Death and the Maiden Read Free

know.’
    The fear expressed in the last sentences proved to be unfounded. By the evening, accommodation for the party had been arranged, and Mr Tidson, deep in the chronicles of Winchester College, seemed certain of a fortnight’s pleasurable nymph-hunting (in the classical and not the piscatorial sense) and the rest of the party of a peaceful and interesting holiday. Connie studied the Ordnance map, Miss Carmody revived her recollections of Winchester Cathedral, the Domus hotel, and the walks which could be taken from the city, and Crete arranged a personal orgy of embroidery, for it was her practice, it seemed, to remain within doors in a climate she neither liked nor trusted, and she therefore would need something to do.
    The few days soon passed. On the Saturday morning preceding the Monday on which the party were to motor down to Winchester, Mr Tidson put into his notebook a passage which pleased him mightily. It was, he explained, an extract from a diary of the time of the Civil War, and, read in the evening by his wife and by Miss Carmody, ran thus:
    â€˜He wase by perswation of my ffather-in-lawe then putt to schoole at Winchestor and stayed 6 yeres and wase beten for the trwe reason that he tawlked lewdely and with littell discretion of a nakid mayd wett in the feldes where shee doe lye abedd, and hee not aschamed even att such tinder edge to saye itt.’
    â€˜You see?’ said Mr Tidson triumphantly. ‘Even in the seventeenth century she was known. What do you say now to my naiad?’
    â€˜Amazing,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘May I have another look at that?’ She took the notebook from Crete’s hands andperused the passage again. ‘The spelling puts me in mind of something, although I can’t remember quite what.’
    â€˜I think you should share your knowledge,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Think, my dear Prissie, think! We must learn to control our verbal memories.’
    Connie leaned over and took the book from her aunt. She flicked over the pages contemptuously. Mr Tidson looked at Miss Carmody and smiled.
    â€˜Women have very inaccurate notions of history, I believe,’ he remarked with conversational inoffensiveness. ‘Except you, of course, my dear Prissie.’
    â€˜I don’t know about inaccurate,’ said Connie, tossing the book at him so that a sharp edge hit him on his little round paunch, ‘but I do know that there’s a book of seventeenth-century memoirs in auntie’s bureau bookcase in which you could find all these words.’
    â€˜Is there indeed?’ said Mr Tidson. ‘And is it your custom to peer into your aunt’s bureau bookcase?’
    â€˜Really, Edris!’ remonstrated Crete. ‘You must not speak to Connie like that. It is not kind. Perhaps she does not know that she should not peer. What is it – peering? It is an offensive word, I think. Snoop, do you say?’
    Connie crimsoned and got up. She looked so threatening that Mr Tidson actually drew his knees up a little as though to protect his stomach from further assault. Miss Carmody seemed to suffer fears on his behalf, too, for she held on to Connie’s arm, said that she detested the word ‘snooping,’ and added with unwonted sharpness that Connie had had the run of her bureau bookcase for years, ever since she had been old enough to be trusted with her aunt’s favourite volumes, and that no question of prying, peering or snooping entered into the matter.
    Mr Tidson smiled sweetly, and observed that Connie ought not to be touchy, and that she knew as well as he did that he had been joking. He also upheld Miss Carmody’s pronouncement that snooping was a vulgar synonym.
    â€˜I don’t like his ways,’ said Connie, when he and Crete had gone. ‘Half the time he says nasty, spiteful things,and the other half he’s trying to paw me about. I think him a disgusting old man.’
    â€˜Not so very old,’