Adders on the Heath Read Online Free PDF Page B

suppose I'll need you again, sir, until the inquest.'
    'So I'm by no means out of the wood!'
    'Come, sir, there's not the slightest need for alarm. Even if we are compelled to think of this as foul play, you must remember that, so long as a man is innocent, he has nothing to fear from the police.'
    'Oh? What about Timothy Thingummy?'
    'That, sir,' said the Superintendent, 'was in London. We don't make mistakes in these parts. We can't afford to. We get little experience of murders around here. They have rarity value, if you take me, and we don't want to waste what is rare, now do we? Besides, sir, it is not at all conclusive that a mistake was made in the particular case which you cite. All the same, we shall exercise every care, you may be sure.'
    'I jolly well hope so!'
    The Superintendent looked concerned.
    'You seem to be in a jumpy state, sir. Do you feel quite well?'
    'Yes, of course, but I'm not used to finding corpses in my tent.'
    There has to be a first time for everything, sir. Now, not to worry. You're quite sure you didn't know the dead man?'
    'Good heavens, of course I didn't! What next?'
    'We have to wait on Providence to learn that, sir. Well, we shall be seeing you at the inquest.'
    On this (to Richardson) sinister note they parted.
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    WAITING FOR DENISOT
     
    'When you want to find out what day it is, you ask yourself what day it was yesterday, and then what day it will be tomorrow. Then you will know what today is, because it is the day that comes between.'
    Hal Eyre- Betty and the Bears
     
    Richardson caught the bus and went back to the New Forest Hunt Hotel. The bar, on a Sunday, was not open until twelve, so, as he had time to kill, he decided to take a walk. There were still his tent and his gear at his camp on the heath, so he made that, the heath, his objective. He was seriously worried.
    By that time, on a fine Sunday morning, there were a number of cars on the road and on the common. There were also a number of people on horseback. He walked at a moderate pace but, even so, he soon passed a farm and what, for want of a more exact and functional name, he called the fenced-in pound, and then he reached the open common.
    Here he followed the grassy track which, for some way, ran with the gravelled road along which the police car had taken him on the previous night, then he branched off on to a causeway which ran between the gorse and the bog. He walked beside the ditch until he came to a sparse bit of woodland and the river.
    He halted on the wooden bridge and gazed down at the water. It flowed cleanly under the planking and was lost to sight, although not entirely to sound, round a bend on whose bank the bushes grew thickly. On the far side of the bridge, and a little distance downstream, were four youngish men and an older one. Two of them were carrying shot-guns. The older man wished Richardson good morning as he crossed the bridge; the others stared and then nodded. For a moment he connected them (unreasonably) with the police, but almost immediately he realised that they had no connection whatever with his experiences of the previous night, but were there to pick off the destructive grey squirrels which infested the wood.
    There had been some rain in the early hours of the morning (although, deep asleep in the Superintendent's comfortable spare bed, he had not heard it), so that the rough little up-and-down path was treacherously slippery. He skidded his way to the bend which took him across a messy little ditch on to the heath and soon spotted his tent. The police certainly had moved it on to higher ground. It was now about three hundred yards from the river. There was no one on guard over it, but a police car was stationed near the spot on which he had pitched it. He went over to the car. Before he could ask a question, he was recognised by the sergeant, who sat beside the constable-driver.
    'May I get some of my things?'
    'Quite all right to get your things, sir.'
    'And stow