JM01 - River of Darkness

by Rennie Airth

  Sinclair left early the following day for Stonehill. Madden’s departure for London was delayed till the afternoon. Sergeant Booth accompanied him to the station. They stopped off at the hospital on the way to inquire after Constable Styles and were directed to one of the wards. Billy was sitting up in bed in hospital pyjamas with his hands bandaged and his face white with cream. He appealed to Madden, “There’s nothing wrong with me, sir. Can’t you get me discharged?”

  “It’s out of my hands, I’m afraid. I’ve already asked. They’re keeping you in till Monday.”

  Even Madden’s smile, rare thing that it was, couldn’t lighten the young man’s dejection. Nor was he cheered a few minutes later when a nurse arrived with a glass jar of violets, which she placed on his bedside table.

  “From the young lady in Ward B.” she said to Billy, with a simper.

  “What’s this, then?” Booth’s brown eyes twinkled.

  “Miss Bridgewater’s the young woman the constable saved from the fire,” the nurse explained. “She’s hoping he’ll go and visit her in her ward so she can thank him in person.”

  “Constable!” Madden’s frown was back.

  “Do I have to, sir?”

  “You’ve just said there’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Billy looked to Booth for support, but found none.

  “Make the most of it, lad,” was the only advice received from that quarter. “When it comes to the fair sex, you’re never a hero for long.”

  17

  Mrs. Aylward’s Bentley was well remembered in Highfield, the lady less so, though both Alf Birney and his daughter recalled her coming into the shop to make a purchase.

  “Late April it was,” Stackpole told Madden. “May Birney remembers her buying a bunch of daffodils and asking the way to Melling Lodge.”

  The car had been parked in the street outside the shop and it was there that Miss Birney had had her glimpse of Pike.

  “She saw him standing in the road beside the car, side-on, just like she told us. He was wearing his chauffeur’s cap. It’s all come back to her now, she says.”

  The inspector had arrived to find his work mostly done. Stackpole had taken fresh statements from the Birneys. He had them in his tunic pocket, ready for Madden’s perusal.

  “Oh, and I have a message for you from Dr. Blackwell, sir,” the constable added, with an unusually wooden expression. “She says she’ll be back in her surgery by three.”

  “Thank you, Will,” Madden replied, equally stiff-faced.

  He had telephoned Helen the night before and discovered she was committed to accompanying her father to a luncheon party in Farnham that Sunday. “But I’ll drop him at the house when we get back and meet you in the village. Keep an eye out for my car. My darling, I long to see you.”

  Madden, tongue-tied as always, could only murmur that he loved her, but that seemed enough.

  Stackpole had been waiting on the station platform to greet him. The tall constable’s smile had warmed the grey autumn day. “It’s good to have you back, sir. The village is a different place since we heard the news. There are some people waiting to shake your hand, I can tell you.”

  A good many of them seemed to have gathered at the Rose and Crown, where Stackpole suggested they look in for a bite of lunch. Having wrung at least a dozen palms, Madden sought refuge in the familiar surroundings of the snug bar, which Mr. Poole, the landlord, had kept private for them. While the constable ordered beer and sandwiches, he settled down to read the Birney’s statements.

  “It shook me when I realized how long ago it was he first came here.” Stackpole had removed his helmet. A pint of amber bitter nestled in his big hand. “Late April, according to Miss Birney. He must have kept coming back after that.”

  Madden grunted. He was still busy reading.

  “From May to the end of July—that’s three months. What was he doing up there in the woods? Building a dugout, I know, but after that. . . ?”

  The inspector had gone silent. Stackpole stole a glance at him. “What is it, sir?”

  Madden’s forefinger rested on a line in the statement he was reading. “Dr. Blackwell. . . ?” A frown creased his forehead.

  The constable looked over his shoulder. “That’s May’s statement, is it? Yes, she remembers the doctor being in the shop that morning. It was just before Mrs. Aylward came in. That was when she noticed Pike outside.”

  “I saw him through the shop window. He was standing looking back up the street, staring hard at something. He just stood there like a statue . . .”

  “Yes, sir?” Stackpole still hadn’t grasped the inspector’s point.

  “Looking at what, Will? Staring at whom?”

  Understanding dawned slowly in the constable’s eyes. “Christ!” he said. He’d turned pale.

  “They resembled each other, didn’t they? She told me once people used to take them for sisters.” Madden sat with his head bowed. “Pike saw her first, Will. Before he ever set eyes on Lucy Fletcher.”

  The inspector raised his eyes. “Was that why he was up in the woods for so long? Couldn’t he make up his mind between them? We’ve always wondered why he came back. He had his bag with him, so we thought he’d come to collect something. But that wasn’t it. He was bringing what he needed.”

  His companion reached over and pressed his arm. “Don’t, sir,” Stackpole urged him. “Put it from your mind. It’s over now.”

  Madden’s face was stricken. “This stays between us, Will,” he said quietly. He fastened his gaze on the constable. “Not a word to Dr. Blackwell about it. Never! Do you hear me?”

  They found Tom Cooper, the Fletchers’ gardener, trimming the hedge in front of his own cottage at the end of a lane off the paved main road. He took off his cracked leather gloves to shake the inspector’s hand. “I was that pleased to hear he was dead, sir, though I wish you’d caught him. I was hoping to see the bastard swing.”

  Cooper told them something they hadn’t known before. Mrs. Aylward had taken two days to complete the painting and had spent the intervening night in a hotel in Guildford.

  “I only saw the chauffeur the first day, when they arrived. He took the lady’s things from the car into the hall. Mrs. Fletcher showed him where to put them. Then he parked the car in the drive. Next time I came by it was empty, and I didn’t see him again. I thought he must have gone into the village.”

  “That’s where he went,” Madden said later, as they walked back up the lane. He nodded behind them towards the woods of Upton Hanger, bright with the colours of autumn. The morning mist was gathering again, starting to weave silvery threads among the tips of the Scotch pines lining the crest. “He knew by then he’d be coming back. He was scouting out a site for his dugout.”

  They reached the corner. Looking up the road, the inspector caught sight of the small red two-seater coming towards them. He raised his arm. Stackpole saw the light in his eyes and grinned under his helmet.

  The car drew up beside them. “Hullo, you two.” Her deep blue glance rested on Madden. “I’ve just bumped into young Jem Roker. He was looking for me. His father’s fallen off a haystack and broken his arm. I’ll have to go out there.” She smiled into his eyes. “A doctor’s life . . .”

  “Will you be long?” he asked anxiously.

  “Not more than an hour. But I’ve got to stop in at the surgery first. Come along there for a moment.”

  They followed the car as it turned off the road on to the track that circled the green. The door of the doctor’s waiting-room was ajar when they got there. Stackpole hung back.

  “I’ll wait for you here, sir.” He studied the grey sky as though it held some feature of interest.

  Madden went inside and found Helen in her office. She came from behind her desk into his arms. He held her to him, wordless. The thought of the peril that had come so close to her sent a shudder through him he couldn’t control.

  “John, what is it?”

  “No . . . nothing . . . I’
m just . . .” He abandoned all hope of words and clung to her.

  She kissed him. “Those poor people at Stonehill . . . I lay awake all night trying to imagine what you must be doing . . . I wanted you with me, I don’t want you going away any more . . .”

  He tightened his hold on her and they kissed again.

  “I’ve something to show you,” she said. She led him hack to the desk and picked up an envelope that was lying there. “This is from Dr. Mackay in Edinburgh. She says Sophy has started talking about her mother again. Still nothing about that night, but it won’t be long, Dr. Mackay thinks.” Helen took out a folded sheet of paper from the envelope and handed it to him. “This is something Sophy did. Dr. Mackay thought I’d like to see it.”

  Madden smoothed out the paper in his hands. It bore a child’s drawing done in crayon of a lake with mountains in the background. Yellow-billed ducks floated on the blue water. Giant birds flapped overhead.

  “What are those?” he asked, pointing.

  Helen frowned. “Highland cattle?” she hazarded.

  Madden laughed. “Of course.”

  “It’s a happy picture, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.” He took her in his arms again. They stood unmoving for several moments. Then she spoke.

  “Let’s get married soon,” she whispered. “Let’s not wait. There’s so little time.”

  “Time. . . ?” He didn’t understand her, and drew back a little to study her face. “We’ve all the time in the world now.”

  “No, it’s going, it’s passing every second, can’t you feel it?” Laughing, she challenged him with her eyes. “Marry me now, John Madden.”

  He returned her straight gaze, unblinking. “By God, I will!” he vowed.

  Stackpole was waiting on the green a little way from where the Wolseley was parked. Madden put the doctor’s bag on the passenger seat besides the splints and bandages that Helen had brought out from the surgery. She got into the car.

  “When you’ve finished go straight to the house. Father’s spending the afternoon in Farnham, so you won’t find anyone there. But Molly will be pleased to see you. Just let yourself in. The front door’s not locked.” She held his gaze for a moment. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  With a wave to the constable, she drove off.

  Their last call of the afternoon was on the Fletcher cook, Ann Dunn, who lived on the opposite side of the green. She, too, remembered Mrs. Aylward’s visit to Melling Lodge. “When lunch was ready in the kitchen, I sent for the chauffeur, but he wasn’t in the car. We thought he must have gone to the pub.”

  Mrs. Dunn brushed a lock of hair from her forehead with a flour-dusted arm. She had found new employment with the village baker. The pleasant smell of newly baked bread filled the small cottage. “I’ve just remembered now. It was poor Sally Pepper I sent out to look for him.”

  The afternoon light was beginning to fade as they re-crossed the green. Glancing at the inspector, Stackpole saw his eyes filmed over with thought and he smiled to himself again. The smoke of autumn fires hung in the still air. When they reached the constable’s cottage they found Mrs. Stackpole herself, hair bound up in a yellow scarf, busily raking dead leaves into a bonfire.

  “Here I am, Will Stackpole, doing your work as usual.” She smiled a greeting to Madden. “There was a call from Oakley while you were gone. Dick Wright says he’s lost another pair of chickens. And they pinched some food from his kitchen, too. He still says it’s gypsies.”

  “Gypsies!” Stackpole snorted with derision. “Whenever anything’s lifted hereabouts, it’s always the gypsies.”

  Mention of Oakley jogged the inspector’s memory. “What became of our friend Wellings?” he asked. “Did you charge him in the end?”

  “Never had a chance to, sir.” Stackpole discarded his helmet and began to unbutton his tunic. “He did a midnight flit. Packed up and slipped away without a word. It hardly seemed worth the trouble to try to get him back. The pub’s been shut ever since.”

  Madden caught sight of a curly head framed in an upstairs window of the cottage. “Hullo, Amy,” he said.

  Mrs. Stackpole spun round. “What are you doing there, young lady? Get back to bed this instant!”

  The child’s head vanished.

  “Amy’s down with the measles,” her mother explained. “Dr. Blackwell said she’d look in later on her way home.”

  Stackpole busied himself with the rake. “Perhaps you’d like to wait here for her, sir,” he said casually.

  “No, I don’t think so, Will.” The inspector adjusted his hat. “I’ll be on my way.”

  “You’re leaving now?” The constable looked aghast.

  “Not this moment.”

  “Then we’ll be seeing you again?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Turning at the garden gate he was in time to see Mrs. Stackpole jab an elbow into her husband’s ribs. Grinning, he raised an arm in farewell.

  18

  Thick grey clouds hung close to the earth, brushing the tops of the tall beech trees. Away to his left the woods of Upton Hanger were no more than a dark shadow in the deepening dusk. Madden walked down the lane in a cocoon of mist-wrapped silence, buoyant with a happiness that sent his spirits soaring and lightened his step on the damp ground underfoot.

  Pausing at the locked gates of Melling Lodge, he looked down the elm-lined drive, but it was already too dark to see the house. He recalled the day he had driven through the gates in Lord Stratton’s Rolls Royce, and all that happened since.

  But as he walked on his mood changed. The euphoria began to drain away and was replaced by a low current of unease, which at first he attributed to the dank air and gathering mist, reminding him, as they did, of freezing nights spent in no man’s land, waiting to ambush an enemy patrol.

  At the same time he was aware of a nagging voice at the back of his mind. Madden was gifted with unusual powers of retrieval; it was one of his strengths as a detective; there was little he heard that he forgot. But his attention had strayed from his work that afternoon. His thoughts had wandered. He had the uncomfortable feeling of having missed something important. Of having heard, but not listened.

  The lane narrowed, the hedgerows drawing in on either side. He came to where the road began a long turn to the right. Ahead of him was the footpath that ran through the spur of woods to the side gate of the garden; the path Will Stackpole had shown him on his first visit.

  Hesitating for a second, he decided to stay on the paved road, reasoning that Helen might catch up with him in her car, and after five minutes came to the main gates, which were open. Beyond them, the drive stretched away like a dark tunnel.

  He started down the avenue of limes, dead leaves rustling beneath his feet. The trees on either side still bore a heavy burden of autumn foliage and he spied a faint gleam of gold in the blackness overhead. At the end of the tunnel the white shape of the house showed dimly, the outline blurred and softened by the thickening mist.

  Madden stopped.

  He had heard a noise in the bushes flanking the line of trees. A rustle louder than the whisper of leaves beneath his feet.

  “Molly, is that you? Here, girl!” He called to the dog.

  The noise ceased at once. The inspector stood unmoving in a darkness dense with silver mist. Utter silence had fallen all around him. Then he felt something brush his cheek and he lifted his hand quickly—

  A leaf, spiralling down from the branches above, came to rest on his shoulder.

  He heard the rustle again, quick and furtive, and this time recognized the sound as that of a small, scurrying animal. Prey or predator, he could not tell, but it was gone in a moment.

  His anxiety had not abated and he began to comb his memory, running through the events of the afternoon, the conversations he had held, trying to track down the errant phrase that lurked like a fugitive at the back of his mind, refusing to show itself.

  Was it something Stackpole had said?r />
  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 stone-flagged 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.