Adders on the Heath

'No, but that doesn't mean a thing. The stuff was on the premises. Any member of the staff could have got at it. He had only to hook the key to the cupboard.'

'If he'd known the stuff was there!'

'But we all knew. Young Borgia, who was the lab. assistant, was always boasting about the poisons cupboard. He used to take a delight in telling the boys that he could do in the whole school if he wanted to. The science master heard him and complained to the Old Man.'

Dame Beatrice intervened.

'It is still to be proved that the school possessed stocks of potassium cyanide and of hydrocyanic acid,' she said.

'The trouble is that it did,' said Richardson, gloomily. 'The science bloke ran a photography club and the art chap knew all about engraving.'

Denis looked concerned, but Dame Beatrice cackled.

'To employ one master who needed to have access to poisons might be accidental; two, in the same school, looks like carelessness on the part of the Head,' she misquoted. Laura grunted. She was always somewhat discountenanced when Dame Beatrice, like the Devil, used scripture (in the most elementary sense of the word) to prove her argument.

'Here,' she said, suddenly becoming cheerful again, 'New Forest indicates adders. Aren't adder-bites treated with potassium-something-or-other?'

'Indeed, yes. They may be treated by an injection of potassium permanganate solution, but that is not quite the same thing as potassium cyanide,' Dame Beatrice mildly pointed out.

'No, perhaps not, but can't you see what must have happened? Those two men must have been bitten by adders and some clot gave them the wrong injection as an antidote. I don't believe that either of them was poisoned deliberately.'

'A most ingenious theory,' Dame Beatrice admitted. 'It is medically sound and may well serve as a working hypothesis.'

'Golly!' said Laura, overawed, in the Hyman Caplan fashion, by this evidence of her own genius. 'Do you really mean it?'

'I do, but there remains the unescapable theory that if both men were bitten by adders and if both, according to your idea, were given treatment which resulted in death, coincidence is overdoing matters.'

'But there's nothing wrong with the idea?'

'No, no. It is most ingenious. The inquests are to be resumed three weeks from today. That should give us ample time and scope to free Mr Richardson's mind of fears and forebodings, and, I hope, to hit upon the truth.'

'Thanks,' said Richardson gloomily.

'I wonder what you really think?' said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone and in the car.

'First, that Mr Richardson is entirely innocent, although I cannot feel that he has been altogether open with me.'

'You don't think he moved Colnbrook's body from his tent and then more or less guided Denis to the spot where they found it?'

'The trouble about that theory is that there is a very big question-mark attached to it. If he did move the body, (a task of some magnitude, incidentally, for one person) why should he have taken Denis that way? It would seem a most dangerous as well as a most illogical proceeding.'

'Oh, I don't know. Murderers do these queer things.'

'What about the second body, that of Mr Bunt, which the police did find in the tent? Do you suggest that Mr Richardson substituted it for that of Mr Colnbrook?'

'Well, it could be,' said Laura, this time doubtfully. 'You see, he might have had a motive for doing in Colnbrook, but none for wanting Bunt out of the way.'

'Dear, dear, dear!' said Dame Beatrice. 'That, of all things connected with this case, surely remains to be seen!'

'All right. I don't mind acting as Aunt Sally. I wonder what the two lads thought about the inquest? Denis was as cool as a cucumber, but there's no doubt that poor old Richardson looked a bit green about the gills.'

The two young men had driven in Richardson's little car to the inquest, and they had returned in it to the hotel. Laura and Dame Beatrice joined them in the bar, where there was plenty of time (as Denis pointed out) for a couple of quick ones before lunch, for the inquests had been held in the morning.

As soon as the four were settled at a table in the corner by a large window which overlooked the side of the garden, Denis said,

'For goodness' sake, Aunt dear, put this lunatic out of his misery! He's convinced the police suspect him and he's already arranging to see a solicitor and reserve his defence.'

Dame Beatrice bestowed upon Richardson an encouraging leer.

'Upon what do you base your fears, dear child?' she asked.

'Well, it all looks so damned bad,' replied Richardson. 'I can make out a case for the police as easily as though I were the Superintendent himself. They can't help but suspect me. I mean, just look at the facts!'

'Let us include in them, then, your own movements on which, for want of a more original expression, we will call the day and night of the crime.'

'The day and night?' Richardson looked horrified. 'How do you mean-the day and night?'

'Well, I have had no opportunity to examine the bodies of the deceased,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but it is to be assumed that the murders-if, indeed murders they were...'

'Person or persons unknown,' murmured Denis. 'I bet that's what it will be, unless it's brought in as suicide. Personally, I don't think it will be. I suspect the Superintendent of having something up his sleeve.'

'Very well,' said Dame Beatrice, 'those two men were murdered. If that is so, we have to discover, in the classic formula, which person or persons had the means, the motive and the opportunity to commit these crimes.'

'Do we believe that both crimes were committed by the same person or persons?' demanded Denis.

'Of course we do,' said Laura. 'It would be too much of a coincidence if they were not.' She ignored the fact that she herself had invoked the arm of this goddess.

'Two different derivatives of the same lethal substance were used, sweet coz, remember,' murmured Denis.

'Yes, I know, but you heard what Tom said about poisons at his school. Why shouldn't science and art both be involved?'

'Shades of Sir Christopher Wren!'

'I don't see why not,' said Laura stoutly. 'Things are tending that way at the present time. You should read more books.'

Dame Beatrice intervened.

'It seems to me,' she said, 'that the Scylla and District Athletic and Social Club should be subjected to inquisition. Both the deceased were, or had been, members. Surely the solution of the mystery of these deaths might very possibly lie there.'

'Isn't that rather too obvious a thought, dear Aunt?' asked Denis.

'Yes, of course it is,' his great-aunt agreed. 'But, if you remember your Holmes...'

'And also your Wodehouse,' said Laura.

'I think it's time for lunch,' said Richardson. He seemed none the happier as a result of being present at this session of higher thought. Dame Beatrice cackled.

'Lunch will be on for the next two hours,' she said, 'and, if you care to approach the bar counter, you will be allowed to consume (free of charge, which, as a house-keeper, I find regrettable) potato crisps, olives, cheese biscuits and frazzled bacon rinds. These should help to stave off the pangs of hunger for a while.'

'Atta-baby!' said Laura, rising from her chair. 'He isn't the only one who feels like a starving python.'

'In that case,' said Dame Beatrice, 'perhaps we had better go in to lunch.'

When lunch was over, she suggested that she and Richardson should go for a run in her car while Laura and Denis followed their own devices. George was to drive his employer and the distressed young man, so that, seated together in the Jaguar, they could talk undisturbed. The route was left to George.

'What do you want to know?' asked Richardson, when, having taken the road across a vast expanse of open pasture on which grazed ponies and cattle, the car turned across a bridge and entered magnificent woodland.