Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  Richardson crossed the road and followed the broad green ride until, at a bend in the river, he came to the spot on which he had set up his tent. The tent was a sordid little affair, not more than three feet wide and only high enough to allow the occupant to choose whether to lie flat, kneel, crouch, or sit. It sufficed for his needs, however, and had the supreme advantages of being small to pack and light to carry. The rest of his paraphernalia was under a waterproof sheet a yard from the tent-flap and was as meagre as long experience of lone camping could possibly make it. He was, like the immortal Merkland of John MacNab, not dressy. His heavier luggage he proposed to leave at the station until he booked in at the hotel.

  Although it was almost the end of the third week in September, an Indian summer seemed likely. Richardson had not taken the weather into his calculations in fixing his holiday, but merely the fact that, so late in the season, he would be likely to get the camping site to himself. Still, it was pleasant to see the sunshine and feel its grateful if unseasonable warmth. He was not—and would not so have described himself—a naturalist, but he liked to have some definite interest or occupation during a lonely holiday and had decided, this year, to observe and, if possible, photograph, the fauna of the forest. He hoped for deer, badgers, foxes, hares, the irrepressible rabbit, and even the otter. If he neither spotted nor photographed any of them, he would still be of Stevenson’s opinion that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. He was a sinuously fit young man and could move like a cat. He possessed, also, an almost cat-like capacity for being able to see in the dark.

  He spent the afternoon in prospecting for likely badger setts and foxes’ holes and, finding himself alone in the wide waste over which a visitor could be distinguished a long way off, he discovered a spot along the water at which, under the nearside bank, where the river turned a sharpish bend, there was a natural bathing-place four or five feet deep. It was not big enough for swimming, but proved to be an excellent hole for a cold and refreshing dip. All afternoon he did not see a soul, but, on taking a brisk walk after his rough toweling, he heard, in the woods at the far side of the heath, the sound of foresters felling a mighty tree.

  He returned to the hotel for tea. He had decided that there was no point in spending time shopping in the village, and there was no farm near enough to make it worth the trouble of carrying milk, water and eggs back to his camp. Richardson, besides, was a good trencherman but an indifferent cook. Neither did he want to spend time collecting dead wood for a fire, although the Forest by-laws allowed for this. He had, too, (after hearing of the devastating experience of a friend), a dread of starting a conflagration. His sleeping-bag of wool and camel-hair provided sufficient warmth at night, and comfort was assured by the inflatable mattress on which, over a groundsheet, it rested. He thought that he would be perfectly happy until his friend arrived on the Saturday.

  He enjoyed his tea and lingered over it. When he took the road again it was ten minutes to five. He passed two girls on horseback, and several cars and a lorry either passed or overtook him; otherwise the world, so far as he was concerned, was empty of human beings. He reached camp and decided to continue to follow the course of the river. It was not possible to keep close to the bank because of bushes, thick and dense in places, and some patches of marshy ground, but he met the water again at frequent intervals and came, at last, to the borders of a wood.

  Here all trace of a path was lost. He continued to follow the stream until impenetrable thickets and a good deal of mud made progress less than tolerable. He struck back, through the trees—pine, oak, and beech—and regained the open heath. A fair, broad trackway, recently used by wheeled vehicles, led him between gorse and bramble towards his tent.

  He was within a quarter of a mile of his camp when he spotted the runners. There were two of them jogging along across the heath, apparently out for a training spin, for they were obviously in no hurry. In fact, as he watched, they slowed up and then stopped. Rather to his surprise, the shorter of them put field-glasses to his eyes and, after scanning the countryside for a full three minutes, he handed the glasses to his companion.

  The men were a couple of hundred yards away and it was impossible to gain an impression of anything more than their height and general build, yet something about the taller man struck a chord in Richardson’s memory. Tantalisingly, however, he could not recall the circumstances under which he must have met the man. As the fellow was in running kit, however, he assumed that he must be a member of some club with which his own had been associated.

  He walked on and then glanced sideways and a little behind him. The taller man was handing back the glasses. They were an odd sort of burden to carry on a cross-country run, Richardson thought. The only rational explanation seemed to be that the two men were to be the hares in a hare-and-hounds chase and were plotting their route. What they had appeared to be watching, however, was a group of forest ponies which had come into view against the dark trees of a fir wood, a Forestry plantation away over to Richardson’s right.

  He made his way back to camp and when he got there he spread his anorak on the ground, sat down on it, and lit a pipe. He smoked very little, for he was always in reasonably good training, but a pipe helped contemplation and seemed to fit in with the quiet of the approaching evening.

  When he had finished the pipe and knocked it out on to some mud at the edge of the stream, he put everything ready for the night and went off to have dinner at the hotel. He had not expected to see the two runners again, but they must have taken a long cast round when they reached the fencing of the fir wood, for they had come out upon the common. They were near enough now for him to see the taller man more clearly. This time he recognised him. He was the A. B. Colnbrook of the cross-country inter-club incident and the chief actor in another encounter which Richardson still thought of with distaste.

  He had no desire to meet the fellow again, and, fortunately, there was no chance or this, for, even as he recognised Colnbrook, the two runners, who had again been using their field-glasses although the light was failing fast, picked up their feet, and cantered off on the path which Richardson himself had just left.

  On the following morning, having breakfasted at the hotel, he walked into the village for letters. There was a postcard from the friend who had planned to join him.

  “Can’t manage this week-end. Have to come on Monday at about half-past eleven,” was the gist of the information it contained. Richardson was not at all sorry. He was enjoying his solitude and to have the time of it extended for two or three days did not trouble him, but rather the reverse. He thrust the postcard into his jacket pocket, bought cigarettes, sweets, and fruit in the village, stopped a moment at the water-splash to watch a foal which had found some herbage on the bank there, crossed by the footbridge, and tramped along the winding road to the hotel. He stayed for lunch and then went for a walk over the common. He photographed a mare and her foal, saw a hare but was not able to get a picture, and took a long cast round which he hoped would bring him back on to the heath.

  He covered about eleven miles, using the Ordnance map and a pocket compass, and reached camp too late, he noted ruefully, to go back and get tea at the hotel. He took a plunge in his water-hole, the second that day, and decided to get to the hotel by about seven, have a drink before dinner and then, after dinner, try his luck with flashlight at the entrance to a badgers’ sett which a forester he met had pointed out to him.

  The sett was about a mile and a half from his camp, in a bank in the middle of the woods. By the time he reached his tent, after having dined at the hotel, the September evening was chilly. He added a thick sweater to his shirt and pullover, then, camera and bulb in hand, he set off for his objective. He carried, besides, a small electric torch, for the going was made treacherous at times by ant-hills and low-growing gorse and the night was moonless and dark.

  He took up his position and waited for the better part of two hours. He became cramped and chilly, but there was no sign of bro
ck. There were the usual whisperings and movements of a forest at night, and the brown owls were calling, but, from Richardson’s point of view, his vigil was fruitless. He returned to camp, took off his shoes and his jacket, and crawled into his tent. His sleeping-bag was warmly lined and the rubber mattress was gratefully springy. In no time at all he was asleep.

  Bird-song woke him early. Dawn was at hand and the half-light was eerie. He emerged from his sleeping-bag with care and crawled out of the tent. The trees in the distant wood, where he had watched for the badgers, were no more than a bluish-black blur and when (almost suddenly, it seemed) the bird-song ceased, he could hear the river which, in full daylight, had seemed soundless, rippling softly in song over stones.

  The light broadened fast, as, pulling a towel from his pack, he went off to his water-hole for a dip. The stream was agonisingly cold and, when he was dry and had dressed, he went for a run. Breakfast at the hotel was not served before eight, so he trotted towards the gravelled road which led one way to the house he had seen and the other way to the wide wooden bridge. Twenty yards or so beyond the bridge, he still followed the road, where it bent to the left, and trotted on.

  The surface was loose and very rough, but soon he realised that by leaving its verge and making passage through a gap in the wayside gorse, he could run parallel to the road on the adjacent common. He crossed over and soon his shoes were sodden with dew.

  The road itself led into magnificent woods. He left the common and followed the stony track over a rough plank bridge, and then across another, beneath which the main stream ran. He paused on this second bridge and leaned on the parapet. The water below the left-hand side of the bridge ran deep and widened out into a sizeable pool. Richardson marked the pool as a possible swimming place, and then walked on. The woodland was open, and displayed, in all their grey-boled grandeur, magnificent beeches and several giant oaks. There also were holly trees whose girth gave a clue to their antiquity, and there were some ancient thorn trees on which the berries were bright in their autumn scarlet. Blackberries were ripe, or ripening, and every wild rose bush had its smooth, red, ovular fruits.

  Richardson followed the path along ruts made by foresters’ carts and the indentations of the caterpillar wheels of tractors. He skirted muddy pools which rarely dried up all the year, and, pursuing his way, disturbed the sudden birds and the darting grey squirrels. At last he came to the fringe of the wood and to such a watery quagmire that his progress that way was halted. Beyond him, and on either side of the path, was a heather-covered, bracken-fronded common with never a path or road. He looked at his watch. It was more than time to turn back if he wanted breakfast.

  He retraced his steps—no hardship in this undiscovered country. The wood, except for landmarks in the form of one or two fine beeches which he had noted on his outward journey, looked completely different when traversed in the opposite direction. He regained the bridges and the road, and then took a narrow, built-up path (which a formidable notice prohibited equestrians from using) and, by brisk walking, came, as he had anticipated, on to the so-called lawn-really a part of the common—opposite the hotel. He crossed a couple of plank bridges over small and sluggish streams, and struck out across the grass. He arrived rather muddy, but in great spirits and extremely hungry for his breakfast, at just after nine o’clock.

  The defection of Denis, who was now not due to arrive until Monday morning, had made him consider how best he might employ the Saturday and the Sunday. He thought that, on these days, the quiet walks and excursions which he had so much enjoyed on the Thursday and Friday might be made less solitary by the invasion of week-end parties or by the local people who had Saturday and Sunday free. By the time breakfast was over he had made up his mind what to do. He would take a train to the second station down the line and from there follow his nose. There was a manor house marked on the map. He thought he might take a look at it.

  He looked up a train in the A.B.C. lent to him at the hotel, and set off, inconspicuously dressed in grey worsted trousers and a green-mixture tweed jacket, for the station. The train came in to time, but nobody, later on, came forward to declare that he had boarded it, and at the station where he alighted there was not a ticket-collector or a porter to be seen. Not knowing what to do with his ticket, and unwilling to hang about, he left it on the ledge of the ticket office and walked out into the sunshine.

  He had sheets 179 and 180 of the one-inch Ordnance Survey, but the roads proved to be adequately signposted and a walk of about three miles brought him to crossroads in the middle of a large, flourishing, remarkably uninteresting village. At this point the map helped him, and he tramped along a country road, past fields, until he came to the manor house. Regrettably, but in accordance, he supposed, with modern usage, the mansion had been turned into flats. Cars stood about in what had been the entrance to the stables, and in the forecourt of the once pleasant old country house were a couple of large caravans.

  There was nothing for it but to tramp onwards towards lunch and the coast. He crossed the main Lymington road, dropped southwards and then, still following the signposts and helped again by the map, he took a secondary road south-east until he came to cliffs and the sea. There was a solitary hotel on the cliff-top. He went in, drank beer, and had lunch.

  After lunch he strolled for an hour along the cliff-top; later he descended a primitive wooden stairway to the beach. He changed, behind a chunk of fallen cliff, into the swimming trunks he had brought, stayed in the smooth sea for twenty minutes or so, dried himself and dressed and, foreswearing tea for once, caught the bus into Lymington. Here he purchased two pairs of woolen socks and, at another shop (where, afterwards, they remembered him), he bought a pair of gumboots.

  After that he waited for and boarded another bus which took him back to the station from which he had set out. Half an hour later he was at dinner in the hotel. He felt relaxed but not tired, treated himself to a half-bottle of claret, and was in no hurry to get back to camp. He had coffee and a liqueur, smoked a couple of cigarettes and finally left at a quarter to nine.

  The night was clear and fine and the moon was up, but the temperature had dropped considerably with the coming on of the dark, so Richardson stepped out briskly, and, in spite of having to carry the heavy gumboots as well as his bathing trunks and towel, took ten minutes’ less time than usual. His tent glimmered faintly ahead. The time was approximately twenty-five minutes to ten.

  He switched on his torch, tossed the gumboots on the ground beside the waterproof pack which contained most of his belongings, unstrapped the knapsack from his shoulders, and pulled out the damp trunks and towel. Then he turned the torchlight on to the flap of the tent to light up the narrow entrance.

  “Hello!” he thought. “I’ve had a visitor. Wonder whether anything’s missing? Have to wait until morning. Can’t check everything now. Lucky I didn’t leave any spare cash about. Messy blighter, whoever he was!”

  The marks of muddy fingers were visible on the tent-flap. Richardson had studied them for a minute or so before another thought came to him. The visitor, finding the tent unoccupied, might have decided that it would shelter him for the night. In this case, he most probably would be a tramp.

  Richardson had encountered tramps before. As a class he did not care for them. He switched off his torch, lay with his ear against the tent flap and listened. The first thing that struck him was that there was no sound of breathing, or of anything else, coming from the interior of the tent. The second point to impinge upon his conscious mind was that the dew on the heath was heavy and that his feet were extremely wet.

  With these considerations in mind, he switched on the torch again, drew aside the tent-flap, and crawled in. His bed was occupied. On top of groundsheet, rubber mattress and sleeping-bag lay a man. There had been no sound of breathing because the man was dead.

  It did not take Richardson long to ascertain this. At first, on hands and knees, he played his torch over the features and clothing of the corpse.
Then he backed out again while he considered how best to tackle the problem which confronted him.

  It was not an easy thing to do, but he forced himself to enter the tent again. He felt the man’s hands and stared, in the torchlight, at the rigid, slug-white face. He groped inside the man’s shirt for his heartbeats, but there were none. Then, with a sense of repugnance, but also from a sense of duty, he put his mouth against the mouth of the corpse and breathed deeply, in and out, against the clenched teeth and parted lips.

  All was in vain. At last, in an effort of resuscitation which was not far removed from an inexperienced person’s panic in the face of unexpected, unexplained death, he thumped the corpse over the heart with a pounding fist and shouted,

  “Why the devil, Colnbrook, did you have to die on me?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hounds of the Law

  …and some of the young hounds paid him rather more attention than he appreciated; so he tried to keep them off with his umbrella…

  Sporting Recollections of a Younger Son

  Claude Luttrell

  After the first shock of dismay and—it must be admitted—a sort of horrified annoyance, it occurred to Richardson that the house whose estate he had circumnavigated in the approach to his camping site was probably on the telephone. It would need to be, he argued, as it was so far from the shops and the village.

  Thither, therefore, he made his way by torchlight, intending to request the loan of the instrument for the purpose of calling the police. These, he supposed, would contact a doctor, although he realised that there was little, if anything, that a doctor could do except specify the cause of death and arrange for Colnbrook’s body to be removed.

  At the house, however, he met with an immediate check. An obviously nervous maidservant, her hair in curlers, answered the door and stood there staring at him. He gave no reason, beyond a statement that the call was urgent, for asking to use the telephone, and was met, not unreasonably, by a flat, although apologetic, refusal.