JM01 - River of Darkness

by Rennie Airth

He muttered something inaudible. Head bowed, he led them into a small kitchen where the young woman with bobbed hair Madden remembered seeing with Wellings was sitting at a table. She had a cut lip and a blackened, swollen eye. The other eye was red and swimming with tears.

  “Well, Gladys Maberley!” The constable removed his helmet. “You look like you could do with a cup of tea.”

  As the woman started to rise, the young man spoke for the first time. “Let me, Glad,” he muttered. He busied himself with a kettle at the sink.

  “This is Mr. Madden,” Stackpole said. “He’s come all the way from London to talk to you, Gladys.” He put his helmet on the table and pulled out a chair for the inspector and another for himself. “So tell us what you’ve been up to—and mind!” The constable wagged a warning finger. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  Twenty minutes later they were standing outside the door of the Coachman’s Arms. Stackpole was grinning with delight. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face, sir.”

  Inside, the smell of stale beer lingered in the taproom. Wellings was seated with his right arm resting on a bar table. Dr. Blackwell was at work, strapping his wrist in a tight bandage.

  “Not broken, just sprained,” she said to them, as they came in. “Mr. Wellings will live to fight another day.”

  “I want to lay a charge.” Wellings shook his other fist at Stackpole. “Have you got that? He came at me with a shovel. That’s a weapon in my book. Do you hear what I’m saying, Constable?”

  “I hear you, Mr. Wellings.” For the second time that day Stackpole removed his helmet. He had stopped grinning.

  Helen Blackwell snapped her bag shut. “I’ll leave you now,” she said. She went out.

  Wellings ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair. Stackpole spoke to him. “You’ll remember Inspector Madden?”

  “Who?” Wellings looked over his shoulder and noticed the inspector for the first time. “What’s he doing here?”

  “We’ll ask the questions.” The constable sat down at the table.

  “I’m not answering any questions until I hear what you mean to do about Fred Maberley.” Wellings looked defiant.

  Madden seated himself. “Two weeks ago you made a statement to Sergeant Gates. In view of what Gladys Maberley has just told us, I now realize that you failed to tell the truth on that occasion.”

  “Says who?”

  “Shut your gob, you piece of filth.” Stackpole spoke in an even tone. “Just listen to what the inspector’s saying.”

  Wellings flushed. He glared at the constable.

  “You knowingly made a false statement to the police. That constitutes an obstruction of justice, a serious matter at any time, but given the circumstances of the case we’re investigating, exceptionally grave. You will very likely go to prison. Mr. Wellings.”

  “What?” He turned white. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I will ask you now—what were you doing on the night of Sunday, July the thirty-first? I am speaking of the late evening, after the pub was closed.”

  Wellings licked his lips. His glance strayed to the bar. “You wouldn’t have a fag, would you? he asked.

  Madden took out his cigarettes and placed them on the table with a box of matches. He waited while Wellings lit up.

  “Gladys and I”—he took a long pull on the cigarette—“we went to Tup’s Spinney.” He blew out the match.

  “What time?”

  “About half past eleven, maybe a little earlier.”

  “Where was Fred Maberley?”

  “Asleep.” Wellings’s smile flickered and went out.

  “While you were there did you see or hear anything?” Madden asked.

  Wellings nodded. “A motorbike. Just after we got there. It went past us through the fields.”

  “In which direction? Away from Upton Hanger?”

  Wellings nodded again.

  “What make of motorcycle? Did you notice?”

  He shook his head.

  “What did you see?” Madden persisted.

  Wellings puffed on his cigarette. “When I heard it, I got up and went to the edge of the trees. I thought it might be someone else coming to the spinney. You know . . .” He grinned knowingly at Madden, but received no sympathy from the inspector’s glance. “There was a moon up, I saw it clearly. A motorbike and sidecar.”

  “A sidecar—you’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. At first I thought there was someone in it, you know, a passenger, but then I saw there wasn’t.”

  Madden and Stackpole looked at each other.

  “Let me get this clear,” the inspector said. “There was something in the sidecar?”

  “That’s right—a shape. That’s all I could see. Like I said, at first I thought it was a passenger. But it just didn’t look right, not for a person. It was too low. There wasn’t much showing over the rim of the sidecar.”

  “How fast was it travelling?”

  “Not fast. He was watching for the ruts.”

  “He? You saw the rider?”

  Wellings shook his head. “Just his shape. Big bloke. He was wearing a cloth cap. That’s all, Mr. Madden, I swear. It was only for a few seconds, then he was gone, heading back towards the road.”

  Madden stared at him. “You could have told us this two weeks ago,” he said.

  Wellings was silent.

  The inspector stood up. “Stay here.” He signed to Stackpole and the two of them went outside into the road. The constable filled his lungs with fresh air.

  “I suppose he’ll get off now, the little bastard.”

  “Not at all.” Madden shook his head firmly. “No bargain was struck. We’re going to charge him. But don’t tell him that yet. Get his statement first. Then tell him, but leave it for a few days. He may remember something more.”

  Stackpole’s grin returned. He took out his notebook.

  “Before you go back in, I need a telephone.”

  “There’s only one in Oakley, sir, at the post-office counter. That’s in the store. You’ll have to go through the Guildford exchange.”

  Five minutes later Madden was connected with the Scotland Yard switchboard. He caught Sinclair on his way out to an early luncheon appointment.

  “We need to get the Surrey police on to this, sir. They’ll have to go over their tracks, question the same people in the same villages. On this side of the ridge, at least.”

  “But now we’ve something specific. A motorcycle and sidecar. A big man in a cloth cap. Well done, John!”

  “We’ve Stackpole to thank, sir. He doesn’t miss much.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention that to Norris when I speak to him. What was he carrying in the sidecar, I wonder?”

  Madden thought. “Assuming he had a rifle with him, he wouldn’t want to cart it around in the open. Perhaps a bag of some kind?”

  “Hmmm . . .” The chief inspector mused. “It was after eleven when Wellings saw him. Say he quit Melling Lodge around ten o’clock, what was he doing for the next hour? It wouldn’t have taken him that long to get back to his motorcycle.”

  They fell silent. Then Madden spoke: “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, sir—”

  “No, you won’t, John. There’s nothing we can do from here at present. You need a break. Take the weekend off. I’ll see you at the office on Monday morning.”

  “But I think I should—”

  “Inspector!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “That’s an order.” Sinclair hung up.

  Coming out of the shop, Madden saw Helen Blackwell sitting in her car in the shade of the chestnut tree. Two women stood with folded arms chatting to her, but they moved off as he approached. She accepted, with a smile, his offer of a cigarette. When he bent over to light it, he caught a whiff of jasmine reminding him of the evening he had gone to her house.

  “I don’t know whether it’s unusual,” he began, “but you are the first woman doctor I’ve met.”

  “Not
unusual at all. Twenty years ago there were barely a dozen of us in the whole country. Of course the war helped. She drew thoughtfully on her cigarette. “It’s terrible to say that, but it’s true.” She glanced up at him with a smile. “My grandfather was a gentleman, you know. That’s to say he did nothing. When Father came down from Cambridge and said he wanted to be a doctor the old boy nearly had a fit. He thought it was almost as bad as going into trade. And the funny thing was, Father was just the same. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘You’re a woman.’ But we got over that.”

  Sunlight filtering through the chestnut leaves touched her hair with gold. He already regretted the moment of their parting. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

  “I took over the practice after the war. Most of the villagers seem happy enough with the change. That is, apart from one or two.”

  She was smiling broadly and he saw she was looking at Stackpole as he approached from the direction of the pub.

  “How’s my patient, Will?” she called out.

  “Sicker than when you saw him, Miss Helen.” The constable tapped his jacket pocket. “I’ve got his statement, sir, signed and sealed.”

  “We think the man we’re after came through here on a motorcycle,” Madden explained to her. “It’s a start.”

  “Don’t wait for me, Miss Helen,” Stackpole said.

  “Are you sure, Will?”

  “I’ve still got Gladys Maberley’s statement to write out, and then I want to have a word with Fred. Get him calmed down. The post van will be through in an hour. I’ll get a lift back to Highfield.”

  Madden shook his hand. “Good work, Constable. You’ll get those statements off to Guildford?”

  “First thing in the morning, sir.” He touched his helmet and was gone.

  Madden walked around to the passenger side. She reached over and opened the door.

  “You don’t have to go back to London right away, do you?”

  It sounded more like a statement than a question, and Madden shook his head.

  “Come back to the house and have lunch with me.”

  She smiled at him as he climbed in and then, unaccountably, laughed.

  “What is it?” he asked. And when she didn’t reply. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I’m ashamed to tell you.” She started the car. “I was thinking about my locum falling off his horse.”

  15

  She seated him in the arbour on the terrace with a glass of beer.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Madden looked out over the sunlit garden at the woods beyond, rising like a green wave. The heat of the day was still building. He sipped his beer. It was a moment of peace, rare in his life, and he wanted to arrest it and clasp it to him: to stop time in its tracks. He heard a noise and looked round, expecting to see her. But it was Mary, the maid. She was carrying a wicker hamper and a plaid blanket.

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “Hullo, Mary.”

  She smiled at him and put down the basket with the blanket on top of it, then went back inside the house, but returned in a moment with a pair of cushions.

  “I thought we’d have a picnic.”

  Helen Blackwell stepped from the doorway on to the terrace. She had shed her skirt and blouse of the morning and was wearing a cool chemise-type dress of white cotton. Her hair, freed from the ribbon she used to tie it back, lay on her shoulders. Madden saw that her legs were bare.

  “Thank you, Mary,” she said to the maid. “That will be all.”

  She picked up the cushions and the blanket. Madden assumed the burden of the hamper. Together they went down the steps from the terrace. As they started across the lawn the black pointer he remembered from his first visit rose from a pool of shadow beneath a walnut tree and joined the procession behind them.

  They reached the orchard at the bottom of the lawn and passed beneath plum trees heavy with sun-ripened fruit. The buzz of wasps sounded loud in the dappled shade. A stone wall marked the boundary of the garden. She opened the gate and let him through, then closed it quickly before the dog could follow them.

  “Not you, Molly.”

  The animal whined in disappointment.

  “Stay!” she commanded, without explanation. She smiled at him. “You can’t come on a picnic dressed like that. At least take your jacket off.”

  He did as she said, then stripped off his tie as well and draped both garments over the green wooden gate.

  They were close to the edge of the shallow stream. On the other side, the woods came down almost to the water, but where they were a carpet of meadow grass extended for a short distance downstream. He followed her until their way was blocked by a thicket of holly bushes.

  “This is the tricky bit,” she said. She slipped off her shoes and stepped down from the bank into the stream. “Be careful, the stones are slippery.” She moved slowly through the ankle-deep water, holding the cushions and blanket in bundle above her head. When she was past the bushes she climbed up on the bank again.

  Madden took off his shoes and socks and put them on top of the hamper. He rolled up his trousers and stepped down into the cool water. She was waiting on the bank, hand outstretched, to take the basket from him.

  “I used to come here with my brother, Peter, when we were children. It was our secret place.”

  They were on a small patch of grass enclosed by bushes. Close to the bank, water-lilies tugged weakly at their stems in the faint current of the stream.

  “He was the pilot, wasn’t he?”

  “You remembered . . .” Her deep blue gaze brushed his. “That was such a terrible night. All I could think of was how we’d been young together—Lucy and Peter and David and I—and now they were all dead. And then I looked into your eyes and saw that you must have been in the war, too, and I couldn’t stop thinking about all those dead . . . the ghosts we live with.”

  He wanted to speak, but could find no words, and he looked away.

  She studied his face for a moment, then began to spread the blanket and cushions on the grass. Madden retrieved his shoes and socks. About to put them on, he was arrested by the sight of her sitting beside him. She was leaning on one hand, her legs tucked to the side, looking down, her face hidden by the fall of thick, honey-coloured hair. In the stillness that enveloped them the whirr of a pigeon’s wings sounded loud overhead. Not knowing what to do or say, he unfastened the sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up.

  “Shrapnel.” She spoke, and he felt the touch of her fingers on his forearm where the scars were spread like strewn coins.

  “I worked in an Army hospital for a year. I know all the wounds.” Her fingers stayed on his skin. Her touch went through him like fire. “And that scar on your forehead . . .” She took her hand off his arm and raised it to his head, sliding her fingers under the lock of hair that fell across his brow and running them gently across the skin. “That’s most likely a shell fragment, too.”

  Madden began to tremble. Her face was close, but their eyes didn’t meet. Her glance was fixed on his forehead. He saw a faint line of sweat on her upper lip and the golden hairs on her forearm. He put his arm around her waist, clumsy, unsure of what he was doing, but when he bent to kiss her, her hand went from his forehead to the back of his neck and she pressed her lips to his, meeting his tongue with hers, kissing him deeply.

  She drew him down and in a moment they were lying stretched on the blanket, side by side. He could feel his heart racing, the blood drumming in his ears. Then she moved again, pulling him over her until she was on her back and he was above her. They continued to kiss. When he put his hand on her hip she caught it with hers and held it and then brought it to her stomach and pressed it there. He began to fumble with her dress, but she reached down herself and drew it up and then took his hand again and brought it to her bare stomach at the top of her pants and guided it down inside them. He felt the stiff curly hair and then the wetness.

  She reached for him, and he broke thei
r kiss to tear open his trousers. When she took him in her hand he groaned. She let go of him to push at her pants and he joined his hand with hers and together they stripped them off her. She spread her legs to receive him and cried out when he entered her.

  He never knew how long they were together. To him, it seemed only moments, and then his body was shaken by spasms and he felt her bucking and reaching for him. She cried out again.

  They lay together, unmoving. In the silence he heard a blackbird call in the woods across the stream. Her breathing, hot in his ear, slowly abated. His weight lay on her, crushing her, he thought, but when he sought to shift it she held him imprisoned in her arms.

  “Stay with me,” she pleaded, and they lay together. Her thighs held him fast, both slippery with sweat.

  Finally she relaxed, sinking under him, and he moved and lay alongside her. She turned her head so that her face was close to his and when he kissed her she responded, bringing her hand up to his cheek, stroking him. He looked down at her body. Her long legs, one bent over the other, were flushed in the sunlight. Moisture shone in her dark golden bush. He could smell his semen mixed with their sweat. He was close to tears.

  “John . . . ?” Her eyes were open, she was smiling at him. “Your name is John, isn’t it?” Her soft laughter in his ear gave him the release he needed and his laughter joined with hers. “Oh, God! I wasn’t sure I had the nerve . . . and you wouldn’t speak.”

  “Speak?” At first he didn’t understand. And then, when he did, he couldn’t tell her that he had never imagined such a scene. Had never pictured himself lying in her arms, lying between her legs. That he no longer thought of his life as holding such possibilities.

  “I knew it that first night. It was awful, I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to . . . make love with you. And then I remembered poor Lucy lying there with her throat cut and Charles and the others and I couldn’t believe I was thinking that.” She was silent, looking away. Then she turned her head and smiled into his eyes. “They talk about the demon rum, but I think it should be the demon sex.” He put his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest. A light breeze stirred the bushes around them, bringing relief from the heat. “After the war, after Guy was killed, I had an affair with a man. I needed someone. But I found it didn’t work, I didn’t really care for him and I had to stop it . . .”