by Rennie Airth
Before leaving he cast a glance at the darkened windows of the cottage. He hadn’t forgotten the old woman’s strange behaviour. Something was troubling her. He must find out what it was.
He would come early next Saturday. There was much to do.
6
Grim-faced, Sinclair strode along the carpeted corridor with Madden at his elbow. “So Ferris thinks my days are numbered—did you see that piece in Friday’s Express? ‘Is it time for a change?’ I wonder, does he know something we don’t?”
A breakdown in the Underground had delayed the chief inspector’s arrival at the Yard by half an hour. He had paused in his office only long enough to empty the contents of his briefcase on to his desk, secure the cumulative file from the drawer where it resided and signal Madden to accompany him.
“Let’s leave that till later, John,” he said, when the inspector began to tell him about an idea he had. “Let’s get this over with first.”
Glancing at his colleague’s face, Sinclair was pleased to see him looking rested and alert. He allowed himself to wonder whether a visit to Highfield had figured among Madden’s weekend activities.
“‘Informed circles at the Yard,’” he quoted, as he led the way into the anteroom to Bennett’s office. “That’s what Ferris calls his source. Do you think the chief super will have the grace to blush this morning?”
In the event, they had no opportunity to find out. Bennett was alone in his office. The deputy, dressed in funereal black, stood by the window, hands on hips, gazing out at the morning traffic on the river. He turned when they entered.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” He ushered them to their usual chairs at the polished oak table. Their way led past his desk where a copy of Friday’s Daily Express was ostentatiously displayed. “We’re on our own this morning.” Bennett sat down facing them. His brown eyes were expressionless. “Mr. Sampson has another appointment.”
Sinclair opened his file. Without haste he began to leaf through the typewritten pages. His neat, contained figure showed no sign of strain or anxiety.
“As you know, sir, we were hoping these wartime killings in Belgium would provide us with information that would assist us in our current inquiries.” The chief inspector raised flint-coloured eyes from the file and looked squarely at Bennett. “I’m afraid thus far they’ve proved a blind alley.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Bennett shifted slightly in his chair. “None of these men fits the bill, then?”
“Mr. Madden and I have interviewed two of the four survivors of B Company. Neither was our man. The third, Marlow, is in hospital and the fourth, Samuel Patterson, has been traced by the Norwich police. He’s working on a farm near Aylsham. His movements are accounted for.”
“Yet these men—and their comrades who were killed—were the only ones Captain Miller questioned?”
“According to the records, yes.”
“And we know he closed the case.” Bennett frowned. “Then logic suggests he believed one of those killed in battle was the guilty man. That’s been your assumption—am I right, Chief Inspector?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you thought he could have been mistaken? That it might have been one of these four?”
“That possibility was in my mind.” Sinclair nodded. “But now I’ve had second thoughts.”
“Oh?” The deputy sat forward.
“I’ve been struck by the fact that none of these men—none of those who survived—was questioned again after they came out of the line. That doesn’t make sense. I’ve looked at the verbal records of the interrogations carefully. Miller bore down hard on them. It’s plain he thought they were hiding something. Even if he believed the guilty man among them was dead he would have had the others in again. He wouldn’t have let it go at that.”
Bennett’s brow knotted. “Then the murderer wasn’t from B Company after all. Miller must have decided it was someone else.”
“So it would seem,” Sinclair agreed.
“But without that memorandum, we’re not likely to discover who.”
“Correct.”
Bennett sighed. He looked away. “Is there anything else, Chief Inspector?”
“Only this, sir.” Sinclair dipped into the file. Selecting a paper, he pulled it out and held it up before him. “I sent a telegram to the Brussels Sureté last week asking them to check their records for us. I was hoping they might have a copy of Miller’s report. They don’t.” His eye met Bennett’s over the top of the sheet of paper. “In fact, according to their records the case is still open.”
“What?” The deputy sat up straight in astonishment. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“Well, for one thing, the British military authorities never informed the Belgian civilian police that the case was closed.”
The two men looked at each other. Perhaps five seconds elapsed. Then Bennett’s eyes narrowed. Sinclair, who had a high opinion of the deputy’s quickness of mind, saw the realization dawn.
“That damned memorandum! It’s not lost, is it? They just won’t give it to us!”
Sinclair made a slight gesture of dissent. “Not necessarily, sir. It may well be lost. Now.”
“You mean someone deliberately got rid of it. But we don’t know who, or when?”
“That seems likely.”
“The killer himself?”
Sinclair shook his head. “I doubt that. Unless he was an MP, and even then . . .” He slipped the paper back into the file. “I spoke to Colonel Jenkins on Friday and asked him to put us in touch with Miller’s commanding officer during the war. It’s possible he may remember something of the case. Incidentally, Jenkins said they’re still hunting for the memorandum at the War Office depot. I’ve no reason to disbelieve him. There could be a variety of reasons why someone in September 1917 decided it would be better to destroy that piece of paper, particularly if they thought the guilty party was dead. It was a brutal crime and the victims were civilians. No need to point a finger at the armed forces, they might have thought. Let the dead bury the dead.”
Bennett was studying his fingernails. After a few moments he rose and went to the window. He stood with his arms folded and looked out. Sinclair glanced at Madden with raised eyebrows. The deputy returned to the table and sat down.
“Let me sum up, if I may.” He cleared his throat. “There’s no point in my tackling the War Office on this, no way of prising that memorandum out of them?”
“I believe not, sir. If it still exists, if they’re withholding it deliberately, they’ll continue to do so. If not, we’ll only antagonize them.”
Bennett nodded, understanding. His frown returned. “If you only had a name, something to go on . . .” He dropped his eyes. He seemed reluctant to continue. “Then again, it’s quite possible the cases are unconnected. The murders in Belgium, the killings here . . . We can’t be sure.”
“Indeed we can’t, sir.” Sinclair carefully aligned the papers in front of him and slid them back into the folder.
The deputy lifted his gaze. “Perhaps, after all, it’s time to look . . . in a different direction.” His glance conveyed sympathy.
The chief inspector acknowledged the words with a slight nod.
Bennett rose. He turned to Madden. “Would you leave us, Inspector? I want a word in private with Mr. Sinclair.”
Twenty minutes later the chief inspector walked briskly into his office. The bulky cumulative file flew from his hands and landed with a resounding thud on his desktop. As though in response, the nervous chatter of a typewriter in the adjoining room fell silent. Sinclair stood before his desk.
“I rather hoped the chief super’s non-appearance this morning might signal his dispatch to the Tower for immediate execution. But it seems Ferris was right—we’re the ones scheduled for the block.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Madden scowled from behind his desk. “I think they’re making a mistake.”
“Perhaps. What’s certain is Sampson has the ass
istant commissioner’s ear. That’s where he was this morning, by the way, doing some last-minute spadework with Sir George, making sure he doesn’t change his mind.”
“Is that it, then? Are we out?”
“Not quite yet, though I dare say we would be if Parkhurst wasn’t due in Newcastle this afternoon for a regional conference. He won’t be back till Thursday. That’s the appointed day. He’s called a meeting in his office. Bennett and I are invited to attend. You’re excused, John.”
The chief inspector took his pipe from his pocket. He perched on the edge of his desk. “Poor Bennett. He’s in the worst position of all, trying to straddle a barbed-wire fence. He knows we’re on the right track, even though it keeps going cold. But if he continues backing us he’ll find himself exposed. I think he half suspects Sampson’s after his job.”
“Surely not!” Madden was incredulous.
“Oh, he won’t get it.” Sinclair chuckled. “But our chief super’s fantasies know no bounds. Never mind that. You were saying earlier you had an idea. Now would be a good time to hear it.”
The inspector took a moment to collect his thoughts. “It all depends on how Miller went about his business,” he began.
“I don’t follow you.”
“He wouldn’t have worked alone. He would have had a redcap NCO along with him to take notes and type up his reports. But what we don’t know is whether he simply drew a clerk at random from whatever pool was available, in which case it wouldn’t be much help to us, or whether he worked with the same man regularly.”
“You mean if they were a team?” Sinclair frowned.
Madden nodded. “If he used the same clerk, then that would be the man who took down the interrogations of B Company and typed up the records. He’d be familiar with the case. They might even have discussed it.”
“You’re suggesting this mythical clerk might have known what was in Miller’s mind. Who he thought the guilty man was.” The chief inspector looked sceptical.
“More than that. He’d most likely have typed up that memorandum. And it wouldn’t have been a routine job for him. He’d remember what was in it.”
Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. “So what is it we need to know? The name of Miller’s special clerk, if he had one. I’m not sure there’s time. Thursday’s our deadline.”
“I know, but I’ve thought of a short cut,” Madden said. “Miller was travelling in a staff car when he was killed. It’s likely he was on an investigation, which means he had a clerk with him, probably the driver. He could be our man.”
“Now you’re telling me he’s dead!”
“He might be.” Madden was unfazed. “But we don’t know that.”
“Nor do we,” Sinclair agreed after a moment. He gave an approving nod. “You’re right, John, it’s worth a try. I’ll pester the War Office again. I’m in the mood to twist someone’s tail.”
7
When she came to a convenient tree-stump, Harriet Merrick paused and sat down, fanning her face with the wide straw hat she had put on to please Annie McConnell. (Mrs. Merrick had pleaded in vain that the mild October sunshine was hardly likely to cause her sunstroke!) She was finding the gentle slope to the top of Shooter’s Hill heavy going today. A slight pain in her chest, like a bolt tightening, had persuaded her to stop and rest for a while. She waited now for the sensation to pass.
She was reluctant to admit it, but she’d not been feeling herself these past few days. A nagging headache that had started on the night of her sixty-first birthday had continued to plague her since. At her son’s suggestion they had taken advantage of the unusually warm autumn weather to dine outside that night, and Mrs. Merrick thought at first she might have caught a chill. But the cold she feared did not develop. Instead, her head had continued to ache, keeping her awake at night and allowing her thoughts to wander restlessly in a state of increasing anxiety.
The trouble had started with Tigger’s death. Poisoned, Hopley reckoned. He blamed the farmers hereabouts who, he said, were laying down strychnine and other poisons against the foxes, which took a heavy toll on their hen coops. The gardener had come across the poor animal dragging itself on its stomach through the shrubbery in the early morning. Tigger had been missing all night, though Annie had called to him repeatedly before she went to bed.
The children’s attention had been distracted while the dog was carried to the potting shed where presently he died. After lunch their father had told them what had happened. They had wept, but then, as children did, dried their tears and taken a lively interest in the funeral arrangements, which Hopley was charged with. That evening they had stood hand in hand with their parents and with Annie while prayers were said and the remains of the spaniel laid to rest in a grave dug behind the croquet lawn.
Their father had assured them he wouldn’t let the matter rest there and had already informed the village bobby, Constable Proudfoot, who intended to look into it. The next day Harriet Merrick took her grandchildren aside and promised to buy them a new puppy on their return from holiday in Cornwall.
But, like spreading ripples in a pond, the brutal disturbance to domestic life at Croft Manor continued to claim its victims. On Tuesday night little Robert had become tearful again, and it was discovered he was running a temperature. He had been packed off to bed immediately by his mother while the unspoken thought hung in the air: if it turned out to be anything serious the whole family would have to delay their departure for Penzance at the end of the week.
This in turn seemed to upset Mrs. Merrick, as she readily admitted to Annie. “I don’t want them hanging on. I want them to go.”
“Will you listen to yourself?” Annie had laughed at her. “Your own flesh and blood, and you can’t wait to see the back of them.”
“I was looking forward to us being here alone. Just you and I, Annie.”
“Now don’t you worry, Miss Hattie.” Annie addressed her as Mrs. Merrick in front of others, but always as Miss Hattie when they were alone, just as she had for the past forty years and more. “We’ll have plenty of time on our own, you’ll see. They’ll be off for three weeks.”
“Not if they don’t go,” Mrs. Merrick had pointed out with unanswerable logic, but Annie just shook her head at her.
“What a great silly you are! Always getting yourself worked up for no reason.”
Annie was right—there was no reason to be upset. But this, paradoxically, seemed to distress her all the more, and the night before she had hardly closed her eyes for worrying.
“Oh, Annie, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Why do I want them away from here?” They were walking in the garden together after breakfast. “I’m starting to feel the way I did when Tom died. Do you remember? I was so afraid then, even before I knew.”
Annie had drawn her into a recess in the yew alley and put her arms around her.
“There, my dear,” she murmured. “Aren’t you forgetting it’s four years since the poor dear boy was killed?”
“How could I forget?”
“Almost to the day . . .”
“Oh! Do you think it’s that?” Mrs. Merrick drew back. Tom had been killed in the second week of October. The anniversary was near. “Oh, I do hope so.” She caught her breath at her own words, wondering how she could have said such a thing.
But it was true, nonetheless, and the thought had comforted her for the rest of the day.
She felt better still when she went up to the nursery later with Annie and they found the invalid’s temperature had come down. He declared himself fit enough for a game of Happy Families, and although his nanny, Enid Bradshaw, opposed the idea she was overruled by Annie whose writ ran in all departments of the household.
Mrs. Merrick smiled as Robert’s seven-year-old sister fussed over him, fluffing up his pillows and settling him comfortably in his bed. She giggled with them both when Annie fixed the patient with a glittering eye. “Now tell me the truth, Master Robert—and may a lie never stain your lips—are you
by any chance holding Miss Bun, the Baker’s Daughter?”
The game continued until the arrival of Dr. Fellows, who pronounced Robert to be on the mend after only the briefest of examinations. “A case of nerves, I think. Losing the dog must have upset him more than we realized. Poor beast, do you know yet how it happened?”
It was also Mrs. Merrick’s day for her weekly check-up and Dr. Fellows apologized for having come an hour later than usual. “I was just leaving the surgery when they brought in Emmett Hogg with a broken ankle. It seems he had to hobble and crawl for half a mile before he found help. Fell into a pit in the woods, he says.” Dr. Fellows lifted an eloquent eyebrow. “Not many men hereabouts manage to be dead drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, but Hogg makes quite a habit of it. Now what have you been up to, madam?” The doctor lowered his jowly visage over the gauge of his blood pressure apparatus. He pumped air into the cuff around Mrs. Merrick’s arm. He frowned. “Been overdoing it again, have we?”
Mrs. Merrick, who liked neither being addressed as “madam,” nor being referred to in the first person plural, acknowledged that she had been for a walk earlier that day. She made no mention of Shooter’s Hill.
“Take it easy for the next few days,” Dr. Fellows advised her. “We’d better make that a week. No more walks outside the garden until I see you again.”
Mrs. Merrick’s thoughts were elsewhere. Something he had said had jogged her memory.
“Fell into a pit, you say?”
“That’s Hogg’s story.” Dr. Fellows snapped his bag shut. “I hae me coots.”
Harriet Merrick winced. “If it happened in Ashdown Forest he must report it,” she said firmly. “The police want to know about any fresh digging there. My son was telling me only the other day.”
William was a Justice of the Peace.