ADDERS ON THE HEATH
Tom Richardson, spending a few days under canvas in the New Forest, returns one night to find a dead man in his tent. When the police arrive the original body-that of a man Richardson had quarrelled with-is gone, and in its place is the body of a man he did not know. When the first body reappears in the wood, suspicion for both deaths falls on Richardson. But Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley comes to the rescue, and all her wits and intuition are required to probe and elucidate the mystery, and to save a man having to stand trial for double murder.
ADDERS ON THE HEATH
GLADYS MITCHELL
A New Portway Large Print Book
CHIVERS PRESS BATH
First published in Great Britain 1963
by
Michael Joseph Ltd
This Large Print edition published by
Chivers Press
by arrangement with
Severn House Publishers Limited
and in the U.S.A. with
the author's estate
at the request of
The London & Home Counties Branch
of
The Library Association
1989
ISBN 0 7451 7184 2
Copyright © 1963 by Gladys Mitchell
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys, 1901-1983
Adders on the heath.-(A New Portway large print book)
I. Title
823'.912 [F]
ISBN 0-7451-7184-2
To
TESSA NIVEN
with love
'Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. As he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unexpected, short cuts and footprints for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.'
Robert Louis Stevenson
PRELUDE
'I hope they kill nothing in the woods but foxes.'
The Verney Letters, 1738
Members of the Scylla and District Social and Athletic Club are rarely seen in action at the White City. Still less often, if at all, do they represent the A.A.A. against Oxford or Cambridge. They are present at the Olympics, (provided that they can afford to be present), as spectators, not as competitors.
Yet the club is a keen one, has a treasurer apt at collecting subscriptions and is not without its aspirants to county honours, for now and again the county will call a member or two for trials, the club's own time-keeping being unreliable.
One candidate for this honour did not impress the judges, who considered his tactics in the two-mile race rather suspect. As he had won it, both he and his girl friend were very much annoyed and referred (in broader and less printable terms) to the bias and favouritism of the chief judge. The girl friend was a club-mate, for the Scylla and District admits women members. It took a very stormy A.G.M. to achieve this, but the treasurer carried the day.
'We're a bit short this year, and you can always bully women into paying the sub.,' he said. 'After all, they need only use the facilities once a week. We can make that a rule.'
'They'll be more nuisance than they're worth,' said someone, but this was only partly true. The club, in fact, had shown a certain amount of enlightenment and good sense in admitting women to membership, but this was allied, perhaps, to an equal lack of caution, for the ladies (God bless them!) were apt to be both critical and partisan. In addition, those ladies who joined the Scylla and District proved to be a vociferous, enthusiastic body, sometimes (alas!) divided among themselves, as when Aileen Crumb got a flyer over Doreen Dodds and beat her by three yards in the two-twenty-('Crumb's got the crust of Old Nick, and, of course, the starter was her uncle,' ran the ugly comment of the Dodds' supporters)-and there were other incidents which divided the ladies into two camps. Still, taken on the whole, they were as close-knit a body as the Amazons, although following a somewhat different ideology, as they warred only on other women and never attempted to tackle Theseus and his men.
All the same, there had always been one exception to that which, otherwise, was their fixed rule. When lined up for the high hurdles or the short sprint, they were adept at not quite beating the gun, and so were the terror of the timid, red-blazered starter.
'Still,' said Corinna May to her fellow-hurdler and second string, Dulcie Cobham, 'it takes the males to spike each other on the bends, and, personally-and I have it for a fact because he told me so himself-I happen to know that poor old Bert was spiked, yes, and jostled, too, by that pot-bellied so-and-so in the two miles this afternoon. Bert could of won, and he certainly did ought to have done, and, if he had, he'd of stood a good chance of being picked for the county at the White City British Games, Whitsun. It was a damn' shame!'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Dulcie, who was a fair-minded girl except where her own boy friend was concerned. 'It's easy enough to jostle and even spike people without really meaning to. I mean, you've got to do the best you can for yourself, haven't you? Anyway, they ought to start the distance races further back up the straight, and then there wouldn't be that fight for the inside place at the first bend.'
'All the same,' said Corinna, sticking to her guns, (for she was hoping to go steady with Albert when, at the age of twenty, she retired from the track), 'poor old Bert was jostled and he was spiked, and it was done by that bitchy Lord Haw-Haw that everybody hates and despises. He never does run fair. I don't know why we still have fixtures with that bloody lot, I don't really!'
'Oh, I don't know. They've got some quite good runners,' said Dulcie, biting back her opinion of Albert Colnbrook's own shady mannerisms on bends screened by water-jump hedges. 'Quite good runners,' she repeated.
'Oh, you!' exclaimed Bert's girl friend, exasperated, but, so far, unwilling to quarrel, since she was expecting Dulcie to act as pace-maker over the first two hurdles in the inter-club competition. 'You'd stick up for Satan if he was a long-distance runner!'
'Well, anyhow, he'd probably burn up the opposition,' retorted Dulcie, who had been brought up on the Bible.
Corinna's sentiments (or something remarkably like them) were being expressed in a men's dressing-room some weeks later.
'Bumping and boring are a recognised part of their technique on the track, and one expects this and makes allowances. And, of course, some of those blighters know exactly what to do behind the little hedge at the water-jump. But when it comes to cross-country running and an ugly great lout offers to put a fist in your face because, in jumping a brook just ahead of him (and that, of course, was what he couldn't stand), you happen to throw a bit of soft mud in his eye, well, give me Heton and 'Arrer, or even Ox and Tab. Why, the poisonous bounder actually threatened to murder me!' complained a young man named Richardson.
'What did you do?' asked his audience, towelling themselves vigorously and indicating that they were not particularly stirred by these disclosures.
'Me? Well, I said, "Sorry, old boy. See you later for a drink." You have to play soft with these yobs, and the match was only a friendly. But would he play ball? No.'
'So then?' asked someone, in a bored tone.
'He took it upon himself to tell me how I was raised and reared.'
'And you?' asked Mr Bones, still unenthusiastic.
'I slapped him in the kisser and told him I would remember him in my will.'
'Meaning you'd twist his head off?' The question came from a dried-and-dressed as he parted his hair.
'Well, actually, he fell in the brook, so I cantered lightly on, but took jolly good care I didn't sit next to him at that rather decent supper they gave us, if you noticed.'