Adders on the Heath

'So it was the mile runners who had received this offer,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Did the girls know whether any of the male athletes had been approached?'

'I gathered that none of the men had received the offer-at least, not so far as the girls knew.'

'Yet the ability to run a mere mile does not sound to me a sufficiently important qualification for what I suspect was required of the successors of Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt.'

'Oh, if you run a mile in competition on the track, you're capable of jog-trotting a considerably greater distance than that in training, don't you think? Of these girls, one was a hurdler and two were two-twenty sprinters but they were taking the outing with the milers and all seemed in pretty good shape. Cross-country training spins needn't be all that strenuous. It's not as though there's anything competitive about them. I mean, you can slow down and walk, if you want to. Think of Colnbrook and Bunt with their field-glasses.'

'I see. Did you gather why the girls, and not the men, had been approached?'

'No, but I rather thought that the men might have jibbed at the idea of being murdered. May simply be a wild guess, of course.'

'Were the names of Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt mentioned to the girls when this mysterious offer was made to them?'

'Not in so many words, but there aren't many flies on the lasses these days. They'd read between the lines all right. There wasn't any doubt about that. They knew Colnbrook and Bunt had been mixed up in something fishy and they desired no part in it. Now, your turn. What did Miss Calne have to say?'

'Without any prompting from me, she remarked upon the fact that Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt often trained on the Lawn opposite her house and watched the Forest ponies through field-glasses.'

'Adds up, doesn't it?'

'I thought so. We had the same evidence from Mr Richardson and then, of course, there is the discrepancy between the number of motorists known to have run down straying ponies and the number of ponies reported missing.'

'That seems a bit complicated to me. What about hit and run drivers? Such menaces do exist, you know.'

'I should like another meeting with Mrs Bath. I must get her to introduce me to her sister's husband.'

'The p.c? Good idea.'

'I shall also have a word with the Chief Constable.'

'What would you like me to do?'

'I know what I should like one of us to do, but I fear it would be difficult to manage.'

'Excelsior! Lead me to it!'

'I will tell you what is in my mind, but that, I think, is as far as we shall get. I wish we had some means of contacting the Forest gipsies and of gaining their confidence.'

'Nothing easier. You know that riding-stables I hire from while we're here? Well, the three girls who run it know a gipsy who owns a lorry and takes the foodstuffs and things for their horses. Lots of the Forest gipsies have settled down now, you know. They live in cottages and have cars instead of caravans, but they're gipsies all right and very proud of it. The one I'm talking about lives along the same road as your Miss Calne, and you can bet your life that anything she's seen he's seen, and he'll know a whole lot more about it than she does. It's too late to go over there tonight, but first thing in the morning I will sally forth and find out what I can. I doubt whether I'll be able to tackle the bloke direct, because they tell me he's as shy as a fawn and as cagey as an old dog-fox. I shall have to tell the girls what I want to know and why I want to know it. Will that be all right? Mind you, he may not have the information I need.'

Laura's self-imposed errand on the following morning took her to the riding-stables at just after nine o'clock. The stables were attached to a large, decrepit old house on the edge of a bit of common just beyond the water-splash and Laura reached them after a good ten minutes of rapid walking.

Mucking-out had not begun when she arrived, for the string had not yet left the stables, but two of the owners were swilling down the yard and the scent of breakfast which came from the house indicated that the third and oldest of the three was doing the cooking. Laura offered to man the pump, a welcome suggestion, it seemed, and, with two buckets going instead of one, the job was soon concluded.

'Coming in for some breakfast?' asked one of the girls.

'I'd like to come in and natter, but I've just finished breakfast, thanks.'

'Oh, well, come in for a cup of coffee, then. If you want a mount, you can have one at ten for an hour. We've got everything hired from eleven onwards, unless you'd like to make it three o'clock this afternoon.'

'All right. I'll make it three o'clock, then. When I leave here I've got to get back to the hotel to make a report to my boss.'

'She isn't doing a stint for the R.S.P.C.A., is she? If so, you can give us a clean bill. No starvation rations, no over-tiring, no unkind treatment and the vet always on the end of the telephone.'

'No, seriously. I need some information and I don't know how to get it unless you can help me.'

They went into the house and the two girls took chairs at the table in the shabby dining-room while Laura lounged on the broad, cushioned window-seat. Breakfast was brought in, coffee poured, and when the plates had been cleared by the hungry girls, cook, helping herself to marmalade, said, 'Now, Mrs Gavin, at your service.'

'Thanks,' said Laura. 'Well, you know that ancient lorry which brings your feeding-stuffs and what not from Lymington?'

'We do. It's driven by a man named Lee. Nobody but a gipsy could persuade that contraption to move. I don't know why they're such wizards with worn-out machinery, but they are.'

'Centuries of make-do and mend, I suppose. Anyway, it's the gipsy I want to talk about.'

'He doesn't tell fortunes. That's his mother, old Dosha Lee.'

'He keeps his eyes open, though, I take it,' said Laura, ignoring the lighthearted reference to fortune-telling and forcing a serious note. 'Does he take much interest in the Forest ponies, do you know?'

'He daren't-not in the way you mean.'

'I wasn't thinking of that, but you've hit the target, in a way. We have some reason to think that somebody-a syndicate, perhaps, is more likely-is knocking off some of the ponies and taking them out of the Forest for sale elsewhere. Mind you, we have very little to go on, but that's what we suspect.'

'Well, but why should you worry? You don't own any of the ponies, do you?'

'Look here, if I tell you a bit more, will you swear not to breathe a word to a soul unless I say you may? Dorothy? Miriam? Angela? It's serious.'

They nodded and looked impressed.

'Cross my heart.'

'Till death us do part.'

'See this wet, see this dry.'

'Right.' Laura leaned forward and in low tones told them as much of the story as they needed to know.

'But who do you suppose is at the head of this pony-snatching?' Miriam demanded. She was the cook-housekeeper and the financial genius of the undertaking.

'I can't tell you that at present. It wouldn't be fair. We have our suspicions, but proof is hard to get. That's why I wondered whether your gipsy can help us.'

'It doesn't seem to me that you're on very safe ground in thinking that ponies have been stolen out of the Forest,' said Dorothy bluntly. 'It would be a frightfully difficult thing to do if you're thinking in big numbers, as I suppose you are. They're under all sorts of protection. There are the Commoners who own them, the Verderers, the Agisters-I don't see how anybody could get away with wholesale stealing. Look here, Mrs Gavin, Angela's got a book all about the Forest and the rights of the Commoners and so forth, so we do know what we're talking about. We're Commoners ourselves, actually, although we don't bother much about it.'