Adders on the Heath (6 page)

'And your team? Where do all of
you
come from?'

'We come from all over the place. Berks, Bucks and Oxon mostly. Our secretary lives in Surrey and the treasurer hangs out in Kent. A representative body, one might say, take us all in all.'

'Do you have many outside competitions?'

'As many as we can get. We don't do much on the track, because we haven't got a ground, so it's mostly cross-country. Anyway, most of us like it that way. It's cheaper than golf!'

'How did your club come to be formed?'

'I don't know, really. Chaps knew other chaps, and, before we came down, there was a sort of meeting and some of us agreed to join.'

'It sounds very casual.'

'Oh, yes,' said Richardson earnestly, 'it is. That's the beauty of it. Nobody's bound to turn out. You get the notice-usually at some dashed awkward time when you've already fixed up to do something quite other-and you don't have to answer. You just roll up or not, exactly as you please.'

'And the result of this idyllic arrangement?'

'Curiously enough, quite a lot of people do roll up. There's some sort of psychological explanation, I shouldn't wonder. Oh, dash it! I forgot!
You're
a psychologist, aren't you?'

Dame Beatrice cackled, and Laura remarked that she herself had noticed that where there was no compulsion there was often a better response than when a press-gang was at work.

'You say that you took care not to be seated near Mr Colnbrook at the supper,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Could you tell whether he still felt animosity towards you?'

'Well, he wasn't very pleased when, on the run-in, I beat him, but I did make the distance between us as narrow as I could. I had to win, of course, because of scoring for the team, otherwise I'd have let him beat me to it.'

'You did not know whether your team really needed your help, I suppose?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Those who had finished in front of us were howling their heads off, particularly the opposition, so I thought I'd better pull it off.'

'Well, I should think you're in the clear, all right,' said Laura. 'You couldn't have had any reason at all to wish Colnbrook out of this world. You won the scrap and you won the race. It was for
him
to wish
you
to hell, not vice-versa.'

'Exactly my opinion,' said Denis.

'I shall be interested to hear what is said at the inquest,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but, like Laura, I cannot see that you have anything to fear provided that you have related all that you know about Mr Colnbrook.'

'Oh, I say, are you really going to attend the inquest?' said Richardson, ignoring the insinuation. 'That's most awfully good of you. I'm not looking forward to it much. It's rotten in the middle of a holiday. Oh, look! They're taking down the shutters. That means the bar's open. Now, Dame Beatrice, what can I get you?'

Nothing serious was said or done until after lunch, but, when the party left the dining-room, Dame Beatrice took her grand-nephew aside, leaving Richardson to escort Laura.

'Why is your friend so nervous about all this?' she asked. '
Can
he be involved in any way? After all, he tried to tell the police about the exchange of bodies, it appears. He could do no more if they refused to allow him to explain.'

'I think he got wind-up when we came upon Colnbrook's body in those woods,' said Denis. 'It really
was
the toughest kind of luck that we should be the people to stumble on it like that. It's as though some malignant fate is dogging Tom down here, and the worst of it is that I really was responsible for suggesting we had a look for Colnbrook.'

'Yes?' said Dame Beatrice doubtfully. 'You have no reason to think that Mr Richardson knew perfectly well where Mr Colnbrook's body was, and deliberately led you to its discovery?'

'Good Lord, no, of course not! That's a fantastic suggestion, darling great-aunt. Besides, the forester said they'd moved it from where they found it. It was in their way.'

'Very likely,' his great-aunt agreed. 'But, as Laura would say, it is as well to explore all avenues. What made him pitch a tent up there on the heath when he would have been far more comfortable sleeping here in the hotel? I understand that he took all his meals here, including his breakfast.'

'Well, he's a solitary sort of old lunatic, you know. I doubt whether he's got a close pal in the world besides myself. I gather that he wanted to do a bit of badger-watching and so forth, and, of course, I did let him down. I couldn't help it, but there it was. He had two days more on his own than we'd planned. It was damned bad luck that this business of two dead men should have cropped up.'

'Yes. One might argue that one dead man was enough. Two...'

'Overdoing it? I agree. But what's the answer?'

'That is what we have to find out, dear child.'

'In the old days, I got half a crown when you called me that. Do you remember?'

'I hardly think that you are in dire need of half a crown in these days.'

'You never know,' said Denis.

'What is this athletics club of which Mr Richardson is a member? And what kind of people are the other members?'

'They call themselves the Hen-Harriers-a sort of play upon words, if you take me, although they don't have women members. They're a casual bunch, as he indicated. They're the sort of chaps who ran as second strings for their colleges in the three miles when they were up-third strings, most likely-plus a sprinkling of hockey players who turn up for cross-country running when they haven't a fixture, or, more likely, when a fixture falls through at the last minute. Happy-go-lucky types, I should say, on the whole. I only know what Tom tells me about them.'

'You would not call them a desperately keen band?'

'Lord, no! They really do run for the fun of it, and, if nobody bothers to finish, well, nobody bothers!'

'It sounds an ideal arrangement.'

'Oh, it is, and old Tom enjoys it. He has to be pubbable and clubbable, you see, and it's jolly good for him, otherwise he'd probably turn into every kind of hermit.'

'Girls?'

'He's a bit like the hero of
She Stoops to Conquer
-good with barmaids, but otherwise, I fear, not even a spent force, although I did hear a rumour that he might be getting engaged. I haven't met the girl.'

'What does he do for a living?'

'Oh, prep-school master, as long as he can stick the school, and then a bit of private tutoring while he works up steam to apply for another post. Lives with a widowed mother who, I gather, has plenty of dough. What Tom really ought to do is to write, but his first novel was turned down by the only two publishers he sent it to, and that seems to have soured on the boy. He's by way of being Shelley's original sensitive plant.'

'Interesting.'

'You can tell the sort of chap he is by the way he's taking these deaths. They can't possibly be anything to do with him, but his attitude is that the black cap is already on the judge's head. It gets fatiguing. It will be a jolly good thing when the inquest is over and he can breathe again.'

'How did you come to make his acquaintance?'

'A common interest in music'

'Does he play an instrument?'

'No, but he understands the Elizabethans.'

Dame Beatrice, who understood Bach and nobody else, allowed this statement to pass without challenge. Richardson and Laura were in the garden admiring the dahlias and some late carnations and Denis and his great-aunt were walking on the finely-cut lawn.

'In what way do you think I can help your friend?' Dame Beatrice enquired. She bent to pick up a handsome fir-cone which had fallen from
Pinus Pinea
, the Stone Pine (introduced, as she remarked to her great-nephew, four hundred years ago, in the time (more or less) of his friend's Elizabethans), and studied it while Denis answered.

'Well, I think you've given his
morale
a considerable boost by coming down here at all, and now he knows you're going to attend the inquest it's made his day. What do you want to do this afternoon? See the spot where we found Colnbrook's body?'

'No, child. Did I understand from Mr Richardson that Mr Colnbrook belonged to an association of mixed athletes (in the sense, I mean, of the way one describes a co-educational school as being mixed) called the Scylla and District Club?'

'Yes, that's Colnbrook's mob. Social and Athletic, they call themselves, according to Tom. They've got a ground of sorts, somewhere outside Southampton. I expect you heard him say so. They've had one or two good people-steeplechasers, mostly-but not exactly world class, I believe. I don't much follow athletics. Anyway, they're a pretty minor club, the same as Tom's lot.'

'By which you mean-?'

'Well, they're not exactly Achilles, or Poly. Harriers, or Herne Hill or Thames Valley, for example.'

'I see.' There was a pause, then Dame Beatrice added, 'Perhaps, when we have attended the inquest, your friend will honour me with
the whole
of his confidence. I dislike to work on half-truths.'

CHAPTER SIX

INQUESTS ARE ODIOUS

'Poisoned with henbane. His whole body stinks of it.'

Jerome K. Jerome

The inquests on Colnbrook and the so-far unnamed body also dumped in Richardson's tent were held separately but on the same day. Richardson was called as a witness in both cases. Accepting Dame Beatrice's advice (in the tradition that drowning men clutch at straws, and having about as much faith in the result), he had been to the Superintendent to tell him that he recognised the body he and Denis had found in the woods as that of the first deceased occupant of his tent. The Superintendent (suspiciously so, in Richardson's opinion) had been friendly and almost jocose.

'So we shall see what we
shall
see, sir,' he had said, in termination of the interview.

'What's that mean?' Richardson had demanded.

'Now, now, sir, there's no reason to be nervous. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but
the truth, you know.' He insisted upon shaking hands at parting.

The so-far unidentified body came first, and the court learnt that it was that of one Edward Makepeace Thackeray Bunt, an ex-member and cross-country club-record-holder of the Scylla and District A.C.

'You've nothing to worry about, then,' murmured Denis to Richardson. 'It's all the same bunch. One of them has bought it, mark my words.'

Richardson grunted his incredulity at the suggestion that he had nothing to worry about. He knew better. He had spent almost sleepless nights in the hotel. Bunt was identified by his father, an older, bearded edition of the dead man. The medical evidence was clear and remained unchallenged. The deceased had died from a fatal dose of hydrocyanic acid, better known to the layman as prussic acid. (There was no mention of fir cones!)

The police asked for an adjournment after the evidence of identification and the medical evidence had been concluded. It was clear they suspected that Bunt had been murdered, in spite of the fact, well known to the medical profession, that prussic acid is a suicide's agent, although not, at that, a very common one.

Richardson's protagonist, Colnbrook, was identified by his sister, who did not appear to be greatly upset by the proceedings. In his case the medical evidence was that he had taken potassium cyanide, a more commonly used preparation than hydrocyanic acid and therefore more readily come by.

Neither Denis nor Richardson was called upon to testify to the finding of the body in the woods. The police had investigated their account of the matter and the forester to whom they had spoken was severely dealt with by the coroner.

'At what time did you come upon the body?'

'Oo, now, that would have been around nine o'clock, I reckon, sir.'

'Where did you find it?'

'Where us was working.'

'And that was?'

'Oo, about half-way acrorst Benet Enclosure, near enough.'

'What were you doing there?'

The witness looked surprised.

'Why, sir, you knows as well as I do.'

'Answer the question, man. All this has to go on record.'

'Oo, well, then, us was felling.'

'Tell the court how you came to find the body.'

'It were there.'

'How do you mean?'

'Why, us was felling a Scots pine, do ee see, sir, and dead man, he laid just where tree were liable to fall.'

'You mean that the body was lying in the open, where anybody could have seen it?'

'Ar, that be my meaning.'

'Don't you realise that you had no right to move it?'

'But it were in the way. Tree trunk woulda made mincemeat of the poor bugger, if that had fell on 'im.'

'Please do not comment. Confine yourself to answering my questions.'

'I thought as how I were.'

'Why did you not go at once for the police or a doctor?'

'Us was too busy, that's for why. Chap was dead all right. Nothing to be done for him, and us had our day's work to think of.'

'You are a very stupid man. Didn't you realise that you might get into serious trouble for not reporting a death?'

'Us was gooing to report it all right, not as it were any business of ourn. Us tossed up to see who ud do the reporting. I lorst, and that's why I be here.'

'What happened when Mr Richardson and Mr Bradley arrived?'

'Oo, us had just knocked off for a spell when us heard 'em. Fell in the ditch, or summat, they did. So I hollers at 'em, thinking to save meself a job, and one of 'em ketches his foot agin the dead 'un, so I uncovers un where us laid him in the brocken and axes 'em to report, which I takes it they did. Very took aback, 'em was when they see the corpus. I noticed that particularly.'

'I have asked you before not to comment. You have nothing more to tell the court?'

'Noo, sir, I reckon that be all.'

'Very well. You may stand down, unless the jury have anything to ask you.'

The jury looked at one another, but no one was bold enough to venture a question, so the witness, passing a finger around the inside of his Sunday collar and scratching the side-seam of his Sunday trousers, thankfully abandoned his public position and rejoined the ranks of the anonymous.