Adders on the Heath (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  At this Gavin turned to Dame Beatrice and asked,

  “Do you think you could refresh their memories?”

  At the mention of Campden-Towne, Maidston, ponies, and ships, which she made implacably and with a mesmeric intensity which obviously unnerved them, they gave up the struggle.

  “He had us sewn up,” said one. “We didn’t want to do it, sir, and that’s a fact.”

  “Are you sailors?” asked Gavin.

  “Ah, we are that,” said the other. “He’s got the goods on us, else he’d never have talked us into this.”

  “Well, we’ve got the goods on him,” Gavin told them pleasantly. “He’s a murderer with two deaths to his credit, and it’s a good thing for you both that you didn’t succeed in kidnapping my son, for—mark this!—at whatever risk to the boy, we should have been bound to pull Towne in. He’s been selling State secrets. How does that strike you?”

  The two men swore incredulously, and protested that they certainly had known nothing about it. Gavin believed them and said so.

  “We knew there was funny business over the ponies,” said one. “Leastways, we guessed as much. But we only thought he knocked ’em off.”

  “The ponies were a secret code, and a very simple and clever one. I’m not giving it away, of course, but I can assure you chaps that you’re well out of this business.”

  “Well out, sir?”

  “Yes, well out, unless Dame Beatrice wants to prosecute you for breaking into her house.”

  Dame Beatrice leered at the men and they flinched.

  “I imagine that they will be more useful in court as witnesses than as defendants,” she said.

  “Yes, you’ll have to give evidence as to the shipping of the ponies,” agreed Gavin.

  “Knowing them to have been knocked off, Guv?”

  “I hardly think that need come into it. The less complicated your evidence the better, I should say, but of course, I’m not a lawyer.”

  The Superintendent turned up at this juncture and was admitted by Henri, who, after a hasty dash upstairs to reassure his wife, had returned to his self-imposed guard duty.

  “And I think, Superintendent, that, for the sake of their own safety, it would be as well to take these men into protective custody until Campden-Towne and Maidston have been arrested,” observed Dame Beatrice.

  “We’ve got them, ma’am. Picked them up this afternoon as soon as your little party left the hotel. You convinced us all right, and I must apologise to Mr. Richardson for keeping the tabs on him like I have done,” concluded the Superintendent handsomely. The young men, it transpired later, had not heard a sound of what had been going on, but had slept through everything.

  Fugue

  How all ye powers that rule above

  Grant we may evil shun

  And that henceforth such dreadful acts

  May never more be done.

  Victorian Street Ballad

  “Just fancy,” said Aileen Crumb to Doreen Dodd, “what some of we girls might have been letting ourselves in for!

  “Glad we’re sprinters and not milers.”

  “There’s the cross-country runs old Artie is always bellyaching us into doing.”

  “I don’t really dig that lark. Tiring, that’s what I call it, and might any minute rick your ankle. Now this indoor work is a bit of all right. Under cover, and matting where it’s needed, and no occasion to wear yourself out.”

  “See them Americans in the Indoors has to run into a bar at the finish of the sprints, save them concussing themselves against a wall or something?”

  “Oh, well, they runs faster over there. Anyway, it’s men, not us. Besides, if enough of them Yanks concusses themselves, we might stand a chance of a few more golds in the next Olympics. That’s the way I look at it.”

  They giggled and then did a little “running on the spot” in order to warm up before they began any serious training.

  “Let’s barge that Corinna and that Dulcie off the track for a bit. Them hurdlers always thinks they should ought to have priority,” said Doreen. “Wonderful how Corinna got over Albert Colnbrook,” she added unkindly. “She’s going steady with Bob Chichester now, so I heard.”

  “Bob’s treated himself to one of them fibre-glass poles. It bends like a bit of rubber piping. He’ll break his neck one of these days,” said Aileen, pleased by this thought.

  “I’m glad, in a way, Mr. Towne only got life,” said Doreen, changing the subject. “I couldn’t really fancy seeing him hung.”

  “Huh! I could! He’ll really do about nine years and then come out and do in somebodies else. You see if he don’t!

  “Get on with some work, you girls,” said the trainer. “What you think you’re here for?”

  “To keep you in a job,” said Doreen pertly. However, she walked over to the hurdlers and requested the favour of a few minutes’ use of the track. The hurdlers, with a prospect of nearly eight months of non-competitive sport before them, were only too glad to step aside and take a rest.

  “Hey, you girls, what about your exercises?” demanded the coach. “Some of you perishing little lie-abouts makes me wonder why I give up my time!”

  “So do we wonder, thinking what perishing help you are!” retorted Dulcie, who was tired of playing second string to Corinna and firmly believed that, with better coaching, she could beat her. The trainer, whose defensive motto was Never argue with women, walked away and contented himself with a sardonic look at Penny the Putt, who was contorting herself into a series of fancy attitudes but without handling the shot. She had no intention of using it that winter, because she thought she was overdeveloping her biceps and might not look sufficiently attractive at the dances she proposed to attend.

  “Well, Face?” she demanded tartly, suspending her operations. “What’s given you the stomach-ache?”

  “Well, Margot Fonteyn?” retorted the coach. “What you think you’re practising? Swan Lake?”

  “I’m loosening up, like you told us.”

  “Blimey! Your boyfriend’s going to be lucky!” Delighted with this pithy comment, he walked away before Penny could hurl a shoe at him or find any other reply, and joined the milers Judy and Syl, who were in a corner of the arena putting in a stint of slow skipping. He advised them to “let the knees go, girls,” before he passed on to the high jump and altered the position of a mat. Out of his range and orbit, Judy and Syl abandoned exercise and subsided on to a bench.

  “What say we pack it in for tonight?” suggested Syl. “We got that cross-country run Saturday. Besides, giving evidence at that trial wasn’t half an ordeal. I’ll never feel the same again, especially after reading about it when it was over.”

  “Good thing it’s all come out. Fancy Mr. Towne being a secret agent as well as a double murderer, and getting the poison through that boy of that other guilty lot! I couldn’t hardly believe it, although it was all in the papers.”

  “Secret agent? That’s only what they’re called when they’re on our side. I should call him a dirty spy. And what a lousy trick finding out all about that young What’s ’is name what used to be a master at the school and then trying to frame him into the murders!”

  “Oh, they’re a crafty lot! In my opinion, Bert Colnbrook and that there Bunt never ought to have had nothing to do with them.”

  “I expect the money was good. And then, of course, they had to go and get above themselves and start a bit of blackmail. That’s what got them done in. They ought to have known it was daft, as well as dangerous, to put pressure on a man like that.”

  “Mr. Towne wasn’t all that daft. Fancy poisoning ’em at that Mr. Maidston’s house, Mr. Towne knowing it was empty because of knowing the Maidstons—and I bet she knew all what was going on, for all they dismissed her from the case…”

  “You mean, knowing they’d gone up to London in Mr. and Mrs. Towne’s name, so the house would be empty with the servants being give the evening off. But the cook said they never smelt a rat. A bit d
umb, if you ask me. I bet I’d have had my suspicions if my boss had started throwing me favours out of the blue. Oh, well, come on, let’s beat it. You can come to supper if you like. I’ll send my kid brother out for pease pudden and faggots. My mum likes that. And we could take in some cider and p’raps a packet of fags.”

  “Well, all right. I’ll treat us to the cider and the fags if you’re doing the rest. But don’t let Dad Artie know. He doesn’t half create if he finds us breaking training.”

  “He’s got a single-track mind. Sometimes I wonder if we girls are wise to put ourselves in the power of a man like that. I mean, look at Svengali.”

  “Look at who?”

  “Oh, lose it! Do you know what my own dad calls Towne and Company?—a nest of adders. And so they are.”

  “Adders?” Judy ventured upon the witticism of a lifetime. “The way they knocked off them ponies, I reckon it was subtraction they done, not addition. What do you say?”

  About the Author

  Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and History, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.