Dead of Winter

4

‘She was a dear girl, very likeable. But so hard to get to know. Still grieving, I fear.’

Helen Madden mused on her words. Seated on a settee facing the fire that her husband had lit in the drawing-room a short while before, she turned her gaze on the flickering flames.

‘She kept surprising us with her talents. Soon after she came I gave her a piece of parachute silk that had come my way and she made two embroidered blouses from it. They were quite beautiful. She was wearing one of them the day she went up to London, I remember.’

Helen glanced across at Sinclair, who was seated in an armchair on one side of the wide fireplace.

‘And then we only discovered a week ago that she was a pianist. There was a call for volunteers to perform at a concert for the patients at Stratton Hall and Rosa came forward. She played two Chopin nocturnes and you could have heard a pin drop. I asked her afterwards where she had learned and she said her father had taught her. He was the schoolmaster in the village where she grew up. He must have been a remarkable man.’

Again she paused.

‘But these are just odd details. We didn’t really know her. She was so quiet. So withdrawn.’

Sinclair frowned. ‘You said “still grieving”. What did you mean?’

Helen looked at him. ‘Are you aware she was Jewish?’ she asked.

Sinclair nodded.

‘It so happened she was in France when the Germans invaded Poland. Or perhaps it wasn’t by chance. Her father had arranged the trip for her. He sent her to stay with an old university friend of his in Tours; it may be that he saw what was coming and wanted her out of the country. In any event she never heard from her parents again, nor her two younger brothers, though of course she kept hoping. For as long as she could. Until the truth came out.’

Helen regarded the chief inspector for a moment, then turned her gaze to the fire, where the heaped logs flamed and cackled, sending sparks flying up the chimney. Sinclair, too, remained silent. Two years had passed since the Foreign Secretary had risen in the House of Commons to confirm the reports that had been circulating for some time of the wholesale massacre of Jews in occupied Europe. He recalled a phrase from the joint declaration issued by the Allies, which had named Poland ‘the principal slaughterhouse’.

‘We only talked once, properly, I mean.’ Helen put a hand to her brow. ‘But I could see how much the thought of her family, and of what must have happened to them, had affected her.’

Madden stirred in his chair. He was sitting across the fireplace from the chief inspector, his face half-hidden by the deepening shadows in the room.

‘There’s not much more we can tell you, Angus,’ he said. ‘The last time I saw Rosa was at the farm on Thursday, just before Helen arrived to drive her to the station. She was weighed down with her bag and a basket of food I’d given her to take up to her aunt, and she kept trying to thank me for them. She wasn’t a high-spirited girl. Reflective, rather, as Helen says. But she seemed cheerful enough that day; she was looking forward to seeing her aunt.’ He paused for a moment, then spoke again: ‘Tell us a little more about the murder itself. From what you said first, it sounded like a chance crime. Is that still your opinion?’

‘Yes and no. Which is to say, there’s now a question mark hanging over the case.’ The chief inspector grimaced. ‘It all revolves around the injury she suffered, the manner in which she was killed. But it’s a bit like trying to make bricks without straw. There just isn’t enough evidence to be certain, one way or the other. But I’ll lay it all out for you and you can tell me what you think. What you both think,’ he added, with a glance at Helen. ‘Just give me a moment to collect my thoughts.’

Though inured like all by now to the rigours of wartime travel, to the misery of unheated carriages, overcrowded compartments and the mingled smell of bodily odours and stale tobacco, he was still recovering from his trip down from London that afternoon when for two hours he had sat wedged in a window seat, gazing out at a countryside that offered little relief to eyes weary of the sight of dust and rubble, of the never-ending vista of ruined streets and bombed-out houses which the capital presented. Stripped to the bone by one of the coldest winters in recent memory, the fields and hedgerows through which they crawled had a lifeless air, while the sky above, grey as metal, had seemed to press on the barren earth. Scanning the paper he had bought at Waterloo, four pages of rationed newsprint filled mostly with war dispatches, his eye had lit on a single paragraph reporting the discovery of the body of a young Polish woman in Bloomsbury whose death was being treated by the police as suspicious. An account of the crime that Billy Styles had compiled and handed to him the day before was in his overnight case on the luggage rack above. The chief inspector had reviewed its contents a number of times without being able to come to any conclusion, an admission he had made to Madden when they had spoken on the telephone the previous evening.

‘It’s not exactly a puzzle, John,’ Sinclair had told his old partner. ‘To quote Styles, it’s more of a conundrum. I’ll tell you more when I come down tomorrow. I’m hoping you can help me with it.’

A frequent guest, the chief inspector’s visit had been arranged some time before, and he’d been looking forward not so much to the break from his duties it offered, which would be brief, but to the prospect of spending a few hours with friends who over the years had become dearer to him than any. The knowledge that his stay would now be overshadowed by a brutal crime, one to which they were connected, if only by circumstance, had darkened his mood, and it was not until his train was drawing into Highfield station and he glimpsed the familiar figure of his hostess waiting for him on the platform that his spirits had begun to recover.

‘Dear Angus …’

The disagreeable image he retained of the past two hours had evaporated with the kiss of greeting Helen had given him. Still slender, seemingly ageless, and with the movements and gestures of a woman on happy sensuous terms with her life, she had the gift of lending grace to any occasion, even one as commonplace as this — or so the chief inspector had always thought — and the whiff of jasmine he caught as her cheek touched his brought with it the memory of happier days in the past.

‘I’ve so many questions to ask you. But it’ll be better if we wait. I know it’s John you want to talk to about this.’

‘Not only him. I want your thoughts, too.’

‘Why, Angus, I’m flattered.’ Her teasing smile had lightened the moment between them. ‘I’m not used to being included in your old policemen’s confidences.’

Though quite baseless, the assertion, as intended, had brought a flush to Sinclair’s cheeks. John Madden’s decision to quit the force, made twenty years before, had come as a keen disappointment to him, and for a while at least he had found it difficult to overlook the role his colleague’s wife had played in bringing this about. Her remark now was an affectionate reminder of a time when they had not always seen eye to eye: his reaction to it a tacit acknowledgement of the power she continued to wield over him. A beauty in her day, and to Sinclair’s eyes still a woman of extraordinary appeal, she had always had the capacity to disturb his equanimity; to unsettle his sense of himself. It was a measure of their friendship and of the deep admiration he had for her that far from resenting this he took it as a sign that age and an increasing tendency towards crustiness had not yet reduced him to the status of old curmudgeon.

The train of recollection set off by her words had continued to occupy the chief inspector’s thoughts during the drive home. It had been a crime as bloody as any in the history of the Yard that had first brought him to Highfield, along with Madden, then an inspector, and his memory inevitably returned to that day as they drove past the high brick wall that hid from view the house where the outrage had occurred. Called Melling Lodge, it had lived under a curse ever since, or so it seemed to Sinclair. Though leased periodically to tenants, and used briefly to house evacuees at the start of the Blitz, it had more often stood empty, and the chief could seldom pass by the wrought-iron gates and the glimpsed garden beyond without a shudder. Today, however, the tremor he felt had more to do with the killing that had taken place in Bloomsbury two nights since and his concern for the effect it might have on the small community of which his friends were a part.

The early darkness of winter was drawing in by the time Helen turned into the long driveway lined with lime trees, bare of leaves now, but familiar to the chief inspector in all seasons, and drew up before the spacious, half-timbered house where she and Madden had lived since their marriage and which had belonged to her father; and his father before him. No lights were showing in the hall, but when they went inside they found Madden in the drawing-room with the curtains already pulled, kneeling on the hearth adding logs to the fire.

‘We’ve had one burning in your room all day, Angus.’ He had risen with a smile to greet their guest and shake his hand. ‘Be sure and keep it going or you’ll freeze.’

As he shed his coat and went closer to the blaze to warm his hands, Sinclair had cast a covert glance at his old friend, noting with envy his erect bearing and evident vigour. Unlike his wife’s clear face, Madden’s weathered features bore ample testimony to his age — he was past fifty — and to his past, as well, most notably in the shape of a jagged scar on his brow near the hairline that served as a reminder to those who knew his history of his time in the trenches.

Tall, and striking as much for his appearance as for his air of quiet authority, he was of all the colleagues the chief inspector had known during his long career at the Yard the most memorable.

And the one he had valued the most.

‘As I say, there’s no mystery about how she was killed, not according to the pathologist. Her neck was broken from behind. To be precise, whoever attacked her caught her in a headlock and snapped her spinal cord. She never had a chance to fight back. But that’s part of the problem.’

Refreshed by a sip of the whisky his hosts had offered him, a precious wartime commodity, Sinclair was ready to go on.

‘If the killer had an ulterior motive — rape, for example — it seems highly unlikely he would have seized hold of her that way. It’s true he might have tried to silence her, even render her semi-conscious, but not like that, surely. It’s far too dangerous.’

‘I agree.’ Helen interrupted him in a quiet voice. The crackling of the fire had died down in the last few minutes and as the flames diminished, the room, lit by a single table lamp, had grown darker. ‘That’s why boys are taught not to scrag each other when they fight. If he’d wanted to control her he’d more likely have squeezed her throat.’

‘Precisely.’ The chief inspector took another sip from his glass. ‘And that was the pathologist’s first guess. He examined the body by torchlight at the scene and guessed she’d been strangled. But there’s no doubt now as to what happened. It seems the murder was deliberate.’

Madden grunted, but when Sinclair glanced at him, inviting him to speak, he shook his head.

‘No, go on, Angus.’

Famous in his time at the Yard for his silences, for his practice, as Sinclair had once declared, in exasperation, many years before, of staying mum while others made fools of themselves, Madden’s reversion to old habits left the chief inspector with no option but to continue:

‘So with that in mind, we’re faced with the question of motive. Why did he kill her? One theory is that he meant to rob her — her belongings, what she was carrying, were strewn all about — but of what? Not money, surely. But Styles found a number of charred matchsticks on and around the body indicating he’d been trying to strike a light in the wind: which in turn suggests he was looking for something. But there’s no way of telling whether he went through her coat pockets, for example, or whether he found her wallet, which ended up under some corrugated iron and could either have fallen there by chance or been tossed away by the killer after he’d searched it.’

‘Was there anything in it?’ Madden spoke at last. ‘Anything of value, I mean?’

Sinclair shook his head. ‘Quite the reverse. It contained her identity card and a small amount of money. Nothing more. So it’s possible he could have removed something from it. But these are all rational questions, and they may be the wrong ones to ask. It’s possible we’re dealing with a disturbed individual, someone who killed the girl for no reason at all, then set about trying to strike a light in order to examine his handiwork. But it’s worth pointing out that lunatics of that sort usually have a weapon of some kind, often a knife, and they seldom attack with their bare hands. At least not in my experience.’

Sinclair sat back heavily in his chair. He’d already had a long day.

‘You asked me earlier, John, if I still thought it was a crime of chance, and the answer is, yes, I do, on balance. But only on balance. We can’t get away from the fact that the act itself was deliberate and that for all we know there may have been a motive behind it. A rational motive. We have to consider the possibility that she was killed by someone she knew.’

‘Oh, no! Surely not.’ The exclamation came from Helen. She stared in disbelief at the chief inspector. ‘You mean a man, don’t you? Someone she was involved with?’

‘As I say, it’s something we have to consider, and it’s where I’m hoping you and John can help me. Was there anyone here she’d become friendly with? Have you heard any gossip? I might add that her aunt, a Mrs Laski, scoffs at the notion. But she hadn’t seen her niece for nearly two months and wouldn’t necessarily have known of any new development in her life.’

‘No, but she knew Rosa, and that was enough.’ Helen’s response was immediate. ‘You never met her, Angus, but if you had you’d understand. It wasn’t just that she kept to herself. She simply had no interest in … that side of life. In men. It was as though she had taken a vow: as if she was still in mourning. John …?’ She turned to her husband, and Madden nodded in confirmation.

‘We can ask around tomorrow, if you like, Angus, but you’ll find it’s a blind alley. Anyway, it’s hard to see some man following her up to London from here with the express purpose of killing her.’

‘I agree. But I had to put it to you.’

The sigh that came from the chief inspector’s lips then was partly one of relief. He knew better than most the distress a murder inquiry brought to any community, and his fear that the trail might lead back to Highfield had prompted him to ring the station commander at Bow Street that morning to inform him that he was going down to the village himself and would assess the need, if any, of extending the investigation outside the capital. Reassured now, he felt able to relax, and to let the wave of tiredness he’d been conscious of for some time wash over him. His stifled yawn caught Helen’s eye.

‘You must be exhausted, Angus. And though you haven’t mentioned it, I think your toe is bothering you. Why not go up to your room and have a rest before dinner.’ She rose from the settee. ‘I have to go out myself. We’ve an epidemic of whooping cough in the village, and there are some children I must look in on.’

Mildly put out to discover he’d failed to hide his discomfort from his hostess’s all-seeing eye, the chief inspector waited until she had left the room. Then he rounded on Madden.

‘You’ve been mighty quiet,’ he accused his old colleague. ‘Enough of that. Come on, before I go up, tell me what you think. I’ve given you the facts. What do you make of them?’

Emerging from the depths of his armchair, Madden leaned forward. His expression hadn’t changed and the chief inspector was unable to gauge his reaction from his eyes, which were dark and deep-set.

‘Not much, I’m afraid. Nothing that hasn’t occurred to you already. But there is one thing. I’m still not clear in my mind what Rosa’s movements were that night. How she came to encounter this man. Could you go through them again for me?’

‘Willingly.’ The chief inspector put down his glass. ‘As well as I can, that is. We still don’t know her exact route after she reached Waterloo, though it seems likely she came north to Tottenham Court Road by the Underground and then walked from there. Posters with her photograph are being put up along that route. We’re hoping someone will remember seeing her. Once she got to Bloomsbury, however, the situation becomes much clearer. I think I told you about the air-raid warden she bumped into. After they’d exchanged a few words, the girl continued down Little Russell Street while the warden went the other way, up Museum Street towards the British Museum. It seems she was killed within seconds of the two of them separating. And no more than twenty paces from where they’d been standing. So it looks as though she met her murderer coming down Little Russell Street. He must have been walking in the opposite direction.’

‘Or following her, surely?’

Madden’s intervention brought the chief inspector up short.

‘Well, yes … I suppose so … technically.’ Sinclair frowned. ‘But there’s no indication of that. They stood there talking for a minute or two and according to the warden there was no one else about.’

Madden sat pondering.

‘Yet you say they bumped into each other in the darkness?’ he went on after a moment. ‘Did she seem to be hurrying? Was she nervous, perhaps?’

‘Because she thought someone was following her? John, I’ve just said there was no suggestion of that.’ The chief inspector’s puzzlement showed on his face. ‘It wasn’t only that the warden didn’t see anyone. He didn’t hear any footsteps either. The Bow Street detectives asked him. Mind you, that could be explained by the fact there was a strong wind blowing.’

‘Or because the killer heard him speaking to Rosa and stopped.’

‘Around the corner, you mean? In Museum Street? Out of sight?’

Sinclair stared at him, and as he watched, Madden got to his feet. The fire had burned down to a bank of smouldering embers and he stirred it, adding fresh logs to revive the blaze.

‘Yes, but if he was following her with the intention of killing her, doesn’t that suggest it was someone she knew?’

Sinclair resumed speaking, but this time his companion made no reply.

‘And didn’t we agree that the odds were against that?’

‘True … But there’s another possibility.’

Madden put down the poker and straightened, his tall figure casting a long shadow across the hearth. He looked down at the chief inspector.

‘What if he knew her?’ he said.

‘John and I have decided. We’re going up to London for the funeral. Do you know when it will be, Angus? Have the police released Rosa’s body yet?’

Helen Madden sat back on her heels. She brushed a strand of fair hair from her eyes and regarded Sinclair, who was seated on a tombstone. Seeking to fill in time before the chief inspector’s train departed, they had stopped at the churchyard, where Helen had a task to perform.

‘I’m not certain,’ Sinclair said. ‘But I can find out for you. In any case, it won’t be long. There’s no reason for it to be held back. The pathologist has done his work.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘If you let me know what train you’re catching I’ll send your friend Billy Styles with a police car to Waterloo. The funeral will be at Golders Green, I expect. He can run you up there and collect Mrs Laski on the way. I dare say she’d be grateful for a lift.’

‘That would be kind, Angus.’ She smiled her thanks. ‘And it means we can take Rosa’s things with us and return them to her aunt. I know you looked through them today, but will the police in London still want to see them?’

The chief inspector considered the question. He had been watching while his hostess busied herself attending to her family’s plot in the moss-walled cemetery, sweeping it free of dead leaves and branches and trimming the uncut grass with a pair of garden shears. The chore was a necessary one, Helen had explained. Highfield had been without a sexton since the death of the last incumbent the previous summer, and it was unlikely the post would be filled until the war was over. Buried side by side in the square plot were her parents and grandparents. But not her two brothers. Both casualties of the First World War, their bodies lay in cemeteries across the Channel, in what had been, until recently, enemy-held territory; one in France, the other in Belgium. The spot where they might have been interred was occupied by a relatively new gravestone, little weathered as yet, and inscribed simply with the name ‘Topper’ and beneath it the words ‘Mourned by his many friends’. It marked the final resting place of an old tramp whose true name no one had ever discovered but who had been deeply attached to Helen and her husband and cared for by them in his last years.

‘I’ll have a word with the detective handling the case,’ Sinclair replied, after an interval. He’d been remembering the old vagrant, and Helen’s determination in particular that he should not end his days in solitude, abandoned by some path or hedgerow. ‘But I don’t believe so. There’s a diary among her stuff, but it’s in Polish, and the best thing would be for Mrs Laski to look through it and see if it contains anything unusual.’

The book in question, leather-bound and inscribed with its owner’s name, had been among the effects which the chief inspector had examined earlier at Madden’s farm. They had gone there in the late morning, and May Burrows, the manager’s wife, had shown him up to the room where Rosa Nowak had slept. In her thirties now, May had been little more than a child herself when Sinclair had first come to Highfield. With her that morning had been her daughter, Belle, home on a weekend pass from an ATS barracks in Southampton, and with a dimpled face and a head of dark curls that had reminded the chief inspector of her mother twenty years before.

‘Such an easy girl,’ May had told him when she took him upstairs. ‘Good-hearted, too. No trouble, ever. She’d do anything she was asked, and always with a smile. So different from the others we had before her.’

This last had been said with a knowing look and a shake of the head, and referred beyond doubt to at least two of the three land girls Madden had employed earlier in the war, both of whom had contrived to become pregnant during their time at Highfield. Of them, and their paramours, two signallers from a temporary training camp set up near the village, Helen had remarked that it was worse than trying to keep foxes out of a henhouse. The third, a wan creature from the London suburb of Ealing, had given up her job as a secretary to join the Land Army, seduced perhaps by the vision displayed by a poster put up early in the war in which a smiling girl stood beckoning, a sheaf of golden corn beneath her arm. ‘You are needed in the fields,’ the poster proclaimed, but made no mention of the work involved; of the grinding physical effort farm labour demanded, the backbreaking toil from dawn till dusk. The young woman in question had lasted less than two months before wilting under the strain and being shipped back to London. Thereafter, Madden had managed with the labour he had until the demands of the dairy, which fell more and more on May, had obliged him to look for outside help once more.

May’s evident fondness for Rosa had been echoed later by her husband, George, when Madden and Sinclair found him in the tack room off the stable yard.

‘She never said much, not even to us, but she had a sweet nature,’ Burrows told them. He’d been busy repairing a broken harness: winter was a time for make and mend on the farm. ‘Just ask our Tommy. She used to help him with his homework, though it wasn’t part of her job. But she liked kids, you could tell. She was going to be a teacher one day, she said. Tom was in tears when he heard what had happened to her.’

Though not expected to appear that day — it was Sunday — the two farmhands Madden employed, a pair of middle-aged brothers named Thorp, had walked over from the cottage they shared a mile away to ask whether the grim news they had heard from other sources was true. And each, it turned out, had his own special memory of the young girl and the brief time she had spent among them.

‘She were a worker, that one,’ Fred Thorp, the older of the two, wistfully recalled when they came upon the two brothers drinking tea with May and her daughter in the farmhouse kitchen. ‘You never had to go looking for her. After she’d finished with the cows she’d be there asking what she could do next. Once I caught her muck-knocking …’ He chuckled. ‘It were pouring rain and we’d all given up for the day, but then I spotted her down there — ’he gestured in the direction of the fields — ‘still at it, soaked to the skin. So I told her, “Now you stop that”, and I made her come in with me. Took her by the hand, I did, thought I might have to drag her, she was that set on staying.’

His younger brother Seth had a more personal souvenir which he proudly showed to Madden and his guest.

‘She made this shirt for me, Rosa did.’ He’d patted the well-ironed garment he was wearing under his patched tweed jacket. ‘And another like it from a piece of material I had off our cousin Mabel when she went to Australia before the war. I’d never known what to do with it till Rosa said to leave it with her. It’s a crying shame, sir. I hope you catch that bastard soon. Hanging’s too good for him.’

The subject of Rosa’s skill as a seamstress had come up again when the chief inspector examined the girl’s belongings in what had been her bedroom. With Madden at his elbow, Sinclair had gone quickly through her clothes, few in number, but including one of the two embroidered silk blouses Helen had told him about and which he remarked on to his host.

‘Oh, she could do wonders with a needle and thread.’ Overhearing his remark, May commented from the doorway where she was waiting for them to complete their business. ‘There was also that coat she made for herself, Mr Madden, do you remember? She was wearing it the day she went to London.’

Helen, too, had recalled the garment when she arrived at the farm later to collect the chief inspector, having spent the morning visiting patients in the area who for one reason or another were unable to get to her surgery during the week.

‘It was an old coat of Rob’s which he’d discarded,’ she told him, referring to their son, who was a naval lieutenant. ‘I was amazed when I took her to the station that day. She’d made a hood from some of the material left over after she’d shortened it. And not only that, she’d changed the whole cut. I hardly recognized it.’

With his precious weekend all but over, Sinclair had taken his leave then of Madden, who was committed to driving the tractor he’d been using for the past fortnight over to a neighbouring farm which had an urgent need for it.

‘We’re all sharing machinery now,’ he’d remarked. ‘And everyone’s behind with the autumn ploughing as a result. But ours is done, thank God. We’ll have a chance to catch our breath. Winter’s usually a quiet time.’

The chief inspector had long ceased to wonder at the ease with which his old partner had been able to turn his back on the profession where he had found such distinction and settle into the life of a farmer. A countryman by birth, it had needed only the accident of his meeting with Helen and their subsequent decision to marry to provide the impulse necessary to return to his roots. But that morning Sinclair had sensed a change in the other man, an uncharacteristic tension in his manner, which had shown itself during a stroll they had taken in the garden together after breakfast.

Professing a wish to examine what damage had been done by the recent wind to his fruit trees, Madden had led the way down the long lawn in front of the house to the orchard that bordered a stream at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the brook lay a wooded ridge called Upton Hanger, which in summer glowed deep green but whose great oaks and beeches, stripped of their leaves, stood stark as skeletons in the leaden morning light.

‘She worked mainly with the cows, you know, Angus.’ Madden had spoken without preamble, taking the chief inspector by surprise. His attention had seemed to be fixed on the broken branch of a plum tree which he’d picked up from the ground and was examining. ‘She had a gift for it. I’d hear her talking to them while she was milking. In Polish, I imagine. She called them by their names. I think she was happy here. Or less unhappy. I’ll have to find someone local to take her place. May needs help in the dairy, but I can’t face asking for another land girl. Not till this is settled.’

He had looked at Sinclair then.

‘You will keep me informed, won’t you, Angus?’

Though spoken in a quiet tone, the demand had brooked no refusal, and the chief inspector had been swift to reassure his friend. But he’d been struck as much by the depth of feeling evident in Madden’s voice as by the look in his eye, which had seemed to reflect a stronger emotion; one, though, he was not used to seeing there: a cold, controlled anger.

‘John’s furious, though he tries not to show it,’ Helen told him later that day when they were driving to the station. ‘He never thought of Rosa as an employee. He saw the sadness in her from the first. The grieving. To him she was someone who needed help and comfort, as much a casualty of war as any wounded soldier. And now she’s gone and there’s nothing he can do about it.’

They had continued in silence for a few moments. Then she had spoken again:

‘And something else. It’s reawakened an old pain in him. Not that he’s said so in so many words, but I can tell. The daughter he lost … you remember that?’

She was referring to an episode in Madden’s life before he’d met her, an earlier marriage, which had ended in tragedy. A young detective at the time, he and his wife had had a daughter, but soon after her birth, the two of them had contracted influenza and died. Madden had witnessed the last hours of his child as she struggled for life, and the experience had left a wound in him which only the love he’d found later with Helen and the life they had made together had healed. Or so the chief inspector had always believed.

‘He dreamed of her the other night for the first time in years and he wondered why. I think it’s because of what happened to poor Rosa. She was in his care, you see. But he couldn’t protect her.’

Her words had remained in Sinclair’s mind until they reached the station, where, having elected to return to London on an earlier train than he might have rather than risk being delayed until all hours by the uncertainties of the rail schedule, he had discovered with little surprise that the early train was no longer early; that at the very least it would be an hour late. Preferring the company of his hostess to the cramped squalor of the waiting room, he had returned with her to the churchyard where he sat now, with his coat buttoned up over a thick scarf and his hat pulled down low against the persistent cold, watching while she attended to her self-imposed task.

‘Poor Angus. It’s been a miserable weekend for you. We haven’t had a chance to talk about other things. For instance, I wanted to hear about your lunch with Lucy. Did you really invite her to the Savoy? That sounds far too grand for her.’

Busy raking the scattered leaves into a heap, Helen glanced up, smiling.

‘I was the one who felt privileged.’ The chief inspector grinned in response. Childless himself — and a widower — he had observed the Maddens’ golden-haired daughter with fascination over the years, watching her grow from a strong-willed child, and via a stormy adolescence, into a beauty cast in the image of her mother. ‘Not to say envied. She turned every man’s head in the room.’

‘If you think to please me by saying that you’re making a grave mistake.’ Helen’s attempt at severity, contrived as it was, had little effect on her auditor. Sinclair’s grin merely widened. ‘Turning men’s heads seems to be my daughter’s sole ambition. And her only achievement to date. And no matter what she claims, I can’t believe she’s contributing to the war effort.’

On leaving school, and despite the opposition of her mother, who had wanted her to try for university, Lucy Madden had enlisted in the WRNS, a move which had enabled her not only to slip the parental leash, but to obtain a posting in London, much to the disapproval of Helen, who thought her daughter too young at eighteen for such an adventure.

‘How she’s managed to get herself assigned to the Admiralty is beyond me. She can’t be remotely qualified for any sort of position there.’

It had been on the tip of the chief inspector’s tongue when Helen had said this to him some months ago to point out that Lucy’s qualifications were all too obvious and that men of rank, none of them spring chickens any longer, liked nothing better than to have youth and beauty in close proximity, the better to burnish the image they had of themselves.

‘And any idea of Aunt Maud being a suitable chaperone is quite unrealistic. Poor dear, I doubt she knows what time of day it is, never mind what hour Lucy gets in at night. She may have survived the Blitz, but whether she can cope with the presence of my daughter under her roof remains to be seen.’

The lady in question, a spinster now in her nineties, lived in St John’s Wood, and Lucy had lodged with her since moving to London.

‘Still, at least I’ll get a chance to talk to her when we go up,’ Helen said, returning to her job of raking the leaves. ‘And Lucy, too, if I’m lucky, though she’ll probably claim that some crisis on the high seas requires her to be at her desk. If she has such a thing. It’s a ploy she’s discovered to avoid being interrogated, one she knows I can’t get round. At least I used to know the mischief she was getting up to. Now I haven’t the least idea, and I don’t know which is worse.’

Unable to keep a straight face any longer, she began to laugh. But the change of mood was fleeting, and after a few moments her expression grew serious again.

‘I didn’t mention it earlier, Angus, but I rang Mrs Laski yesterday evening to tell her how shocked we were. I’ll talk to her again when I see her at the funeral. I want her to know at least that we cared for Rosa. That we feel the loss of her.’

Unhappy with her thoughts, she stirred the mound of dead leaves with her rake.

‘It’s so wrong,’ she burst out.

‘Wrong?’

‘Unfair, I mean. Undeserved. Without cause or reason. We’ve been living for years with death all around us. Violent death. First the Blitz and now these dreadful flying bombs. The knowledge that anyone might be killed at any moment. People we love … our children.’

Biting her lip, she looked away, and the chief inspector understood what it was she dared not say. A year had passed since the Maddens’ son Robert had been posted to a destroyer assigned to the perilous Murmansk convoys. Out of touch for weeks on end, his long absences — and the silence that inevitably accompanied them — were a source of anguished concern to his parents.

‘But this is different, somehow. It’s got no connection to anything, not even the war. All poor Rosa did was go up to London to see her aunt. Don’t you see — it makes a mockery of death?’

She turned and found the chief inspector’s sympathetic gaze on her.

‘It’s meaningless. That’s what I’m saying. All those others, her family, her people. Dead, all of them. And now her own life lost for nothing.’