Adders on the Heath

'I have passed on your ideas and they have been received with interest, but with a good deal of caution. I will get in touch with you later on, if I may.'

Dame Beatrice telephoned back and told the Superintendent that she would be delighted to be in touch with him again.

'So, next time I reach you, ma'am, you'll be at your own home?' he asked.

'At the Stone House,' said Dame Beatrice. They returned to it on the following day.

'I say,' said Hamish, 'do I have to go to the vicar tomorrow morning? It's Divinity and his views are a bit dim, you know.'

'You're not thinking of becoming a minister of religion?' asked Dame Beatrice.

'Oh, no. I am an informed agnostic. It's the same with ghosts,' said Hamish.

'Indeed?'

'Oh, yes. You remember the person who said, 'I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them,' don't you?'

'Really, my dear Hamish?'

'Well, it's the same with me and religion.'

'Believe me, a very well-balanced point of view. It will all sort itself out in time.'

'What do I do now, though?'

'Be strong and very courageous.'

'Be your age,' said Hamish, rudely and unkindly.

Dame Beatrice cackled and, with a thin but iron arm, forestalled Laura's intention of clouting her son. 'Sorry,' said Hamish, without conviction. 'That was nasty of me, wasn't it?'

'It was,' agreed Dame Beatrice. 'One should respect the aged. I refer, of course, to myself.'

'I do respect you. Where do we go from here?'

'Into a state of siege.'

'Siege? You mean the house might be surrounded? Oh, good! What about sharing out the guns?'

'Noiseless warfare!' said Dame Beatrice, impressively. 'Knives, as the gentleman said, are a different matter.'

'George once told me that, given a decent-sized spanner, he could take on three gunmen and lay them out.'

'George issued an understatement. He often does. He is a Londoner. He could lay four of them out.'

They had left the hotel at just after three and had driven along the Forest roads for an hour before they ended up at Lymington to make for the Stone House. Richardson had telephoned his mother, for Dame Beatrice, in semi-serious mood, had informed him that he might have to fight for his life if he came to her home.

Five o'clock found them all at tea in Dame Beatrice's comfortable drawing-room and at six o'clock Celestine, Dame Beatrice's housekeeper, parlour-maid, housemaid, friend and jealous guardian, addressed her spouse Henri, who was enjoying a bottle of wine and a snack of bread and cheese in the kitchen.

'Madame enrages herself. She has enemies.'

'She does not enrage herself,' protested Henri, 'but I think there are some things in the air.'

'What makes the young Monsieur Richardson?'

'He is, perhaps, a murderer.'

Celestine shrieked.

'A murderer? An assassin? But no!'

'One does not know.' Henri took up his largest carving-knife and sharpened it with great solemnity. At this moment Hamish walked into the kitchen.

'I say,' he said, 'the cakes and things at tea were all right, but isn't there something to eat? His eye fell on the manoeuvres of Henri. 'Gosh!' he added. 'Are we really in a state of siege? Aunt Dame said so, but I thought she was having me on.'

Celestine hastened to provide him with cold pie and cocoa, viands at the sight of which she herself flinched, but which, she had long realised, were one of the stays of English youth.

'You,' said Henri, with ferocious humour, producing a large but superseded carving-knife, 'must be well- armed, monsieur, should a siege take place. Accept this, if you please.'

'Knives!' quoted Hamish, flourishing the one provided. 'This is the life! Oh, thanks a lot, Henri!' He retired, making large passes in the air.

'You are a monster who lives by the death of little children!' shrieked Celestine. 'Sharpen an axe!'

Henri, who had lived with his wife for more than thirty years, realised that she was in what the English would call 'one of her moods,' and that, as she was thus possessed, the simplest way to avoid difficulties was to placate her by implicitly obeying her orders. Accordingly, he brought in his largest axe from the weatherproof woodshed and solemnly put on it a lethal cutting-edge. He displayed his handiwork. His wife nodded.

'It is well,' she said. 'There are sweetbreads for dinner. I hope the young men will like them. Dame Beatrice does not eat glands. For her...'