Adders on the Heath (12 page)

CHAPTER TEN

THE SUPERINTENDENT REVIEWS IT

'Nobody supposes that the digging up of antiquities is in itself a scientific end...'

Sir Leonard Wolley-
Digging Up the Past

'There remain,' said Dame Beatrice, 'the hotel staff. They could all have known that Mr Richardson was encamped on the heath.'

The Superintendent rubbed his jaw.

'Are you
seriously
thinking that one of the hotel servants is guilty, ma'am?' he enquired.

'No, I am not,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but I suppose we ought to look at the thing in the round. What is your own idea?'

'I can see nothing nearer than Mr Richardson himself. All the evidence seems to point that way. We have witnesses of his two disagreements with Colnbrook. What is more, one of the quarrels, that one in the station waiting-room, seems to have been of a serious nature.'

'Against that, we must put the murder of Mr Bunt. There is nothing whatever to connect
him
with Mr Richardson, is there?'

'No,' said the Superintendent thoughtfully. 'What's more, for what it's worth, Dame Beatrice, Bunt was not, as one might say, an indigenous product. He came to Southampton from the Transvaal and had been over here only about three years before he was killed.'

'Shades of potassium cyanide!' said Dame Beatrice. 'Do they not, in those latitudes, use large amounts of it in extracting gold from ores?'

The Superintendent looked startled; then he recollected himself and smiled.

'It wouldn't account for the prussic acid,' he said. Dame Beatrice said that she was not so sure.

'Derivatives postulate a main substance,' she argued. 'Those who know potassium cyanide may surely have some passing acquaintance with hydrocyanic acid?'

The Superintendent politely disagreed.

'I don't see it, ma'am, but then, of course, I'm not a doctor.'

'And I'm not a chemist, Superintendent. All the same, I hardly see how you are going to establish a connection between Mr Richardson and Mr Bunt, and, from the circumstance of Mr Richardson's tent having been used to house both the bodies, I deduce that the two murders were committed by the same person or persons.'

'Well, I'll take another look at the hotel staff, of course, ma'am, but I don't really think we shall pin anything on anybody there.'

'One of the guests, perhaps,' said Dame Beatrice.

'We've done a certain amount of work on those who were staying in the hotel at the time. Most people co-operated well, but one or two were a bit sticky, especially the residents. It needed a lot of tact to get them to tell us they couldn't help us!'

'Did nothing come of your efforts?'

'Not a thing. None of them even seems to have noticed what time young Richardson came in that night. I've had a good go at the manager and the porter, but it hasn't led to anything. The manager had gone up to bed and all the porter can tell me is that Richardson was "in a pretty fair taking," which is only what you'd expect, whether he's guilty or innocent.'

'Quite so. I wish we knew the reason why the first body was put into Mr Richardson's tent and then the second body substituted for it.'

The Superintendent looked at her for a moment or two before he said,

'We've only Mr Richardson's word for it that Colnbrook's body ever
was
in the tent, ma'am. And he wasn't any too frank with me about it, you know.'

'I cannot see why he should have lied about it, though. As for his lack of frankness, that, surely, was a matter of being stricken with panic, a perfectly natural reaction I should have thought.'

'I don't like the way the body was found in that enclosure. Of all the miles and miles of woods and open heath which make up the Forest, why did he choose to go with Mr Bradley to that one particular part? It was too much of a coincidence altogether.'

'Oh, I do not agree with you there, Superintendent. The wood was a natural enough place in which to hide the body, and it was a natural enough place for the young men to choose for their walk. Besides, there was the dog. Then, again, the body had not been hidden just where they stumbled upon it, you know. The woodmen confessed that they had moved it.'

'I haven't lost sight of that fact, ma'am. A good old dressing down I gave them, too. Destroying evidence, I told them. One of them had the cheek to tell me that a whole lot more evidence would have been destroyed if a tree-trunk had fallen right across the body. He was correct, in a way, I suppose, but I wouldn't let him get away with it. I told him that he and his mates might think themselves lucky not to be charged with being accessories after the fact.' He chuckled. 'That shook 'em up a bit.'

'What about the school near Basingstoke?' asked Dame Beatrice.

'We'd have to find a connection between the masters there and the two dead men. It seems a very long shot to me, ma'am.'

'I don't think it need necessarily be such a very long shot, Superintendent, and, from your point of view, it would bring Mr Richardson back into the picture. Besides, if he was teaching at the school at the time of one of these quarrels with Colnbrook, it
could
be that somebody else on the staff had also met members of the Scylla and District Club. Had you thought of that?'

The Superintendent looked doubtful.

'We could hardly see our way clear,' he said. 'We've nothing at all against the school, and Mr Richardson has had a tutoring job, as you know, since he left there. We see no reason, at present, for us to trouble the Headmaster and his staff.'

'Then what about the people at that house from which Mr Richardson hoped to telephone you?'

'Yes, we could get on to that, I suppose. You see, ma'am, there we have nothing, again, but Mr Richardson's word to go on. We don't know that he ever went to the house.'

'What about the maid who answered the door? She is certain to remember the evening.'

'She has only to deny that he called, ma'am.'

'You had better leave her to me, then. She was not the only servant left in the house, if you remember.'

'That's if we accept Mr Richardson's story.'

'Well, it would do no harm to make an enquiry, would it?'

'As a matter of fact, we went there,' said the Superintendent, looking her in the eye.

'Really? Whom did you see?'

'Everybody in the house, including, I have no doubt, the maid in question. Not a very bright specimen, but we couldn't shake her. She swore that nobody came to the door that night.'

'Oh, dear! I suppose you picked on the right girl?'

The Superintendent shook his head.

'She wasn't very bright,' he repeated, 'but it seems that she is the one who always answers the door.'

'She may have been coached by her employers, don't you think? Naturally, they would not wish to be involved in a case of murder.'

'They were not at home when, or if, Mr Richardson called, ma'am. They were in London to see a show, and they stayed at a hotel in Kensington a couple of nights. We checked on that, and their name is in the hotel register all right.'

'Well, there is the evidence that Mr Richardson did call, then. How otherwise could he have known they were not at home?'

'He could have seen them go off, ma'am. The road between the house and the bridge, the only way a car could take, is visible from where he was camping. We've proved that.'

'I still think he called at the house that night to try to telephone you. If he did, the girl is lying. I'd like to meet her and form my own conclusions. It seems a suitable task for a psychiatrist. What do you think?'

'That if she
is
lying, ma'am, it is for the reason you yourself suggested. She's been got at by her employers, who don't intend to be mixed up in a case of murder.'

'Yes. However, perhaps I can find a way of getting her to come, as my secretary puts it, clean. It seems an odd coincidence to me that two dead bodies should have been in the immediate neighbourhood of that house just when the owners of it happened to be away from home.'

'Coincidence is known to have a long arm, ma'am.'

'And ourselves a long leg, asking to be pulled, Superintendent. What did you make of the couple?'

'Oh, about what one would expect. Well-off-you have to be, to buy even a moderate-sized estate in the Forest these days-easy-going, on the surface, but I fancy there's a pretty hard streak underneath. The husband is obviously not quite a gentleman. The wife, I should imagine, married beneath her, as they say, probably for money. Still, they seem to get on well enough together. They received me civilly but showed me the door as soon as they possibly could. I don't blame them for that. Nobody likes to have a policeman about the place-not that they've got neighbours to pry and speculate, that's one thing.'

'How did the domestics react?'

'Oh, as we find servants almost invariably do. There was a mixture of nervousness and excitement and the usual urge to get their picture in the papers.'

'Well, I still think I might find a visit to that house very interesting. You have no objection, I take it?'

'None in the least, Dame Beatrice. If you do get anything useful, you'll remember our agreement?'

'You shall learn all. What is the name of these people?'

'Campden-Towne.'

Dame Beatrice did not take Laura with her, neither did she take the walk across the heath and by the stream. Her car, to the ill-concealed distress of her chauffeur George, turned off the road which led from the hotel on to the common and took the same vile, loose, pot-holed track as the police-car had used. George drove slowly, but soon they came to the bridge, after a turn to the left, crossed it and made a stately progress, in spite of the gravel over which the car was crunching, up to the house.

Dame Beatrice sent George to knock at the front door, having furnished him with the name which she had obtained from the Superintendent. He returned, very shortly, with the information that the householder himself was not at home, but that his wife would be happy to grant Dame Beatrice an interview.

The maid-the same, presumably, as had refused Richardson the use of the telephone-showed her into a large, well-furnished room in which a strongly-built woman of between thirty-five and forty was standing looking at the only picture. She turned, as the maid announced the visitor, and Dame Beatrice noted that she had large, sad eyes and almost no chin.

'How do you do?' the woman said. 'Please sit down. I don't think we've met before, have we?'

'No, we have not,' replied Dame Beatrice, seating herself in the chair indicated, 'and you may wish that we had not met now.'

'Oh, dear! Are you asking for a subscription for something? I'm afraid my husband sees to all that kind of thing.'

'I am not asking for a subscription. I am asking for help in a different kind of way. I am told by the police...'

'By the police?'

'Of course. I am consultant psychiatrist to the Home Office.'

'Oh, dear! Well, what do you want to know?'

'I want to know why you and your husband were absent from this house when a young man discovered a dead body in his tent on the heath.'

'Well, really, Dame Beatrice! I don't know that I understand you! My husband has told the police where we were, and our reason for being there. I can add nothing to what he said. It was the simple truth. In any case, I cannot see what is your own interest in the matter. It was all very horrid and very sordid, no doubt, but, really, it was nothing to do with us, as I told the Superintendent.'

'I could wish that you and your husband had been at home that night, though.'

'Exactly why?'

'Because I am quite sure that you would have been only too ready to admit the unfortunate owner of the tent and that you would have allowed him to telephone the police.'

'Most unlikely, at that time of night! In any case, except to oblige the young man, what difference could it have made?'

'I can tell you, provided that you will undertake to confide it to nobody but your husband.'

'Very well.'

'The body which the police saw lying in the tent was
not
the body about which young Mr Richardson wished to telephone the police.'

'What!'

'No. The first body was that which was stumbled upon (quite literally) by Mr Richardson and his friend in the enclosure on the far side of the heath.'

'Good gracious! What an extraordinary thing!'

'By the way,' said Dame Beatrice, 'I wonder whether I might have a word with the girl who answers the door. She did answer it, did she not, to Mr Richardson that night?'

'Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll go and get her. You won't find her very intelligent, I'm afraid.'

She went out of the room and left Dame Beatrice to gaze at the picture, which happened to be the coloured portrait of a florid, clean-shaven, thick-set middle-aged man whom Dame Beatrice took to be the husband of her reluctant hostess. The latter was gone for nearly ten minutes and returned with a scared-looking girl of about seventeen.

'This is Myrtle,' she said. 'I'd better leave you together.'

'Thank you,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Good morning, Myrtle. I don't know whether you can help me?'