Adders on the Heath

Beatrice and Laura loitered. The sunshine, for that time of year, was particularly brilliant and there was more blue than cloud in the sky.

Although it was fairly late in the season, a great many craft were still in commission and the scene was gay and pleasing. The Beaulieu River at this point was a quarter of a mile wide, with a deepish channel at the quay. The river here made a magnificent bend, and there were shallows by the opposite bank.

Two catamarans, the double hulls referred to by Dame Beatrice, were drawn well up on the quay-side and she and Laura stopped to examine them.

'I do not think I care about them, so far as looks are concerned,' commented Dame Beatrice. 'What are their particular assets, that you favour them so highly?'

'To quote the book of words, they tack very fast, they're a safe, manoeuvrable sort of craft-you can even lift one hull completely out of the water and still keep going-and they are particularly sensitive to the helmsman. I rather agree with you about their looks, but I suppose they stem from the outrigger canoes that South Sea Islanders use.'

'Yes, I see.'

'They take sail, of course-quite a tall spread if you want to go really fast-and the masts are mostly of metal, the International type if you want a flyer. But, look here, Mrs. Croc, you didn't segregate me from the opposite sex just to talk about catamarans. Did you get anything interesting or important from young Tom Richardson during the car ride?'

'I obtained a detailed account of how he spent his time down here before Denis joined him.'

'Any good?'

'I have not made up my mind. It appears to me that there was a good deal of time, when he was absent from his tent, in which ill-disposed persons could have...'

'Wished the bodies on him?'

'Exactly.'

'But who would want to?'

'By that, I infer that you are asking whether Mr Richardson has enemies.'

'Well, yes, there's that, because I can't quite see the point of putting the bodies, one after the other, in his tent, unless there was some ill-feeling towards him. It would have been much simpler to have dumped them in the woods, the way Richardson and Denis found the second body, which was really, I suppose, the first body-or would you put it third?'

'Let us call it the first body, as Mr Richardson found it first.'

'Less confusing that way, I agree. Incidentally, am I wrong, or did I go to sleep or something at the inquest?'

'To the best of my knowledge and belief, you did not go to sleep at the inquest. And now, to what do we refer?'

'I'll give you three guesses,' said Laura, grinning. 'I say, this is a jolly sort of place, isn't it? Look at that cruiser!'

Dame Beatrice looked at it. Then she said that from what she had gathered of Laura's previous remarks, she would hazard a first guess that her secretary might have noted that there had been nothing in the medical evidence to indicate which of the victims had died first.

'Well!' exclaimed Laura. 'You are, in good sooth, a mind-reader, Mrs Croc, dear!'

'It is part of my profession, of course,' Dame Beatrice modestly pointed out.

'Think there is anything significant about the times of the deaths not being disclosed?'

'It is more than possible, but do you not think that both men may have died at approximately the same time?'

'It seemed to me that the Superintendent was wriggling his toes inside his boots, all the same.'

'You postulate?'

'Like the dickens I do. He was on pins in case anything, however trivial, was going to be given away. After all, doctors (present company excepted, of course!) are a stiff-necked gaggle and don't appreciate having their tails docked. Pun deliberate, intentional and, I thought, rather good. What do you think?'

'That the use of the word 'gaggle' did not sustain your metaphor, suggesting, as it does, the presence of geese and not of dogs-or do they dock the tails of Anser Aibifrons, Anser Brachyrhynchus and others of their ilk?'

'You win,' said Laura. 'Glad I didn't bet on my chances. Honestly, though, don't you see that it makes a difference whether one of them was killed first? Of course it does! Gang warfare!'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Simple enough. Gang A do in Citizen B, so Gang B take it out on Citizen A.'

'Gang warfare is seldom so tidy or so restrained.'

'We've never had a gang warfare case,' said Laura, keeping to her point.

'For which we may be devoutly thankful. Gang warfare, as I understand it, is nasty, brutish and without even the advantage of being short, the last being unlike life, which is said to wear the tarnished halo of extreme brevity. We seem to have lost sight of our escorts, by the way.'

'They're round the bend-literally, I mean, not figuratively. Do you want us to step it out and catch them up?'