River of Darkness jm-1

by Rennie Airth

  Was it something Stackpole had said?

  He reached the end of the drive and crossed the short expanse of gravel in front of the house. The portico light was out, but the door was unlocked, as promised, and he went inside, switching on the light in the entrance hall. The way to the drawing-room led through the hall and across a passage and he went there without pausing.

  The drawing-room was in darkness, but there was enough light coming from the hall to make out the various table lamps. As he began to switch them on, a reflection of the room sprang up in the wide bow window overlooking the terrace where the curtains had not been drawn. He caught sight of his own figure in the gold-framed mirror above the mantelpiece and frowned, remembering.

  Not the constable. His wife!

  It was something Mrs Stackpole had said.

  Madden opened the door to the terrace and stepped outside. The mist was thicker on this side of the house, covering the lawn and cloaking the orchard at the foot of the garden.

  He whistled and called out the dog's name twice: 'Molly! Molly!'

  No answering yelp came from the silvered blackness.

  Mist lapped at the flagstoned terrace.

  The hairs on the back of Madden's neck rose. Like other long-term survivors of the trenches he had developed an instinct for danger that some had called a sixth sense but was, in fact, a learned reaction to small events and anomalies: a flicker of light in the depths of no man's land; the thrum of a barbed-wire strand in the darkness.

  To things that were not as they should be.

  He whistled again, and this time he heard a faint whine. The noise came from close at hand — near the foot of the terrace steps, which were hidden in mist but overlapping it came another sound from behind him: the high-pitched note of the Wolseley's engine approaching down the drive towards the house.

  'Dick Wright says he's lost another pair of chickens. And they pinched some food from his kitchen, too.'

  Madden whirled and made for the door, slamming and locking it behind him, and then sprinted across the drawing-room, running for the hallway and the front door.

  Racing to head her off.

  Before he had crossed the room he heard the pounding of footsteps on the terrace and turned to see his own reflection in the bow window shatter as a body came hurtling through it, smashing wood and glass, landing on the floor beyond the window-sill and then driving onwards towards him without a pause. He had time only to register the pale, blood-streaked face and the long pole that Pike held crossways in front of his body like a barrier before the man was on him!

  Too late the inspector saw the gleam of the bayonet tipping the pole. He tried to fling himself to one side, but Pike followed the movement, and as Madden staggered backwards he made a darting, snakelike thrust, driving the blade deep into the inspector's body, then wrenching it out with a savage turn of his wrist.

  Madden collapsed to his knees with a groan and toppled over. He lay unmoving.

  Leaving her car's motor running, Helen Blackwell hurried into the house. As she ran through the lighted hallway she called to Madden: 'John, they want you back in London. That man who was burned wasn't Pike. He's not dead-'

  She came into the drawing-room and stopped. Her eyes went from the smashed window to Madden's body on the floor, seeing both in the same instant. For the space of a heartbeat she stood rooted. Paralysed by shock. Then, as she opened her mouth to cry out, a hand was clamped across her lips from behind and her arms were pinned to her side. Hot breath blasted in her ear; bristles tore at her neck.

  She knew who it was — who it must be. The knowledge came in a flash and, though terror-stricken, she fought back at once, throwing her body from side to side, trying to unbalance her assailant. Strong as he was she sensed weakness in him. His hoarse breathing bore a note of exhaustion. Mingled with the incoherent growling that came from his lips she heard grunts of pain.

  Reeling about the room, crashing into furniture, sending stools and side tables spinning, they came before the mirror over the fireplace and Helen caught a glimpse of her attacker behind her. She saw a bloodstained forehead and lips drawn back over snarling teeth. She also saw a dark stain on the upper arm of his khaki shirt. Wrenching a hand free from his clawing grip she punched her knuckles into the mark with all her strength.

  Pike let out a roar of pain and released her. But before she could react, a blow from behind sent her stumbling into the fireplace where her forehead struck the projecting ledge of the mantelpiece and she fell back, stunned, on the hearth rug, blood flowing from a deep cut above her eye.

  Snarling with pain, Pike seized her under the armpits and dragged her inert form over to the sofa. He was moaning, half crying, muttering the same words over and over: 'Sadie… oh, Sadie Blood from his forehead dripped on to her blouse.

  He pulled her hair from under her body, where it was trapped, and spread it about her shoulders.

  'Oh, Sadie He ripped the buttons of her blouse, then reached down to drag up her skirt. As he pulled it above her knees he was caught from behind by his shirt and lifted and spun around. A tremendous blow to the side of his jaw sent him staggering backwards and he tripped over one of the tumbled stools and fell flat on his back.

  'You murdering swine!'

  Stackpole stood over him in his shirtsleeves. As Pike tried to clamber to his feet, grasping at the back of an armchair, the constable struck him another clubbing blow, knocking him face down on the carpet.

  'Bastard!'

  He grasped the back of Pike's shirt in one hand and his leather belt in the other and hauled him up on to his hands and knees. As the dazed man flailed about, trying to find his bearings, Stackpole ran him across the floor and pitched him head first into a glass fronted cabinet. Glass and china shattered, spilling on to the carpet. Pike's head emerged from the cabinet dripping with blood. The constable threw his body aside.

  Breathing heavily, his face suffused with rage, he looked about him. Dr Blackwell was stirring on the sofa, raising her head, blinking blood from her eye- 'Look out!'

  Her cry made him turn quickly and he saw Pike on the floor behind him gripping a long pole with both hands. His strike was so swift Stackpole had no chance to avoid it. The tip of the bayonet caught the constable in the thigh and he stumbled to one side and fell over a chair, landing heavily on his back.

  Dazed, he saw Pike, his bloodied face twisted with pain, hauling himself to his feet. He was leaning on the pole, pushing himself upright, when all of a sudden the prop was snatched from his hands and he crashed to the floor again. The figure of Madden rose to his knees behind him. He held the pole in his hands. The inspector's front was drenched in blood.

  His face was ghastly pale.

  Pike lay groaning on his back. He seemed to have come to the end of his strength. As Stackpole clambered up he saw that Madden, too, was on his feet.

  The inspector stood swaying over the man stretched out on the floor. He lifted the bayonet-tipped pole in unsteady hands.

  'Do it, sir!' Stackpole urged him hoarsely. 'Kill him! Send the bastard to hell!'

  'John!' Dr Blackwell called to him from the sofa.

  Her voice was pleading.

  Madden held the point of the blade an inch from Pike's chest. The brown eyes met his through a mask of blood. They showed no emotion.

  'Amos Pike!' Madden's voice was faint. 'I'm placing you under arrest.'

  The eyes flared. The bloody face contorted. Before the inspector could stop him Pike reached up and seized the pole from his failing grip. With a single thrust he drove the point downwards into his own chest, impaling his body to the floor. Blood fountained from his lips. His body gave a last convulsive heave and was still.

  Madden sank to his knees and fell sideways to the floor.

  'John…' Helen Blackwell scrambled across the floor to his side. 'My darling…' She knelt beside him, tearing at his blood-soaked shirt.

  Stackpole hobbled towards them. A sudden drumming on the floor made him check. Pike's
heels beat a spasmodic tattoo on the carpet. The constable plucked the bayonet-tipped pole from his chest. He saw it was a roughly trimmed sapling. The long sword bayonet had been wired to one end. He raised it, prepared to strike again. The drumming ceased.

  'Is he dead?' Dr Blackwell didn't look up.

  'Dead as he'll ever be.'

  'Will, go to the phone. Ring Guildford hospital.

  They must send an ambulance with a nurse right away. Immediately. When you've done that, fetch my bag from the car. Hurry!'

  The constable was already on the move, half limping, half running. When he returned a few minutes later he found her in the same position, kneeling beside the inspector, flicking blood angrily from her eye, pressing a pad of silk that must have come from her underclothing to Madden's side.

  'Open my bag. You'll find a dressing inside.'

  Stackpole did as he was bid. She quickly replaced the makeshift pad. Then she took his hand in hers and held it firmly on the surgical dressing.

  'Keep it like that. Don't press too hard. I have to fetch a bandage from upstairs. I'll only be a moment.'

  Shocked by the sight of Madden's bloody torso and ashen face, Stackpole couldn't check the words that came to his lips: 'Will he… is he going to…?'

  'No!' she said fiercely. 'He's not going to die, do you hear me?' She turned her pale, bloodstained face to his. 'We're going to keep him alive. You and I.'

  Barely aware of the pain from his injured leg, the constable knelt beside Madden's body, holding his hand steady on the dressing. The patter of running footsteps sounded overhead. He let his gaze wander about the room. Despite the shambles that met his eye — Pike's body lying stark not a foot away, the smashed glass and furniture all around — and notwithstanding the inspector's dreadful pallor, he felt strangely comforted.

  He had known her for many years, since childhood indeed, and long since learned to trust her word and judgement.

  'He had Biggs's body in the car with him,' the chief inspector explained. 'Somehow he managed to set it behind the steering-wheel, though that can't have been easy. He was hurt himself, and the room was full of smoke. He was on the point of leaving when we arrived, you know, getting ready to make a run for it. Perhaps he thought it a good idea to take the body with him and bury it in some place where it wouldn't be found. That way he'd keep us guessing.

  Was it Biggs who had stolen the silver? Was Carver really Pike?'

  Dr Blackwell's steady glance told Sinclair she was paying close heed to what he was telling her.

  'God knows how he slipped away. We had the place surrounded, but the men were running this way and that, and the stables were on fire, too. It was all confusion. My guess is he went out through the kitchen and across the stableyard.

  'But how he survived at all is the real mystery. He drove flat out into the side of the house. The pathologist who examined his body found three cracked ribs and injuries to his head. Plus he had a revolver bullet in his arm. The man had incredible strength and endurance.'

  How did he get to Highfield?" Dr Blackwell's gaze shifted to the white-painted bedstead on the other side of the hospital room. Sinclair noted that her eyes seldom left Madden for long. The inspector was deeply asleep.

  'A farmer who lived a few miles from Mrs Aylward's house reported his car stolen during the night. It was found abandoned in a wood near Godalming ten days ago. He must have come the rest of the way on foot.

  Amazing strength. Amazing perseverance.'

  'Will Stackpole says he was stealing food over on the Oakley side of the hanger. A farmer there reported some minor thefts.' Dr Blackwell's gaze returned to the chief inspector.

  'He went back to his old dugout,' Sinclair affirmed.

  'He couldn't reconstruct it, he hadn't the tools. All he had was his bayonet. But he dug a hole in the loose soil. More of an animal's burrow, really. I wonder how human he was at the end.'

  He regretted his words at once and looked at her quickly to gauge their effect. He could only imagine how it might feel to have been the object of so twisted and murderous a passion. But if the doctor was disturbed by the thought she gave no sign of it. 'I realized afterwards he must have come back for me. I have the same kind of looks as Lucy Fletcher. He could have watched us both from the ridge. But what about the others? Mrs Reynolds and Mrs Merrick?'

  She seemed genuinely curious.

  'They were fair-haired, like you.' And good-looking, he almost added, but didn't wish to sound over familiar. Dr Blackwell's manner towards him had been cool. Remembering her smile from their previous encounters at Highfield, he wondered if he would see it today.

  'We were his type, then. One look and he was smitten. The fatal glance. Like Tristan and Iseult.' She spoke with bitter irony. Her gaze went again to the still figure in the bed.

  'His mother had the same colouring.'

  'His mother? Her eye kindled with renewed interest.

  'Yes, we know quite a lot about his past now. Let me finish telling you about the body first.'

  Sinclair was starting to enjoy their conversation, which hadn't seemed likely at first. During his frequent visits to Guildford and Highfield over the past fortnight he had called in at the hospital several times, only to find Madden asleep or sedated. On his last visit, a few days before, he had seen Dr Blackwell in her clothes and white doctor's jacket lying stretched out on the only other bed the ward contained, and had crept from the room.

  That afternoon he had come on her sitting in a chair beside the inspector's bed with his hand resting in hers on the white counterpane. Madden's eyes were shut. The doctor, too, was nodding, but she started awake as he entered and stood up at once, turning to face him. Sinclair was put in mind of a lioness guarding her wounded mate and he approached the bedside cautiously.

  'He's asleep. You're not to wake him."

  Her thick fair hair was tied back tightly in a ribbon, her face pale above the white doctor's coat. The cut over her eye showed an ugly red scab. He saw she had made no attempt to cover it with powder.

  Sinclair was shocked by his colleague's appearance.

  The inspector's sunken cheeks and chalky skin gave his pallid features the aspect of a death's head.

  Dr Blackwell noticed his reaction. 'I know he looks terrible,' she said. 'But he's getting better. It was mainly the loss of blood, the shock. I wasn't sure at first… I didn't know whether we could save him.

  But he's very strong…" She touched Madden's cheek and then kissed his forehead. It was as though she needed to reassure herself of his physical presence.

  'You don't know how strong,' she burst out, anger sharpening her tone.

  The chief inspector rather thought he did, but wasn't disposed to argue the point.

  'We've no idea, you or I, what men like him suffered in the war, what they endured. To see him like this now..!' Her voice broke.

  He understood then where her anger came from.

  He saw that she held him and the whole unsuffering world guilty of indifference to the inspector's long Calvary. And he accepted the justice of this injustice humbly and in silence.

  On the point of leaving, he had mentioned his disappointment at not finding Madden awake. 'We've got most of the answers now. John would be interested to hear them.'

  'Then why not tell me?' she had suggested coolly.

  It afforded the chief inspector some amusement on his train journey back to London later to reflect that it hadn't even occurred to him to demur.

  They had taken their chairs over to the window, away from the sickbed. A brisk wind was blowing outside. Golden leaves from the chestnuts lining the street batted against the window-panes. The pale autumn sunshine brought out the shadows beneath Helen Blackwell's eyes.

  Now it had shifted and lay on the polished linoleum at their feet, slowly lengthening and moving across the floor towards the sleeping figure in the white bed.

  'The Folkestone pathologist naturally examined the body we retrieved from the car. It was badly disfigure
d.

  There was little he could learn from it. But one thing bothered him. Army records gave Pike's height as a touch over six feet and his physique as muscular.

  The body seemed about two inches shorter. I say "seemed" because it was so severely burned the flesh had shrivelled, altering its natural size and, besides, it was fixed in a sitting position, making it difficult to measure accurately.'

  'And there was no possibility of checking for distinguishing marks.' The doctor's attention was fully engaged.

  'None. But in the course of his examination the pathologist had found something interesting. A key ring that must have been in the pocket of the man's clothing and which had adhered to the flesh of his leg.

  He gave it to the Folkestone police who tested the keys on the padlocks Pike had used to lock the shed where he kept his motorcycle and found they didn't fit. However, it was equally possible they were for locks at Mrs Aylward's house or in the stables, and there was no way of checking those.

  'Then one of the detectives had a fresh idea. He took a good look at the key ring itself. It was made with a shilling piece — a hole had been drilled in the coin — and he remembered that was something men returning from the war had done. The shilling was the King's shilling they were given on enlistment and they kept it as a memento.

  'Now Pike had certainly served in the war, but he'd enlisted as a professional soldier years before. Even supposing he still had his shilling, it seemed unlikely to the detective that a man like Amos Pike would have done anything so sentimental as to turn it into a key ring.' The chief inspector smiled approvingly.

  'That's what I call good detective work. Seeing past the evidence. He's a man called Booth. Fine copper.

  He'd already helped us a great deal.'

  'The key ring belonged to Biggs?' Dr Blackwell asked.

  'It did. Booth learned that from a friend of his, but not until lunch-time on Sunday. By then I was returning myself from Stonehill by train. I got to the Yard in the late afternoon, found Booth's message waiting for me and tried to ring John in Highfield right away.'

  'I was at the constable's cottage when you rang,' Dr Blackwell said. Sinclair already knew that — he had read her statement to the Guildford police. But he let her speak. 'We tried to ring John at my house, but there was no reply, so we decided to go over and fetch him. Pike must have been waiting outside in the garden when John switched the lights on. We found the body of our dog near the terrace.'