Adders on the Heath

have some passing acquaintance with hydrocyanic acid?'

The Superintendent politely disagreed.

'I don't see it, ma'am, but then, of course, I'm not a doctor.'

'And I'm not a chemist, Superintendent. All the same, I hardly see how you are going to establish a connection between Mr Richardson and Mr Bunt, and, from the circumstance of Mr Richardson's tent having been used to house both the bodies, I deduce that the two murders were committed by the same person or persons.'

'Well, I'll take another look at the hotel staff, of course, ma'am, but I don't really think we shall pin anything on anybody there.'

'One of the guests, perhaps,' said Dame Beatrice.

'We've done a certain amount of work on those who were staying in the hotel at the time. Most people co-operated well, but one or two were a bit sticky, especially the residents. It needed a lot of tact to get them to tell us they couldn't help us!'

'Did nothing come of your efforts?'

'Not a thing. None of them even seems to have noticed what time young Richardson came in that night. I've had a good go at the manager and the porter, but it hasn't led to anything. The manager had gone up to bed and all the porter can tell me is that Richardson was 'in a pretty fair taking,' which is only what you'd expect, whether he's guilty or innocent.'

'Quite so. I wish we knew the reason why the first body was put into Mr Richardson's tent and then the second body substituted for it.'

The Superintendent looked at her for a moment or two before he said,

'We've only Mr Richardson's word for it that Colnbrook's body ever was in the tent, ma'am. And he wasn't any too frank with me about it, you know.'

'I cannot see why he should have lied about it, though. As for his lack of frankness, that, surely, was a matter of being stricken with panic, a perfectly natural reaction I should have thought.'

'I don't like the way the body was found in that enclosure. Of all the miles and miles of woods and open heath which make up the Forest, why did he choose to go with Mr Bradley to that one particular part? It was too much of a coincidence altogether.'

'Oh, I do not agree with you there, Superintendent. The wood was a natural enough place in which to hide the body, and it was a natural enough place for the young men to choose for their walk. Besides, there was the dog. Then, again, the body had not been hidden just where they stumbled upon it, you know. The woodmen confessed that they had moved it.'

'I haven't lost sight of that fact, ma'am. A good old dressing down I gave them, too. Destroying evidence, I told them. One of them had the cheek to tell me that a whole lot more evidence would have been destroyed if a tree-trunk had fallen right across the body. He was correct, in a way, I suppose, but I wouldn't let him get away with it. I told him that he and his mates might think themselves lucky not to be charged with being accessories after the fact.' He chuckled. 'That shook 'em up a bit.'

'What about the school near Basingstoke?' asked Dame Beatrice.

'We'd have to find a connection between the masters there and the two dead men. It seems a very long shot to me, ma'am.'

'I don't think it need necessarily be such a very long shot, Superintendent, and, from your point of view, it would bring Mr Richardson back into the picture. Besides, if he was teaching at the school at the time of one of these quarrels with Colnbrook, it could be that somebody else on the staff had also met members of the Scylla and District Club. Had you thought of that?'

The Superintendent looked doubtful.

'We could hardly see our way clear,' he said. 'We've nothing at all against the school, and Mr Richardson has had a tutoring job, as you know, since he left there. We see no reason, at present, for us to trouble the Headmaster and his staff.'

'Then what about the people at that house from which Mr Richardson hoped to telephone you?'

'Yes, we could get on to that, I suppose. You see, ma'am, there we have nothing, again, but Mr Richardson's word to go on. We don't know that he ever went to the house.'

'What about the maid who answered the door? She is certain to remember the evening.'

'She has only to deny that he called, ma'am.'

'You had better leave her to me, then. She was not the only servant left in the house, if you remember.'

'That's if we accept Mr Richardson's story.'

'Well, it would do no harm to make an enquiry, would it?'

'As a matter of fact, we went there,' said the Superintendent, looking her in the eye.

'Really? Whom did you see?'

'Everybody in the house, including, I have no doubt, the maid in question. Not a very bright specimen, but we couldn't shake her. She swore that nobody came to the door that night.'

'Oh, dear! I suppose you picked on the right girl?'

The Superintendent shook his head.

'She wasn't very bright,' he repeated, 'but it seems that she is the one who always answers the door.'