The surface was loose and very rough, but soon he realised that by leaving its verge and making passage through a gap in the wayside gorse, he could run parallel to the road on the adjacent common. He crossed over and soon his shoes were sodden with dew.
The road itself led into magnificent woods. He left the common and followed the stony track over a rough plank bridge, and then across another, beneath which the main stream ran. He paused on this second bridge and leaned on the parapet. The water below the left-hand side of the bridge ran deep and widened out into a sizeable pool. Richardson marked the pool as a possible swimming place, and then walked on. The woodland was open, and displayed, in all their grey-boled grandeur, magnificent beeches and several giant oaks. There also were holly trees whose girth gave a clue to their antiquity, and there were some ancient thorn trees on which the berries were bright in their autumn scarlet. Blackberries were ripe, or ripening, and every wild rose bush had its smooth, red, ovular fruits.
Richardson followed the path along ruts made by foresters' carts and the indentations of the caterpillar wheels of tractors. He skirted muddy pools which rarely dried up all the year, and, pursuing his way, disturbed the sudden birds and the darting grey squirrels. At last he came to the fringe of the wood and to such a watery quagmire that his progress that way was halted. Beyond him, and on either side of the path, was a heather-covered, bracken-fronded common with never a path or road. He looked at his watch. It was more than time to turn back if he wanted breakfast.
He retraced his steps-no hardship in this undiscovered country. The wood, except for landmarks in the form of one or two fine beeches which he had noted on his outward journey, looked completely different when traversed in the opposite direction. He regained the bridges and the road, and then took a narrow, built-up path (which a formidable notice prohibited equestrians from using) and, by brisk walking, came, as he had anticipated, on to the so-called lawn-really a part of the common-opposite the hotel. He crossed a couple of plank bridges over small and sluggish streams, and struck out across the grass. He arrived rather muddy, but in great spirits and extremely hungry for his breakfast, at just after nine o'clock.
The defection of Denis, who was now not due to arrive until Monday morning, had made him consider how best he might employ the Saturday and the Sunday. He thought that, on these days, the quiet walks and excursions which he had so much enjoyed on the Thursday and Friday might be made less solitary by the invasion of week-end parties or by the local people who had Saturday and Sunday free. By the time breakfast was over he had made up his mind what to do. He would take a train to the second station down the line and from there follow his nose. There was a manor house marked on the map. He thought he might take a look at it.
He looked up a train in the A.B.C. lent to him at the hotel, and set off, inconspicuously dressed in grey worsted trousers and a green-mixture tweed jacket, for the station. The train came in to time, but nobody, later on, came forward to declare that he had boarded it, and at the station where he alighted there was not a ticket-collector or a porter to be seen. Not knowing what to do with his ticket, and unwilling to hang about, he left it on the ledge of the ticket office and walked out into the sunshine.
He had sheets 179 and 180 of the one-inch Ordnance Survey, but the roads proved to be adequately signposted and a walk of about three miles brought him to cross-roads in the middle of a large, flourishing, remarkably uninteresting village. At this point the map helped him, and he tramped along a country road, past fields, until he came to the manor house. Regrettably, but in accordance, he supposed, with modern usage, the mansion had been turned into flats. Cars stood about in what had been the entrance to the stables, and in the forecourt of the once pleasant old country house were a couple of large caravans.
There was nothing for it but to tramp onwards towards lunch and the coast. He crossed the main Lymington road, dropped southwards and then, still following the signposts and helped again by the map, he took a secondary road south-east until he came to cliffs and the sea. There was a solitary hotel on the cliff-top. He went in, drank beer and had lunch.
After lunch he strolled for an hour along the cliff-top; later he descended a primitive wooden stairway to the beach. He changed, behind a chunk of fallen cliff, into the swimming trunks he had brought, stayed in the smooth sea for twenty minutes or so, dried himself and dressed and, foreswearing tea for once, caught the bus into Lymington. Here he purchased two pairs of woollen socks and, at another shop (where, afterwards, they remembered him), he bought a pair of gumboots.
After that he waited for and boarded another bus which took him back to the station from which he had set out. Half an hour later he was at dinner in the hotel. He felt relaxed but not tired, treated himself to a half-bottle of claret and was in no hurry to get back to camp. He had coffee and a liqueur, smoked a couple of cigarettes and finally left at a quarter to nine.
The night was clear and fine and the moon was up, but the temperature had dropped considerably with the coming on of the dark, so Richardson stepped out briskly, and, in spite of having to carry the heavy gumboots as well as his bathing trunks and towel, took ten minutes' less time than usual. His tent glimmered faintly ahead. The time was approximately twenty-five minutes to ten.
He switched on his torch, tossed the gumboots on the ground beside the waterproof pack which contained most of his belongings, unstrapped the knapsack from his shoulders and pulled out the damp trunks and towel. Then he turned the torchlight on to the flap of the tent to light up the narrow entrance.
'Hello!' he thought. 'I've had a visitor. Wonder whether anything's missing? Have to wait until morning. Can't check everything now. Lucky I didn't leave any spare cash about. Messy blighter, whoever he was!'
The marks of muddy fingers were visible on the tent-flap. Richardson had studied them for a minute or so before another thought came to him. The visitor, finding the tent unoccupied, might have decided that it would shelter him for the night. In this case, he most probably would be a tramp.
Richardson had encountered tramps before. As a class he did not care for them. He switched off his torch, lay with his ear against the tent flap and listened. The first thing that struck him was that there was no sound of breathing, or of anything else, coming from the interior of the tent. The second point to impinge upon his conscious mind was that the dew on the heath was heavy and that his feet were extremely wet.
With these considerations in mind, he switched on the torch again, drew aside the tent-flap and crawled in. His bed was occupied. On top of groundsheet, rubber mattress and sleeping-bag lay a man. There had been no sound of breathing because the man was dead.
It did not take Richardson long to ascertain this. At first, on hands and knees, he played his torch over the features and clothing of the corpse. Then he backed out again while he considered how best to tackle the problem which confronted him.
It was not an easy thing to do, but he forced himself to enter the tent again. He felt the man's hands and stared, in the torchlight, at the rigid, slug-white face. He groped inside the man's shirt for his heartbeats, but there were none. Then, with a sense of repugnance, but also from a sense of duty, he put his mouth against the mouth of the corpse and breathed deeply, in and out, against the clenched teeth and parted lips.
All was in vain. At last, in an effort of resuscitation which was not far removed from an inexperienced person's panic in the face of unexpected, unexplained death, he thumped the corpse over the heart with a pounding fist and shouted,