The Death of Kings

by Rennie George Airth

  ‘In other words he cracked?’ Madden’s voice was sharp and Derry caught his eye.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ He scowled. ‘We all know that people can be made to confess to things they didn’t do if they’re denied sleep and questioned without a break for long enough. But that didn’t happen with Norris.’ He looked hard at Madden. ‘I’m not saying we didn’t push him, but I made it clear to the team of detectives I had with me—and Angus can confirm this—that he wasn’t to be bullied and browbeaten into saying anything he didn’t mean.’

  ‘I accept that.’ Madden nodded. ‘But it does seem to me he changed his story rather suddenly.’

  Derry shrugged.

  ‘The truth is, right from the start he seemed ready to give in; half a dozen times he appeared to be on the point of confessing and that only made us more sure that we’d arrested the right man. I had the impression he didn’t want to go on with his denials; that he was tired of the struggle; that he wanted to end it. So when he agreed to sign a confession—this was two days after we’d arrested him—I wasn’t surprised. I’d been expecting it.’

  ‘But now you don’t feel the same way?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far; not yet.’ Derry grimaced. ‘I just wonder now if it wasn’t life he was sick of; his own, I mean; if he hadn’t had enough of it. His family had disowned him after the attempted rape conviction—I learned that later. They were chapel—very religious. They didn’t want anything to do with him. None of them came to his trial at Maidstone.’

  ‘Yet he went back on his confession later.’

  Derry nodded. ‘At the trial he did, but the judge wasn’t having it—he made that clear in his summing up—and Norris seemed to accept it. I remember watching his face when the jury returned its verdict. He shut his eyes when he heard the foreman’s words. That was all. Then he seemed to sink back into himself. He didn’t speak again. He was hanged at Pentonville the following January. Angus and I were both there. It’s a nasty business, a hanging. Thank God neither of us has ever had to attend another.’

  While he’d been talking Derry’s stoop had grown more pronounced, and now he moved away from Madden and went to the single window aperture in the wall behind them. Brushing off the ledge, he sat down.

  ‘I can’t stand for too long these days,’ he explained. ‘I need to take the weight off my old pins.’ He fanned his face with his hat.

  ‘Tell me about the pendant now.’ Madden frowned. ‘What part did it play in the investigation?’

  ‘Not much, as it turned out.’ Derry had given some thought to his answer. ‘But one thing I can tell you is that Norris didn’t take it. At first we assumed he had, along with the other stuff, but he was adamant; it was the one thing he stuck to. Quite simply he didn’t know what we were talking about. We had to explain to him what it was—a green stone hanging around her neck. He swore he had never seen it and by the end I believed him. He’d confessed to everything else, after all, so why not that? His defence counsel raised the point during his trial. He said the fact that the pendant was missing suggested that someone else might have killed the girl. But the judge wasn’t buying it.’

  ‘What did you think had happened to it? At the time, I mean?’

  ‘That it must have been lost, torn off in the struggle she’d most likely had with him. She had a small handbag with her when she left the house; it was hanging from her shoulder by a strap. The maid who saw her told us that. We discovered it lying in a bush near the hut. It looked as though it had fallen or been thrown there. Norris said he couldn’t remember seeing it and we were inclined to believe him since there was a gold compact with an enamelled top inside it, a pretty thing that he certainly would have taken and tried to sell if he had seen it.’

  ‘Did he tell you they had fought?’

  Derry shook his head. ‘The fact is he didn’t have much to say, not off his own bat. Once he’d confessed to the killing he seemed to think that was it and he needn’t say anything more. We had to keep prodding him. It was mostly a matter of question and answer. We would ask him, for instance, if he had grabbed her from behind and he would nod. Then we’d have to insist he say the word “yes” so that it could be recorded for the interview. It was the same with most of the other details. Did he drag her to the hut, and so on? Each time we had to get him to agree it had been so.’

  ‘So in effect you wrote his confession for him?’

  ‘You could put it that way.’ Derry looked displeased.

  ‘Go on about the pendant, would you?’ Madden spoke after a moment.

  ‘Well, the area around the hut had been searched as a matter of course, but after it became clear that it was missing I widened the area considerably and made sure every inch of ground was gone over, but without result. So we still couldn’t explain for certain how the pendant had disappeared. But it wasn’t crucial to the inquiry. It was possible she had lost it somewhere else on the wood: perhaps she managed to break free from Norris and he had to chase her and it came off. We thought it might still be lying here somewhere, hidden by dead leaves.’

  ‘Charlie Chubb suggested that might be the explanation.’ Madden grunted. ‘For what it’s worth he pointed out that it wasn’t uncommon for investigations to end with a few questions still unanswered.’

  Derry nodded in agreement. ‘That was what we told ourselves—Angus and I. And it’s what’s bothering us now. Did we make a mistake in shrugging it off as just one of those things? If this turns out to be the same pendant’—he tapped his jacket pocket—‘then perhaps we did.’

  Madden took off his jacket. He slung it over his shoulder. Derry had put his hat back on but was not yet ready to move from his seat on the window ledge. He sat there gnawing at his lip.

  ‘Let’s consider the alternative,’ Madden said. He stirred the dead leaves at his feet with the toe of his shoe. ‘Supposing it was someone else who murdered her—how could he have managed to do that given there were so many people about? How is it nobody saw him?’

  ‘I’ve wondered that myself.’ Derry mopped his face. ‘You might even say the question has been occupying my mind to the exclusion of all others since I received that note.’

  ‘The suggestion has been made that Miss Blake might have gone out that afternoon to meet someone: that she had a rendezvous arranged in the wood or somewhere near it and that whoever she went to meet might be the person who murdered her.’

  ‘Angus and I discussed that possibility. We spoke on the phone a few days ago. If she was coming here to meet a man he could well have been waiting for her in this hut.’

  Madden frowned. ‘If Norris was no more than a few minutes behind her, as you say, that wouldn’t have left much time for the murderer to act. He must already have had it in mind to kill her.’

  ‘That’s a fair assumption.’ Derry nodded.

  ‘And that would make him a very different kind of killer.’

  The Kent detective shrugged.

  Madden continued to stare at the ground; he was lost in thought.

  ‘The next question then is how did he escape?’ He looked up. ‘What route would he have taken?’

  Derry rose from his seat and looked about him.

  ‘Well, he didn’t use the path, obviously, or he would have run into either Norris or those young boys who were coming from the opposite direction. He must have made his way through the wood, which would have meant crossing the path and going straight on until he hit the road, which is over there.’

  He pointed over Madden’s shoulder.

  ‘But he could equally have taken the other direction, slipping out the back of this hut and going on until he came out of the trees into the fields, where he might well have been noticed by some of the hop pickers. On balance I think he would have headed for the road. But where he went after that is anyone’s guess. He might have had a car handy; or he might have strolled into the vill
age. Once he had put some distance between himself and Miss Blake’s body he would no longer have been an object of suspicion. Depending on how he was dressed, he could even have passed as just another picker.’

  Shrugging, he glanced at his watch.

  ‘But I see it’s after twelve. What do you say to a bite of lunch in the pub? We can talk about it some more there.’

  • • •

  ‘I remember you,’ Madden said. ‘I saw you fight at the White City before the first war; 1912, was it? Your opponent was a Frenchman. You knocked him out in the fourth round. You weren’t Mr William Barrow then.’ He nodded to a wooden board on the wall behind the bar where the legend WM. BARROW, PROP. was depicted in faded gold lettering. ‘You were “Kid Cannon”.’

  The landlord’s battered face broke into a broad grin. Though he looked to be in his sixties now, with short grey hair, a crooked nose and a belly that threatened to overflow his trousers, he was still recognizable as the fresh-faced young man pictured in boxing trunks standing with his fists raised in a photograph hanging beside the board.

  He slid the pint of bitter he had just pulled across the bar.

  ‘That’s for remembering, sir. It’s on the house.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Barrow.’ Madden raised the glass to his lips, but then paused when he caught the other’s eye. The landlord was giving him a strange look. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a copper,’ William Barrow said.

  Madden smiled. ‘Well, you’re half right,’ he conceded. ‘I used to be with the force. But I quit years ago. How did you guess?’

  ‘I recognized that old fellow you came in with.’ Barrow nodded towards the back of the pub, where Derry had wandered off a few moments earlier in search of a lavatory. ‘I remember him from when a young woman was murdered here before the war. He took a statement from me.’ He paused. ‘I was just wondering why he’d turned up again. There’s not more trouble, is there?’

  Madden shook his head. ‘Mr Derry’s retired. He was just been showing me where that murder happened, taking me over the ground. We worked together on another murder case years ago. That’s how we got to know each other. I was down in Canterbury and he offered to drive me out here.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘Incidentally, do you recall the man they arrested drinking in your pub on the day of the murder?’

  ‘Too right, I do.’ The old boxer’s friendly grin showed where two of his front teeth were missing. ‘He was always the last to leave, always wanting one more beer. That day was no different and since I’d already called time I told him to hop it.’

  ‘Did he ever give you any trouble?’

  ‘Was he violent, do you mean—up for a fight?’ Barrow’s grin widened. ‘Not a chance. Not him. He was the whiny sort. He used to sit in a corner drinking on his own. He never joined in. I thought he looked sorry for himself.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe he had reason.’

  ‘Were you surprised when you heard he’d been arrested?’

  ‘Surprised?’

  ‘Did you think it likely he could have killed someone? Did he seem to be the type?’

  ‘Would I have taken him for a murderer, you mean?’ The landlord stroked his cropped head thoughtfully. ‘No, I don’t think so. But, then, you can never tell, can you? You can never be sure.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘You think you know people, but you don’t.’ Barrow shook his head ruefully. ‘Not really.’

  Derry had reappeared while he was speaking. Madden turned to acknowledge his companion.

  ‘I’ve been explaining to Mr Barrow here that you’ve been giving me a Cook’s tour of the murder site. He’s wondering why you’re taking the trouble.’

  ‘Is he now?’ Tom Derry favoured the landlord with his flat copper’s stare. ‘Well, let him. And in the meantime he can draw me a pint of whatever it is you’re drinking—I seem to recall they serve a good brew here—and put up a plate of sandwiches for us while he’s at it.’

  They had walked from the wood back to the village, a distance of less than a mile by the road but somewhat longer by the route they had followed after Madden had asked Derry if he could show him where the hop pickers were at work.

  ‘I’m a farmer now. I’m curious. I’ve never seen a hop harvest in progress.’

  Returning to the path, they had continued along it, eventually coming out of the trees to find that on this side of the wood the hop fields stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Soon they were walking along a deep lane flanked on either side by long lines of yellowing plants, where the pickers were busy filling bins with the dried, cone-like flowers that contained the resins and oils used to impart an agreeably bitter taste to beer and ale. The scent of them was overwhelming in the hot summer air.

  ‘It’s like a pilgrimage every year.’

  Derry gestured at the lines of pickers, many of them wearing straw hats against the hot sun. Men and women seemed equally divided in numbers and Madden saw that there were children working there as well, their small fingers nimble and well adapted to picking the flowers.

  ‘Whole families turn up, many of them from London. They do it to escape the heat in the city, and although the work’s hard it’s something of a holiday, for the kids at least. They go swimming in the river when they get the chance. By the end of the summer they’re as brown as berries.’

  Proof of his words came a few moments later when they reached the end of the field and turned into a much wider avenue, where a line of huts with corrugated iron roofs stood and where a group of younger children, some no more than three or four years old, were playing in a circle under the eyes of a grey-haired woman busy at a washing-tub.

  ‘A lot of these kids get conceived down here, too, I’ve been told.’ Derry had grinned. ‘Hopkins, they’re called. Everything’s rough and ready, and if the weather’s fine like it is now a lot of people sleep out. There’s no telling what goes on under the stars.’

  ‘And Norris was a part of all this, was he?’ Madden had been curious.

  ‘Hardly. These are families. They stick together. Like I say, he had no one. He probably slept rough, got his food where he could, did his work and then drank his wages away at the pub.’

  ‘After he’d stolen that stuff from the body, where did he go?’ Madden had paused to look up and down the long line of huts.

  ‘Not back here. He was never seen again by the team he’d been picking with. When we caught him in Canterbury he was dirty and unshaven and said he had slept out the two nights preceding. His story was he had realized what a fool he had been to take the jewellery off the body and panicked. He knew if he was caught he wouldn’t be believed, not with his record. In the end he had decided to try and get rid of the stuff as quickly as he could and scarper. What worries me now is that he may have been telling the truth.’

  Madden had been silent at that point. Running the facts through his mind as Derry had reported them, he had hit on what he thought was a snag.

  ‘Assuming that Norris wasn’t the killer, he must have come on the body after the boys found it’—he had finally given voice to his doubts—‘after the sound of their voices had scared off the real murderer. But is that possible?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’ Derry had looked glum. ‘After their discovery the lads ran to the village to alert the local bobby, an officer called Duckworth: he retired a few years ago and went to live in Maidstone. I’ve spoken to him: there’s nothing new he can add to what we know. The boys didn’t think to leave one of their number behind to stay by the body and it must have been all of ten minutes before they came back with Duckworth.’

  ‘But surely they would have run into Norris on the way. He was coming from the village, after all.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Derry shook his head. ‘Before we even got to the question of the murder, while we were still e
stablishing his movements, he told us he had stopped for a leak in the wood on the way back from the pub, which sounded reasonable given the amount of beer he’d put away. He said he’d left the path and gone into the bushes to relieve himself. He claimed he didn’t see or hear the boys when they ran past, and given the fact that he was the worse for wear from drink at the time, that may well have been true.’

  • • •

  ‘That’s agreed, then, is it? You’ll take the pendant back to London with you? It’ll be more use there than down here.’

  Derry weighed the velvet bag in his hand.

  ‘If you can find the time to show it to that woman Portia Blake shared a flat with, you’d be doing Angus and me a favour; and saving me a trip to London. As I said, she’ll be back next week, and her phone number is in the file.’

  He handed the bag to Madden, who loosened the drawstring and drew out the pendant. Their conversation inside the pub had been interrupted by the arrival of a party of pickers, a noisy group eager to down as much beer as they could in the short lunch break allowed them. At Barrow’s suggestion the two men had taken their glasses and the sandwiches he had made for them outside into a small courtyard where tables and chairs were set.

  Derry watched now as Madden held the pendant up before his eyes. The green stone glinted in the sunlight.

  ‘The fellow who sent that to me—I’m assuming it’s a man now—could he be the killer, do you think?’

  Surprised by the question, Madden stared at him.

  ‘It’s the teasing tone of the letter. I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s almost as though he wants to play games with us.’