Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley) Page 11

  “They have already done so,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Even if I’d had a car, I’d have had to leave it on the heath and cart the body into the enclosure,” said Richardson. “You could never get a car along that woodland track. The whole thing would have been a sheer impossibility, but still the police are on to me, and probably, as Scab says, on to him as well, if they’ve checked his movements.”

  “It just means they really haven’t a clue,” said Denis, “but it’s a bit much that they should keep picking on Tom.”

  “Well,” said Dame Beatrice, “let us do a little straight thinking and then I shall compare our findings with those of the Superintendent.”

  “Our findings? But we haven’t found out anything!” Richardson protested.

  “Have we not?” Dame Beatrice produced her notebook. “We have found a long list of possible suspects and we may even be in a position to add to it later.”

  “Oh, you mean the members of the Scylla and District,” said Richardson, “but I can’t see anything much in that. I mean to say…”

  “Take heart, laddie,” said Laura, “and give the oracle a chance to tell her tale.”

  “Here, then,” said Dame Beatrice, “is a categorical survey of those who may have had the means, the opportunity, and a motive for wanting Mr. Colnbrook and Mr. Bunt out of the way.”

  She stepped over to the door and turned the key in the lock, then she made certain that the French doors which looked out on to the garden were securely bolted down.

  “This is the stuff from which thrillers are fabricated,” said Laura, gratified by these proceedings. “Shall I look in the cupboard under the bookcase to make certain no spy is lurking?”

  “It is just as well to take precautions against our being interrupted,” said Dame Beatrice. “Now to the matter in hand. Logically, (and here I am bound to see the point of view of the police), Mr. Richardson must be our principal suspect, with Mr. Bradley as his accessory after the fact or even his co-partner in crime.

  “Let us examine the evidence against them. Of Mr. Richardson’s plan to pitch a tent on the heath we need say nothing. What does seem a little out of the way, however, is that, on his own admission and on the evidence of the hotel ledgers, he took all his meals, even his breakfasts, here. One had supposed that the whole art of camping out included the minor arts of cooking and catering for oneself. Still, we may let that pass.

  “What cannot be got over so easily is the circumstance that Mr. Bradley was obliged to delay his coming, and to upset previous plans, on the flimsy and unlikely excuse of having to play polo. Cricket, yes. Cricket is a sacred game. Football, particularly Rugby football, is a possible excuse for breaking a previous engagement. Possibly there might be an injury to another player. ‘Bradley will not fail us.’ One can visualise the scene and hear the ensuing dialogue. But polo—that unnecessary contribution to dangerous occupations, a relic of the days when India was part of the great British Empire and it was more gentlemanly to ride a pony than to dash about on foot in the broiling sun—polo will not do as an excuse.”

  “I did play polo,” protested Denis. “And it was because one of the team couldn’t turn out. And, dash it all, if the Duke can get away with playing polo, so can I.”

  “Ah,” said Laura, “but your playing polo was just a blind. I can see Dame B’s point. You did play polo, yes. But what did you also do when Colnbrook and Bunt were killed? The polo doesn’t let you out. That’s what the Superintendent thinks.”

  Denis nodded. Richardson looked gloomier than ever.

  “So the police have got something on us,” he said. “Scab could have popped down here by car, as arranged, helped me with the bodies, and popped back again to fix up this polo alibi for himself. Only, you see, he didn’t.”

  “Of course he didn’t,” said Laura, “but Dame Beatrice has to cut down the wood so that we can all see the trees.”

  “A striking metaphor,” said Denis. “Go on, dear great-aunt. Who comes next on your list?”

  “Oh, but I haven’t finished with you two yet. We have three headings, remember. I have dealt with opportunity. There remain means and motive.”

  “I can do those for you,” said Richardson. “From my last teaching post I could have got hold of both the poisons used. From the heath itself I could (I suppose) have supplied myself with adders—although there is nothing to suggest that either of the bodies showed adder bites—and as for motive, well, I’ve managed, in the case of Bunt, to keep mine hidden, but it’s known I had two rows with Colnbrook, and—there you are! Also, as Laura, no doubt, has told you, I knew those chaps were in this neighbourhood.”

  “Admirably expressed,” said Dame Beatrice. “Let us move on to the other candidates. Chief among these, of course, are the members of the Scylla and District Social and Athletic Club, but until we can discover means and motive for any or all of these—opportunity would present no difficulty at all, one assumes—I fear we cannot particularise.”

  “One thing,” said Denis. “If Tom could have got hold of the prussic acid and the potassium stuff, so could the science bloke at the school.”

  “And the art master,” said Laura. “Didn’t you say that he went in for engraving?”

  “There’s also that little toad of a lab boy,” said Denis. “You mentioned him, I think.”

  “The difficulty here is that we cannot show, at present, any connection between any one of these three and the dead men,” said Dame Beatrice. “Where was this school, Mr. Richardson?”

  “In a little place called Want, not far from Basingstoke.”

  “I see. Not so very far away from here, either.”

  “No, I suppose not. But it’s absurd to think that Joliffe and Draco could have had anything to do with the murders, and the lab kid is only seventeen, although a bit of a wart.”

  “So was Henry Thingummy only seventeen,” said Laura. “You can’t go by age.”

  “A boy of seventeen might murder one person. But to kill two, unless he were…” said Dame Beatrice.

  “A pathological case?” said Denis. “Yes, it would seem to be beyond the scope of the average lad, but all the same…”

  “There’s no such thing as the average lad,” said Laura, belligerently.

  “Oh, but there is,” said Richardson. “You’d be surprised. There’s a common factor. If you’d taught in boys’ schools…”

  “Only because everybody dreads being different from everybody else,” said Laura, interrupting him. “You can’t tell what they all really think, and I shall always maintain that…”

  “There are still a few daring young men on the flying trapeze?” asked Dame Beatrice, giving an eldritch cackle.

  “Well, I don’t claim to be one of those. But we’re straying from the point, aren’t we?” said Richardson, defeated, he thought, by the ladies. “We were talking about my last school.”

  “And now,” said Dame Beatrice, “we are going to talk about your last employer. You coached his son, I believe, and left them your holiday address. Why did you do that? Furthermore, what kind of people are they, and where do they live?”

  “Oh, they live just outside Southampton. I didn’t like them much, but I don’t see any reason why they should be mixed up in these goings on. I gave them my address because they asked for it and promised to send me my last month’s pay, which they have done.”

  “And the son whom you coached?”

  “Oh, a bit short on intellect and rather a little wart, but I felt sorry for the poor kid. He was spoilt most of the time; otherwise he was groused at because he wasn’t grateful enough for the spoiling. Quite a hopeless sort of situation, I thought, and not at all calculated to produce a first-class citizen. I’ll write down the address for you, but I really don’t want them bothered. There can’t be any connection.”

  “You are probably right,” said Dame Beatrice, “but, as Laura would tell you, we must leave no stone unturned. To resume, and to rejoin our sheep, there remain other
suspects and it is for you, Mr. Richardson, to decide which we examine first.”

  “Well, but who are they? I can’t think of anybody else.”

  “Oh, but surely! What about the people in the house from which you tried to telephone? What about the people (visitors and staff) who live, or did live, in this hotel?”

  “Some assignment!” said Laura. “And, of course,” she added, “there are always the members of other athletics clubs. Some of them may have had it in for Colnbrook and Bunt.”

  “Why, so they may,” said Dame Beatrice, leering at her in a confidential fashion.

  “Good heavens, of course not!” said Richardson, aghast. “It’s not the sort of thing that’s ever done!”

  Denis clicked his tongue sadly.

  “Et tu, Brute?” he asked. Richardson gave him a sharp glance which was not misinterpreted either by Laura or by Dame Beatrice.

  “So there is a nigger in the woodpile,” said the former, when, having bade the young men good night, she was seated in an armchair in her employer’s first-floor room.

  “By that, you infer…?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “That there is something more which Tom ought to tell us. That baby boy ain’t as innocent as he would have us believe.”

  “Dear me,” said Dame Beatrice mildly. “I really think you’d better go to bed.”

  “The bar is still open,” said Laura. “I will repair thither and seek truth in the bottom of a glass of their excellent beer.” She did this and was ready with her findings for Dame Beatrice at breakfast on the following morning.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is the business of swapping over the bodies. Why go to all that trouble? Why not have left Colnbrook in Tom’s tent and carted Bunt’s body into that enclosure? It just doesn’t make sense!

  “The difference between sense and nonsense is understood only by the critics of modern plays, dear child,”

  “One man’s meat is another man’s—here, I say!” exclaimed Laura. “Haven’t we perhaps got something there? Could one of them have been taking it as a medicine?”

  “You’ve been doing too much reading,” said Dame Beatrice, “but, yes, I am compelled to agree that, although prussic acid can scarcely be classed as a medicine, there is a very mild preparation which is used in food as a flavouring.”

  “So where does that get us?”

  “Nowhere,” admitted Dame Beatrice, treating Laura to a crocodile grin. “But remember, in the words of the immortal Quince, that truth makes all things plain. In addition, although Pyramus did not kill Thisbe, he was, in a sense, as responsible for her death as the lion was for his.”

  “Sez you!” said Laura, incensed by this intrusion into her own treasure-house of apt quotation. “Well, where do we go from here?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Superintendent Reviews It

  Nobody supposes that the digging up of antiquities is in itself a scientific end…

  Digging Up the Past

  Sir Leonard Wolley

  “There remain,” said Dame Beatrice, “the hotel staff. They could all have known that Mr. Richardson was encamped on the heath.”

  The Superintendent rubbed his jaw.

  “Are you seriously thinking that one of the hotel servants is guilty, ma’am?” he enquired.

  “No, I am not,” said Dame Beatrice, “but I suppose we ought to look at the thing in the round. What is your own idea?”

  “I can see nothing nearer than Mr. Richardson himself. All the evidence seems to point that way. We have witnesses of his two disagreements with Colnbrook. What is more, one of the quarrels, that one in the station waiting-room, seems to have been of a serious nature.”

  “Against that, we must put the murder of Mr. Bunt. There is nothing whatever to connect him with Mr. Richardson, is there?”

  “No,” said the Superintendent thoughtfully. “What’s more, for what it’s worth, Dame Beatrice, Bunt was not, as one might say, an indigenous product. He came to Southampton from the Transvaal and had been over here only about three years before he was killed.”

  “Shades of potassium cyanide!” said Dame Beatrice. “Do they not, in those latitudes, use large amounts of it in extracting gold from ores?”

  The Superintendent looked startled; then he recollected himself and smiled.

  “It wouldn’t account for the prussic acid,” he said. Dame Beatrice said that she was not so sure.

  “Derivatives postulate a main substance,” she argued. “Those who know potassium cyanide may surely have some passing acquaintance with hydrocyanic acid?”

  The Superintendent politely disagreed.

  “I don’t see it, ma’am, but then, of course, I’m not a doctor.”

  “And I’m not a chemist, Superintendent. All the same, I hardly see how you are going to establish a connection between Mr. Richardson and Mr. Bunt, and, from the circumstance of Mr. Richardson’s tent having been used to house both the bodies, I deduce that the two murders were committed by the same person or persons.”

  “Well, I’ll take another look at the hotel staff, of course, ma’am, but I don’t really think we shall pin anything on anybody there.”

  “One of the guests, perhaps,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “We’ve done a certain amount of work on those who were staying in the hotel at the time. Most people cooperated well, but one or two were a bit sticky, especially the residents. It needed a lot of tact to get them to tell us they couldn’t help us!”

  “Did nothing come of your efforts?”

  “Not a thing. None of them even seems to have noticed what time young Richardson came in that night. I’ve had a good go at the manager and the porter, but it hasn’t led to anything. The manager had gone up to bed and all the porter can tell me is that Richardson was ‘in a pretty fair taking,’ which is only what you’d expect, whether he’s guilty or innocent.”

  “Quite so. I wish we knew the reason why the first body was put into Mr. Richardson’s tent and then the second body substituted for it.”

  The Superintendent looked at her for a moment or two before he said,

  “We’ve only Mr. Richardson’s word for it that Colnbrook’s body ever was in the tent, ma’am. And he wasn’t any too frank with me about it, you know.”

  “I cannot see why he should have lied about it, though. As for his lack of frankness, that, surely, was a matter of being stricken with panic, a perfectly natural reaction I should have thought.”

  “I don’t like the way the body was found in that enclosure. Of all the miles and miles of woods and open heath which make up the Forest, why did he choose to go with Mr. Bradley to that one particular part? It was too much of a coincidence altogether.”

  “Oh, I do not agree with you there, Superintendent. The wood was a natural enough place in which to hide the body, and it was a natural enough place for the young men to choose for their walk. Besides, there was the dog. Then, again, the body had not been hidden just where they stumbled upon it, you know. The woodmen confessed that they had moved it.”

  “I haven’t lost sight of that fact, ma’am. A good old dressing down I gave them, too. Destroying evidence, I told them. One of them had the cheek to tell me that a whole lot more evidence would have been destroyed if a tree-trunk had fallen right across the body. He was correct, in a way, I suppose, but I wouldn’t let him get away with it. I told him that he and his mates might think themselves lucky not to be charged with being accessories after the fact.” He chuckled. “That shook ’em up a bit.”

  “What about the school near Basingstoke?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “We’d have to find a connection between the masters there and the two dead men. It seems a very long shot to me, ma’am.”

  “I don’t think it need necessarily be such a very long shot, Superintendent, and, from your point of view, it would bring Mr. Richardson back into the picture. Besides, if he was teaching at the school at the time of one of these quarrels with Colnbrook, it
could be that somebody else on the staff had also met members of the Scylla and District Club. Had you thought of that?”

  The Superintendent looked doubtful.

  “We could hardly see our way clear,” he said. “We’ve nothing at all against the school, and Mr. Richardson has had a tutoring job, as you know, since he left there. We see no reason, at present, for us to trouble the Headmaster and his staff.”

  “Then what about the people at that house from which Mr. Richardson hoped to telephone you?”

  “Yes, we could get on to that, I suppose. You see, ma’am, there we have nothing, again, but Mr. Richardson’s word to go on. We don’t know that he ever went to the house.”

  “What about the maid who answered the door? She is certain to remember that evening.”

  “She has only to deny that he called, ma’am.”

  “You had better leave her to me, then. She was not the only servant left in the house, if you remember.”

  “That’s if we accept Mr. Richardson’s story.”

  “Well, it would do no harm to make an enquiry, would it?”

  “As a matter of fact, we went there,” said the Superintendent, looking her in the eye.

  “Really? Whom did you see?”

  “Everybody in the house, including, I have no doubt, the maid in question. Not a very bright specimen, but we couldn’t shake her. She swore that nobody came to the door that night.”

  “Oh, dear! I suppose you picked on the right girl?”

  The Superintendent shook his head.

  “She wasn’t very bright,” he repeated, “but it seems that she is the one who always answers the door.”

  “She may have been coached by her employers, don’t you think? Naturally, they would not wish to be involved in a case of murder.”

  “They were not at home when, or if, Mr. Richardson called, ma’am. They were in London to see a show, and they stayed at a hotel in Kensington a couple of nights. We checked on that, and their name is in the hotel register all right.”