JM01 - River of Darkness

by Rennie Airth

  The line of the crest was uneven, broken by bumps and hollows, and twice they lost sight of their quarry as the ground dipped, only to see him again toiling up the next rise. Then he changed direction suddenly, veering off to the right, and when they reached the spot they found they were at the top of the path that ascended the ridge from the fields around Oakley. The hamlet lay beneath them surrounded by the broad sweep of farmlands.

  The cough and stutter of a motorcycle being kicked into life sounded faintly.

  “Blast!” Madden sank to his haunches.

  “There he goes!” Stackpole started down the path, but the inspector called him back.

  “It’s no use. You won’t catch him.”

  They watched as a motorcycle and sidecar emerged from the treeline below and moved slowly along the rutted track through the cornfields. The rider, hunched over the handlebars, did not look back. Madden cupped his hands like binoculars over his eyes. “See what you can make out. Anything at all.”

  The constable copied him. They crouched in silence.

  “Cloth cap,” Stackpole panted. “Just like Wellings said.”

  “Black bodywork on the sidecar. What make of bike is that?”

  “Harley Davidson . . . I think. Hard to be sure from here. There’s something in the sidecar, sir. Could be a bag.”

  Madden stood up. “I’ve got to get down to Melling Lodge and ring Guildford. I want you to stay here. We have to know what road he takes when he reaches Oakley. As soon as you’re sure, come down to the house.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stackpole’s gaze was riveted to the valley floor.

  Madden turned and went plunging down the steep hillside.

  Blue uniforms milled in the forecourt of Melling Lodge. To the chief inspector, as he stepped from his car, it seemed as though the scene of two weeks before was being re-enacted. The familiar form of Inspector Boyce materialized from the pale shadows cast by the limpid evening light.

  “Sir.” He shook hands with Sinclair. “We’ve been in touch with the Kent and Sussex constabularies. There’ll be officers on the look-out for him all over the south-east.”

  Sinclair spied Madden’s tall figure approaching.

  “John?” His voice held a note of concern.

  “I’m fine, sir.” They shook hands. “Not a scratch. He missed us both.”

  Sinclair looked at the two men. “Any chance of him heading north or west?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely,” Madden replied. “Stackpole saw him take the Craydon road. That rules out Godalming and Farnham to the west. If he passed through Craydon he’d come to the main road between Guildford and Horsham. He could have turned north there, but they’re watching for him in Guildford. So either he turned south, towards Horsham, or he kept going east to Dorking and beyond.”

  “That’s assuming he sticks to the main roads,” Sinclair felt bound to point out.

  “Quite, sir. If he knows the back roads . . .” Madden shrugged.

  “And he could cut up to London, if he wanted.”

  “I don’t think so.” The inspector shook his head. “He’s a country man.” Then he shrugged a second time. “I’m guessing,” he admitted.

  Boyce coughed. “We’ve something already, sir. Three witnesses saw him ride through Oakley this afternoon, two women and a man.” He took out a notepad. “Same basic description. Big fellow in a brown jacket and a cloth cap. One of the women thought he had a moustache. Brown hair, she said. About the bike, the women just saw a motorcycle and sidecar, but the man—he’s a young chap called Maberley—he said it was a Harley, no question. There was a brown leather bag in the sidecar, the top of it was sticking out. Maberley saw that—he was interested in the bike, so he looked hard. Said the bag was like a cricket bag.” He checked his notepad. “Oh, and the sidecar’s painted black or dark blue.”

  “And what do we have up there?” Sinclair asked Madden. He nodded towards the woods of Upton Hanger.

  “A big hole that’s been filled in, Stackpole says. He went up again and found it in a thicket above the path, well hidden.”

  Madden explained how he’d stopped to examine the footprints. “He must have seen us from above and realized we’d picked up his tracks. It’s possible he recognised Stackpole as being a policeman.”

  “How so?” the chief inspector asked.

  “We know he’s spent time in the woods, but he might have been in Highfield, too. If so, he’d know the village bobby by sight.”

  The constable, like Madden, still in his shirtsleeves, appeared before them. “I’ve got hold of a couple of spades from the toolshed, sir,” he said to Sinclair. “We’re ready when you are.”

  Boyce looked at his watch. “Nearly seven.” He called to one of the uniformed officers. “Bring some flares from the van. We’re going to need them.”

  It took them forty minutes to reach the circle of beeches. From there Stackpole led the party up the hillside, past the line of ilexes, to an area dense with holly and tangled brush. Earlier, the constable had discovered a way into the thicket, a narrow entrance made to resemble an animal’s track and masked by dead branches. The men had to crawl in one at a time.

  Sinclair and Madden were the last to enter. The chief inspector had lingered at the bottom of the slope to examine the beech tree where Madden had sought cover.

  “A narrow shave,” he observed, running his finger over the bullet-gouged trunk. “You must have had some anxious moments, John.”

  Madden recalled the eerie calm that had possessed him. It was a throwback to his time in the trenches, and the realization sent a chill through him.

  The mound of earth discovered inside the thicket was about ten feet long at its base and in the rough shape of a triangle. Some soil had already been shifted and lay in a heap beside it.

  “Looks like he was digging it up when you disturbed him,” Boyce remarked, dusting off the knees of his trousers. “What’s he got down there, I wonder? Not another body, I hope!”

  The answer wasn’t long in coming. The first constable detailed to dig struck a metallic object with the first thrust of his spade. He bent down and hauled out a silver branched candlestick from the loosened soil. A few seconds later a second was uncovered. Then three silver cups were unearthed, all bearing inscriptions noting that “Captain C.S.G. Fletcher” had won them in target-shooting contests. They were found beside a rolled-up cloth, which contained a collection of jewellery comprising a garnet necklace, two gold rings, seven earrings—only four matched—and a locket on a golden chain.

  Lastly, a mantelpiece clock, mounted in Sèvres china, was pulled from the clinging soil. The porcelain was cracked and a piece was missing.

  “That’s all that was on the list,” Boyce commented.

  Under the canopy of trees it was rapidly growing dark and Sinclair gave the order for the naphtha flares to be lit. Thrust into the ground at intervals around the site, the naked flames brought an air of ceremony to the grim proceedings, as though some blood sacrifice was being offered to the deities of the forest.

  The digging continued, with the officers working in pairs now, jackets shed and sleeves rolled up. Six feet down the spades struck another obstruction. This time the object proved harder to dislodge, but eventually a broad strip of corrugated iron was uncovered and passed up. Brushed clean and laid out on the ground, it became the receptacle for a variety of other items retrieved from the loose earth near the bottom of the hole: a piece of tar soap, a length of two-by-four, several wooden slats, cut to measure, numerous cigarette stubs, a piece of bacon rind, a bottle of Veno’s cough medicine, a half-eaten jar of cherry jam, empty tins of Maconochie’s stew.

  One of the diggers handed up heavy earthenware jar.

  “What’s that for?” Boyce wondered aloud.

  “Rum.” Madden spoke from the shadows. “A half-gill unit. Standard issue.”

  Sinclair glanced at him. The inspector stood on his own in the shadows, away from the flickering light. His face was expressionless.<
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  The two men working in the pit handed their spades up and began climbing out.

  “I reckon that’s all, sir,” one of them said to Boyce.

  “Wait!” Madden came forward and peered down into the hole. “I want all that loose soil cleared out, Constable. Back you go.”

  Boyce started to say something, but the chief inspector held up his hand to silence him.

  The two constables resumed their labour. Madden stood over them while they shovelled earth out. After a few minutes, he said, “Right, that’ll do.” He helped the pair out and then jumped down into the pit himself. “Let’s have one of those flares over here,” he said.

  It was Sinclair himself who brought it over. The others gathered around. The excavated hole was in the shape of a blunt T, the two arms branching out only a little beyond the thick central trunk, where Madden was now standing. He pointed behind him to the head of the T where a broad step had been cut into the back wall.

  “That’s where he slept,” he said. “Those wooden slats are for duckboards, to keep the floor dry, and the piece of tin is for the roof.” He came forward. “And this is a firestep.” He mounted a low projection at the foot of the T, bringing his head and shoulders up over the lip of the trench. “What we have here is a dugout.”

  “Like in the war, sir?” The question was Stackpole’s.

  “Like in the war.” Madden’s voice was scored with bitterness “That muck you see—the soap and the stew and the rum—it’s what they had in the trenches. Even down to the cough medicine—we used to live on the stuff.”

  He looked up at Sinclair. “I’ll tell you what he did, sir. He took a swig of rum, the way we used to before an attack, and then he went down there and blew his bloody whistle and charged into that house and killed the lot of them. And that’s not all—” Madden pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper which he handed up to the chief inspector. “Do you remember those drawings Sophy Fletcher made? This is another one.”

  Sinclair held up the paper to the light. The men gathered around, peering over his shoulder.

  “That’s a gas mask,” Madden said. “When he broke in he was wearing one, and that’s what the child saw—some goggled-eyed monster dragging her mother down the passage. It explains why she hasn’t said a word since.”

  Part Two

  But now hell’s gates are an old tale;

  Remote the anguish seems;

  The guns are muffled and far away,

  Dreams within dreams.

  And far and far are Flanders mud,

  And the pain of Picardy;

  And the blood that runs there runs beyond

  The wide waste sea.

  Rose Macaulay, “Picnic July 1917”

  1

  Dressed in her maid’s uniform and white lace cap, Ethel Bridgewater sat at the kitchen table reading yesterday’s News of the World. Her attention had been caught by a half-page advertisement for something called the “Harlene Hair-Drill” which promised users of the company’s products “a luxurious wealth of gloriously beautiful and healthy hair.”

  For some time now Ethel had been considering having her own hair bobbed—more and more of her friends were doing it—but she was reluctant to take the step. Though a plain young woman, she possessed a head of rich chestnut hair and felt instinctively it would be a mistake to get rid of this crowning asset.

  She was reading the advertisement for a second time when the door to the stableyard opened and Carver came in. He didn’t speak, and neither did she. They seldom exchanged a word, going about their duties in silence when they happened to meet.

  Glancing up, Ethel received a shock. Carver’s looks had been transformed since their last encounter before the weekend. His moustache had disappeared and, shorn of this covering, his mouth was revealed as thin with a marked downward turn at one corner where a small scar was visible. It was entirely in keeping with their relationship that it did not even occur to the maid to pass comment on his changed appearance.

  Ethel rose from the table and began to busy herself preparing tea for her mistress, Mrs. Aylward. Carver opened the stove door and took out a plate of food which had been left there for him. He ate at irregular hours, and the cook, Mrs. Rowley, who lived in the neighbourhood and would not be back to prepare dinner until later that afternoon, had been taught to leave his meals warming in the oven. He brought the plate over to the table, collecting a knife and fork from the kitchen cutlery, and began to eat.

  Ethel hurried over the tea-things. Once she had taken the tray into the drawing-room there was dusting work she could do upstairs. In truth, she didn’t like to find herself alone with Carver for any length of time. If asked why, she would have found it difficult to give a reason. Certainly he had never offended her in any way. But his presence had a strange—almost physical—effect on her. After a while the air seemed to get closer, as though some unseen agent were consuming the oxygen, and Ethel would find herself becoming breathless. As soon as the kettle boiled, she made the tea and took the tray out.

  Carver, whose real name was Amos Pike, carried his dirty plate to the sink and cleaned it. He washed and dried his utensils, returning everything to its place. Using the hot water remaining in the kettle he made himself a cup of tea and brought it to the table. He picked up the newspaper and read it carefully, paying particular attention to the news columns. Satisfied, he washed and dried his cup and went outside into the yard.

  Mrs. Aylward’s house, though modest in size, boasted a set of stables at the rear. Built by the previous owner, an enthusiastic horseman, they were no longer used for that purpose and had been converted into a storeroom and garage. Pike lived in a room on the floor above.

  Employed primarily as a chauffeur, he was also charged with keeping the garden tidy. But his duties there were minimal, Mrs. Aylward’s interest in horticulture being confined to a conservatory that she had added to the house, attaching it to the side of her studio.

  His job that day was to clean the greenhouse windows and he had already done the inside. Now he set up his ladder on the gravelled path that ran alongside the structure and mounted the steps with a bucket and mop. He worked automatically, his brow grooved with some inner preoccupation, his glance unfocussed.

  Pike had unusual eyes. Flat and brown, they seldom gave any clue to what he was thinking. Many people found them disturbing.

  2

  Deputy Assistant Commissioner Bennett rose as Sinclair and Madden entered his office. “Inspector! I’m relieved to see you in one piece.” He came around from behind his desk and shook Madden’s hand.

  “A pity you didn’t nab him when you had the chance,” Sampson offered. The chief superintendent, in a mustard-coloured suit and matching tie, was already in his chair. He grinned to show he was making a joke. “There were two of you, weren’t there?”

  Bennett looked at him sharply, but made no comment. He took his own chair at the table by the window. The others joined him.

  “Well, Chief Inspector?”

  Sinclair opened his file. “On the positive side, sir, we now know it’s only one man we’re looking for, and the military connection is solidly established. Mr. Madden assures me that what he built in the woods was an Army dugout, down to the last detail. One of the villagers reported hearing a police whistle at the time of the attack. Police whistle, Army whistle—they’re one and the same. He seems to have acted as though he were going ‘over the top.’” The chief inspector’s tone indicated his distaste for the cliche. “Apparently he wore a gas mask at the time.”

  He took two pieces of paper from his file and passed them across the table. “Those are drawings which the Fletcher child made later—as you know, she hasn’t spoken yet. We didn’t know what they meant until Inspector Madden realized they were an attempt by her to draw a gas mask.”

  Sampson scowled. “We haven’t seen these before,” he said.

  “I didn’t include them in the file,” Sinclair admitted. �
�They seemed to have no bearing on the case.”

  “We’ll have everything in future if you don’t mind, Chief Inspector.” Sampson’s small eyes had turned hard.

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Bennett stirred restlessly. “But what are we dealing with here?” he demanded. “What’s this man about? Is he a lunatic? Have we any idea?”

  Sinclair shook his head. “He may prove to be, sir. But I’m inclined to regard him as sane. Frighteningly so. Whatever mayhem he committed in Melling Lodge, all his preparations leading up to it, as well as his getaway, show the most detailed planning.

  “And considering the events of Saturday, I’d say he kept his head to a remarkable degree. Instead of persisting with his attack on Mr. Madden and the constable, he cut his losses and ran for it while he still had a chance to escape. We have eyewitness reports of him riding through both Oakley and Craydon and the most extraordinary thing, as far as I’m concerned, is that apparently he was going at no more than twenty miles an hour. Granted he didn’t want to attract attention, but he must have felt an enormous urge to put his foot down. The man’s an iceberg.”

  Sampson clicked his tongue with impatience.

  “Now, as to sightings, I’m afraid the news isn’t good. After Craydon he effectively disappeared. That’s to say, we’ve had any number of reports of motorcyclists travelling about the countryside, but given it was a Saturday afternoon, that’s hardly surprising. Some of them were stopped by the police, but without result. He seems to have vanished.”

  Bennett hesitated. “At our last meeting you indicated that the robbery was designed to mislead us. Are you still of that view?”

  Sinclair looked unhappy. “That seems less likely now,” he conceded. “But I’m still puzzled as to why he would risk returning to Highfield.”

  “No, really, we can’t have that.” Sampson came to life, striking the table with his fist. “There’s a perfectly obvious explanation and it’s staring you in the face. The man’s a thief—I’ve said so from the start. He buried what he stole because he didn’t want to be caught with it on him. Two weeks later he went back to collect it. He assumed the police would have left the area by then, and he was right. Madden’s presence in the woods was pure chance. My God, he even brought a bag with him so he could load the stuff and take it away. Just look at the facts, man.”