Death and the Maiden Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    Miss Carmody, still perturbed, got up at six the next morning and went out by herself for a walk. She crossed the High Street and stood for a moment beside the Butter Cross before she passed beneath an archway which led across the green to the Cathedral.
    Except for a postman she saw nobody as she left the flying buttresses of the south wall of the Cathedral behind her and crossed the silent and beautiful Close. She paused, as she had paused in years gone by, to admire the sixteenth-century houses near Kings Gate, and then she walked under the arches of the gate itself, with the Church of St Swithun athwart it, and turned down College Street towards the