River of Darkness jm-1

by Rennie Airth

  Booth raised an eyebrow at his departing figure.

  'Doesn't say much, does he?'

  Billy wanted to defend the inspector, but he couldn't think of a suitable response.

  'Mind you, I wouldn't have his job.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'This Melling Lodge business?' Booth shook his head. 'Worst kind of case a copper can find himself landed with.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Because you're dealing with something you don't understand.' The sergeant dipped into his beer. 'Most people do things for reasons and criminals are no different. But this bloke!' He shook his head again.

  'With a case like that, it's hard to know where to start.'

  Billy watched Madden lead Dawkins away from the bar to a table in the corner. The inspector carried their glasses. He pulled out a chair for the other man and saw that he was comfortably settled.

  'I remember a case I was on once.' Booth was speaking again. 'A young woman was murdered, strangled.

  Her body was found in a field just outside of town. We got the bloke that did it. He kept a diary.

  It was produced in evidence.'

  'Did he mention the murder?' Billy was fascinated.

  Booth nodded. 'But it's what he wrote — I've never forgotten it. "Warm weather. Rain in the afternoon. I killed a girl today."'

  'That was all?' Billy was incredulous.

  The sergeant shrugged. 'She was his first, thank God. But I remember thinking then, there must be people around us living another life from the one we live. It's as though they're from a different world. To understand them you'd have to get inside their heads, and what chance is there of that?'

  Madden took Dawkins's glass to the bar and returned to their table with a fresh drink. He was smiling and nodding at the other man. Dawkins spoke, gesturing with his hands. He patted his trousered stump. He was grinning across the table at the inspector.

  'How did you catch him?' Billy wanted to know.

  'Through a little thing.' Booth drained his glass.

  'He'd taken something from the girl he killed, a brooch shaped like a buckle with a piece of amber mounted in the middle. It was nothing special, but we gave out a description of it. A couple of weeks later a beat constable noticed a girl in the street wearing something similar. He asked her where she'd got it and she told him a young man had given it to her. Turned out he was the bloke.'

  'That was lucky.'

  The inspector rose and took his leave of Dawkins.

  Billy saw a banknote change hands.

  'Lucky for her,' Booth countered. 'I reckon she would have been his next. But that's how it is with a case like that — or this Melling Lodge business. You won't crack it the usual way. You have to hope something will turn up. Some little thing,' he added, unconsciously echoing the inspector's words earlier.

  'You have to keep your eyes open.'

  Little was said on the journey back to London.

  Madden sat gazing out of the window, seemingly wrapped in thought. Billy, aware that another possible lead had turned cold, supposed that was what was on the inspector's mind.

  Or was he thinking about all those men who had marched down through the town to the harbour and on to the Channel steamers? the young constable wondered. The route had been renamed after the war, Sergeant Booth had told them in the taxi. Now it was known as the Road of Remembrance. To Billy, recalling Alf Dawkins with his crutches and his nervous tic, begging for half-crowns, it seemed more a case of how quickly people forgot.

  'Mr Hardy has three children and sings in the church choir. He's short and fat and gets breathless climbing a flight of stairs. I hope you had better luck with Dawkins, John.'

  Madden's response caused Sinclair's eyebrows to shoot skywards. 'One leg! Poor devil — but couldn't someone have told us that?'

  The chief inspector had returned from Have an hour earlier. He was seated at his desk, smoking his pipe. Behind him the late-afternoon sun lay like molten fire on the river.

  'He remembers the incident well enough. They were all lined up by the sergeant major and marched in one at a time to be questioned. It put a scare into them, Dawkins said, but he swears none of them was guilty.

  They returned from the farm in a group that night.'

  Madden settled behind his desk. He lit a cigarette.

  'He said Miller was rough on them. He behaved as though he believed they were hiding something. But after they came out of the line a few days later they never heard another word about the case.'

  'I got the same from Hardy.' Sinclair puffed at his pipe. 'What did you make of it?'

  The inspector shrugged. 'I wondered why Miller didn't talk to them again. Even if he believed the guilty man had been killed in action he'd still have wanted to question the others to get the full story from them.'

  'I had the same reaction.' Sinclair nodded agreement.

  'It's obvious Miller no longer regarded them as suspects. He must have had someone else in mind.

  We've been chasing the wrong fox, damn it!'

  'But still someone he thought was dead,' Madden pointed out quickly. 'He closed the case, remember.'

  The chief inspector grunted. He shook his head pessimistically. 'I've been wondering what to do next.

  It occurred to me the Belgian police might be able to help us, so I sent a telegram to the Brussels Surete half an hour ago asking them to check their records.

  After all, those were Belgian citizens who were murdered.'

  He sighed heavily. 'The trouble is, Brussels was under German occupation at the time and I'm not sure the civilian police were ever involved in the investigation. I've a nasty feeling they'll simply refer us to the British military authorities and we'll be back where we started. With Miller's missing memorandum.'

  Harold Biggs had been looking forward to spending that Saturday afternoon at the races. He and his pal, Jimmy Pullman, had planned to drive to Dover in Jimmy's second-hand Morris, lose a few shillings on the nags and then look in later at the Seaview Hotel where there was a regular Saturday tea dance.

  They might, if they were lucky, pick up a couple of girls. But a summons from Mr Henry Wolverton, senior partner in the firm of Dabney, Dabney and Wolverton, on Friday morning put a stopper on that.

  'There's something I want you to do tomorrow, Biggs. Old client of the firm. Widow of client actually.

  Got herself into a state about something. Written me a letter.' Wolverton, a stout middle-aged man with an unhealthily red face, spoke habitually in short sentences as though he couldn't summon up the breath for longer utterances. 'Wants someone to go and see her tomorrow afternoon. Has to be then.' He peered up at Harold over the top of his half-spectacles. 'Out of normal working hours, I know. You don't mind, do you?'

  'No, sir,' said Biggs, minding strongly.

  'He's got his nerve,' Jimmy Pullman remarked when they met later in the Bunch of Grapes for a lunch-time drink. Jimmy worked in a gents clothing store. 'Catch Mr Henry Bloody Wolverton spending his Saturday afternoon traipsing around the countryside.

  You should have told him where to get off, Biggsy.'

  Harold shrugged, pretending unconcern. He accepted a Scotch egg from the plate Jimmy pushed along the pub counter towards him. His job as a solicitor's clerk was the same one he'd held before the war and he'd been happy when early demobilization enabled him to reclaim it. Other men returning later to civilian life had not been so fortunate.

  'What do you have to do, anyway?' Jimmy demanded. 'And why tomorrow afternoon?'

  Biggs took out the letter Mr Wolverton had given him and squinted through his horn-rimmed spectacles at the nearly illegible handwriting, which meandered drunkenly across the page. 'All she says is she needs someone to do something for her and it has to be tomorrow afternoon. She's underlined "afternoon" several times. She says it's important. She's underlined that, too.' Biggs sipped his beer.

  'And she lives at bloody Knowlton?' Jimmy scowled. 'What's her name?'

  Biggs gla
nced at the letter again. 'Troy,' he said.

  'Winifred Troy.'

  The early-afternoon bus left for Knowlton at a quarter to two, and Biggs reached the bus station with five minutes to spare, having spent the morning working at the office. He just had time to dash back to his lodgings and exchange his dark suit and black bowler for plus-fours and a checked cap. A pair of two-tone shoes, which he'd recently bought at a reduced price through the good offices of Jimmy Pullman, completed his ensemble. He was ready for a trip to the country.

  The journey to Knowlton took forty minutes. The bus service, linking Folkestone and Dover via a string of inland villages, was a post-war innovation, and it looked like the business was flourishing. Every seat in the green-painted vehicle was taken and Harold was obliged to share his own with a dough-faced woman in the late stages of pregnancy.

  To pass the time — and to take his mind off the disagreeable thought that the short, panting breaths he heard coming from beside him might herald an impromptu birth — he began to conduct a mental exercise. He had recently completed a correspondence course in Pelmanism, a method of memory training designed to eliminate mind-wandering and increase concentration. The course, a popular one in Biggs's set, had been heavily promoted. 'How to Eliminate Brain Fag!' the advertisements trumpeted. Harold was convinced that his memory was sharper as a result and he set out now to recall as much as he could of what he had read in the previous day's newspaper.

  The main story on the front page had dealt with the Irish peace talks, which had dragged on in London all summer. A formal conference of the parties was due to open shortly, but diehard elements in Sinn Fein were opposed to any agreement that excluded the province of Ulster from a United Ireland. The report recalled that a shipment of 500 sub-machine-guns destined for Sinn Fein had been seized recently in New York.

  There had been further debate in the House of Commons on the government's decision to admit women to the civil service in three years' time. Despite recent rains most of southern England was still in the grip of drought and rigid economies would be necessary for the remainder of the year. The price of whisky had been increased again. A bottle now cost 12/6d.

  Most of these stories he had only glanced at (though he seemed to have retained the salient facts!). But there was one item he had read with close attention, a lengthy article dealing with the police investigation into the murders at Melling Lodge in Surrey two months earlier.

  Biggs had followed the case with interest from the start. It was a talking point in his office and in the Bunch of Grapes where he usually spent his lunch hour. The apparently reasonless crime had caught people's imaginations. Some thought it the work of a maniac — Jimmy Pullman held to this view — but Harold felt there was more behind the murders than met the eye. 'It'll turn out to be the person you least expect,' he had predicted. 'Someone like the postman.'

  He'd been disappointed initially when the opening words of the article — Important developments are expected soon in the continuing investigation into the horrific murders at Melling Lodge — were not borne out in succeeding paragraphs. Instead, the report detailed the progress of the inquiry to date. Or lack of progress, since it was plain the police had made little headway. The writer questioned whether the investigation was on the right track. If, indeed, it ever had been.

  The shock felt at the killings seemed to have induced a sense of 'panic', he asserted. 'Wild theories' had abounded at the outset and even now, when it was increasingly clear that what they were dealing with was 'an isolated incident of senseless violence', there seemed to be an unwillingness, even among experienced officers, to approach the matter in 'a straightforward way'.

  Harold was gratified to discover that he was able to retrieve key words and phrases from the text.

  A move to seek the help of 'outside experts' had been checked, thanks to prompt action at the 'highest levels' in the Yard. But the investigation had continued to flounder in the eyes of many, who questioned whether proper attention had been given to 'the most basic areas of crime detection'.

  A description of the man sought had been available to the police for some time, but there was doubt whether this area of the inquiry had been pursued with 'sufficient thoroughness'. Another 'solid lead' was the motorcycle and sidecar that the murderer was known to have used. It was rare in police work for a physical clue of this nature to yield no results, the reporter declared, leaving unspoken the implication that the detectives in charge of the case had somehow failed to make the most of it.

  Somewhere in England is a man answering to the description who owns a motorcycle. Surely it only requires a methodical approach by the police of this land acting in concert to uncover his identity.

  This somewhat dramatic assertion had lodged intact in Harold's newly improved memory. But he was puzzled by the article as a whole. He couldn't determine whether the reporter was giving his own opinions or those of the 'informed circles at Scotland Yard' to whom he referred from time to time. And it was only right at the very end of the report that the 'important developments' heralded in the opening paragraph were finally revealed:

  The lack of progress has pointed to the need for a fresh approach. It is understood that the officer at present heading the inquiry, Chief Inspector Sinclair, will shortly be replaced by the man thought best qualified to bring matters to a successful conclusion, Britain's most famous detective, Chief Superintendent Albert Sampson, better known to the public as 'Sampson of the Yard'.

  Knowlton was not Biggs's final destination. Mrs Troy lived at a place called Rudd's Cross, which he had been told was in the vicinity. Inquiring at the village pub, where the bus deposited him, he learned that in fact it was more than two miles away and could only be reached by a footpath that ran through the fields.

  As he left the outskirts of Knowlton a distant rumble came to his ears. Away to the west the thunderheads of a storm were massing. The air was warm and muggy. Harold took off his glasses and mopped his face with a handkerchief. He'd brought no umbrella with him.

  He hurried on through the stubbled fields, keeping an anxious eye on the heavens. Pausing at a stile, he removed his cap and patted dry the two bays of bare scalp on either side of his widow's peak. Thunder boomed again, louder this time. His new shoes were starting to pinch.

  The bubble of resentment which had been swelling inside him all morning burst into angry recognition that he had let himself be used. Exploited! He might have minded less if there'd been any mention of compensation when Mr Wolverton gave him his assignment.

  His bitterness grew as it fastened on this grievance.

  Only last month his request for an increase in salary had been turned down. He'd felt hard done by then.

  After years of wartime privation the shops were at last full of goods worth buying. Harold himself had been saving for months to purchase a wireless set — public transmissions by the new British Broadcasting Company were due to start the following year. Further off in his future the mirage of a motor-car shimmered.

  Jimmy was right, he thought angrily, as he set off again. It was time he asserted himself.

  Biggs was at his wits' end. He could make no sense of the old woman's ramblings. She would start on one thing, skip to another, and then lose the thread of both.

  'Edna Babb? She's the girl who "does" for you?

  Have I got that right, Mrs Troy?'

  Finding his way to the cottage had proved no problem. It was just as Mr Wolverton had described it, standing on its own, separated by an apple orchard and unploughed fields from the rest of the houses grouped around the crossroads that gave the hamlet its name. But it had taken repeated hammerings on the door with the brass knocker before he heard the shuffle of slow footsteps inside and saw the door handle turn.

  'Mr Wolverton?'

  The figure peering up at him from the shadowy hallway was old and bent. Her thinning white hair was drawn back in an untidy bun. She wore a thick, knitted shawl wrapped about her shoulders over a long, stained skirt of da
rk bombazine. Wondering how she could possibly mistake him for his employer, he had given her his name. It was only when he went inside — when she led him into the small parlour and seated herself in a high-backed chair beside the window where a bar of sunlight entering through lace-net curtains illuminated her face — that he noticed the milky, cataract-clouded eyes.

  He had pulled up a chair beside hers, and now he sat and listened while she talked of people he had never heard of — of 'Edna' and 'Tom Donkin' and 'Mr Grail' — as though they were old acquaintances of his.

  While she spoke her hands moved ceaselessly, fondling a cat that had jumped into her lap as soon as she sat down, a large tortoiseshell beast which regarded Biggs steadily through narrow slitted eyelids. Its rasping purr filled the gaps of silence left by the quavering, breathless voice. Listening with half an ear, Harold thought sourly of the likely drenching he was in for later as the thunder rumbled ever closer. The shaft of light filtering through the lace-net curtains had dulled to a leaden beam.

  'Tom Donkin took care of the garden?'

  The picture was becoming clearer. Donkin was a local man, someone the Babb woman had found to work as a gardener and handyman. It seemed there was something between them, a relationship, but they had fallen out — had a fight in Mrs Troy's words — and Donkin had gone away. He was no longer living in the district and Edna Babb had been trying to discover his whereabouts.

  'Looking all over,' Mrs Troy explained. She turned her face towards Harold, milky blue eyes blinking like some blind underground animal's. 'Poor girl. I think she's expecting.'

  This had happened some months ago and since then Edna Babb had ceased to be someone Winifred Troy could count on. She still came in to clean, but only intermittently. Once a week, instead of the three times agreed on. Sometimes not at all.

  'Why didn't you find someone else?' Biggs asked, increasingly impatient.

  It seemed there was no one else, not in Rudd's Cross. Edna 'did' for two other families and they, too, complained of being let down. Sometimes she disappeared for days.

  Unmoved by the old woman's predicament, Biggs was just telling himself he could see no way of dealing with the matter — not if the wretched Babb was the only cleaner available — when he discovered to his amazement that this, after all, wasn't the problem. It was merely the background to it. Mrs Troy had learned to cope with Edna's absences. If the house wasn't properly cleaned — and there was plenty of evidence of this in the layer of dust he could see coating the mantelpiece in front of him and dulling the glass front of the silver cabinet across the room — it didn't seem to bother the old woman. The crisis lay in another quarter. To be precise, in the shape of Mr Grail.