VINTAGE BOOKS
London
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Gladys Mitchell
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Copyright
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Epub ISBN: 9781407064215
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Copyright © the Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1947
Gladys Mitchell has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Published by Vintage in 2010
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph in 1947
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
To
WINIFRED BLAZEY
‘But howsoever it be (gentle reader), I pray thee take it in good part, considering that for thee I have taken this pain, to the intent that thou mayst read the same with pleasure’ William Adlington—To the Reader of the Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius
*
and to the
RIVER ITCHEN
‘From all diseases that arise,
From all disposed crudities;
From too much study, too much pain,
From laziness and from a strain;
From any humour doing harm,
Be it dry, or moist, or cold, or warm.
Then come to me, whate’er you feel,
Within, without, from head to heel.’
Anonymous (Early 17th century)—from the later editions of SIR THOMAS OVERBURY’S MISCELLANY
Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or ‘The Great Gladys’ as Philip Larkin called her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. Her hobbies included architecture and writing poetry. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.
Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the detective heroine of a further sixty six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.
When former banana-grower Edris Tidson hears of a possible sighting of a water-naiad he insists that his wife, her aunt Prissie and Prissie’s young ward Connie, travel with him to Winchester in search of the nymph. As tensions rise between Connie and Edris, Prissie invites part-time Freudian Mrs Bradley to join them and unofficially observe Edris and his growing obsession. Then two young boys are found drowned and speculation mounts that the naiad is luring them to her deaths. Can Mrs Bradley unravel the mysteries hidden within the river?
Speedy Death
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop
The Longer Bodies
The Saltmarsh Murders
Death at the Opera
The Devil at Saxon Wall
Dead Men’s Morris
Come Away, Death
St Peter’s Finger
Printer’s Error
Brazen Tongue
Hangman’s Curfew
When Last I Died
Laurels Are Poison
The Worsted Viper
Sunset Over Soho
My Father Sleeps
The Rising of the Moon
Here Comes a Chopper
The Dancing Druids
Tom Brown’s Body
Groaning Spinney
The Devil’s Elbow
The Echoing Strangers
Merlin’s Furlong
Faintley Speaking
Watson’s Choice
Twelve Horses and the
Hangman’s Noose
The Twenty-third Man
Spotted Hemlock
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes
Say It With Flowers
The Nodding Canaries
My Bones Will Keep
Adders on the Heath
Death of the Delft Blue
Pageant of Murder
The Croaking Raven
Skeleton Island
Three Quick and Five Dead
Dance to Your Daddy
Gory Dew
Lament for Leto
A Hearse on May-Day
The Murder of Busy Lizzie
Winking at the Brim
A Javelin for Jonah
Convent on Styx
Late, Late in the Evening
Noonday and Night
Fault in the Structure
Wraiths and Changelings
Mingled with Venom
The Mudflats of the Dead
Nest of Vipers
Uncoffin’d Clay
The Whispering Knights
Lovers, Make Moan
The Death-Cap Dancers
The Death of a Burrowing Mole
Here Lies Gloria Mundy
Cold, Lone and Still
The Greenstone Griffins
The Crozier Pharaohs
No Winding-Sheet
Chapter One ‘Nothing happened till nearly half-past eight, and then pale watery began to trickle down, followed by tall blue-winged olives, and a fish or two rose tentatively. As I worked my way up, I saw, round a corner through the long grasses, such a commotion as must assuredly be a rat or a waterhen: but, no, it was not …’
J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)
‘IT BEARS INVESTIGATION,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘It bears investigation, my dear Prissie.’
‘Very well, Edris. Investigate by all means, as long as it isn’t too expensive,’ said Miss Carmody; and she smiled at the eager little man.
Among the numerous persons washed into her life by the irresponsible tides of consanguinity, Mr Tidson was a late but interesting piece of flotsam. He was the elderly Miss Carmody’s second cousin, and had been living in Tenerife since his marriage. The fortunes of war had put off until late his retirement from his business, which was that of a banana grower, but he and his wife had at last come to England to live. It had transpired that they purposed to live with Miss Carmody, an arrangement which, she had confided to Connie Carmody, her niece and ward, she hoped would be readjusted.
Connie concurred in this hope. She had watched, with growing jealousy and alarm, the gradual settling-down of her Uncle Edris and his wife and the consequent disruption of the quiet life which she and her aunt had been leading, and she was becoming accustomed to think of Mr Tidson as an interloper and a nuisance.
‘What is it that bears investigation, though?’ Miss Carmody enquired. She and her ward were seated in the window of her eighteenth-century drawing-room in South-West London. The drawing-room was discreetly, comfortably but not expensively furnished, and formed part of a four-roomed flat which had housed Miss Carmody and her niece admirably, but which provided such close quarters for four people that Connie had been obliged, since the invasion (as she savagely but excusably termed it) to share a bedroom with her aunt, an arrangement which she, naturally, disliked.
Mr Tidson, who was occupying most of the settee, straightened himself and looked with exasperating benevolence upon Connie before replying to Miss Carmody’s question.
‘There is a newspaper report of something singular in the River Itchen,’ he said. ‘It seems, from this report, that a man has alleged that he saw a naiad or water-sprite below one of the bridges not very far from Winchester. Very interesting, if true. I should like to go and look into it.’
He went on to describe some extraordinary experiences of his own in connection with the folk-lore of the Canary Islands, and stated that these had caused him to become a keen student of primitive survivals and manifestations. Connie listened impatiently, and Miss Carmody with a blend of kindly but obvious incredulity mingled with slight disapproval, for some of Mr Tidson’s recollections seemed unsuited to the ears of his niece.
By the time he had concluded his remarks, the fact that he should show excitement at a silly-season report of a water-sprite in a Hampshire chalk stream which ordinarily offered a habitat to nothing more sinister than a pike, more beautiful than the grayling or more intelligent than the brown trout, occasioned the disdainful Connie no surprise; neither was she surprised by Mr Tidson’s experiences. He was, she knew already, rather a salacious little man.
‘Let me see the paragraph,’ said Miss Carmody; for she could scarcely believe that the newspapers, short as they were of newsprint, would devote space to a report upon anything quite so unlikely as the classic visitant. It was true that, the war being over and the Loch Ness monster having made no peace-time reappearance, even that single sheet of newsprint which formed the daily paper had somehow to be filled, but it seemed to her quite ridiculous that space should be devoted to the naiad.
Connie appeared to share her views.
‘You must have misread it,’ she said, ‘or else it’s rot!’
Miss Carmody took the paper which Mr Tidson handed her and read the marked column without comment. She observed, however, that it was not a newspaper report but merely a letter to the editor, and was clearly from the kind of person who claims to have heard the first cuckoo in Spring. Connie remarked upon this. Mr Tidson ignored her. She smiled, then, and asked to see the paper.
‘Crete would accompany me if you did,’ Mr Tidson observed, looking at Miss Carmody expectantly. Miss Carmody, having seen nothing of him for almost thirty-five years, had not found it difficult to revive her previous interest in the earnest and persistent little man, and it was with a certain degree of sympathy that she had begun to realize that time was already hanging on his hands, and that his young wife, Greek by extraction and extremely beautiful, was not proving the ideal companion of his leisure.
‘Very well, Edris,’ she said. ‘There is nothing I need attend to until early September except my Working Men’s Eldest Daughters, and I shall be glad to gather strength for them. Let us go and investigate. It will make as good a summer holiday as any other. Tell me your plans whilst I put these flowers in water, and then you shall teach Elsie how to make a Madras curry in place of the Ceylon one which you did not care for yesterday.’
‘A summer holiday in quest of a naiad?’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Charming, my dear Prissie! Quite delightful! And we shall go to Winchester – when? I mean, how soon? Could you manage Monday? I do not want the scent to grow cold, and, besides, I want to hear the Cathedral choir doing Gray in A. Do you think it is likely that they will?’
‘Monday? Admirable. Toogood is using the last of the petrol to take two of my Mothers to the seaside to-morrow, but by Monday he can get the next allowance,’ responded Miss Carmody, ignoring Gray in A, a key she did not care for very much, preferring Church music in E flat. ‘On Monday, then. Very pleasant.’
‘Good,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘Or, of course, we could go by train this afternoon. What do you think?’
Perceiving that he was impatient to be upon the scene and obtain first-hand information of the naiad, Miss Carmody agreed to lose no time, but (rather to her relief, for it was inconvenient to arrange to leave home at not more than four hours’ notice, and she knew that Connie, who did the packing, would not like it, and, in any case, disliked Mr Tidson) this decision was overridden, for at that moment Crete came in, and, catching the last remarks of the parties concerned, vetoed the notion that they could go without preparations.
‘We have to arrange at Winchester to stay somewhere,’ Crete pointed out, ‘and I have to get my hair done, and you have to find enough coupons (I suppose from my book) for at least two shirts before you can go anywhere. Do be reasonable, Edris. You are a very foolish old man.’
She turned away from him contemptuously and looked at herself in the glass.
Crete Tidson was twenty years younger than her husband. She was a slender woman with greenish-gold hair, large dark eyes like those shown in early seventeenth-century portraits, the curling mouth and proudly-carried head of her race, and a rounded, wilful chin. She erred on the side of severity towards her husband, but encouraged him in the free expression of his tastes. She had a well-founded although critical respect for his ability to get his own way, and seldom trusted him out of her sight, for Mr Tidson had developed to a marked degree the foible (noted by St Paul in the Athenians) of desiring always some new thing, and in pursuit of these novelties he was inclined to get into mischief.
‘At any rate,’ said Mr Tidson, ‘I can and will send for a local newspaper, which should contain a fuller account than the one I have just shown Connie.’ He beamed amiably upon his niece, who scowled in return. ‘And I will also go to the public library for information about Winchester, the River Itchen, naiads, fishing, and the folk-lore of Hampshire. I do so love anything new, and this will be delightfully new. I could do the preliminary research this afternoon, before we leave London, couldn’t I?’
Glad for him to have something to do which would innocently dispose of his time, his wife and Miss Carmody immediately agreed that he could, although Connie remained aloof, and (considering that he had introduced her to the naiad at her own request) unreasonably scornful.
‘I will wire for the rooms,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘We will stay at the Domus. Connie and I always do. An excellent hotel in every way, although, of course, not cheap.’
‘But what is it really all about?’ asked Crete, who had not been present when Mr Tidson had looked up from the newspaper and announced the great discovery. ‘What could we do in Winchester? It is a mare’s nest, is it not?’
‘It is a naiad in Hampshire, my dear Crete,’ said Mr Tidson.
‘Nonsense, Uncle Edris,’ said Connie, annoyed to think of any more of her aunt’s money being thrown away on the Tidsons. ‘There are no naiads in Hampshire. There never have been, and there never will be. Hampshire was part of Wessex. You know that as well as I do!’
‘King Alfred,’ agreed Miss Carmody, ‘not to speak of his pious father, Aethelwulf, would not have permitted naiads in country already menaced by the Danes.’
‘Red-haired, horrid people,’ said Crete, who had known two modern Danes on Tenerife, and had found that they rivalled her in beauty. ‘I do not like the Danes.’
‘There were Roman settlements in Hampshire, though,’ went on Miss Carmody pacifically. ‘May not the Romans, with their flair for appropriations, have introduced a stolen Greek naiad into the waters of Venta Belgarum?’
‘It is possible,’ Crete admitted, losing interest. ‘In any case, Edris seems determined to take a holiday, and he might as well pursue a naiad as butterflies or tit-mice – or the daughter of Señor Don Alvarez Pedilla y Lampada, as happened last time,’ she added darkly. ‘He has immoral itches.’
‘How soon do we go?’ demanded Connie, who disliked Crete almost as much as she disliked Mr Tidson, and was jealous of her beauty and charm.
‘On Monday, if we can have the rooms. They are likely to be full at this time of year, however,’ said her aunt. ‘I have been before, and I 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:
‘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.’
‘You see?’ said Mr Tidson triumphantly. ‘Even in the seventeenth century she was known. What do you say now to my naiad?’
‘Amazing,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘May I have another look at that?’ She took the notebook from Crete’s hands and perused the passage again. ‘The spelling puts me in mind of something, although I can’t remember quite what.’
‘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.
‘Women have very inaccurate notions of history, I believe,’ he remarked with conversational inoffensiveness. ‘Except you, of course, my dear Prissie.’
‘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.’
‘Is there indeed?’ said Mr Tidson. ‘And is it your custom to peer into your aunt’s bureau bookcase?’
‘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.
‘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.’
‘Not so very old,’ said Miss Carmody.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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—’
‘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.’
‘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.
‘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.
‘What nephew would that be, Uncle Edris?’ enquired Connie, who had been bidden privately by Miss Carmody to be civil to Mr Tidson, although not to countenance or encourage his oddities.
‘Why, Polly’s girl’s boy,’ replied Mr Tidson unhelpfully. ‘What’s the name, now?’
‘Preece-Harvard,’ said Connie, through her teeth. ‘I ought to know!’
‘Preece-Harvard is the name,’ agreed Miss Carmody, ‘and it is nothing to do with Polly, as you very well know. They live not very far from Winchester. We had better look them up while we are there.’
‘Don’t ask me to go!’ said Connie.
‘I must look up the address,’ said Mr Tidson.
‘You will hardly have time to look the boy up, though,’ observed Crete, not without malice. ‘You will be too busy looking up your nymph.’
Mr Tidson became silent, and looked out of the car window at College Wood, distant half a mile from the road.
‘We should be passing Bradley Farm about now,’ said Connie, who had the map open on her knees. She was seated between her aunt and Crete Tidson on the back seat of the car. Mr Tidson was in front, beside Toogood.
‘Bradley? Ah, that reminds me,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘My friend Mrs Bradley is also proposing to stay at the Domus with us. Miss Carroll took her place at Cartaret College, Connie, you remember, when she relinquished the post of Warden of Athelstan Hall.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Connie. ‘That terrifying, black old lady who always wore dreadful colours and did indescribable knitting. We heard her lecture. I should hardly have thought you could call her a friend of yours, though. We only knew Miss Carroll very slightly, and although you spoke to Mrs Bradley—’
‘Black?’ said Mr Tidson, turning his head.
‘She has black hair and black eyes,’ Miss Carmody sharply replied. ‘There is nothing else black about her, of course. Connie is given to wilful and misleading exaggeration at times.’
‘Exaggeration is always misleading,’ said Crete. Mr Tidson, who did not believe this, resumed his contemplation of the landscape, and the car swept smoothly past Dodsley Wood and a couple of tumuli, and then along a stretch of what had once been a Roman road, and so past Abbots Barton towards Winchester.
‘And although you spoke to Mrs Bradley after her lecture on hereditary tendencies,’ said Connie, who disliked to be cut off in the middle of a sentence, ‘I don’t see that that could exactly make her a friend of yours, Aunt Prissie, and I don’t want to meet her again! I didn’t like her.’
‘Put that rug back, dear,’ replied her aunt. ‘You won’t need that in the hotel. Well, here we are, Crete,’ she added, turning to the slightly more bearable of her parasitic guests. ‘I wonder how you will like it now we’re here?’
‘Oh, I shall like it,’ said Crete. ‘Edris will have his nymph, you will have your friend the black woman, Connie will walk and go early, very early, to bed, and I shall enjoy myself alone. But how is this the hotel? We are not yet in Winchester.’
Chapter Two ‘… which is to inform such Housekeepers as are not in the Higher Rank of Fortune, how to Eat, or Entertain Company, in the most elegant Manner, at a reasonable Expence.’
Mrs SARAH HARRISON OF DEVONSHIRE (The
House-Keeper’s Pocket Book and Complete
Family Cook, 1760)
THE DOMUS HOTEL was in a side-turning and free of the main road traffic. It was approached by way of a lane south-west of the broad arterial road from which A33 debouched before appearing, out of a maze of tributary meanderings, as the main Southampton Road beyond St Cross.
The Domus had been in turn a monastery, an Elizabethan mansion devoted to the cause and hiding of Jesuit priests, an eighteenth-century town house, a nineteenth-century nunnery, and, lastly, a hotel, and it showed traces of all these adventures. The car had been driven past a long garden whose wall still carried stigmata in the form of a small Cross and the date 1872, relics of the nunnery, and was now drawn up before a glassed-in entrance-lounge containing a wicker-chair, an iron shoe-scraper, two plants in pots, a fibre mat, a model of Winchester Cathedral, and the hotel cat.
Further doors led into the hall, and a door to the right showed the reception desk. A tall, cadaverous porter of Scottish extraction jerked a Wee Free thumb towards the office and took charge of the smallest piece of luggage which Toogood had dumped on the tiled floor. Miss Carmody, followed by Mr Tidson, went to the reception desk, and the porter put down the smallest piece of luggage, glanced about him as though in deep suspicion of the whole party, and asked lugubriously of Connie:
‘You’ll be staying long, no doubt?’
‘Oh, not so long as all that,’ said Connie, glancing uncertainly at Crete.
‘For a fortnight,’ said Crete.
‘Ou, ay,’ said the porter, as though this confirmed his worst fears. A voice from the desk said:
‘Twenty-nine, thirty-three and seven, Thomas.’
‘Twenty-nine, therrty-three and seven,’ repeated the porter. ‘You’ll follow me. Fifteen, therrty-three and seven is what I was tellt this morning, but ye’ll suit yoursel’s, nae doubt!’
Twenty-nine, a pleasant little room in the oldest part of the house, was assigned by Miss Carmody to Connie. Thirty-three, containing twin beds and a double wardrobe, was for the Tidsons, and was on the same floor. Number seven was on the ground-floor of the annexe, and was gained by going through the sun-lounge into a bungalow building, very modern and pleasant. Seven was Miss Carmody’s room, and when she found that it was exactly what she had asked for – for she suffered slightly from pyromania and disliked to sleep above ground level in strange houses – she was extremely pleased. Crete was not pleased. She demanded a separate room.
The four met in the cocktail lounge and were served by the severe Thomas with excellent sherry, except for Connie, who preferred gin and Vermouth. They had not been there long when Miss Carmody, putting down her glass, said that they must find out whether her friend Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch. She asked Connie to go and see.
‘They won’t know,’ said Connie, ‘and, if they did, I wouldn’t dare to ask. This place always did terrify me, and Thomas makes me feel as though I’d jam on my face. I call him an awful sort of man.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘I will send for him and enquire.’ She summoned Thomas, to the admiration of her niece, by pressing the bell. Thomas, who had added to his first impressiveness by putting their drinks before them as though he knew full well that they were jeopardizing the safety of their immortal souls with every sip they took, acceded civilly, with an inclination of the head and a ‘Verra guid’ uttered like a curse, to Miss Carmody’s request that he would find out whether Mrs Bradley was expected for lunch, and returned in due course with the information that she was.
‘And a verra clever body,’ he added, looking pontifical as he gazed over Mr Tidson’s head at the red geraniums in the garden. ‘A verra clever body. Just that.’
It sounded like an epitaph, and all found themselves gravely inclining their heads. The rite was interrupted by the entrance of a small, black-haired, black-eyed woman in a hairy heliotrope tweed costume and a green felt hat. She was of witch-like aspect, and heralded her coming with a harsh cackle which sounded oddly from her beaky little mouth.
‘Mrs Bradley!’ exclaimed Miss Carmody, getting up. Thomas made way respectfully for the new arrival, and, without being asked, went out and shortly returned with another glass of sherry.
‘Your Amontillado, madam,’ he said. As this title had not, so far, been bestowed upon the other ladies of the party, it was particularly impressive, and when Thomas went away (which he did without taking notice of being yelled at as ‘Waiter!’ by a young officer in the uniform of the Royal Air Force), Crete Tidson, having, with her husband and Connie, been introduced to the witch, enquired whether Mrs Bradley had often stayed at the Domus.
‘Once, some time before the war,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Are you familiar with the country in and around the New Forest?’
The gong for lunch interrupted the flow of conversation which followed these last magic words, and the party of four were allotted an excellent table at the garden end of the dining-room and were provided with copies of the menu. Mrs Bradley was conducted to a table for one by a window.
‘Pig’s face!’ said Mr Tidson, enraptured, when he had read the menu. ‘I haven’t eaten pig’s face since I was a little tiny boy.’
He began to hum under his breath until his wife prodded him sharply. The waitress, a nice girl, perceiving his excitement, saw to it that he received a generous portion. She took his order for bottled beer, and decided, in the security of her small alcove between the sideboard and the serving-table, that the little man had picked the wrong wife and was henpecked. She made up her mind to make his stay as pleasant as she could. He reminded her of her uncle from America.
‘I like it here,’ said Connie, looking favourably upon a plate of excellent cold beef and the salad and boiled potatoes which came with it. ‘What are we going to do this afternoon?’
‘What you like,’ replied her aunt. ‘Crete? Edris? What are your suggestions?’
‘I shall explore the city,’ said Mr Tidson, ‘and possibly I shall seek an interview with the editor of the local paper. I shall be happiest alone.’
‘I shall sit in the sun lounge, which appears to be warm and pleasant, and get on with my embroidery,’ said Crete.
‘Then you and I will walk to St Cross,’ said Miss Carmody, ‘if you would like that, Connie.’
Connie said that she would like it very much, and Crete asked what there was to see at St Cross. Whilst Miss Carmody (interrupted often by Mr Tidson, who had read up St Cross in a guide book before he had left London) was answering this question, the plates were changed and the party received jam roll and custard, or, if they preferred it, plum tart.
Mr Tidson finished his beer, and, before anyone could prevent it, he had crossed over to Mrs Bradley’s table and was soon in a deep discussion upon cheese, for she had chosen cheese and biscuit rather than the sweet course. Mr Tidson was inclined to reproach her for declining the excellent jam roll, and they had a pleasant and inspiring conversation before he returned to his place.
After lunch Mrs Bradley accepted an invitation from Miss Carmody to accompany herself and her niece to St Cross, and none of them saw any more of the Tidsons until dinner.
‘I hope you are staying a good long time,’ said Connie, to the great surprise of her aunt.
‘I hope to stay as long as you all do,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I am very fond of Winchester, and, besides, Miss Carmody and I have much to talk about.’
‘You’ll have more still if Uncle Edris finds his water-nymph,’ said Connie. Mrs Bradley looked interested and asked for an explanation, although she had already, on the telephone, received tidings of the water-nymph from Miss Carmody. She could perceive, however, that Connie was even more in need of help than Mr Tidson.
‘Ah,’ she said, when Connie, who had some wit and a gift of mimicry, had given a lively picture of Mr Tidson’s raptures, ‘that explains the expression in his eye. He looks gleeful, a sign I have learned to dread in my patients. But all is now made clear. Clear as the waters of the Itchen,’ she added, regarding the crystal river with great favour, for they had made short work of the distance between the Domus and College Walk.
‘You don’t think Edris is mad?’ asked Miss Carmody anxiously. ‘I shouldn’t mind in the ordinary way, but I don’t much want him mad in an hotel.’
‘No, it is not the place,’ Mrs Bradley gravely agreed. ‘But, indeed, no such thought had crossed my mind. I remarked upon my patients because, with the exception of very small children engaged upon very dark deeds, I do not see gleeful persons unless they are in some degree abnormal.’
‘But Uncle Edris is a small child engaged upon dark deeds,’ observed Connie. Mrs Bradley disregarded this, and looked expectantly at Miss Carmody.
‘Yes, I am afraid that Edris is abnormal. He has lived thirty-five years surrounded by nothing but bananas,’ Miss Carmody explained with great simplicity.
‘I see,’ Mrs Bradley replied. She looked thoughtful. ‘No doubt that would make a great impression, especially on a sensitive spirit. Has Mr Tidson a sensitive spirit?’
Connie glanced at her to find out whether she could be laughing, but Mrs Bradley was gazing benignly upon the prospect of St Catherine’s Hill, which could be seen half a mile away on the further side of the river. Her expression gave no clue to her thoughts, but, whatever these may have been, it hardly seemed likely, judging from her profile, that they were of a humorous nature.
The conversation turned to earthworks, and then to thirteenth-century architecture, and the subject of Mr Tidson’s peculiarities was not resumed. The three ladies had an interesting hour at the medieval hospital, over which they were conducted by one of the brothers, and then they returned to the city by the way they had come, and, at Connie’s request, had tea not at the hotel but at tea-rooms which were partly supported by the only remaining pillar of William the Conqueror’s Norman palace, a relic which Connie found romantic.
It was half-past five before they returned to the Domus. Crete Tidson had given up her embroidery and was reading an evening paper brought to her by a young man who had already fallen in love with her greenish hair, slim body and (as he said) fathomless eyes. Of Mr Tidson there was no sign.
‘You might be the naiad yourself, Crete,’ said Miss Carmody, greeting her. ‘Has Edris come in yet from his walk?’
Crete, who had looked startled by the reference to the naiad, resumed her expression of remoteness and slight boredom, and replied that Edris had come in to tea at half-past four and had eaten everything on the tray except the one piece of brown bread and butter which had fallen to his wife’s portion. She added that he had then gone out again.
‘He is as pleased as a child with Winchester,’ she remarked at the conclusion of this narrative.
‘I should not have supposed that a child would have been particularly pleased with Winchester. I should have thought it was an adult person’s heaven,’ Mrs Bradley thoughtfully observed. Crete gave her the same kind of sharp and startled glance as she had bestowed upon Miss Carmody at mention of the naiad, but Mrs Bradley remained in bland contemplation of the scarlet geraniums which, apart from smooth lawn, brown earth, a gravel path, a disused chicken coop and an aristocratic mound which covered the out-of-date air-raid shelter, formed the chief attraction of the somewhat unimaginative garden.
‘Well, Edris is rather like a child, in many ways, when he is pleased. That was what I meant,’ said Crete. ‘Have you all had tea? And is there a bookshop near? I cannot embroider all the time.’
Connie told her where to find a bookshop, and said that there was a lending library at the back of it.
‘You go through the shop,’ she added helpfully.
‘No, thank you!’ said Crete. ‘I only like new books. By that I mean books which have not been handled by others.’
‘But I expect they have. The new ones, I mean,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘People handle the new books to see what they want in exchange for their book tokens. No one ever knows what to do with a book token. I’ve noticed it.’
‘Oh, I do!’ cried Connie. ‘All my friends give me book tokens, and I give them book tokens, too. It saves all the bother of presents.’
‘But it isn’t the same fun,’ said Miss Carmody, who had certain old-fashioned ideas, although not very many.
‘Well, I must have a book, and it must be a new one. Edris will have to find me something,’ said Crete. ‘He will know what to get, no doubt. I am not hard to please.’
Confronted upon his return with the task of finding her a book which should be both light and sensible, Mr Tidson, who seemed to be in great good humour, promised to attend to it in the morning, as the shop would most certainly be shut at that time of the evening.
‘I will get you a guide book,’ he said. ‘It will save you the trouble of visiting the places of interest, and will last you longer than a novel.’
Miss Carmody, to whom these uses of a guide book had not previously occurred, looked somewhat surprised. Mrs Bradley cackled, and Crete observed that Edris sometimes had very good ideas. She added that she had had no intention whatsoever of visiting the places of interest, but that one should be informed upon matters of cultural and historic importance, and that a guide book would be most welcome.
Upon this note of conjugal understanding and felicity, husband and wife went up to dress for dinner, and Connie, who did not think much of the walk she had had that afternoon, went out, as she said, to stretch her legs. Miss Carmody, with a grateful sigh, sat down beside Mrs Bradley.
‘Well, what do you make of Edris and Crete?’ she enquired.
‘They seem well matched,’ replied Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. This comment seemed to cause Miss Carmody some surprise. ‘Will they enjoy their stay in England, do you think?’ Mrs Bradley went on.
‘It is not a stay. It is permanent,’ Miss Carmody replied. She hesitated, and then added, ‘Edris has retired from his banana plantation, although not as comfortably, I believe, as he had hoped. He has had losses, I understand, and then I suppose trade must have suffered somewhat during the war. I believe they have not much to live on, and as I believe they propose to live on me, that will not be much for them, either.’
Politeness forbade Mrs Bradley to ask more, and she turned the conversation on to Connie, who seemed, she said, an interesting child. Certainly Connie’s ill-humour, which had been most marked since the advent of the Tidsons, seemed to have disappeared. Miss Carmody commented on this, and added that she was very fond of Connie.
‘She is my cousin’s child. I took her for his sake, but I keep her now for my own,’ she said with apparent sincerity.
Mrs Bradley understood from this that Miss Carmody supported Connie, and she was surprised that so independent-seeming a girl should be content to live on an aunt past middle age.
‘She is technically illegitimate,’ said Miss Carmody, as though she were explaining away Mrs Bradley’s uncharitable thoughts. ‘A very sad case. My cousin – Arthur Preece-Harvard, you know – was very deeply in love with Connie’s mother. There was no dishonour attached. They intended to marry. Connie is the first-fruits of impatience.’
‘And the mother?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, perceiving that Miss Carmody wished to develop the conversation.
‘A sweet, sweet girl,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘She died, I am sorry to say, in giving birth to Connie. Arthur was broken-hearted for a time, and, of course, the whole thing has made life hard for the child. I wish she got on with Edris better. They dislike one another very much. It is so awkward at times. Of course, Connie has suffered great hardship and some injustice. It has made her rather bitter, I’m afraid. I do what I can, but, of course, it isn’t what she was used to. It is very wrong to treat a child unfairly.’
‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley; and the thoughts engendered by this conversation lasted her all the time that she was dressing.
The party met for cocktails at half-past six, and spent a pleasant time until dinner, which was at seven. Mr Tidson, who, from his own account, had spent a delightful afternoon in roving all over the town from the Westgate to the river bridge, and from Hyde Abbey gateway to the farthest boundary of St Mary’s College, invited Mrs Bradley to sit at their table for the meal, but she pleaded that there were papers she proposed to study during dinner, and produced an impressive brief-case which did, indeed, contain papers of a sort, although not anything of immediate or first-rate importance.
Mr Tidson led the way into the dining-room, made a pleasant remark to the waitress, pulled Mrs Bradley’s chair out for her and even, rather officiously, cleared a space beside her plate for her documents. Then he saw his own party seated, flipped open his table napkin, said ‘Ha! Oxtail soup!’ and called boisterously for the wine list. There was no doubt that he was in great holiday spirits, and there was no doubt, either, thought Mrs Bradley, that the wine would appear in due course on Miss Carmody’s bill.
‘You are enjoying Winchester, sir?’ asked the waitress, when she came to bring the bottle and change the plates.
‘Winchester,’ declared Mr Tidson, ‘is the queen of cities. And you, my dear, are the queen of Winchester.’
‘My home’s in Southampton,’ said the girl, registering a theory that Mr Tidson was an old sport but would bear watching. Anecdotes about Southampton, Liverpool and Bristol, from all of which his banana boats had sailed, then lasted Mr Tidson until coffee, and the waitress decided that she was wrong, and that the poor old bloke was harmless after all, thus confirming her first impression of him.
‘I shall hope,’ he said, changing the conversation when all five of them were seated in the lounge after dinner, ‘to have your company, Mrs Bradley, in my exploration of the city and its environs. I am, as you may imagine, a little out of touch with details of English architecture after so long a sojourn abroad. Would you care to accompany me tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day?’
‘It would give me great pleasure,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Shall we say to-morrow afternoon? And where would you like to go?’
‘I should like to go to Alresford,’ Mr Tidson replied, ‘but as my nymph is not there I shall postpone my visit in her honour, and we will walk as far as Shawford, if you are willing.’
‘Alresford?’ said Connie, startled. ‘Oh, but you can’t go there!’
‘That is what I said,’ replied Mr Tidson. ‘Moreover, I did not address the remark to you!’
Chapter Three ‘Dr Thorne promised to come also but was prevented by being obliged to attend some Patients.’
* * *
‘Soon after breakfast I went out a fishing by myself, into Wilmots Orchard as it is called and stayed there till Dinner time near 3 o’clock had very good sport, caught 3 fine Trout, the largest about 1pd and 1/4, and 4 fine Eels …’
Diary of a Country Parson: the REVEREND
JAMES WOODFORDE, Vol. 3, 1788–1792.
Edited by JOHN BERESFORD.
AS IT HAPPENED, Mrs Bradley spent only two days in Winchester, or, rather, two parts of days, for she was recalled by telegram on the Tuesday afternoon to attend an ex-seaman who had been ordered psychiatric treatment for shock following some bad burns.
Mr Tidson, therefore, continued his tour of Winchester and the neighbourhood alone, for his wife still declared that she preferred a chair in the sun-lounge to walking or sightseeing, and Miss Carmody and Connie refused to have anything to do with fishing.
Mr Tidson had announced himself to be a devoted and persistent angler, and argued that, besides this, the troutrod in his hand would cloak the gravity of his true quest, his search for the naiad, for it gave a screen, and seemed to provide a reason, for his wadings and mud-larkings across water-meadows intersected by ditches, brooks, tributary streams and carriers, and for his getting dirty and wet.
A wet and muddy angler was almost an object of nature, he observed, but a naiad-hunter in similar plight might have been regarded askance, particularly as the quickest way back to the hotel lay across the Cathedral Close. He therefore purchased a green-heart rod and some tackle, and set about acquiring tickets for the local waters.
His first action after lunch was to see Mrs Bradley off. His second was to walk to the offices of the County newspaper and enquire whether anything more had been added to the first report of the naiad. Rather to his annoyance, Miss Carmody insisted upon going there with him. Connie, whom he had attempted to persuade, refused to be seen about with him, an announcement which she made in the most offensive tone of which she was capable. She then went off to the bus station and left Mr Tidson and Miss Carmody to walk to the office of the newspaper.
The staff could tell them no more. They cast polite doubts upon the authenticity of the letter and also declared that it was unusual for ladies to bathe in the open river so near the Cathedral precincts. The story of the naiad, they thought, had been invented to provide a silly-season sensation, or possibly to provoke a newspaper correspondence. It had not appeared in any of the local papers, although a local resident had sent them a cutting.
They had not, however, troubled to get in touch with the sender of the letter. They thought that he must have been someone staying in Winchester on holiday who had found the place quiet – some people did – and had tried to create a diversion in the form of a stupid hoax.
Miss Carmody listened with critical attention, putting in a word here and there. She confided to Connie, upon her return to the Domus, that she still found herself slightly worried. She could not forget that Mr Tidson had been out of England for a great many years, and, in any case, had no sense of humour, and she feared lest his researches should lead him into difficulties. She referred afresh to the instinct which had caused her to ask Mrs Bradley to come to Winchester, and said soberly that she would have been glad of the continued support and comfort of her presence.
Connie, who meant to go to Andover, where she had friends, listened with considerable impatience, for she knew she would miss the bus if she stayed too long. She did, in fact, miss it, much to her annoyance, for there was no other which fitted in with the hotel meals, and this fact caused her to postpone her outing and behave rather sulkily in consequence.