‘A jolly good thing Connie wouldn’t come and stay with us,’ said Laura, ‘or one of us would have had to take her along.’
‘She showed the natural repugnance to us,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘for which I was prepared. I have warned Miss Carmody to keep a strict eye on her movements, but I confess that I should have felt a good deal easier in my mind if Connie had been under our jurisdiction for a bit. Still, it is always a difficult task to save people from themselves. So much so that I sometimes wonder whether the laws of Providence regard as a supremely immoral action any attempt to do it.’
‘Funny that Connie had so much to say about that job, and is still with Miss Carmody,’ said Laura. ‘I suppose you worked it.’
‘I don’t think Connie ever had a job,’ said Mrs Bradley, not for the first time.
The report on the naiad, by the time that Laura reached Winchester, had not received any additions. The creature had been seen twice, each time in the same stretch of water, once by two city councillors walking together, and once by a District Visitor who reported her at once to the police. Laura went out, accompanied by Gavin, to inspect that part of the Itchen in which she had been seen.
They took the now familiar path at the bottom of College Walk, passed through the white wicket-gate, and slackened their rate of walking as they rounded the grassy space where the river made its bend and the stream on the College side of the path ran straight and shallow beside them. They passed the College playing-fields, and the boggy meadows between the swift streams widened.
Thick cresses, darkly, succulently green, the water-mint, the purple loosestrife, seemed a fitting border to the grey-bright floods that were said to house the naiad. The lance-leaved, saw-toothed hemp agrimony, crowding its corymbs at the head of its three-foot stems, was dwarfed by the mighty hogweed, coarse and hairy. The handsome, purple-tinged angelica, with hollow stem, set off and did not diminish the water-level charm of the wild forget-me-not, still blooming at the end of its season. Dark crimson self-heal, square-stemmed, longlipped (the carpenter’s herb, the curative Prunella), reared above purple-edged bracts its dimorphic flowers.
‘Queer about Connie Carmody and the dog,’ said Gavin suddenly. ‘I keep on thinking about it.’
‘I suppose,’ began Laura; and then, urged by some instinct to protect her own sex from the enemy, she stopped short.
‘Go on,’ said Gavin encouragingly. ‘After all, we know who did the murders. But the dog is just a bit odd. Could Connie Carmody be bats, and is that why Mrs Bradley wanted to keep an eye on her and have her in her house for a bit?’
‘I don’t think it’s that,’ said Laura. ‘It was directly Connie had killed the dog, I think, that she gave up all idea of kidding us. She’d killed old Tidson by proxy, I suppose, and she could put up with him after that. Tidson got her worked up about Arthur, and that’s why she ran away from here. She brooded a good bit, and came back and slaughtered his dog.’
‘And then came over all regretful?’
‘No. Only all sick. She didn’t regret what she’d done.’
‘Not a dog-lover, you would say?’
‘No. Only a Tidson-hater, according to Mrs Croc.’
‘But why the dog in that particular spot?’
‘Oh, practice makes perfect, and that’s what Mrs Croc’s afraid of.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Gavin looked at her suspiciously.
‘Neither do I,’ said Laura lightly.
‘You don’t think the old lady is leading us up the garden, and that Connie killed those boys after all?’
‘Good Lord, of course I don’t!’
‘She could have used the same stone, you see, and that would account for the fact that we’ve found only one with prints on it,’ said Gavin.
‘Then what about the absence of prints in Mr Tidson’s room?’
‘I admit that’s a snag. And yet, you see, it’s such a pointer, too.’
‘The lesser of two evils, I expect. Or, at least, the lesser of two obvious risks.’
‘Yes. You know, Laura, this case annoys me a bit. He hasn’t really been so very intelligent, has he? And yet he’s held us up completely.’
‘Comes of having no accomplices, you know. You can get away with most things if you know how to keep your mouth shut and can pick the right time to perform.’
‘Crete must be in his confidence.’
‘Not entirely. They don’t get on too well. But partly, I think. She seems to act as the naiad when he wishes.’
‘In any case, she couldn’t give evidence against him, so I suppose it wouldn’t matter what she did – that is, from one point of view.’
‘It would matter if she gave other people ideas!’
‘What do you suppose is the idea behind this naiad business? Crete being the naiad, I mean.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ She chuckled. ‘It might be a different idea at different times, don’t you think? If I had to make a guess, I should say that this time it’s to blackleg old Tidson and give away his presence in the vicinity. I doubt whether Crete is a villain. I think she’s just an extravagant cat.’
‘Without much conscience, I should say.’
‘Well, that goes with extravagance.’
‘I don’t know that, of the two of them, I don’t dislike Crete a bit more than old Tidson himself.’
‘Of course you do! Outraged male vanity, because she won’t look at you!’ said Laura.
‘It may interest you to hear,’ said Gavin, ‘that I had some difficulty in getting her out of my hair in the early stages of our acquaintance. She found me handsome, manly and sunburnt, if you really want to know.’
Laura hooted rudely, and startled a gull which had come inland ahead of a gale which had not yet reached the coast.
‘Hush!’ said Gavin. ‘The next thing you’ll frighten is the naiad, and, if you do, we shan’t see her.’
‘I was the naiad myself once,’ said Laura.
‘So I’ve heard. What about a demonstration?’
‘After we’re married, with pleasure. It was quite fun.’
‘It must have been. Rather chilly fun, too, I should have thought. Anyway, here’s the stretch of the river where she’s supposed to have been seen most recently. Ought we to go to ground, and hide behind the willow trees, do you think?’
‘Whatever you say . . . You know, it wouldn’t be quite an impossibility, would it?’
‘What wouldn’t?’
‘To see her. In fact—’ Laura suddenly caught Gavin’s arm – ‘what’s that? See? Over by the reeds in that carrier.’
‘A swan.’
‘I don’t mean the swan. I mean whatever made the swan angry. There’s something or somebody there, and, what’s more, she’s seen us, I think.’
‘Well, we’re here to solve mysteries. Good thing I’ve brought my waders.’ Gavin seated himself and pulled on the thigh-high boots. ‘Here goes. Remember me to Mrs Bradley if I get pulled under and become a little merman or something, won’t you?’
Laura, who had no intention of being left out of any excitement which was being provided, promptly pulled off her shoes, put on a pair of plimsolls and unfastened her skirt. Under it she was wearing shorts. She had no stockings.
‘Stay where you are,’ said Gavin.
‘Rot,’ retorted Laura. ‘Don’t be an oaf.’
Her swain made no rejoinder, and together they entered the water. The stream flowed fast, and it was difficult work to get across it.
‘Hope nobody sees us who has fishing rights here,’ said Laura.