Adders on the Heath

Dame Beatrice sent George to knock at the front door, having furnished him with the name which she had obtained from the Superintendent. He returned, very shortly, with the information that the householder himself was not at home, but that his wife would be happy to grant Dame Beatrice an interview.

The maid-the same, presumably, as had refused Richardson the use of the telephone-showed her into a large, well-furnished room in which a strongly-built woman of between thirty-five and forty was standing looking at the only picture. She turned, as the maid announced the visitor, and Dame Beatrice noted that she had large, sad eyes and almost no chin.

'How do you do?' the woman said. 'Please sit down. I don't think we've met before, have we?'

'No, we have not,' replied Dame Beatrice, seating herself in the chair indicated, 'and you may wish that we had not met now.'

'Oh, dear! Are you asking for a subscription for something? I'm afraid my husband sees to all that kind of thing.'

'I am not asking for a subscription. I am asking for help in a different kind of way. I am told by the police...'

'By the police?'

'Of course. I am consultant psychiatrist to the Home Office.'

'Oh, dear! Well, what do you want to know?'

'I want to know why you and your husband were absent from this house when a young man discovered a dead body in his tent on the heath.'

'Well, really, Dame Beatrice! I don't know that I understand you! My husband has told the police where we were, and our reason for being there. I can add nothing to what he said. It was the simple truth. In any case, I cannot see what is your own interest in the matter. It was all very horrid and very sordid, no doubt, but, really, it was nothing to do with us, as I told the Superintendent.'

'I could wish that you and your husband had been at home that night, though.'

'Exactly why?'

'Because I am quite sure that you would have been only too ready to admit the unfortunate owner of the tent and that you would have allowed him to telephone the police.'

'Most unlikely, at that time of night! In any case, except to oblige the young man, what difference could it have made?'

'I can tell you, provided that you will undertake to confide it to nobody but your husband.'

'Very well.'

'The body which the police saw lying in the tent was not the body about which young Mr Richardson wished to telephone the police.'

'What!'

'No. The first body was that which was stumbled upon (quite literally) by Mr Richardson and his friend in the enclosure on the far side of the heath.'

'Good gracious! What an extraordinary thing!'

'By the way,' said Dame Beatrice, 'I wonder whether I might have a word with the girl who answers the door. She did answer it, did she not, to Mr Richardson that night?'

'Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll go and get her. You won't find her very intelligent, I'm afraid.'

She went out of the room and left Dame Beatrice to gaze at the picture, which happened to be the coloured portrait of a florid, clean-shaven, thick-set middle-aged man whom Dame Beatrice took to be the husband of her reluctant hostess. The latter was gone for nearly ten minutes and returned with a scared-looking girl of about seventeen.

'This is Myrtle,' she said. 'I'd better leave you together.'

'Thank you,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Good morning, Myrtle. I don't know whether you can help me?'

Myrtle mumbled unintelligibly and twisted nail-bitten fingers in her apron.

'You've read about these horrible murders, of course,' Dame Beatrice went on. 'Well, now, I wonder whether you can describe a young man who called here on the night in question and wanted to use the telephone?'

'The night in question, madam?' Myrtle abandoned the picking at her apron.

'Yes, the night in question, Myrtle. You're not always having young men call after dark asking to use the telephone, so do not deny that he came. I happen to know that he did.'

'Oh, him! Well, I shut the door too quick to see much of him. I was scared, see, on account we was alone in the house.'

'We being...?'

'Cook, Shirl and me.'

'Oh, yes. Your master and mistress had gone to London, I believe.'

'That's right, and it was the master as told me to say as nobody called. He didn't want to be mixed up in anything, he said.'

'Well, now, what about this young man?'

'He was out of breath, but he talked posh and his hair needed combing. You don't mean...?' Her mouth fell open as her mind assimilated a new, delicious, terrifying idea. 'You don't mean as I've spoke with a murderer, do you?'

'Well, we can't go so far as that at present, but the police are keeping an open mind.'

'The police are keepin' an open mind,' repeated Myrtle, obviously memorising the phrase. 'Coo, wait till I tells Cook and Shirl!'

'And you can add nothing to your description?'

'Arf a mo.' She wrinkled her brow in deep thought, but was obliged to shake her head. 'I don't know as I can. You see, I shut the door quick as I could 'cos I was scared. I always 'ave been scared of knocks on the door at night, without I knows who to expect.'

'Very natural, in a lonely house such as this. How long have you worked here?'

'I come here last March twelvemonth. Oh, I do 'ope the master won't bawl me out, but it was missus as changed what I was to say.'

'Is your home in the village?'

'No. I comes from t' other side the common, from the Children's 'Ome over there.'

'I see. Well, thank you, Myrtle. Oh, there is just one more thing. I suppose you didn't happen to notice what the time was when this young man called?'

'Not to speak of it in the witness-box like.' It was clear that Myrtle already saw herself in a prominent position in court. 'Still, we'd had our supper, which is nine o'clock by Cook's alarm, and I'd finished washing-up which Cook won't never allow no dirty crocks to wait over till the morning, but we hadn't ack'chelly gone to bed, although I'd done me curlers so I suppose it would have been about ten o'clock when he come.'

This tallied reasonably well with Richardson's own story. Dame Beatrice returned to the hotel and telephoned the Superintendent. She invited him to lunch and, when it was over, they commandeered the small drawing-room lounge and she gave him an account of her visit.

'You think that Myrtle was briefed before she was brought in to you,' said the Superintendent.

'On her own admission there is nothing else to think. Mrs Campden-Towne went out of the room to bring her, instead of ringing the bell, and was gone longer than one would have thought necessary. The girl made no attempt to deny that Mr Richardson had called, she stated that her mistress had changed the tale, and her estimate of the time coincides, nearly enough, with his own.'

'Hm, yes, it does look as though Myrtle had been got at both times. I wonder whether the Campden-Townes decided, after all, that they'd been foolish to tell her to keep her mouth shut, or whether it was her own idea in the first place and Campden-Towne agreed to it? Anyway, it confirms Mr Richardson's story so far as the attempt to telephone is concerned and, that being so, it does appear that he got in touch with us as soon as he could. So there's that much in his favour. Oh, well, there's plenty of work to be done in a routine sort of style. We're still digging away at the friends and acquaintances of the two deceased. The thing that bothers us is that there must have been some closer connection between Bunt and Colnbrook than mere membership of that athletic and social club.'

'I still propose to visit the school and I also intend to interview the last employers of Mr Richardson.'