Adders on the Heath

'How did you come to make his acquaintance?'

'A common interest in music'

'Does he play an instrument?'

'No, but he understands the Elizabethans.'

Dame Beatrice, who understood Bach and nobody else, allowed this statement to pass without challenge. Richardson and Laura were in the garden admiring the dahlias and some late carnations and Denis and his great-aunt were walking on the finely-cut lawn.

'In what way do you think I can help your friend?' Dame Beatrice enquired. She bent to pick up a handsome fir-cone which had fallen from Pinus Pinea, the Stone Pine (introduced, as she remarked to her great-nephew, four hundred years ago, in the time (more or less) of his friend's Elizabethans), and studied it while Denis answered.

'Well, I think you've given his morale a considerable boost by coming down here at all, and now he knows you're going to attend the inquest it's made his day. What do you want to do this afternoon? See the spot where we found Colnbrook's body?'

'No, child. Did I understand from Mr Richardson that Mr Colnbrook belonged to an association of mixed athletes (in the sense, I mean, of the way one describes a co-educational school as being mixed) called the Scylla and District Club?'

'Yes, that's Colnbrook's mob. Social and Athletic, they call themselves, according to Tom. They've got a ground of sorts, somewhere outside Southampton. I expect you heard him say so. They've had one or two good people-steeplechasers, mostly-but not exactly world class, I believe. I don't much follow athletics. Anyway, they're a pretty minor club, the same as Tom's lot.'

'By which you mean-?'

'Well, they're not exactly Achilles, or Poly. Harriers, or Herne Hill or Thames Valley, for example.'

'I see.' There was a pause, then Dame Beatrice added, 'Perhaps, when we have attended the inquest, your friend will honour me with the whole of his confidence. I dislike to work on half-truths.'

CHAPTER SIX

INQUESTS ARE ODIOUS

'Poisoned with henbane. His whole body stinks of it.'

Jerome K. Jerome

The inquests on Colnbrook and the so-far unnamed body also dumped in Richardson's tent were held separately but on the same day. Richardson was called as a witness in both cases. Accepting Dame Beatrice's advice (in the tradition that drowning men clutch at straws, and having about as much faith in the result), he had been to the Superintendent to tell him that he recognised the body he and Denis had found in the woods as that of the first deceased occupant of his tent. The Superintendent (suspiciously so, in Richardson's opinion) had been friendly and almost jocose.

'So we shall see what we shall see, sir,' he had said, in termination of the interview.

'What's that mean?' Richardson had demanded.

'Now, now, sir, there's no reason to be nervous. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you know.' He insisted upon shaking hands at parting.

The so-far unidentified body came first, and the court learnt that it was that of one Edward Makepeace Thackeray Bunt, an ex-member and cross-country club-record-holder of the Scylla and District A.C.

'You've nothing to worry about, then,' murmured Denis to Richardson. 'It's all the same bunch. One of them has bought it, mark my words.'

Richardson grunted his incredulity at the suggestion that he had nothing to worry about. He knew better. He had spent almost sleepless nights in the hotel. Bunt was identified by his father, an older, bearded edition of the dead man. The medical evidence was clear and remained unchallenged. The deceased had died from a fatal dose of hydrocyanic acid, better known to the layman as prussic acid. (There was no mention of fir cones!)

The police asked for an adjournment after the evidence of identification and the medical evidence had been concluded. It was clear they suspected that Bunt had been murdered, in spite of the fact, well known to the medical profession, that prussic acid is a suicide's agent, although not, at that, a very common one.

Richardson's protagonist, Colnbrook, was identified by his sister, who did not appear to be greatly upset by the proceedings. In his case the medical evidence was that he had taken potassium cyanide, a more commonly used preparation than hydrocyanic acid and therefore more readily come by.

Neither Denis nor Richardson was called upon to testify to the finding of the body in the woods. The police had investigated their account of the matter and the forester to whom they had spoken was severely dealt with by the coroner.

'At what time did you come upon the body?'

'Oo, now, that would have been around nine o'clock, I reckon, sir.'

'Where did you find it?'

'Where us was working.'

'And that was?'

'Oo, about half-way acrorst Benet Enclosure, near enough.'

'What were you doing there?'

The witness looked surprised.

'Why, sir, you knows as well as I do.'

'Answer the question, man. All this has to go on record.'

'Oo, well, then, us was felling.'

'Tell the court how you came to find the body.'

'It were there.'

'How do you mean?'

'Why, us was felling a Scots pine, do ee see, sir, and dead man, he laid just where tree were liable to fall.'

'You mean that the body was lying in the open, where anybody could have seen it?'

'Ar, that be my meaning.'

'Don't you realise that you had no right to move it?'

'But it were in the way. Tree trunk woulda made mincemeat of the poor bugger, if that had fell on 'im.'

'Please do not comment. Confine yourself to answering my questions.'

'I thought as how I were.'

'Why did you not go at once for the police or a doctor?'

'Us was too busy, that's for why. Chap was dead all right. Nothing to be done for him, and us had our day's work to think of.'

'You are a very stupid man. Didn't you realise that you might get into serious trouble for not reporting a death?'

'Us was gooing to report it all right, not as it were any business of ourn. Us tossed up to see who ud do the reporting. I lorst, and that's why I be here.'

'What happened when Mr Richardson and Mr Bradley arrived?'

'Oo, us had just knocked off for a spell when us heard 'em. Fell in the ditch, or summat, they did. So I hollers at 'em, thinking to save meself a job, and one of 'em ketches his foot agin the dead 'un, so I uncovers un where us laid him in the brocken and axes 'em to report, which I takes it they did. Very took aback, 'em was when they see the corpus. I noticed that particularly.'

'I have asked you before not to comment. You have nothing more to tell the court?'

'Noo, sir, I reckon that be all.'

'Very well. You may stand down, unless the jury have anything to ask you.'

The jury looked at one another, but no one was bold enough to venture a question, so the witness, passing a finger around the inside of his Sunday collar and scratching the side-seam of his Sunday trousers, thankfully abandoned his public position and rejoined the ranks of the anonymous.

* * *

'Well, there's one thing,' said Denis, when they left the coroner's court, 'if the doctors are right about the poisons-and, of course, they are right-that lets you out most beautifully, apart from what I said before.'

'Does it?' Richardson sounded more than doubtful. 'What makes you think so?'

The poisons themselves, of course. How could you get hold of potassium cyanide?'

'Quite easily. You forget I've worked in prep, schools. The stinks lab. in my last school probably contained enough lethal matter to kill the whole Regiment of Guards.'

'But you didn't touch chemistry, did you?'