Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “So we shall see what we shall see, sir,” he had said, in termination of the interview.

  “What’s that mean?” Richardson had demanded.

  “Now, now, sir, there’s no reason to be nervous. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you know.” He insisted upon shaking hands at parting.

  The so-far unidentified body came first, and the court learnt that it was that of one Edward Makepeace Thackeray Bunt, an ex-member and cross-country club-record-holder of the Scylla and District A.C.

  “You’ve nothing to worry about, then,” murmured Denis to Richardson. “It’s all the same bunch. One of them has bought it, mark my words.”

  Richardson grunted his incredulity at the suggestion that he had nothing to worry about. He knew better. He had spent almost sleepless nights in the hotel. Bunt was identified by his father, an older, bearded edition of the dead man. The medical evidence was clear and remained unchallenged. The deceased had died from a fatal dose of hydrocyanic acid, better known to the layman as prussic acid. (There was no mention of fir cones!)

  The police asked for an adjournment after the evidence of identification and the medical evidence had been concluded. It was clear they suspected that Bunt had been murdered, in spite of the fact, well known to the medical profession, that prussic acid is a suicide’s agent, although not, at that, a very common one.

  Richardson’s protagonist, Colnbrook, was identified by his sister, who did not appear to be greatly upset by the proceedings. In his case the medical evidence was that he had taken potassium cyanide, a more commonly used preparation than hydrocyanic acid and therefore more readily come by.

  Neither Denis nor Richardson was called upon to testify to the finding of the body in the woods. The police had investigated their account of the matter and the forester to whom they had spoken was severely dealt with by the coroner.

  “At what time did you come upon the body?”

  “Oo, now, that would have been around nine o’clock, I reckon, sir.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Where us was working.”

  “And that was?”

  “Oo, about half-way acrorst Benet Enclosure, near enough.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  The witness looked surprised.

  “Why, sir, you knows as well as I do.”

  “Answer the question, man. All this has to go on record.”

  “Oo, well, then, us was felling.”

  “Tell the court how you came to find the body.”

  “It were there.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Why, us was felling a Scots pine, do ee see, sir, and dead man, he laid just where tree were liable to fall.”

  “You mean that the body was lying in the open, where anybody could have seen it?”

  “Ar, that be my meaning.”

  “Don’t you realise that you had no right to move it?”

  “But it were in the way. Tree trunk woulda made mincemeat of the poor bugger, if that had fell on ’im.”

  “Please do not comment. Confine yourself to answering my questions.”

  “I thought as how I were.”

  “Why did you not go at once for the police or a doctor?”

  “Us was too busy, that’s for why. Chap was dead all right. Nothing to be done for him, and us had our day’s work to think of.”

  “You are a very stupid man. Didn’t you realise that you might get into serious trouble for not reporting a death?”

  “Us was gooing to report it all right, not as it were any business of ourn. Us tossed up to see who ud do the reporting. I lorst, and that’s why I be here.”

  “What happened when Mr. Richardson and Mr. Bradley arrived?”

  “Oo, us had just knocked off for a spell when us heard ’em. Fell in the ditch, or summat, they did. So I hollers at ’em, thinking to save meself a job, and one of ’em ketches his foot agin the dead un, so I uncovers un where us laid him in the bracken and axes ’em to report, which I takes it they did. Very took aback, ’em was when they see the corpus. I noticed that particular.”

  “I have asked you before not to comment. You have nothing more to tell the court?”

  “Noo, sir, I reckon that be all.”

  “Very well. You may stand down, unless the jury have anything to ask you.”

  The jury looked at one another, but no one was bold enough to venture a question, so the witness, passing a finger around the inside of his Sunday collar and scratching the side-seam of his Sunday trousers, thankfully abandoned his public position and rejoined the ranks of the anonymous.

  “Well, there’s one thing,” said Denis, when they left the coroner’s court, “if the doctors are right about the poisons—and, of course, they are right—that lets you out most beautifully, apart from what I said before.”

  “Does it?” Richardson sounded more than doubtful. “What makes you think so?”

  “The poisons themselves, of course. How could you get hold of potassium cyanide?”

  “Quite easily. You forget I’ve worked in prep schools. The stinks lab in my last school probably contained enough lethal matter to kill the whole Regiment of Guards.”

  “But you didn’t touch chemistry, did you?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean a thing. The stuff was on the premises. Any member of the staff could have got at it. He had only to hook the key to the cupboard.”

  “If he’d known the stuff was there!”

  “But we all knew. Young Borgia, who was the lab assistant, was always boasting about the poisons cupboard. He used to take a delight in telling the boys that he could do in the whole school if he wanted to. The science master heard him and complained to the Old Man.”

  Dame Beatrice intervened.

  “It is still to be proved that the school possessed stocks of potassium cyanide and of hydrocyanic acid,” she said.

  “The trouble is that it did,” said Richardson, gloomily. “The science bloke ran a photography club and the art chap knew all about engraving.”

  Denis looked concerned, but Dame Beatrice cackled.

  “To employ one master who needed to have access to poisons might be accidental; two, in the same school, looks like carelessness on the part of the Head,” she misquoted. Laura grunted. She was always somewhat discountenanced when Dame Beatrice, like the Devil, used scripture (in the most elementary sense of the word) to prove her argument.

  “Here,” she said, suddenly becoming cheerful again, “New Forest indicates adders. Aren’t adder-bites treated with potassium-something-or-other?”

  “Indeed, yes. They may be treated by an injection of potassium permanganate solution, but that is not quite the same thing as potassium cyanide,” Dame Beatrice mildly pointed out.

  “No, perhaps not, but can’t you see what must have happened? Those two men must have been bitten by adders and some clot gave them the wrong injection as an antidote. I don’t believe that either of them was poisoned deliberately.”

  “A most ingenious theory,” Dame Beatrice admitted. “It is medically sound and may well serve as a working hypothesis.”

  “Golly!” said Laura, overawed, in the Hyman Caplan fashion, by this evidence of her own genius. “Do you really mean it?”

  “I do, but there remains the unescapable theory that if both men were bitten by adders and if both, according to your idea, were given treatment which resulted in death, coincidence is overdoing matters.”

  “But there’s nothing wrong with the idea?”

  “No, no. It is most ingenious. The inquests are to be resumed three weeks from today. That should give us ample time and scope to free Mr. Richardson’s mind of fears and forebodings, and, I hope, to hit upon the truth.”

  “Thanks,” said Richardson gloomily.

  “I wonder what you really think?” said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone and in the car.

  “First, that Mr. Richardson is entirely innocent, although I cannot feel that
he has been altogether open with me.”

  “You don’t think he moved Colnbrook’s body from his tent and then more or less guided Denis to the spot where they found it?”

  “The trouble about that theory is that there is a very big question-mark attached to it. If he did move the body, (a task of some magnitude, incidentally, for one person) why should he have taken Denis that way? It would seem a most dangerous as well as a most illogical proceeding.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Murderers do these queer things.”

  “What about the second body, that of Mr. Bunt, which the police did find in the tent? Do you suggest that Mr. Richardson substituted it for that of Mr. Colnbrook?”

  “Well, it could be,” said Laura, this time doubtfully. “You see, he might have had a motive for doing in Colnbrook, but none for wanting Bunt out of the way.”

  “Dear, dear, dear!” said Dame Beatrice. “That, of all things connected with this case, surely remains to be seen!”

  “All right. I don’t mind acting as Aunt Sally. I wonder what the two lads thought about the inquest? Denis was as cool as a cucumber, but there’s no doubt that poor old Richardson looked a bit green about the gills.”

  The two young men had driven in Richardson’s little car to the inquest, and they had returned in it to the hotel. Laura and Dame Beatrice joined them in the bar, where there was plenty of time (as Denis pointed out) for a couple of quick ones before lunch, for the inquests had been held in the morning.

  As soon as the four were settled at a table in the corner by a large window which overlooked the side of the garden, Denis said,

  “For goodness’ sake, Aunt dear, put this lunatic out of his misery! He’s convinced the police suspect him and he’s already arranging to see a solicitor and reserve his defence.”

  Dame Beatrice bestowed upon Richardson an encouraging leer.

  “Upon what do you base your fears, dear child?” she asked.

  “Well, it all looks so damned bad,” replied Richardson. “I can make out a case for the police as easily as though I were the Superintendent himself. They can’t help but suspect me. I mean, just look at the facts!”

  “Let us include in them, then, your own movements on which, for want of a more original expression, we will call the day and night of the crime.”

  “The day and night?” Richardson looked horrified. “How do you mean—the day and night?”

  “Well, I have had no opportunity to examine the bodies of the deceased,” said Dame Beatrice, “but it is to be assumed that the murders—if, indeed murders they were…”

  “Person or persons unknown,” murmured Denis. “I bet that’s what it will be, unless it’s brought in as suicide. Personally, I don’t think it will be. I suspect the Superintendent of having something up his sleeve.”

  “Very well,” said Dame Beatrice, “those two men were murdered. If that is so, we have to discover, in the classic formula, which person or persons had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit these crimes.”

  “Do we believe that both crimes were committed by the same person or persons?” demanded Denis.

  “Of course we do,” said Laura. “It would be too much of a coincidence if they were not.” She ignored the fact that she herself had invoked the arm of this goddess.

  “Two different derivatives of the same lethal substance were used, sweet coz, remember,” murmured Denis.

  “Yes, I know, but you heard what Tom said about poisons at his school. Why shouldn’t science and art both be involved?”

  “Shades of Sir Christopher Wren!”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Laura stoutly. “Things are tending that way at the present time. You should read more books.”

  Dame Beatrice intervened.

  “It seems to me,” she said, “that the Scylla and District Athletic and Social Club should be subjected to inquisition. Both the deceased were, or had been, members. Surely the solution of the mystery of these deaths might very possibly lie there.”

  “Isn’t that rather too obvious a thought, dear Aunt?” asked Denis.

  “Yes, of course it is,” his great-aunt agreed. “But, if you remember your Holmes…”

  “And also your Wodehouse,” said Laura.

  “I think it’s time for lunch,” said Richardson. He seemed none the happier as a result of being present at this session of higher thought. Dame Beatrice cackled.

  “Lunch will be on for the next two hours,” she said, “and, if you care to approach the bar counter, you will be allowed to consume (free of charge, which, as a housekeeper, I find regrettable) potato crisps, olives, cheese biscuits, and frazzled bacon rinds. These should help to stave off the pangs of hunger for a while.”

  “Atta-baby!” said Laura, rising from her chair. “He isn’t the only one who feels like a starving python.”

  “In that case,” said Dame Beatrice, “perhaps we had better go in to lunch.”

  When lunch was over, she suggested that she and Richardson should go for a run in her car while Laura and Denis followed their own devices. George was to drive his employer and the distressed young man, so that, seated together in the Jaguar, they could talk undisturbed. The route was left to George.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Richardson, when, having taken the road across a vast expanse of open pasture on which grazed ponies and cattle, the car turned across a bridge and entered magnificent woodland.

  “I want to know exactly—and, please realise that I mean what I say—exactly how you spent your time on the day which culminated in your discovery of Mr. Colnbrook’s body in your tent and your subsequent report to the police.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough. When you’re on your own you remember things ever so much better than when you’re one of a party. Let’s see, now. Yes.”

  “Begin with breakfast,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Breakfast, yes. I got in to breakfast at the hotel at about nine o’clock. Is that near enough?”

  “If it is as near as you can get.”

  “Yes, well, it would have been just about then, because, you see, I had gone for a walk after I’d had a plunge in the stream. I don’t know how far I went, but it would have been about seven miles, I think.”

  “Two hours’ walking, then?”

  “About that, I suppose. I stepped it out because, at that time in the morning, at this time of year, it’s chilly.

  “Yes. And after breakfast?”

  “I did what seems a silly thing now, but I didn’t know at the time that I’d be asked to account for my actions. I went by train to New Milton and walked from there to a village where there’s an interesting old manor house.”

  “That sounds innocent enough.”

  “Absolutely. The trouble is that I can’t think of anybody who’ll swear to my having been there.”

  “I see. And then?”

  “The manor house has been converted into flats, so I left and went to Milford-on-Sea, where I had lunch at an hotel.”

  “Excellent. The waiter will be able to identify you.”

  “Then I had a swim—very cold, of course!—and then I went into Lymington and bought some socks at one shop and some Wellington boots at another.”

  “Better and better! So what is worrying you, Mr. Richardson?”

  “I don’t really know. I feel as though I’m in a trap. I know the Superintendent suspects me.”

  “He probably suspects the members of the Scylla and District club a good deal more strongly, let alone the relatives of the deceased. What did you do after you left Lymington?”

  “Nothing much. I caught a bus to the level crossing in this village and walked back to the hotel. There I had dinner, as usual—”

  “As usual?”

  “Well, by that, I mean I’d dined there on the Thursday and Friday. This was the Saturday, when I’d been expecting Denis to show up, but, of course, I knew he wouldn’t, because of the postcard I’d had.”

  “Postcard? Ah, yes. You walked
into the village and collected it on the Friday morning, I believe. Why did you not have your correspondence addressed to the hotel?”

  “Well, it seemed rather cheek, as I wasn’t sleeping there.”

  “Dear me! I had no idea that the rising generation entertained such scruples.”

  “Everything was to be sent to the hotel once we were in residence, of course—that’s to say, from last Saturday onwards. I didn’t know, when I made the arrangement, that Denis couldn’t come that week-end.”

  “Quite. To how many people did you give the poste restante address?”

  “To Denis himself, to my mother, and to the people whose kid I’d been tutoring.”

  “I see. To nobody else?”

  “Nobody—but I did tell the Maidstons—my last employers, you know—that I was camping up on the heath.”

  “You came to the New Forest last Thursday morning and pitched your tent. At what time?”

  “Oh, a quarter to ten, near enough.”

  “You left it, on Thursday, for how long?”

  “I went back to the hotel at about twelve and got back to camp at about a quarter-past two, I think. I didn’t stay in the tent. I bathed and then I explored a bit, and went back to the hotel for tea. I left again at about ten minutes to five, walked a few miles, got to the hotel for a latish dinner, and then went back to camp to sleep.”

  “It seems to me that anybody who was watching your movements might have had some chance to formulate a plan of action. The most likely person to have done so would have been a member of the hotel staff, don’t you think?”

  “Hopelessly unlikely, I would have said.”

  Dame Beatrice nodded approval. Then she said, “All the same, I suppose some members of the staff have their free day on a Thursday? What about your Friday?”

  “Well, Friday was quite a bit different. I had breakfast at the hotel at about a quarter to nine, and then I walked into the village, collected Denis’s postcard, bought cigarettes, fruit, and some sweets, got back to the hotel in time for a drink before lunch and then, after lunch, I walked over the common and photographed some ponies and cattle and a couple of donkeys, I think. I suppose again I walked about seven miles altogether.”