ADDERS ON THE HEATH
Tom Richardson, spending a few days under canvas in the New Forest, returns one night to find a dead man in his tent. When the police arrive the original body-that of a man Richardson had quarrelled with-is gone, and in its place is the body of a man he did not know. When the first body reappears in the wood, suspicion for both deaths falls on Richardson. But Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley comes to the rescue, and all her wits and intuition are required to probe and elucidate the mystery, and to save a man having to stand trial for double murder.
ADDERS ON THE HEATH
GLADYS MITCHELL
CHIVERS PRESS BATH
First published in Great Britain 1963
by
Michael Joseph Ltd
This Large Print edition published by
Chivers Press
by arrangement with
Severn House Publishers Limited
and in the U.S.A. with
the author's estate
at the request of
The London & Home Counties Branch
of
The Library Association
1989
ISBN 0 7451 7184 2
Copyright © 1963 by Gladys Mitchell
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys,
Adders on the heath.-(A New Portway large print book)
I. Title
823'.912 [F]
ISBN 0-7451-7184-2
TESSA NIVEN
'Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. As he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unexpected, short cuts and footprints for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.'
PRELUDE
'I hope they kill nothing in the woods but foxes.'
Members of the Scylla and District Social and Athletic Club are rarely seen in action at the White City. Still less often, if at all, do they represent the A.A.A. against Oxford or Cambridge. They are present at the Olympics, (provided that they can afford to be present), as spectators, not as competitors.
Yet the club is a keen one, has a treasurer apt at collecting subscriptions and is not without its aspirants to county honours, for now and again the county will call a member or two for trials, the club's own time-keeping being unreliable.
One candidate for this honour did not impress the judges, who considered his tactics in the two-mile race rather suspect. As he had won it, both he and his girl friend were very much annoyed and referred (in broader and less printable terms) to the bias and favouritism of the chief judge. The girl friend was a club-mate, for the Scylla and District admits women members. It took a very stormy A.G.M. to achieve this, but the treasurer carried the day.
'We're a bit short this year, and you can always bully women into paying the sub.,' he said. 'After all, they need only use the facilities once a week. We can make that a rule.'
'They'll be more nuisance than they're worth,' said someone, but this was only partly true. The club, in fact, had shown a certain amount of enlightenment and good sense in admitting women to membership, but this was allied, perhaps, to an equal lack of caution, for the ladies (God bless them!) were apt to be both critical and partisan. In addition, those ladies who joined the Scylla and District proved to be a vociferous, enthusiastic body, sometimes (alas!) divided among themselves, as when Aileen Crumb got a flyer over Doreen Dodds and beat her by three yards in the two-twenty-('Crumb's got the crust of Old Nick, and, of course, the starter was her uncle,' ran the ugly comment of the Dodds' supporters)-and there were other incidents which divided the ladies into two camps. Still, taken on the whole, they were as close-knit a body as the Amazons, although following a somewhat different ideology, as they warred only on other women and never attempted to tackle Theseus and his men.
All the same, there had always been one exception to that which, otherwise, was their fixed rule. When
