The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3)

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Would you mind telling me your name, Mrs ‒?’

  ‘Mercybright,’ Linn said, ‘but it’s Miss, not Mrs.’

  ‘May I ask what relation you are to Mr Maddox?’

  ‘It’s none of your business!’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t mind answering,’ Linn said. ‘We live together as man and wife.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Darns said. ‘It’s always a help when people are perfectly frank with us. Were you acquainted with Mr Maddox before his wife disappeared?’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘How long after her departure did you come and take her place as it were?’

  ‘About a week,’ Linn said, and met the man’s gaze with only the slightest change of colour.

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ Tom said, ‘if I ought to see a solicitor.’

  ‘And what do you think he would do for you, Mr Maddox?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Tom said. ‘I dunno what they ever do. Somebody said it, that’s all.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, Mr Maddox. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean, not yet?’

  But Darns and his constable left without another word.

  Betony, hearing of this visit, became very angry.

  ‘That settles it!’ she said. ‘I’m going to Birmingham to look for Tilly.’

  ‘There’s no point in that,’ Tom said. ‘If the police can’t find her, what chance have you?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re not trying hard enough.’

  ‘They’ve got posters out, or so they told me.’

  ‘I’m going there all the same.’

  But although she spent two whole days in Birmingham, tramping all the busiest streets, asking at shops and boardinghouses, she learnt nothing. ‘We’ve been asked already,’ a shopkeeper told her. ‘The police’ve been round trying to find that same young woman.’ And she saw the posters everywhere, asking for Mrs Tilly Maddox, of the Pikehouse, Eastery, near Chepsworth, to present herself at the nearest police station, as her next of kin were anxious about her.

  At the Bruno Brush Company in Hall Street, however, Betony discovered an interesting fact: that the travelling salesman, Arthur Trimble, had left their employ at a day’s notice on September twenty-ninth and had talked of taking his family to London. His wife, is seemed, had relations there. Her uncle was offering him a job.

  Betony returned home and went to the Pikehouse. She found Tom alone, for Linn had gone up to Eastery, to see the midwife, Mrs Gibbs.

  ‘September twenty-ninth! Don’t you see? It means Trimble left Brum immediately after Emery Preston had asked him questions about Tilly. So obviously he must have been mixed up with her, just as you said, and was frightened his wife might hear about it.’

  ‘We’re still no nearer finding Tilly.’

  ‘No, she probably parted from Trimble quite soon, and she might be anywhere by now. But at least the police must know all this. They’ll know he went off in a terrible hurry and they’ll draw the same conclusions as I have done.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Tom said.

  ‘Of course I’m right!’ she exclaimed, and went on to talk of her wedding instead. ‘Will you be coming, you and Linn?’

  ‘Better not,’ he said, undoing knots in a piece of string. ‘What with her being pretty near her time, and the things folk’re saying in Huntlip at present, we’d only spoil it if we was there.’

  ‘You could come to Cobbs, though, afterwards. Dicky could fetch you in the trap.’

  ‘Better not,’ he said again. ‘We ent really wanted there, Linn and me.’

  ‘I want you,’ Betony said, ‘or I wouldn’t be asking.’ But she knew he was wise to keep away. Only Dicky and her mother accepted him now. To the rest of the the family he was an outcast.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I won’t press you if you’d rather not come. But I hope my present is ready in time!’

  ‘It will be,’ he said. ‘There ent a lot to do on it now.’ He was making her a wickerwork chair. ‘Jack comes out to watch me at it, so’s I don’t make janders of it, but that’ll be ready in time, you’ll see. Honest John! as William always used to say.’

  Often, when he was unable to sleep, he would lie on his back, utterly still, afraid of disturbing Linn beside him. He would think of things to make himself sleepy, such as counting the cost of his osier rods, and the profit remaining when he sold his baskets. Sometimes he was back at Etaples during inspection, going over in his mind all the items laid out before him. Respirator. Field-dressings. Iron rations. Mess-tin, water-bottle, Tommy’s cooker. Rifle, ammunition, ground-sheet.

  Then the names would start coming. Newers. Ritchie. Glover. Braid. Danson. Evans. Privitt. Rush. Until, in a state between waking and sleeping, he wandered alone in a vast empty space, over ground much cratered by shells and mines, looking for men he knew were lost, while a voice kept whispering in his ear: Where are they? Where are they? Where are they gone?

  Often Linn herself was awake, because of the baby moving inside her, or because she sensed his wakefulness. She had nursed many men during the war; had heard them groaning, sobbing, swearing; had held them, writhing, in her arms while they screamed out the substance of their nightmares. But Tom never tossed about in bed; never moaned or screamed; he lay quite still and silent always, and if she turned her head on the pillow, she would find that his eyes were wide open, twitching a little now and then, intent, it seemed, though they saw nothing.

  ‘Tom? Can’t you sleep? Is your head hurting?’

  ‘It’s throbbing a bit, but nothing much.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, this and that. Nothing special. It’s harder to sleep, you know, now that day and night are the same.’ But sleep when it did come was often pure and sweet and clean, and sometimes his dreams were happy ones.

  ‘I was up on Lippy Hill and the sun was shining. The berries was red on the rowan trees, and there was dozens of thrushes there, mostly gathered on just one tree. I had a little lad with me. He brought me some berries that the thrushes had shook down onto the ground and he showed them to me in his two hands.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ Linn asked. ‘Perhaps he was our son.’

  ‘I never properly saw his face. Just the berries in his hands. Then we was sitting on a little hummock and all the rabbits was out playing. It was evening time. Still and warm. And some of the rabbits came so close, they was eating right between our feet, mine and the boy’s, as we sat on the hummock side by side.’

  Tom was lighting the fire for breakfast. He liked to be able to do these things, and Linn, though she watched, never interfered. He was always careful, handling the matches, and the fire was always beautifully laid.

  ‘The berries was just as red as red, and the thrushes was yellow, with great fluffed-up chests speckled all over as smart as you please.’

  He put a match to the laid fire and it crackled up. He crouched before it, the light of it flickering in his eyes.

  ‘It’s a funny thing, but I ent never blind in my dreams,’ he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  One morning, early, when Linn was shaving him and trimming his hair, she thought she heard a dog barking, somewhere in the woods across the road.

  ‘It’s probably MacNab’s spaniel,’ Tom said. ‘Maybe he’s out after rabbits.’

  At half-past-nine, Jimmy Winger’s milk-float stopped at the gate, and Linn went out with the quart jug.

  ‘I see you got company,’ Jimmy said, and pointed to a car drawn up on the grass at the edge of the woods. ‘The police are rooting about in there. I seen ’em as I came round past Tyson’s. What’re they up to, do you reckon?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard the gossip, Jimmy?’

  ‘I might’ve done,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I wouldn’t stand for it if I was you. There should be a law against policemen.’

  Jimmy had once been fined ten shillings for riding his bicycle without lights. Policemen were worse than gamekeepers and needed somet
hing better to do.

  ‘I’ll lend you a loan of my shotgun if you like, so’s you can send ’em packing,’ he said, ‘and if I should meet one of ’em on the road, I shall let old Twinkler ride him down!’

  When Jimmy had gone, Linn stood looking towards the woods, but could see no sign of the searchers there. Only, once, she thought she heard the same dog barking, somewhere deep among the trees.

  She said nothing to Tom about it, but later in the morning another car drew up behind the first, and four policemen in uniform got out. One of them sounded a blast on the horn and after a while the first party emerged from the wood. Detective-Inspector Darns was among them. There were seven men altogether, one of them with a wolfhound on a leash, and they all stood talking for about five minutes. Then the newcomers went to their car and each took a spade and a sack from the dicky. All seven vanished together among the trees.

  ‘What’s the commotion?’ Tom asked.

  ‘The police are searching the woods,’ she said.

  His face became bleak. He stood as though turned to stone. Linn went to him and took hold of his arm.

  At one o’clock, the searchers assembled at the edge of the wood and sat on the grass, eating sandwiches and drinking tea from vacuum flasks. Tom went across to them, using his white walking-stick and making towards the sound of their voices, but they stopped talking as he drew near, and he stood in the roadway, hesitating. Darns got up and went to him.

  ‘Yes, Mr Maddox, did you want me?’

  ‘What d’you hope to find in there?’

  ‘What are you afraid we’ll find?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time. You won’t find nothing.’

  ‘Then there’s no need for you to be worried.’

  ‘Who said I was worried?’

  Tom turned and walked back home, very slowly, counting the paces. Darns went and sat on the running-board of the first car, and one of the uniformed constables offered him a cigarette.

  ‘Is he as blind as he seems, that chap?’

  ‘What a suspicious mind you’ve got, Ryelands. You’re very nearly as bad as me.’

  ‘You got any intuitions, sir, one way or the other?’

  ‘Not reliable ones,’ Darns said. ‘But if he has done his missus in, well, the sight of us turning the place upside down may well poke a chink or two in that armour of his.’

  Towards the end of the afternoon, when the searchers again mustered on the turnpike, they found they had an audience there: three women and a man, all elderly, who had wandered down from Eastery.

  ‘Is it true,’ the old man asked, ‘that you’ve found a grave in them there woods?’

  ‘No, it’s not true,’ Darns said.

  ‘What have you found?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions.’

  ‘Then they ent found nothing,’ the old man said to the three women. ‘I knowed it was all a pack of lies.’

  ‘Who spread these rumours?’ Darns asked.

  ‘Not me, not me!’ the old man said.

  ‘Have you got permission to search them woods?’ one of the women asked Darns. ‘Have you spoken to Mrs Lannam?’

  ‘Yes, and we’ve got a warrant,’ Darns said.

  ‘What, signed by the king and his chancellors?’

  ‘Move away, please!’ a constable said. ‘Can’t you see we’re trying to turn?’

  As the first car moved off, back towards Huntlip, a tall figure came striding down the field-path from Eastery and stepped out into the road. It was the Reverend Peter Chance, vicar of Eastery-with-Scoate, a big man with a shock of white hair, and he stood waving the car to a standstill.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked, stooping to speak to Darns through the window. ‘Why are you persecuting Tom Maddox? Has he done something wrong? Is there any truth in these wild rumours?’

  ‘It’s our job to find out, vicar.’

  ‘Have you questioned the boy? Does he admit harming his wife?’

  ‘People don’t generally admit such things, until they’re obliged to,’ Darns said.

  ‘If he denies it, I’m quite sure he’s speaking the truth.’

  ‘But just supposing he isn’t, vicar?’

  ‘Then God will punish him, without a doubt.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t satisfy the law.’

  ‘The law takes too much on itself in these matters. Revenge belongs to God alone. “Thou shalt not kill,” the commandment says, and it makes no exception of any kind. The hanging of murderers is therefore wrong.’

  ‘It has one advantage,’ Darns said. ‘It stops them doing it again.’

  He motioned the constable to drive on.

  The next day, Saturday the twenty-fifth, was cloudy and dull and rather cold. Tom stepped outside as always, first thing, and stood for a while sniffing the air. The wind was blowing from the northwest.

  ‘Betony’s wedding day,’ he said, ‘and it smells like rain.’

  ‘What time is the wedding?’

  ‘Two o’clock this afternoon. If we listen carefully we may hear the bells, though it ent very likely with the wind as it is.’

  ‘It’s certainly a dark old day,’ Linn said, ‘but perhaps it’ll brighten by this afternoon.’

  At ten o’clock two cars turned into the old turnpike and parked as before on the wide grass verge. Linn went to the gate and saw the policemen go into the wood. There were five altogether, four in uniform, one in plain clothes. Inspector Darns was not among them.

  Linn for once was filled with hatred. She wanted to rush out after the men and pummel them. She wanted to strike their cheerful faces and see them crumple. She wished she and Tom could run away.

  ‘Is it them?’ he asked, when she went indoors. ‘They’re deadly determined, I’ll say that, when they once get a notion in their heads.’

  ‘Why must they stop just opposite? They could just as well stop in Tyson’s lane.’

  ‘They want me to know they’re there,’ he said. ‘They want to scare me and whittle me down.’

  ‘You mustn’t let them,’ Linn said.

  ‘I shan’t, don’t worry. But I wish it was over all the same.’

  By eleven o’clock, there was a gathering on the turnpike road of people from Eastery, Huntlip, Middening, and Blagg. Two newspaper men drove over from Chepsworth and took a photograph of the Pikehouse. They talked to all the local people. Emery Preston came with his sons, the four of them packed onto Matthew’s motor-cycle and sidecar, so that when Darns arrived at half-past-eleven he was appalled at the growing crowd. He turned to Penfold.

  ‘Send these people about their business! What the hell do they think this is?’

  ‘I’m taking no orders from you, young fella,’ an Eastery man said to Penfold. ‘You ent even wearing a uniform.’

  But the crowd moved off eventually. The newspaper men drove away. Only the Prestons lingered on.

  ‘Mr Preston,’ Darns said. ‘I must ask you to take yourself off and your sons with you. You’ve got no business hanging about here like this.’

  ‘It’s my daughter you’re looking for, remember, and I aim to give you a helping hand.’

  ‘Enter those woods,’ Darns said, ‘and I’ll have you placed under arrest.’

  ‘Why, what’ve you found, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Nothing whatever so far, Mr Preston, but I’m in charge of this investigation and I will not tolerate interference.’

  ‘You can’t turn me off the road, however. I’ve got a right to stand here if I so choose and so’ve my boys.’

  ‘I thought you had a public house to manage.’

  ‘My cousin’s looking after that. I’ve got more important business here.’

  ‘Was it you who summoned those reporters?’

  ‘What if it was? People got a right to know what’s happening.’

  ‘We don’t even know if anything has happened, Mr Preston.’

  ‘No, nor you never will, neither,’ Emery said, ‘if you don’t shift yours
elves better than this!’

  Darns and Penfold turned away. Their work was often distasteful to them.

  ‘I reckon he’d like it,’ Penfold muttered, ‘if we were to dig up his daughter’s body.’

  The day remained darkly overcast, and from midday onwards a small rain fell, light but drenching. Emery Preston and his three boys took shelter just inside the wood, staring across at the tiny Pikehouse, where firelight dickered at the window and smoke blew downwards from the chimney.

  ‘Sitting comfortably by his fire! ‒ The murdering bastard!’ Emery said, and turned his collar up to his ears.

  At one o’clock, when Darns thought of cancelling further search, Penfold came to him with a cotton scarf, found in the deeper part of the wood, among the oaks and beeches. It had lain in the undergrowth a long time; its printed pattern was almost gone; and it had a dark brown stain upon it that could have been blood.

  Penfold had marked the place of its finding, and Darns went with him to look around. Many trees had been felled during the war. Their stumps were still pale and clean-looking, and heaps of brushwood still lay around. Darns gave orders for the search to continue. He wanted the heaps of brushwood moved. Then he and Penfold went to speak to Emery Preston. They showed him the scarf, carefully folded with the stain inside. ‘Have you ever seen this before, Mr Preston?’

  ‘Seen it? Yes. It belonged to Tilly.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘How sure must I be? She had one like it. That’s all I can say. I bought it myself at the Christmas bazaar last year.’ Emery looked from one to the other. He swallowed hard. ‘Did you find anything else besides?’

  ‘Nothing else, Mr Preston, and the scarf of course means very little. Your daughter could have dropped it at any time, if she happened to take a walk in the woods.’

  ‘Tilly never walked if she could help it. Not by herself, at any rate.’

  ‘I think we’ll have a word with Mr Maddox,’ Darns said to Penfold.

  ‘About time too!’ Emery said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No, Mr Preston. You’ll return home.’

  ‘I ent budging till it damn well suits me, so you might as well get used to the fact.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ Darns said, ‘but you’re not seeing Maddox.’