by Rennie Airth
It hadn’t helped when Hollingsworth, checking his own weapon, had winked at him. “Don’t take on, lad. The guv’nor knows what he’s doing. It’s for your own protection.” He grinned. “And ours.”
Billy hadn’t said a word to anyone since, but unfortunately nobody seemed to have noticed. Least of all Madden, beside whom he had been wedged in one of the two cars that had brought the men down from London. The inspector had sat silent throughout the trip, gazing out of the window, lost in thought.
They were walking now in single file through the woods, a line of uniformed policemen strung out behind the three detectives. Madden had chosen a route well away from the treeline, which bent in a slow curve until it met the wooded knoll where the gamekeeper was said to be posted. No longer, though! Glancing up from the leaf-strewn path Billy spotted a man wearing rough tweeds and carrying a shotgun hurrying towards them. Madden had already seen him and brought the column to a halt.
“Hoskins, sir!” the man called out as he drew near.
“Madden’s the name. Is he on the move?”
“No, sir.” The keeper came up beside them. He was in his forties with red, weathered cheeks and a stubbled chin. “But there’s trouble over on the other side, near the pond. You can’t see ’em from here but it looks like a troop of Girl Guides. They’re settling down by the water.”
“Christ!” The exclamation came from Drummond.
Madden thought. He beckoned to Billy. “I want you to run back the way we came. Tell the chief inspector what Hoskins has told us and say I’ve ordered you to work your way round till you get to the pond. Stay out of sight as long as you can, but if you have to show yourself take off your hat and jacket and roll up your sleeves. Try to look like someone out for a Sunday-afternoon stroll. Find out who’s in charge of those Guides and get them moved away.” Madden thought some more. “You’ll probably have to show your warrant card, so you can say this is a police operation and we require the area to be cleared. Stay there when they’ve gone. I’ll be round later after I’ve got the men posted on this side. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Billy was already on his way. Now he would show them.
Within ten minutes he was back at the shallow bowl where the chief inspector sat in the shade beside Sergeant Hollingsworth smoking his pipe. Half of the uniformed squad remained with him. It was planned that Sinclair would lead one of the armed groups and Drummond and Madden the other two. It was going to take a while to get all the men positioned. Billy explained what the new problem was and how Madden proposed to deal with it.
“I think I know who that lot are.” Constable Proudfoot had stayed behind with the chief inspector. “I’d better go along and have a word with them.”
“Please, Sir.” Billy spoke up. “Mr. Madden doesn’t want any uniforms spotted.” He hoped he was right. “He told me if I had to show myself I should take off my jacket and try to look . . . unofficial.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage that all right, Constable.”
The ghost of a smile crossed the chief inspector’s lips. Billy was trying to work out exactly what he meant.
“Get along with you, then.”
He took to his heels again. He believed he could work his way round to the pond in twenty minutes, no more, but once the trees gave out he was forced into an ever-widening circle, seeking dead ground out of sight of the thicket, and it was fully half an hour before at last he saw ahead of him the flicker of blue-skirted figures and beyond them the glint of sunlight on water.
He was on a well-trodden footpath shielded by a line of laurel bushes, which led directly to the pond. The bushes gave out well short of the water’s edge, but Billy felt the time had come to show himself. He took off his hat and jacket—and, as an afterthought, his collar and tie—transferred his wallet to his hip pocket and then made a bundle of his discarded garments and tucked them under a bush. Rolling up his sleeves he walked rapidly along the path until he reached the end of the line of laurels, where he slowed his pace to a stroll. Hands in pockets he approached the group of Guides, who were busy collecting sticks and brushwood from the ground. He counted up to two dozen. Four of the older girls were kneeling beside a tripod with a kettle hanging from it in readiness for the fire that would be lit beneath. As Billy came up one of them rose.
“Yes, young man? What can I do for you?”
Under her blue felt hat she was revealed as a woman in her mid-fifties with a tight-lipped look that suggested a temper barely under control. Hostile brown eyes examined him from behind wire-rimmed spectacles.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, miss . . . madam.” He was flustered by the sight of the belted uniform adorned with badges. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave this area.”
“What did you say?” The woman appeared to levitate before Billy’s startled gaze. “Are you aware this is public land? You have no right whatsoever—”
“No, please—” he interrupted her, “You don’t understand. I’m a policeman.” Over her right shoulder he could see the stunted trees and tangled brush of the thicket. It was no more than two hundred yards away.
“I don’t believe you.” The scornful gaze took in his bare forearms and braces. His collarless shirt. “You look like a scruff to me.”
Billy reached into his hip pocket for his wallet—and then froze. Something had moved in the thicket. He caught a glimpse of a man’s figure crouching at the fringe of the brush. Sun glinted on metal. He looked again, but like a mirage the figure had vanished. He moved deliberately, edging around so that his back would be turned to the thicket.
“What are you doing? Why are you moving like that.” The woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Cynthia! Alison! Come over here.”
She spoke over her shoulder. Two of the girls kneeling by the tripod rose and joined them, standing behind her like bodyguards. They were in their early teens and plainly nervous and unsure of themselves and the situation.
Billy held out his hand, hoping the gesture would not be seen from the thicket, which was now behind him.
“This is my warrant card. Please look at it carefully.”
The woman peered suspiciously at the square of white cardboard as though it might be a scorpion he was offering her. Finally she took it from his hand.
“In that thicket behind me—please don’t stare at it—there’s an armed man whom we mean to arrest,” he began.
The woman looked up from the card. Her glance went immediately over his shoulder. The two girls were looking in the same direction.
“There are twenty policemen in the woods beyond—”
“I warn you, young man, if you’re making this up . . . !”
Billy was becoming desperate. He wanted to take hold of this old bitch and shake her hard. He wanted to tell her to stop being pigheaded and self-important and listen to what he was saying. But he had had the example of Madden before him for the past two months and he recalled the inspector’s words to him at Highfield.
“I assure you I’m not making it up,” he said quietly. “You’ve seen my card. I work at Scotland Yard. Some of the policemen over there are armed. It’s possible that shots will be fired in the next half-hour. I want you to get these children together and take them away from here immediately.” He stared back at her.
“Please, miss . . .” One of the girls at her shoulder shuffled nervously.
“Oh, very well!” She thrust Billy’s card back at him. “But I warn you, young man, you haven’t heard the last of this!”
She spun round on her heel and put her hand into the patch pocket sewn on to her uniform. In the nick of time Billy saw what was about to happen.
“No, don’t!” He grabbed hold of her wrist as she brought the police whistle up to her lips. “You mustn’t use that whistle!”
“Take your hand off me!” Her lips had gone white with rage. “Did you see that, Cynthia? This officer . . . this so-called officer manhandled me. I’m going to report him and you will be my witness. Manhandled!” sh
e repeated, seeming to relish the word.
Red-faced with anger himself, Billy said nothing. He watched as she turned away from him and clapped her hands. “Girls! Get into line! We’re leaving! This man has spoiled our afternoon.”
The blue uniforms gathered. Billy felt the weight of their disapproval. When they had lined up in twos the woman cast a final glare at him.
“Mr. Styles,” she said. “Yes, Mr. Styles. I shan’t forget that name.”
The Guides marched away down the footpath. Billy was hardly aware of their departure. All his thoughts were focused on the presence in the thicket behind him. He knew he was being watched. A hardened killer . . . The chief inspector’s words came back to him. He remembered what had happened to Madden and Stackpole in the woods above Highfield and he felt an overpowering urge to move. To run!
Instead, he forced himself to stroll up and down the edge of the pond for a few minutes. When he spotted a flat stone on the ground he picked it up and skimmed it across the water’s surface. Then another. His knees were shaking and his mouth had gone dry.
Finally, as though bored with the amusement, he ambled back along the footpath. As he reached the cover of the laurels his knees gave way and he stumbled and fell to the ground. His cigarettes were in his jacket and he wanted one badly. But for a while he simply sat where he was in the shade of the bushes blinking away the sweat that ran down his forehead, waiting for his heartbeat to slow.
He marvelled how the minutes he had just passed had seemed to stretch into years.
6
William Merrick lifted his head from under the silver bonnet of the Lagonda. His brow was disfigured by a smear of oil. He rubbed his withered arm, massaging the hand that would never do quite what he wanted of it. Shutting his eyes for an instant, he shook his head as though to clear it, then dipped back under the bonnet.
His mother watched from the window of her bedroom in despair. The suitcases, which had been strapped to the wings of the long chassis, had been removed and stood on the gravel driveway. The rest of the luggage, a small mountain of it, was still packed in the dicky. But for how long?
Mrs. Merrick looked at her watch. It was nearly half past four.
They had been on the point of leaving—the entire household, Hopley included, had gathered on the doorstep to wave goodbye—when the car’s motor had simply died. Mrs. Merrick had heard it shudder and cough as William reached up to fit his goggles over his eyes, and the next moment it had fallen silent.
After a couple of attempts to crank it back to life—the car was an old model with no self-starter—he had ordered everyone to get out, unbuckled the straps holding the suitcases and lifted up the bonnet.
Charlotte had climbed out of the front seat and the children and their nanny from the back. For a while everyone stood around watching William at work. Then they had drifted away. Only Harriet Merrick had remained on the doorstep, as though transfixed, disbelieving, until Annie came out to rescue her.
“Now take that look off your face, Miss Hattie,” she said severely, as she led her mistress back into the house. “Give the poor boy a chance. He’ll not get it mended if you stand there watching him.”
She settled Mrs. Merrick in her room, where she was left to reflect bitterly on the fact that only six months before they had had a chauffeur—one Dawson—and that during his reign the Lagonda had never given a day’s trouble. But Dawson had left to return home to Yorkshire and since then William had felt able to handle the car himself, with occasional help from Hobday, the village mechanic. It had been clear to Mrs. Merrick for some time that her son overrated his skill and knowledge in the matter of managing an automobile—there had been a number of embarrassing breakdowns—but she had thought it wiser to hold her tongue. Now she wished she had been less reticent.
Rose and the upstairs maid, Elsie, were packed and ready to leave themselves and they had promised to send Hobday back to Croft Manor as soon as they reached the village. But the only emissary who arrived from Stonehill was the mechanic’s twelve-year-old son, who reported that his father had gone to Crowborough for the day and wouldn’t be home till nightfall.
So William had laboured on, his tools in their oilskin cover laid out on the ground by his feet. Meanwhile, Charlotte busied herself rearranging the day. The children had been placated with a picnic in the garden, which their mother and Annie supervised. Sandwiches were sent out to William. Mrs. Merrick remained in her room.
At two o’clock Charlotte rang the Hartstons in Chichester to say they would be arriving later than expected. She added a rider that they might not get there at all that afternoon, in which case they would stop off briefly on their way through the following day.
Mrs. Merrick came down at four o’clock to join her daughter-in-law in the drawing-room. Charlotte was still in her travelling clothes, her long fair hair drawn up in a net. Tea was served to them by Agnes, one of the downstairs maids, who had volunteered to stay on an extra day.
Despite her daughter-in-law’s sympathetic presence Mrs. Merrick found it almost impossible to speak. A feeling of terror had gripped her as she lay on her bed. The dread, to which she could put no name nor ascribe to any cause, reminded her vividly of the agony of mind that had awaken her on the night of her younger son’s death in France four years before. She had tried to tell herself it was the anniversary—now so close—that had brought back the memory of the pain she had suffered. But even as her mind accepted the explanation, some other part of her, something deeper and darker, from the very depths of her being, rejected it.
“I’ll go and speak to William again.”
As Charlotte prepared to rise they heard footsteps in the hall outside. They went past the door to the cloakroom. After a minute they returned. The door opened and William Merrick put his head in. “We’re getting there,” he said.
He shut the door before either of them could speak. The two women looked at each other, sharing the same thought. Quite soon it would be too late to leave. They would have to spend the night at Croft Manor.
Harriet Merrick could bear it no longer. Excusing herself, she returned to her room upstairs. For a while she stood at the window watching her son at work beneath the bonnet, hoping to see him turn the crank and hear the engine cough into life.
Then that, too, became unendurable and she went quietly downstairs and out into the garden. The sun lay low in the western sky. Soon the wooded slopes of Shooter’s Hill would lose shape and definition and appear only as a dark mass against the dying light.
From the bottom of the garden she heard the children’s voices. They must be playing on the croquet lawn, she thought. Hopley touched his hat to her from the shrubbery. Why hadn’t he gone? she thought distractedly.
Why were they all still there?
She heard a light footstep on the grass behind her and turned to find Annie approaching with a wrap in her hands. “There’s a chill in the air. Just put this round your shoulders now.”
Mrs. Merrick accepted the garment, drawing it tightly about her. Already she felt the cold.
“It’ll soon be dark,” she said. “It won’t be long now.”
7
Pike put on his cap, pulling the rim down to within an inch of his eyeline, using his first and second fingers to measure the distance in a gesture made automatic by the years he had spent in uniform.
He did up the top two buttons of his tunic and then ran his hands lightly over his body from head to foot—cap, tunic, trousers, puttees, boots—in a further involuntary action to which he gave no thought. His rifle stood propped against the side of the dugout. His gas mask, rolled into a bundle and tied with a piece of cord, lay on the bunk bench beside him. There was nothing further he had to do. Now he could only wait.
Although it was still light outside, the plaited willow roof and the surrounding screen of brush prevented the late-afternoon sun from entering the dugout, and Pike sat unblinking in the near-darkness. He was waiting for nightfall.
At Melling Lodg
e he had attacked at sunset. The thick woods of Upton Hanger had covered his approach and he had been able to hide in the bushes by the stream until the moment was ripe. Here in Ashdown Forest more patience was called for. His route to Croft Manor took him through stretches of open country as well as woods and he was too conspicuous a figure in his military dress to risk being seen.
By day at least the forest seemed well populated. Throughout the afternoon he had made regular sorties out of the dugout to scan the surrounding countryside and he had seen, at different times, ramblers in the distance, a man with a butterfly net and a troop of Girl Guides. None of them had lingered in the area and none, he believed, would still be abroad after dark.
Pike reached down for the stone jar of rum at his feet and lifted it to his lips. As the syrupy liquid slipped down his throat, settling in a warm pool in the pit of his stomach, his thoughts went back to the war years. To the many times he had sat, as he did now, in trench or dugout, waiting to accompany patrols and raids into no man’s land, or in the hours leading up to a general attack.
He had not expected to survive the conflict. After his first few times in action he had seen that, for him, death or crippling injury was unlikely to be long delayed. He had been a soldier of almost suicidal bravery. The anguish that dogged his days, repressed and barely acknowledged though it was, had nevertheless driven him to risk his life repeatedly. It would have taken a more reflective man than Amos Pike to have recognized in these acts of desperation the grim aspect of a death wish.
But although struck down several times by bullets and shell fragments he had returned each time to his battalion where he was regarded with awe that quickly shaded into fear among those who came into close contact with him.
His memories flowed back and forth . . . He saw the bodies of the dead lying in their hundreds and smelt the sickly sweet stench of corruption . . . he saw the dead body and smelt the scent of roses . . . he recalled the warmth of sweet white flesh pressed to his and the pleasure that so soon turned to shame.
