Adders on the Heath

'Admirably expressed,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Let us move on to the other candidates. Chief among these, of course, are the members of the Scylla and District Social and Athletic Club, but until we can discover means and motive for any or all of these-opportunity would present no difficulty at all, one assumes-I fear we cannot particularise.'

'One thing,' said Denis. 'If Tom could have got hold of the prussic acid and the potassium stuff, so could the science bloke at the school.'

'And the art master,' said Laura. 'Didn't you say that he went in for engraving?'

'There's also that little toad of a lab. boy,' said Denis. 'You mentioned him, I think.'

'The difficulty here is that we cannot show, at present, any connection between any one of these three and the dead men,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Where was this school, Mr Richardson?'

'In a little place called Want, not far from Basingstoke.'

'I see. Not so very far away from here, either.'

'No, I suppose not. But it's absurd to think that Joliffe and Draco could have had anything to do with the murders, and the lab. kid is only seventeen, although a bit of a wart.'

'So was Henry Thingummy only seventeen,' said Laura. 'You can't go by age.'

'A boy of seventeen might murder one person. But to kill two, unless he were...' said Dame Beatrice.

'A pathological case?' said Denis. 'Yes, it would seem to be beyond the scope of the average lad, but all the same...'

'There's no such thing as the average lad,' said Laura, belligerently.

'Oh, but there is,' said Richardson. 'You'd be surprised. There's a common factor. If you'd taught in boys' schools...'

'Only because everybody dreads being different from everybody else,' said Laura, interrupting him. 'You can't tell what they all really think, and I shall always maintain that...'

'There are still a few daring young men on the flying trapeze?' asked Dame Beatrice, giving an eldritch cackle.

'Well, I don't claim to be one of those. But we're straying from the point, aren't we?' said Richardson, defeated, he thought, by the ladies. 'We were talking about my last school.'

'And now,' said Dame Beatrice, 'we are going to talk about your last employer. You coached his son, I believe, and left them your holiday address. Why did you do that? Furthermore, what kind of people are they, and where do they live?'

'Oh, they live just outside Southampton. I didn't like them much, but I don't see any reason why they should be mixed up in these goings on. I gave them my address because they asked for it and promised to send me my last month's pay, which they have done.'

'And the son whom you coached?'

'Oh, a bit short on intellect and rather a little wart, but I felt sorry for the poor kid. He was spoilt most of the time; otherwise he was groused at because he wasn't grateful enough for the spoiling. Quite a hopeless sort of situation, I thought, and not at all calculated to produce a first-class citizen. I'll write down the address for you, but I really don't want them bothered. There can't be any connection.'

'You are probably right,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but, as Laura would tell you, we must leave no stone unturned. To resume, and to rejoin our sheep, there remain other suspects and it is for you, Mr Richardson, to decide which we examine first.'

'Well, but who are they? I can't think of anybody else.'

'Oh, but surely! What about the people in the house from which you tried to telephone? What about the people (visitors and staff) who live, or did live, in this hotel?'

'Some assignment!' said Laura. 'And, of course,' she added, 'there are always the members of other athletics clubs. Some of them may have had it in for Colnbrook and Bunt.'

'Why, so they may,' said Dame Beatrice, leering at her in a confidential fashion.

'Good heavens, of course not!' said Richardson, aghast. 'It's not the sort of thing that's ever done!'

Denis clicked his tongue sadly.

'Et tu, Brute?' he asked. Richardson gave him a sharp glance which was not misinterpreted either by Laura or by Dame Beatrice.

'So there is a nigger in the woodpile,' said the former, when, having bade the young men good night, she was seated in an armchair in her employer's first-floor room.

'By that, you infer...?' said Dame Beatrice.

'That there is something more which Tom ought to tell us. That baby boy ain't as innocent as he would have us believe.'

'Dear me,' said Dame Beatrice mildly. 'I really think you'd better go to bed.'

'The bar is still open,' said Laura. 'I will repair thither and seek truth in the bottom of a glass of their excellent beer.' She did this and was ready with her findings for Dame Beatrice at breakfast on the following morning.

'What I don't understand,' she said, 'is the business of swapping over the bodies. Why go to all that trouble? Why not have left Colnbrook in Tom's tent and carted Bunt's body into that enclosure? It just doesn't make sense!'

'The difference between sense and nonsense is understood only by the critics of modern plays, dear child.'

'One man's meat is another man's-here, I say!' exclaimed Laura. 'Haven't we perhaps got something there? Could one of them have been taking it as a medicine?'

'You've been doing too much reading,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but, yes, I am compelled to agree that, although prussic acid can scarcely be classed as a medicine, there is a very mild preparation which is used in food as a flavouring.'

'So where does that get us?'

'Nowhere,' admitted Dame Beatrice, treating Laura to a crocodile grin. 'But remember, in the words of the immortal Quince, that truth makes all things plain. In addition, although Pyramus did not kill Thisbe, he was, in a sense, as responsible for her death as the lion was for his.'

'Sez you!' said Laura, incensed by this intrusion into her own treasure-house of apt quotation. 'Well, where do we go from here?'

CHAPTER TEN

THE SUPERINTENDENT REVIEWS IT

'Nobody supposes that the digging up of antiquities is in itself a scientific end...'

Sir Leonard Wolley-Digging Up the Past

'There remain,' said Dame Beatrice, 'the hotel staff. They could all have known that Mr Richardson was encamped on the heath.'

The Superintendent rubbed his jaw.

'Are you seriously thinking that one of the hotel servants is guilty, ma'am?' he enquired.

'No, I am not,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but I suppose we ought to look at the thing in the round. What is your own idea?'

'I can see nothing nearer than Mr Richardson himself. All the evidence seems to point that way. We have witnesses of his two disagreements with Colnbrook. What is more, one of the quarrels, that one in the station waiting-room, seems to have been of a serious nature.'

'Against that, we must put the murder of Mr Bunt. There is nothing whatever to connect him with Mr Richardson, is there?'

'No,' said the Superintendent thoughtfully. 'What's more, for what it's worth, Dame Beatrice, Bunt was not, as one might say, an indigenous product. He came to Southampton from the Transvaal and had been over here only about three years before he was killed.'

'Shades of potassium cyanide!' said Dame Beatrice. 'Do they not, in those latitudes, use large amounts of it in extracting gold from ores?'

The Superintendent looked startled; then he recollected himself and smiled.

'It wouldn't account for the prussic acid,' he said. Dame Beatrice said that she was not so sure.

'Derivatives postulate a main substance,' she argued. 'Those who know potassium cyanide may surely have some passing acquaintance with hydrocyanic acid?'