“IF SHE’S THERE . . .”
THE HONOR BROOME district is one of those odd little pockets of solitude and loneliness still be to found here and there all round London. The greater motor roads avoid it, no railway runs near, the only public means of transport is provided by the very occasional North Nodding bus, whose run is extended to its boundaries. Apart from this the few inhabitants have to depend on a bicycle or a four-mile trudge along a road often damp and muddy, since the Broome rivulet runs by its side and is very apt to overflow. This comparative isolation from the rest of the world is due to its situation at the foot of a high and steep and stony ridge, hostile to all forms of mechanical transport, almost impossible for horses and difficult and fatiguing for pedestrians.
On the high summit of the ridge lies Broome Common, now, as a result of neglect during the war years, largely a tangled mass of silver birch, standing amidst a thick undergrowth of bramble. Here picnickers still come in fine weather, though they seldom risk the sharp descent to Honor Broome village and the consequent stiff climb back again. Here, too, children come in the autumn to gather the blackberry crop. The common land extends down the less steep western slope of the ridge till it reaches the boundaries of Honor Broome parish, and down this slope, too, runs through a wilderness of pine and birch, the Broome brook, with its perennial tendency to overflow. No doubt had not the land been so sterile, steep and stony it would long ago have been enclosed and cultivated. As it is, it has remained much as it has been since the beginning of time. For the task of cultivation has never seemed inviting, not even during the war, when almost every square yard of soil was called upon to do its bit and no back garden anywhere but blossomed with its cabbages and carrots.
The village itself consisted of two or three small farms, a church and a beerhouse, serving respectively the body, the soul, and the thirst of the inhabitants. It was but a sombre prospect that the village offered, though, to the approaching stranger, as it crouched as it were under the heavy and frowning dominance of the great, steep, wooded ridge behind, and to it the sunshine seldom came.
At North Nodding Bobby paused and got no news. Nothing had been heard or seen of Tiny Garden. Nothing was known of Ted Wyllie and his companion, nor was there any reason why they should have been noticed in the busy stream of traffic making its way to or from London and the west country. All along the road watch was being kept to intercept Cy King’s car, but so far without result.
“If they were going to Honor Broome they would turn off near here to get there, wouldn’t they?” Bobby asked.
“Half a mile along on the right,” agreed the North Nodding station sergeant to whom Bobby was talking. “If that’s where they wanted to go,” he added doubtfully, evidently finding it hard to believe that any one was ever likely to entertain such a desire. “I did ring up Mr Turner to ask if a car had been seen. He said not as he knew of but he would let me know if he heard anything.”
“Who is Mr Turner?” Bobby asked.
“Well, sir,” the station sergeant explained, “we’ve no one stationed up there, being short of men and no great need neither they being all quiet and respectable like, so Mr Turner’s been sworn in as special constable in case of being wanted. Farms seventy acres of the worst land in England, north aspect, too, but doesn’t do so bad what with guaranteed prices and all and when parson can’t get there, takes the service, being churchwarden.”
“Have you inquired about any caravans being seen?” Bobby asked.
“Cycled up there myself special,” the sergeant assured him. “A tidy pull, too, up that road. None known and not likely. No caravan wants to tackle that ridge, and no cause either. Not but that there might be a dozen of ’em hidden on the slope or on the ridge for days at a time and no one know anything about it. Take fifty men a week or more to make a proper search.”
“You might ring Mr Turner, will you?” Bobby asked, “and tell him to expect me. I may want his help.”
“Very good, sir,” said the sergeant, but doubtfully. “He’s well over seventy, and what with asthma and his rheumatics being so bad, he can’t get about much. But very well thought of.”
“Ring him all the same,” Bobby said. “He may be useful. Get hold of two of your men to report to me there as soon as possible. Urgent. If I’m not at Turner’s I’ll leave instructions with him. Tell them I expect them as soon as possible—no, sooner, much sooner.”
“Well, sir,” began the sergeant, even more doubtfully than before, but Bobby was already on his way back to his waiting car, and from his desk the sergeant watched it disappear at top speed. “Did ought to be summonsed for dangerous driving,” he muttered to himself. “Job for the inspector,” he added as he reached for the ’phone, “and him most like anywhere but at home and the same for all our chaps. Just like these high ups—seem to think we have all the reserves we want under our thumb, so to speak, and if not then up to us to be in two different places at once.”
Happily unaware of these unfavourable reactions, Bobby was urging his driver to a speed it was not easy to attain or keep on this steep, narrow, and winding road. But presently they came within sight of the scattered cottages and farmhouses that made up the village, lying brooding as it were and expectant in the dark shadow cast by the overhanging ridge behind. Bobby’s driver said:
“Small car over there, sir, under those trees. Looks as if it had been parked there. Bayard Ten.”
“Yes, I see,” Bobby said. “We had better have a look. It was a Bayard Ten Cy King was reported using.”
The driver stopped their car accordingly, and he and Bobby got out. There was nothing in the deserted Bayard Ten to suggest to whom it had belonged, nothing in it, indeed except two full tins of petrol. At these Bobby looked thoughtfully, and then told his companion to transfer them to their own car.
“May as well drain the tank, too, while you are about it,” he added. “We don’t want Cy to make any hurried departure till we’ve had a chance of a chat.”
“No, sir,” agreed the driver and set to work. The tank drained, he said: “Suppose it belongs to some picnic party? Or a salesman trying to do a bit of business round here?”
“Then,” Bobby said, “there’ll probably be some language going and a highly indignant letter to the Commissioner—or even ‘The Times’. High-handed action of police—Gestapo methods in England. We’ll have to put it down to excess of zeal and do a grovel. I’ll leave a note in the car to say the petrol has been removed for safety and will be returned on application.” Then he said more gravely: “But I think the chances are it means Cy King has got here first and knows just where to go. Not too good.”
They drove on, and as they reached the village saw Fred Ford waiting for them by the roadside.
“Mrs Turner has just been to say there was a ’phone call that you wouldn’t be long,” he explained. “Mr Turner is a Special. I’ve been making inquiries, but no one seems to know anything about any caravan.”
“We saw a car parked by the roadside not far off,” Bobby said. “A Bayard Ten. Cy King has been reported driving a Bayard Ten. Looks as if he had come straight here, and for a purpose.”
“Oh, well,” Ford said; and he looked doubtfully at the dark ridge above them, crowned by its tangle of trees and bramble. “If he’s there . . . if she’s there . . .” he muttered.
“I must get more help,” Bobby said. “I must get on the ’phone. Which is Mr Turner’s?” He, too, looked doubtfully and with mistrust at the ridge, and it had to him the aspect of a hidden place where immemorial secrets kept themselves inviolate. “Take a regiment to search it properly up there,” he said.
Ford and he hurried then to Mr Turner’s farm, and there Bobby spent a few feverish busy minutes, every one of them bitterly grudged, since he knew that every one of them was heavy with the issues of life and death. Such rough plans as were practicable in the circumstances he tried to arrange so as to avoid as much as possible of the overlapping that could hardly be avoided in such hasty improv
isation. He tried to make sure, too, that every road was watched, and he left his driver on duty at the ’phone to answer the innumerable inquiries that he knew were sure soon to come flooding in.
“Answer as best you can,” he told the dismayed-looking driver. “Say we think Cy King is loose in the vicinity and means mischief and we must find him first if we can, if it’s not too late already. Repeat I want Broome Common searched from end to end and all roads watched. Come on, Ford. Remember you’ll have to mind your step. Cy is probably armed, and we aren’t.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ford. “I know. Luckily I thought it looked like rain, so I brought my umbrella.”
Bobby hardly noticed this remark, and paid it no attention, for he had momentarily forgotten that Ford possessed an umbrella, the handle of which he had carefully loaded so as to make it quite an effective weapon. There was something else that Bobby did notice, though, and that was Mrs Turner hurrying after them. She said to him:
“I heard what you were saying. My grandchildren are coming back home across the common. I must meet them.”
“They are in no danger,” Bobby said. “How old are they?”
“One seven and the other nine,” she answered, hurrying to keep up with them and finding the task impossible, so that soon she was left behind.
CHAPTER XXXIV
“MAN HITTING LADY”
WITH NO clear idea of what he could hope for, with indeed little hope of any kind in his heart, Bobby, Ford close behind, hurried on up the still steeply ascending slope. What, he was asking himself, could two men do by themselves to search all that expanse of closely woven tree and bush with which this approach to the summit of the ridge, and the ridge itself, was so continuously covered? Only here and there were there occasional open glades, only here and there was this tangle of growth traversed by some narrow and neglected path that almost always promptly died away again into invisibility.
Somewhere, he supposed, up there, or perhaps on one side or the other of this track he and Ford were following, lay concealed the caravan he now believed had been the true Betty’s prison. Why else, indeed, had Cy King and his companion—Bill Bright probably—come this way with such speed, and with a purpose only too easily, too dreadfully surmised? Nor would they need to waste time in search, for they would know exactly where they had to go. Somewhere, too, within those hidden depths was almost certainly Tiny Garden, desperate and at bay, knowing his life was forfeit. A wild beast in a panic, Bobby told himself, and what form his panic might take who could tell, though all might guess? And Ted Wyllie. For he also had been on his way, and these woods were sure to be his destination, too. Probably, indeed, he was already there somewhere in these green, secret shades.
Difficult, Bobby told himself, to realize that this quiet, deserted-looking stretch of woodland and common, where so few ever came, and those few only for the most innocent of purposes—picnicking in the spring and summer, in the autumn for the gathering of berries for tarts and jams, no one at all in the winter—now hid within itself those who by the compulsion of circumstance and their own deeds had been wrought to such extremity of passion and despair that violence, death, tragedy, of one sort or another had become inevitable.
The air was still and quiet, the light of the fading day growing dim as it filtered through the neighbouring trees. Darkness and gloom were descending on the earth as on Bobby’s mind. Now hope had nearly left him of ever achieving that purpose and hope of rescue which for so long had eluded him so persistently. The ascent became a little less steep as the crest of the ridge was approached. Here and there on the rough track they were following appeared a derelict cigarette-packet or a torn scrap of newspaper—those universal stigmata of our civilization to show that others did at times pass that way. There were even faint wheel-tracks visible in places, though Bobby wondered a little how any vehicle could negotiate successfully that cliff-like descent to Honor Broome village. It would need first-class brakes in first-class condition.
A glimmer of hope began to stir within him. Clearly by this way wheeled traffic came and went. Then any such vehicle, caravan or other, seeking to evade notice must either have gone on through the village, where, if it had arrived, it would certainly have been seen and remembered, or else it must have turned off to one side or the other. If so, there would equally certainly be tracks left to show where that had happened.
“You look out your side, Ford,” Bobby said. “I’ll watch mine. If any caravan is up here there must be tracks where it left the road.”
“Right, sir,” Ford answered, and only a moment or two later he said: “There’s a kiddy behind those bushes—two of them. Look as though they were hiding.”
“Kiddies,” Bobby repeated in surprise, and he remembered that Mrs Turner had spoken of her grandchildren. He stopped and called: “Hullo, you two! Late for tea, aren’t you? Your grannie’s come to look for you. She’s just behind.”
A small boy cautiously emerged, followed by a smaller girl, whom he was holding by the hand.
“We’ve had our tea,” the boy announced.
There was a quaver in his voice, and Bobby, looking at them closely, thought the girl at least had been crying. There was a frightened, hesitating air about them both, so that they gave the impression of being on the point of running away. Bobby said:
“What’s the matter? Anything been happening?”
“Man hitting lady,” the girl said. “Behind a tree,” and the boy added:
“We ran away.”
“I was frightened,” the girl said.
“I wasn’t,” the boy boasted, and the girl said:
“Story. You were.”
“Grannie’s coming to take you home,” Bobby told them, speaking as quietly as he could, though his heart was beating violently, controlling his eagerness for fear of alarming more the already frightened children. Perhaps into silence. “A man hitting a lady?” he went on. “I don’t think he ought to do that, do you?”
“Bad man,” said the little girl.
“So he is,” agreed Bobby. “I must go and tell him not to.” The child nodded emphatic approval. “Where was it you saw him?” Bobby asked. The boy pointed directly behind.
“The man had a big stick,” he said.
“How long ago?” Bobby asked. “Was it far?”
But they did not answer. Probably they did not quite know how to express themselves in terms of time and distance. They stood there hand in hand, looking up at him gravely, an odd little air of responsibility about them, as though they understood more clearly than they could say in words that they had come already face to face with the problems of good and evil that life in time brings to all. On Bobby’s side he was fearful that they had witnessed the final culmination of that tragedy he had so long dreaded, so desperately striven to avert. He said:
“Well, I think I must go and find him and tell him he mustn’t. What was the lady like? Had you ever seen her before?” They shook their heads. He asked again: “What was the man like?”
“Big,” the boy said. “Very big.”
“Bigger than Mr Sims,” the girl said.
“Mr Sims is awful big,” said the boy. “I’ll be bigger when I grow up,” he boasted.
“Story,” said the little girl. “Grannie says you won’t, not if you don’t eat your porridge all up and you never.”
Bobby turned to Ford.
“Sounds as if we are too late again,” he said very bitterly. “Sounds as if Tiny Garden has got here before us. Anyhow, we can see he hangs—for all the good that is,” he added, still more bitterly.
“We ought to have a good chance of getting him,” Ford said, with a hungry look over the children’s heads into the trees behind.
“Go back with the children,” Bobby told him, “till you meet Mrs Turner, and then back here.”
“Wouldn’t it be all right, sir, to let them go by themselves?” Ford asked hesitatingly. “She can’t be far, and no one will want to hurt them.”
“Do as yo
u are told,” Bobby said, and his tone was sharp and angry as he vented on the unlucky Ford some of the disappointment, the horror, the bitter sense of frustration he was experiencing. “We may be too late to save the girl,” he added more mildly. “I’m not running any risks with the children. Get going and don’t leave them till they’re safe.”
Ford, even discipline did not prevent him from looking as sulky and rebellious as he felt, set off at a trot, the girl on his shoulder, the boy running at his side. Bobby plunged into the undergrowth and all his being had become merged in one great urge to find Tiny, and for Tiny to offer that resistance to arrest which would justify resort to force. That this should be the end of the long and weary trail that had been followed so perseveringly, so persistently, was to him almost unbearable. Time, his enemy throughout, had it seemed at this last moment finally defeated him, for he felt that the story told by the children left little room for hope.
He crashed his way through bush and bramble and saw no sign, heard no sound to disturb the immemorial silence of those deserted woods, till he saw on his right hand a thin column of smoke rising into the quiet air. He ran towards it, taking a savage pleasure in smashing through every obstacle in his path. The smoke grew darker, thicker, it became shot with a sudden uprush of flame. He ran faster still, following that ominous beacon. He broke through a fringe of trees into a wide open glade, and there a caravan blazed, a mass of leaping flame.
The heat was too great for him to get very near. He ran round it. He could see no sign of life anywhere, nor was there any way of checking those leaping flames that seemed as though they laughed in their lust of destruction as they fed full on the dry wood of the caravan, and the petrol with which it seemed all had been soaked. Bobby could only stand and watch and ask himself what dark secrets were there being destroyed for ever before his eyes. He heard some one coming at a run. It was Ford. He came and stood by Bobby, watching like him the roaring furnace that once had been a habitation—or a prison. He said presently:
The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 23
