Adders on the Heath

'No, no. I am finding our tete-a-tete both interesting and profitable. There is one commission over which I shall need assistance of a specialised kind, if we are indeed to undertake this enquiry. What do you really feel about our entangling ourselves?'

'We can't back out now! Young Tom would die of fright. After all, he may be in a dangerous position. We don't really know what the police think about his connection with these deaths and, even if they don't hold him responsible, they'll keep badgering him with questions to see whether he alters his story, and if they do badger him, and if he can't count on our support and sympathy, the highly-strung lad is apt to go up the wall.'

'Yes,' agreed Dame Beatrice, 'but you must not allow your maternal instincts to cloud your judgment, you know.'

Laura almost choked. Dame Beatrice cackled and called her attention to a yacht which was passing.

'Sloop, Bermuda rigged,' said Laura, stopping to watch and appraise it. 'Saw one rather like it at the Boat Show. Coasts and estuaries. Cost about five hundred and fifty. The sails come about fifty pounds extra.'

'I do not understand why sails should be listed as an extra if the craft cannot get under weigh without them,' observed Dame Beatrice.

'Well, you see-Now, there's a nice job!' A four-berth motor-cum-sailing boat was approaching them round the long, handsome sweep of the broad river. 'Draws about three and a half feet of water. Over three hundred feet of sail and, if you're in a hurry, or the wind's wrong, there's an eighteen-horsepower motor to get you out of trouble,' said Laura. 'A lazy owner's delight, in fact, I call her, but a sweet little craft, all the same. You can go to sea in her!'

'Delightful. How well can Hamish swim now?'

'Oh, he's the usual modern water-baby-perfectly safe under any circumstances except extreme cold or a bevy of hungry sharks.'

'Then we had better purchase a handy boat and spend time on the water next summer. It would be convenient enough to come here from the Stone House and I find this place attractive. Then, of course, there is the Hamble River...'

'Both very crowded in the summer. Why don't we go up to Plockton on Loch Carron in Wester Ross? Scenery marvellous, harbour good, and free from strong tides, artists' paradise and yachtsman's dream. (I quote). It's on the railway, if you don't want to take the car, and we could get to Skye or into Loch Torridon or up to Gairloch...'

'I like the sound of that, too. Go ahead, my dear Laura, and make your plans.'

'We could always come here again at this time of year, or even a bit later. But I must point out, Mrs Croc, dear, that we're now losing sight of our raison d'etre.'

'I do not feel that Mr Richardson and his mirages are my raison d'etre, child.'

'Good Lord! You don't mean you think Tom was seeing things, and the corpses weren't in his tent at all? Oh, but we know that one of them was, because the Superintendent saw it there. So-why mirages?'

'Say, then, the figments of a guilty mind, child.'

'You don't really think Tom Richardson has a guilty mind?'

'We all have guilty minds, my dear Laura.'

'You don't fob me off like that! Jolly well come clean!'

'I think there is more behind Mr Richardson's present reactions than we know.'

'You mean he's mixed up in something fishy?'

'I think he knows more about the late Mr Colnbrook than he has admitted.'

This part of the conversation was on similar lines to that which was being carried on between the two young men. These, taking but the most cursory interest in the yachts, cruisers, launches, catamarans, dinghies and boatmen's supply boats which were out on the river, were strolling towards Beaulieu, deep in conversation punctuated by pauses for earnest thought.

Just as Laura was asking whether Dame Beatrice believed that Richardson was mixed up with something illegal, Denis, with the disconcerting directness of the artist, suddenly said to his friend,

'You'll have to come clean with Aunt Adela, you know, if you want her in your team. I told you so before.'

Richardson did not attempt to side-step the significance of this piece of advice. He said, with sober fatality:

'I know. I talked to her quite a lot coming down here in her car, but it was a question of giving her the information she asked for, rather than putting my oar in and volunteering possibly unnecessary facts, you see.'

'What facts?'

'Such as that I actually met Colnbrook-to speak to him, I mean-more than once. I do know a bit more about him than I've ever told anybody. I could have had a motive for killing him, now that I'm engaged to be married.'

'Good Lord! You don't mean he was in a position to blackmail you? What have you been a-doing of?'

'Look here, I don't want it to get to the police that I know more about him than I've told them. All the same, (and keep this under your hat until I've decided what to do) except that I admitted I'd met him and had run against him in the cross-country challenge, you may as well face it that I've told them damn-all, and that's how it's going to stay.'

'Leave out the damn, man, and tell Aunt Adela the all. She won't let you down. I can vouch for her.