‘Verra guid,’ said Thomas, indicating by his tone that it was very far from that. ‘And for the young leddy?’
‘Gin and Italian,’ said Connie, ‘and get an evening paper, Thomas, will you?’
‘There’ll be nae mair peppers the night, but ye may borrow mine if ye’ll promise no to do the crossword,’ said Thomas. ‘Ye filled in victors for lictors on Wednesday, and put me out terrible.’
‘But “victors” was right! I looked at the answers next day!’ said Connie indignantly.
‘I dinna work out the crossword to get it right,’ said Thomas withering her. ‘Ony fule can dae that! But if ye pit lictor where it should hae been victor, ye get mallet in place of velvet and that gives ye antimony instead of enticing. Enticing! Well, well!’ He laughed shortly. ‘Enticing, where he could hae pit antimony!’
‘That’s a very odd sort of man,’ said Mr Tidson, gazing with nervous interest at Thomas’ retreating form and at the two dragon’s eyes of silver buttons on the back of the old man’s livery; for Thomas acted both as porter and cocktail waiter in the same greenish uniform. It had silver-braided cuffs and silver buttons, and he had worn it for years past. It was almost threadbare, but nothing would induce him to take to the new and smart blue-and-gold suit which the manageress had been anxious to provide. He had confided to Connie when she had come down early one morning and had discovered him, with the coat off, going over the buttons with plate powder, that he liked fine to gie his wee lozenges a bit of a shine, for, between themselves, (meaning himself and Connie), they minded him on a kiltie suit he had had as a wee laddie in Kilmarnock.
‘He is not only an odd sort of man; he is a very intelligent fellow,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘And he serves very good sherry,’ she added, ‘although perhaps that is more to the credit of the hotel than to his own personal credit.’
‘We are not having sherry to-day, though,’ said Crete, ‘and Thomas does not approve of champagne cocktails.’
She smiled at Thomas when he returned with the glasses. Thomas inclined his head in acknowledgement of the smile, but did not move a muscle of his Covenanting face as he set the cocktails down on the polished table.
‘I think,’ said Mrs Bradley suddenly, ‘that Connie ought to take me up all the hills to-morrow. Will you?’ she added, turning to the girl. ‘I believe you walk fast and far, and I feel the need of exercise.’
‘I’d love to go with you,’ replied Connie. ‘But what about you, Aunt Prissie?’ she added, turning towards Miss Carmody.
‘You and Mrs Bradley would walk my legs off,’ Miss Carmody comfortably replied. ‘I shall write up my Mothers. It is a task much overdue. I will sit with Crete whilst she does her embroidery. What do you say, Crete, to that?’
‘She says nothing,’ said Mr Tidson, raising his glass. ‘What can she say, my dear Prissie? Convention does not permit her to say that she prefers her own company, and if she does pretend to welcome your presence you are not to be blamed if you think her protestations sincere.’
He sipped his cocktail thoughtfully after this rather rude speech, then suddenly started, and called excitedly for Thomas. The factotum appeared, and gazed with disapproval at the party.
‘What will ye?’ he enquired, looming like a minor prophet with a major message, uncompromisingly beside the tiny table.
‘This cocktail! Where’s the brandy?’ Mr Tidson demanded. Thomas picked up the glass, bent bristling brows upon the complainant, walked to the window, held the innocent drink to the light, and then replied in justly withering tones:
‘I will be speiring.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Miss Carmody, taking up her drink. ‘You’ve annoyed him! Next time we shall get no brandy in them at all! You are rather provoking, Edris!’
‘I am a connoisseur,’ Mr Tidson replied. ‘And when a connoisseur finds that what should be a masterpiece is nothing of the kind, honour compels him to say so. I suggest, my dear Crete, that you put your cocktail down.’
‘Just what she is doing,’ said Connie vulgarly, watching Crete’s tasting of the mixture. Thomas returned at this juncture with the glass on a silver salver.
‘Your drink, sir – laced,’ he observed.
‘Splendid!’ said Mr Tidson, sipping his drink. He waited until Thomas had gone, and then remarked, ‘It is amazing, my dear Connie, what a display of firmness will do.’
‘You must try it some time, Uncle Edris,’ said Connie angrily. Mr Tidson looked at her with an expression of concern, gulped his drink hastily, and choked.
‘It’s a verra great peety ye wouldn’t be content with the proper mixture,’ said Thomas, coming back with a table napkin and mopping up the cocktail that was spilt on Mr Tidson’s light-grey suit. ‘Maybe anither time ye’ll admit that this hoose kens whit’s guid for ye.’
This classic setting down of Mr Tidson struck everybody dumb except Connie, who, to the consternation of the guests at another table, suddenly put down her glass and went into hysterical laughter.
‘Dear, do control yourself,’ said her aunt. Connie wiped her eyes, apologized, gulped down her drink, and fled out into the garden.
‘I can’t think why Connie is quite so ill-mannered,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I do apologize for her. She has made us the cynosure of all eyes, and that, in a public place, is unforgivable. I will go and call her in. She shall at least say she is sorry.’
Connie, it proved, was ready enough to do this, and she sat down very meekly and waited for lunch to be announced.
‘Talking of plans, I must say I had hoped that some one or two of you would come and sit on the bank and watch me fish,’ observed Mr Tidson, in an attempt to recover his poise.
‘Not to-morrow, Edris,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I really must do up my Mothers.’
‘Perhaps I will come,’ said Crete amiably. ‘That is, I will come if it is not too far to walk.’
‘No, no. I shall try the St Cross water again,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘I should like to fish the stretch by Itchen Abbas, but, alas! – it is privately owned and I have no acquaintance whatever, so far as I know, with the owner. Never mind! I must work out my ticket.’
‘I thought most of the water was privately owned,’ said Connie. ‘Do they allow you to take trout?’
‘He is not fishing for trout, but only for water-nymphs,’ said Crete, ‘and, as he says, he has his ticket.’
‘Could one be had up for murder if one caught a water-nymph?’ asked Connie.
‘Probably only for cruelty to animals, I should say,’ Crete replied. ‘Perhaps, Edris, you would rather be alone?’
‘No, no,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Do come with me, my dear. The naiad might recognize in you a fellow-countrywoman.’
‘Half a fellow-countrywoman,’ said Connie. Crete looked at her with lazy hostility.
‘You ought to be more agreeable to Crete,’ said Miss Carmody, getting her niece to herself after lunch, although Mrs Bradley, writing a letter to Laura, was seated at a desk in the window. ‘And to Edris, too.’
‘I am as agreeable as I can bear to be,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t like Uncle Edris, and I don’t like Crete, and I wish we hadn’t come to Winchester with them. And I do my best to please you, Aunt Prissie, you know I do, but I think it’s time I lived my own life, and I’m going to, as soon as we go home. I am sorry about the cocktails, but I can’t go on like this. You can’t expect it. I know you think I’m rude to Uncle Edris, but it’s the way I keep him from frightening me, that’s all.’
‘Now, what does that mean?’ asked Miss Carmody. ‘It sounds like nonsense again.’
‘I’m going to get a job. In fact, I’ve got one. It is at four pounds ten shillings a week, and I have already been interviewed. It’s time I had my own money. I don’t intend to live on charity, and I shan’t!’ cried Connie, ending up with a gasp.
‘Charity?’ said Miss Carmody, disguising, she hoped, her real feelings. ‘But, Connie dear, there was never any question of that. I’ve been only too glad to have you. You mus
t know what an interest and comfort you’ve been, and I always thought—’
‘Well, you need not think it any more! I’m off!’ said Connie crudely. Miss Carmody was deeply upset. She swallowed, looked with compassionate horror at her niece, and then walked out of the room.
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Bradley, getting up, ‘and how old are you now?’
‘Nineteen,’ replied Connie, ashamed of her tender age.
‘So much? Perhaps you are right. No, I’m sure you are right. Will you live with your aunt, or are you going into lodgings, I wonder?’
‘I intend to go into a flat,’ replied Connie, betraying by her tear-filled eyes her sense of her own bad behaviour. ‘You know, about Aunt Prissie, I don’t really mean to be nasty, but I feel I must get away! It’s all too much for me. Sometimes I think I’m going mad! And you don’t know how unfairly I’ve been treated!’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Miss Carmody, coming back with slightly pink eyelids. ‘But you will be polite to Crete and Edris? I wouldn’t like them to think that you had left me because of them, you know. It would hurt their feelings, and I should not like to do that.’
‘I don’t see why they should live on you,’ said Connie. ‘And I don’t mind whose feelings I hurt, except, perhaps, yours, Aunt Prissie.’ She looked helplessly at her aunt, and then burst into tears. Miss Carmody took her hurriedly out of the room, but her anguished sobs could be heard all the way up the stairs.
Chapter Six
‘I put the fly well to my side of him, showing him no gut: he turned out to take it, but before doing so, he swam round it to see if there was gut on the other side. He saw it and sheered off. I can never get anyone to believe this simple and truthful tale.’
J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)
Mrs BRADLEY, who had spent much thought upon the results of her expedition with Miss Carmody, spent some time on the following day discussing the circumstances of the boy’s death with the Tidsons. Mr Tidson clung to his theory that the boy had been enticed into the water by the naiad.
‘I knew it would happen,’ he said. Mrs Bradley watched him with her sharp black eyes; summed him up, pursing her beaky little mouth; assessed him against a background of extravagance, ill-luck, hot sunshine and green bananas; and had to give him up, or, rather, to pigeon-hole him. She had done the same with the conversation between Connie and Miss Carmody in the lounge. There was something hidden in that talk which she meant to bring to light when she could.
Meanwhile Laura had written entertainingly from Liverpool, where she and her friend Kitty were contriving to combine bananas with pleasure. They had managed, wrote Laura dashingly, to contact a man who had known something of the Tidsons in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The Tidsons, it appeared, had been well known at the Sporting Club, the English Club and the Yacht Club, chiefly because of Crete’s unusual and striking beauty. There had been some scandal of the domestic kind in which Mr Tidson, having stepped out of his own and into the Lothario class, had been involved, and there was a rumour that it had taken most of his money to hush it up. It was an old story, however; eight years old at least. There was a better-substantiated tale that Crete was an incurably extravagant wife.
This bore out what Mrs Bradley had already learned from the editor of the Vanguard, and she found nothing surprising nor particularly disquieting about it.
She would write direct to Santa Cruz, Laura continued, if Mrs Bradley thought it worth while. Mrs Bradley did think it worth while, but decided that the time had not arrived for this, since she had nothing against Mr Tidson so far except a surmise that his water-nymph was a cloak and an excuse for activities he did not want known. Whether the death of the boy Grier could be included among these activities she did not know, although it was impossible to shake off an uncomfortable impression that it could. However, there was nothing to connect Mr Tidson with the drowned boy beyond the fact that he had spent most of his time near the river since the party had come to Winchester, and that on the one significant occasion he had fallen into the water.
Miss Carmody, pressed for evidence in support of her apparently outrageous theory that the boy had been murdered by her relative, instanced Mr Tidson’s mishap, and emphasized the fact that it coincided, nearly enough, with the time of the boy’s death. She also referred again to the sandal which Mr Tidson had got rid of on to the dust-cart.
‘I know that sandal was worrying him,’ she said.
Mrs Bradley and Connie did not get their walk on the day following the champagne cocktails, for the weather turned wet, and so everybody except Crete went to afternoon service at the Cathedral, to hear Noble in B minor.
‘A very good key for the Nunc Dimittis, but I am not so sure about the Magnificat,’ said Mr Tidson, as they dodged a stream of traffic across the narrow High Street.
Mr Tidson did not revise his opinion of the key of B minor, but talked intelligently upon Stanford in A and Wood in F as he walked beside Mrs Bradley across the Close and out of the gate by Saint Swithun’s Church at the termination of the service.
‘I used to be a choirboy,’ he said.
Mrs Bradley found herself more and more interested in the strange little man. His potentialities, she felt, were infinite. She longed to ask him, point-blank, whether or not he were a murderer, but she felt that this would ruin their friendly relationship and defeat the object of the question, which was, quite simply and unequivocally, to find out the answer.
The evening passed pleasantly and sociably, and gained from the absence of Connie, who went to bed immediately after dinner upon plea of a headache. It was left to Connie, however, to provide the next line of excitement. This she did in the manner beloved of adolescents (whether consciously or unconsciously) by introducing the subject of ghosts. She began by contacting Thomas on the following day, and, to bolster up a weak approach to the matter, adopted a belligerent tone in demanding of the dignified old man whether the hotel was haunted.
‘I have heard it is,’ she asserted, ‘and I certainly think it might be true. What about it, Thomas? “Ghaists nor bogles shall ye fear,” and all that, you know.’
‘Likewise,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘“By the noise of dead men’s bones in charnel houses rattling.”’
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Connie anxiously. ‘Please don’t!’
‘And,’ said Miss Carmody, innocently adding her quota to what she believed to be an intellectual game, ‘“powers above in clouds do sit,” you remember.’
‘“Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie,”’said Mr Tidson, giggling at Connie and avoiding Thomas’ eye as he adapted Robert Burns to the trend of the conversation. The others looked at Thomas expectantly.
‘There’s a wee hoose on the ither side o’ the town, so I have haird,’ began Thomas gravely, ‘that is said to contain a footstep.’
‘I shouldn’t care to hear it,’ said Connie. ‘But I’m not talking about a house across the town. I’m talking about this hotel. You ought to know whether the hotel is haunted or not. You’ve lived here long enough, Thomas.’
‘Hotels are not made to be haunted. The guests, maybe, couldna thole it,’ said Thomas, picking up his little round tray. ‘Ghaisties wadna come whaur they werena welcome.’
Connie felt herself snubbed by this original* thought upon the subject, and did not ask any more questions; but Mrs Bradley, who had her own reasons for being interested, said to her after lunch on the following day:
‘Will you come with me to the top of St Catherine’s Hill? It is fine to-day, and we shall not mind if it’s slippery. I think I’d like you to tell me about your ghost.’
‘I suppose you think it sounds ridiculous?’ said Connie, on the defensive.
‘Oh, I don’t see why the hotel shouldn’t be haunted. It has had a long and troubled history. Have you discovered the priest’s hole yet? Perhaps you have seen it on a previous visit? I know you have stayed here before,’ said Mrs Bradley, taking no notice of the protest.
‘Not that
long linen-cupboard place down two or three steps at the top of the main staircase?’
‘I understand so. There is a story that a Jesuit was in hiding there when the mistress of the house was taken before the Council to be questioned. He wanted to give himself up, but the servants would not let him. They said that the honour of the house was involved, which, one must admit, was true.’
‘My ghost was a nun,’ said Connie. ‘Nothing happened exactly, but I don’t think I want to sleep in my bedroom any more. Do you think they would change it if I asked them? I don’t want to be laughed at by that sneering Crete Tidson, though. I wish I could make a change without her knowing. Better still, I wish I could start my job a bit sooner, and leave the hotel altogether!’
‘You had better change with me if you feel like that,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and we will say nothing to any of them. Now come along, and we’ll see how many miles we can walk.’
‘Oh, dear! I suppose I’ve got to come with you,’ said Connie, very ungratefully. Miss Carmody had gone into Alresford, Crete had decided to lie down, and Mr Tidson was off on his own affairs as usual.
The route they followed led them past the Cathedral and across its Close, down College Street and along College Walk, and then, by the river footpath, to the path across the water-meadows. This brought them to the main stream of the Itchen, for this walk was one way – and by far the most delightful – to reach St Catherine’s Hill.
There was a choice of paths, for a bridge spanned the river and led to the towing-path; on the right bank, which Connie chose, was a narrow path alongside the water. They passed forget-me-not and meadow rue, and, on a pool beside the stream, the yellow water-lily. There was water-cress in abundance on all the streams, and the ragged-robin stood two feet high in the water-meadows.
Mrs Bradley and Connie walked for the most part in single file and in silence. At last they crossed the by-pass and began to climb the hill.
They mounted some chalk-cut steps to the first of the pre-Roman earthworks which crowned the top of the hill. From a kind of circular plateau covered with short springy grass a fine view could be had of the river, the city, and the water-meadows. There was an open prospect across the river to the hills around Oliver’s Battery, and away to the south-west were the barrows on Compton Down.
Death and the Maiden mb-20 Page 6