘you haven’t yet told me all about the nymph who caused you to get so wet. You remember? You came to the hotel—’
‘And Thomas put me in here, in the smoke-room, and told me not to move out of it because of the hotel carpets! Yes, I remember, of course. Well, you remember that at just after five it came on to rain?’
‘Yes, of course I remember. And you went in after the nymph. That, too, I know. But where exactly did you see her?’
‘You know that little road which connects the Southampton Road with the new by-pass? It runs past the swimming pool and over a couple of bridges. Well, beside the first bridge there is an old, broken, wooden footbridge under which the stream is fast and a good bit deeper than one imagines, and rather narrow.
‘Until the rain came on, it was pleasant there, and I was standing on the wooden bridge, looking fairly aimlessly at the water, when I spotted a sort of commotion. I watched, and the sedgy reeds parted and I saw – I swear it! – a woman’s head with fairish hair coloured something between the green of an olive and the yellow of a dead wild-iris leaf. It was gone the next second, but I heard a laugh, and then an exclamation in Greek.’
‘In Greek?’
‘In ancient Greek, too! “Too cold and chilly,” was the exact exclamation I heard. At least, that would be the translation.’
‘It sounds like a quotation from the Frogs of Aristophanes, does it not? “Too cold and chilly,” is a line in the Frogs, I think.’*
‘It is most likely. I do know, anyhow, that I agreed with the remark when I had lowered myself into the stream. I hadn’t stopped to think before that! I was anxious only to find this naiad who spoke Greek.’
‘Did she fly from you as soon as you entered the stream?’
‘I don’t know, but I didn’t find her. The stream was deeper than I thought, and it was running pretty fast, and I was wading against the current. I caught just a glimpse of her, you know, while I was still on the bridge, or perhaps that was only my fancy. Anyway, it was apparent that there was nothing more to see, except old Tidson, who was very calmly fishing from behind a clump of tall reeds. He cast very badly, as a matter of fact, and nearly hooked me. I can easily understand he hooked his hat! I climbed out near to where he was, and told him I’d seen the nymph and had even heard her speak. I asked him whether he’d spotted anything moving, but he said he hadn’t seen a thing, except a very impressive trout which he insisted upon describing in far too elaborate detail. He did say that he had heard a voice coming across the water, but that he hadn’t really taken any notice. At the time he heard it, he thought that this special trout had taken his fly, and he wasn’t in the least interested in anything else in the world.’
‘What kind of fly?’
‘A hackle caperer, he said. What difference does it make?’
‘I should have thought it might have been a sherry spinner at this time of year, that’s all. But pray go on with your story.’