Adders on the Heath (3 page)

'Just a point or two, sir,' said the Superintendent, with a geniality which made Richardson's blood run cold. 'First of all, what made you jump to the idea that the man was dead when you found him?'

Of all the questions which Richardson had half-anticipated, this was the biggest surprise and he was extremely hard put to it for an answer. He stared at the desk and then said,

'I don't really know, except that he didn't seem to be breathing. What I can't make out is how a dying man would have known that my tent was there-that's one thing-and then, well, the lights from that house, you know. You'd have thought that if he felt bad he'd have made for them in the hope that they would phone a doctor or something. So I'm beginning to conclude that he might have been dumped on me, as I had a feeling you yourself thought last night. I didn't think all this out at the time. It's what I've been thinking since; so I don't suppose I've answered your question.' (What did all this sound like, he wondered, and what had happened to
Colnbrook's
body?)

'Near enough, sir, near enough. Those ideas were in your subconscious mind, no doubt. All you've done is to bring them forward, so to speak, and rationalise them. It's the usual way, we find,' said the Superintendent.

Richardson was dumbfounded by this reasoning. He swallowed, and then said that anything he could do...

The Superintendent gave him a heavy, paternal smile.

'All in good time, sir. We'll be keeping the tabs on you, of course. Well, I think that's all for the present. You can get the bus back to the level crossing from here. You'll know your way from there. We've had to shift your tent a couple of hundred yards away from where you pitched it because we've cordoned off an area around the dead man and you'll find some of my men here and there on the heath, but you'll see your camp all right. Actually, where you'd pitched there'd be quite a bit of bog if we had much rain. You'll be better off on the higher ground where we've put you. How long did you think of staying in the Forest?'

'About another fortnight. A pal is joining me, but he doesn't want to camp, so we're transferring to the New Forest Hunt Hotel.'

'Does the hotel know they're to expect you?'

'Oh, yes, of course. I booked the rooms a couple of months ago. I've been having all my meals there, anyway. I mean, the hotel people know I exist.'

'I see. Well, I don't suppose I'll need you again, sir, until the inquest.'

'So I'm by no means out of the wood!'

'Come, sir, there's not the slightest need for alarm. Even if we are compelled to think of this as foul play, you must remember that, so long as a man is innocent, he has nothing to fear from the police.'

'Oh? What about Timothy Thingummy?'

'That, sir,' said the Superintendent, 'was in London. We don't make mistakes in these parts. We can't afford to. We get little experience of murders around here. They have rarity value, if you take me, and we don't want to waste what is rare, now do we? Besides, sir, it is not at all conclusive that a mistake
was
made in the particular case which you cite. All the same, we shall exercise every care, you may be sure.'

'I jolly well hope so!'

The Superintendent looked concerned.

'You seem to be in a jumpy state, sir. Do you feel quite well?'

'Yes, of course, but I'm not used to finding corpses in my tent.'

There has to be a first time for everything, sir. Now, not to worry. You're
quite
sure you didn't know the dead man?'

'Good heavens, of course I didn't! What next?'

'We have to wait on Providence to learn that, sir. Well, we shall be seeing you at the inquest.'

On this (to Richardson) sinister note they parted.

CHAPTER THREE

WAITING FOR DENISOT

'When you want to find out what day it is, you ask yourself what day it was yesterday, and then what day it will be tomorrow. Then you will know what today is, because it is the day that comes between.'

Hal Eyre-
Betty and the Bears

Richardson caught the bus and went back to the New Forest Hunt Hotel. The bar, on a Sunday, was not open until twelve, so, as he had time to kill, he decided to take a walk. There were still his tent and his gear at his camp on the heath, so he made that, the heath, his objective. He was seriously worried.

By that time, on a fine Sunday morning, there were a number of cars on the road and on the common. There were also a number of people on horseback. He walked at a moderate pace but, even so, he soon passed a farm and what, for want of a more exact and functional name, he called the fenced-in pound, and then he reached the open common.

Here he followed the grassy track which, for some way, ran with the gravelled road along which the police car had taken him on the previous night, then he branched off on to a causeway which ran between the gorse and the bog. He walked beside the ditch until he came to a sparse bit of woodland and the river.

He halted on the wooden bridge and gazed down at the water. It flowed cleanly under the planking and was lost to sight, although not entirely to sound, round a bend on whose bank the bushes grew thickly. On the far side of the bridge, and a little distance downstream, were four youngish men and an older one. Two of them were carrying shot-guns. The older man wished Richardson good morning as he crossed the bridge; the others stared and then nodded. For a moment he connected them (unreasonably) with the police, but almost immediately he realised that they had no connection whatever with his experiences of the previous night, but were there to pick off the destructive grey squirrels which infested the wood.

There had been some rain in the early hours of the morning (although, deep asleep in the Superintendent's comfortable spare bed, he had not heard it), so that the rough little up-and-down path was treacherously slippery. He skidded his way to the bend which took him across a messy little ditch on to the heath and soon spotted his tent. The police certainly had moved it on to higher ground. It was now about three hundred yards from the river. There was no one on guard over it, but a police car was stationed near the spot on which he had pitched it. He went over to the car. Before he could ask a question, he was recognised by the sergeant, who sat beside the constable-driver.

'May I get some of my things?'

'Quite all right to get your things, sir.'

'And stow away my tent?'

'Do what you like with your tent. We don't need it any longer. We've about finished here.'

'I'm moving into the New Forest Hunt Hotel.'

'Very good, sir. I'll let the Superintendent know.'

'He does know. I told him myself.'

The sergeant withdrew and Richardson went to his tent. He picked up his pack and inspected the contents. Nothing had been impounded; in fact, it did not appear that anything had been touched. He knew better than to believe this, for the police, in the course of duty, would have looked at everything. All the same, if was a relief to find his belongings intact. He took down the tent and stowed it, waved to the police car without obtaining any response, and tramped, heavily laden, back to the hotel.

To his surprise and relief, his fame had not preceded him. Barney had been discreet and had kept his mouth shut. It seemed reasonable, however, to warn the management that there might be visits from the police, so, having checked in at the office, he told the story of the mysterious dead, but did not mention that there had been two of these.

'Oh, yes?' said the manager. 'Well, I know the Superintendent, so that'll be all right. He's in plain clothes and he'll see that anybody he brings here is in plain clothes, too. Don't worry, Mr Richardson. We expected you and Mr Bradley last night, but you were otherwise engaged, it seems!'

'Bradley can't come until tomorrow. I don't know what has held him up, but I had a postcard.'

'You'll like to see your room, anyway. The porter has the key and has taken your stuff up. Number seventeen. We've given Mr Bradley number twenty-two on the same floor.'

'Thanks.' He went upstairs to find his gear neatly stowed and the porter about to go downstairs.

'Will there be anything more, sir?'

'No, thanks, Barney, not until my suitcase turns up.'

'Very good, sir.' But Barney loitered.

'I don't know anything else,' said Richardson. 'I spent the night at the police station, but that's not as bad as it sounds, because, actually, the Superintendent put me up in his own house.'

'All of a queer do, sir.'

'Must have been watching me ever since I began camping up there, I should think, this tramp I mean.' Again he made no mention of duplicates.

'Do the police suspect foul play, sir?'

Richardson, alarmed, thought that he had better answer truthfully.

'Well, continue to keep matters under your hat, but I rather fancy they do,' he said. 'I'm told I may have to attend the inquest.'

'You don't know the cause of death, sir?'

'No, I haven't the least idea. I saw no sign of injury, but I wasn't looking for anything of the sort. I wonder how the poor devil of a bobby got on who had to stay on guard up there all night?' (Side-track, he thought. It worked.)

'The Super sent up a car for him to sleep in, and a motor-cycle combination to bring the driver back, so I was told,' said the porter.

'Some grape-vine!' said Richardson. 'Oh, well, we must wait and see what happens. I suppose I'm free to come and go-I haven't been told I'm not-so I'm going to play golf this afternoon, if the pro. can fix me up with clubs and balls. I suppose I can get a game?'

'I'm sure you can, sir. There's a notice to say visitors are welcome. I don't know what sub. they expect, but at this time of year it should be easy enough to get a game.'

The golf course was a mile and a half outside the village, two and a half from the hotel. Richardson went in to lunch at one o'clock precisely and was driving off from the first tee at two-thirty.

He had been lucky enough to meet the secretary as soon as he arrived, and had been introduced to the local doctor, whose handicap was the same as his own. When the round was finished, Richardson returned the borrowed clubs to the pro., tipped him and said he had enjoyed the game.

'I didn't catch the doctor's name,' he added.

The pro. repeated it.

'Does the police doctoring round here as well. Seems there's been a corpse up on Medley Heath. Some chap in a little tent. I don't know the rights and wrongs, but all over the place that's spoke of,' he added.

'Oh, really? What did he die of?'

'Poison, so they reckon.'

'Who do? The police?'

'Them, among others. Doctor Mack you played with just now, got a fine big carryin' voice!'

Richardson wondered whether, had he known that his opponent 'did the police doctoring,' he would have asked him any questions concerning his findings. He decided that to have done so would have been to risk a snub. As it happened, however, on his way out he met the doctor again just as the latter was getting into his car. The doctor said, immediately, seeing Richardson on foot,

'Oh, can I give you a lift? Which way do you go?'

Richardson named his hotel.

'Splendid. I can drop you on the village side of the level crossing, if that will help.'

Richardson said gratefully that it would. The car started up and turned left on to a secondary road lined with fairly pretentious houses. Richardson, deciding that it was now or never, risked the snub which he confidently expected.

'I say,' he said, 'the pro. was telling me about the dead man on the heath, you know.'

'Yes?' The doctor kept his eyes on the road ahead, but Richardson detected a slight frown between his thin sandy brows.

'Well, you see, I'm the person who got stuck with the body,' he said, 'so I'm rather interested.'

'How do you mean-stuck with the body?' The frown disappeared.

'I've been camping on my own up on Medley Heath since Thursday. I'd pushed over to the hotel for dinner and hung around a bit afterwards, having coffee and a brandy, and, when I got back to my tent, there was this dead man.'

'Oh?' The monosyllable invited further confidences.

'So, of course, I called the police and now I think they believe the chap was murdered. I spent the night at the Superintendent's house. He was very decent, but I don't think I'm out of his clutches. I'm just wondering
how
the man was killed. I don't want the police to connect
me
with the job!'

'I can tell you how he was killed. It will be in the papers tomorrow, anyway, so there need be no secret about it. Still, perhaps, you'd better keep it to yourself until it's public property. He was choked to death with a fir cone.'

'Choked...?'

'With the fruit of the Douglas Fir, to be exact. I recovered an elliptical cone nearly three inches long. Didn't you notice how suffused the face was?-typical case of asphyxia.'

'No, I didn't notice. I tried to revive him by that pinch the nose and breathe into the mouth method, but I think I knew he was gone before I started.' (This referred to Colnbrook, he reflected, and realised that he should not have said it.)

'The mouth was very badly bruised, too,' said the doctor, pursuing his own train of thought. 'The bruising, of course, is one reason for believing that he was murdered.'

'Well, of course! I mean, surely you couldn't choke yourself
accidentally
on a fir cone, could you?'

'Hardly, perhaps, but I suppose you could commit suicide that way.'

'Surely not! It would be a beastly way to die!'

'You'd be surprised at how some of them manage it. There was a fellow, some years ago, who slopped petrol all over himself and set himself alight. You wouldn't think
that
was possible, but he did it.'

The car passed a school and the village hall, and drew up just before it reached the village street. Richardson, expressing gratitude, got out and waited on a lumpy bit of pavement until the car turned a bend in the road. Then he strode away past the shops in the village street, over the foot-bridge which crossed the water-splash and made his way back to the hotel.

The doctor (funny swine) had been pulling his leg. Neither of the deaths had been caused by a fir cone. Colnbrook's most certainly had not. If anything of the sort had choked him (only it hadn't) it would have been a surfeit of almonds. There had been faint but unmistakable odour of almonds while Richardson was trying to give him that breath-of-life treatment first recorded in the annals of the prophet Elisha.

Almonds
!

It could have been suicide, of course, yet, recollecting his sight of the two men on the heath and then on the common, their running togs, their field-glasses and their absorption in the job in hand (whatever it was), it seemed highly unlikely that anything so dramatic as a double suicide could have been in their minds. In addition to this, Colnbrook had been the last person on earth, Richardson felt, to have contemplated such a drastic course. He had given the impression of being far too pleased with A. B. Colnbrook to think of doing away with him.

There was one feasible explanation, of course. One of the men could have murdered the other and then, afraid to face the possible consequences of such an act, have killed himself. There was yet another possibility. When last he had seen them, they had been heading for the heath again. The only dwelling-house they would pass, so far as Richardson knew, was the biggish place from which he had tried to telephone. Could they have been lured in there and murdered?

He visualised the curl-papered maid who had answered the door to him, and this brought to mind her reference to Cook and Shirl. Cooks, he supposed, could and did perform fearful and wonderful deeds, upon occasion-there was that frightful pie-maker of Dusseldorf-or was it Hanover?-but was anybody called Shirl capable of murder?-let alone the goggling, curl-papered specimen who had answered the door. Besides, he did not believe that three
women
would have struggled from that house to the tent with the hulking body of Colnbrook and then taken it away and hidden it and substituted the second body for it. Theoretically this might be possible, but for all practical purposes he felt certain that it was not. Only a
man
would have organised a job such as that.