Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Nobody aren’t home except me and Cook and Shirl, and I dursent let anybody in with the master and missus away,” the quavering domestic announced.

  Richardson, although a trifle nonplussed, tried again.

  “I’m not trying to steal anything. It’s just that the call is very important indeed and it would take me some time to get to another telephone. Don’t you think…?” he enquired.

  The maid cut the conversation short by slamming the door, and he heard the heavy bolts, which had been withdrawn in answer to his knock, thrust home again. There was nothing for it but to make for the hotel and trust that there was a night porter on duty.

  It turned out that the hotel did not employ a night porter, but that the front door was kept open until midnight to accommodate those guests who had motored into Bournemouth to see one of the shows. He effected an entrance easily enough, therefore, and found the day porter, with whom he was already acquainted, about to lock up and retire for the night.

  “Barney,” he said, “I want to use the phone.”

  “Help yourself, Mr. Richardson.” The porter took in the white face and the shaking hands. “Anything I can do?”

  “Yes. Look up the police for me, will you? Some gosh-awful bloke has gone and died on me.”

  “Not the friend you were expecting, Mr. Richardson?”

  “Oh, no, thank God. Somebody who decided to crawl into my tent and peg out there. I suppose he felt bad, poor devil, but I wish to hell he hadn’t picked on me! Now there’ll be no end of a hoo-ha, I suppose, and I’ll be questioned and goodness knows what!”

  “Sit you down on the settee, sir. You look as if you’d had a nasty shock. It’ll be the Hurstington police as will be best. Some of the sub-stations aren’t manned the whole of the time. I’ll need to look in the book to put you through.”

  He disappeared, but the telephone kiosk used by the guests was only a step or two along the passage and Richardson could hear the porter’s end of the call.

  “Hurstington police station? New Forest Hunt Hotel here. Gent has something to report…Yes, hold the line, please.” He returned to Richardson. “O.K. You’re through, sir.” He retired and Richardson went to the telephone. He told his tale, but withheld the fact that he knew the dead man. There would be time for the details later.

  “Stay where you are, sir, and we’ll be right over,” said the Superintendent.

  Tom returned to the settee in the entrance hall. Barney came back with a pot of black coffee and a basin of sugar.

  “Here, sir,” he said. “Have a go at this. You need it, Sorry I can’t stiffen it up a bit for you, but the bar’s been locked up this last hour.”

  The police arrived half an hour later and took Richardson in their car along the secondary road from the hotel and then by way of the crunching gravel trackway on to the common. The causeway, which led across the plantation of baby firs to the deciduous wood and the bridge, was not nearly wide enough to take a car, so the driver continued to follow the gravel trackway and crossed the wide bridge. Here he parked the car on the grass and remained in charge of it while the Superintendent and a detective-sergeant accompanied Richardson to his camp.

  Richardson, on whom his experience of finding the dead man had acted like something in a horrible dream, had the feeling, suddenly, that he had brought the police on a wild-goose chase and that when they pulled back the tent-flap there would be nothing there but his bedding and effects. This, however, was not the case. The sergeant took charge of him, while the Superintendent, armed with a powerful torch, ducked into the mean little shelter.

  He soon came out again.

  “Go and get Sansom,” he said to his sergeant. “I’ll wait here with Mr. Richardson until you come back. Sansom will have to stay on guard here. There’s nothing we can do until the morning. Can’t take any useful photographs in this.”

  The sergeant went off and the Superintendent addressed Richardson. He had switched off his torch and they talked in the dark.

  “Been here long, sir?”

  “Since Thursday, about eleven in the morning.”

  “Know the neighbourhood?”

  “From studying the Ordnance maps.” (It was part of the truth.)

  “Know the deceased?”

  “Never set eyes on him in my life before.” He told this lie instinctively and regretted it too late.

  “Just so, sir. I’ll have to take a full statement from you in the morning, but, if I can get one or two facts quite clear for the moment, it may help me.”

  “To make sure I don’t spend the night cooking up a story?” Richardson felt panic-stricken again.

  “Now, now, sir! You could have only one reason for doing that, you know.”

  Richardson, in his fright, asked disingenuously, “Good Lord! You don’t think the chap was murdered?”

  “That is a matter for the doctor, sir. Now, if you’d just give me an account of your movements yesterday and today…”

  Richardson, feeling slightly sick, gave the Superintendent a résumé of what he had done and where he had been. It sounded inadequate, he thought.

  “So, you see, I had a bit of a shock when I clocked in here at about half-past nine or just after, to find that I’d got a visitor. I was sure he was dead, but I did my best for him,” he said in conclusion.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Then I went to that house over there—there were lights on then, but they’re out now—to telephone, you know.”

  “Yes?”

  “But there was nobody there who was prepared to authorise me to use the phone—only the maids and they wouldn’t let me in. I don’t blame them, of course, only it meant that I had to get back to the hotel. I telephoned you from there as soon as I could.”

  “Very good sir. Well, as soon as the constable gets here, I’ll run you back. I suppose they can give you a bed?”

  “I’ve no idea, but I certainly can’t sleep here.”

  “Definitely not, sir.” Someone holding a torch approached them. “Ah, here comes Sansom.” He gave the constable some directions. “Now, then, sir, I expect you can do with some sleep. It’s a bit late for you to fix up at the hotel, now I come to think of it, so, if you’ll accept another arrangement, there’s a spare room at my house and we’ll drive back there now and soon get you settled for the night.”

  “Well, thanks…” said Richardson uncertainly. “It will mean I’ll be on the spot for questioning in the morning, I suppose. Still, it’s very good of you.”

  “Think nothing of it, sir. As for questioning, there’s nothing to worry about there. It’s just routine, you know. The circumstances are unusual, you see, and we’ll need to get a clear picture. That’s all there is to it, you’ll find. Oh, there is just one thing more, sir. Now I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas about this, thinking I don’t believe your account of the matter and so forth, but I expect my torch is a good bit more powerful than your own—you did say you saw the dead man by the light of your torch, sir?”

  “Yes, but it gives a pretty strong light, you know, and the battery’s new.”

  “Quite so, sir. Well, now, if you don’t mind just borrowing my torch while I stand by.”

  “What on earth for?” Richardson realised that, unintentionally, his voice was high-pitched and his tone nervous.

  “Well, sir, the circumstances being, as I say and as you will admit, unusual, I would appreciate it if you would just take another look at the body to make certain you don’t know who it is.”

  Richardson’s heart failed him. The Superintendent suspected something! There was nothing for it, however, but to comply with his request. He accepted the loan of the powerful torch and unwillingly crawled into the tent. It was a complete and almost devastating shock to see that the body was no longer that of Colnbrook. What lay there was the corpse of a man considerably shorter than Colnbrook. It must be that of the other runner, although both men had changed their clothes since he had seen them last. Colnbrook had had on a rather aggr
essive check suit. This man had on a tweed jacket and flannel trousers.

  Feeling sick, Richardson backed out of the tent and handed the torch to the Superintendent.

  “I don’t know him,” he said. This, at least, was true. “But, well, it doesn’t look to me like the same man,” he added, desperately anxious to cover up his first lie.

  “Come, come, sir. You had a shock, I daresay, when you first saw the body. Not surprising, that. You can’t identify him, then?”

  “He’s pretty persistent,” thought Richardson. Aloud he said, “No, I certainly can’t. What can have induced him to plant himself on me?”

  “That we must find out, sir—that is, if he did plant himself on you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” (Murder, of course! They must believe the man had been murdered! And what about Colnbrook? Could he have been suffering from hallucinations when he thought that the first man was Colnbrook?)

  “We have to keep open minds, sir, when bodies are found in unexpected places under what might prove to be suspicious circumstances. That’s all, sir,” said the Superintendent, soothingly. “And now, come along, sir. Hop in the back and we’ll soon find you a kip-down for the night. Best forget about this until the morning.”

  “Shall I—do I have to attend an inquest or anything?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir, but there’s plenty of time for that. You’ll only need to depose that you found the body. Then we’ll have to get it identified, as you cannot help us there, and the rest is up to the medical officer. There’s really nothing to worry about.”

  “Sez you!” thought Richardson grimly.

  The police car ground itself over the rough gravel until it reached the road which led to the hotel. It passed the hotel and turned through a shallow water-splash and up the main street of the sleeping village. At the top it turned to the right at the level crossing, and, some time later, after a smooth rush on an empty main road, it was driven in at the double gates of a large, redbrick, new-looking police station lighted fearsomely by the headlamps. At the back of this solid block was the Superintendent’s private house and here the car drew up. Richardson was taken into the dining-room and given whisky and soda and a plate of biscuits and cheese. The Superintendent made no reference to the dead man in the tent, but drank whisky with his guest and then smoked placidly while Richardson, who found himself almost startlingly hungry, played havoc with the food provided.

  The young man had brought nothing with him from his camp, but, when he was shown up to the spare room which had been promised him, he found pyjamas laid out on the small single bed and the Superintendent, indicating these, observed that they might be a bit on the large side but would be better than nothing. He then showed him the bathroom and an electric razor and wished him good night, adding that breakfast would be served at half-past seven. Richardson was aware, ten minutes later, that a car drove off, but after that he slept until a thumping on the door caused him to accept the fact, at first incredulously, that it was morning and time to get up.

  The Superintendent’s wife served breakfast. It was a misty morning, but this, she said, would soon clear. The Superintendent himself did not appear and Richardson, who had expected to be grilled as soon as breakfast was over, was not certain whether to be thankful or apprehensive when the wife observed that Jim would find it cold up there on the common.

  After breakfast she settled her guest in an armchair by an electric fire and gave him the morning paper. He flicked over the pages to find out whether there was any reference to the dead man in the tent, but soon realised that that piece of news would not yet be public property.

  At just after ten the Superintendent returned and Richardson was invited to step over to his office. Although the headlights and the lamp over the door had given him an impression of size, he was surprised to see, in daylight, just how large and uncompromising a building the redbrick police station was.

  The Superintendent’s office, however, was reassuringly like all other offices. There was an enormous desk with a swivel chair and two telephones, filing cabinets against the walls and an armchair for the visitor. There was a box of cigarettes on the desk and Richardson accepted a cigarette when it was offered and prepared to sell his life dearly.

  “Just a point or two, sir,” said the Superintendent, with a geniality which made Richardson’s blood run cold. “First of all, what made you jump to the idea that the man was dead when you found him?”

  Of all the questions which Richardson had half-anticipated, this was the biggest surprise and he was extremely hard put to it for an answer. He stared at the desk and then said,

  “I don’t really know, except that he didn’t seem to be breathing. What I can’t make out is how a dying man would have known that my tent was there—that’s one thing—and then, well, the lights from that house, you know. You’d have thought that if he felt bad he’d have made for them in the hope that they would phone a doctor or something. So I’m beginning to conclude that he might have been dumped on me, as I had a feeling you yourself thought last night. I didn’t think all this out at the time. It’s what I’ve been thinking since; so I don’t suppose I’ve answered your question.” (What did all this sound like, he wondered, and what had happened to Colnbrook’s body?)

  “Near enough, sir, near enough. Those ideas were in your subconscious mind, no doubt. All you’ve done is to bring them forward, so to speak, and rationalise them. It’s the usual way, we find,” said the Superintendent.

  Richardson was dumbfounded by this reasoning. He swallowed, and then said that anything he could do…

  The Superintendent gave him a heavy, paternal smile.

  “All in good time, sir. We’ll be keeping the tabs on you, of course. Well, I think that’s all for the present. You can get the bus back to the level crossing from here. You’ll know your way from there. We’ve had to shift your tent a couple of hundred yards away from where you pitched it because we’ve cordoned off an area around the dead man and you’ll find some of my men here and there on the heath, but you’ll see your camp all right. Actually, where you’d pitched there’d be quite a bit of bog if we had much rain. You’ll be better off on the higher ground where we’ve put you. How long did you think of staying in the Forest?”

  “About another fortnight. A pal is joining me, but he doesn’t want to camp, so we’re transferring to the New Forest Hunt Hotel.”

  “Does the hotel know they’re to expect you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I booked the rooms a couple of months ago. I’ve been having all my meals there, anyway. I mean, the hotel people know I exist.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t suppose I’ll need you again, sir, until the inquest.”

  “So I’m by no means out of the wood!”

  “Come, sir, there’s not the slightest need for alarm, Even if we are compelled to think of this as foul play, you must remember that, so long as a man is innocent, he has nothing to fear from the police.”

  “Oh? What about Timothy Thingummy?”

  “That, sir,” said the Superintendent, “was in London. We don’t make mistakes in these parts. We can’t afford to. We get little experience of murders around here. They have rarity value, if you take me, and we don’t want to waste what is rare, now do we? Besides, sir, it is not at all conclusive that a mistake was made in the particular case which you cite. All the same, we shall exercise every care, you may be sure.”

  “I jolly well hope so!”

  The Superintendent looked concerned.

  “You seem to be in a jumpy state, sir. Do you feel quite well?”

  “Yes, of course, but I’m not used to finding corpses in my tent.”

  “There has to be a first time for everything, sir. Now, not to worry. You’re quite sure you didn’t know the dead man?”

  “Good heavens, of course I didn’t! What next?”

  “We have to wait on Providence to learn that, sir. Well, we shall be seeing you at the inquest.”

  On this (to Ri
chardson) sinister note they parted.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Waiting for Denisot

  When you want to find out what day it is, you ask yourself what day it was yesterday, and then what day it will be tomorrow. Then you will know what today is, because it is the day that comes between.

  Betty and the Bears

  Hal Eyre

  Richardson caught the bus and went back to the New Forest Hunt Hotel. The bar, on a Sunday, was not open until twelve, so, as he had time to kill, he decided to take a walk. There were still his tent and his gear at his camp on the heath, so he made that, the heath, his objective. He was seriously worried.

  By that time, on a fine Sunday morning, there were a number of cars on the road and on the common. There were also a number of people on horseback. He walked at a moderate pace but, even so, he soon passed a farm and what, for want of a more exact and functional name, he called the fenced-in pound, and then he reached the open common.

  Here he followed the grassy track which, for some way, ran with the gravelled road along which the police car had taken him on the previous night, then he branched off on to a causeway which ran between the gorse and the bog. He walked beside the ditch until he came to a sparse bit of woodland and the river.

  He halted on the wooden bridge and gazed down at the water. It flowed cleanly under the planking and was lost to sight, although not entirely to sound, round a bend on whose bank the bushes grew thickly. On the far side of the bridge, and a little distance down-stream, were four youngish men and an older one. Two of them were carrying shot-guns. The older man wished Richardson good morning as he crossed the bridge; the others stared and then nodded. For a moment he connected them (unreasonably) with the police, but almost immediately he realised that they had no connection whatever with his experiences of the previous night, but were there to pick off the destructive grey squirrels which infested the wood.

  There had been some rain in the early hours of the morning (although, deep asleep in the Superintendent’s comfortable spare bed, he had not heard it), so that the rough little up-and-down path was treacherously slippery. He skidded his way to the bend which took him across a messy little ditch on to the heath and soon spotted his tent. The police certainly had moved it on to higher ground. It was now about three hundred yards from the river. There was no one on guard over it, but a police car was stationed near the spot on which he had pitched it. He went over to the car. Before he could ask a question, he was recognised by the sergeant, who sat beside the constable driver.