Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bath,” said Dame Beatrice. The children’s mother looked up, then, hauling vigorously, she jerked her offspring up the bank.

  “Why, good morning, Dame Beatrice,” she said. “Now, then, Arthur and Baby; it isn’t no good you make that fuss. The fishes ’ave took a day off, just the same as we ’ave, and even if they ’adn’t, you couldn’t of kept ’em, ’cos we didn’t bring no jam-jars. (I don’t ’old with them carryin’ glass about,” she added to Dame Beatrice. “Fall down and cut theirselves to pieces, more than likely.) Now, then, Baby, stop that noise, else you’ll choke yourself on the sweetie I’m not goin’ to give you till you stop your ’owling. And just you come back on the path, Arthur, else you won’t get one, neither.”

  The path was the broad ride across the heath which led to another bend of the stream. They took this track, well away from the water, and while the children frolicked and quarrelled, Dame Beatrice and Mrs. Bath talked.

  “You have chosen a very pleasant day for your outing,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Came in on the bus. They fair loves riding on the bus. Got to do some shopping when we get back, but time enough for that. They seen the fishing nets in a shop in the village and nothing wouldn’t do but for Arthur to ’ave one. Well, of course, what ’e ’as the baby wants, too, so I ’ad to buy ’em one each.”

  “You’ve walked all this way from the bus stop in the village?”

  “Oh, no, only from the road that leads to Mr. Campden-Towne’s place. He spotted us in the village and stopped his car and gave us a nice ride up to here.”

  “But how are you going to get back? It’s a very long walk for the children.”

  “Oh, we’ll make out all right. Arthur, he’s a right manly little walker and I can give ’im a piggy-back now and again while the baby has a bit of a walk.”

  “Mr. Campden-Towne? I’ve heard the name. Isn’t he a tall, rather thin man who rides a very fine chestnut horse?”

  “No, that isn’t him. You’re mistook, unless he’ve changed his shape and make and also ’is habits since I left his service.”

  “I wonder of whom I’m thinking, then?”

  “Might be the Colonel, although I wouldn’t call ’im thin. He’s tall, though, and he did have a chestnut horse, now I come to think.”

  “But surely Mr. Campden-Towne rides? I thought everybody round here did.”

  “Not ’im. He’s what they call a City gentleman. All ’is work’s in London and Southampton. He’s in shipping—leastways, ’e always used to be in the old days, or so I understood.”

  “Really? And how did you like working for him?”

  “Like it? Well, you don’t think about whether you like it or not. You just does it, and looks forward to your evening out and your money.”

  Dame Beatrice was anxious to obtain a first-hand description of Mr. Campden-Towne, although she had seen his portrait, but she did not intend that her anxiety should be obvious, so she began to talk about the children and enquired whether Mrs. Bath was hoping that they would grow up to be interested in athletics. This led, in the most natural way, to a dissertation on the merits and demerits of the Scylla and District club and to some interesting sidelights on the characters and attainments of its members. Another thought—an idle one this time—struck Dame Beatrice.

  “Did you find difficulty in adhering to a training schedule when you were working for Mr. Campden-Towne?” she enquired.

  “Bless you, no, Dame Beatrice! I used to go errands down the village twice a week, and soon’s I were out of the ’ouse I used to run. And when I come to the little river I used to jump it from side to side, as many times as I could. That was when I was goin’, of course. Coming back I ’ad plenty to carry, so I used to do weight-liftin’ exercises with the baskets and bags. Oh, training was dead easy in them days. And then, you see, I could always do my press-ups and squats and leg exercises and that sort of thing, in my bedroom. Once the master fell down, dead drunk, just inside the front door, and the missus was ever so worried because she was expecting two people for dinner. I told her not to bother. All she need do was to get one of the others to open the bedroom door wide, Mr. Campden-Towne being a very stocky man, though only five foot seven, and I’d have him on the bed, safe out of the way, in no time, and so I would have done, but she insisted on helping, and I must say she managed very well.”

  “And the guests arrived and the dinner passed off quite smoothly?”

  “I’ll say it did. Mrs. Campden-Towne telephoned the hotel to a gentleman there she’d met, and asked him over to make a fourth at bridge, the way they’d enjoy their evening. Mr. and Mrs. Maidston was the couple. The other gentleman’s name I never heard, for everybody called him Sidney. (Come on, Arthur! Bring Jennie! We’re turning back now!) You don’t mind if we leave you, madam? I think they’ll have had enough by the time I get ’em home.”

  “Oh, I’ll come with you as far as the hotel,” said Dame Beatrice, “and then you must come in and rest while I get my car round. You can trust my man, a thoroughly experienced driver. I am interested that you know the people over there.” She made a sketchy gesture towards the lonely house. “By the way, who lives in the cottage in the woods and keeps geese?” (The young men had told her and Laura of their ignominious retreat in the face of these enemies.)

  “The cottage? Oh, their name’s Lovebaker. A very old Forest family they are.”

  The baby began to tire soon after they had crossed the rustic bridge and were on the causeway. Her mother picked her up and carried her as far as the edge of the common. Here there was a sturdy wooden bench and the chance of a rest. Some farm-hands were rounding up bullocks. Forest ponies were scattered all over an enormous area of grass and nearer at hand some riders, both girls and men, were desultorily whacking a polo ball about. A few people were tracking down the brownish Forest mushrooms. Cars were out on a secondary road which cut the common in two. It ran on into dim blue woods and over a bridge which crossed another stretch of the river before the way turned at right-angles to reach, past glades and the natural Forest trees, the village of Emery Down.

  The two children soon tired of sitting on the seat. Arthur announced his intention of catching a pony and taking it home. He made cowboy noises and galloped away. His mother let the baby toddle after him, but the child began to cry as soon as she realised that she could not catch him. Her mother went after her, scooped her up, brought her back to the seat, wiped her eyes and nose, and comforted her with the gift of a sweet.

  The ponies took no notice of Arthur, for they were farther off than he had realised and his weary little legs soon caused him to call off the chase.

  “Wonder why the figures been going up so much this last two years,” remarked Mrs. Bath, watching her son’s listless approach. “Arthur’s tired hisself.”

  “Figures?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “Yes, you know. Injured on the roads. Ponies. I see the figures in the paper the other day. Funny enough, it’s only the pony figures as ’as gone up. Cattle and deer is down, and the pannage pigs, well, of course, they’re seasonal and don’t trouble the roads, anyway. You know what I sometimes wonder?”

  “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “I sometimes wonder whether the gippoes ’ave got a system.”

  “A system?”

  “For knocking of ’em off. You know—stealing ’em. I don’t reckon all them ponies gets killed.”

  “But I thought there were strict laws about reporting animals injured or killed on the roads. Do not the bodies have to be produced? Are there not people called Agisters with responsibility for such matters?”

  “I know nothing of that, Dame Beatrice, but Mabel’s husband—the policeman, you know—he will ’ave it there’s something fishy going on, and he’s a man right out of the Forest, as you might say. It was him as pointed them figures out to me and it was then he said it. ‘There’s something fishy about them figures, Deirdre,’ he says, ‘and if I was Chief Constable,’ he
says, ‘I’d want to look into it,’ he says, ‘because the number of motorists booked don’t have all that connection with the number of ponies as is missing.’ That’s what he said.”

  “Really!” said Dame Beatrice; and she tucked away the information in her memory. “That’s very interesting indeed.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Bath, getting up from the seat, “I think we’ll be getting along. It’s been ever so nice meetin’ up with you again, Dame Beatrice.”

  In spite of the mother’s protests, Dame Beatrice carried the baby back to the hotel. Arthur, sturdy and independent to the last, refused to be helped, but raised no objection to orangeade and biscuits in the hotel lounge. The baby had milk and the ladies coffee, and the porter went to warn George to bring round the car.

  As soon as she had seen the family off from the hotel steps, Dame Beatrice rang up the Superintendent. He was in his office and promised to be with her in about an hour. Dame Beatrice invited him to lunch, and told him, with a cackle which disconcerted him, that he need not worry about having to sit at the same table as his chief suspect. She would arrange, she said, for the young men to have a table for two, so that, with perfect propriety, he might join herself and Laura. The Superintendent accepted with alacrity. There was shepherd’s pie on the menu at home.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Despatches from Three Fronts

  As he handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was, especially for so strong a rope, and one not in use.

  “You could hang a man with it,” he thought to himself. When his preparations were made he looked around, and said complacently:

  “There now, my friend, I think we shall learn something of you this time!”

  Bram Stoker

  They sat at a table in the window, the Superintendent facing the garden, Dame Beatrice with her back to it, and Laura at Dame Beatrice’s left hand. The Superintendent seemed mildly pleased with life, but he spoke of nothing beyond commonplaces until they were taking cheese at the end of the meal.

  “We’re getting somewhere,” he observed. “Do you think they’d let us have that little room again?”

  Dame Beatrice said she thought it could be managed, as the retired naval officer who usually laid claim to it was still away. To the drawing-room lounge, therefore, they repaired. Laura bolted the French windows, locked the door (after the porter had been requested to put the Engaged notice on the corridor side of it), and the three settled down, with coffee, for what Laura referred to as a nice cosy chat.

  Outside the windows the garden showed every sign of autumn. Horsechestnut burrs strewed the grass and the flowers were becoming bedraggled. Every fir tree bore its cones and a vivid creeper was gay with reds and yellows. There were blackbirds on the lawn, but their brilliant summer song had given place to a monotonous and querulous chirping.

  “Those birds sing flat,” remarked Laura. Dame Beatrice, bolt upright on the only straight-backed chair in the room, asked the Superintendent to enlarge upon his promising beginning.

  “You are getting somewhere?” she asked, prompting him.

  “We are, I think,” he replied. “Acting on your suggestions, we had another go at Mr. and Mrs. Campden-Towne. The gentleman was not at home, but the good lady told me that he was at his Southampton office. I got her to give me the address and telephone number and went there by car. He wasn’t there, but I was given the address and number of his London office. I rang up and was told that he was expected but had not arrived.”

  “He seems an elusive gentleman,” Dame Beatrice remarked.

  “Yes. Well, as I badly wanted to see him, I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone, so I went first to that hotel in Kensington where the Campden-Townes were supposed to have stayed, and gave them a description of Mrs. Maidston. She isn’t a bit like Mrs. Campden-Towne to look at—as you, Dame Beatrice, will testify—and, in her own way, is quite striking but rather small. They hadn’t any difficulty in recalling her. Of course, I referred to her as Mrs. Campden-Towne and then I asked about the husband. Well, the description was of a tall, thinnish chap with a bald forehead. This doesn’t fit Campden-Towne, who’s about as wide as he’s high and has thick brown hair.”

  “I never did think that visit of the Campden-Townes to London would hold water,” Dame Beatrice observed. “It was altogether too opportune.”

  “That’s as maybe, ma’am. I then went to Campden-Towne’s London office. By that time he’d arrived. He trades under the name of S. Ponly Ltd. and is in a pretty good line of business, I should think. Everything looked plush. Well, I challenged him, straight to the point. Told him I knew he hadn’t been in London on the nights in question—that’s to say, the time when the murders were committed and the bodies disposed of. (I was bluffing there a bit, of course.) I asked him where he had been at the times stated, and I hinted that I knew more than I’d actually said.

  “Well, he’s a cagey bird and a bold one. He sent me to the devil, asked where was my authority for questioning him, and told me to prove he wasn’t in Kensington when he had said he was. I said I was only asking for his help, but he blew a raspberry at that one and stuck to it that he was being victimised by the police.”

  “I wonder how phoney his business is,” said Laura. The Superintendent shook his head.

  “It’s all it should be, so far as I can make out from other enquiries I instituted,” he said. “I’m afraid we can get no angle there at present, Mrs. Gavin. Still, there’s plenty of scope yet. Mind you, I left him a bit thoughtful, I could see that. My trouble is, though, that even if I can prove he never went near that Kensington hotel, I can’t prove that he murdered those two men. I’ve still to establish a connection between him and them, and there’s no line of contact at present.”

  “Would his business link up with protection money?” asked Laura.

  “Not unless it’s a cover for something illegal,” the Superintendent replied, “or perhaps a bookmaking side-line.”

  “I wonder whether a discreet question or two at the headquarters of the Scylla and District Social and Athletic Club would help to establish the required connection between him and the dead men,” said Dame Beatrice. The Superintendent looked doubtful.

  “We might try, I suppose,” he said. “Well, look now Dame Beatrice, you yourself have already had friendly relations with some of the members, so you might be willing to take on that aspect and save me the job. I am not too anxious to make a police matter of it with the club if I can avoid it. The less publicity my efforts are given, the better it will be at present.”

  “I had friendly contact with Mrs. Bath again today,” said Dame Beatrice. She gave an account of her walk. “I think, from what she told me, that Mrs. Bath might be able to throw a side-light, if nothing stronger, on to Mr. Campden-Towne’s business activities.”

  The Superintendent made a note. Then he said,

  “I also went to see Mr. and Mrs. Maidston. My word! That boy of theirs is a coughdrop!”

  “Yes. He isn’t theirs, of course. They were fostering him with a view to a possible adoption. That boy, Superintendent, was in Mr. Richardson’s form at the preparatory school until his foster-parents took him away.”

  “Was he indeed? That might be worth looking into. What was their reason? Did you gather that?”

  “Not from Mrs. Maidston and only obliquely from the boy. By the way, what was the result of your interview with Borgia Robinson? You did go and see him, I take it?”

  “Oh, him! A nasty bit of work if ever there was one! Actually suggested he should sell me his information! Sell it me! I soon told him where he got off, and, of course, I’ve still got to check on what he told me. I suppose you’ve guessed what that was, ma’am?”

  “Well, it is nothing but guesswork, as you suggest, but my guess would be that he told you about the missing poisons—the hydrocyanic acid and the potassium cyanide.”

  “Dead right. Mind you, according to him, only a small quantit
y of each was missing, but enough to provide more than one lethal dose. He as good as accused Mr. Richardson, but, in spite of what I think, I took him up very short on that, and told him to be careful what he said. All the same, he’d said it.”

  “Yes, of course he would. He has read the newspapers. No, Superintendent, I am pretty sure who it was who obtained possession of the poisons, and it was not Mr. Richardson. I am convinced that it was the child Clive, probably as the result of a ‘dare,’ or possibly to give himself a sense of power. I think the wretched Robinson found out about it, or, much worse, sold Clive the poisons and then put pressure on the boy. The boy, who has a keen sense of sauve qui peut, appealed to his foster-mother to be taken away from the school and so out of Robinson’s clutches, and, as his wishes sometimes seem to be law…he probably threatened to run away if she did not take him away…”

  “I see. Could well be, of course.” The Superintendent rubbed his jaw. “But even if, through the boy, we could trace possession of the poisons to the Maidstons, it wouldn’t help us much if the couple were safely tucked away in a Kensington hotel at the time of the murders, would it?”

  “Well, first things first,” said Dame Beatrice, refusing to play to the gambit. “I will tackle the members of the Scylla and Distict club and see whether there is anything there to help us.”

  “One trouble,” said the Superintendent, “is that, so far, we haven’t a clue as to where the murders took place, nor can we find out what the men were doing up to the time of their deaths. Only one thing seems clear. Going by the medical evidence, they must have died at pretty much the same time and that means it was likely they were together when they took the poisons. If the murderer hadn’t been fool enough to move the bodies, we might almost have expected the coroner’s jury to suggest it was a suicide pact.”

  “Unlikely, in my opinion, Superintendent. But with reference to the murderer’s foolishness, doesn’t it occur to you that he had to move the bodies?”