Adders on the Heath

'Very well.'

'The body which the police saw lying in the tent was not the body about which young Mr Richardson wished to telephone the police.'

'What!'

'No. The first body was that which was stumbled upon (quite literally) by Mr Richardson and his friend in the enclosure on the far side of the heath.'

'Good gracious! What an extraordinary thing!'

'By the way,' said Dame Beatrice, 'I wonder whether I might have a word with the girl who answers the door. She did answer it, did she not, to Mr Richardson that night?'

'Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll go and get her. You won't find her very intelligent, I'm afraid.'

She went out of the room and left Dame Beatrice to gaze at the picture, which happened to be the coloured portrait of a florid, clean-shaven, thick-set middle-aged man whom Dame Beatrice took to be the husband of her reluctant hostess. The latter was gone for nearly ten minutes and returned with a scared-looking girl of about seventeen.

'This is Myrtle,' she said. 'I'd better leave you together.'

'Thank you,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Good morning, Myrtle. I don't know whether you can help me?'

Myrtle mumbled unintelligibly and twisted nail-bitten fingers in her apron.

'You've read about these horrible murders, of course,' Dame Beatrice went on. 'Well, now, I wonder whether you can describe a young man who called here on the night in question and wanted to use the telephone?'

'The night in question, madam?' Myrtle abandoned the picking at her apron.

'Yes, the night in question, Myrtle. You're not always having young men call after dark asking to use the telephone, so do not deny that he came. I happen to know that he did.'

'Oh, him! Well, I shut the door too quick to see much of him. I was scared, see, on account we was alone in the house.'

'We being...?'

'Cook, Shirl and me.'

'Oh, yes. Your master and mistress had gone to London, I believe.'

'That's right, and it was the master as told me to say as nobody called. He didn't want to be mixed up in anything, he said.'

'Well, now, what about this young man?'

'He was out of breath, but he talked posh and his hair needed combing. You don't mean...?' Her mouth fell open as her mind assimilated a new, delicious, terrifying idea. 'You don't mean as I've spoke with a murderer, do you?'

'Well, we can't go so far as that at present, but the police are keeping an open mind.'

'The police are keepin' an open mind,' repeated Myrtle, obviously memorising the phrase. 'Coo, wait till I tells Cook and Shirl!'

'And you can add nothing to your description?'

'Arf a mo.' She wrinkled her brow in deep thought, but was obliged to shake her head. 'I don't know as I can. You see, I shut the door quick as I could 'cos I was scared. I always 'ave been scared of knocks on the door at night, without I knows who to expect.'

'Very natural, in a lonely house such as this. How long have you worked here?'

'I come here last March twelvemonth. Oh, I do 'ope the master won't bawl me out, but it was missus as changed what I was to say.'

'Is your home in the village?'

'No. I comes from t' other side the common, from the Children's 'Ome over there.'

'I see. Well, thank you, Myrtle. Oh, there is just one more thing. I suppose you didn't happen to notice what the time was when this young man called?'

'Not to speak of it in the witness-box like.' It was clear that Myrtle already saw herself in a prominent position in court. 'Still, we'd had our supper, which is nine o'clock by Cook's alarm, and I'd finished washing-up which Cook won't never allow no dirty crocks to wait over till the morning, but we hadn't ack'chelly gone to bed, although I'd done me curlers so I suppose it would have been about ten o'clock when he come.'

This tallied reasonably well with Richardson's own story. Dame Beatrice returned to the hotel and telephoned the Superintendent. She invited him to lunch and, when it was over, they commandeered the small drawing-room lounge and she gave him an account of her visit.

'You think that Myrtle was briefed before she was brought in to you,' said the Superintendent.

'On her own admission there is nothing else to think. Mrs Campden-Towne went out of the room to bring her, instead of ringing the bell, and was gone longer than one would have thought necessary. The girl made no attempt to deny that Mr Richardson had called, she stated that her mistress had changed the tale, and her estimate of the time coincides, nearly enough, with his own.'

'Hm, yes, it does look as though Myrtle had been got at both times. I wonder whether the Campden- Townes decided, after all, that they'd been foolish to tell her to keep her mouth shut, or whether it was her own idea in the first place and Campden-Towne agreed to it? Anyway, it confirms Mr Richardson's story so far as the