River of Darkness jm-1

by Rennie Airth

  She was reluctant to admit it, but she'd not been feeling herself these past few days. A nagging headache that had started on the night of her sixty-first birthday had continued to plague her since. At her son's suggestion they had taken advantage of the unusually warm autumn weather to dine outside that night, and Mrs Merrick thought at first she might have caught a chill. But the cold she feared did not develop. Instead, her head had continued to ache, keeping her awake at night and allowing her thoughts to wander restlessly in a state of increasing anxiety.

  The trouble had started with Tigger's death.

  Poisoned, Hopley reckoned. He blamed the farmers hereabouts who, he said, were laying down strychnine and other poisons against the foxes, which took a heavy toll of their hen coops. The gardener had come across the poor animal dragging itself on its stomach through the shrubbery in the early morning. Tigger had been missing all night, though Annie had called to him repeatedly before she went to bed.

  The children's attention had been distracted while the dog was carried to the potting shed where presently he died. After lunch their father had told them what had happened. They had wept, but then, as children did, dried their tears and taken a lively interest in the funeral arrangements, which Hopley was charged with. That evening they had stood hand in hand with their parents and with Annie while prayers were said and the remains of the spaniel laid to rest in a grave dug behind the croquet lawn.

  Their father had assured them he wouldn't let the matter rest there and had already informed the village bobby, Constable Proudfoot, who intended to look into it. The next day Harriet Merrick took her grandchildren aside and promised to buy them a new puppy on their return from holiday in Cornwall.

  But, like spreading ripples in a pond, the brutal disturbance to domestic life at Croft Manor continued to claim its victims. On Tuesday night little Robert had become tearful again, and it was discovered he was running a temperature. He had been packed off to bed immediately by his mother while the unspoken thought hung in the air: if it turned out to be anything serious the whole family would have to delay their departure for Penzance at the end of the week.

  This in turn seemed to upset Mrs Merrick, as she readily admitted to Annie. 'I don't want them hanging on. I want them to go.'

  'Will you listen to yourself?' Annie had laughed at her. 'Your own flesh and blood, and you can't wait to see the back of them.'

  'I was looking forward to us being here alone. Just you and I, Annie.'

  'Now don't you worry, Miss Hattie.' Annie addressed her as Mrs Merrick in front of others, but always as Miss Hattie when they were alone, just as she had for the past forty years and more. 'We'll have plenty of time on our own, you'll see. They'll be off for three weeks.'

  'Not if they don't go,' Mrs Merrick had pointed out with unanswerable logic, but Annie just shook her head at her.

  'What a great silly you are! Always getting yourself worked up for no reason.'

  Annie was right — there was no reason to be upset.

  But this, paradoxically, seemed to distress her all the more, and the night before she had hardly closed her eyes for worrying.

  'Oh, Annie, I don't know what's the matter with me. Why do I want them away from here?' They were walking in the garden together after breakfast. 'I'm starting to feel the way I did when Tom died. Do you remember? I was so afraid then, even before I knew.'

  Annie had drawn her into a recess in the yew alley and put her arms around her.

  'There, my dear,' she murmured. 'Aren't you forgetting it's four years since the poor dear boy was killed?'

  'How could I forget?'

  'Almost to the day…" 'Oh! Do you think it's that?' Mrs Merrick drew back. Tom had been killed in the second week of October. The anniversary was near. 'Oh, I do hope so.'

  She caught her breath at her own words, wondering how she could have said such a thing.

  But it was true, none the less, and the thought had comforted her for the rest of the day.

  She felt better still when she went up to the nursery later with Annie and they found the invalid's temperature had come down. He declared himself fit enough for a game of Happy Families, and although his nanny, Enid Bradshaw, opposed the idea she was overruled by Annie whose writ ran in all departments of the household.

  Mrs Merrick smiled as Robert's seven-year-old sister fussed over him, fluffing up his pillows and settling him comfortably in his bed. She giggled with them both when Annie fixed the patient with a glittering eye. 'Now tell me the truth, Master Robert — and may a lie never stain your lips — are you by any chance holding Miss Bun, the Baker's Daughter?'

  The game continued until the arrival of Dr Fellows, who pronounced Robert to be on the mend after only the briefest of examinations. 'A case of nerves, I think.

  Losing the dog must have upset him more than we realized. Poor beast, do you know yet how it happened?'

  It was also Mrs Merrick's day for her weekly checkup and Dr Fellows apologized for having come an hour later than usual. 'I was just leaving the surgery when they brought in Emmett Hogg with a broken ankle. It seems he had to hobble and crawl for half a mile before he found help. Fell into a pit in the woods, he says.' Dr Fellows lifted an eloquent eyebrow. 'Not many men hereabouts manage to be dead drunk at two o'clock in the afternoon, but Hogg makes quite a habit of it. Now what have you been up to, madam?'

  The doctor lowered his jowly visage over the gauge of his blood pressure apparatus. He pumped air into the cuff around Mrs Merrick's arm. He frowned. 'Been overdoing it again, have we?'

  Mrs Merrick, who liked neither being addressed as 'madam', nor being referred to in the first person plural, acknowledged that she had been for a walk earlier that day. She made no mention of Shooter's Hill.

  'Take it easy for the next few days,' Dr Fellows advised her. 'We'd better make that a week. No more walks outside the garden until I see you again.'

  Mrs Merrick's thoughts were elsewhere. Something he had said had jogged her memory.

  'Fell into a pit, you say?'

  'That's Hogg's story.' Dr Fellows snapped his bag shut. 'I hae me doots.'

  Harriet Merrick winced. 'If it happened in Ashdown Forest he must report it,' she said firmly. 'The police want to know about any fresh digging there. My son was telling me only the other day.'

  William was a Justice of the Peace.

  'I'm not sure anyone will believe anything Emmett Hogg tells them,' Dr Fellows remarked. He paused at the bedroom door.

  'Nevertheless, he must report it. And you must make sure he does,' Mrs Merrick added, pleased for once to be in a position to dictate.

  11

  The door to the adjoining office opened and Hollingsworth and Styles entered. Chief Inspector Sinclair, immaculate in grey pinstripe and pearl tie-pin, sat behind his desk. The windows at his back, which so often during the long summer had sparkled diamond bright in the sunshine, were flecked with rain. Lightning streaked the black sky above Kennington. He motioned the two men to come closer. 'No doubt you've heard the rumours that I'm to be replaced as head of this investigation. I'm sorry to have to tell you they're true. I'm due to see the assistant commissioner in a few minutes. It's my understanding he'll hand the inquiry over to Chief Superintendent Sampson.'

  Hollingsworth muttered some words.

  'Sergeant?' Sinclair raised an eyebrow.

  'Nothing, sir. Sorry, sir.'

  'I want to take this opportunity to thank you both for the work you've put in. Long hours, with little to show for it, you may think. But I assure you that's not the case. I've no doubt that the information gathered in this file will eventually lead to the arrest and, I hope, conviction of the man we've been seeking.' He patted the thick buff folder lying on the desk in front of him.

  'As to the future, neither Inspector Madden nor myself expects to play any further part in this inquiry.

  Chief Superintendent Sampson will be putting together his own team and I think it likely he'll want to include you both, given your
familiarity with the history and details of the case. I know you'll offer him the same loyalty and devotion to a difficult job you have always given me, and for which I thank you now.'

  The chief inspector stood up and held out his hand to Hollingsworth, who shook it. Styles followed suit.

  'You'll be informed shortly of any change in your assignments. That will be all.'

  The two men returned to the side office, shutting the door behind them. Sinclair resumed his seat and took out his pipe. He glanced at Madden, who had listened in silence at his desk. 'Well, John?'

  'I think it's a damned shame.'

  'An opinion not shared by Mrs Sinclair, who is pleased at the thought of my spending more time at home. She comforts me with the assurance that I need not fear to find myself less usefully employed in the future. Only the area of my activities will change. Are you familiar with the term "mulching"?'

  The grin that came to Madden's face reminded the chief inspector that there was at least one satisfaction he could take from the weeks of labour they had shared. His pleasure at seeing his partner more like his old self had been heightened for a brief time when it seemed likely that Madden's suggestion that they track down Captain Miller's clerk would bear dividends.

  Against all odds the War Office had been able to supply them, without delay, with the identity of the driver of Miller's staff car. The names of both men had been on the casualty report.

  Corporal Alfred Tozer had survived the blast that killed his superior and in due course had been invalided back to a hospital in Eastbourne where medical records retained since the war gave an address for him in Bethnal Green.

  Madden had sped there in a taxi with Hollingsworth only to discover that while it remained Tozer's residence — he lived with his sister and her husband, the three of them running a newsagent's and tobacconist's business together — he was absent from home.

  'On a walking holiday? In North Wales?' The chief inspector had raised his eyes to the ceiling in disbelief.

  'He's a rambler, sir. It's how he spends his holiday every year, according to his sister. He visits different parts of the country.'

  'How admirable! We must recommend him to the tourist board. So we still don't know whether he was Miller's regular clerk, or even if he has any special knowledge of that case?'

  Madden shook his head.

  Clutching at straws, Sinclair had telephoned the police in Bangor and asked them to pass the word along to sub-stations in the district to be on the lookout for Tozer. He was to be asked to get in touch with Scotland Yard at once. The same message had been left with his sister, who was not expecting him back before the weekend.

  'I'll put a note in the file, but I don't see the chief superintendent stirring himself to chase up any ideas we put forward.'

  Their last chance to advance the investigation came that morning with a further message from the War Office regarding Miller's wartime commanding officer in the Military Police. A Colonel Strachan, he was now retired and living in a village in Scotland so remote that even the chief inspector had never heard of it.

  The Yard's switchboard had spent most of the morning wrestling with exchanges up and down the country. Sinclair was out of the office when they finally made contact with the colonel, and it was Madden who spoke to him.

  'He says he recalls the case and knows it was closed,' he told the chief inspector on his return. 'But he can't remember the name of the man Miller identified as the murderer. He was killed in battle, though. He remembers that much.'

  'And how did Miller know it was him?'

  'He can't remember that, either.'

  'My, my…' The chief inspector scratched his head.

  'Remind me not to retire too early, John. It seems to have a damaging effect on the brain cells. What did you make of it?'

  Madden frowned. 'It's hard to be sure over a longdistance line. His voice was very faint. But I'd say he wasn't bending over backwards to be helpful.'

  'Nobbled?' Sinclair inserted a pipe-cleaner into the stem of his briar. He squinted at Madden.

  'Possibly. But not by the War Office. He seemed genuinely surprised to get my call. If it was done at all it was done at the time, just as we suspect.'

  'But not on his initiative?'

  'I'm sure not. He was a military policeman. He'd have been breaking the law. No, the order must have come from higher up.'

  'From headquarters?'

  The inspector shrugged.

  'I see a man.' Sinclair extracted his pipe-cleaner and blew through the stem. 'A general, perhaps. Or an overweight colonel with a scarlet hat band and lapel tabs. He's sitting in his office — it's in a chateau, by the way. He's just had a good dinner. The front is a long way off.'

  'You're talking about a staff officer.' Madden scowled.

  'Am I? Well, this one has a file in front of him.'

  Sinclair examined the pipe-cleaner. 'A ticklish matter.

  It's the investigator's memorandum that bothers him.

  "No," he says, removing it and tossing it aside.' The chief inspector matched words to action, dropping the pipe-cleaner into the wastepaper basket beside him.

  ' "No, I don't think we'll have that."' He looked at his pipe. 'I wonder what the problem was. Perhaps he didn't want the name of the murderer made public.

  Perhaps it would have been an embarrassment to someone.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, since the man in question was dead it didn't really matter. Justice had been served.' Sinclair put his pipe in his pocket. 'Yes, I'd like to meet that staff officer. I really would.'

  He glanced at his watch. 'Time I was on my way.'

  He rose, collecting the file from his desk. 'They're welcome to this.' He hefted the bulky folder. 'I shan't give Sampson the satisfaction of watching me squirm.

  The convicted felon made a dignified exit. After all, it's only a job, as the bishop said to the actress He started to move around his desk, then halted.

  With a sudden sharp gesture he slammed the file down. 'No, by God, it's not!'

  Madden started in surprise. The chief inspector stared through the window at the rainswept morning.

  He spoke in a low, angry tone: 'Somewhere out there is a man bent on murder. It's only a matter of time before he acts. Somewhere there's a woman, a whole family, perhaps, who stand in peril. And now I'm being asked to place this investigation — and the lives of these people, whoever they are — in the hands of a… nincompoopY He snatched up the file, and at the same moment his eye fell on Billy Styles, who was standing in the open doorway to the adjoining office with two cups of tea in his hands. He stared at Sinclair in horror.

  'You didn't hear me say that, Constable. Is that clear?'

  'Yes, sir.' The young man quailed.

  'Absolutely clear?'

  Billy could only nod.

  With a glance at Madden, the chief inspector strode out of the office.

  An hour later Sinclair completed his summing up of the inquiry to date. He'd been surprised when the assistant commissioner requested it. He had expected the proceedings to be brief, and to be confined to an expression of thanks from Sir George for his weeks of toil, followed by a brisk handover of the file to Chief Superintendent Sampson, who sat beside Parkhurst at the polished oak table with the air of a vulture perched on a branch.

  The table was a twin of the one that graced Bennett's office. In other respects the assistant commissioner's rooms were more elaborately furnished. A thick pile carpet covered the floor and the walls were hung with landscapes of the green English countryside.

  Two windows, overlooking the Embankment, framed a wide mahogany desk behind which hung a large photograph of Sir George with his namesake, King George V. The blurred outlines of a horse walking in the background suggested a racecourse as the likely setting for the picture. Parkhurst, in morning dress, stood with his head slightly bowed and turned attentively towards the monarch, who wore a glazed expression.

  The chief inspector sat on his own. Parkhurst faced him across the table, wit
h Sampson on one side of him and Bennett on the other. The assistant commissioner was in his late fifties. His fleshy cheeks were marked by a network of livid veins. While Sinclair was speaking his glance had wandered about the room, as though unable to settle on anything, in contrast to Sampson, beside him, whose small dark eyes never left the chief inspector's face. Bennett sat apart from both of them, his chair drawn away as though deliberately distancing himself. The deputy's face showed no emotion.

  'Allow me to underline the importance I attribute to this recent aspect of the investigation, sir.'

  Given the opportunity to explain himself, the chief inspector had abandoned his original intention of washing his hands of the whole business as quickly as possible. He was now enjoying the process of drawing it out, watching Sampson twitch with impatience, observing Sir George trying to screw up his resolve to put an end to the meeting. He would say what he had to say, and be damned! 'It's my belief — and Inspector Madden's — that the man who killed those people in Belgium in 1917 is the same man we're looking for now. The devil of it is we haven't been able to pin down his identity. But we will… or, rather, we would have, I'm sure.' Sinclair paused briefly. 'Sir, I cannot urge strongly enough that this line of inquiry should not be abandoned and that we should keep pressing the War Office to provide a name.'

  Parkhurst stirred restlessly in his chair. 'All the same, Chief Inspector, you will admit there's no necessary connection between those killings and the ones at Melling Lodge. When all is said and done, you're well in the realm of speculation.'

  'Indeed, I am, sir.' Sinclair nodded vigorously. 'But speculation is what this case has forced on us. And speaking of necessary connections, this has been our main problem. I firmly believe there was no personal connection whatsoever between the murderer and the people at Melling Lodge, other than the one that existed in his mind, and which we've been trying to unravel.'