‘You remember that I mentioned repressed spinsters,’ said Mr Tidson.
‘I do remember. You meant me to think you were referring to Miss Carmody, but, as I realize now, you were really giving me a pointer to Connie,’ Mrs Bradley agreed. Mr Tidson began to preen himself a little.
‘Well, I knew I hadn’t killed anyone,’ he said. ‘And if it had to be one of our party, naturally I fastened on Connie. She was out that night alone—’
‘Oh, yes! She left her aunt at the west front of the Cathedral and went off by herself, did she not? Of course,’ Mrs Bradley added, eyeing Mr Tidson with that expression of kindly curiosity to which she had subjected him before, ‘she is so much stronger than you are that I did wonder whether you would have been able to transport Biggin’s body from the top of the hill to the weir.’
‘Oh, I am not so puny!’ said Mr Tidson shortly. ‘Besides, I could have rolled it down the slope.’
‘When did you come across it, by the way?’ asked Mrs Bradley?’
‘Why, when I was searching for my dog,’ replied Mr Tidson. ‘I found it in the bushes with the dead animal, and I thought our friend the inspector ought to know what had happened. I therefore pushed it out where I knew it would immediately be seen. I suppose I ought to have reported it, but I thought – well, no doubt even the inspector, prejudiced as he is against me, can understand the feelings of an uncle.’
‘Even a wicked uncle, eh?’ said Gavin, scowling at the toes of his boots. Mr Tidson sniggered.
‘I do like a good loser, Inspector,’ he remarked.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But, since the dog is going to figure largely in the enquiry, it would be interesting to know how you recognized it as your dog. It was in a sorry state when Laura Menzies found it.’
‘The dog? Oh, I recognized it by the collar, of course,’ said Mr Tidson eagerly. ‘That was how I came to connect poor Connie with the second murder. I never thought there was any doubt about the first one.’
‘Got an answer to everything, haven’t you?’ said Gavin, still with his eyes on his boots. Mr Tidson giggled happily.
‘And where is this collar now?’ Mrs Bradley enquired.
‘Ask the inspector,’ Mr Tidson replied. ‘I have no doubt he has it in safe keeping.’
‘You, too, I hope,’ said Gavin, touching the bell on his desk. ‘Ah, come in, Sergeant. Edris Tidson, I arrest you for the wilful murders of Robert Grier and John Biggin, and it is my duty to warn you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.’
‘But why, why, why?’ screamed Mr Tidson. ‘I tell you – I tell you—!’
‘There, there, sir. Best take it easy,’ said the sergeant.
‘I want to know why!’ yelled Mr Tidson.
‘In a word, you gave yourself away over the dog-collar,’ said Gavin. ‘In fact, you’ve given yourself away over the dog altogether. Mrs Bradley and I have been playing ball, and you’ve dropped neatly into a trap. – Got his statements down, Sergeant? – You couldn’t have seen the body when you were looking for your dog. It had been discovered before you even bought your dog. That’s one thing. Then, that sandal you brought to the hotel. Your having retained possession of it was inadvertent; your disposal of it was masterly; but you forgot that if you had really picked it up in all innocence it would have had your fingerprints on it, didn’t you? Even you do not keep your gloves on when you go fishing!’
‘But my fingerprints are on it! Of course they’re on it!’ shrieked Mr Tidson, struggling ineffectually with the sergeant.
‘It was Connie who faked all the evidence, of course,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘just as it was Connie who wrote the truth to Crete Tidson from Lewes.’
‘But it was Tidson who attempted to murder Crete when she taxed him with his crimes! We found the forked branch, you remember, with which he had held her down,’ said Gavin, nodding.
‘That is what we were meant to find. She got nurses to guard her night and day until she felt fully recovered. I agree about that,’ said Mrs Bradley. Laura noted and digested this reply.
‘But why didn’t we see him?’ she asked. ‘We looked, you know, didn’t we, David?’
‘The reeds made sufficient cover for a fisherman, I expect,’ said Gavin. ‘I know they would for me, and it would not have taken him more than a minute to wriggle away from us there.’
‘And did he really kill little Grier because the kid had seen someone push him into the river?’ demanded Laura.
‘It scarcely seems credible, does it?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But injured vanity is an imponderable factor, and Mr Tidson’s vanity had been very sadly injured.’
‘Do you think he would ever have harmed Arthur Preece-Harvard?’
‘Well, if he had, I’m afraid he would have been suspect at once, unless he could have made it look as though Connie had done it out of jealousy or revenge.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t put anything past him. One thing puzzles me more than the murders, though, really. Did he truly believe in his nymph?’ demanded Gavin.
‘Yes, I’d like to know that,’ said Laura.
‘Who can say? Your thought on that matter is just as good as mine. Look around you. What do you see?’ said Mrs Bradley.
Laura obeyed the command, but did not answer the question. Instead she said to Gavin:
‘When did you know he had done it?’
‘As soon as I heard about the first panama hat. I did not see how Potter could have invented that hat which he declared he had seen beneath the boy’s body. It is not a usual type of hat in these days, and is, I should say, completely unknown in the district in which Potter lives. I didn’t think there was the slightest reason why he should have mentioned it unless he had actually seen it. And as, therefore, I concluded that that part of his story was true, and as Mr Tidson’s activities on the night in question were somewhat odd, a field of what Mrs Bradley calls speculation was opened.’
‘Wasn’t it the sandal which really dished him, then?’
‘Not in my opinion. The defence, I think you will find, will challenge us to prove that the two sandals make a pair. They are both so very badly worn that I think such proof would be almost out of the question.’
‘Besides,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘Mr Tidson’s behaviour with the one which he brought to the hotel was not that of a guilty person, and, if he sticks to his story of having found it alongside the river, I doubt whether we can successfully contradict him. Besides, I think you forget—’
‘You don’t think he stands a chance of getting off, do you?’ asked Laura, struck suddenly by this unwelcome thought. Gavin shrugged.
‘Stranger things have happened,’ he replied. ‘It is almost impossible to tell what kind of evidence will convince the general public, and in a case of child murder it will make a difference if there are women on the jury. Well, I must go back now. Some of us work.’ He grinned. Laura nodded, a little coolly, and, looking at Mrs Bradley, said:
‘I suppose Connie’s evidence would dish herself as well as Mr Tidson if she could be got to speak? I mean, she helped to transport the body, didn’t you say?’
‘No, I didn’t say so, and I don’t think she did. I don’t think Biggin was killed on Saint Catherine’s Hill at all. I think the murder took place very close to where he was found. None but a madman would have dreamed of transporting the body that distance and over such difficult ground.’
‘How did Connie get hold of Mr Tidson’s gloves to be able to plant them in that hole on the hill? And the second sandal – where did that come from?’
‘I leave all that to you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I can only say that they appeared in the hole after the police and I had both scrutinized its contents. Does that suggest anything to you?’
‘Only that Connie went to some pains to make certain that the sins of her Uncle Edris should find him out.’
‘True. Go on from there.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You will. But Mr Tid
son did not try to murder Crete. He has a perfect alibi, unless Mrs Preece-Harvard is lying.’
‘And is she?’
‘No, I don’t think so, child. The forked stick was Connie again.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I caught my last Trout with a worm, now I will put on a minnow and try a quarter of an hour about yonder trees for another, and so walk towards our lodgings . . . But turn out of the way a little, good Scholar, towards yonder high honeysuckle hedge: there we’ll sit and sing . . .’
IZAAK WALTON (The Compleat Angler)
THE magistrates remanded Mr Tidson.
‘We need further evidence,’ said Gavin. ‘Where in heaven’s name do we get it?’
‘We concentrate upon the peculiar and distinctive features of the case,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Chief among them I rate the obscure movements and extraordinary actions of Connie Carmody. There is also the one inexplicable lapse of Mr Tidson.’
‘Of course,’ said Gavin, pursuing his own thoughts, ‘Tidson has put up a pretty good show. He’s declared that the gloves were planted – a point we can hardly dispute – and he’s underlined the complete absence of motive. Absence of motive, that is—’
‘So far as a jury is concerned. I agree,’ said Mrs Bradley placidly. ‘A jury wouldn’t look at Mr Tidson. Practice makes perfect is such an old-fashioned idea.’
‘It isn’t only the absence of motive,’ said Laura. ‘They’ll see that if the gloves were planted there was no reason why that hat shouldn’t have been planted, too – that is, if they believe Potter. And then there’s another thing—’
‘Oh, let it all come!’ groaned Gavin.
‘Well, don’t you see what Mrs Croc. means by Mr Tidson’s curious lapse? There ought to have been a third victim.’
‘Eh?’ said Gavin, staring.
‘Me,’ said Laura. ‘If we really think he murdered little Grier because the kid saw him take a ducking, I ought to have been murdered weeks ago. I actually tossed him in.’
‘Good Lord, yes, so you did.’
‘Well, why hasn’t he crept up behind me with his half-brick? It was different with the bloke who threw him in first. I don’t suppose their paths have crossed again.’
‘It’s a point,’ said Gavin, rubbing his jaw.
‘How do you suppose that Connie got hold of his gloves, and – we’ll say for the sake of argument – his hat?’ Mrs Bradley enquired.
‘Burgled his bedroom, I imagine.’
‘I don’t think she’d have dared. She was very much afraid of him at that time. She may have wiped out his fingerprints later.’
‘He could have left his hat and gloves in the Cathedral at some time,’ said Laura. ‘But why on earth didn’t he say so?’
‘He will – at the trial – if it ever comes to the point. And the point is it may sound like the truth. We have to face the fact that Mr Tidson is as clever as Connie is foolish, and the jury may well believe him.’
‘And the old villian is not committed for trial,’ said Gavin, looking perturbed. ‘He’d like to make her the guilty one, and himself right about her motive – she did everything she could to get him hanged.’
‘And over-did it,’ observed Laura. ‘But surely Mr Tidson soon found out what she was up to? Why didn’t he give her away?’
‘I said he was a clever old man,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘No doubt it suited him very well to let Connie go all the way in faking the evidence. He depended upon me to save him. He as good as told me so. The deeper Connie involved herself the harder it would be for us to find out the truth. He knew that perfectly well. He must have chuckled when he brought that meaningless sandal to the Domus.’
‘Not entirely meaningless,’ said Laura.
‘Meaningless so far as the police were concerned,’ admitted Gavin. ‘We can’t even prove that those sandals ever belonged to young Biggin. There’s nothing to show that they did. His parents are not prepared to swear to anything. His father wants to stick to that bit of money, and hates the police like poison. But if Tidson can’t be proved guilty, I still don’t get what his game was unless—’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘You mean he realised that Connie was doing her best to incriminate him, and that if only he could give her rope enough she would hang herself in the end?’
‘That is what I think, but of course we shall never prove it. Connie has been criminally foolish, but I think we all knew who the guilty party was. Of course, she had a strong double motive in trying to incriminate him—’
‘To get Mr Tidson hanged and so be rid of him out of her aunt’s house, and to save for ever young Preece-Harvard,’ said Laura.
‘But, of course, she gave herself away (as I told you) by placing what she believed to be objects which would incriminate Mr Tidson in that hole in the ground on the top of the hill after she had seen me search the hole. That was a childish thing to do. Then – very interesting, this! – she gave herself a black eye that morning when she saw that the others all had one!’
‘I wonder what caused a careful person like Mr Tidson to leave his precious gloves in the Cathedral?’ said Laura, frowning.
‘I have checked the Cathedral services,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and I think he must have been carried away by the setting of Bairstow in D.’
Mr Tidson was released for lack of evidence, and immediately rejoined his wife in Tenerife – this to her great annoyance, as she informed Miss Priscilla Carmody by letter. Connie Carmody, anticipating trouble in England, went over on the next boat a week later. Miss Priscilla Carmody received news of her safe arrival from Crete Tidson, and almost immediately afterwards there followed from Gavin (who had gone at once to the island) news that her body and that of Mr Tidson had been recovered from deep water at the end of the Mole at Santa Cruz.
They were locked in each other’s arms in a grip that was not the clasp of love. The charitable islanders believed that one of them had died in an effort to save the other from drowning. Laura, drawing Mrs Bradley’s attention to this report in the English newspapers, remarked:
‘Well, I’m glad it didn’t happen in Winchester,’ and her blue-grey eyes saw in retrospect the grey Cathedral, the hills and the lovely darkening reaches of the river.
The prospect widened and grew as clear as a vision. She saw willows and the tall, green reeds, the patches of weed, the clear and stony shallows, the uncertain deeps; the rough and thick-leaved water-plants by the brink, the blue forget-me-not, the toffee-brown water-dropwort; and in side-stream and carrier, ditch and brook no less than in the broadly-curving river, over the weirs and under the little bridges, the smooth, hard rush of the water.
She saw the mallard in flight and the moorhens’ nests built on flotsam; the scuttling dabchicks, the warblers swinging on the sedge; she saw the lithe stoat slinking swiftly back to his home; the swans like galleons for beauty; and, last, a solitary trout in a small deep pool, as he anchored himself against the run of the stream.
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