Adders on the Heath (19 page)

Charlotte Bronte-
Shirley

'Cross-country running?' said Dame Beatrice. 'That fits in very nicely, as you say, with what we already know. Did you manage to obtain details?'

'Not so that you'd notice. I rang up the secretary of the Scylla and District. He had just got home for his lunch, so he wasn't too pleased at being kept from it. I put it to him as you'd told me to, and that's as much as I gleaned. Oh, and I made an appointment for you with Miss Calne. How can she help?'

'I cannot tell at present, but I hope that my visit to her will open up a wide field.'

'I wish it would open up a
clear
field,' said Richardson. 'I'm sick of being the Superintendent's stool-pigeon.'

'Be of good cheer,' said Denis. 'If I do not misinterpret the smug leer of my great-aunt's countenance, you are in the clear already. What about it, great-aunt?'

Dame Beatrice wagged her head, but would not commit herself.

'Do I come with you to see Miss Calne? I fixed four o'clock for your interview,' said Laura.

'No, you won't want another session of waiting in the car. If I judge Miss Calne aright, I shall most certainly be invited to take tea with her.'

'Then I'll go to the riding-stables and hire a hack, when I've seen you off.'

'No, no, please do not wait. Away you go! It is no distance, as you know, to Miss Calne's house from here, so there will be a long time to wait before I go, and if you stay here with me you will miss the best of the afternoon.'

So off went Laura to hire a horse and, the two young men having been bidden to go away and play golf, Dame Beatrice was left alone. She wondered whether her visit to Miss Calne would prove abortive. If so, there remained the club secretary, who would be certain to have the information she required. She preferred, however, to deal with the trustworthy ex-schoolmistress rather than with a young man who could hardly be expected to keep to himself that which she would have to disclose to him (by inference, even if not in so many words). There was another reason, too, for choosing Miss Calne. Her house faced an open common.

She decided to walk, as the distance to be covered was short and the late September afternoon was clement. She arrived punctually at four o'clock. Roses were still blooming in Miss Calne's small garden, and as Dame Beatrice reached the door, which was at the side of the house, her hostess appeared, holding a bouquet of the aromatic blooms.

'I thought that, as you are staying in the hotel, you might like a few flowers for your room. I've vases I can lend you,' she said, when the greetings were over. 'I'll just put these into water to keep them quite fresh, and then we'll have our tea and (I do hope) a nice long gossip.'

They went into the house and Dame Beatrice was given an armchair and a new magazine while Miss Calne busied herself in the kitchen putting the roses into water and making the tea.

'Now,' said Miss Calne, when two kinds of bread and butter, a plate of scones, some home-made jam, meat paste, some chocolate biscuits and two kinds of cake were on the table, 'what can I do for you, Dame Beatrice?'

'I am not at all certain that you can do anything,' said Dame Beatrice, accepting a slice of brown bread and butter, 'but you
may
be able to help me. Do you happen to know the name of your predecessor?'

'As president of the Scylla and District Club? Yes, of course I do. He was a Mr Sebastian Campden-Towne and he lives in that big house on the borders of the heath. You can't see the house from here because the trees along that road leading up to the common hide it, but it is over there.' She gestured.

'I have seen the house,' said Dame Beatrice, 'and I was hoping that you would give me Mr Towne's full name.'

'Yes, the club members always called him plain Mr Towne. It reminded me of the Headmaster at my last school. A new member of staff turned up with the double-barrelled name of Finlay-Hopkinson, but the Headmaster ruled, "Either Finlay or Hopkinson, young fellow, but not
both
, in
my
school!" I don't really blame him.'

Dame Beatrice cackled.

'He probably saved the young man from a certain amount of impudence from the boys,' she remarked.

'But why, if I may ask, does Mr Towne come into the picture?' asked Miss Calne.

'Is he a friend of yours? Do you entertain kindly thoughts concerning him?'

'I don't really know a great deal about him. He is an arrogant, self-made man and thinks school-teachers very small beer.'

'Then I will tell you all.' This she proceeded to do. Miss Calne was enthralled and delighted. Without being asked, she promised to keep secret the disclosures.

'I feel most honoured,' she said, 'to be the recipient of these confidences, Dame Beatrice, and, for what it's worth, (probably very little), I can tell you something else. From my front windows, as you can see, I get a very good view of our Lawn.'

'This part of the common, you mean?'

'Oh, no, Dame Beatrice! This kind of open country is known as a Lawn. This one is Gurkha Lawn, so known because Gurkhas were encamped on it during the war. There was an attempt, some time back, to re-name it, but the local people fought for the name and won. I was canvassed and I voted to retain it. The Gurkhas are such gallant little men.'

'And is Ghurkha Lawn germane to the issue?'

'I don't really know, but the men you mentioned-Colnbrook and Bunt, you know-trained on it and were always spying out the lie of the land through field-glasses.'

'Interesting. Did they appear to be looking at anything else, besides the lie of the land?'

'Oh, yes, of course. They studied the ponies, but, then, anybody would, you know. They're so picturesque and charming.'

Dame Beatrice left at five o'clock and returned to the hotel to find Laura enjoying a late but very substantial tea.

'Oh, hullo, Mrs Croc, dear,' said her secretary. 'Did you have a good time? I'll ring for some tea for you.'

'I had a very beautiful tea at Miss Calne's,' said Dame Beatrice, 'and that means I had a good time. Besides, Miss Calne, having had, I suppose, a certain training in such matters, is an observant and reliable witness. How did you enjoy your afternoon?'

'Very much indeed. Having collected the horse, I rode eastward towards Beaulieu and turned off soon after I had passed that little pond with the geese and things. You know, I still can't make head or tail of the local geography. I was certain I was headed towards Lymington, but, by the time I thought of branching off again, I realised that I was coming back on to the common here.'

'Yes, the roads make the shape of a letter Y.'

'Then the maps are wrong! Never mind. I went along on the ambling nag (as somebody says somewhere) until I came to a path which led up and down, and here and there, but always giving a view that I could recognise.'

'Yes?'

'Well, I didn't recognise personages by name, so to speak, but I did spot some lassies all got up regardless, in vests and running shorts, out for a training spin.'

'Indeed?'

'So I rode over, always anxious to push along any kind of physical effort, and stopped to chat with them.'

'I see. And the upshot?'

'Well, a bit of evidence which may lend colour to our view.'

'This is most interesting. I hesitate to prophesy, but are you not suggesting that there has been an attempt to recruit successors to Mr Colnbrook and Mr Bunt?'

'I don't know how you knew, but that's a fact. Shall I tell you all?'

'Please do. So far, all I know of the Scylla and District club is what I have learned from Miss Calne, Mrs Bath and from the secretary and the unhelpful doer of good works-all this apart from what Mr Richardson has told us, of course. How did you know that these girls were members?'

'Well, I didn't, but I thought it was worthwhile to take a chance, so I rode athwart their tracks, as I could see they were slowing down, and asked the way to Boldre. I then offered them cigarettes and we fell into conversation. The subject of the murders, sponsored by me, came up, and then we all adjourned to the local, less than a mile away. To show goodwill, I dismounted and trotted beside the nag while they spread out and jogged alongside. All girls together, if you take my point.'

'You have the enviable gifts of friendliness and tact, dear child.'

'Take it as read. When we got to the pub it was too early, of course, for drinks, but the landlady was awfully good and let us into her own part of the house for coffee and lots of beef, cheese, sardine, tomato and ham sandwiches, so we had those and then some hard-boiled eggs and some pickled onions.'

'Good heavens, child!'

'Oh, we enjoyed them, you know. Then it was-after we'd had the pickled pork and piccalilli-that I began to get the gen.'

'It is not often,' said Dame Beatrice, 'that I feel faint but pursuing. Pray go on.'

'Stay with me. The pursuit won't take all that long. Anyway, to retrieve our
mouflons
-for I feel we've gone over the top and are a very long way from the common or garden sheep-what I learned was as follows. Far from Colnbrook and Bunt being rivals, they were very good friends and were associated in what Dulcie-couldn't get at any of their surnames, but I don't suppose that matters-called "a sort of a fiddle, only nothing really to do with the club." What do you make of that?'

'Just what I made of it before.'

'Yes. Well, I tried to winkle out some more information, but, although the girls were willing to be co-opted, I don't think they knew very much. They spoke of one Corinna, Dulcie's particular team-mate. They're the first-and-second string hurdlers. Dulcie was inclined to be disparaging about Corinna. Said she had tried hard to be Colnbrook's "steady" and had pretended to be cut up when she heard about his death.'

'But Dulcie did not believe this?'

'Quite definitely did not. Said she thought Corinna was really a bit scared of Colnbrook, whom Dulcie diagnosed as a nasty bit of work, and that Corinna was more relieved than distressed when she heard he was dead.'

'What did the other girls think?'

'Oh, they agreed with her. Anyhow, those mostly concerned were a couple of club milers named Judy and Syl. They had been what they called "approached."'

'By whom? Did they say?'

'Well, they giggled a good bit and said "no names, no pack-drill" and that was about as much as I could get out of them. A man was involved-that was obvious-but when girls begin going all girlish there's not a lot one can do. I didn't like to suggest any names myself. One needs to be careful about giving that sort of lead. One other thing did come out. There was good money to be won if they fell in with this proposition-whatever it was-and we can guess-but they all agreed that "a fiddle wasn't really worth it." I gathered they meant it might endanger their amateur status, and I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be true. There's almost nothing you do in athletics that
doesn't
endanger your amateur status. An awful lot of rot really.'

'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.'