He had been lucky enough to meet the secretary as soon as he arrived, and had been introduced to the local doctor, whose handicap was the same as his own. When the round was finished, Richardson returned the borrowed clubs to the pro., tipped him and said he had enjoyed the game.

  'I didn't catch the doctor's name,' he added.

  The pro. repeated it.

  'Does the police doctoring round here as well. Seems there's been a corpse up on Medley Heath. Some chap in a little tent. I don't know the rights and wrongs, but all over the place that's spoke of,' he added.

  'Oh, really? What did he die of?'

  'Poison, so they reckon.'

  'Who do? The police?'

  'Them, among others. Doctor Mack you played with just now, got a fine big carryin' voice!'

  Richardson wondered whether, had he known that his opponent 'did the police doctoring,' he would have asked him any questions concerning his findings. He decided that to have done so would have been to risk a snub. As it happened, however, on his way out he met the doctor again just as the latter was getting into his car. The doctor said, immediately, seeing Richardson on foot,

  'Oh, can I give you a lift? Which way do you go?'

  Richardson named his hotel.

  'Splendid. I can drop you on the village side of the level crossing, if that will help.'

  Richardson said gratefully that it would. The car started up and turned left on to a secondary road lined with fairly pretentious houses. Richardson, deciding that it was now or never, risked the snub which he confidently expected.

  'I say,' he said, 'the pro. was telling me about the dead man on the heath, you know.'

  'Yes?' The doctor kept his eyes on the road ahead, but Richardson detected a slight frown between his thin sandy brows.

  'Well, you see, I'm the person who got stuck with the body,' he said, 'so I'm rather interested.'

  'How do you mean-stuck with the body?' The frown disappeared.

  'I've been camping on my own up on Medley Heath since Thursday. I'd pushed over to the hotel for dinner and hung around a bit afterwards, having coffee and a brandy, and, when I got back to my tent, there was this dead man.'

  'Oh?' The monosyllable invited further confidences.

  'So, of course, I called the police and now I think they believe the chap was murdered. I spent the night at the Superintendent's house. He was very decent, but I don't think I'm out of his clutches. I'm just wondering how the man was killed. I don't want the police to connect me with the job!'

  'I can tell you how he was killed. It will be in the papers tomorrow, anyway, so there need be no secret about it. Still, perhaps, you'd better keep it to yourself until it's public property. He was choked to death with a fir cone.'

  'Choked...?'

  'With the fruit of the Douglas Fir, to be exact. I recovered an elliptical cone nearly three inches long. Didn't you notice how suffused the face was?-typical case of asphyxia.'

  'No, I didn't notice. I tried to revive him by that pinch the nose and breathe into the mouth method, but I think I knew he was gone before I started.' (This referred to Colnbrook, he reflected, and realised that he should not have said it.)

  'The mouth was very badly bruised, too,' said the doctor, pursuing his own train of thought. 'The bruising, of course, is one reason for believing that he was murdered.'

  'Well, of course! I mean, surely you couldn't choke yourself accidentally on a fir cone, could you?'

  'Hardly, perhaps, but I suppose you could commit suicide that way.'

  'Surely not! It would be a beastly way to die!'

  'You'd be surprised at how some of them manage it. There was a fellow, some years ago, who slopped petrol all over himself and set himself alight. You wouldn't think that was possible, but he did it.'

  The car passed a school and the village hall, and drew up just before it reached the village street. Richardson, expressing gratitude, got out and waited on a lumpy bit of pavement until the car turned a bend in the road. Then he strode away past the shops in the village street, over the foot-bridge which crossed the water-splash and made his way back to the hotel.

  The doctor (funny swine) had been pulling his leg. Neither of the deaths had been caused by a fir cone. Colnbrook's most certainly had not. If anything of the sort had choked him (only it hadn't) it would have been a surfeit of almonds. There had been faint but unmistakable odour of almonds while Richardson was trying to give him that breath-of-life treatment first recorded in the annals of the prophet Elisha.

  Almonds!

  It could have been suicide, of course, yet, recollecting his sight of the two men on the heath and then on the common, their running togs, their field-glasses and their absorption in the job in hand (whatever it was), it seemed highly unlikely that anything so dramatic as a double suicide could have been in their minds. In addition to this, Colnbrook had been the last person on earth, Richardson felt, to have contemplated such a drastic course. He had given the impression of being far too pleased with A. B. Colnbrook to think of doing away with him.

  There was one feasible explanation, of course. One of the men could have murdered the other and then, afraid to face the possible consequences of such an act, have killed himself. There was yet another possibility. When last he had seen them, they had been heading for the heath again. The only dwelling-house they would pass, so far as Richardson knew, was the biggish place from which he had tried to telephone. Could they have been lured in there and murdered?

  He visualised the curl-papered maid who had answered the door to him, and this brought to mind her reference to Cook and Shirl. Cooks, he supposed, could and did perform fearful and wonderful deeds, upon occasion-there was that frightful pie-maker of Dusseldorf-or was it Hanover?-but was anybody called Shirl capable of murder?-let alone the goggling, curl-papered specimen who had answered the door. Besides, he did not believe that three women would have struggled from that house to the tent with the hulking body of Colnbrook and then taken it away and hidden it and substituted the second body for it. Theoretically this might be possible, but for all practical purposes he felt certain that it was not. Only a man would have organised a job such as that.

  * * *

  He was too late for tea at the hotel, but Barney, who met him as he entered, said, with a conspiratorial nod,

  Try the kitchen, sir. Mabel's "on" this afternoon.'

  Richardson crossed the uneven, large, ancient tiles of the kitchen, beyond which lay the modern annexe in which the cooking and serving were done, and turned off to the right, past the foot of a servants' staircase, also part of the original house, which had been built, very narrow and steep, in the thickness of the wall. It led up to the second floor and the porter's bedroom.

  In the room past the bottom of this staircase, Mabel was busy washing up. She desisted as Richardson came in and hooked a chair up to a large, scrubbed, wooden table. As was her invariable habit, she grinned widely but did not speak. She made fresh tea, put out bread and butter, jam and a sponge sandwich, and, jerking her head, indicated that he might set to.

  'We've had Carrie's boy friend, the policeman, here this afternoon. Tell us about the murder,' she said, when Tom had drunk his third cup of tea. Richardson, in a low tone, gave her a carefully edited account of what had happened. At the end, she stood with her arms akimbo, studied his fresh complexion and boyish, candid face and shook her head.

  'He's wrong. The police are all wrong. It can't be you. Ain't got the nerve,' she said. 'No more nor me. Takes nerve, it do, to bring off a nice clean murder. No, Mr Richardson, it wouldn't be your sort of lark, no more nor it wouldn't be mine, whatever Carrie's boy friend may say.'

  Richardson felt that the Delphic Oracle had spoken. He did not even resent the slur cast upon his courage. What Mabel believed today he hoped and trusted that the police would believe tomorrow. He thanked her for the tea, went into the small drawing-room which served to house the visitors' library and, most days, an irascible ex-Naval officer, and, surveying the volumes on the bookshelves, took down E. F. Benson's masterpiece, The Luck of the Vails, trusting that the flute-playing villainies of Mr Francis Vail would blot out, for a space, his own anxieties and problems.

  The anodyne worked. Somewhere a clock struck the half-hour. Richardson took the book to his room, and, putting it on the bedside table, went off for a bath before dinner.

  After dinner, the mixed feeling of being, at the same time, in a trap and at a loose end, assailed him again, but a joyful surprise was in store. He was loitering in the front hall, trying to decide between the respective attractions of The Luck of the Vails and the television lounge, when the front door opened and in came the porter with a couple of suitcases. He was followed by a slender, tall young man with thick brown hair and wide-apart grey eyes. The young man was carrying a violin case in one hand and a flute, cased in leather, in the other.

  'Oh, Lord!' exclaimed Richardson, joyfully. 'Uncle Francis Vail in person! Well, well, well!'

  The newcomer apparently understood the reference.

  'Oh, Geoffrey,' he said reproachfully, naming one of the heroes in the book, 'I did so hope that people would mistake it for a telescope. Then it would seem as though I'd been in the Navy. It's a terribly good thing to have been in, and I should be much respected if people thought I'd ever belonged to it. Are you sure it doesn't look like a telescope? It's really meant to look like one, you know.' He put the flute in its case to his eye.

  'Quite sure, Scab, you lunatic. Come and sign the book. Which is his room, Barney? I've forgotten.'

  'Number twenty-two, sir. I'll get the key.'

  'And is our escutcheon still unsullied, or have you been up to something?' asked Denis, in his disconcerting way.

  'I've been up to something,' said Richardson. 'Are you hungry, or shall I a tale unfold?'

  'I dined in Winchester with a bloke I know. Is there a bar here?'

  'There is. Let me lead you to it.'

  'Right. I'll dump my kit and then I'll join you.'

  'I'll put the car away while you're dumping. Somehow I don't think we're going to need it tomorrow.'

  They met in the bar a quarter of an hour later.

  'Tell me why we shan't need the car,' said Denis, over a pint of bitter. 'I thought you were going to walk your legs off while you were alone, and that we were to ride in the stately limousine as soon as I turned up. Incidentally, I'm sorry for the delay, but I got let in for playing polo.'

  'You mean you preferred playing polo to getting down here when you said you would? Then it serves you right that you've missed all the fun of being my fellow gaolbird.'

  'You don't say!'

  'I do say. I've been scared out of my wits until now, but I don't seem to care quite so much now you've turned up.'

  'Absolutely the right spirit. Tell me all. I can see you've lost weight since last we met.'

  Richardson told him all. It was a straightforward narrative but, as Denis remarked at the end of it, fraught with unusual interest.

  'There's only one thing to do,' he said.

  'Confess, and get myself hanged?'

  'That would be going too far and is, in any case, unnecessary. No, what you need, at this crisis in a young man's affairs, is the advice and assistance of my great-aunt.'

  'Not Lady Selina?'

  'Perish the thought! I refer to the one and only Dame Beatrice. Your corpses will be meat and drink to her.'

  'Dame Beatrice? But?-Oh, she wouldn't take me on, would she? I mean, I've never even met her!'

  'The loss is hers and can soon be remedied.'

  'You'll really ask her?'

  'Yes, of course, and I know she'll come. You must tell her everything, you know, just as you've told it to me. No hedging or ditching. She can't be expected to work with blinkers on. Your two rows with Colnbrook must be exposed with all their low-life implications and you'll have to confess that you saw these two birds on the heath, so that you knew they were in the neighbourhood. And if I were you,' continued Denis earnestly, 'I'd come clean to the Superintendent, too. He's bound to dig it all out sooner or later-the police do, you know-and you'll be in a far stronger position if the information comes from you in the first place.'

  'Well, I don't know about that,' said Richardson, very doubtfully. 'I'm certain that he suspects me, whereas Dame Beatrice, I take it, will not.'

  'She'll start from scratch, keeping an open mind. Still, you have an ingenuous, unbearded sort of face and are obviously frightened to death, so perhaps she'll give you the benefit of the doubt.'

  'You are a Job's comforter!' said Richardson; but he looked quite happy again.

  'Meanwhile,' Denis added, 'I will bend my own not inconspicuous intellect to your problem and let you know my conclusions in the morning. Sleep well!'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN SEARCH OF A BODY

  'Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediments.'

  Shakespeare

  'What we ought to do,' said Denis, on the following morning, 'and I've slept on this, I might tell you, because it actually occurred to me last night when I got to bed...'

  'Is to tell the Superintendent there's Colnbrook's body hidden away somewhere. He won't believe us, you know. Besides-'

  'You go too fast. Let me finish. It occurred to me last night, as I tossed restlessly on my pillow, that what we must do is to find that second body-or, rather, that first body-before they hold the inquest on the body found in your tent by the police.'

  'But how on earth can we do that?'

  'We will quarter the ground. Isn't there a riding stables at hand? We shall hire a couple of docile, trustworthy hacks and look for clues.'

  'What about Dame Beatrice?'

  'Fun first, business later. Must you have still another piece of toast?'

  'Yes, really I must. But, about the horses...'

  'Unreliable, you think?'

  'I don't think that. I do think we'd be much better off on foot-that is, if we really must look for Colnbrook.'

  'Why? I loathe a lot of walking.'

  'Very well. You ride, I'll walk, and we'll compare notes at lunch.'

  'Not a bad idea. Where do I find these riding stables?'

  'The other side of the water-splash. Don't go through the splash or over the footbridge. Keep straight on and then turn left. There's a footpath across a bit of common.'

  'It sounds complicated. I'll walk with you.'

  'All right. It's a far better idea, really it is.'

  So the two young men set out for the site of Richardson's camp. Denis had a camera and photographed a Forest pony and her half-grown chestnut foal. Three-quarters of the way along the beautiful road which led to the common, he insisted upon stopping at the 'pound' to obtain a picture of a farmer, his wife and his cowman urging an extremely lively bull calf to climb up a ramp into a lorry. Richardson was impatient to get on, and was almost dancing by the time his friend was satisfied.

  'Nobody would think I'm threatened with the hangman,' he complained, when at last they were on their way again. 'Now don't waste any more time, and do forget that blasted box camera of yours for a bit. I didn't even bring mine.'

  They soon reached the causeway. It led away from the gravelled road and ran straight and true (and was, in places, extremely muddy) between the sparsely-planted young pines and the heather, by the side of the drainage ditches, until it entered the narrow wood. Here Denis stood still and gazed about him.

  'Rather good, isn't it?' said Richardson.

  'How did you find the way here in the first place?' Denis demanded. 'You didn't know the neighbourhood, did you?'

  'Oh, I thought I'd told you that I came down one Saturday, ages ago, and nosed around and prospected and so forth. Mind you, I didn't tell the Superintendent that. It wouldn't do to let him think I knew the countryside before I got let in for this business.'

  'I see. Do we cross this little bridge?'

  'We do, and follow the path to the right.'

  They did this, and watched the sunshine and shadow on the stream before going on again. After a bit they came upon a gate which led into an enclosure. Denis indicated the gate.

  'Can we go this way?'

  'I suppose so, although I never have. It's only on a latch, so it's all right, so long as we shut it after us. Looks as though the foresters have been busy.'

  The inviting path on the other side of the gate was broad and clearly marked, and bore the imprint, here and there, where the ground was soft, of car tyres and caterpillar wheels. Denis produced a magnifying glass and studied the imprints with exaggerated thoroughness.

  'No hoof-prints,' he observed. They walked on again, past the grey, smooth trunks of a couple of felled beeches on the right-hand side of the path, and a magnificent Scots pine, prone across the bracken, on the left. The path mounted gradually. Suddenly Denis, who was in the lead, stopped short. 'I'm going back,' he said. A gaggle of geese, eight in all, had formed a line across the path, which led straight into a farmyard. 'Geese horrify me. I'd rather face a pride of lions.'

  'There's a dog, too,' said Richardson, in practical tones. 'Besides, about geese I really do agree. I told you I'd never been this way, and now you see that my instinct was sound.'

  They retraced their steps and again followed the path beside the water. It narrowed and grew lumpy and then muddy. Then it turned almost at right-angles on to a miry track with led across the gravelled road and on to the open heath. Richardson pointed out the big house from which he had tried to telephone.

  'You don't think there's anything suspicious in the circumstance that the owner of the house happened to be away on the very day you discovered a dead man in your tent?' Denis suggested.

  'Oh, I hardly imagine so. Just a coincidence, I would say. And I certainly don't attach any importance to the fact that the maid wouldn't let me use the telephone. For all she knew, it might have been an impudent attempt on my part to get into the house with burglarious intentions. Besides, women-servants always think somebody is determined to murder them in their beds, although why in their beds I can't think. One would suppose the last thing to do on their part would be to stay in bed if a homicidal maniac was loose about the place. Personally, I should want to be up and about, preferably with my shoes on.'

 

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