Adders on the Heath

'I see. And the upshot?'

'Well, a bit of evidence which may lend colour to our view.'

'This is most interesting. I hesitate to prophesy, but are you not suggesting that there has been an attempt to recruit successors to Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt?'

'I don't know how you knew, but that's a fact. Shall I tell you all?'

'Please do. So far, all I know of the Scylla and District club is what I have learned from Miss Calne, Mrs Bath and from the secretary and the unhelpful doer of good works-all this apart from what Mr Richardson has told us, of course. How did you know that these girls were members?'

'Well, I didn't, but I thought it was worthwhile to take a chance, so I rode athwart their tracks, as I could see they were slowing down, and asked the way to Boldre. I then offered them cigarettes and we fell into conversation. The subject of the murders, sponsored by me, came up, and then we all adjourned to the local, less than a mile away. To show goodwill, I dismounted and trotted beside the nag while they spread out and jogged alongside. All girls together, if you take my point.'

'You have the enviable gifts of friendliness and tact, dear child.'

'Take it as read. When we got to the pub it was too early, of course, for drinks, but the landlady was awfully good and let us into her own part of the house for coffee and lots of beef, cheese, sardine, tomato and ham sandwiches, so we had those and then some hard-boiled eggs and some pickled onions.'

'Good heavens, child!'

'Oh, we enjoyed them, you know. Then it was-after we'd had the pickled pork and piccalilli-that I began to get the gen.'

'It is not often,' said Dame Beatrice, 'that I feel faint but pursuing. Pray go on.'

'Stay with me. The pursuit won't take all that long. Anyway, to retrieve our mouflons-for I feel we've gone over the top and are a very long way from the common or garden sheep-what I learned was as follows. Far from Colnbrook and Bunt being rivals, they were very good friends and were associated in what Dulcie-couldn't get at any of their surnames, but I don't suppose that matters-called 'a sort of a fiddle, only nothing really to do with the club.' What do you make of that?'

'Just what I made of it before.'

'Yes. Well, I tried to winkle out some more information, but, although the girls were willing to be co- opted, I don't think they knew very much. They spoke of one Corinna, Dulcie's particular team-mate. They're the first-and-second string hurdlers. Dulcie was inclined to be disparaging about Corinna. Said she had tried hard to be Colnbrook's 'steady' and had pretended to be cut up when she heard about his death.'

'But Dulcie did not believe this?'

'Quite definitely did not. Said she thought Corinna was really a bit scared of Colnbrook, whom Dulcie diagnosed as a nasty bit of work, and that Corinna was more relieved than distressed when she heard he was dead.'

'What did the other girls think?'

'Oh, they agreed with her. Anyhow, those mostly concerned were a couple of club milers named Judy and Syl. They had been what they called 'approached.''

'By whom? Did they say?'

'Well, they giggled a good bit and said 'no names, no pack-drill' and that was about as much as I could get out of them. A man was involved-that was obvious-but when girls begin going all girlish there's not a lot one can do. I didn't like to suggest any names myself. One needs to be careful about giving that sort of lead. One other thing did come out. There was good money to be won if they fell in with this proposition-whatever it was-and we can guess-but they all agreed that 'a fiddle wasn't really worth it.' I gathered they meant it might endanger their amateur status, and I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be true. There's almost nothing you do in athletics that doesn't endanger your amateur status. An awful lot of rot really.'

'So it was the mile runners who had received this offer,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Did the girls know whether any of the male athletes had been approached?'

'I gathered that none of the men had received the offer-at least, not so far as the girls knew.'

'Yet the ability to run a mere mile does not sound to me a sufficiently important qualification for what I suspect was required of the successors of Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt.'

'Oh, if you run a mile in competition on the track, you're capable of jog-trotting a considerably greater distance than that in training, don't you think? Of these girls, one was a hurdler and two were two-twenty sprinters but they were taking the outing with the milers and all seemed in pretty good shape. Cross-country training spins needn't be all that strenuous. It's not as though there's anything competitive about them. I mean, you can slow down and walk, if you want to. Think of Colnbrook and Bunt with their field-glasses.'

'I see. Did you gather why the girls, and not the men, had been approached?'

'No, but I rather thought that the men might have jibbed at the idea of being murdered. May simply be a wild guess, of course.'

'Were the names of Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt mentioned to the girls when this mysterious offer was made to them?'

'Not in so many words, but there aren't many flies on the lasses these days. They'd read between the lines all right. There wasn't any doubt about that. They knew Colnbrook and Bunt had been mixed up in something fishy and they desired no part in it. Now, your turn. What did Miss Calne have to say?'

'Without any prompting from me, she remarked upon the fact that Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt often trained on the Lawn opposite her house and watched the Forest ponies through field-glasses.'

'Adds up, doesn't it?'