JM01 - River of Darkness

by Rennie Airth

  He thrust his head forward, brilliantined hair glinting in the sunlight that came through the window.

  “Let me offer you another suggestion, Chief Inspector. Have you considered that this man may be simply a loner who holed up in those woods? Who saw Melling Lodge as a tempting target and set out to rob it, but lost control of himself? I’ll grant you he may be deranged. But calling this hole a dugout! Why not say he simply built himself a shelter? Of course he has an Army background—the same is true of most able-bodied men in this country. He built what he’d been taught to build—a place to sleep and protect himself from the weather. And as for this gas mask! He picked up the single large drawing and squinted at it. “I’m glad you know what it is, Madden, because I’m damned if I do.”

  He put down the piece of paper and turned to Bennett. “What is certain, sir, is that the child was a key witness and she was allowed to go to Scotland out of our control and protection. I have strong reservations about that. I think it was an error of judgement. But it’s done.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Let’s concentrate now on what we know and what we can find out and stop cooking up wild theories unsupported by evidence.”

  There was silence. Bennett coughed. He looked at Sinclair.

  The chief inspector was gazing at the ceiling. “A loner holed up in the woods who has a motorcycle. No, I don’t think so.” He shifted his glance to Bennett. “Sir, this man has a job, I believe. He seems to move only at the weekends. Now, it’s true he may have returned to collect what he stole. But we must look at the crime as a whole. The bayoneted victims were all killed within seconds of each other—the evidence is clear on that point. He didn’t ‘lose control.’ He broke into that house with the intention of killing the occupants, and we still don’t know why.” He paused deliberately. “As for Sophy Fletcher, I made my decision on the basis of medical advice—that returning her to her family was the best measure we could take, both for the child herself and as regards the possibility of our obtaining any testimony from her in the future. I’ve heard nothing to make me change my mind.”

  He fixed his cool grey eyes on Sampson. The chief superintendent’s muddy complexion turned brick red. Bennett looked from one to the other. He seemed to be enjoying the confrontation.

  “Very well.” He shifted in his chair. “What now?”

  Sinclair consulted his file. “We’re still going through the list of discharged mental patients supplied by the War Office. Other police authorities are helping. That’s a long job. We’ve put out a general description of the man we’re looking for, and the motorcycle and sidecar. Harley Davidson, through their agents, will supply us with a list of purchasers in the last three years—since the end of the war. We’ll start with that, concentrating on the Home Counties. We may have to extend it later.”

  “He could have bought it second-hand,” Bennett observed.

  “We’ll check those registrations, too. But we have to face the fact he may have stolen the machine, and it may be on false plates.” Sinclair straightened the papers in his file. “Inspector Madden has come up with an idea that we think might be worth pursuing,” he went on. “Of course, we’ve already consulted the Crime Index and there’s no criminal on record with a modus operandi remotely resembling this man’s. But in spite of that, we’d like to put out a general inquiry to other forces to see if they have anything similar to this case in their records.”

  “Surely—” Bennett began, but Sampson cut him off.

  “That sounds like a waste of time to me. Several people slaughtered in a house? I think we’d have heard about it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir.” Sinclair turned his tranquil gaze on the chief superintendent. “But what if he tried and failed? I’m thinking of an abortive attempt, or perhaps an assault with a weapon similiar to the one used at Melling Lodge. Some case still unsolved and unexplained.”

  Bennett was pondering. “How would you do it?” he asked. “Through the Gazette?”

  “Yes, sir.” The Police Gazette, containing particulars of crimes and criminals sought, was circulated daily to all forces of Britain and Ireland. “We’ll list some general information about the case, type of wound and so on, and see if it draws a response.”

  Sinclair closed his file. He paused, as though gathering himself. “Sir, there’s one further point I’d like to make. While every effort should be made to track this man down by orthodox police methods, we should recognise the special problems we’re faced with and be prepared to look at other ways of approaching the inquiry. Taking up the point you made earlier, as to whether he’s sane or not, I think it’s time we considered calling in an expert in the field of psychology.”

  There was silence in the room. Bennett shifted uneasily in his chair. Sampson, beside him, raised his head slowly and fixed his gaze on the chief inspector.

  “We have a unique situation here,” Sinclair went on, seemingly unaware of the effect of his words. “We’re dealing with a man without criminal connections whose motives we don’t understand. My most immediate fear is that he may commit a similar crime or crimes unless we apprehend him. I’d feel better in my own mind if I was sure we hadn’t neglected any possible line of investigation.”

  Bennett was busy drawing a doodle on his note pad. He didn’t look up.

  It was Sampson who spoke. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Angus. Really I am.” His tone had changed to one of puzzlement. “We all know what happens when you bring outsiders into these cases. Before you know it, every half-baked soothsayer and trick-cyclist will be telling us how to solve it.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating, sir.”

  “Am I?” The chief superintendent reached into his top pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping. “From this morning’s Express. I happen to have it with me.” With his other hand he fished out a pair of spectacles and placed them on the end of his nose. “A lady by the name of Princess Wahletka, a well-known psychic, has offered her services to the police to assist them in solving ‘the frightful crime of Melling Lodge’—I’m quoting, of course. ‘They have only to ask, and I am ready to put all my powers at their disposal.’ ” He grinned. “If you want to take her up, she’s appearing nightly at the Empire Theatre in Leeds.”

  Two red spots had appeared on the chief inspector’s cheeks. “Excuse me, sir, but you’re trying to equate a medical practitioner with a quack.”

  “I’m not trying to equate anything, Angus.” The chief superintendent was genial. “I’m just giving you a friendly warning. So far the press hasn’t known how to handle this case—they’re as baffled as you are, if you like. Start calling in psychologists and you’ll hand them an open invitation. Do you know what this is?” He shook the clipping under Sinclair’s nose. “This is the tip of your bloody iceberg, is what it is.”

  “Chief Superintendent!” Bennett spoke sharply.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Sampson sat back. The smile remained on his lips.

  The deputy drummed his fingertips on the table. He avoided Sinclair’s glance.

  “Thank you, Chief Inspector,” he said. “I’ll consider your suggestion. Gentlemen, this meeting is concluded.”

  He rose from the table.

  That was highly educational. I trust you were taking notes.” Sinclair’s file landed with a thud on his desktop. “I thought the clipping was a nice touch. He just happened to have it with him. And did you notice Bennett backpedalling for all he was worth? All in all you won’t see a finer example of the Ripper complex in action.”

  “The Ripper, sir?”

  “Jack of the same name. By the time he was done there wasn’t a smart-aleck between here and Temple Bar who didn’t have a theory as to who he was and how to nab him, and the only point on which they agreed was that the police were a bunch of lame-brained incompetents who couldn’t catch cold in an igloo.”

  Madden was grinning.

  “You may laugh, but there are people in this building who still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about i
t. They’re terrified of opening the door, even a crack.” The chief inspector sat down at his desk. “Don’t blame Bennett,” he said. “He understands what we’re up against. But if we call in an outsider and the newspapers get hold of it—and the chief super will see to it they do—all hell will break loose. Careers are made and lost over cases like this one, and I don’t mean yours or mine. Bennett’s own future is at stake.”

  Late that afternoon the telephone rang on the chief inspector’s desk. “Hullo . . . yes, he’s here. One moment, please.”

  He signalled to Madden. Then he got up and left the office. Madden picked up the phone.

  “John, is that you?” Helen Blackwell’s voice came to him from a long way off. “Lord Stratton rang father this morning. He told us what happened to you and Will . . . are you all right?” Her voice swelled and faded on the trunk line.

  “Yes, I’m fine . . .” Surprise robbed him of words. He didn’t know what to say to her. “I’ll see you in a fortnight?” he asked anxiously.

  Her reply was lost in the crackle of the faulty line.

  “What?” he called out. “I can’t hear . . .”

  “. . . less than that now . . .” he heard her say. Her soft laugh reached his ears, then the line went dead.

  A few minutes later Sinclair returned. With a glance at Madden he seated himself at his desk. “Och, aye!” he remarked.

  3

  Billy Styles was at Waterloo Station a good ten minutes before the time he had been ordered to report; it was only a short ride in the bus from Stockwell, where he lived with his mother. Mrs. Styles had been widowed young—Billy’s father had died of tuberculosis when he was only four—and she had had to support them both, by working first as a waitress in a tea-room in the high street, then later as a factory hand in a wartime munitions plant. Billy himself had tried to enlist in the last year of the war, when he was eighteen, but had been turned down by the doctor who examined him on the ground that he had weak lungs; a shock to the young man, who had never suspected he had any such flaw in his physical constitution. His suspicion that the doctor was conducting some form of private vendetta against the conscription policy was strengthened when some time later he passed a medical examination to gain entry into the Metropolitan Police without incident. The memory rankled with Billy who felt cheated of his due.

  He had spent the past fortnight working with Sergeant Hollingsworth. Assigned space in a small office beside the chief inspector’s, they had toiled over the list of discharged mental patients, dividing it up into regions and dispatching individual rosters to the various police authorities around the country. A number of ex-patients had already been interviewed and the results collated and assessed.

  The work was grinding and repetitive, but after experiencing initial boredom with it, Billy had found increasing satisfaction in the process of gradual elimination, which he and the sergeant, under Madden’s supervision, were engaged in. He had been allowed to study the cumulative file: a history of the case, which Chief Inspector Sinclair kept up to date.

  When he reached the details of the attack on Madden and Stackpole in the woods above Highfield he felt fresh pangs of jealousy and envy. He felt it was he who should have been with the inspector, rather than the village bobby. Sometimes, in his imagination, he saw himself in the trenches under Madden’s command.

  The inspector appeared with three minutes to spare and they walked on to the platform together.

  “Do you know what this is about, Constable?”

  “No, sir.” Billy had to add a skip to his step to keep up with Madden’s long stride.

  “Let’s find a compartment first.”

  The telephone call had come the previous evening. Sinclair had looked across at Madden and raised a thumb.

  “That was Tom Derry,” he said as he hung up. “He’s a chief inspector now—head of the Maidstone CID. We worked on that Ashford murder together. He thinks he may have something for us.”

  Derry had read the item about the Melling Lodge murders in the Police Gazette two days previously, but had not made the connection in his mind right away.

  “He didn’t handle the case himself,” Madden explained to Billy as the train drew out of the station. “But then he recalled one or two details from the file. We’ll find out more when we talk to him.”

  Billy listened in silence. Pride stirred in him. For the first time he felt Madden was treating him as a colleague. He was tempted to join in, to offer some observation of his own, but decided, on balance, it would be better not to speak. If the inspector wanted his opinion he would ask for it.

  “Where do you live, Constable?”

  They had the compartment to themselves. The train moved at a steady clip through the green fields and hedgerows of Kent, a countryside still unmarred by the spreading stain of pink and white suburban villas.

  “Stockwell, sir.”

  “With your family?”

  “Just my mother, sir. My father’s dead.”

  “Was he killed in the war?”

  “No sir. He died before.” For some reason he couldn’t rationalize, Billy felt ashamed. It was as though he wished his father had perished in the conflict, rather than from a common disease. He wished, too, that he himself had worn a soldier’s uniform, if only for a day. “My uncle Jack now—Mum’s brother—he was killed on the Somme.”

  Billy hesitated. He could read nothing from the inspector’s expression. Yet he knew he had been in the same battle. It was common knowledge at the Yard. One of the sergeants had told him Madden’s battalion had been in action on the first day. Out of seven hundred men, the sergeant said, fewer than eighty had survived to answer their names at the evening roll-call. Billy couldn’t conceive of such an event, of so many men being cut down in such a short space of time, and he wanted to ask the inspector about it. But when he looked at Madden’s face as he stared out of the window he decided it might be better not to.

  Derry’s office at Maidstone Central Police Station overlooked a corner of the market square. A profusion of pink geraniums overflowed two terracotta pots on the ledge outside his window and the chief inspector was busy watering them when Madden and Styles were shown in. He parked the can on the ledge outside and came over to shake their hands.

  “How’s Mr. Sinclair? Bearing up? Be sure to give him my regards when you see him.” He had a bony, intelligent face and a swift glance, which showed mild surprise at the youthful appearance of Styles.

  “Mr. Sinclair wanted to come himself, sir. But the assistant commissioner called a meeting this morning.”

  “Here’s the file,” Derry said. He handed Madden a buff folder. “But let me give you the gist of it so you’ll know why I rang the Yard.”

  He directed his visitors to a pair of chairs and then seated himself behind his desk.

  “It happened on the first week of April when I chanced to be on leave. I was only away for a fortnight, but by the time I got back it was all over. The detectives handling it felt they had a cast-iron case. They were even more sure when the fellow topped himself.”

  “He was in custody, was he?” Madden inquired.

  “They were holding him in the cells downstairs. He tore his shirt into strips and managed to hang himself from the bars.” Derry shook his head regretfully. “I looked over the file, of course, but I have to say I didn’t feel any doubts at the time. It seemed solid. Based on what I read, I reckon he would have swung.”

  Madden balanced the folder on his knee. “But you changed your mind when you saw our item in the Gazette?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s say I’m in two minds right now. I just have a natsy feeling we might have picked up the wrong man.”

  “Even though he hanged himself?” Madden was surprised.

  Derry shrugged. “Caddo—that was his name—always admitted stealing the goods he was caught with. Perhaps he thought he couldn’t escape conviction on the murder charge either, though he did maintain the woman was dead when he entered the ho
use, and he never changed his story. Still, whatever happened he was going to spend a spell in prison.”

  “I see he was a gypsy.” Madden had opened the file.

  “A full-blooded Romany. They do say you can’t lock them up for any length of time. They won’t abide it.” Derry reached behind him and brought in the watering-can from the ledge outside. “Caddo lost his wife a couple of years back. He was alone. A man can come to the end of himself, don’t you think?”

  Madden didn’t look up from the file.

  “He owned a horse and caravan.” Derry brushed off his hands. “He used to visit the district regularly—it’s near a village called Bentham, about ten miles east of here. He had an arrangement with a local farmer, a tenant of the Bentham Court estate, and used to camp on his land for a few weeks in return for mending his pots and pans and doing other odd jobs.”

  “Any past history with the police?” Madden was paging through the folder.

  “Nothing serious. There was an allegation of sheep-stealing a few years ago, but nothing came of it. A case of grab the nearest gypsy, if you ask me. The trouble started when the man he dealt with left the region and a new tenant took over the farm. Chap called Reynolds. He didn’t care for gypsies, it seems, and he told Caddo when he turned up at the end of March that he’d give him a week to find a new site and then he wanted him off his land. They had a blazing row in front of witnesses. Caddo was heard to make threats. Next thing, Reynolds went to the bobby at Bentham and accused Caddo of having poisoned his dogs.”

  Madden looked up sharply.