River of Darkness (3 page)

Boyce was waiting for them when they came out on to the terrace again. The sun was lower in the sky, the shadows lengthening. 'Mr Sinclair rang from Guildford,' he told Madden. 'He'll be here soon.' 'You can start the men searching the gardens.' The inspector lit a cigarette. 'But stay out of the woods for now.' Boyce wondered what Madden had made of the shambles inside the house. He searched in vain for any hint in the dark, withdrawn eyes. 'You don't think they came that way, do you?' The inspector shrugged. 'If they drove in the front gates, why come round to this side to break in? They could have knocked on the door.' To Billy, he said, 'Find that village bobby - what's his name? Stackpole?' Billy returned in a few minutes with a tall, moustached constable. Madden greeted him. 'Do you know these woods?' he asked. 'Well enough, sir.' Stackpole eyed him warily. Word had spread about the Scotland Yard inspector who'd told the Lord Lieutenant where to get off. 'Come along, then. You too, Styles.' A gravel path through the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden led to a wooden gate. On the other side of the wall they found a uniformed constable patrolling a small expanse of meadow grass bordering a shallow stream. He was a young man, not much older than Billy himself, and with similiar colouring - fair skin and reddish hair. His face was flushed by hours spent in the broiling sun. 'Excuse me, sir.' He hurried over to them. 'What is it, Constable?' Madden had paused to take off his hat and jacket and hang them on the gate. When he rolled up his sleeves Billy saw a random pattern of scars spread over his forearm the size and shape of sixpences. 'A footprint, sir. Down by the stream. I noticed it earlier.' 'Show me.' The constable led the way down the gently sloping bank. He pointed. 'There, sir, next to the steppingstones. Coming this way.' The stream, diminished by weeks of drought, had shrunk to half its normal size. The earlier course of the water was marked by a surface of smooth dried mud. It was on this that the faint imprint of a footmark showed beside one of a line of flat stones crossing the stream. Madden nodded his approval. 'Well spotted, Constable.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Go up to the house. My compliments to Mr Boyce and ask him to send a couple of men down here with some plaster-of-paris. Tell him the footprint's shallow but well defined and if they're careful they should get a good cast of it.' 'Right away, sir.' The constable set off briskly. Madden went down on his haunches. Stackpole joined him, squinting at the stream bed. 'He might have missed his footing, sir. Coming across last evening, just as it was getting dark.' 'Big man.' The inspector frowned. 'Size eleven, I should say. That looks like a boot mark.' Stackpole pursed his lips. "Course, it could be anyone's.' Billy felt the prick of envy. First the young constable. Now the village bobby! Madden led them across the stepping-stones to the opposite bank. Almost at once they were in the wood, moving uphill through a stand of saplings that ended when they came to the tall beeches. A sea of fern and brush covered the ground on either side of the path, which was well used and easy to follow. The air was hot and still. 'Do the villagers come up here often?' Madden spoke over his shoulder. 'A fair bit, sir.' Stackpole kept pace with the inspector's long stride. 'Time was when the whole hanger was a shoot, but that was before the war. Now his lordship only has two keepers and they don't come over this way, except once in a while.' Panting at the rear, trying to keep up with them, Billy had to watch for branches whipping back in his face. When he caught the cuff of his jacket in a bramble thicket, the constable paused to help disentangle him. He was grinning under his helmet. 'City boy,' he whispered. Billy flushed a deeper red. He saw that Madden was watching them from above, hands on hips. The hill steepened as they neared the top of the ridge. Madden stopped. He sniffed the air. 'Constable?' 'Yes, sir. I smell it. . .' Stackpole cast about him with narrowed eyes. Billy caught a whiff of something. They were in the middle of a steeply sloping forest of pines. The carpet of ferns stretched unbroken on either side of them. 'Can't tell which way the wind's blowing,' the constable complained. 'Quiet!' Madden spoke sharply. They stood in silence. Billy heard a low rustle in the undergrowth away to their left. Madden picked up a stick and threw it. A raucous cry broke the stillness, followed by the flapping of black wings as a pair of crows rose from the ground and flew off, threading a path through the lofty pines. Madden and Stackpole looked at each other. 'Let's take a look,' the inspector said. Madden left the path and began wading through the waist-high ferns. Keeping his eye fixed on the spot where the crows had appeared, he worked his way up and across the slope. Stackpole stayed close behind. Billy, struggling in the rear as before, lost his footing on the steep slope and had to grab at a root to keep himself from sliding down. His hat fell off. He caught it with his other hand. For a moment he lay spreadeagled like a starfish on the hillside. The others paused and looked back. 'It's all right, sir,' Billy gasped. 'I'm coming.' He could see Stackpole chuckling. By the time he caught up with them they had stopped and were standing with their backs to him looking down. Madden held out a hand to check Billy's puffing uphill progress. The young constable saw they were at the edge of an area where the undergrowth had been flattened. The body of a small white dog lay on the ground in front of them. Beyond it was the corpse of a man, clad in a soiled cloth coat. He lay on his back with his head pointing down the slope. His hands, clutching at his chest, had torn apart his blood-soaked shirt. Where his eyes had been there were only pits. Billy blenched at the sight of the sockets, filled with congealed blood. 'Do you know him, Constable?' Madden's tone was detached. 'Yes, sir.' Stackpole, too, had paled. 'Name of Wiggins. James Wiggins. He's from the village.' 'What would he be doing up here?' 'Poaching, most likely.' The constable mopped his brow. 'That coat of his has got the deepest pockets in the county. Like as not we'll find a bird in one of them. Must have come across here from his lordship's shoot to dodge the keepers.' He pointed a finger at the dog. 'That's Betsy, Jimmy's bitch. Wonderful nose for a pheasant, or so Jimmy always said.' 'You've had dealings with him?' 'You could say that.' Stackpole grunted. 'He's been up before the bench. But not nearly as often as he should have. Hard man to lay a hand on.' The constable bit his lip. 'Poor Jimmy. I always said he'd come to a bad end.' Madden was peering at the ground in front of them. Something had caught his eye. He bent down and slipped his hand into the trampled ferns, then withdrew it holding a cigarette stub delicately between his fingertips. He held it up to the light. 'Three Castles. One of his?' 'Not likely. Pipe and a tin of Navy Cut - that was Jimmy's style.' Stackpole's brow was knotted in a frown. 'Sir, I don't see how this could have happened.' Madden, occupied with folding the stub into a handkerchief, glanced at him questioningly. 'I just can't see anyone creeping up on Jimmy. You wouldn't have got within twenty feet of him. If he didn't spot you, the bitch would have.' Madden put the handkerchief carefully into his trouser pocket. He said, 'I think it was the other way round.' 'Sir?' The inspector turned so that he was facing down the slope. The others followed the direction of his glance. Melling Lodge lay directly below them, clearly visible through a gap in the pine forest. Billy could make out a group of men in plain clothes standing on the terrace. A line of blue uniforms moved slowly across the sunlit lawn. 'I think whoever killed them was sitting here, waiting for dark.' Stackpole nodded slowly, comprehending. 'Betsy would have picked up their scent,' he said. 'Come looking to see who it was.' He touched the small body with the toe of his boot. A thin trickle of blood had dried on the white jaw. 'When she was stabbed she must have squealed, kicked up a racket, and Jimmy came running.' Madden was frowning. 'I didn't see a dog at the lodge,' he said. 'Did the Fletchers have one?' 'Yes, sir, Rufus. An old Labrador. But he died not long ago.' Leaving Billy posted by the body, Madden and the constable returned to the path. The inspector wanted to climb to the top of the ridge. It took only a few minutes, the pines thinning out as they scaled the stony crest. On the other side was a vista of farms and woodland stretching for miles. In the distance, hazy in the afternoon light, they could just make out the blurred contours of the South Downs. Not far from the base of the ridge a cluster of cottages stood with a square church tower in the middle. 'That's Oakley, sir,' Stackpole said, without prompting. 'I was born there.' Madden pointed to a narrow track that led from the hamlet through fields of ripening corn to the edge of the woods beneath them. 'Could you get a car along there?' The constable shook his head. 'Tractor, maybe. Car springs wouldn't take the ruts.' They went back down the path and crossed the slope to where Billy was standing by Wiggins's body. Madden paused for only a moment. 'Stay off the flattened area,' he told the young constable. 'It needs to be searched. I'll be sending some men up.' Billy felt his cup of bitterness brim over. The inspector had finally found something he was fit for. To stand watch over a body until others came to do the police work.

'Isn't there something I can do, sir?' 'Yes, keep the crows off him,' Madden called back as he hastened away. 'They go for the eyes.' Stackpole clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically as he went by. 'Not yours, lad,' he said, with a wink.

Chief Inspector Sinclair drew Madden aside, leading him down the shallow steps from the terrace on to the now deserted lawn. They made an oddly contrasting pair: Madden, tall and rumpled, with his jacket slung over his shoulder; Sinclair, slight and no more than medium height, almost the dandy in his tailored pinstripe suit and soft felt hat. They stood close together, casting a single shadow in the dying sunlight. 'A question. Have we any idea what we're dealing with here?' The chief inspector's restless glance took in the squad of uniformed police who had moved off the grass and were searching the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. At Madden's behest he had just dispatched two CID sergeants to deal with the body in the woods. 'An armed gang, I'm told, a robbery gone wrong.' He nodded towards the terrace where Boyce and Chief Inspector Norris stood watching them. 'In that case, perhaps someone would explain to me why there's stuff in the house in plain view worth more than what was taken. Did you see the china in the drawing-room? And that brace of Purdeys on the gun rack? Good of them not to loot the place, wouldn't you say? Especially since they had all night to do it.' Angus Sinclair's consonants had the precision of cut glass. A native of Aberdeen, he'd been a policeman for more than thirty years. 'Your thoughts, John?' Madden lit a cigarette before replying. Sinclair studied his face. He noted familiar signs of strain and deep-seated fatigue in the dark, shadowed eyes. They were aspects of Madden he had come to recognize, souvenirs of the war, as permanent and unalterable as the scar on his forehead. 'Starting with the door, sir,' Madden's deep voice rose little above a murmur, 'why break it down? It wasn't locked. Then the victims' hands and arms. Apart from Mrs Fletcher, they were all killed the same way, but there isn't a cut or scratch on any of them.' 'Your point?' Sinclair cocked his head attentively. 'Whoever did this was in a hurry. The victims had no time to react or defend themselves. I think those downstairs were all dead within seconds of the door being smashed in.' 'Which means the killings were deliberate. That was the intention from the outset.' The chief inspector paused, reflecting on what he had said. 'So much for a robbery gone wrong! Anything else?' 'The weapon, sir. It was unusual. No injuries to the hands and arms, as I said. And then there's Colonel Fletcher, killed from behind in that way.' 'Would you care to be more specific?' Sinclair frowned. 'Have you any idea what it was?' Madden shrugged. 'I'd rather hear what the pathologist says. I don't want to put ideas in his head.' 'Or mine?' The chief inspector raised an eyebrow. 'But as regards Colonel Fletcher, I take your meaning. You'd think he would have faced his attacker. Why did he turn and run?' 'He might have been trying for one of the guns in the study.' 'Even so, an old soldier . . . You'd expect him to take on a man with a knife. If it was a knife . . .' Sinclair grimaced. 'An armed gang? Could they be right?' He gestured towards the terrace. Madden shook his head. 'I think it was one man,' he said. The chief inspector looked hard at him. 'I was hoping you wouldn't say that,' he admitted. Madden shrugged. 'I have the same feeling.' Sinclair's gaze shifted to the house. 'It's got the smell of madness about it. That's one man's work. But we have to be sure. What about the woman upstairs, Mrs Fletcher? There could have been two of them.' Again Madden shook his head. 'He broke the door down and killed the maid in the drawing-room, then went for Colonel Fletcher. The colonel tried to reach the study -- where the guns were - but he only got as far as the doorway before he was caught from behind. As for the woman in the kitchen, the nanny, I doubt she even knew what was happening. You can see the surprise in her face.' While Madden was speaking Sinclair had taken a briar pipe from his pocket. He stood now, tapping the empty bowl in the palm of his hand. 'Aye, but that still doesn't explain Mrs Fletcher. She wasn't killed like the others.' 'I think she heard the disturbance and came down the stairs. That's where they met. Did you notice the pearls in the carpet?' The chief inspector nodded. 'From a bracelet, I'd say. It must have broken. I think he seized her there and dragged her upstairs to the bedroom. Tell the pathologist to look for bruises on the wrists and arms.' Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. 'If you're right, then since he didn't kill her on the stairs, he must have had something else in mind. Rape, by the look of it. Poor woman. Well, we'll know soon enough.' He slipped the pipe back into his pocket. 'That would explain why she wasn't stabbed. He wanted her alive. But what did he use to kill her with?' 'A razor, I'd say.' 'Yes, but whose? The colonel's? Or did he bring his own?' The chief inspector expelled his breath in another long sigh. He watched as a plain-clothes detective stepped over the broken door frame to deposit a white envelope in a numbered cardboard box, one of four standing in a row on the terrace. Close by was a leather holdall, Sinclair's 'black bag', containing equipment he deemed necessary for a murder investigation: gloves, tweezers, bottles, envelopes. The new scientific approach to crime detection was slowly gaining ground, though not without meeting resistance. Juries remained suspicious of forensic evidence. Even judges were inclined to give it little weight in their summings-up. 'I've sent for the mortuary wagon.' Sinclair was speaking again. 'We'll do the post-mortems in Guildford tonight, as many as we can. I want to run the investigation from down here, at least in the early stages. Bring a bag when you come tomorrow. You'll be sleeping in the pub. 'Meantime, there's that little girl to think about. Get over to Dr Blackwell's house, would you, John? Find out if the child saw anything. And arrange to have her moved to hospital right away. We can take the doctor's statement tomorrow. I must get back.' He glanced up at the house again. 'I want to keep an eye on that pathologist. He's new to me. I asked for the sainted Spilsbury, but he wasn't available. On holiday in the Scilly Isles, if you please! I had to take one of his assistants at St Mary's.' As he spoke, photographer's flash powder, like sheet lightning, lit up a window. 'All this and the Lord Lieutenant, too!' 'You met him, did you?' Madden donned his jacket. 'He was leaving when I arrived. With inky fingers and a foul disposition. He said you were impertinent. No, damned impertinent.' 'He went inside the house -- did he tell you that?' Sinclair was amused. 'You are aware, are you not, that he's head of the magistracy and chief executive for the county of Surrey? Take care, John. That type likes to make trouble.' Madden scowled. 'I've had a bellyful of that type.' 'Then again, someone stepped in that pool of blood in the study. I might send an officer after him to look at the sole of his shoe. That should spoil his supper.' Madden's glance, straying to the bottom of the garden, was arrested by the sight of Styles sitting on a bench at the edge of the lawn. The constable's red hair was plastered to his sunburned forehead. He was picking burrs from his socks. 'Aye, I'm sorry about that.' Sinclair had followed the direction of his gaze. 'I shouldn't have landed you with a green one. There was no one else on hand this morning. I'll have him replaced tomorrow.' Madden shook his head. A smile touched his lips. 'No, leave him,' he said. 'He'll do.'