by Rennie Airth
“What?” Derry raised a ginger eyebrow.
“That was something we left out of the Gazette item, sir. The dog at Melling Lodge was poisoned a few weeks earlier. Do you remember what was used on Reynolds’s animals?”
Derry nodded. “Strychnine,” he said. “How about the other?”
“The same.” Madden weighed the file in his hand. The two men looked at each other. Derry clicked his tongue in chagrin.
“Damn it!” he said. He looked away.
“Did they search his caravan?” Madden wondered.
“The bobby did. Nothing turned up. Of course, he could have got rid of the stuff. Anyway, the constable spoke to him sharpish. Told him Reynolds wanted him off his land within twenty-four hours. It was a Saturday. The murder happened the same evening.”
“Caddo admitted going over there, to Reynolds’s farm.” Madden was back in the file. “He said he didn’t have anything special in mind.”
“That was his first statement.” Derry pointed at the folder. “He made another later and he was more forthcoming, admitted he meant to do Reynolds harm. Said he thought of setting fire to his barn.”
“That would have been what time?”
“After six, Caddo said. It was starting to get dark. His story—his second version—was that he approached the house and saw lights on and the back door standing open. He waited a few minutes and then went closer. He didn’t see anyone about. He’d lost his nerve about firing the barn—so he said—but he thought he might slip inside and help himself to whatever he could find. When he got to the door he noticed the lock had been smashed, but he couldn’t hear anything so he went inside. He took a bag from the kitchen and started putting things in it—a clock from the mantelpiece, some knives and forks from a canteen of cutlery. He found his way to Reynolds’s study, opened his desk and pocketed twenty quid and a gold watch.”
“Where was Reynolds all this time?”
“Less than a mile away, looking for some sheep. With his dogs dead he was having a hell of time running his flock and a number of them had strayed. He had a neighbour with him, fellow called Tompkins, who’d come over to lend a hand. Tompkins saw Mrs. Reynolds before they went off, so that put the husband in the clear. Both men were out of sight of the house for an hour—that could well have been a factor.”
“Might have saved their lives,” Madden remarked.
Derry cocked his head. “You think it was your man?”
“It could be, sir.” Madden scowled in frustration. “So what did Caddo do then?”
“He went upstairs, just to take a look, he said, to see if there was anything worth lifting. His story is he found Mrs. Reynolds’s body in the bedroom and got out of the house as fast as he could and ran all the way back to his camp-site. They picked him up in his caravan on the Ashford road next morning.”
Madden was wondering. “Since you didn’t know about the poisoned dog, what made you think there might be a connection with Melling Lodge?”
“The murder itself,” Derry replied. “The woman having her throat cut that way and her body thrown across the bed. And . . . well, this is a strange thing to say, you’ll think . . . but the fact that she wasn’t raped. Just like your Mrs. Fletcher.”
“That struck you as strange?”
Derry nodded. “He dragged her out of her bath and threw her on the bed. Why? She was naked, a good-looking woman, too. I mean, why didn’t he rape her?” He looked uncomfortable. “Hell of a thing to find yourself wondering,” he muttered.
“If it’s any consolation, sir, Mr. Sinclair had the same reaction.” Madden returned to the file. “What about the murder weapon?” he asked.
“According to our pathologist, probably a cutthroat razor. Caddo had one. It was tested, but nothing came up.”
“Prints?”
“None.” Derry got to his feet. “I dare say you’d like to have a look at the place, Inspector.”
“I would, sir.” Madden ordered the papers in the file. “What would be the best way of getting there?”
“I’ll take you myself,” Derry said. “This business is like a bone in my throat. I have to know one way or the other.”
It turned out Derry had his own motor-car—one of the new 20 h.p. Ford five-seaters. The cars were being offered on the market at only £205 and Billy had a secret yearning to possess one, though he hadn’t learned to drive yet.
They left Maidstone by the Sheerness road, but soon turned off it and drove through the rolling chalk uplands of the North Downs. The August sun was hot on their faces and the breeze in the open car was welcome. At Bentham, a village nestling in the fold of a green valley, Derry stopped outside a set of wrought-iron gates. He pointed up a long, straight drive, treeless but flanked at its furthest point by a pair of ornamental ponds. In the background, a handsome Palladian facade was visible.
“Bentham Court,” he said. “The guide books call it an architectural gem. A family named Garfield own it now. Reynolds is one of their tenants.”
They drove on for another mile, then branched off the road on to a narrow rutted track that ended at a patch of bare earth beside a chalky stream.
“This was Caddo’s camp-site. Reynolds’s farm is a mile or two away.” Although he hadn’t handled the case, the chief inspector seemed to have taken the trouble to familiarize himself with the details. “There’s a path that runs along the stream.”
They returned to the road and continued on the winding paved surface until they came to another dirt track, which Derry took, steering the car down a gentle gradient to the stream bed, which he crossed slowly, the water creaming about the wheels, and then ascending the grassy slope on the other side. A slate-roofed farmhouse with a whitewashed barn behind it came into view. Sheep dotted the green contoured landscape on either side of the roadway. As Derry pulled up near the house, a man in rough clothes came out of the barn. He stopped some distance from the car and stared at them. There was no hint of greeting in his manner.
“Mr. Reynolds?” Derry got out of the car. “We haven’t met. I’m Chief Inspector Derry, from Maidstone. This is Inspector Madden and Detective Constable Styles. They’re from London.” When the man didn’t respond, he asked, “Would you like to see our warrant cards?”
Reynolds shook his head. “I thought I’d done with you lot.” He came closer, but didn’t offer to shake hands.
“Inspector Madden has some questions to ask you. And we’d like to have a look around, if that’s all right?”
“I don’t understand.” He was about forty, Billy judged, but somehow older. Unshaven and wearing a dirty, collarless shirt, he looked like a man who had lost interest in how he appeared to others. His eyes were dull and uncaring. “I thought the bastard hanged himself.”
“Can we go inside for a moment? We won’t bother you for long.”
“No,” Reynolds said flatly. He glared at them.
Madden spoke: “I understand how you feel, Mr. Reynolds, but please oblige me.” Billy was struck by the gentle tone of his voice. “I’m working on another case and I believe there may be a connection. You’d be doing me a great service if you’d help us.”
The man didn’t reply at once. He stared into Madden’s deep-set eyes, until Billy began to think that some silent communication was passing between them. Abruptly he turned away. “Go in, if you want to,” he said, over his shoulder. He walked off.
Madden led the way through the front door, which opened into a small brick-paved entrance hall where they had to pick their way through a litter of muddy boots. Beyond was a sitting-room smelling of stale cigarette smoke. Sunlight streaming through smeared window-panes fell on a heap of dirty laundry lying on the floor in the middle of the room. An overturned ashtray spread its contents over the surface of a low wooden table where a pile of dirty plates and cutlery was stacked.
The house was like the man, Billy thought. Something had gone. Snapped. He followed Madden and Derry to the kitchen at the rear of the house, where the inspector examined
the back door: a fresh section of wood in the jamb, still unpainted, showed where the lock had had to be repaired.
They returned to the hallway and went upstairs. The lowceilinged bedroom showed the same signs of neglect as the rooms below. The double bed was unmade, the bedclothes pushed aside, and the glassed top of the dressing-table was dulled by a thin coating of dust. Two framed photographs stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. One showed a smiling young woman with a wreath of flowers in her fair hair. The other was a picture of Reynolds in a private’s uniform. Billy saw the dark buttons on the tunic and knew what they meant. Reynolds had served in the Rifle Brigade. Black-buttoned bastards.
The bathroom was across a narrow passage and Madden walked from one room to the other. Billy saw that he was pacing out the distance between the big ball-and-claw-footed bath and the bed. It looked to be about twelve feet, the young constable reckoned. He saw what Derry had meant. Why drag the woman all the way to the bed and not rape her? If he’d wanted to kill her, why not do it in the bathroom? He realized that the same questions could indeed be asked about Mrs. Fletcher’s murder.
Before they left the bedroom his eye was caught by a leather-bound volume on the bedside table. He glanced at the title. It was a collection of poems by a writer Billy had never heard of. Opening the book, he found an inscription in the flyleaf: To my dearest darling girl, with all my love, Fred.
Outside, Madden stood in front of the house and let his gaze wander over the gently sloping hillside. The chalk downland was bare of cover.
“Shall we talk to him now?” Derry asked. He had just seen Reynolds appear from a fold of land below them. He had a young dog at his side. When it trotted away, he summoned it back, slapping his thigh, making the animal come to heel.
“In a moment,” Madden replied.
He walked round to the side of the house. Derry and Billy followed. They found him gazing up the hillside behind the farmhouse at the crest of the ridge, about half a mile away, where a small coppice of beeches stood.
“There!” The inspector pointed. “I want to have a look at that first.”
As they walked up the cropped grass of the shallow incline Madden told the chief inspector about the dugout in the woods on Upton Hanger. “We haven’t made that public—we’re being careful about what we put out. He used a rifle and bayonet for four of the five killings. And we think he was wearing a gas mask when he broke in.”
Derry grunted. “Sounds to me like you’ve got a weird one,” he commented.
Billy, walking a respectful two paces behind them, thought that was putting it mildly.
The coppice covered only an acre or two. The leaf-carpeted ground beneath the trees showed no sign of having been disturbed. Madden stood in the shade at the edge of the beeline and looked down at the farmhouse. The barn behind it was set a little to one side and from where he stood he had a clear view of the kitchen door and the backyard. Watching him, Derry saw the crease of frustration notched in his forehead.
“This is the spot . . .” Madden glanced left and right along the bare crest of the ridge. “We know he likes to watch them first.”
He took off his hat and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Derry noticed the ragged scar running along his hairline. The sense of familiarity he usually felt when he met another policeman was missing with Madden. He recognized that this grim-faced inspector was different.
“Sir?” Styles’s voice reached them from inside the wood. “There’s something here, sir. A cigarette tin, I think . . .”
Madden spun on his heel and strode over to where the constable was standing behind a low bank. As he approached Billy went down on his haunches.
“Don’t touch it!”
The two older men joined him. He pointed, and they saw the glint of metal in the deep shade beneath the bank. Madden crouched down.
“You’re right, Constable.”
Taking a pencil from his jacket pocket he lifted the cylindrical cigarette tin off the ground and held it up.
“No label,” Billy said regretfully. He felt he’d earned the right to make a comment.
“The man we’re after smokes Three Castles,” Madden explained.
“If it’s his it’s been here since early April. You won’t get a print off it now,” Derry remarked.
“True. But we’ll take it with us, anyway. Constable—handkerchief!”
Billy reached into his pocket, recalling, as he did so, the shame he had felt the last time he’d been required to produce one. As Madden was passing the tin over to him, he paused and looked at it more closely, holding it up to the light. “Do you see that burn mark?” he asked Derry, and the chief inspector nodded. The inside of the tin was blackened. “I want to search this patch of ground. We’re looking for a piece of cloth, probably burned or charred. Anything that would serve as wadding. This tin’s been used as a Tommy cooker. You can brew a cup of tea on it if you haven’t got a stove handy. The troops used to put wadding at the bottom and soak it in methylated spirits.”
Billy, with the tin safely stowed in his pocket, was already examining the ground around him. Madden and Derry joined in the search. To Billy’s chagrin, it was the chief inspector who found what they were looking for.
“Isn’t this what they call two-by-four?” Derry was down on his heels brushing away the dead leaves.
Madden picked up the ball of charred cloth. A small square of flannel, unconsumed by the flames, was still visible. He took out his own handkerchief and wrapped it around the burned fragment. Then he returned to the spot where Billy had found the tin and got down on his knees. The other two watched as Madden laid his long body against the low bank in front of him and peered over the rim. They were a dozen yards from the edge of the coppice. Nevertheless, the inspector had a clear line of sight through the trees to the Reynolds’ farmhouse below.
“There . . . that’s it!” Madden growled his satisfaction.
When they went back down the hill Reynolds was nowhere to be seen. As before, his figure emerged suddenly from a hidden hollow in the slope. The dog was trotting at his heels. It stopped and pricked up its ears as they approached. Reynolds waited, hands in pockets, his face expressionless.
Madden wasted no words. “Can you remember what time it was, Mr. Reynolds, when you left the house and when you returned? It matters to me how long you were absent.”
Reynolds blinked. He swallowed. “We left the house, Ben Tompkins and I, just after half past five and came down here looking for strays. We were back soon after half past six. Say twenty to seven at the latest.”
“It was dark by then?”
He nodded.
“You were out of sight of the house all the time?”
“Pretty well. We were further down.” Reynolds turned and pointed away. “There’s a dip in the land, it’s not obvious from here.”
“I know you didn’t see anything,” Madden said. Billy was surprised again by his tone. His manner with Reynolds now was businesslike, impersonal. Yet Reynolds was responding readily to his questions. “But did you hear anything? It’s important.”
“No, I already told the police.” For the first time he seemed eager to help.
“Nothing at all? Think hard.”
Reynolds frowned. “What sort of thing?”
Madden shook his head. “I’m not going to say. I don’t want to put it in your mind.”
Reynolds stared at him. “I know I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “but I remember Ben saying something . . .”
“What was that?” The inspector leaned closer.
“We’d found a ewe caught by her leg in a cleft down by the stream. We were just easing her out when Ben looked up. I remember now . . .” He kept staring at Madden. “He said, ‘Did you hear that? It sounded like a whistle.’”
It was after seven when Madden got back to the Yard. Sinclair was waiting in his office.
“We’re lucky Tom Derry’s in charge at Maidstone. There aren’t many who would have smelt a rat.”
They stood together at the open window and watched as a pleasure-steamer strung with coloured lights moved slowly downriver. “But is it our rat?”
“I think it is, sir. The razor, the dogs, the whistle.”
“And the fact she wasn’t raped?”
“Especially that.”
The sounds of a jazz band drifted up to them through the gathering dusk.
“No evidence of a bayonet this time,” the chief inspector remarked.
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t carrying one. You can’t see the front door of the house from the coppice. He couldn’t have known whether Reynolds was at home or not.”
“So, assuming it was our man, he must have been ready to kill him, too, and he’d have wanted better than a razor for that. The razor’s for the woman.”
“It looks that way,” Madden agreed heavily.
Sinclair turned from the window with a sigh and went to his desk. “I must get home. Mrs. Sinclair is threatening divorce on the grounds of desertion.” He eyed his colleague. “And so should you, John. Get some rest.” The chief inspector viewed Madden’s pale face and sunken eyes with concern. Did the man never sleep?
“There were differences, though.” Madden sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette. “He was in more of a hurry than he was at Melling Lodge. He was in and out of that house in a matter of minutes. There was no sign of him when the gypsy arrived just after six. And there was none of the preparation. He must have poisoned the dogs on Friday night—Reynolds found them on Saturday morning. He killed Mrs. Reynolds the same evening.”
“He took his time at Highfield,” Sinclair agreed. “Perhaps he’s getting a taste for it.” He shuddered at the thought.
“But it wasn’t done on the spur of the moment,” Madden insisted. “He knew the lie of the land. He lay up in the wood waiting for sunset. He must have picked out the coppice on an earlier visit.”
“An earlier visit . . .” Sinclair echoed the words. “But why did he go there in the first place? Or Highfield, come to that. And what was it that caught his eye? What brought him back?”