Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley) Page 8

  “Another two hours, I imagine, so that you would have been away from your tent for, roughly, what length of time?”

  “Roughly, for about three and a half hours plus an hour for lunch, plus the two hours’ walking you’ve just mentioned.”

  “In other words, once you had left your camp in the morning, you did not return to it for at least six to seven hours.”

  “I suppose that’s about right. At about a quarter to five I met a forester, not far from my camp, who showed me a badger’s hole in the woods and I made up my mind to do a bit of badger-watching that night after dinner. So I did, but I had no luck with the badgers and got back to camp at about half-past eleven or so.”

  “So your tent was again empty from—?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I cut out tea in favour of the walk and the forester, but, after dinner, that’s to say, at about a quarter to eight, I went back to camp for a sweater and a torch, and so on.”

  “And you saw nobody near your tent?”

  “Not a soul. Of course, it was pretty dark then. All the way through, you see, there’s very little proof that I spent my time in the way I say I did.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” said Dame Beatrice cheerfully. “You’d be surprised how many people observe what others do and where they go. The world is populated quite largely by Peeping Toms. Oh, your name is Tom! Dear, dear!”

  “Do you think the Superintendent will charge me?”

  “I think nothing is more unlikely. What do you know about hydrocyanic acid, apart from what was said at the inquest?”

  “Wasn’t it supplied to secret agents during the war in case they were afraid of being forced to give away information to the Nazis?”

  “Anything else?”

  “I did mention the stinks cupboard at Tuna House School.”

  “I must have a word with the Headmaster.”

  “Oily old brute!”

  “That sounds as though his manners are above the average. But we appear to have arrived at an unique village.”

  George pulled up.

  “You named no particular destination, madam,” he said, “and Mrs. Gavin and Mr. Denis were particularly anxious to visit Buckler’s Hard. Shall I see whether I can obtain permission from the car-park attendant to take the car down the slope, madam?”

  “No, no. We must not attempt to suborn an official who is on duty. Besides, I prefer to tour outlandish places on foot. One sees far more that way.”

  “I don’t know that the inhabitants would care to hear their village called outlandish, madam,” said George, with a respectful smile.

  “But it is outlandish, in the very best sense of the word, George. You will observe that there is a vast expanse of water at the foot of the hill. How very fortunate we are to have struck a fine day for this excursion! Now Mrs. Gavin will be able to show me a catamaran, I hope. She talks freely of twin hulls. You may meet us at Beaulieu, but I cannot say when. I believe we can walk to the abbey alongside the water. I see that Mrs. Gavin and my grand-nephew have followed us here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Buckler’s Hard

  When will the stream be aweary of flowing

  Under my eye?

  When will the wind be aweary of blowing

  Over the sky?

  When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?

  When will the heart be aweary of beating?

  And nature die?

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Once the party had left the two cars, Dame Beatrice annexed Laura, leaving the two young men free to wander together down the rough, steep road to the quay. The boys strolled on beside the water, but Dame Beatrice and Laura loitered. The sunshine, for that time of year, was particularly brilliant and there was more blue than cloud in the sky.

  Although it was fairly late in the season, a great many craft were still in commission and the scene was gay and pleasing. The Beaulieu River at this point was a quarter of a mile wide, with a deepish channel at the quay. The river here made a magnificent bend, and there were shallows by the opposite bank.

  Two catamarans, the double hulls referred to by Dame Beatrice, were drawn well up on the quay-side and she and Laura stopped to examine them.

  “I do not think I care about them, so far as looks are concerned,” commented Dame Beatrice. “What are their particular assets, that you favour them so highly?”

  “To quote the book of words, they tack very fast, they’re a safe, manoeuvrable sort of craft—you can even lift one hull completely out of the water and still keep going—and they are particularly sensitive to the helmsman. I rather agree with you about their looks, but I suppose they stem from the outrigger canoes that South Sea Islanders use.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “They take sail, of course—quite a tall spread if you want to go really fast—and the masts are mostly of metal, the International type if you want a flyer. But, look here, Mrs. Croc., you didn’t segregate me from the opposite sex just to talk about catamarans. Did you get anything interesting or important from young Tom Richardson during the car ride?”

  “I obtained a detailed account of how he spent his time down here before Denis joined him.”

  “Any good?”

  “I have not made up my mind. It appears to me that there was a good deal of time, when he was absent from his tent, in which ill-disposed persons could have…”

  “Wished the bodies on him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But who would want to?”

  “By that, I infer that you are asking whether Mr. Richardson has enemies.”

  “Well, yes, there’s that, because I can’t quite see the point of putting the bodies, one after the other, in his tent, unless there was some ill-feeling towards him. It would have been much simpler to have dumped them in the woods, the way Richardson and Denis found the second body, which was really, I suppose, the first body—or would you put it third?”

  “Let us call it the first body, as Mr. Richardson found it first.”

  “Less confusing that way, I agree. Incidentally, am I wrong, or did I go to sleep or something at the inquest?”

  “To the best of my knowledge and belief, you did not go to sleep at the inquest. And now, to what do we refer?”

  “I’ll give you three guesses,” said Laura, grinning. “I say, this is a jolly sort of place, isn’t it? Look at that cruiser!”

  Dame Beatrice looked at it. Then she said that from what she had gathered of Laura’s previous remarks, she would hazard a first guess that her secretary might have noted that there had been nothing in the medical evidence to indicate which of the victims had died first.

  “Well!” exclaimed Laura. “You are, in good sooth, a mind-reader, Mrs. Croc., dear!”

  “It is part of my profession, of course,” Dame Beatrice modestly pointed out.

  “Think there is anything significant about the times of the deaths not being disclosed?”

  “It is more than possible, but do you not think that both men may have died at approximately the same time?”

  “It seemed to me that the Superintendent was wriggling his toes inside his boots, all the same.”

  “You postulate?”

  “Like the dickens I do. He was on pins in case anything, however trivial, was going to be given away. After all, doctors (present company excepted, of course!) are a stiff-necked gaggle and don’t appreciate having their tails docked. Pun deliberate, intentional and, I thought, rather good. What do you think?”

  “That the use of the word “gaggle” did not sustain your metaphor, suggesting, as it does, the presence of geese and not of dogs—or do they dock the tails of Anser Aibifrons, Anser Brachyrhynchus, and others of their ilk?”

  “You win,” said Laura. “Glad I didn’t bet on my chances. Honestly, though, don’t you see that it makes a difference whether one of them was killed first? Of course it does! Gang warfare!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Simple enough. Gang A
do in Citizen B, so Gang B take it out on Citizen A.”

  “Gang warfare is seldom so tidy or so restrained.”

  “We’ve never had a gang warfare case,” said Laura, keeping to her point.

  “For which we may be devoutly thankful. Gang warfare, as I understand it, is nasty, brutish, and without even the advantage of being short, the last being unlike life, which is said to wear the tarnished halo of extreme brevity. We seem to have lost sight of our escorts, by the way.”

  “They’re round the bend—literally, I mean, not figuratively. Do you want us to step it out and catch them up?”

  “No, no. I am finding our tete-a-tite both interesting and profitable. There is one commission over which I shall need assistance of a specialised kind, if we are indeed to undertake this enquiry. What do you really feel about our entangling ourselves?”

  “We can’t back out now! Young Tom would die of fright After all, he may be in a dangerous position. We don’t really know what the police think about his connection with these deaths and, even if they don’t hold him responsible, they’ll keep badgering him with questions to see whether he alters his story, and if they do badger him, and if he can’t count on our support and sympathy, the highly-strung lad is apt to go up the wall.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dame Beatrice, “but you must not allow your maternal instincts to cloud your judgment, you know.”

  Laura almost choked. Dame Beatrice cackled and called her attention to a yacht which was passing.

  “Sloop, Bermuda rigged,” said Laura, stopping to watch and appraise it. “Saw one rather like it at the Boat Show. Coasts and estuaries. Costs about five hundred and fifty. The sails come about fifty pounds extra.”

  “I do not understand why sails should be listed as an extra if the craft cannot get under way without them,” observed Dame Beatrice.

  “Well, you see—now, there’s a nice job!” A four-berth motor-cum-sailing boat was approaching them round the long, handsome sweep of the broad river. “Draws about three and a half feet of water. Over three hundred feet of sail and, if you’re in a hurry, or the wind’s wrong, there’s an eighteen-horsepower motor to get you out of trouble,” said Laura. “A lazy owner’s delight, in fact, I call her, but a sweet little craft, all the same. You can go to sea in her!”

  “Delightful. How well can Hamish swim now?”

  “Oh, he’s the usual modern water-baby—perfectly safe under any circumstances except extreme cold or a bevy of hungry sharks.”

  “Then we had better purchase a handy boat and spend time on the water next summer. It would be convenient enough to come here from the Stone House and I find this place attractive. Then, of course, there is the Hamble River…”

  “Both very crowded in the summer. Why don’t we go up to Plockton on Loch Carron in Wester Ross? Scenery marvellous, harbour good, and free from strong tides, artists’ paradise, and yachtsman’s dream (I quote). It’s on the railway, if you don’t want to take the car, and we could get to Skye or into Loch Torridon or up to Gairloch…”

  “I like the sound of that, too. Go ahead, my dear Laura, and make your plans.”

  “We could always come here again at this time of year, or even a bit later. But I must point out, Mrs. Croc., dear, that we’re now losing sight of our raison d’être.”

  “I do not feel that Mr. Richardson and his mirages are my raison d’être, child.”

  “Good Lord! You don’t mean you think Tom was seeing things, and the corpses weren’t in his tent at all? Oh, but we know that one of them was, because the Superintendent saw it there. So—why mirages?”

  “Say, then, the figments of a guilty mind, child.”

  “You don’t really think Tom Richardson has a guilty mind?”

  “We all have guilty minds, my dear Laura.”

  “You don’t fob me off like that! Jolly well come clean!”

  “I think there is more behind Mr. Richardson’s present reactions than we know.”

  “You mean he’s mixed up in something fishy?”

  “I think he knows more about the late Mr. Colnbrook than he has admitted.”

  This part of the conversation was on similar lines to that which was being carried on between the two young men. These, taking but the most cursory interest in the yachts, cruisers, launches, catamarans, dinghies, and boatmen’s supply boats which were out on the river, were strolling towards Beaulieu, deep in conversation punctuated by pauses for earnest thought.

  Just as Laura was asking whether Dame Beatrice believed that Richardson was mixed up with something illegal, Denis, with the disconcerting directness of the artist, suddenly said to his friend,

  “You’ll have to come clean with Aunt Adela, you know, if you want her in your team. I told you so before.”

  Richardson did not attempt to side-step the significance of this piece of advice. He said, with sober fatality,

  “I know. I talked to her quite a lot coming down here in her car, but it was a question of giving her the information she asked for, rather than putting my oar in and volunteering possibly unnecessary facts, you see.”

  “What facts?”

  “Such as that I actually met Colnbrook—to speak to him, I mean—more than once. I do know a bit more about him than I’ve ever told anybody. I could have had a motive for killing him, now that I’m engaged to be married.”

  “Good Lord! You don’t mean he was in a position to blackmail you? What have you been a-doing of?”

  “Look here, I don’t want it to get to the police that I know more about him than I’ve told them. All the same, (and keep this under your hat until I’ve decided what to do) except that I admitted I’d met him and had run against him in the cross-country challenge, you may as well face it that I’ve told them damn-all, and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

  “Leave out the damn, man, and tell Aunt Adela the all. She won’t let you down. I can vouch for her. You’d better seek her out in the drawing-room lounge tonight. You’re pretty certain to get it to yourselves after dinner because everybody either looks in on the television or props up the bar. Talk to her like an erring but favourite grandson. Lay bare your youthful bosom. You must give her something to go on, you know. She can’t be expected to start from scratch and still steer your colours past the winning post.”

  “Do jockeys start from scratch?” asked Richardson, looking more cheerful. “I thought they were handicapped by weights.”

  “All right, all right! She can’t be expected to carry unfair and extra weight because she lacks the salient facts of your case. Be reasonable.”

  “Yes, of course. Yes, I agree. All right, then. You do think I’m in a bit of a jam, though, don’t you?”“I still think you exaggerate the dangers, but I also still think it’s better to be safe than sorry, therefore Aunt Adela is the answer, and I think you ought to tell her everything you know. Let’s halt here awhile and let her and Laura catch up with us.”

  “Who is this Mrs. Gavin?”

  “She’s by way of being my great-aunt’s secretary, but she is also a person in her own right.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A grand girl, our Laura. Anyway, you come clean and you’ll never look back with either of them.”

  “All right, then, let’s stop and look at boats.”

  “I suppose you didn’t know the party of the second part?”

  “The how-much?”

  “The specimen who was in your tent when you went back there with the police. That there Bunt.”

  “Never seen him in my life before and that’s the gospel truth. I suppose he was the second runner on the heath, that’s all.”

  “Then what the devil are you worrying about? Suppose you do know something more about Colnbrook! What’s it matter?”

  “I’ve been framed. Somebody must have it in for me. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to.”

  “Well, think! Who’s likely to frame you? When you’ve settled that to your satisfaction, just give Aunt Adela his name and address
and, unless I’m vastly mistaken, Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Of course I do, you idiot! Put your faith in the Bradleys. They can’t fail!”

  “Well, if you say so,” said Richardson, but his optimism had faded again and he spoke despondently. They were traversing Keeping’s Copse. Denis deliberately slowed, and then stopped.

  “So you have thought better of it, Mr. Richardson,” said Dame Beatrice, as disconcerting in her own fashion as her grand-nephew was in his. “You are prepared to make shocking disclosures. I shall be very glad to hear them. Shall we make what, in modern parlance, I am informed, is called a date?”

  “Well,” stammered Richardson, taken aback by this display of omniscience and conscious also of Denis’s triumphant yet tolerant smile. “It’s very good of you. Perhaps there are one or two things…”

  “Of course there are. It would be extraordinary and inhuman if people told the whole truth at once. It might even be very dangerous. Let us now drop the subject and concentrate our thoughts on Beaulieu Abbey. What are your opinions on jazz, trad, twist, squares, cats, and those delinquents who follow Siva the Destroyer without knowledge of the obverse of his medal—if, indeed, a metaphor in this connection be not entirely out of place?”

  “The Preserver,” said Denis. “Well, the refectory at Beaulieu seems to have been preserved, and something of the cloisters and a few extra bits of wall.”

  “Three arches of the Chapter House, too,” said Laura, “and, of course, there’s always the collection of lizzies.”

  “Lizzies?”

  “Vintage cars, dear.”

  “Oh,” said Richardson, “vintage cars. I see. Very interesting, I should think.”

  “For good measure, the cloisters are haunted,” pursued Laura. “Come on. Let’s step it out. I want something to eat. Looking at people on boats always makes me feel hungry. You, Tom, had better walk with me, so that Dame B. and Denis can get together for a bit. They’re by way of being buddies. Besides, you can confide your troubles to me as we go. I know Denis. Always sees the bright side. So fatiguing. Now you just tell me the worst, and I’ll be as lugubrious as you like. Rely on me not to point out the silver lining.”