The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

  Brooke saw again the flailing semaphore of the jerking arms, the oddly inhuman erratic stumble, then the collapse into the grass.

  ‘A few other details,’ said Comfort.

  A box stood by a microscope on the pathologist’s desk. Inside were a pair of glasses, misshapen by the heat.

  ‘Badly melted, of course, but they’re reading glasses. And she had her own teeth, showing signs of dental work, a filling, certainly, within the last five years. Her general physical condition, given her age, is actually excellent.’

  Comfort rocked his head from side to side. ‘If she was a vagrant I’d say she was a pretty unusual one. The internal examination shows no signs of alcohol abuse. The bones show no signs of rheumatism or deformation, and certainly not in the feet, which would be symptomatic of a roadster. You might have to think again, Brooke. Sorry. The good news is that there’s a shop mark on the frame of the spectacles. Here, see? Goodall’s. Silver Street, I think, so that might help. Here …’

  The detached lenses of the glasses, slightly distorted, lay in Comfort’s hand as he slipped them inside an envelope with the frame. ‘With any luck the prescription will do the trick.’

  The pathologist threw open a window. The morgue filled with the sound of the city’s church bells marking the hour.

  ‘I know you like the wider picture, as well as the detail,’ said Comfort. ‘There were several other items found in the ashes of the box house. A tobacco tin and cigarette roller, a couple of chicken bones. A two-bob bit. None of it seemed pertinent. I assumed it was either litter, or it’d been left by the crew who put up the boxes. That was the Auxiliary Fire Service. When I asked, they pointed out they weren’t the only crew on the site. The safety trenches on Midsummer Common, around the box house, were dug by a labour squad from Civil Defence. Which, if I’m not mistaken, brings us back to your man Childe, on the day he died.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Edison, with a newly issued warrant, took the Wasp to Major Stone’s house. Brooke commandeered a radio car with a uniformed driver and sped out to Madingley Hall along dappled lanes. At the barrier he passed Colonel Swift-Lane, leaving, at the wheel of a black polished Bentley.

  ‘Inspector. Anything I can do?’ called the colonel.

  Brooke asked the constable to wind his window down. The situation was hardly conducive to a candid update on the inquiry. ‘No, sir. Still on the case; a few loose ends. Major Stone will do. If I need you later?’

  ‘Absolutely. Ring the adjutant’s office, they’ll track me down. I’m off for a Whitehall briefing, but I’ll be back by dusk.’

  Swift-Lane appeared almost childishly excited. Brooke recalled Kerridge’s expert summary of his career, the almost boyish enthusiasm for adventure. He actually bobbed in his seat. ‘How can Stone help?’ he asked. ‘He’s just ahead of you, back from London.’

  ‘I won’t keep you,’ said Brooke, nodding to his driver.

  They swept on, leaving Swift-Lane at the gate.

  The forecourt of the hall was busy, with trestle tables laid out on the gravel covered with order papers. Motorcycle couriers came and went with document bags.

  ‘Bit of a flap,’ said Stone, still standing by his staff car as an orderly took his small case out of the boot. ‘Invasion exercise at the weekend. No doubt you’ll get the bumf in town. Bloody chaos here … CO’s off to get further orders from the Regional Comptroller, no less.’

  ‘I need a moment,’ said Brooke, and Stone nodded amiably, heading back up to his office. The wary lack of confidence, palpable in their first meeting, had evaporated. Perhaps, Brooke thought, he revelled in the idea of being a man of action, even if it was entirely administrative action.

  ‘This about your Yank scientist again?’ asked Stone, installed behind his desk, relighting the stub of a small cigar in a tin ashtray.

  ‘Lux: Ernst Lux. No, this is an entirely different matter.’

  Stone walked to the open window and filled his lungs with the country air.

  Brooke contemplated his broad back. ‘Do you know a woman called Vera Staunton?’

  Stone turned, tried a smile, but it slid away to leave a sudden look of anger. He slammed the mullioned window shut.

  ‘What is your interest in Vera?’ he asked, coming back to his seat.

  ‘I know it’s a bore, Major, but I’m afraid I’m the one who asks the questions. Colonel Swift-Lane is as keen as I am to find the killer of Chris Childe. I can—’

  Stone’s hand rose quickly to dismiss the idea of involving the CO.

  ‘I think we can take the basis of your relationship with Vera Staunton as a given, Major,’ said Brooke. ‘I’m not here to secure a minor conviction for soliciting. You—’

  ‘Vera is not a common prostitute,’ said Stone, almost in a whisper.

  ‘In what sense is she uncommon?’

  ‘She observes certain proprieties,’ said Stone, although he sounded uncertain that he’d done her justice. ‘She is a decent woman. A war widow. A—’

  ‘And a member of the communist party, and the Peace Pledge Union …’

  Stone inflated his chest. ‘I think you’ll find her role in the coming revolution will be restricted to filling envelopes. The Party meetings provide her with an intellectual escape. They recruited her, you know. She’s a pacifist at heart, not a Bolshevik. And it is a free country. Isn’t that the point of all this …’

  Brooke sensed Stone was trying to deflect the course of the interview. ‘You’ll be aware a man was found shot dead in one of the city cemeteries. The newspapers have noted the bare details. He was a conscientious objector by the name of Chris Childe. Killed by a bullet to the left temple.’

  Stone had been nodding, a very slight movement of his square jaw, and this continued, although Brooke felt it was a cover for a certain level of shock. Had Swift-Lane failed to keep his deputy fully briefed on the case?

  ‘I see,’ said Stone. ‘Am I in some way a suspect?’

  ‘Mrs Staunton has made a statement to the effect that on the night of the Great Darkness you visited her rooms and on leaving the next morning bumped into a man on the stairs. She further alleges that this man was Childe.

  ‘You returned to her room unexpectedly later and told her you’d seen him again, in the dock at the assizes, pleading for unconditional registration. You feared recognition, and – presumably – blackmail. Mrs Staunton says she got the impression you were going to try and offer Childe money for a measure of discretion. Did you?’

  ‘No.’ He rearranged his hand on his desk, lifting the metal finger with his undamaged hand.

  For a few tumbling seconds Brooke thought that would be it: a series of flat denials, but the major’s shoulders slumped, and he met his eyes.

  ‘I felt an approach was counterproductive, Brooke. Why signal my anxieties? If he had the guts, and tried to use what he knew, then, and only then, I’d have offered money, yes. Or devised a counter-threat. The decisions of the tribunal are open to review, after all. He didn’t hold all the cards.’

  ‘Did you take any direct action?’

  ‘Yes. I felt Childe had been less than honest with the tribunal about his political affiliations. Vera was able to fill in the details. I left a note with the clerk of the court, to be copied to my fellow assessors on the tribunal, making it clear I might wish to revisit one of our recent decisions. I gave the clerk Childe’s case number. He’ll have a note.

  ‘I trusted Vera’s judgement. Childe wasn’t a troublemaker. But if he tried to use what he knew against me, I would have had a riposte at least. I had no need to kill the man, Brooke. None at all. I had the situation under control.’

  Brooke considered the image of Childe’s shattered skull on its steel pillow in the morgue.

  ‘Did you fire the shot that killed Chris Childe?’

  Stone managed the smile this time, and a short laugh.

  ‘I’m not sure panic, or overreaction, is a sound military virtue,’ he said smoothly.

  �
�I’m sorry, this is a serious enquiry. I can continue it at the Spinning House. Did you fire the shot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have a pistol?’

  Stone unbuttoned his leather holster and placed it on the desk. Brooke noted the affectation of his initials on the grip, and the regimental crest. He wondered if it had been with this gun that he’d mutilated his own hand in the trenches.

  Brooke’s jacket had a ticket pocket from which he extracted a bullet, which he placed on the desk.

  ‘That is the bullet which killed Chris Childe; it was embedded in a tree, having passed through his brain. It is, remarkably, intact. A simple matter to match it with the murder weapon.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Stone, sliding the pistol in its holster over the desk. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘I have obtained a warrant to search your home. That is in progress. Do you possess other weapons?’

  ‘You’re searching my house, now?’ Stone, normally florid, seemed to drain of blood. ‘Will my wife have been offered an explanation?’

  ‘No. We simply need to find any firearms and eliminate them from our inquiry, and take a statement from her on your movements on the night Childe died. My question, again: do you possess any other pistols capable of firing a bullet of this calibre?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware. My wife’s father collected pistols. They’re all boxed, and spiked. There’s a gun-room caisson on the upper landing. They’re all mostly Indian Army antiques, frankly. There’s a shotgun in the kitchen, but there’s no ammunition.’

  Brooke made a note.

  ‘If the bullet doesn’t match, is that an end to it?’ asked Stone.

  ‘No. But if no other weapon comes to hand, and you can adequately explain your whereabouts on the night of the murder, I think we’re done. Can you?’

  ‘I was in court until five. I walked home via Vera’s flat. I’d let the driver go and it’s only a mile. We had dinner at eight-thirty with friends. My wife can confirm that. Our guests left at eleven. I got a cab to the station the next morning, and we dropped by at the court to leave a note for the clerk …’ He shrugged. ‘I caught the 9.17. I spent two nights at my club. I returned just now, you saw me.’

  Brooke nodded. ‘We’ll make the necessary checks. In the meantime, I can take it you will be on duty here at the hall? No urgent, top-level military exercises planned outside the county?’

  Brooke had let a slightly mocking tone enter his voice, and he could see Stone swell slightly with bruised self-importance.

  ‘In the short-term, no. No plans, Brooke. But I’ve been given a new command, by the War Office, by the prime minister, actually. It’s classified, I’m afraid, otherwise I’d share details. I’ll be gone by the end of the month.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Brooke.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Major Stone, having given Brooke permission to search his office and a small dormitory room in the attic where he was able to sleep when working late, promptly commandeered a staff car to take him home. He wished to ‘oversee’ Edison in the search. A suspicion lingered in his wake that the major’s eagerness to return to the house, in the midst of a top-level military exercise, was the result of anxiety over his wife: what would she think? What would she be told? What did she know? Brooke recalled wise words from his father: never judge a marriage from the outside. Perhaps she knew it all: the indiscretions, the kept woman. To what extent was she also dedicated to the upward trajectory of her husband’s career?

  First, for Brooke, came Stone’s office. He noted its neat, bureaucratic simplicity, with the desk and chair set to impress beneath a regimental flag. The two phones, red and green, placed precisely at one o’clock, and two o’clock to the blotter. A black fountain pen lay at right angles to the pile of documents. A framed picture, to the far left, was turned so that any visitor could glimpse the scene: the steps of the Old College, Sandhurst, a group of cadets at attention, as perpendicular as the white pillars which held the pediment above.

  The overall effect was of a sanctum, and the extent to which the room resisted the sounds of the outside world was extraordinary. The atmosphere was stifling, claustrophobic, almost quilted with silence. Brooke thought of Stone seated in this peace, considering perhaps what lay ahead: a new command, rank, even a title, while his hands lay on the blotter, the disfigured fingers a reminder of the hint of disgrace which might now, finally, be consigned to the past.

  Had Childe threatened this glorious future?

  Brooke searched thoroughly but there was no second gun. The attic room proved to be one-time servants’ quarters. The book beside the bed was A History of the Punic Wars, the blanket neatly folded, the pillow smooth and unruffled. Brooke wondered if the creation of this billet had provided Stone with the camouflage required to visit Babylon Street. He imagined a late-night call from the black phone to home, complaining of the workload, the necessity to use the cold attic bed.

  Here, under the roof, Madingley’s bucolic silence was even more profound. It was into this cotton wool world that a single sound did impinge: a gunshot, dull and muffled by a silencer. Brooke went to the window and opened it, breathing in the country air laced with pine scent, listening: five shots more rang out in a stilted, imperfect series.

  Taking directions from the staff sergeant on duty in the Great Hall, he set out around the perimeter of the building, a bewildering zigzag path past walled gardens, ice houses and a dilapidated orangery, into the grounds beyond.

  The officer class at Madingley had kept its pleasures close to hand. A groom led a pair of handsome horses into the old stables, while two men played tennis on a court bordered by hedges of copper beech, although the net was partly perished and roughly patched. Under the rusted iron canopy of a small bandstand, a pair of young men in braces played violins in front of a music stand.

  A path led past a dovecote into the formal gardens, and Brooke followed it to a fork, took the left way, and left again at a statue of a god blowing a wind with puffed cheeks. The woods finally cleared to reveal a large rectangular piece of open grass which the staff sergeant who’d given him directions had referred to as the old polo pitch.

  Here a shooting range had been set out. The targets to the right, the butts to the left, a wooden pavilion beyond in the colonial style. Reaching the verandah, Brooke watched an elderly man in a shirt and breeches firing pistol shots, then testing his accuracy by examining the distant target with a small brass telescope. The targets were made of straw, and roughly assembled in human form.

  Inside, the pavilion revealed its original purpose: a series of heraldic devices decorated a long bar, while half a dozen battered leather couches were arranged in a convivial nest around a large open fireplace. At the bar, a private in fatigues worked with dubbin, softening an ammunition belt, while a spread cloth held several pistols, each one glistening with newly applied polish.

  Brooke held his warrant card in the soldier’s face. ‘Major Stone asked me to pop down and pick up his pistol. Just routine elimination. He said I was to ask for Private …?’

  ‘Goodman.’

  ‘Right. Goodman. That was it. He said you had everything running smartly.’

  Goodman smiled. ‘Good shot, the major – old school of course. You can tell the ones who did their bit last time. Competitions, with a crowd watching, or a wager on the outcome, they get better. Rest of ’em fold under pressure. And the gun’s not important. The major has an old Webley .45, but he can outshoot the cadets with all their new kit.’

  Reaching back, he slipped a padlock key off a board painted with numbers.

  ‘Gun’s booked in, is it? You keep track?’ asked Brooke.

  ‘No need. The estate’s secure, you came through the gates, you’d have seen. Tight as a duck’s arse … The perimeter wire’s seven foot high. We trust the officers. These keys are spares.’

  Brooke was directed to the changing room, which was lined with lockers and reeked of damp clothes, polish and sweat. Stone’s locker was
number 34 and, besides a padded jacket and a box of ammunition, contained a revolver folded in a green cloth.

  Brooke requisitioned everything in a felt bag provided by the amiable Goodman.

  Outside, on the verandah, he watched the elderly soldier fire a final round at the distant straw man. The first five shots missed but the sixth caught the target’s head, so that it flipped back only to sag forward on its chest. A skein of blue cordite drifted across the green landscape, all the more vivid when viewed through Brooke’s lenses.

  Now he was out in the clear light, he slid the pistol out of the bag using a pencil through the trigger guard. While he’d been a decent shot himself, he’d never coveted guns, never found that their metallic heft held the special fascination it did for others. So he was no expert. But he was absolutely sure he wasn’t holding an antique Webley .45.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  While Brooke searched Madingley Hall for the murder weapon, Edison was back at the Spinning House, typing up an inventory of items removed from Stone’s home: a total of thirty-two guns, all ceremonial, and none in a condition to fire.

  He was about to add a summary of Mrs Stone’s testimony when the desk sergeant shouted up the stairs that he should pick up the phone as CID at West Bar, Sheffield, were on the line, insisting on speaking to Brooke, on an urgent matter.

  Edison scribbled down a brief outline of the message.

  The car which had taken Gretorix – aka Turl – north, with Detective Inspector Solly and his police driver, had stopped for petrol on the A1 at Newark. It had then pulled into a roadhouse on the edge of Sherwood Forest. Solly had left Gretorix and the driver in the car, while he used the toilet and ordered a round of sandwiches.

  Returning ten minutes later, he found the driver unconscious at the wheel. A head wound, delivered with a heavy blunt object, had cracked his skull. The prisoner, despite being handcuffed to a restraining bar in the rear of the vehicle, was gone. The cuffs’ chain had been severed with bolt-cutters.