River of Darkness jm-1

by Rennie Airth

  He sat down then in the shade of the oak tree and took out his cigarettes. The green leaves overhead seemed to remind him of something: the image of Helen Blackwell in her patterned blouse came into his mind with a pleasant jolt. He lit a cigarette.

  Far away, beyond the golden fields, a faint blur on the horizon showed where the downs began. He watched a hawk circling in the air above. Etched clear against the brilliant blue sky, it wheeled and wheeled in ever-tightening turns. Wheeled… and dropped!

  Wheatstalks shivered and were still. The hunter had its prey.

  Madden extinguished his cigarette. He'd yet to catch the scent of his.

  In Oakley, the door of the Coachman's Arms stood open. Sergeant Gates was seated at one of the tables in the taproom. Smoke-blackened beams supported the grubby ceiling. The smell of stale beer and tobacco soured the air. The man Madden had seen standing in the doorway earlier lounged over the bar, his elbows resting on the stained surface. He was in his early thirties with black slicked-back hair and a knowing smile.

  'This is Inspector Madden,' Gates said tonelessly.

  'Sir, this is Mr Wellings, the landlord. I was about to question him.'

  'Go ahead, Sergeant. Don't mind me.' Madden sat down.

  Wellings directed his smile at the inspector. 'Still half an hour to opening time, I'm afraid. But if Sergeant Gates is prepared to turn a blind eye, I dare say I could draw you a pint.'

  'No, thank you, Mr Wellings.' Madden didn't return the smile.

  'We're interested in any customers you might have had over the weekend,' Gates began. 'Visitors, not locals.'

  'Starting when?'

  'Saturday.'

  'I had the Farnham Wheelers Club through here at midday. About a dozen of them. They parked their bikes outside and came in for a drink. And there was a party of four in a motor-car. Two men and their wives, I reckon. They had the ploughman's lunch.'

  'Was that all?' Gates looked up.

  'No, there was another couple in the evening. Bloke on a motorbike with his girlfriend on the pillion.

  Took me aside, he did, and asked me if I had a room for them. I told him I didn't run that kind of establishment. I did say he could try his luck in Tup's Spinney.' Wellings smirked.

  Madden waited to be enlightened, but Gates went on: 'Sunday, then?'

  'There were more. Quite a few. Four parties in cars between midday and two o'clock. Six men and four ladies, as I recall. Two of the parties were travelling together, heading for the coast. And then in the evening there was one other car with a man and his wife and their son. But all they wanted was directions.

  They'd lost their way.'

  'Did you see any other cars during the day? Travelling through the village, but not stopping?'

  'Or motorcycles?' Madden said.

  Wellings paused, frowning with exaggerated concentration.

  He shook his head. 'No, I can't say that I did. But, then, I'm stuck in here during opening hours. Don't see too much of what's going on outside.'

  The smile was back.

  Sergeant Gates looked at Madden, who nodded.

  'Thank you, Mr Wellings.' He closed his notebook.

  'What did you think, sir?' he asked Madden outside.

  'I thought he was lying.'

  'I agree, but about what?' The sergeant wrinkled his nose. 'He's a right sow, if you'll pardon the expression. The last two landlords quit because they couldn't make the place pay. But somehow he manages to, and you have to ask yourself how.'

  'After-hours drinks?'

  'That, and he'll sell you a carton of fags at below market price, or so I've been told. We think he handles stolen goods, but we haven't been able to lay a finger on him thus far.'

  'There's a list out of items taken from Melling Lodge. If any of them turn up locally, pull him in.

  Never mind if there's a connection or not. Put him through it.'

  'It'll be a pleasure, sir.'

  Madden donned his jacket. 'What was that he said about the man with the motorbike and his girl?'

  'He should try his luck in Tup's Spinney.' Gates gestured. 'That's over in the fields. Well known to the local lads and lasses, if you take my meaning.' He grunted. 'Wellings has an eye for the ladies himself, they say. Especially if it's someone else's wife. Nasty piece of work.'

  They loaded the sergeant's bicycle into the back of the Humber, and Madden drove him the few miles to Craydon. Returning by the same road, and passing through Oakley, he saw Wellings on the pavement outside the village shop talking to a young woman with bobbed hair. He paused in his conversation and watched Madden's car as it went by.

  Madden parked the Humber where he had found it, in the courtyard of the Rose and Crown in High field. As he climbed out of the car, the door of the pub opened and a lanky man in a city suit came out.

  He had his tie loosened and his hat tipped back on his head.

  'Mr Madden, is it? Reg Ferris. Daily Express.' He held out his hand. Madden shook it briefly.

  They hadn't met before, but he knew Ferris's name and recalled that he was no friend of the chief inspector's.

  'Bad business.' The reporter's darting eyes went from Madden to the car and back as though he hoped to glean some information from putting the two together. 'I'm told it was like an abattoir in there.'

  Madden reached into the car for his jacket.

  'We're waiting for Mr Sinclair. He's said he'll meet us.'

  'Then I dare say he will.'

  Ferris leaned against the car. He put his hands in his pockets. 'This is different, isn't it?' He watched to see how Madden would react.

  'Different?'

  'You've not had a case like this before — admit it.

  Slaughtering a whole household, and for what? A few bits of silverware? It doesn't make sense.'

  The inspector put on his jacket. 'Goodbye, Mr Ferris.' He walked away.

  The reporter called after him: 'From what I hear you don't know where to start.'

  4

  Madden found the chief inspector on the church hall steps talking to Helen Blackwell. The doctor was wearing a man's white linen jacket with the cuffs rolled up over a light summer dress. She greeted Madden with a smile.

  'Dr Blackwell has been giving us a statement.'

  Sinclair's grey eyes held a hint of wry amusement. 'She has also explained to me her reasons for wanting to keep Sophy Fletcher at her house, rather than send her to hospital. I found her arguments… persuasive. The child will stay here.'

  'Thank you again, Chief Inspector.' The doctor shook his hand warmly. Her eyes brushed Madden's.

  'Good morning to you both.'

  Sinclair's nod was approving as he watched her walk away. 'A fine-looking lassie.' He gave Madden a sideways glance. 'Dragon indeed! You might have warned me, John.'

  'Nothing from Oakley, I'm afraid, sir.' Madden was smiling. 'The press are waiting for you at the pub. I bumped into Ferris.'

  'Is that rodent here?' The chief inspector's face darkened. 'It must be the smell of blood.'

  'He's already guessed we've got problems.'

  'He doesn't know the half of it. Come with me.

  There's something I want to show you.'

  Inside the hall a low hum of voices sounded from a line of tables where detectives were taking statements.

  Madden saw Styles, bent over a pad, sitting opposite an elderly woman in a black coat and hat. Inspector Boyce was at another table before a growing pile of statement forms. With a nod to him, Sinclair picked up his file and led Madden to one side, out of earshot.

  He removed two typewritten sheets of paper clipped together from the folder and handed them to the inspector. 'Have a look at that.'

  It was the post-mortem report on Lucy Fletcher.

  Madden spent several minutes studying it. Sinclair waited until he had finished.

  'So he never touched her.' Eyes narrowed, the chief inspector stood with folded arms. 'Ransom looked everywhere. Vaginal swabs. Anal swabs. He even tested the
poor woman's mouth. Not a trace of semen.'

  'He grabbed her, though, just as we thought,'

  Madden said. ' "Bruises on the upper arms…"' he quoted.

  'He grabbed her and dragged her up the stairs to the bedroom and cut her throat. Why didn't he rape her? There was nothing to stop him. She was naked under that robe. What was he doing there? Why was he in that house?'

  Madden was silent.

  'He killed her with a razor, Ransom thinks. But it wasn't the colonel's — that was with his shaving things in the bathroom. We found no trace of blood on it.

  He brought his own.'

  Madden put the report back in the file. 'Did you show this to Dr Blackwell?' he asked.

  'Yes. Why?'

  'They were childhood friends. She needed to know.'

  Sinclair sighed. He pointed to the pile of forms in front of Boyce. 'Go through those, John. See if you can find anything. I must talk to the press. When I come back we'll sit down together. The assistant commissioner's called a meeting for tomorrow morning.

  The Yard is making its concern clear,' he added drily. 'I expect to be told they want an early result.'

  'I doubt they'll get one this time.' Madden weighed the file in his hand.

  'Spare a thought for me tomorrow when I'm telling them that.'

  The tea urn had appeared again; it was sitting on a table by the door. Madden poured himself a mug and took a sandwich from the heaped plate beside it. He collected the pile of forms from Boyce and settled down in a quiet corner.

  The statements, short for the most part, were mainly testaments to the unchanging nature of village life. Most of those questioned had seen the Fletchers at church on Sunday morning — for the last time, tragically. Several of them had spoken to Lucy Fletcher afterwards. 'Such a lovely lady,' Mrs Arthur Skipps, the butcher's wife had said, unprompted, and the detective interviewing her had let the remark stand.

  Such a lovely lady.

  Tom Cooper, the Fletchers' gardener, had been one of the last to see them alive. Although he was free on Sunday, he had gone over to Melling Lodge in the late afternoon to water the roses growing beside the kitchen-garden wall. The long drought had made it a difficult summer for him and he was determined not to see his labours go for nothing. Colonel Fletcher had found him busy with a watering-can and chided him in a friendly way for working on his day off. The colonel had been in his 'usual good spirits'. Later, Mrs Fletcher and her daughter Sophy had walked by and Cooper had waved to them. They were talking about the puppy the Fletchers were planning to buy for Sophy and her brother when they returned from Scotland at the end of the summer.

  Lord Stratton, in his statement, said he had taken the Lord Lieutenant and his wife to dine with the Fletchers on Saturday evening. It had been 'a pleasant occasion'. The Fletchers had talked about their plans to drive through France later that summer to visit friends in Biarritz.

  Helen Blackwell, who had also been at the dinner, was more forthcoming. Sophy Fletcher was to have spent the whole summer with her uncle and aunt Colonel Fletcher's brother and his wife — at their home outside Edinburgh. An attack of measles had kept her in Highfield, however, and her brother James had been sent on ahead. She was due to have travelled to Scotland by train the following week in the company of her nanny, Alice Crookes. Shortly thereafter the Fletchers had planned to leave for France.

  The last part of Dr Blackwell's statement, an account of her urgent summons to the house on Monday morning, was given in cold medical language.

  She had examined each of the victims in turn and pronounced them dead. Rigor was starting to recede and she had estimated the time of death at a little over twelve hours earlier. She said 'something' had made her look under the bed in the nursery. She employed the same phrase as she had used with Madden to describe Sophy's condition when she found her. 'Profound shock.'

  The question of strangers in the village over the weekend was dealt with in several of the statements.

  Frederick Poole, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, reported a busload of passengers in a Samuelson motor coach stopping at the pub for lunch on Saturday. The company had alerted him ahead of time. As far as he knew, all those who alighted from the bus had boarded the vehicle again later. Apart from that, there had been upward of a score of motorists and cyclists who had called in at the pub on Saturday and Sunday.

  None had stuck in his mind. All had continued their journeys.

  Freda Birney, the wife of the owner of the village shop, Alf Birney, reported seeing two hikers picnicking by the stream between the outskirts of the village and Melling Lodge on Sunday just before twelve o'clock. She had been taking the dog for a walk before preparing lunch for her family. Madden made a note to have the hikers traced and questioned.

  Running his eye over the next statement in the pile, he paused, went back and reread it carefully, checked the name of the interviewing officer, and then put it to one side.

  Billy Styles pushed the form across the table, watched the man sign it, said, 'Thank you, sir, that'll be all for now,' then leaned back in his chair and stretched. His tenth interview of the day. Harold Toombs, the village sexton. Billy had had to fight to keep a straight face as he wrote it down. Toombs had spent the weekend working in his garden. He had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary.

  It was a matter of amazement to Billy that he was still part of the investigation. After his experiences of the day before he had expected to find himself back in the CID pool at Scotland Yard.

  Detective Sergeant Hollingsworth, who'd brought him the news, seemed equally surprised. A stocky, nut-faced man with twenty years on the force, he affected to find Billy's presence among them a source of wonder. 'Can't think what the guv'nor has in mind.

  No bloodhounds in your family tree, are there, Detective Constable Styles? No hidden talents we're not apprised of?'

  On receiving word, Billy had experienced a moment of elation, quickly followed by one of foreboding as he contemplated the prospect of spending another day under the dark glance of Inspector Madden.

  But thus far, beyond a polite, 'Good morning, sir,' from Billy, and a distracted nod in response from the inspector, they hadn't exchanged a word, and Billy had found himself mildly bored as he recorded the villagers' bald accounts of the long, sun-drenched weekend.

  Now he saw Madden, sitting in the corner of the hall, beckon to him. He rose from the table and went over. 'Sir?'

  Madden held out a statement form. 'Yours, I think?'

  Billy glanced at it. 'Yes, sir. May Birney. Her father owns the village store.'

  The inspector eyed him. 'Well, did she, or didn't she, Constable?' he asked.

  'Sir, she wasn't sure.' Billy shuffled nervously. 'First she said she did, then she changed her mind. Said she must have been mistaken.'

  'Why did she do that? Change her mind?'

  'Sir… sir, I don't know.'

  Madden stood up so abruptly Billy had to spring backwards. 'Let's see if we can find out, shall we?'

  With a nod to Boyce he strode from the hall. Billy hurried after him.

  The village store, a few minutes' walk away down Highfield's only paved road, was situated between the pub and the post office. Alf Birney, plump, with a fringe of grey hair like a monk's tonsure, came from behind the counter to show them into a curtained-off toom at the back of the shop.

  'It's not right this should have happened,' he muttered.

  'Not to a lady like Mrs Fletcher. Not to any of them.' He shifted a carton of custard powder off a chair to make room for Madden. 'I can remember when she was a child. She used to come to the shop every Saturday to buy her sweets. Little Lucy He left them there, and a minute later his daughter came in. May Birney was no more than sixteen. She was dressed in a dun-coloured work smock, her bobbed hair cut in a fringe across her pale forehead.

  'Get it straight in your mind now, girl.' Her father's voice came from beyond the curtain. 'Tell the inspector exactly what you heard.'

  Mis
s Birney stood before them, nervously twisting her fingers. Madden looked at Billy and nodded.

  Taken by surprise — he'd assumed the inspector would handle the questioning — Billy cleared his throat. 'It's about this business of the whistle you say you heard.

  Or didn't hear.' He spoke loudly, and watched her flush and steal a glance at Madden, who was seated at a table in the middle of the room.

  'You were out walking the dog, you said,' Billy prompted her.

  May Birney stared at her feet.

  'Tell us again what happened.'

  The girl said something inaudible. 'What?' Billy heard himself almost shouting. 'I didn't hear. What did you say?'

  'I said I told you before but you said I was imagining it.' She spoke very quickly looking down.

  'I never said that-' Billy checked himself. 'I asked you if you were sure you'd heard a police whistle and you said, no, you weren't-'

  'I said like a police whistle.'

  'All right, like a police whistle, but then you said perhaps you'd been mistaken and you hadn't heard it at all. Do you remember saying that?'

  The girl fell silent again.

  Billy stepped nearer. He felt Madden's eyes on him.

  'Now listen to me, May Birney. This is a serious matter. I don't need to remind you what happened at Melling Lodge on Sunday night. Stop saying you're not sure or you don't remember. Either you heard something or you didn't. And if you're making all this up…!'

  The girl turned bright red.

  Madden spoke. 'Would you like to sit down, May?'

  He drew up another chair for her. After a moment's hesitation, the girl complied. 'Now let's see, I'm a little puzzled, what time did this happen?'

  'Around nine o'clock, sir. Might have been a little later.'

  'Was it still light?'

  'Just getting dark.'

  'You were walking the dog?'

  'Yes, sir, Bessie. She's getting old, you see, and needs to be taken, but if you put her outside, she just flops down, so Mum and me, we take her down to the stream and make her walk a bit.' She kept her eyes on Madden's face.