Death and the Maiden Read Free Page A

said Miss Carmody.
    â€˜He’s old enough to know better than to go chasing nymphs in rivers,’ said Connie stoutly, ‘although, of course, it’s only on a par with his other activities, I suppose.’
    Miss Carmody, in the day or two that followed, confessed herself worried by Mr Tidson’s enthusiasm for the naiad. He was alternately in high spirits at the thought (or so he said) of adding to his repertory of folk-lore, or cast down because the naiad might have left Hampshire before he had an opportunity to see her. The possibility that the letter to the paper might be either a practical joke or the gibberings of a maniac he appeared to disregard.
    â€˜I can’t make him out,’ said Connie. ‘His business life, I expect, was a mixture of cadging, sharp practice and double-dealing, and I should think he was a menace to his employees and unpopular with the other banana growers.’
    There was something frightening, she went on, in the fact that Mr Tidson should suddenly leap at this ridiculous newspaper communication as an excuse to go to Winchester. Why Winchester, she wanted to know; and held her aunt’s gaze.
    Miss Carmody said nothing, but she was sufficiently perturbed, it appeared, to go to the telephone next morning, before her uninvited guests were astir, and call up a psychiatrist, a sound and talented old lady whose name was Bradley. She gave the facts, and added that she thought it would do no harm to obtain an expert opinion upon Mr Tidson’s mental condition before he went down to Winchester in search of his naiad.
    â€˜You understand that I don’t want him to suspect that we think there might be anything odd about him,’ she said anxiously, ‘because, of course, there probably isn’t. His interest may be quite genuine, and probably is. I just thought that, if you could spare the time . . . Well, look here! I mustn’t thwart him. Could you possibly come to Winchester? I – we have met, you know – a mutual friend, Miss Carroll, at Cartaret College—’
    â€˜I quite understand,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and I am most intrigued. I shall be in Winchester and at the Domus by Monday lunch-time. Your naiad may be full of possibilities.’
    â€˜Yes, that is what I fear,’ said Miss Carmody. Very much cheered, however, by Mrs Bradley’s comforting promise, she expressed her gratitude and rang off. She then sent Connie to the bank for a Statement, and knit her brows over this when it came. Mr and Mrs Tidson were costing her rather dear. They had already spent six weeks at her house, and the Domus , as she herself had advertised, was not a cheap hotel. However, it was where she had always stayed, particularly during the blitz on London, and she had always said that she could not contemplate staying anywhere else. Connie reminded her of this almost snappishly when she put forward a tentative suggestion that, to save expense, the party might take furnished lodgings for the holiday. Connie disliked furnished lodgings, and said so roundly.
    â€˜And, in the end, what with one thing and another, you won’t be a bit better off,’ she added ill-temperedly.
    Miss Carmody sighed; but she reminded herself that Connie had been accustomed to better things than she could offer her, and also that the Domus was indeed a most comfortable and kindly hotel, and not even actually in the city.
    Mr Tidson enjoyed his drive to Winchester, and, by the time the car was passing Basingstoke on road A30 to rejoin A33 en route for the string of villages on the somewhat uninteresting journey past Micheldever and Kingsworthy to the lane on the north side of Winchester, where the Domus hotel is to be found, he had remembered and remarked upon a nephew of his who, he believed, went to school in Winchester but would now be on holiday, he supposed.
    â€˜What nephew would that be, Uncle Edris?’ enquired Connie, who had been bidden privately by