‘Well, but aren’t we walking away from the house you want?’
‘I don’t want the house, child. I want to interview the girl on my ground, not on hers. I shall write her a threatening letter.’
‘That should winkle her out of her home and along to the Domus, I’ll bet!’
‘I hope so. If it doesn’t, I shall visit the place where she works. I shall threaten, at any rate, to do so. I think that perhaps she’ll see reason.’
These bullying tactics succeeded. Potter’s young woman turned out to be a weakly-looking creature of about thirty, fair-haired and with insipid pretensions to prettiness. Mrs Bradley made mincemeat of her in no time, and hauled her along from the Domus, where they met, to the police station, where they parted, and, having scared her almost to death, left her to the local Superintendent.
Against her evidence, abetted by that of the neighbours – that Potter visited her during licensing hours, whilst her father was at the public house – no case against Potter could stand.
‘That ought to frighten old Tidson,’ said Laura, who felt rather worried. She confided this emotion to Gavin, who replied:
‘That will be taken care of.’
‘Sez you!’ observed Laura, with more thoughtfulness than these words merit.
‘No, really,’ Gavin objected. ‘Not a word will come out in the papers about the release of Potter, and he’s been advised to say nowt. Of course, plenty of people will know he’s cleared, and that’s as it should be, after all; but officially no news will leak out, and we’re only needing time to get on to Tidson. It needs his hat to turn up. Potter swears he saw it when he picked up the boy—’
‘I suppose,’ said Laura, struck by a sudden idea, ‘he did find the boy where he said he did?’
‘Yes. We’ve found a woman who was on her way into Winchester to pick up a very early bus. She saw him lift the boy up (she didn’t know, of course, that the kid was dead), and she wondered whether she ought to stay and help. But she’d got the day off from work to go into Southampton to see whether she could get a pair of shoes, and was late already for the bus she intended to catch, so she didn’t wait. She didn’t mention the hat, and we didn’t feel we could put a leading question. If it was there, she hadn’t noticed it.’
‘Oh, well, then, that’s that,’ said Laura. ‘But you’ve got to keep an eye on Mrs Croc. I’m not having her scuppered by Tidsons. By the way, was it wise to let him get clean away from Winchester?’
‘We’re having him tailed all right. The local superintendent – an awfully good chap and a mine of information on dryfly fishing, by the way – isn’t sorry to have Tidson go. He pollutes the air of Winchester, according to the superintendent, and will probably cause Saint Swithun to turn in his grave.’
‘He’s a horror,’ said Laura stoutly. ‘You’ve got to get him, you know.’
‘Don’t worry. But we haven’t found the weapon yet, and when we do it won’t have his fingerprints on it. I wonder when he moved Grier’s body from the weir? On that early morning trip, I guess. He’s been intelligent, you know.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘No peculiar absences from the Domus except the telephone one – he must have been windy about something that night; I don’t believe he just wanted Connie’s address—’
‘He’s got frightful cheek,’ said Gavin, ‘and doesn’t mind taking a few risks. He worked out that nobody could connect his absence from the hotel with the murders – or, at any rate, nobody could prove it had anything to do with the murders – and he did want something out of Mrs Bradley’s room. Connie’s address was easily the most likely thing he would be looking for.’
‘All right. Granted,’ said Laura. ‘All the same, if she’d come back and found him—’
‘She wouldn’t have found him. She’d have found Crete, and Crete would have been ready with some plausible tale.’
‘Come to borrow an aspirin tablet. I know. Well, I hope you get him!’
‘We’ll get him,’ said Gavin. ‘Only, you see, it takes time.’
‘And, but for Mrs Croc., you’d have hanged Potter without a qualm.’
‘I shouldn’t think so, you know. But she certainly put us on to Tidson. That I’ll admit, although I can’t see yet where it gets us. We can’t prove a thing.’
‘I see now why Miss Carmody was so worried about Tidson in the first place.’
‘Was she worried about Tidson?’
‘Well, she called Mrs Croc. in at once to give his reflexes the once-over. And she told Mrs Croc. she was sure he had murdered little Grier.’
‘Did she? That’s rather interesting. What had she got to go on?’
‘Only the naiad. But there must have been something else, surely?’
‘Perhaps not, you know, if she knew – as she did know, of course – that Tidson was the next heir to the Preece-Harvard money and estates, and had made an idiotic excuse (the naiad is idiotic, isn’t it?) to get down to Winchester near the boy who was keeping him out of the inheritance.’
‘Yes . . . but considering we admit he’s been rather intelligent for a murderer, wasn’t it a suspiciously silly excuse? He wouldn’t want to attract attention, surely, to the fact that he meant to come to Winchester when the boy, when he isn’t at school, lives so frightfully near, at Alresford.’
‘That point has worried me a bit, but perhaps he’s forgotten, living abroad for so long, that English people don’t stay at home in August. I should think he expected to find the boy at Alresford, and is keeping his hand in now until he can get at the kid.’
‘But – keep his hand in? That’s insane!’
‘Well, isn’t the naiad insane? It’s all of a piece!’
Chapter Eighteen
‘“Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr Tulliver. “You’ve been naughty to her, I doubt, Tom?”’
GEORGE ELIOT (The Mill on the Floss)
A MONTH later Mrs Bradley and Laura were in London, and the papers were in possession of a curious story. A naiad, it was reported, had been seen in the River Itchen not far from Winchester; this on the apparently unimpeachable evidence of three respectable citizens.
‘Crete!’ said Laura, handing Mrs Bradley the newspaper. ‘They must have gone back to Winchester to kill Arthur Preece-Harvard. We’d better get down there at once!’
‘Do you think so?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. ‘I am inclined to agree that the naiad must be Mrs Tidson. It seems a strange thing for her to have done. One would imagine that the last thing the Tidsons would want would be to attract attention to their presence in Winchester if they mean to kill Arthur Preece-Harvard.’
‘Well, the naiad has greenish hair. It says so here,’ said Laura. She stood behind Mrs Bradley’s chair and pointed to the description of the visitant. ‘Don’t you think we ought to go down and interview these people who say they saw her?’
‘No doubt your Mr Gavin will do that, but, if you want to hear their story at first-hand, why don’t you go alone to Winchester to see them? I can’t come with you just now.’
‘May I? Oh, good. I couldn’t—’ She glanced at Mrs Bradley’s day book, which was on the consulting-room table – ‘I suppose I couldn’t go to-day?’
‘Why not?’ Mrs Bradley comfortably replied. ‘I am called away to Hereford to see what Doctor Watson would call a noble bachelor, and there is no reason for you to stay here by yourself. Henri and Célestine can manage. Off you go, child. There’s a train in an hour. You might catch it.’