Adders on the Heath

'Yes, sir?'

'If iddy is umpty, then what is iddy umpty iddy?' asked Hamish.

'You're too young for girls at your age,' said the porter, hitting back, 'and you need a wash and brush up, sir, before you meet your mother.' Hamish studied him.

'Do you know, I think you've won,' he said. 'All boys are dirty. I am a boy, therefore I am dirty. Any argument about that?'

'Certainly not, sir,' said the porter. 'That would make a syllogism, no doubt.'

'Yes, you have won,' said Hamish. 'Right. I'll take a bath. I suppose it isn't an extra?'

'We like the guests to be clean and neat about the place, sir. There is, therefore, no charge for a bath.' Hamish regarded his vanishing back with reverence. Laura regarded her son less affectionately, when sleek, clean and shining, he presented himself before her.

'Well,' she said, 'what have you come for?'

'To ask why I can't go to school in January. I've read all about it. Frozen wash-basins, so that you can't wash, dreadful grub, so you think you're in a foreign prison, underground form-rooms hundreds of degrees below zero, sadistic prefects...'

'They can't be sadistic enough to suit me,' said Laura.

'It sounds a most inviting prospect,' said Dame Beatrice, producing, as though out of a hat, chocolates, potato crisps and liquorice all-sorts.

'You know,' said Hamish, reaching out for the goodies, 'you're the only person who really understands me, Mrs Dame.'

'But, back to the subject of those two girls,' said Laura to her employer, 'what do you think we ought to do?'

'The one thing we cannot do is to take Mr Towne to court. The car was large, the lane is very narrow, there was a bend around which he could not possibly have seen the girls approaching, and the evidence against him rests on their word alone.'

'Well, then, what can we do?'

'At present, nothing. Hamish would like his lunch early, then he can have a rest before you hire a pony for him.'

'He's the complete human cormorant, certainly,' Laura agreed, looking at her son with the fascination of horror. 'All right. I'll push him into the dining-room while we have a civilised drink and then, as you say, he can sit still for a bit while we have our lunch. I'd better ring up the stables right away.'

'You do just that, and hurry up about it,' said Hamish. Laura clouted him, a gesture which he accepted with the greatest of sang-froid.

'May I have a tomato juice, please?' he asked. 'One gave up lemonade when one was seven. With grandfather in Scotland I was allowed a dash of whisky. He said new dogs learn old tricks, whereas old dogs don't learn new tricks. Interesting, and not altogether true. Look at politicians.'

'I don't want to,' said Laura. 'Go and get yourself that tomato juice and then for goodness' sake have your lunch.'

'Will they serve me in the bar? I shouldn't wish to be embarrassed by a refusal because I'm under eighteen.'

Laura went out and returned with the tomato juice. Hamish gulped it down and then headed for the dining-room. Laura sighed. Dame Beatrice cackled.

'You will trust him to ride alone, after the gipsy's warning?' she asked. Laura looked surprised.

'Did you never read Mr P. G. Wodehouse on the subject of the page-boy Harold and the chance of his being bitten by a snake?' she demanded.

'I don't think I ever did.'

'Well, when Jeeves' views were canvassed, he contended that, in such an emergency, his anxiety would be entirely for the snake. If Hamish runs into trouble, my anxiety will be entirely for the other person.'

Laura accompanied her son to the riding-stables at half-past two, saw him mounted, and then walked back to the hotel, but not before he had asked her to tell him the number of the car which had tried to run down the two girls. They knew it, and had given it to her over the telephone. Laura, who knew that she would be plagued by Hamish for days if she did not repeat it to him, confided it hastily, fairly sure that he would forget it that his curiosity was satisfied.

Hamish owed his almost boundless selfconfidence and his overt personality to two factors. One of these was his heredity. Neither Laura nor Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin lacked personality. The other factor was that everything the child had been taught had been taught him extremely well. He was, at the age of ten, a daring and accomplished diver and swimmer, his batting and fielding were, for his age, first class, and he rode like a prince. He was a tall boy, extremely well built and yet also graceful. He had given up dancing classes (at his own urgent request) and was learning judo, which Laura much preferred to boxing, and the piano, which he intended to give up in favour of the organ, which made, he said, a great deal more noise.

His estimate of his prowess at Greek and Latin was more modest than was justified by the facts.

Like most intelligent children of his age, he learned easily and had no objection to being taught. Besides, he got on well with the scholarly, kindly vicar and showed him always his best side. Laura and Hamish themselves were in conflict only because both enjoyed the fight for power. Laura respected her son, and in her he found an opponent worthy of his steel.

'She leaves me alone. I can manage my own affairs,' he had said, at the age of seven, to his father. 'I suppose not many mothers are like that.'