Adders on the Heath

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.

* * *

He was too late for tea at the hotel, but Barney, who met him as he entered, said, with a conspiratorial nod,

Try the kitchen, sir. Mabel's 'on' this afternoon.'

Richardson crossed the uneven, large, ancient tiles of the kitchen, beyond which lay the modern annexe in which the cooking and serving were done, and turned off to the right, past the foot of a servants' staircase, also part of the original house, which had been built, very narrow and steep, in the thickness of the wall. It led up to the second floor and the porter's bedroom.

In the room past the bottom of this staircase, Mabel was busy washing up. She desisted as Richardson came in and hooked a chair up to a large, scrubbed, wooden table. As was her invariable habit, she grinned widely but did not speak. She made fresh tea, put out bread and butter, jam and a sponge sandwich, and, jerking her head, indicated that he might set to.

'We've had Carrie's boy friend, the policeman, here this afternoon. Tell us about the murder,' she said, when Tom had drunk his third cup of tea. Richardson, in a low tone, gave her a carefully edited account of what had happened. At the end, she stood with her arms akimbo, studied his fresh complexion and boyish, candid face and shook her head.

'He's wrong. The police are all wrong. It can't be you. Ain't got the nerve,' she said. 'No more nor me. Takes nerve, it do, to bring off a nice clean murder. No, Mr Richardson, it wouldn't be your sort of lark, no more nor it wouldn't be mine, whatever Carrie's boy friend may say.'

Richardson felt that the Delphic Oracle had spoken. He did not even resent the slur cast upon his courage. What Mabel believed today he hoped and trusted that the police would believe tomorrow. He thanked her for the tea, went into the small drawing-room which served to house the visitors' library and, most days, an irascible ex-Naval officer, and, surveying the volumes on the bookshelves, took down E. F. Benson's masterpiece, The Luck of the Vails, trusting that the flute-playing villainies of Mr Francis Vail would blot out, for a space, his own anxieties and problems.

The anodyne worked. Somewhere a clock struck the half-hour. Richardson took the book to his room, and, putting it on the bedside table, went off for a bath before dinner.

After dinner, the mixed feeling of being, at the same time, in a trap and at a loose end, assailed him again, but a joyful surprise was in store. He was loitering in the front hall, trying to decide between the respective attractions of The Luck of the Vails and the television lounge, when the front door opened and in came the porter with a couple of suitcases. He was followed by a slender, tall young man with thick brown hair and wide-apart grey eyes. The young man was carrying a violin case in one hand and a flute, cased in leather, in the other.

'Oh, Lord!' exclaimed Richardson, joyfully. 'Uncle Francis Vail in person! Well, well, well!'

The newcomer apparently understood the reference.

'Oh, Geoffrey,' he said reproachfully, naming one of the heroes in the book, 'I did so hope that people would mistake it for a telescope. Then it would seem as though I'd been in the Navy. It's a terribly good thing to have been in, and I should be much respected if people thought I'd ever belonged to it. Are you sure it doesn't look like a telescope? It's really meant to look like one, you know.' He put the flute in its case to his eye.

'Quite sure, Scab, you lunatic. Come and sign the book. Which is his room, Barney? I've forgotten.'

'Number twenty-two, sir. I'll get the key.'

'And is our escutcheon still unsullied, or have you been up to something?' asked Denis, in his disconcerting way.

'I've been up to something,' said Richardson. 'Are you hungry, or shall I a tale unfold?'

'I dined in Winchester with a bloke I know. Is there a bar here?'

'There is. Let me lead you to it.'

'Right. I'll dump my kit and then I'll join you.'