Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  (“Culture’s two a penny these days,” remarked Laura, ungrammatically but truly, when she heard this.)

  “I see,” said Dame Beatrice. “Did you ever think of him as a possible murderer?”

  The Headmaster did not attempt to pretend that he misunderstood her.

  “I have asked myself the question since the crisis to which you refer became local knowledge,” he said. “My answer is that Mr. Richardson, no matter what the provocation, is quite incapable of delivering the coup de grace. More’s the pity,” he added. “One really ought to be a better man than Gunga Din, you know.”

  “Why?” Dame Beatrice enquired. The Headmaster waved his hand.

  “Hewers of wood and drawers of water,” he said vaguely. “And by Gunga Din I mean the average boy. Not that there is, of course, an average boy, I suppose, but it’s astonishing and enlightening and also rather depressing, to realise how very much alike they all are. I remember my relief, in young manhood, when I realised that my sins were shared by every young man in the world. Bad for the ego, but a solace to the conscience.”

  “To the conscience?” Dame Beatrice enquired. “I wish I knew what the difference is between conscience and the fear of the law. There are the saints, of course, and one hesitates to condemn them for wrongheadedness.” She paused. The Headmaster said he felt that, in the majority of cases, if there were no retribution there would be a great deal more crime. By this he did not refer to the hanging of murderers. There was, in his opinion, no need to be barbarous, and, that, in any case, murder was not always a crime, although it might be so described by those brought up in the generation which had anticipated his own.

  They got on in capital fashion and drank sherry together, the Headmaster explaining that he kept port and sherry to offer to H.M. Inspectors of Schools. He had taken the very first opportunity of opening his school to the Ministry. Parents liked to think that Dotheboys Hall was out of date and that each child was bedded in a hygienic dormitory and was entitled to its quota of cubic feet of air in the classroom.

  “Talking of space, as represented by the cubic feet to which you refer,” said Dame Beatrice, “your chemistry classes appear to be particularly lucky.”

  “Oh, the science lab, yes. Good set-up there. I rather pride myself on it. We have to move with the times. We even have a model launching station.”

  “And a poisons cupboard, I believe.”

  “Every amenity, dear lady.” He smiled, but looked a trifle anxious.

  Dame Beatrice thanked him for showing her round the school, referred to Stevens with warmth, and began to take her leave. The poisons were in the school chemistry laboratory, and she had seen them. This did not add up to much, in her opinion. Even less than before did she believe that Richardson had guilty knowledge of the two murders.

  There was one person whom, so far, she had not encountered, but whom she was determined to meet and question. The simple thing to do was to ask the Headmaster outright whether she might interview the youth. This plan she abandoned in favour of asking the school caretaker where she might find the lab boy.

  “Him?” said the caretaker. “He’ll be in the caff. Nothing much doing for him at the school till they get a new science master.”

  “But the Headmaster keeps him on?”

  “Might get a science master any time.”

  “And lab boys are not very easy to come by, I suppose. What is this one like?”

  “Proper little ’Itler.”

  “Really? I wonder what you mean by that?”

  “Punch-drunk with power.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. He feels that in his hands he holds the lives of all in the school, both Staff and boys.”

  “Something of that sort.”

  “I really do understand. It is not an uncommon feeling, especially when one has access to deadly poisons. What is his name?”

  “’Ere, I never said nothing about poisons,” said the caretaker. “Anyway, name of Borgia—or so ’e claims.”

  The café, indicated with a certain amount of reluctance by the caretaker, proved to be a respectable shop which sold cakes and ice-cream and where coffee and soft drinks were dispensed in a room which opened off the back of the premises.

  The interior gave promise of the same quietness. Dame Beatrice, guided by a kindly girl who wore a black frock and a small blue apron, took a seat and ordered coffee and biscuits. She also asked whether the waitress knew a Mr. Borgia.

  “Borgia?” repeated the girl. She smiled. “I think it’s just his nonsense, madam. There he is, at that table over there, with his girlfriend. Ask me, his name’s Smith, Jones, or Brown—something more like that.”

  “Or, of course, Robinson,” said Dame Beatrice absently. “I should very much like to meet him.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be everybody’s fancy, madam, being, in my opinion, a nasty bumbacious piece of work, but his girlfriend has got to get back to the shop in ten minutes, so he’ll be on his own after that. He’ll likely sit on in here, smoking his fags. He generally does. Got nothing much else to do until they get a new science master up at the private school, so he told me.”

  “I wonder whether you would be kind enough to give him this note?” said Dame Beatrice, scribbling it as she spoke. “You may read it, if you wish to do so.”

  She sipped the execrable brew which the café had provided and watched the waitress deliver the written message. The young man, a black-haired, pale-faced, rather spotty individual in a shiny and tight-fitting bright blue suit, looked across at her, made a remark to his girlfriend, who giggled, and then hitched his chair round so that his back was towards Dame Beatrice.

  She waited, drinking, in the meanwhile, what she could of the hell-brew. This involved taking the smallest possible sips of it and she soon signalled the waitress to take the rest away.

  “It’s horrible stuff, madam,” said the waitress, sympathetically, “but we can’t make it no better at the price. Ah, there she goes.”

  This last remark was a species of obituary on Borgia’s girlfriend, who rose from his table, slapped him lightly on the top of his brilliantined head, and strolled with swinging hips out of the café. Borgia sped her with a slightly vulgar pleasantry and then came across to Dame Beatrice.

  “So what?” he asked.

  “Sit down,” said Dame Beatrice. “I fear that I cannot recommend the coffee. Did you have any?”

  “Me? No. A cuppa does me.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Not as I need one now,” he added. “Anyway, I don’t take nothing from dames.”

  “I am sure you do not. No really manly young man would.”

  “What do you want with me, anyway?” Borgia demanded, highly suspicious of the compliment.

  “Tales out of school.”

  “How much?”

  “Tell me all about hydrocyanic acid.”

  “Eh? Why?”

  “Because I represent the Home Office.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ultimately it is the authority which decides whether murderers shall be hanged.”

  “Oh, I see. And you represents ’em, does you?” His voice was contemptuous. Dame Beatrice leered at him and answered him blandly.

  “From the psychiatric angle, yes. Now, look here, my poor young man, for your own sake you would be well advised to answer my questions.”

  “And for why?”

  “Two people have been poisoned, the one by hydrocyanic acid and the other by potassium cyanide. So far as we have been able to discover, you are one of the few people connected with the case who had access to both these poisons.”

  “Wodger mean, connected with the case? I don’t know nothing about it!”

  “Come now,” said Dame Beatrice persuasively, “you cannot deny that both substances are to be found in the school laboratory in which you work.”

  “Did work.”

  “I accept that amendment. You knew that they were there, and I have it upon evidence that you have been known to boast that you coul
d kill the whole school, if you wished to do so.”

  “It was only a bit of a joke.” He was on the defensive at last.

  “So I suppose, but it may help you to avoid being suspected of two dastardly murders if you will help me in my enquiries.”

  “’Ow?”

  “By telling me who, besides yourself and the science master, could have known that the poisons were there.”

  “Why, anybody could of knowed—anybody at the school, that is.”

  “Yes, but who, in particular, comes into your mind? You realise that one of the two murdered men may have had one particular connection with the school?”

  “I don’t realise nothing.” She knew that he did not. It would have been surprising if he had.

  “Look, Mr.… er…Borgia…” she said.

  “That ain’t my name!”

  “No, I did not suppose it was. On the other hand, you appear to have been proud enough of calling yourself by it until now.”

  “I ain’t give nobody no poison!”

  “It might suit me to believe that, if I had no other sources of information.”

  Borgia raised his voice.

  “You’re out to frame me! I don’t know nothing about it! My name’s Robinson and you’re tryin’ to take it away! Leave me be, I tell you, else I’ll do you, you old…!”

  “Very well,” said Dame Beatrice.

  Robinson stood up and leaned menacingly over her.

  “You ain’t ’eard the last of this,” he said. “No, nor you ain’t ’eard the last of me, neither.”

  “I look forward to the oral reunion,” said Dame Beatrice. “Nevertheless, should anything come to your mind which might clear you of active participation in this affair, it might be as well to let me know. This address will find me.” She put a visiting-card on the table. The young man snatched it up.

  “Oh?” he said, studying it. “Oh, I getcher, Dame. Well, I better think things over. Ta for the tip. Be seein’ yer.”

  It was a strange kind of retreat, Dame Beatrice thought. She had scared him. So much was obvious. But whether he had guilty knowledge of the murders, or whether there was something else on his conscience, or whether, like so many persons, ignorant or otherwise, he had a horror of anything to do with the police, it was neither just nor possible, at this stage, to determine.

  “He sounds a gosh-awful little oik,” commented Laura, when she was accorded an account of the interview. “Do you really think he did it?”

  “We should need to establish a connection between him and the two dead men before we could begin to speculate upon his guilt or innocence, child, and I do not think that any such connection exists.”

  “Meaning,” said Laura shrewdly, “that, although he’s a filthy little basket, you don’t believe he’d commit murder.”

  “Well, not these particular murders. No, frankly, I do not think he would use poison. It would require an even lower type of mentality than that with which heaven appears to have blessed him, to call himself Borgia, if he really did intend to poison people, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve stopped thinking about this case,” said Laura. “I always come back to the same old starting-point.”

  “And that, in your opinion, is…?”

  “Who on earth except Denis could have known that Richardson was camping up there on the heath and that he’d had two rows with that man? Again, who would have risked changing over the bodies like that, knowing (I somehow feel), that Richardson had seen the first one?”

  “Ah,” said Dame Beatrice, wagging her head. “Think it out for yourself. There is only one answer to each of those questions and I fancy I know what it is. But we must have proof.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Woman and Child

  What a situation am I in! If what you say appears, I shall then find a guilty son.

  She Stoops to Conquer

  Oliver Goldsmith

  The boy was called Clive Maidston and appeared to be a spoilt child. Mr. Maidston was at work when Dame Beatrice called, and his wife received her with a certain amount of reserve.

  “Mr. Richardson?” she said. “Well, there, of course, there were difficulties.”

  “I liked Mr. Richardson,” said Clive. “You needn’t have sent him away.”

  “Oh, he was sent away, was he?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said the boy. “I didn’t want him to leave.”

  “Now, Clive,” said his mother, “you must either go out of the room or else you must stop listening.”

  “Sex means nothing to me,” said Clive, a small, pale boy with large eyes. “When I’m eighteen I shall go into a monastery. I may get a bit of peace there.”

  “They wouldn’t have you, dear. You have to be a good boy for that,” retorted his mother.

  “You think you have a vocation?” asked Dame Beatrice, fixing the child with her basilisk gaze.

  “I’m pretty sure I have.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Never you mind. God made me what I am.”

  “We must circumvent Him, then.”

  “You’re a nut case.”

  “And you,” his mother broke in, “are a rude, impertinent boy and a disgrace to your upbringing.”

  “Impudent, not impertinent. Why don’t you use the dictionary?” demanded the child. “Well, what have you come for?” he asked Dame Beatrice. “You’re not one of these psychology sharks, are you?”

  Dame Beatrice leered at him.

  “Your perspicacity does you credit,” she replied. “How did you guess, I wonder?”

  “I didn’t. I was being bloody rude.”

  “Clive! Really!” protested his mother.

  “Why was Mr. Richardson dismissed?” Dame Beatrice enquired. She was beginning to wonder why Richardson had not resigned this particular post instead of waiting to be asked to leave.

  “It was the letters,” said Clive.

  “Clive, dear, don’t be silly! You know nothing about it,” said his mother.

  “I do, too. I read the letters. They were all lies. Mr. Richardson didn’t have a girlfriend in this house.”

  “Who said anything about girls?”

  “Oh, mother, be your age!”

  “I believe that particular expression to be outdated,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Well, how the hell should I know? I’m not allowed to go anywhere, or see anybody or anything!” He flung himself on the floor and began to drum his heels. “Why can’t I go back to school?”

  “Oh, dear!” said his mother. “Now he’s gone into one of his moods! He really is terribly difficult!”

  “I wouldn’t be difficult if you weren’t a…old…!” screamed Clive. Dame Beatrice picked him up, and stood him on his feet, and gave him a slight and friendly shake.

  “That’s enough,” she said gently. “Go out of the room and come back when you can behave like a boy and not like an hysterical little puppy.”

  “Well, really!” said his mother. Clive glowered darkly at Dame Beatrice and muttered, “I’ll get you,” but he went out of the room.

  “Now,” said Dame Beatrice, “what can you tell me about Mr. Richardson?”

  “Oh, but I must go and see to Clive. We never know what to do with him when he flies into one of his tempers. He might throw himself out of his bedroom window. He’s often threatened it.”

  “Always a splendid sign. The children who do it seldom threaten it beforehand.”

  “But you shook him!”

  “Yes, yes. And now about Mr. Richardson. What were those letters your son mentioned?”

  “Nothing. Some anonymous filth.”

  “How did your son come to read them?”

  “Oh, they were addressed to my husband, and Clive stole the keys of his desk.”

  “But they referred to Mr. Richardson?”

  “In the most sensational terms, so much so that we felt we could not keep him on.”

  “Perhaps I ma
y be allowed to read them.”

  “I don’t suppose my husband has kept them, but I’ll go and see, if you wish.” She went out of the room, but soon returned with the news, not unexpected by Dame Beatrice, that she could not find the letters. Dame Beatrice gave a non-committal nod and demanded briskly,

  “Why does not Clive go back to school, if that’s what he wants?”

  “I thought I had mentioned that. He is very delicate and very highly strung.”

  “A very old-fashioned boy,” said Dame Beatrice. At this moment Clive flung the door open and appeared as dramatically as an amateur actor making an over-played entrance.

  “I burnt them! I burnt them!” he yelled. Dame Beatrice regarded him with benign interest. He stared at her for a moment and then cast himself into her arms.

  “Well, really, Clive!” said his mother. Dame Beatrice pushed him, kindly but without emotion, on to the sofa.

  “Did you, now?” she said. “Well, you read them before you burnt them. Did they add to the total of the world’s knowledge?”

  “They were a lot of damned lies,” sobbed the child.

  “So much is obvious. Be specific,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “What’s that?” He sat up, master of himself again.

  “You know!” retorted Dame Beatrice, who had learned this cliché from her secretary.

  “They said he…well, you know!” said Clive, adroitly turning the tables.

  “And you know that this was not true?”

  “That string-bean!”

  “Really, Clive!” protested his mother.

  “He does not lack stamina,” said Dame Beatrice; but whether she referred to Richardson or to Clive, neither the boy nor his mother could tell. Dame Beatrice did not beat about the bush. “How well do you know some people named Campden-Towne?” she enquired of the woman. Her tone was abrupt and compelling. Mrs. Maidston glanced at Clive. His eyes were venomous.

  “Campden-Towne? Oh, well, yes, I suppose you might call them acquaintances of ours,” she said weakly. Clive made a very rude noise. She ignored it. “Why do you ask?”

  “There is some slight evidence that they may be able to shed a little light on Mr. Richardson’s activities when he discovered that a dead man had been placed in his tent. You have read about that, I am sure.”