by Rennie Airth
“Do you know him, Constable?” Madden’s tone was detached.
“Yes, sir.” Stackpole, too, had paled. “Name of Wiggins. James Wiggins. He’s from the village.”
“What would he be doing up here?”
“Poaching, most likely.” The constable mopped his brow “That coat of his has got the deepest pockets in the county. Like as not we’ll find a bird in one of them. Must have come across here from his lordship’s shoot to dodge the keepers.” He pointed a finger at the dog. “That’s Betsy, Jimmy’s bitch. Wonderful nose for a pheasant, or so Jimmy always said.”
“You’ve had dealings with him?”
“You could say that.” Stackpole grunted. “He’s been up before the bench. But not nearly as often as he should have. Hard man to lay a hand on.” The constable bit his lip. “Poor Jimmy. I always said he’d come to a bad end.”
Madden was peering at the ground in front of them. Something had caught his eye. He bent down and slipped his hand into the trampled ferns, then withdrew it holding a cigarette stub delicately between his fingertips. He held it up to the light.
“Three Castles. One of his?”
“Not likely. Pipe and a tin of Navy Cut—that was Jimmy’s style.” Stackpole’s brow knotted in a frown. “Sir, I don’t see how this could have happened.”
Madden, occupied with folding the stub into a handkerchief, glanced at him questioningly.
“I just can’t see anyone creeping up on Jimmy. You wouldn’t have got within twenty feet of him. If he didn’t spot you, the bitch would have.”
Madden put the handkerchief carefully into his trouser pocket. He said, “I think it was the other way round.”
“Sir?”
The inspector turned so that he was facing down the slope. The others followed the direction of his glance. Melling Lodge lay directly below them, clearly visible through a gap in the pine forest. Billy could make out a group of men in plain clothes standing on the terrace. A line of blue uniforms moved slowly across the sunlit lawn.
“I think whoever killed them was sitting here, waiting for dark.”
Stackpole nodded slowly, comprehending. “Betsy would have picked up their scent,” he said. “Come looking to see who it was.” He touched the small body with the toe of his boot. A thin trickle of blood had dried on the white jaw. “When she was stabbed she must have squealed, kicked up a racket, and Jimmy came running.”
Madden was frowning. “I didn’t see a dog at the lodge,” he said. “Did the Fletchers have one?”
“Yes, sir, Rufus. An old Retriever. But he died not long ago.”
Leaving Billy posted by the body, Madden and the constable returned to the path. The inspector wanted to climb to the top of the ridge. It took only a few minutes, the pines thinning out as they scaled the stony crest. On the other side was a vista of farms and woodland stretching for miles. In the distance, hazy in the afternoon light, they could just make out the blurred contours of the South Downs.
Not far from the base of the ridge a cluster of cottages stood with a square church tower in the middle.
“That’s Oakley, sir,” Stackpole said, without prompting. “I was born there.”
Madden pointed to a narrow track that led from the hamlet through fields of ripening corn to the edge of the woods beneath them.
“Could you get a car along there?”
The constable shook his head. “Tractor, maybe. Car springs wouldn’t take the ruts.”
They went back down the path and crossed the slope to where Billy was standing by Wiggin’s body. Madden paused for only a moment. “Stay off the flattened area,” he told the young constable. “It needs to be searched. I’ll be sending some men up.”
Billy felt his cup of bitterness brim over. The inspector had finally found something he was fit for. To stand watch over a body until others came to do the police work.
“Isn’t there something I can do, sir?”
“Yes, keep the crows off him,” Madden called back as he hastened away. “They go for the eyes.”
Stackpole clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically as he went by. “Not yours, lad,” he said, with a wink.
3
Chief Inspector Sinclair drew Madden aside, leading him down the shallow steps from the terrace onto the now deserted lawn. They made an oddly contrasting pair: Madden, tall and rumpled, with his jacket slung over his shoulder; Sinclair, slight and no more than medium height, almost the dandy in his tailored pinstripe suit and soft felt hat. They stood close together, casting a single shadow in the dying sunlight.
“A question. Have we any idea what we’re dealing with here?” The chief inspector’s restless glance took in the squad of uniformed police who had moved off the grass and were searching the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. At Madden’s behest he had just dispatched two CID sergeants to deal with the body in the woods. “An armed gang, I’m told, a robbery gone wrong.” He nodded towards the terrace where Boyce and Chief Inspector Norris stood watching them. “In that case, perhaps someone would explain to me why there’s stuff in the house in plain view worth more than what was taken. Did you see the china in the drawing-room? And the brace of Purdeys on the gun rack? Good of them not to loot the place, wouldn’t you say? Especially since they had all night to do it.” Angus Sinclair’s consonants had the precision of cut glass. A native of Aberdeen, he’d been a policeman for more than thirty years. “Your thoughts, John?”
Madden lit a cigarette before replying. Sinclair studied his face. He noted familiar signs of strain and deep-seated fatigue in the dark, shadowed eyes. They were aspects of Madden he had come to recognise, souvenirs of the war, as permanent and unalterable as the scar on his forehead.
“Starting with the door, sir,” Madden’s deep voice rose little above a murmur, “why break it down? It wasn’t locked. Then the victims’ hands and arms. Apart from Mrs. Fletcher, they were all killed the same way, but there isn’t a cut or scratch on any of them.”
“Your point?” Sinclair cocked his head attentively.
“Whoever did this was in a hurry. The victims had no time to react or defend themselves. I think those downstairs were all dead within seconds of the door being smashed in.”
“Which means the killings were deliberate. That was the intention from the outset.” The chief inspector paused, reflecting on what he had said. “So much for a robbery gone wrong! Anything else?”
“The weapon, sir. It was unusual. No injuries to the hands and arms, as I said. And then there’s Colonel Fletcher, killed from behind in that way.”
“Would you care to be more specific?” Sinclair frowned. “Have you any idea what it was?”
Madden shrugged. “I’d rather hear what the pathologist says. I don’t want to put ideas in his head.”
“Or mine?” The chief inspector raised an eyebrow. “But as regards Colonel Fletcher, I take your meaning. You’d think he would have faced his attacker. Why did he turn and run?”
“He might have been trying for one of the guns in the study.”
“Even so, an old soldier . . . You’d expect him to take on a man with a knife. If it was a knife . . .” Sinclair grimaced. “An armed gang? Could they be right?” He gestured towards the terrace.
Madden shook his head. “I think it was one man,” he said.
The chief inspector looked hard at him. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” he admitted.
Madden shrugged.
“I have the same feeling.” Sinclair’s gaze shifted to the house. “It’s got the smell of madness about it. That’s one man’s work. But we have to be sure. What about the woman upstairs, Mrs. Fletcher? There could have been two of them.”
Again Madden shook his head. “He broke the door down and killed the maid in the drawing-room, then went for Colonel Fletcher. The colonel tried to reach the study—where the guns were—but he only got as far as the doorway before he was caught from behind. As for the woman in the kitchen, the nanny, I doubt she even knew wha
t was happening. You can see the surprise in her face.”
While Madden was speaking Sinclair had taken a briar pipe from his pocket. He stood now, tapping the empty bowl in the palm of his hand.
“Aye, but that still doesn’t explain Mrs. Fletcher. She wasn’t killed like the others.”
“I think she heard the disturbance and came down the stairs. That’s where they met. Did you notice the pearls in the carpet?”
The chief inspector nodded. “From a bracelet, I’d say. It must have broken. I think he seized her there and dragged her upstairs to the bedroom. Tell the pathologist to look for bruises on the wrists and arms.”
Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. “If you’re right, then since he didn’t kill her on the stairs, he must have had something else in mind. Rape, by the look of it. Poor woman. Well, we’ll know soon enough.” He slipped the pipe back into his pocket. “That would explain why she wasn’t stabbed. He wanted her alive. But what did he use to kill her with?”
“A razor, I’d say.”
“Yes, but whose? The colonel’s? Or did he bring his own?”
The chief inspector expelled his breath in another long sigh. He watched as a plain clothes detective stepped over the broken door frame to deposit a white envelope in a numbered cardboard box, one of four standing in a row on the terrace. Close by was a leather holdall, Sinclair’s “black bag,” containing equipment he deemed necessary for a murder investigation: gloves, tweezers, bottles, envelopes. The new scientific approach to crime detection was slowly gaining ground, though not without meeting resistance. Juries remained suspicious of forensic evidence. Even judges were inclined to give it little weight in their summings up.
“I’ve sent for the mortuary wagon.” Sinclair was speaking again. “We’ll do the post-mortems in Guildford tonight, as many as we can. I want to run the investigation from down here, at least in the early stages. Bring a bag when you come tomorrow. You’ll be sleeping in the pub.
“Meantime, there’s that little girl to think about. Get over to Dr. Blackwell’s house, would you, John? Find out if the child saw anything. And arrange to have her moved to hospital right away. We can take the doctor’s statement tomorrow. I must get back.” He glanced up at the house again. “I want to keep an eye on that pathologist. He’s new to me. I asked for the sainted Spilsbury, but he wasn’t available. On holiday in the Scilly Isles, if you please! I had to take one of his assistants at St. Mary’s.” As he spoke, photographer’s flash powder, like sheet lightning, lit up a window. “All this and the Lord Lieutenant, too!”
“You met him, did you?” Madden donned his jacket.
“He was leaving when I arrived. With inky fingers and a foul disposition. He said you were impertinent. No, damned impertinent.”
“He went inside the house—did he tell you that?”
Sinclair was amused. “You are aware, are you not, that he’s head of the magistracy and chief executive for the county of Surrey? Take care, John. That type likes to make trouble.”
Madden scowled. “I’ve had a bellyful of that type.”
“Then again, someone stepped in that pool of blood in the study. I might send an officer after him to look at the sole of his shoe. That should spoil his supper.”
Madden’s glance, straying to the bottom of the garden, was arrested by the sight of Styles sitting on a bench at the edge of the lawn. The constable’s red hair was plastered to his sunburned forehead. He was picking burrs from his socks.
“Aye, I’m sorry about that.” Sinclair had followed the direction of his gaze. “I shouldn’t have landed you with a green one. There was no one else on hand this morning. I’ll have him replaced tomorrow.”
Madden shook his head. A smile touched his lips. “No, leave him,” he said “He’ll do.”
4
The forecourt was becoming crowded. A second police van was drawn up behind the first, and on the other side of the fountain a big Vauxhall tourer was parked against the creeper-clad wall. The numbers of uniformed police had thinned, but several plainclothesmen were gathered in a group near the front steps. Searching for Stackpole, Madden found him beside a trestle table on which plates of sandwiches and a large tea urn rested.
“Courtesy of the village ladies, sir. Would you care for a mug?”
“Thank you, not now. I have to see Dr. Blackwell. Could you tell me the way to her house?”
“I’ll do better than that, sir.” Stackpole emptied his tin mug and wiped his moustache. “I’m going there myself. Mr. Boyce sent a man over this morning, but he needs to be relieved.”
“You could do with a break yourself, Constable.”
“Oh, I’m all right, sir,” said Stackpole, who was thinking the same applied to Madden. The inspector’s dark eyes seemed to have sunk even deeper into his gaunt face. “And at least I’ll get my supper later, which is more than can be said for this lot.”
He led the way out of the forecourt and through a kitchen garden. A gate in the high brick wall opened on to a path that joined the road some distance past the entrance to Melling Lodge. Looking back, Madden saw that the crowd of villagers had dispersed. But now there were several cars parked outside the gates.
“That’ll be the London press,” he said.
The winding lane ran between hedgerows. The two men tramped along it side by side. After a while, Madden spoke: “Just between us, Constable, we’re not inclined to treat this as a robbery. It looks as though the killings were deliberate, even planned.”
Stackpole sucked in his breath. “That’s hard to believe, sir. If you’d known the family . . .”
“Well liked, were they?”
“More than that. Miss Lucy—Mrs. Fletcher—she was born here, at Melling Lodge. The house would have gone to her brother, but he was killed in the war. When she and the colonel settled at the Lodge, it must have seemed like coming home to her. And as for the village—well, you won’t find a soul who wasn’t that pleased to see her back.”
They had come to a belt of forest, a spur of woodland spilling down from the slopes of Upton Hanger. The road bore to the right, but Stackpole pointed out a narrow track in the woods ahead. “That’s a short cut to the doctor’s house, sir. It’ll save us ten minutes.”
The path, dark as a tunnel, ran beneath a dense canopy of beech and chestnut. The sun had almost set. When they came to a garden gate, Madden paused. He took out his cigarettes. “Constable?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I was told you were with Dr. Blackwell when she found the child.” He struck a match for them.
“So I was.” Stackpole drew in a lungful of tobacco smoke. “I’d already been looking for her when Dr. Helen—Dr. Blackwell—arrived, and we started searching again. It was the doctor who found her, under her bed in the nursery. Poor little girl. She’d squashed herself up against the wall and was lying there with her eyes shut. She must have heard us calling, but she didn’t make a sound. When Dr. Helen pulled her out she was stiff all over and there were dust balls in her hair. She wouldn’t say a word. The doctor wrapped her in a bedspread and put her in her car and drove her straight here.”
“Have you known Dr. Blackwell long?”
“Since we were children, sir.” The constable grinned. “Miss Helen’s from the village. Fine doctor, they say.”
“But not yours?”
“Well, no, sir.” Stackpole looked embarrassed. “I mean, the wife and children go to her, but somehow it doesn’t seem right, her being a woman . . . Besides there’s her father, old Dr. Collingwood. He still sees a few patients.”
They put out their cigarettes. Madden unlatched the garden gate. Close by, a huge weeping beech spread its branches over a corner of the lawn. He saw the house outlined against the darkening sky. Like Melling Lodge, it faced the woods of Upton Hanger, deep and mysterious at this hour. The same stream they had crossed earlier that day divided the ridge from an orchard at the bottom of the garden, which was bounded by a low stone wall.
Th
ey walked up the sloping lawn to the house where the curtains remained undrawn on a wide bow window. Light from inside washed across a broad terrace lined with flower-pots. Roses clung to a trellis. The air was heavy with the scent of jasmine.
As they drew near the house a dog began barking and a door opened. Stackpole touched his helmet.
“Evening, Miss Helen.”
“Hullo, Will.” The doctor was a tall silhouette against the light. “Down, Molly!” she commanded as a black pointer slipped out of the door behind her and came prancing up to the men.
“This is Inspector Madden, from London. Sir . . . Dr. Blackwell.”
They shook hands. Helen Blackwell had a firm grip.
“Come in, please.” She ushered them into the drawing-room. “I’ve been expecting you. I only wish the circumstances were less appalling.”
Madden took off his hat. “I’m sorry you had to be called in this morning, ma’am,” he said. “I expect they were your friends.”
“They were. It was dreadful.” Helen Blackwell had thick fair hair, drawn back and tied with a ribbon behind her head. Her eyes were an unusual shade of blue, Madden noted, dark, almost violet-coloured. He registered her good looks, but was struck more by the signs of character in her face. Her glance was direct. “I’ve known Lucy Fletcher all my life. We grew up together, people used to take us for sisters.”
She fell silent, but he saw she had something more to say and he waited.
“I didn’t examine the bodies thoroughly this morning. It wouldn’t have been right. Can you tell me, was Lucy . . . Mrs. Fletcher . . . ?”
“Assaulted?” Instinctively he avoided the more explicit term. “We don’t know. The pathologist will conduct the post-mortems in Guildford, probably tonight.”