River of Darkness

12

It was not until later that Billy heard a full account of how the village mechanic had come to be at Croft Manor. Hollingsworth had taken his statement while Sinclair was ringing the Yard and he had told Billy about it while they were sitting on the front steps of the house after midnight, taking a quick smoke break, while the blue uniforms milled about in the darkness of the driveway.

Hobday had returned that evening from Crow borough, where he was visiting a sick relative, to be told by his young son that Mr Merrick was having trouble with the Lagonda again. He'd rung the manor but failed to reach anyone. According to Mrs Gladly, who ran the village exchange, the phone was giving out an engaged signal. The receiver was off the hook, she told Hobday, but there was no one on the line.

He'd eaten a bite of supper and then tried ringing the house again, with the same result, and had been inclined to leave it at that, except soon afterwards one of the maids who lived in the village, Rose Allen, had passed by his home and urged him to go out to the manor. She didn't know whether or not the family had got away that afternoon, but if the car was still not working then Mr Merrick would need help with it that night so as to be able to leave first thing in the morning. Rose didn't know about any trouble with the telephone.

Hobday's own car was locked away in his garage.

He decided to cycle out to the manor. Lights were burning in the house when he arrived, but he got no response by ringing the doorbell and so had walked around the house to the kitchen door which he knew would be unlocked, and gone inside.

Pausing only to call out, 'Anyone at home? Anyone there?' he had passed through the kitchen to the main passageway that led to the drawing-room.

The door was open. Hobday looked in.

The first thing he saw was the double doors to the garden smashed in with the glass of both panes lying strewn on the carpet.

The second was the body of Agnes Bertram, the upstairs maid, sprawled on the hearth rug. He spied another body on the sofa by the fireplace, that of the elder Mrs Merrick.

At the far end of the drawing-room the door to the hall stood open and somehow Hobday's shaking legs carried him across to it.

He got no further. One glance through the door was enough. One look at the carnage there in the hall and he fled.

The mechanic's incoherent words had been cut short by the chief inspector, who ordered Madden to Croft Manor at once, taking Proudfoot and Styles with him.

While their car was being whistled up from across the green Billy heard Sinclair issue an order to Drummond.

The Sussex inspector was to ring his headquarters at Tunbridge Wells with an urgent request on the part of Scotland Yard to have all motorcyclists stopped and questioned throughout the night. The order should cover the entire county of Sussex and once that was done it should be extended, by request to other police authorities, to the adjoining counties.

'You must absolutely stress to them the need to act with caution.' Sinclair's consonants took on an added edge. 'The very greatest degree of caution. This man is extremely dangerous. But he must be stopped.' And then, as though speaking to himself, the chief inspector had added, 'God only knows when it happened. I fear we're already too late.'

To Madden, as the inspector was boarding the car, he said, 'I must get hold of the police surgeon. Then the Yard and the chief constable. I'll be with you as soon as I can.'

Inside the car Proudfoot was muttering about 'the children', mumbling to himself, so tired — and now suffering from shock in addition — that he seemed unable to fix his mind on any one thing.

'Whose children?' Madden was with the constable in the back. Billy sat up front with the driver, but twisted around in his seat so that he could listen.

'Mr and Mrs Merrick's… but they're supposed to be off on holiday… meant to leave today… Hobday didn't say… all dead he said… all dead 'The Merricks are the family who live at Croft Manor?' Madden's voice was patient, coaxing.

'That's right… always been Merricks at the manor … There's old Mrs Merrick and her son, that's Mr William, and his wife and their girl and boy… and there's Annie… Annie McConnell… and the maids and the nanny… No, wait!" The constable's brow knotted in pain as he strove to concentrate. T heard all the staff had been given the time off…' He fell silent, nodding. Then he spoke again: 'All dead he said… all dead…'

They were driving down a dark tunnelled lane beneath over-hanging branches. The driver slowed as a pair of iron gates appeared in his headlights. Proudfoot jerked forward in his seat. 'There it is,' he said.

'That's the manor.'

Billy sprang out of the front. One of the gates was standing half open and he drew them both wide, then followed the car down a short driveway, which ended by turning back on itself around a circular flower-bed.

Madden was already at the front door as he joined them.

'Locked.'

Proudfoot led them at a trot around to the side of the house where light fell through an open door on to a bricked yard and on to the wall of a kitchen garden beyond it. Madden halted them at the door. 'Follow me. Don't touch anything. Watch where you step.'

He led them through the lighted kitchen to a door which gave on to a passageway. Billy tried to stay on his heels, but by the time he had stepped out of the kitchen the inspector was already turning into a doorway several paces down the passage. When Billy got there himself he stopped on the threshold.

Madden was bending over a woman's body in front of a fireplace, and Billy was overwhelmed by his earlier memory of the drawing-room at Melling Lodge.

The body of the maid on the floor — the smashed French windows.

Here it was again, like a scene of horror replayed in all its ghastly details.

'Check the body on the couch. See if she's alive.'

The inspector's peremptory tone jerked Billy back to the present.

A sofa stood with its back to him. It wasn't until he went around it that he saw the grey-haired woman who was stretched out there. He fumbled for her wrist.

Blue eyes stared at him unblinking. She wore a silk blouse stained in the centre with a circle of blood the size of a saucer. On the carpet at his feet Billy noticed several potatoes. Potatoes? He could find no pulse in her wrist.

Madden was already moving. He had left the body on the hearth rug and was skirting the area of broken glass, heading for a door at the opposite end of the drawing-room. Billy followed him, but the inspector stopped in the doorway, blocking his view of what lay beyond. He stood there for several seconds, then turned around.

'Constable!' He spoke past Billy's shoulder.

'Sir?'

Billy glanced back and saw Proudfoot standing by the body of the grey-haired woman.

"I want you to check all the rooms downstairs.'

Madden's voice carried a note of command. 'Never mind what's in the hall. Do you mark me?'

Proudfoot stared at him for a moment. Then he nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

'Come along,' Madden said to Billy. He turned and went through the doorway and Billy saw they were entering a spacious hall with a double staircase to the left coming down from the upper floor. As Madden headed that way Billy glanced to his right and saw a wall splattered with blood. Blood lay in pools on the polished stone floor, too, and the carpet had been dragged aside and swept into an untidy heap. There was a body there.

'Hurry up, Constable!' Madden spoke sharply. He was already half-way up the staircase. Billy ran up the steps behind him. When they reached the upper floor the inspector turned to him. 'Check the servants' rooms upstairs. Meet me down here.'

Billy hastened along the passage to a narrow stairway.

He went up to the floor above where he found two maids' rooms and a bathroom, all empty. At the end of the corridor was a nursery decorated with flowered wallpaper containing two beds. A rocking horse stood by the window. Billy gave the room only a glance and then hurried back downstairs.

'Sir, there's no one up there!' His shout echoed down the empty passageway.

'In here, Constable.'

Madden's voice came from near the end of the corridor. Billy found him in a large room furnished with a double bed. Two paintings hung above the headboard, portraits of young children, a girl and a boy. The inspector stood at the foot of the bed, his gaze fixed on them.

'Sir, they got away!' Billy couldn't hide his elation.

'So they did.' The smile on Madden's lips lingered for only a moment, but the young constable savoured it. 'Come on! We must get back.'

They found Proudfoot in the hall below. He was standing some way from the body, his gaze fastened to it.

'There's no one else down here, sir.' He didn't look up as they hurried down the staircase.

'I take it the lady on the couch is old Mrs Merrick?'

Madden's voice was loud in the flagstoned hall.

Proudfoot seemed to start at the sound. He looked up then. 'Yes, sir. It is.'

'And who is that?' The inspector pointed.

The constable moistened his lips. 'That would be Annie McConnell,' he replied. His voice shook. 'She was once Mrs Merrick's maid, I believe, but now… I don't know… they were more like friends Madden regarded him from the bottom of the staircase. "I have a question for you, Constable. How would you describe young Mrs Merrick?'

'Describe…?' Proudfoot tilted on his feet. His glance had begun to glaze over.

'Her appearance?' The inspector walked over to where he was standing. 'Would you call her good looking?'

The constable swallowed. 'Yes, sir. I would call her good-looking.'

Madden said no more.

Billy, moving closer, got his first clear sight of the body on the floor and couldn't suppress a gasp of dismay. Although the long black skirt and ripped blouse indicated the remains were those of a woman, there was no way of telling from her face, which had been torn to pieces as though by a wild animal. The flap of one cheek hung loose and red. There was an eyeball lodged in it. Her nose had been smashed almost flat and beneath the bloody mess her teeth showed through shredded lips.

Despite the wave of nausea that gripped his stomach the young man forced himself to absorb every detail.

He saw a telephone with the receiver off the hook lying on the floor not far from the body. A table and chair had been upturned.

Madden, meanwhile, stood with head bowed studying the scene. When he turned away finally, Billy expected to see that distanced look in his eyes, that 'other world' gaze by which the inspector appeared to separate himself from all around him. But Madden's glance held only pain and sadness. He put his hand on Billy's shoulder.

'Come away, son,' he said.

Shortly after one o'clock the following day Bennett arrived by car from London. The deputy assistant commissioner was surprised to find the leafy lane leading to Croft Manor empty of both press and rubberneckers. The constable on duty at the gates informed him that the chief inspector had had it cleared.

'He's told the reporters to wait for news in Stonehill, sir. And the villagers have been asked not to congregate.'

The day had dawned grey and misty, as though signalling the arrival of autumn. Bennett, black-coated and black-hatted, paused before the front steps to look about him. He was surprised again — this time because he saw no sign of police activity. Sinclair explained that the gardens had already been searched.

'Madden has the men out in the woods now. They're looking for the dugout.'

The chief inspector met Bennett at the door and escorted him to the morning room, which he had made his headquarters. The deputy took in the other man's pale, unshaven cheeks. He reflected that it was the first time he had ever seen Angus Sinclair with a hair out of place.

'You look exhausted, Chief Inspector. Have you had any sleep?'

'A couple of hours here on the couch, thank you, sir.'

'How about Madden?'

Sinclair merely shrugged.

Bennett wasted no time. He was already undoing the straps of his briefcase as they entered the morning room.

'I've something for you. New pictures of Pike.'

Tozer's collaboration with the police artist had resulted in a pair of sketches, which the Yard's photographic department had begun producing in poster form. In one of them, the face was as Tozer remembered it, complete with heavy moustache. In the other, the artist had reproduced the same features stripped of facial hair. Sinclair took copies of each over to the window to examine them in the light.

'He's caught something in the eyes, hasn't he? But I wonder about the mouth — that can only be a guess.'

'We're getting them out to the newspapers today,'

Bennett told him. 'They should be in tomorrow's editions.'

He waited until Sinclair came back from the window and then sat down in an armchair, indicating to the chief inspector to do the same. 'You wouldn't mind having the press off your neck, I dare say.'

Sinclair's look was answer enough.

'That's what I thought. I'll speak to them before I go back. What's more, I'll tell them all information from now on will come out of the Yard, in London.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Now fill me in.' Bennett sat back. "I want to know everything. And so does the commissioner. I have to report to him when I get back. And you'll have to come up to London on Wednesday, I'm afraid. It's a command performance. You and I and Sir George as well. We're all summoned to appear.'

Sinclair sat silent for a few moments, ordering his thoughts. Bennett was used to seeing him with his file in front of him. Now he watched as the chief inspector drew from his mind a summary of the situation.

'We have teams of detectives from London and Tunbridge Wells in place. Some of them are going through the house now, dusting for fingerprints and collecting other evidence. We'll shortly be starting the same process as we followed at Highfield, questioning the villagers as to who or what they might have seen in the past few days and weeks. We'll be showing them these new pictures of Pike along with the earlier one.

'Important items of physical evidence are already in our possession, notably a gas mask.'

'By God!' Bennett sat up. 'Pike's, do you mean?'

'We believe so.' Sinclair spoke in a monotone. 'It was found in the drawing-room this morning under a cabinet. Flung there, perhaps. I'll show it to you.'

He rose and went to a table on which a cardboard box rested. He brought the box over to Bennett and took off the lid.

'You can pick it up, sir. The eyepieces have been tested for prints.'

Bennett held up the khaki canvas hood studded with round glassed eyeholes and a rubber nozzle for breathing.

'Normally the nozzle would be attached to a box respirator,' Sinclair explained. 'Either it was pulled free, or else he doesn't bother with one. And you'll see it's torn behind.' He showed Bennett the ripped canvas. 'There's no doubt one of the victims struggled with him. Annie McConnell. The pathologist found traces of skin under her fingernails when he examined the body this morning. She must have marked him. I pray it was on his face.'

'It was her body you found in the hall?'

'It was. From some bloodstains detected on the carpet in the drawing-room it looks as though he may have bayoneted her there, as he did the other two, but failed to kill her outright. When he came down from upstairs — I'm speculating now — we think he found her trying to use the telephone in the hall.'

Bennett winced. 'Is that why he mutilated her body in that way?'

'Possibly.' Sinclair shrugged. 'But Madden has a different theory. I'll tell you what he believes in a moment. May I continue, sir?'

'Please do.'

'We can't be sure exactly when the attack occurred, except that it must have been after a quarter past five, which was when Mr William Merrick and his family left by car for Chichester. That time's been fixed by the gardener, who was here. Apparently Merrick had had trouble getting the car started and had all but decided to spend the night here — they were going away on holiday — but old Mrs Merrick wanted them out of the house for some reason. She'd been on about it all day.' Sinclair shook his head wearily. "i can't make that out, sir. But thank God they left.'

'Amen!' Bennett murmured.

'We returned ourselves to Stonehill with our prisoner shortly before seven o'clock. Hobday, the mechanic, went out to Croft Manor at about eight. I haven't had the pathologist's report yet on time of death so again I can only speculate. We know Pike attacked Melling Lodge and the farm at Bentham around sundown. I'm assuming he broke in here soon after dark and was gone from the house before we got back to the village. In any case, the request I made to various county authorities to stop and question motorcyclists has had no result. I ordered it suspended this morning. I'm afraid he had ample time to get well away before we were alerted.'

Bennett was becoming increasingly concerned. Listening to Sinclair's dead voice he realized that the man was deeply depressed.

'What else…?' The chief inspector's gaze wandered about the room. 'Madden's team has found a collection of cigarette stubs — all Three Castles — on a hill close by. It's a good vantage point, apparently. We'll have them tested. And we may have another footprint to compare with the cast taken at Melling Lodge. The technicians of the photographic department have lifted some marks off the stone floor in the hall. They use oblique lighting — it's a new development.' He paused deliberately. 'And then there's the matter of the dog.

The family had one. It was poisoned a week ago. I had the remains dug up this morning. Ransom will examine them. The Sussex force offered us their own pathologist, but I wanted Ransom again.'

'Quite right, Chief Inspector.' Bennett was watching him closely.

'I could have asked, you know, sir.' Sinclair's eye met his superior's. 'It slipped my mind, but that's no excuse.'

'Asked what?'

'When I got down here yesterday morning, I could have inquired as to whether any dogs in the district had been poisoned lately. The village bobby knew all about it.' The chief inspector's face showed pain. 'In fact, I wonder now if I haven't been wrong all along in withholding that piece of information from the public'

'And I tell you you've no cause to blame yourself on either count.' Bennett spoke more harshly than he meant. 'If you broadcast that sort of warning we'll have the police being summoned every time a dog throws up. And as for the other, you came here believing you were about to arrest Pike. To arrest him or see him shot down. That's what was on your mind.'

'True, sir.' Sinclair nodded assent. 'But I should have inquired just the same.'

Bennett looked away. 'Have you spoken to William Merrick?' he asked.

'I have. We managed to get in touch with the people they were staying overnight with in Chichester and he came back at once. He's staying with friends nearby. We had a meeting in the early hours of this morning.'

'What did he have to say?'

'A great deal,' Sinclair replied heavily. 'He's bitterly angry, and I can see why. He wanted to know how it was possible for his mother and two members of his household to be murdered in this fashion when there were upwards of a score of policemen in the vicinity.

A question to which even the Delphic oracle might feel pressed to provide an answer,' he added, with a flicker of his old spirit.

Bennett had heard enough. 'Let me say something.'

He stood up and began to pace about the room. 'Quite apart from the tragedy, this is an appalling piece of misfortune. Because of the incident of that man falling into the pit, you've been cruelly misled. But had he not done so your position would be no better. Worse, in fact. What happened here would have happened just the same' — he gestured with his hand — 'and you would have learned about it in London and had to start from scratch. Instead, you were here — on the spot. Make the most of that, Chief Inspector.'

Sinclair regarded him in silence for a moment or two. Then he nodded. 'Thank you, sir. I mean to,' he said quietly.

'One further point. I had a brief conversation with the assistant commissioner before coming down this morning. I put it to him that the theory we'd heard advanced that the perpetrator of these crimes was no more than a thief with a bent for violence was pitifully wide of the mark. It's quite clear he's a criminal psychopath, just as you have indicated from the start.

Had your views encountered less opposition, I suggested, this investigation might have been concluded by now and at least one tragedy averted. Sir George did not disagree. This is your case, Chief Inspector.

Though whether you'll thank me for telling you that…'

Bennett raised an eyebrow, and Sinclair shrugged.

'You mentioned earlier that Madden had a theory about why the McConnell woman's body was damaged in that way. I'd like to hear it.' The deputy was standing by the window, looking out. 'But I see he's coming now, so perhaps we should wait.'

Sinclair rose from his chair and joined him. Emerging from the yew alley, dark-jowled and haggard, the tall inspector came striding through the mist like the very spectre of Death.

Bennett spoke. "I was mistaken about him. You picked the right man for this inquiry.'

A minute later there was a knock on the door and Madden entered. 'Good morning, sir,' he said to Bennett. He turned to Sinclair. 'We've found the dugout. It's about two miles off. There's been no attempt to fill it in. He left a few items behind — a tin of stew, an empty rum jar. I've had them collected for examination.'

'Sit down, John.' The chief inspector pointed to a chair. Madden obeyed.

'It's like the one we found at Highfield,' he went on. 'Made with care and an eye for detail. Looking at the Ordnance map, I'd say it's no more than a couple of miles from the pit we found yesterday. That was due south of Stonehill. The dugout's more to the west.'

'My God!' Bennett shook his head in disbelief. 'You might almost have stumbled on him.'

Sinclair returned to his chair and sat down.

"I told Mr Bennett you had a theory why Annie McConnell's body was savaged,' he said to Madden.

'He'd like to hear it from you.'

Madden turned to the deputy. "I believe it resulted from rage, sir. Fury. The woman Pike came for was the younger Mrs Merrick. When he found she wasn't in the house he must have gone berserk. Miss McConnell was probably trying to use the telephone when he came back downstairs. But even if that angered him, killing her would have been a simple matter. What he did to the body suggests to me some much stronger emotion at work.'

Bennett nodded, understanding.

Sinclair spoke. 'I'm forced to agree with the inspector,' he said. 'Though I don't care for the implication it carries.'

'Implication?'

'It seems that Pike takes many weeks to prepare for these attacks. By the time he's ready he must be near boiling point. Only on this occasion he was frustrated.

I can't pretend to understand his state of mind. But I tremble at the thought of it.' *He was primed to attack, you mean, and that won't have changed?' Bennett looked grim.

'He could be ready to strike at any time,' the chief inspector agreed. 'We must find him. And soon.'

When Pike came into the kitchen on Tuesday morning he found Ethel Bridgewater already there.

She was sitting with a cup of tea on the table in front of her reading the newspaper, which, in Mrs Aylward's absence, she had not had to take upstairs that day.

Ethel's fine head of hair was piled up under her lace cap in a new way, but Pike barely noticed it. His thoughts, agonized and bloody, ranged far beyond the confines of the kitchen.

He was ravenous. He hadn't eaten a proper meal for thirty-six hours. Having poured himself a cup of tea he cut three thick slices of bread from the loaf on the kitchen counter and sat down opposite the maid, who was holding the open newspaper in front of her face.

When Pike lifted his head he received a shock that went through his nervous system like a bolt of electricity.

He saw his own eyes staring at him from the front page of the newspaper.

Stunned witless, it took him several seconds to realize that what he was looking at wasn't a photograph but an artist's impression.

The caption was printed in bold letters: MAN SOUGHT.

Beside it, filling the whole of the next column, was a story headlined: 'KILLER STRIKES AGAIN'.

A sub-heading bore the words: 'Police Net Spread In Southern Counties'.

Pike's jaws moved automatically as he chewed his bread. He couldn't make out the small print of the report. But beneath the picture, in darker lettering, he read his own name: Amos Pike.

Another shockwave went juddering through him.

He stared at the letters in disbelief. The police knew his name! But how?

He was dead. Army records had him listed among the fallen. He was sure of it.

But they had his name. And they knew what he looked like.

Pike put his cup to his lips while the thoughts flailed about inside his head. It hardly mattered to him that the sketch, now that he looked at it, did not, in fact, portray his features with any degree of accuracy.

True, the eyes were those that stared at him every day from his shaving mirror. But his own head was squarer than the one shown in the drawing and his mouth quite different. The artist had failed to catch his thin, tightly drawn lips which, in any case, had been altered by a wound he had suffered during the war. A shell fragment had struck his cheek, severing a nerve and causing one corner of his mouth to droop. The effect was to give his face a skewed look. But none of that mattered…

Pike touched the fresh scabs on his neck. He felt his self-control deserting him. Each day now it was worse, each day harder to maintain his poise. The shell he had built for himself so painfully over the years was starting to crack. What lay beneath he could only sense as yet, but the intimation of it left him fearful.

He who had never known fear the way other men did.

Ethel Bridgewater reached the end of the newspaper.

She folded it and turned back to the front page.

Pike dropped his eyes — the eyes she must be looking at now.

How could she not recognize them?

But then he lifted them again, fastening his gaze on the paper masking her face. He waited to see how she would react. Better to know now. A vein throbbed in his temple.

After two minutes, perhaps three, she laid the paper down on the table and gave it a little push, as though offering it to him. She did not meet his eyes. But, then, she never did.

Her hands went to her hair, patting and shaping the coiled tresses. Her glance went to the kitchen clock on the wall. Then she stood up, brushing the crumbs off her white slip, and left the room.

Pike relaxed with a slow exhalation of breath. He had been ready to kill her.

After breakfast he returned to his room above the old stable and lay down on the narrow bed. Mrs Aylward was not due back until after lunch and he had the morning free if he chose. His head ached. The dull thudding pain had started on the ride back from Ashdown Forest and seemed linked to the frenzied excitement that had gripped him when he raced down the yew alley, rifle at the ready.

Just as his emotion then had found no release, but continued to throb undiminished at his nerve ends, so he seemed unable now to escape from the scenes that ran through his mind over and over again like images on a flickering screen.

He heard the sound of his whistle — a single piercing blast!

He felt the yew hedge brush by on either side of him as he charged towards the lighted room!

He saw the heel of his boot strike the centre of the latched doors, which burst inwards in a shower of broken glass!

As he broke into the room he saw two figures to his right and wheeled that way. A woman in the black of a maid's uniform was kneeling by the fireplace. She half rose, turning towards him, her mouth forming the O of a scream, but his bayonet was ready, quick and deadly, sliding in and out of her black-clothed breast before she had time to utter a sound.

He turned to the other figure, an older woman who was sitting on the couch, expecting to find her cowering and twisting away. Instead she sat upright, unmoving, as though rooted to the spot. The surprise of it caused him to hesitate for a moment and in that instant he was struck from behind, a vase shattering on his hooded head, and then two hands were scrabbling at his neck, striving to get beneath the canvas and, when that failed, taking hold of the cloth itself and tugging furiously at it. Momentarily dazed, he reacted with a vicious backwards jerk of his elbow and heard the grunt of pain behind him. But the fingers held on to the gas-mask hood, which began to tear at the back so that the mask swivelled around on his head and all at once he was blinded, with the glass eyeholes wrenched to one side and his eyes covered by bare canvas.

Dropping his rifle, he lashed back savagely — first with one elbow, then the other — and broke free of the clutching fingers. He dragged the gas mask off his head and flung it aside. Turning, he found his attacker coming at him again. It was a woman! He barely had time to register astonishment — he saw a thin lined face and blazing eyes — before her fingernails raked his neck, stabbing for his eyes.

He struck her with his fist and she gave a cry and dropped to her knees.

Quickly he seized the rifle from the floor and thrust the bayonet into her breast. She toppled over and lay still.

He swung round to the couch — and could hardly credit what he saw before him.

The woman hadn't moved. Her face, ashen with shock, was lifted to his. Wide blue eyes gazed at him unafraid.

He thrust quickly at her, turning his head away as he did so. He couldn't bear to face her without the mask. When he looked again she was lying on her side on the couch, the eyes still staring, but empty now.

He ran from the room.

In the hall outside he found a staircase that took him to the floor above where he raced up and down the passage, flinging open doors. Only empty rooms met his eyes. Furious and disbelieving, he ascended to the floor above that to search the servants' quarters, but with the same result. In the end there was nothing left for him to do but go downstairs again.

From the half-landing of the staircase he saw the woman he thought he'd killed — the one with the blazing eyes — dragging herself across the stone floor in her long black skirt. He reached her just as her hand grasped the telephone on the table and he smashed the rifle butt into her face and ran her through and then hit her in the face again and stamped on her with his heavy boots. His fury could not be contained. Growling and snarling he savaged her lifeless body.

He had never behaved in such a way. Not in any of his previous attacks on civilians. Not even when he had stormed a German machine-gun post single handed during the war and bayoneted the crew and three other men he found in the dugout.

Never!

He lost control.

Sickened and half dazed by the emotion that continued to swirl in his brain — the pulsing need that had brought him to the house was unassuaged — he had quickly searched the remaining rooms downstairs and then departed, stumbling back down the yew alley and leaving the garden by the gate that led to the water-meadow.

He was in haste to get away, not simply to avoid discovery, but to put as much distance as he could between himself and what he had done. The image of the woman's battered face, the eye dislodged from the socket, pursued him like one of the Furies through the moonless night. He saw, too, the other eyes that had looked on him, wide and blue and unafraid.

Not until he reached the dugout did he remember his gas mask, lying discarded on the floor of the drawing-room, but by then it was too late to return for it.

His bag was already packed, such items as he was not taking with him wiped clean of fingerprints.

Within twenty minutes he was kicking the motorcycle's engine into life and beginning the long ride back. He reached the Hastings road without incident, but had to wait at the intersection while a military convoy rumbled by. As soon as the last tarpaulin covered lorry had passed, he pulled out and settled down at the rear of the convoy, tucked almost under the tail-light of the bulky vehicle ahead, travelling south at a steady twenty miles an hour.

Short of Hastings he abandoned the cover of the convoy and thereafter travelled by lanes and back roads until he arrived at Rudd's Cross a little before midnight.

Pausing on the outskirts of the hamlet to extinguish the carbide lamp of his headlight, he sat quiet in the saddle for some time watching for any sign of life in the huddled cottages. It was late. He saw none.

Mrs Troy's cottage, too, was in darkness as he approached it, pushing his machine along the dirt track up to the doors of the garden shed. The headache that had started while he was still in Ashdown Forest hammered at his temples. But sleep was a long way off. His night's work was only beginning.

At seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, soon after Sinclair had left for London by car to attend the conference called by the commissioner at Scotland Yard, the telephone rang in the public bar of the Green Man in Stonehill.

The landlord, Henry Glossop, would normally have risen by that hour, but both he and his wife had had difficulty sleeping since the terrible events at Croft Manor and they had both consulted Dr Fellows, who had prescribed sleeping draughts.

Glossop heard the phone but lay in bed for a while, hoping someone else would answer it. The building was full of police. The four rooms at the opposite end of the corridor from where he and his wife slept were all occupied by detectives. Overnight bags packed with clean clothes had been sent from London and Tunbridge Wells the day before and distributed to the various recipients.

The phone continued to ring. With a sigh, Glossop rose, put on his flannel dressing-gown and slippers and shuffled down the linoleum-carpeted stairs to the shuttered, beer-smelling taproom where the bell still pealed monotonously.

The caller, yet another policeman, was ringing from Folkestone, in Kent. He was polite but insistent, and half a minute later Glossop found himself toiling back up the stairs trying to recall which of the rooms housed the tall detective inspector from London.

'I just hope this doesn't turn into a wild-goose chase, sir. That's all I hope.'

Detective Sergeant Booth had put on weight. Billy noticed it right away, as soon as the sergeant stepped out from under the awning at Folkestone station and hastened up the platform to greet them. The trousers that had hung loosely at their last meeting now fitted snugly about his waist. For a thick-set man he was surprisingly light on his feet.

'Don't worry about that,' Madden reassured him.

'And how are you, Constable?' Booth gave Billy a wink.

'Fine, thank you, Sergeant.'

In fact, he was still feeling drowsy from having dozed off in the compartment. It had taken them three hours, with changes, to reach Folkestone. Billy was suffering from lack of sleep, and so was the inspector, to judge from his deeply withdrawn gaze and white marble-like features. But Billy, who had worked at Madden's side for the past two days, had yet to see him flag, even for an instant.

Booth led them out of the station to a car parked in the road outside, a Wolseley four-seater painted dark blue.

'Chief Inspector Mulrooney's given us one of the station cars for the day, sir.' The sergeant let Madden into the passenger side. 'Not a luxury we normally enjoy.'

Just like the Yard, Billy thought, as he jumped into the back.

'It's the devil of a place to get to.'

'How long will it take us?' Madden asked.

'With the car, no more than half an hour.'

As they drove away from the station Billy looked back and saw the sea, flat and calm under the low grey sky. He marked where the road wound down the hillside to the harbour below — the Road of Remembrance — and recalled what Madden had told him: how the men had marched down in their thousands from the camp on the bluff to the steamers bound for France.

The inspector was speaking again: 'I need to get in touch with Mr Sinclair. He was on his way up to London earlier. The commissioner's called a meeting.

Can I ring him from the cottage?'

'I'm afraid not, sir.' Booth steered the car past a wagon loaded with straw baskets piled high with apples. They were out of the town, driving between hedgerows. 'There's no phone in the house, nor in the village. But Knowlton's nearby. Would you like to stop off there first?'

Madden pondered. Then he shook his head. 'No.

Let's go straight to Rudd's Cross.'

Billy knew only the bare bones of the story, what Madden had told him on the train. But listening to the inspector's questions now, and Booth's answers — leaning forward from the back seat with his chin almost resting on the sergeant's shoulder-blade — he was able to gain a full picture of the chain of circumstances that had led to their hurried departure from Stonehill earlier that morning.

It had started on Monday with a cleaning woman called Edna Babb, who worked for an old lady named Mrs Troy who lived in Rudd's Cross, which was where they were headed now. When Edna arrived at Mrs Troy's cottage the first thing she noticed was that the doors of the silver cabinet in the parlour were standing open and several items missing from it. When she went upstairs she found her employer lying dead in bed. There was nothing to indicate that Mrs Troy had met a violent end, but Edna had been sufficiently upset to hurry across the fields to Knowlton, two miles away, to report her discovery to the village bobby, Constable Packard.

Packard had returned with her directly to Rudd's Cross, where they were joined by the police surgeon.

His brief examination of Mrs Troy's body led him to suspect death by asphyxia, which he estimated to have occurred some forty-eight hours earlier. Packard had sealed the house forthwith and returned to Knowlton where he telephoned a report to the central police station at Folkestone.

'I was assigned to the case and went out later that day with a detective constable,' Booth said. 'We arranged for the body to be taken to Folkestone for examination by the pathologist, along with the pillows on the bed, and we also took fingerprints off the cabinet. I had a word with Babb, who lives in Rudd's Cross, and she told me about this man Grail who's been using the garden shed. The shed was padlocked shut, but I reckoned the circumstances were suspicious enough to warrant breaking in, so I got hold of a screwdriver and took off the latch. The shed was empty, apart from some garden tools.'

'How did Grail come to be using the shed?' Madden asked. 'Was he renting it from Mrs Troy?'

'Not exactly, according to Babb. They had some arrangement whereby Grail took care of the garden and brought her food from time to time.'

'But she never met him? Edna Babb, I mean.'

'Never set eyes on him, she said. He always came at the weekends. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but I realized later, next day, talking to people around there, that he must have taken damned good care not to be seen.'

Booth was getting ahead of his story. He went back to Monday afternoon. At that point the police hadn't been sure what they were dealing with, whether murder, or death by natural causes. It would depend on the pathologist's report, which wouldn't be available until later. As for the items missing from the cabinet, they didn't know yet whether these had been stolen or whether Mrs Troy had removed them herself for some reason. Booth had gone back to Folkestone for the night, intending to return to Rudd's Cross the following day to question the inhabitants.

'I found the station had had a call that afternoon from a firm of solicitors. One of their employees was missing, a man called Biggs. He'd gone out to Rudd's Cross on Saturday to attend to some business for Mrs Troy, who was a client of the firm. For the second Saturday running, apparently. What she wanted was for him to get rid of Grail. After his first visit he reported he'd left a letter giving the fellow his marching orders and he'd volunteered to go back the following week to see him off the property.'

'Kind of him,' Madden observed drily. 'You thought it might have been Biggs who lifted the silver?'

'That was a possible explanation, sir. In a sense it still is. Biggs was supposed to meet a friend in Folkestone on Saturday evening, but never showed up, and no one's seen hide nor hair of him since. Nor any sign of the silver.' Booth blew his horn to warn a couple on a tandem cycle ahead of their approach. The road was narrowing. 'But it strikes me as being farfetched.

If Biggs stole the silver it must mean he smothered Mrs Troy first. But he hardly seems the type. Solicitor's clerk, no record with us. I'm inclined to think he ran foul of Grail.'

Billy, in the back seat, wet his lips. He glanced at Madden, but the inspector's face showed no expression.

Booth continued his story. On arriving at the station the following morning he discovered that the pathologist had confirmed the initial diagnosis. Mrs Troy had died from asphyxiation. Saliva traces on the pillow confirmed his finding. The case was now a murder inquiry and Booth was dispatched to Rudd's Cross with a forensic team. While the others were busy examining the cottage, he had gone from house to house questioning the inhabitants.

'That's when I began to think there was something off about this Grail. No one had seen him close up. A few times he'd been spotted in the fields, coming or going, but apart from the fact that he was reckoned to be a big bloke, no one could say what he really looked like. It made me wonder. I decided to take another look at that shed.'

Booth paused while he turned off the paved surface on to a narrow dirt track that ran between apple orchards where pickers armed with the same type of straw baskets Billy had noticed earlier were busy under the laden trees. A girl with her hair bound up in a red scarf waved to him and Billy tipped his hat and smiled back.

'I'd opened the side door the day before, but there was another door at the front, stable-type, top and bottom, also padlocked. I went to work on that and got it open. I'd only seen the inside in semi-darkness before — the window was boarded over. It wasn't until I had both doors open and light flooding into the place that I saw how clean it was.'

'Clean?' Madden glanced at the sergeant. They were travelling slowly now, easing over the ruts in the lane.

Billy saw a cottage ahead of them, on the right.

'Spotless, sir.' Booth returned the inspector's look.

'Someone had swept and washed the floor until there wasn't a speck of dirt or dust to be seen. But having the light shining in like that made all the difference.'

He grinned. 'I saw something. It was right in the middle of the floor.' He nodded as they drew up beside the house. 'This is Mrs Troy's cottage. You'll see what I mean in a moment.'

They climbed from the car. Booth opened a gate in a hedge and led the way into a small garden. It was well-tended, Billy noticed, the flower-beds weeded and the edges of the lawn trimmed. The sound of the gate squeaking on its hinges had brought a uniformed policeman around from the other side of the thatched cottage. He touched his helmet.

'All quiet, Constable?'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'We've finished with the house for the time being,'

Booth told Madden. 'But I thought it best to leave a man here. We may need to look at that shed more closely'

The wooden structure occupied a corner of the garden. The metal latch hung loosely by a single screw.

'Let's look at it now,' the inspector said.

Booth opened the door and they followed him inside. Though the day was cool the air felt warm and smelled musty under the corrugated-iron roof. Billy made out the dim shape of a work-table at the back of the shed. A fork and a spade stood propped against the wall beside it. Then the room brightened as the sergeant pushed open the double doors at the far end, first the top leaf, then the bottom. Billy peered down at the floor. It was made of cement and looked white and clean, just as Booth had said. He didn't see the mark until the sergeant pointed it out to them.

'It's very faint, sir. But you can just see the outline.'

Billy picked it up then. It was like a shadow on the pale surface. Madden got down on his hands and knees. He peered at the floor closely, then put his nose close to the cement and sniffed.

'I tried to pick out some of the stuff with the point of a knife.' Booth bent over him. 'I'm not sure if there was enough to test.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, I sent it off to the government chemist last night. Don't know when we'll hear from him.'

Madden rose to his feet. He looked at the open doorway at the end of the shed.

'Too narrow for a car,' he observed.

'That's what I thought.' Booth mopped his face with a handkerchief. The fresh air coming in from outside smelled of apples. 'So if that was a patch of oil before he cleaned it up, seems to me it could only have come from a motorcycle standing there.'

Madden grunted. It was hard to tell what he thought.

'And there's something else, sir.' Booth was grinning now, like a conjuror displaying his best trick. 'It wasn't till the idea of a motorbike came into my mind that I thought to look for it. We'll have to go back up the lane a way.'

He led Madden out of the shed and they walked past the parked car and along the dirt track. Billy, following a few paces behind, spied something ahead of them at the side of the road. When they got closer he saw that a shallow depression in the surface had been marked off with a triangle of wooden stakes, tied together with string. A piece of cardboard fixed to one of the stakes bore a rough pencilled message: police notice — keep off. He had missed it when they drove by.

Booth was speaking to the inspector. 'This lane we're on is used by farmworkers to get to the fields and orchards. The only cottage it passes is Mrs Troy's.

It doesn't go anywhere.'

They were standing by the stakes now. The depression held a filling of crusted mud marked with a criss-cross pattern. Booth crouched down, and Madden and Billy did the same. The sergeant pointed with his finger. 'I took a plaster cast of that yesterday afternoon. When I got back to Folkestone I checked it against our book of tyre patterns. It's a standard Dunlop diamond design supplied to motorcycle manufacturers, Harley and Triumph in particular. Someone's ridden a motorbike down this lane in the last few weeks, since the rains started.'

Still Madden said nothing.

'I didn't get the pattern checked till late.' Booth took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to the inspector, who declined, with a slight shake of his head. 'Chief Inspector Mulrooney had gone home, but I called round to see him and we had a word. I told him what I thought. We wondered if we shouldn't wait for the chemist's report…' Booth pulled a face.

T didn't like the idea of dragging you down here for nothing, sir. Not with what you've got on your hands.

But the chief inspector decided the matter was too serious to let any chance slip. Specially after what happened at Stonehill. He said I should ring you first thing in the morning.'

They stood in silence. Booth drew on his cigarette.

He glanced nervously at the inspector.

'What do you think, sir?'

Madden glanced down the lane towards the shed.

Then his gaze swept the surrounding fields and orchards. Finally he spoke: 'I want to look for a footprint. He might have left one somewhere on this track. Check the puddles.'

They formed themselves into a line and walked back slowly towards the cottage, eyes cast down. Billy noted several patches of mud on his side of the lane, but none bore any footmarks. He was almost level with the garden gate when he noticed that Madden, who was walking between them, in the middle of the track, had stopped. He was down on his haunches, looking at the ground in front of him. Booth had seen him, too.

'Have you found something, sir?'

The inspector's muttered reply was unintelligible.

He was peering closely at the saucer of dried mud before him.

'Fetch me some grass, would you, Sergeant?'

Booth tugged a handful from the verge and brought it over to him. Madden fashioned a makeshift brush from the blades and began to flick surface dust and grit from the mud base. He bent down and blew away the dirt. Billy crouched beside him. Gradually the outline of a footmark appeared. First the sole, only lightly sketched on the crusty soil. Then the full print.

Madden blew away more loose grains of earth. The deeper impression of the heel grew clear. Billy saw that the outer rim of the oval shape had a piece missing. He heard the soft sigh that issued from the inspector's lips.

The young man never forgot the scene. He carried with him for the rest of his life the image of Madden as he glanced up and met the sergeant's rapt gaze.

And in later years, whenever the scent of harvest apples came to him he would hear the inspector's murmured words: 'It's him. It's Pike.'

Booth parked the car in the forecourt of the village pub beside a sign depicting St George slaying the dragon. The three men walked quickly down the street, Billy and the sergeant having to stretch their legs to keep up with Madden's long strides. Knowlton seemed like a busy centre. Besides the usual butcher, baker and general store the narrow street boasted a dressmaker and an antique dealer, side by side, and further down a shop that sold bric-a-brac. Billy barely had time to glance in the windows as they swept by.

As though in keeping with the ambitions of the place, the village bobby maintained an office in the front room of a cottage at the end of the street.

Packard, a man in his late forties with greying hair and worry-lines etched deep into his broad forehead, showed no surprise at seeing Booth. But his eyes widened on learning the inspector's identity, and when Madden told him why they were there the constable paled visibly.

'We think this man Pike may live in the district.'

Packard opened the middle drawer of his desk and took out a copy of the police poster. 'This arrived yesterday, sir. I can't say I know this man.'

'Have a look at these, would you?' Madden passed him the two artist's sketches he'd brought with him.

'And I need to use your telephone urgently.'

Billy watched Packard's expression as he studied the drawings and saw at once that he didn't recognize the face. The constable had vacated his desk so that Madden could make his call.

'He's not a man who draws attention to himself.'

Madden spoke with the telephone held to his ear.

He'd placed a call to Stonehill via the Folkestone exchange. 'You won't find him buying a round of drinks in the pub. He probably has no friends.'

Packard shook his head. 'I saw one of these in the newspaper today. I'm sorry, sir…' He handed the sketches back. The inspector began speaking into the phone, but the conversation didn't last long, and he hung up.

'Mr Sinclair's not back from London yet. They're expecting him shortly.'

He looked at his wristwatch. Billy instinctively did the same. It was a quarter to one.

'Let's see if we can work out the timing of this.'

Madden addressed Booth, who sat in one of two straight-backed chairs placed in front of the desk.

Packard had taken the other. Billy stood behind them.

'Pike must have gone to Rudd's Cross on Saturday morning to prepare for his trip to Ashdown Forest.

Suppose Biggs came on him in the shed and they got into an argument. Whatever happened, it ended with Pike killing him, and once he'd done that he had to dispose of Mrs Troy as well. He couldn't afford to leave a witness to his presence there.'

The inspector lit a cigarette. Booth was already smoking.

'Now the sensible thing would have been to clear up and move out during the weekend. But we know he went to Ashdown Forest. He's not a sensible man, not rational in the way you or I would understand it.

He does what he's driven to do.

'So let's say he returned to Rudd's Cross on Sunday night. He could have been back by midnight and that would have given him several hours of darkness in which to clean the shed and dispose of Biggs's body.

What about the silver?' Madden frowned, pursing his lips. 'I think he took that, too. He likes to lay false trails. He's tried it before. His father was a gamekeeper, you know.' The inspector's glance was still on Booth. 'My guess is he's buried them somewhere, Biggs and the silver both.'

The sergeant extinguished his cigarette. 'But where could he have gone on his bike from Rudd's Cross?' he asked. 'There was an alarm out all over Kent.

Motorcycles were being stopped on the road right through Monday morning. They're still making random checks.'

Madden nodded. 'Not far, is the answer. And he must have travelled by back roads and lanes. He knows the district. I'm convinced he lives close by. Whenever he wanted to use the motorcycle he had to get to Rudd's Cross and if he lived too far away it wouldn't be practical. They don't know him there, and if Constable Packard's right he isn't well known in Knowlton either. We think he has a job that involves travelling. Something that takes him around the country, in the Home Counties, at least.'

Listening to them, Billy longed to make a contribution.

He was jealous that Madden addressed his remarks to Booth. Of course, the sergeant was an experienced detective, and the way he'd been able to read the signs at Rudd's Cross must have impressed the inspector. But the young constable felt left out, just as he had at Highfield that first day.

Madden glanced at his watch again. 'I don't know about you,' he said, 'but we had no breakfast. Let's get a quick bite in the pub, then I'll come back and ring Stonehill again. I must speak to Mr Sinclair.'

He was already on the move, rising and striding from the office. The others followed him out into the street, where the inspector carried on talking over his shoulder to Booth and Packard. Billy hung back.

'What's worrying me is Pike may decide to leave the district, just up stakes and go, and we'll have to start afresh. He may not be rational always, but he's no fool. He must know that once Mrs Troy's body is discovered the police will be looking for Grail…"

He walked on, his voice fading.

Billy stood rooted to the spot.

He stared at what was before his eyes.

'Constable!'

Billy started. He looked round. Madden was standing some way up the street looking back.

Billy beckoned to him. His heart was racing.

Madden put his hands on his hips, the gesture underlining his impatience. But he started back, walking rapidly with the others trailing in his wake.

'Sir!' Billy called out, when he was still a few paces off. 'Sir, look!'

The inspector came to a halt beside him. He followed with his eyes the direction Billy was indicating.

Booth arrived panting on his heels.

'What is it?' the sergeant demanded. He peered into the window of the bric-a-brac shop. A bewildering variety of objects met his gaze: a grandfather clock, a tray of glass marbles, cushions of various shapes and sizes, a set of hunting prints… 'What are you looking at?' he asked.

'Do you see that painting of a house on the wall over there?'

Madden spoke in a conversational tone, and Booth understood he was meant to look past the window display to the wall at the back of the shop. He nodded.

'It's Melling Lodge.'

Billy's heart turned a somersault. He was afraid he'd been mistaken. 'It was that figure on the fountain…"

The words poured out as he found his tongue. '… the boy drawing his bow, I remember it, and the front of the house with the bench fixed in the wall…" He went silent again. He could feel the inspector's eyes on him.

'Well spotted, Constable.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Billy didn't look up. He was afraid Madden would see his tear-filled eyes. (Tears of relief, he told himself.) But he felt Booth's elbow in his ribs. The sergeant was grinning at him.

'What did I say, lad? Little things.'

'He calls himself Carver, sir. He's a chauffeur. He works for a lady named Mrs Aylward. Hermione Aylward. She's a painter. Her house isn't far from Knowlton. He's our man all right.'

Billy had watched Constable Packard turn bright red earlier when the same fact became clear. The constable had quickly volunteered to go to the pub and fetch some sandwiches for them. Billy reckoned he must have been ashamed at not having recognized Pike's face from the poster or drawings. Sergeant Booth took a more charitable view.

'It's the uniform,' he explained, while Madden was placing his call to Stonehill. 'You look at this Carver and you see a chauffeur. Specially if he's a bloke who never does anything to attract attention, never meets your eye. You've got no reason to look at him close or watch him. He's the one doing the watching.'

Madden was speaking into the phone. Billy pictured the chief inspector listening at the other end of the line, his grey eyes intent.

'The pattern's clear. All the facts fit. Mrs Aylward gets about a good deal. Her speciality is children's portraits. Do you recall that painting above the fireplace in the drawing-room at Melling Lodge? Mrs Fletcher with the two children? She did that. And there were individual portraits of the children in the Merricks' bedroom at Croft Manor. I expect we'll find they're her work as well. She's quite well known, apparently.'

That wasn't how Miss Grainger had put it, Billy reflected. (Dorothy Grainger, prop., the sign above the door of the bric-a-brac shop had stated.) Sporting a monocle, she had met them in breeches and a man's sports jacket, appearing through a curtained doorway to announce that the store was closing for lunch and they would have to return later. Madden had shown her his warrant card.

'Dear me! What has Hermione been up to?' Miss Grainger had close-cropped hair and a smoker's cough, and Billy had concluded she must be one of them (without knowing quite what that meant). Her heavy featured face was scored with lines of discontent. He goggled when she lit a cigar.

'A painter of note? Come now, Inspector! Let's not go overboard. Gainsborough won't stir in his grave, I assure you. Turner sleeps untroubled.'

Billy hadn't a clue what she was talking about, except it was plainly intended to be insulting towards Mrs Aylward. Somehow Madden had kept his patience.

'Would you tell us about this painting?' he had asked.

Now he spoke to the chief inspector: 'The children's portraits are commissioned, but she does other work as well — houses, landscapes and so on — and holds an exhibition from time to time. She must have done the painting of Melling Lodge on the side, when Mrs Fletcher and the children were sitting for her.'

The inspector had not thought it necessary to make the obvious point. That Pike would have driven Mrs Aylward to Highfield and thus had his first glimpse of Lucy Fletcher.

Miss Grainger had admitted to having a commercial arrangement with Hermione Aylward. The artist's unsold paintings were displayed in the shop at knockdown prices. However, the significance of the Melling Lodge picture had not escaped either of them.

'Directly after the murders she told me to raise the price from the usual twenty-five pounds to two hundred and to make sure people knew what the subject was. She wanted me to put up a sign, but I refused.

After all, there's such a thing as good taste. Since then we've hardly been on speaking terms.' Miss Grainger produced a satisfied smile. 'And, as you see, there have been no takers.'

The question of Mrs Aylward's chauffeur had arisen early in the interview. Madden had asked if she travelled by car.

'Indeed she does. In a damned great Bentley! You'd think royalty was approaching.'

'Then I take it she has a chauffeur?' Madden had asked noncommittally.

Miss Grainger had shrugged. 'Of course. Carver — isn't that his name?' This to Constable Packard, who had nodded. And then flushed as the realization came to him.

Billy didn't understand why the inspector hadn't shown her the pictures of Pike. It was another thing Sergeant Booth had had to explain to him.

'And let her know it's Carver we're interested in?

The word'll be around Knowlton before the afternoon's out. There's no need to tip our hand. We've not set eyes on him yet.'

But they knew where he was, near enough.

'At this moment, on his way back from Dover, sir.

He took Mrs Aylward over there to a luncheon.

They're expected back at the house by tea-time. She'll be spending the evening in.'

Madden had rung the house earlier, posing as a client interested in hiring the artist's services. He had found only the maid at home.

'I left a message saying I'd ring again later.'

Madden was silent for a while, listening to the chief inspector. He grunted and nodded, as though they were sitting face to face. Twice he looked at his wristwatch.

'We'll be in Packard's office, sir. We'll wait for you here.' He nodded again. 'I agree. We must act as soon as possible.'

Madden hung up the receiver. He looked at Booth and Billy, who were sitting facing him across the desk.

'The chief inspector's on his way. He'll pass by Folkestone and collect a squad of armed officers. As soon as they arrive, we'll go out to the house. We'll take him there.'

Pike left off digging in the compost pit and started back across the lawn towards the house. The road outside was hidden from his gaze by a privet hedge, but he kept his eye on the gate as he walked across the leaf-strewn grass. A short driveway led to the front door and beyond it was another stretch of straggly lawn bordered by a shrubbery and a brick wall. Pike's glance swept the garden.

When he passed the conservatory he saw Mrs Aylward's portly, middle-aged figure bent over a tub of hothouse peonies. The double doors to the adjoining studio were shut behind her, but Pike could see the lights switched on inside the house. The evening was drawing in.

He needed to keep busy, to have his hands occupied and his mind-fixed on details, no matter how small or trivial. His head felt raw inside. His thoughts gave him pain.

Several times in the past two days he had felt himself losing touch with his physical surroundings.

On one occasion he had had a sudden vision of the ground opening under his feet and himself, his consciousness, tumbling into blackness, spinning away like a dead leaf. He had bitten his lip hard, drawing blood, forcing himself to feel the pain of here and now.

Hourly he expected the police to arrive at the house.

He had given himself things to do in the garden so that he could keep watch on the front gate. But if he strayed too far from the stables he might be cut off from his escape route.

His mind, as though on a pendulum, swung between rage and fear.

If they came for him he would make them pay dearly!

But his anger was as nothing to his dread at the thought of capture. He had always promised himself he wouldn't be taken alive. He could never endure the shame of appearing in court, of hearing the charges against him read out in public. An even greater terror, barely acknowledged, lay beneath the surface of his thoughts.

What did they know of his past? Would he be called to account for it?

His first intimation of the net being spread for him had come the previous day at Folkestone station when he had gone there to collect Mrs Aylward. He saw his own face on a poster affixed to the noticeboard in the ticket hall.

Less than half an hour later, when driving his employer home, they had come on a police roadblock on the outskirts of town. A line of motorcycles was drawn up at the side of the road and the drivers were being questioned.

Pike, at the wheel of Mrs Aylward's Bentley, was waved through, but already he had felt the iron jaws of the trap closing on him.

He knew he had to leave the district. Once Mrs Troy's body was discovered the police would be going from door to door searching for Grail. Even if they didn't connect him with Pike, the face on the poster and in the artist's sketches published in the newspapers would be fresh in their minds.

But his motorcycle, hidden for the present in a field behind the stables, was useless to him now. Even the bus seemed fraught with peril. How did he know the police weren't stopping public vehicles as well?

He had lain awake most of the night, seeking a solution to his dilemma. It came to him the following morning, but by that time he was half-way to Dover.

The answer lay in the car he was driving! Dressed in his chauffeur's uniform he could go where he chose and not be stopped. They were looking for motorcyclists.

The idea struck him with such force he almost pulled off the road at once in order to deal with the lesser problem of Mrs Aylward's presence in the back seat. But he checked himself in time. He needed several hours' start before the alarm was raised, and that could only be achieved if he travelled by night.

He would leave when the household was asleep and his absence would not be noted until morning. Once he was well away, he could abandon the car, and then … and then…?

His mind clawed at the question. But this time he could find no answer.

The future was blank.

Henceforth he must live as an outlaw, his face displayed in police stations and public buildings throughout the land, while the beast within him grew stronger and more demanding.

The future was chaos.

Pike went through the stone-pillared gateway into the stableyard. The lights were on in the kitchen, where the maid was preparing Mrs Aylward's dinner. He understood from some remarks he'd overheard that Mrs Rowley, the cook, wouldn't be coming in that evening. She had telephoned to say she was unwell. It made no difference to him. He planned on leaving the house — and Mrs Aylward's employment — within the next few hours.

The Bentley was parked across the cobbled yard in the old stables. Pike shut the doors behind him and switched on the light. His room on the floor above was swept clean. Nearly everything he wanted to take with him was already packed in the car. His clothes and his military uniform, together with his rifle, were stowed in the boot. Earlier that day, while Mrs Aylward was lunching in Dover, he had purchased a five gallon can and filled it with petrol as a fuel reserve.

The can shared the back seat with a tarpaulin-wrapped bundle, which served to wedge it securely in place.

He was almost ready to leave. He needed only to retrieve his canvas bag, which was still in the sidecar of his motorcycle. He had had to make two trips from Rudd's Cross on Sunday night to clear the shed and remove all traces of his presence from the cottage. He hoped the police were still puzzling over what had occurred there. (How would they interpret the disappearance of Biggs?) His bag contained the silver ornaments he'd taken from Mrs Troy's cabinet. He wanted to get well away from Knowlton before he disposed of them. There was just a chance — the slimmest of possibilities — that Carver the chauffeur would not be linked in the minds of the police to either Pike or Grail. That his absconding with Mrs Aylward's Bentley would be marked down as straightforward theft. He meant to leave as few clues to his identity as possible. The longer he could keep them guessing the better.

Pike unbolted the rear door of the stables and stepped outside. Darkness was falling. A high brick wall only a few paces from where he stood marked the boundary of the property. Beyond it was a field, which also belonged to Mrs Aylward — it had come with the purchase of the house and had been used by the previous owner as a paddock for his horses. Now it served no purpose and was overgrown. Pike had parked his motorcycle at the bottom of it under the cover of overhanging bushes.

There was an iron gate in the wall, giving access to the field, but Pike walked past it to a smaller, wooden gate, which opened on to a path that ran alongside the field in the shadow of an untrimmed hedge. Just as it was natural for him to use the cover of the hedge, so he walked soft-footed, making hardly any sound as he padded through the darkness.

He had gone no more than twenty yards when he heard a cough, and stopped dead in his tracks.

The sound came from his left, where the field stretched. He crouched down at once, reaching for the bayonet that swung from his belt, motionless in the inky shadows. After a minute he heard a man's voice.

He was speaking softly and Pike couldn't hear what he was saying. He fixed his gaze on the direction from which the sound had come. Beyond the edge of the field, at the far limit of the horizon, the sky was the colour of pearl, glowing faintly with the last rays of the sun. Against this pale backdrop — and visible only for a second, as the man changed position on the ground — he presently glimpsed a familiar shape: the unmistakable outline of a policeman's helmet.

Pike dropped to his stomach and, without pausing, began to crawl back the way he had come. He was practised in the action — he had done it countless times — but the peril he faced now seemed far greater than the dangers he had risked among the mud choked shell-holes and barbed wire of no man's land.

In little more than a minute he was back at the wooden gate. He slid through it on his belly and only when he had regained the protection of the brick wall did he spring to his feet and run to the stable door.

The situation was clear to him. He had understood all in a flash. These were not officers coming to the house on routine inquiries. The presence of the police in the field meant there were others nearby. In all likelihood the house was already surrounded. They knew who he was and had come to arrest him.

His mind screamed a silent refusal.

They would never take him.

His first impulse was to seize his rifle and bayonet and charge the constables crouched in the grass. Shoot them! Bayonet them! Break through their flimsy cordon and run free into the night.

Madness bloomed like a red flower in his brain. But sanity still had a foothold there, and he paused, panting, beside the Bentley.

Where would they go first? To the house, or the stables?

The answer was obvious. They knew where to find him. Mrs Rowley would have seen to that. The cook who was unwell, who wouldn't be in that evening.

He went quickly to the main doors and opened them a crack. The stableyard was empty. So was the lighted kitchen. Either the maid was upstairs, busy in Mrs Aylward's bedroom, or the police were already inside, clearing the house of its occupants. He switched off the light in the stable and opened the doors wide. He needed to create a diversion. Luckily the means were at hand.

Running back to the car, he took the can of petrol from the back seat and began to spray the liquid about, splashing the walls of the building and the wooden partitions between the old stalls. He emptied half the can in this way and put the remainder back in the car.

Pausing only to check that the yard was still empty, he raced to the far end of the stables, struck a match and set fire to the heap of junk and old furniture stored there. Flames sprang up at once. He seized a burning picture frame from the pile and tossed it into the nearest stall, and then ran back to the car.

It took only seconds to crank the engine into life.

Pike settled behind the wheel. He had no plan, only a compelling need to break free of the trap closing about him, a desperate desire that burned as hotly in his brain as the fire that roared the length of the stables now, leaping from stall to stall. He waited until the flames were almost on him before putting the car into gear.

As the heavy vehicle rolled slowly out of the doorway a piece of flaming wood from the rafters fell on the canopy, setting it alight.

Pike swung out of the stableyard through the stone pillared gateway. The course of the drive wound around the projecting conservatory to the front door, but as he began to turn the corner he saw the headlights of a car at the front gate, and he wrenched at the steering-wheel, dragging the Bentley off the gravelled driveway on to the lawn.

He was intending to make a wide circle on the grass and return to the stableyard from where he could leave by the back gate that gave on to the field. His own headlights had picked out a number of helmeted figures running across the grass towards him. A sudden blast of heat on his neck made him look round and he realized the car was on fire. Flames from the burning canopy licked about his head.

The men ahead of him dropped to one knee, as though on command. Next moment the windscreen shattered, and as he swung hard on the wheel again, pulling the car around, he heard the sound of gunshots and felt a stabbing pain in his upper arm.

Pike drew back his lips in a snarl. Pain meant nothing to him. He accepted it as his due. But he had to duck his head to avoid the heat of the flames overhead, and as the bonnet of the Bentley came round he saw other blue-clad forms issuing from the stable yard. A bullet sang past his ear and buried itself in the upholstery behind him.

Directly ahead of him was the lighted conservatory where Mrs Aylward stood framed in one of the panes like a giant moth, her white face staring out into the garden. They were firing from both sides now. Bullets rang on the car's chassis. A shard of glass from the broken windscreen struck him on the forehead. Blood trickled down into his eyes.

Pike held the car to its course. Foot clamped to the accelerator pedal, he saw Mrs Aylward step back from the glass and then stumble to one side, ponderous in her movements, struggling to escape the huge mass of metal that thundered towards her.

Roaring his rage, he drove straight at the glasshouse.

Come what may, they wouldn't take him alive!

'Cease fire!'

The bellowed order was drowned in the crash of breaking glass as the car plunged head-on into the conservatory, bringing down the entire structure in its wake as it ploughed straight on, smashing through the double doors and knocking a hole in the side of the house.

Madden sprang to his feet — he'd lain down flat when the shooting started — and ran through the line of marksmen towards the shattered greenhouse. Billy Styles was at his heels. They arrived at the same moment as a pair of uniformed constables coming from the other direction, from the stableyard. A huddled shape lay in one corner under a mantle of broken glass.

'That's Mrs Aylward — get her out of here,' Madden called to the two policemen. 'Take care, she may be badly cut.'

He ran on over crunching glass to where the car was jammed in the wall. Its momentum had taken it most of the way through into the studio beyond. Only the rear protruded. Black smoke streamed through the broken doors above it. The canopy of the Bentley was still blazing.

'It's no good. We can't get through here.'

Madden caught hold of Billy's arm and pulled him away. He stepped over the broken shards of a windowpane and ran around to the front of the house. The door was open and they went in and found a police sergeant already there with a constable. They were casting about in the hallway, unsure where to go.

The inspector pushed past them and turned to where the studio must be. He opened a door. Smoke poured out of the darkened room into the hall. The flicker of flames was visible inside and Madden caught a glimpse of the black bulk of the Bentley before he was driven back by the pungent fumes.

The two policemen were crowding at his back.

Behind them was a staircase. Madden called to Billy, who was waiting in the hallway. 'Go upstairs. See if there's anyone there. Get them down.'

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he turned back to the studio. But as he started towards the door he caught a whiff of petrol borne on the billowing smoke cloud.

'Look out!' Madden flung himself to one side.

With a whoosh a huge tongue of flame erupted suddenly into the hallway. One of the policemen gave a cry and staggered backwards. A tapestry hanging on the wall beside the stairs caught fire. The lintel above the door was already ablaze.

'Out!' Madden shouted. 'Everyone out!'

He pushed the two officers towards the front door, but turned himself to the staircase where the banisters had now caught fire. As he started up a figure appeared in the smoke above him. It was Billy. He had a body slung over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. He staggered as he sought to keep his footing on the smouldering stair-carpet.

'It's all right, sir,' he called out. 'I can manage.'

Walking backwards, Madden shepherded him down, keeping him close to the wall, away from the blazing banisters. The body was that of a young woman in maid's clothing. Her long hair had come loose and the inspector batted sparks from it as he guided the young constable towards the front door. As Billy stumbled out on to the driveway a cheer went up from the assembled policemen.

Coughing, Madden caught sight of the chief inspector walking fast across the lawn towards them. He had Hollingsworth at his side. Booth stood in the driveway yelling at a group of officers who had just come hurrying around the corner of the house. 'What are you doing here? Go back to the yard. Stay at your posts.'

The men turned tail and disappeared.

'John?' Sinclair was at his elbow.

'He's trapped in the car, I think, sir.' Madden spat a mouthful of smoky saliva on to the gravel. 'I couldn't get into the room. The whole house is going up.'

As he spoke, one of the front windows exploded and flames leaped into the night. The policemen gathered in the drive drew back.

'It'll be hours before we can get in.' Booth had joined them.

Madden's eye picked out the figure of Billy Styles kneeling on the grass beside the young woman he'd carried from the house. She was also on her knees, bent over, retching. Billy supported her with his arm about her waist.

A uniformed sergeant appeared before them. 'I've sent a man down the road to look for a telephone, sir.

He'll call for an ambulance and the fire brigade.'

'Thank you, Sergeant,' Sinclair said. 'What about Mrs Aylward?'

'Her cuts don't look too bad, sir. They're mostly on her back. She must have managed to turn away. But she's in shock. We've got her covered up and lying down over there on the grass.'

The chief inspector looked about him. Light from the blazing house illuminated a broad swathe of lawn.

Some of the policemen had sat down. Cigarettes were being lit. He shrugged and took out his own pipe.

'Well, there's nothing we can do now except wait.'

By midnight the fire had burned itself out. But it was well after dawn before the commander of the fire engine sent from Folkestone gave permission for them to enter the smoking ruins of the house.

In the meantime, two ambulances had arrived, one for Mrs Aylward and her maid, the other for Billy Styles, who was found to have burned hands as well as blisters on his face and neck.

'I'm fine, sir,' he pleaded with Madden, who nevertheless ordered him into the vehicle and shut the doors on his protests.

Sinclair, watching the scene from a distance, was chuckling when the inspector rejoined him. 'Do you know? I think that young man might make a copper, after all.'

A watch was kept on the house all night. Sinclair had brought a dozen uniformed officers with him from Folkestone and the sergeant in charge had organized them into shifts. Madden and the chief inspector retired to one of the cars and snatched a few hours of fitful sleep.

The first flush of dawn brought a new arrival: Chief Inspector Mulrooney, from Folkestone. A big, florid man with a jovial manner, he greeted his London colleagues warmly. 'A good night's work, I trust.'

The Folkestone chief had arranged for a delivery of tea and sandwiches from Knowlton, and the men gathered about the van in a group, yawning and stretching.

Shortly after eight o'clock, following an inspection of the house, the fire chief came over. There had been little that he and his men could do. The blaze had been well out of control by the time they arrived and, like the police, they had spent the night watching and waiting.

He spoke to Sinclair: 'You can pop in now, sir, but only for a minute. It's still hot as a furnace in there.'

The chief inspector and Madden donned boots, helmets and heavy coats lent by the other firemen. At the last moment, Mulrooney decided to accompany them. 'Why should you fellows have all the fun?'

The fire chief and one of his squad, armed with axes, led the way in through what was left of the front door. The walls of the house still stood, but the roof had been destroyed and daylight streamed in through blackened beams. All about them the skeleton of the house stood smoking. The heat was intense.

Following Madden's directions they picked their way through the debris-strewn hallway to the studio.

The hulk of the Bentley, standing in the middle of the ruined room, was hidden by rafters from the collapsed ceiling and chunks of masonry that gave off heat like live coals. The acrid smell of smoke was mingled with other odours.

The two firemen attacked the heap with their axes, hauling pieces of carbonized wood and stone off the car. First the stove-in bonnet was uncovered, then the iron frame of the windscreen. Working quickly, they cleared the driver's area and stood back.

A dreadful sight was revealed. Sitting at the steering-wheel — seemingly welded to it — was a charred human figure. White bone gleamed through blackened flesh. Empty eye sockets stared. The teeth were bared in a lipless grin.

'My God!' Sinclair murmured. He'd never seen anything like it.

Madden, to whom such apparitions were all too familiar, looked away.

Only Mulrooney seemed undisturbed. He nodded with evident satisfaction.

'Now there's a sight to gladden the eye!'

The road to Mrs Aylward's house ran through orchards and winding hedgerows. Little more than a mile from Knowlton, both house and stables were invisible from the lane, hidden behind a high privet hedge and surrounded by fields and orchards.

'Pike must have liked it here,' Bennett commented, as a policeman waved them through the front gate on Friday morning. 'No prying eyes.' He had come down from London by train. Sinclair had met him at Folkestone station and together they had driven out to Knowlton.

When he saw the blackened ruin the deputy shook his head. As their car drew up in front of the house a booted figure in blue overalls came out on to the front steps carrying a bucket of charred debris.

'We couldn't start searching the place until late yesterday,' Sinclair explained to him. 'So far we've found Pike's rifle and razor. They were both in the boot of the car. The razor was wrapped in some clothing. There's no doubt he was about to skip. My feeling is we got here in the nick of time.'

'A pity about the house.' Bennett gazed about him.

They were out of the car, standing in the driveway. A police van was parked nearby.

'Yes, but I don't believe we could have handled it any other way,' the chief inspector declared. Pale and exhausted though he looked, Bennett was pleased to see that his customary poise and confidence had returned. 'Both Madden and I were afraid he might leave, and we were right. He would have got rid of the car once he'd escaped. Then we'd have been back to searching for him. And who knows what he might not have done in the meantime?'

His look challenged the deputy, who conceded with a nod and a smile. 'I'm not criticizing you, Chief Inspector. I'm just thinking of Mrs Aylward. She's lost her home, poor woman.'

'And been frightened out of her wits, into the bargain,' Sinclair agreed grimly. 'But I couldn't telephone her and warn her we were coming. Chances are, she would have panicked, and Pike would have picked that up in the blink of an eyelid.'

'Have you spoken to her yet?'

'Only briefly, sir, on doctor's advice. I saw her at the hospital in Folkestone. She's confirmed the visits to Highfield and Stonehill — she did paintings for both families. Bentham was different. She'd had an earlier portrait commission in the district and she'd noticed a house near the village worth painting. Bentham Court — Madden remembers seeing it from the road when he went there. A Palladian gem, to quote the lady. She got permission from the owners to spend the day there. She thinks she remembers Pike going off to look for petrol. He must have seen Mrs Reynolds in the village and followed her home. Got the lie of the land.'

'How long had he worked for her?'

'About a year. He came with no references, but she gave him a month's trial and he proved satisfactory.

She was thinking of dismissing him, though. She said she found him "a heavy presence".' The chief inspector raised a droll eyebrow. 'That's a gem in its own right.

I'm saving it for my memoirs.'

He led Bennett around the house to the ruins of the conservatory and showed him the hole in the wall where the Bentley had lodged. 'I had it carted away to Folkestone this morning. We removed the body yesterday.

That was a nasty business.'

'Where is it now?'

'With the pathologist in Folkestone. I didn't think it worthwhile dragging Ransom down here. There's little enough either of them can do. Not with what's left.'

They walked on through the stone-pillared gateway into the yard. Sinclair pointed across the heap of blackened rubble that marked the place where the stables had stood.

'We found his motorcycle hidden at the bottom of that field. There was a bag in the sidecar with Mrs Troy's silver in it. I can't believe he meant to leave it there. Perhaps he hadn't had time to collect it before we arrived.

'Madden's over at Rudd's Cross today completing inquiries there. We've pieced that part of the story together pretty well. The Folkestone police are searching the area for Biggs's body. It should be close by.

Pike had a lot to do that night. He couldn't have gone far with it.'

They walked back to the car.

'The commissioner wants a full report,' Bennett said. 'And we'll have to decide how much to release to the press. They're clamouring for details.'

That morning's papers had carried the news of Pike's death. A bald statement issued by Scotland Yard had said the police were no longer seeking anyone in connection with the murders at Melling Lodge and Croft Manor.

'Will there be many loose ends?'

'Enough.' Sinclair put on a long face. 'How did Pike fake his death? How did he get back from France? How did he live before he found a job with Mrs Aylward? Has he done things we don't know about?' He gave Bennett a dark look. 'As to his background, I'm hoping that file from the Nottingham police will be of help. It's sitting on my desk in London. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. But there are some things we'll never know.

What set him off? Why did he start killing? And why those particular women?' The chief inspector shook his head with a sigh. 'Questions, nothing but questions. And no clear answers. It's the sort of thing Socrates used to enjoy, they tell me. But Socrates wasn't a policeman.'

After a brief visit to Folkestone central police station to thank Chief Inspector Mulrooney for his assistance Bennett caught an early-afternoon train back to London.

He had named the following Wednesday as the day on which Sinclair would present his report to the commissioner.

'That should give us enough time to wrap things up, sir. I'll leave tomorrow, but I'm going to Stonehill first. We need an account from the Merricks for the record of Mrs Aylward's visit and whether either of them recalls seeing Pike on that occasion. Chief Inspector Derry, from Maidstone, is doing the same at Bentham for us. I'll speak to him over the weekend.'

'What about Madden?' the deputy asked.

'He'll return to London tomorrow afternoon and go down to Highfield on Sunday.'

'Sunday!' Bennett was moved to protest. 'For heaven's sake, the man's been working non-stop.

Hasn't he earned at least one day off?'

'He has indeed, sir,' Sinclair replied solemnly. 'And I only wish you could persuade him of it.'

'Ah! I see! It's his idea?'

'He insists on going himself. But that's Inspector Madden all over. A slave to his sense of duty.'

Quick-witted though he was, Bennett realized he'd missed something in this last exchange. But he could deduce no more from the chief inspector's pious demeanour as they shook hands than that, in some fashion, his leg had just been well pulled.

Sinclair left early the following day for Stonehill.

Madden's departure for London was delayed till the afternoon. Sergeant Booth accompanied him to the station. They stopped off at the hospital on the way to inquire after Constable Styles and were directed to one of the wards. Billy was sitting up in bed in hospital pyjamas with his hands bandaged and his face white with cream. He appealed to Madden, 'There's nothing wrong with me, sir. Can't you get me discharged?'

'It's out of my hands, I'm afraid. I've already asked.

They're keeping you in till Monday.'

Even Madden's smile, rare thing that it was, couldn't lighten the young man's dejection. Nor was he cheered a few minutes later when a nurse arrived with a glass jar of violets, which she placed on his bedside table.

'From the young lady in Ward B,' she said to Billy, with a simper.

'What's this, then?' Booth's brown eyes twinkled.

'Miss Bridgewater's the young woman the constable saved from the fire,' the nurse explained. 'She's hoping he'll go and visit her in her ward so she can thank him in person.'

'Constable!' Madden's frown was back.

'Do I have to, sir?'

'You've just said there's nothing wrong with you.'

Billy looked to Booth for support, but found none.

'Make the most of it, lad,' was the only advice received from that quarter. 'When it comes to the fair sex, you're never a hero for long.'

Mrs Aylward's Bentley was well remembered in Highfield, the lady less so, though both Alf Birney and his daughter recalled her coming into the shop to make a purchase.

'Late April it was,' Stackpole told Madden. 'May Birney remembers her buying a bunch of daffodils and asking the way to Melling Lodge.'

The car had been parked in the street outside the shop and it was there that Miss Birney had had her glimpse of Pike.

'She saw him standing in the road beside the car, side-on, just like she told us. He was wearing his chauffeur's cap. It's all come back to her now, she says.'

The inspector had arrived to find his work mostly done. Stackpole had taken fresh statements from the Birneys. He had them in his tunic pocket, ready for Madden's perusal.

'Oh, and I have a message for you from Dr Black well, sir,' the constable added, with an unusually wooden expression. 'She says she'll be back in her surgery by three.'

'Thank you, Will,' Madden replied, equally stiff faced.

He had telephoned Helen the night before and discovered she was committed to accompanying her father to a luncheon party in Farnham that Sunday.

'But I'll drop him at the house when we get back and meet you in the village. Keep an eye out for my car.

My darling, I long to see you.'

Madden, tongue-tied as always, could only murmur that he loved her, but that seemed enough.

Stackpole had been waiting on the station platform to greet him. The tall constable's smile had warmed the grey autumn day. 'It's good to have you back, sir.

The village is a different place since we heard the news. There are some people waiting to shake your hand, I can tell you.'

A good many of them seemed to have gathered at the Rose and Crown, where Stackpole suggested they look in for a bite of lunch. Having wrung at least a dozen palms, Madden sought refuge in the familiar surroundings of the snug bar, which Mr Poole, the landlord, had kept private for them. While the constable ordered beer and sandwiches, he settled down to read the Birneys' statements.

'It shook me when I realized how long ago it was he first came here.' Stackpole had removed his helmet.

A pint of amber bitter nestled in his big hand. 'Late April, according to Miss Birney. He must have kept coming back after that.'

Madden grunted. He was still busy reading.

'From May to the end of July — that's three months.

What was he doing up there in the woods? Building a dugout, I know, but after that…?'

The inspector had gone silent. Stackpole stole a glance at him. 'What is it, sir?'

Madden's forefinger rested on a line in the statement he was reading. 'Dr Blackwell…?' A frown creased his forehead.

The constable looked over his shoulder. 'That's May's statement, is it? Yes, she remembers the doctor being in the shop that morning. It was just before Mrs Aylward came in. That was when she noticed Pike outside.'

'"I saw him through the shop window. He was standing looking back up the street, staring hard at something. He just stood there like a statue 'Yes, sir?' Stackpole still hadn't grasped the inspector's point.

'Looking at what, Will? Staring at whom}'

Understanding dawned slowly in the constable's eyes. 'Christ!' he said. He'd turned pale.

'They resembled each other, didn't they? She told me once people used to take them for sisters.' Madden sat with his head bowed. 'Pike saw her first, Will.

Before he ever set eyes on Lucy Fletcher.'

The inspector raised his eyes. 'Was that why he was up in the woods for so long? Couldn't he make up his mind between them? We've always wondered why he came back. He had his bag with him, so we thought he'd come to collect something. But that wasn't it. He was bringing what he needed.'

His companion reached over and pressed his arm.

'Don't, sir,' Stackpole urged him. 'Put it from your mind. It's over now.'

Madden's face was stricken. 'This stays between us, Will,' he said quietly. He fastened his gaze on the constable. 'Not a word to Dr Blackwell about it. Never! Do you hear me?"

They found Tom Cooper, the Fletchers' gardener, trimming the hedge in front of his own cottage at the end of a lane off the paved main road. He took off his cracked leather gloves to shake the inspector's hand. 'I was that pleased to hear he was dead, sir, though I wish you'd caught him. I was hoping to see the bastard swing.'

Cooper told them something they hadn't known before. Mrs Aylward had taken two days to complete the painting and had spent the intervening night in a hotel in Guildford.

'I only saw the chauffeur the first day, when they arrived. He took the lady's things from the car into the hall. Mrs Fletcher showed him where to put them.

Then he parked the car in the drive. Next time I came by it was empty, and I didn't see him again. I thought he must have gone into the village.'

'That's where he went,' Madden said later, as they walked back up the lane. He nodded behind them towards the woods of Upton Hanger, bright with the colours of autumn. The morning mist was gathering again, starting to weave silvery threads among the tips of the Scotch pines lining the crest. 'He knew by then he'd be coming back. He was scouting out a site for his dugout."

They reached the corner. Looking up the road, the inspector caught sight of the small red two-seater coming towards them. He raised his arm. Stackpole saw the light in his eyes and grinned under his helmet She drew up beside them. 'Hullo, you two.' Her deep blue glance rested on Madden. 'I've just bumped into young Jem Roker. He was looking for me. His father's fallen off a haystack and broken his arm. I'll have to go out there.' She smiled into his eyes. 'A doctor's life 'Will you be long?' he asked anxiously.

'Not more than an hour. But I've got to stop in at the surgery first. Come along there for a moment.'

They followed the car as it turned off the road on to the track that circled the green. The door of the doctor's waiting-room was ajar when they got there.

Stackpole hung back.

'I'll wait for you here, sir.' He studied the grey sky as though it held some feature of interest.

Madden went inside and found Helen in her office.

She came from behind her desk into his arms. He held her to him, wordless. The thought of the peril that had come so close to her sent a shudder through him he couldn't control.

'John, what is it?'

'No… nothing… I'm just…' He abandoned all hope of words and clung to her.

She kissed him. 'Those poor people at Stonehill…

I lay awake all night trying to imagine what you must be doing… I wanted you with me, I don't want you going away any more He tightened his hold on her and they kissed again.

'I've something to show you,' she said. She led him back to the desk and picked up an envelope that was lying there. 'This is from Dr Mackay in Edinburgh.

She says Sophy has started talking about her mother again. Still nothing about that night, but it won't be long, Dr Mackay thinks.' Helen took out a folded sheet of paper from the envelope and handed it to him. 'This is something Sophy did. Dr Mackay thought I'd like to see it.'

Madden smoothed out the paper in his hands. It bore a child's drawing done in crayon of a lake with mountains in the background. Yellow-billed ducks floated on the blue water. Giant birds flapped overhead.

'What are those?' he asked, pointing.

Helen frowned. 'Highland cattle?' she hazarded.

Madden laughed. 'Of course.'

'It's a happy picture, don't you think?'

'Yes, I do.' He took her in his arms again. They stood unmoving for several moments. Then she spoke.

'Let's get married soon,' she whispered. 'Let's not wait. There's so little time.'

'Time…?' He didn't understand her, and drew back a little to study her face. 'We've all the time in the world now.'

'No, it's going, it's passing every second, can't you feel it?' Laughing, she challenged him with her eyes.

'Marry me now, John Madden.'

He returned her straight gaze, unblinking. 'By God, I will!' he vowed.

Stackpole was waiting on the green a little way from where the Wolseley was parked. Madden put the doctor's bag on the passenger seat besides the splints and bandages that Helen had brought out from the surgery. She got into the car.

'When you've finished go straight to the house.

Father's spending the afternoon in Farnham, so you won't find anyone there. But Molly will be pleased to see you. Just let yourself in. The front door's not locked.' She held his gaze for a moment. 'I'll be back as soon as I can.'

With a wave to the constable, she drove off.

Their last call of the afternoon was on the Fletchers' cook, Ann Dunn, who lived on the opposite side of the green. She, too, remembered Mrs Aylward's visit to Melling Lodge. 'When lunch was ready in the kitchen, I sent for the chauffeur, but he wasn't in the car. We thought he must have gone to the pub.'

Mrs Dunn brushed a lock of hair from her forehead with a flour-dusted arm. She had found new employment with the village baker. The pleasant smell of newly baked bread filled the small cottage. 'I've just remembered now. It was poor Sally Pepper I sent out to look for him.'

The afternoon light was beginning to fade as they recrossed the green. Glancing at the inspector, Stack pole saw his eyes filmed over with thought and he smiled to himself again. The smoke of autumn fires hung in the still air. When they reached the constable's cottage they found Mrs Stackpole herself, hair bound up in a yellow scarf, busily raking dead leaves into a bonfire.

'Here I am, Will Stackpole, doing your work as usual." She smiled a greeting to Madden. 'There was a call from Oakley while you were gone. Dick Wright says he's lost another pair of chickens. And they pinched some food from his kitchen, too. He still says it's gypsies.'

'Gypsies!' Stackpole snorted with derision. 'Whenever anything's lifted hereabouts, it's always the gypsies.'

Mention of Oakley jogged the inspector's memory.

'What became of our friend Wellings?' he asked. 'Did you charge him in the end?'

'Never had a chance to, sir.' Stackpole discarded his helmet and began to unbutton his tunic. 'He did a midnight flit. Packed up and slipped away without a word. It hardly seemed worth the trouble to try to get him back. The pub's been shut ever since.'

Madden caught sight of a curly head framed in an upstairs window of the cottage. 'Hullo, Amy,' he said.

Mrs Stackpole spun round. 'What are you doing there, young lady? Get back to bed this instant!'

The child's head vanished.

'Amy's down with the measles,' her mother explained. 'Dr Blackwell said she'd look in later on her way home.'

Stackpole busied himself with the rake. 'Perhaps you'd like to wait here for her, sir,' he said casually.

'No, I don't think so, Will.' The inspector adjusted his hat. 'I'll be on my way.' "You're leaving now?' The constable looked aghast 'Not this moment.'

'Then we'll be seeing you again?'

'I shouldn't be surprised.'

Turning at the garden gate he was in time to see Mrs Stackpole jab an elbow into her husband's ribs.

Grinning, he raised an arm in farewell.

Thick grey clouds hung close to the earth, brushing the tops of the tall beech trees. Away to his left the woods of Upton Hanger were no more than a dark shadow in the deepening dusk. Madden walked down the lane in a cocoon of mist-wrapped silence, buoyant with a happiness that sent his spirits soaring and lightened his step on the damp ground underfoot.

Pausing at the locked gates of Melling Lodge, he looked down the elm-lined drive, but it was already too dark to see the house. He recalled the day he had driven through the gates in Lord Stratton's Rolls Royce, and all that had happened since.

But as he walked on his mood changed. The euphoria began to drain away and was replaced by a low current of unease, which at first he attributed to the dank air and gathering mist, reminding him, as they did, of freezing nights spent in no man's land, waiting to ambush an enemy patrol.

At the same time he was aware of a nagging voice at the back of his mind. Madden was gifted with unusual powers of retrieval; it was one of his strengths as a detective; there was little he heard that he forgot.

But his attention had strayed from his work that afternoon. His thoughts had wandered. He had the uncomfortable feeling of having missed something important. Of having heard, but not listened.

The lane narrowed, the hedgerows drawing in on either side. He came to where the road began a long turn to the right. Ahead of him was the footpath that ran through the spur of woods to the side gate of the garden; the path Will Stackpole had shown him on his first visit.

Hesitating for a second, he decided to stay on the paved road, reasoning that Helen might catch up with him in her car, and after five minutes came to the main gates, which were open. Beyond them, the drive stretched away like a dark tunnel.

He started down the avenue of limes, dead leaves rustling beneath his feet. The trees on either side still bore a heavy burden of autumn foliage and he spied a faint gleam of gold in the blackness overhead. At the end of the tunnel the white shape of the house showed dimly, the outline blurred and softened by the thickening mist.

Madden stopped.

He had heard a noise in the bushes flanking the line of trees. A rustle louder than the whisper of leaves beneath his feet.

'Molly, is that you? Here, girl!' He called to the dog.

The noise ceased at once. The inspector stood unmoving in a darkness dense with silver mist. Utter silence had fallen all around him. Then he felt something brush his cheek and he lifted his hand quickly- A leaf, spiralling down from the branches above, came to rest on his shoulder.

He heard the rustle again, quick and furtive, and this time recognized the sound as that of a small, scurrying animal. Prey or predator, he could not tell, but it was gone in a moment.

His anxiety had not abated and he began to comb his memory, running through the events of the afternoon, the conversations he had held, trying to track down the errant phrase that lurked like a fugitive at the back of his mind, refusing to show itself.

Was it something Stackpole had said?

He reached the end of the drive and crossed the short expanse of gravel in front of the house. The portico light was out, but the door was unlocked, as promised, and he went inside, switching on the light in the entrance hall. The way to the drawing-room led through the hall and across a passage and he went there without pausing.

The drawing-room was in darkness, but there was enough light coming from the hall to make out the various table lamps. As he began to switch them on, a reflection of the room sprang up in the wide bow window overlooking the terrace where the curtains had not been drawn. He caught sight of his own figure in the gold-framed mirror above the mantelpiece and frowned, remembering.

Not the constable. His wife!

It was something Mrs Stackpole had said.

Madden opened the door to the terrace and stepped outside. The mist was thicker on this side of the house, covering the lawn and cloaking the orchard at the foot of the garden.

He whistled and called out the dog's name twice: 'Molly! Molly!'

No answering yelp came from the silvered blackness.

Mist lapped at the flagstoned terrace.

The hairs on the back of Madden's neck rose. Like other long-term survivors of the trenches he had developed an instinct for danger that some had called a sixth sense but was, in fact, a learned reaction to small events and anomalies: a flicker of light in the depths of no man's land; the thrum of a barbed-wire strand in the darkness.

To things that were not as they should be.

He whistled again, and this time he heard a faint whine. The noise came from close at hand — near the foot of the terrace steps, which were hidden in mist but overlapping it came another sound from behind him: the high-pitched note of the Wolseley's engine approaching down the drive towards the house.

'Dick Wright says he's lost another pair of chickens. And they pinched some food from his kitchen, too.'

Madden whirled and made for the door, slamming and locking it behind him, and then sprinted across the drawing-room, running for the hallway and the front door.

Racing to head her off.

Before he had crossed the room he heard the pounding of footsteps on the terrace and turned to see his own reflection in the bow window shatter as a body came hurtling through it, smashing wood and glass, landing on the floor beyond the window-sill and then driving onwards towards him without a pause. He had time only to register the pale, blood-streaked face and the long pole that Pike held crossways in front of his body like a barrier before the man was on him!

Too late the inspector saw the gleam of the bayonet tipping the pole. He tried to fling himself to one side, but Pike followed the movement, and as Madden staggered backwards he made a darting, snakelike thrust, driving the blade deep into the inspector's body, then wrenching it out with a savage turn of his wrist.

Madden collapsed to his knees with a groan and toppled over. He lay unmoving.

Leaving her car's motor running, Helen Blackwell hurried into the house. As she ran through the lighted hallway she called to Madden: 'John, they want you back in London. That man who was burned wasn't Pike. He's not dead-'

She came into the drawing-room and stopped. Her eyes went from the smashed window to Madden's body on the floor, seeing both in the same instant. For the space of a heartbeat she stood rooted. Paralysed by shock. Then, as she opened her mouth to cry out, a hand was clamped across her lips from behind and her arms were pinned to her side. Hot breath blasted in her ear; bristles tore at her neck.

She knew who it was — who it must be. The knowledge came in a flash and, though terror-stricken, she fought back at once, throwing her body from side to side, trying to unbalance her assailant. Strong as he was she sensed weakness in him. His hoarse breathing bore a note of exhaustion. Mingled with the incoherent growling that came from his lips she heard grunts of pain.

Reeling about the room, crashing into furniture, sending stools and side tables spinning, they came before the mirror over the fireplace and Helen caught a glimpse of her attacker behind her. She saw a bloodstained forehead and lips drawn back over snarling teeth. She also saw a dark stain on the upper arm of his khaki shirt. Wrenching a hand free from his clawing grip she punched her knuckles into the mark with all her strength.

Pike let out a roar of pain and released her. But before she could react, a blow from behind sent her stumbling into the fireplace where her forehead struck the projecting ledge of the mantelpiece and she fell back, stunned, on the hearth rug, blood flowing from a deep cut above her eye.

Snarling with pain, Pike seized her under the armpits and dragged her inert form over to the sofa. He was moaning, half crying, muttering the same words over and over: 'Sadie… oh, Sadie Blood from his forehead dripped on to her blouse.

He pulled her hair from under her body, where it was trapped, and spread it about her shoulders.

'Oh, Sadie He ripped the buttons of her blouse, then reached down to drag up her skirt. As he pulled it above her knees he was caught from behind by his shirt and lifted and spun around. A tremendous blow to the side of his jaw sent him staggering backwards and he tripped over one of the tumbled stools and fell flat on his back.

'You murdering swine!'

Stackpole stood over him in his shirtsleeves. As Pike tried to clamber to his feet, grasping at the back of an armchair, the constable struck him another clubbing blow, knocking him face down on the carpet.

'Bastard!'

He grasped the back of Pike's shirt in one hand and his leather belt in the other and hauled him up on to his hands and knees. As the dazed man flailed about, trying to find his bearings, Stackpole ran him across the floor and pitched him head first into a glass fronted cabinet. Glass and china shattered, spilling on to the carpet. Pike's head emerged from the cabinet dripping with blood. The constable threw his body aside.

Breathing heavily, his face suffused with rage, he looked about him. Dr Blackwell was stirring on the sofa, raising her head, blinking blood from her eye- 'Look out!'

Her cry made him turn quickly and he saw Pike on the floor behind him gripping a long pole with both hands. His strike was so swift Stackpole had no chance to avoid it. The tip of the bayonet caught the constable in the thigh and he stumbled to one side and fell over a chair, landing heavily on his back.

Dazed, he saw Pike, his bloodied face twisted with pain, hauling himself to his feet. He was leaning on the pole, pushing himself upright, when all of a sudden the prop was snatched from his hands and he crashed to the floor again. The figure of Madden rose to his knees behind him. He held the pole in his hands. The inspector's front was drenched in blood.

His face was ghastly pale.

Pike lay groaning on his back. He seemed to have come to the end of his strength. As Stackpole clambered up he saw that Madden, too, was on his feet.

The inspector stood swaying over the man stretched out on the floor. He lifted the bayonet-tipped pole in unsteady hands.

'Do it, sir!' Stackpole urged him hoarsely. 'Kill him! Send the bastard to hell!'

'John!' Dr Blackwell called to him from the sofa.

Her voice was pleading.

Madden held the point of the blade an inch from Pike's chest. The brown eyes met his through a mask of blood. They showed no emotion.

'Amos Pike!' Madden's voice was faint. 'I'm placing you under arrest.'

The eyes flared. The bloody face contorted. Before the inspector could stop him Pike reached up and seized the pole from his failing grip. With a single thrust he drove the point downwards into his own chest, impaling his body to the floor. Blood fountained from his lips. His body gave a last convulsive heave and was still.

Madden sank to his knees and fell sideways to the floor.

'John…' Helen Blackwell scrambled across the floor to his side. 'My darling…' She knelt beside him, tearing at his blood-soaked shirt.

Stackpole hobbled towards them. A sudden drumming on the floor made him check. Pike's heels beat a spasmodic tattoo on the carpet. The constable plucked the bayonet-tipped pole from his chest. He saw it was a roughly trimmed sapling. The long sword bayonet had been wired to one end. He raised it, prepared to strike again. The drumming ceased.

'Is he dead?' Dr Blackwell didn't look up.

'Dead as he'll ever be.'

'Will, go to the phone. Ring Guildford hospital.

They must send an ambulance with a nurse right away. Immediately. When you've done that, fetch my bag from the car. Hurry!'

The constable was already on the move, half limping, half running. When he returned a few minutes later he found her in the same position, kneeling beside the inspector, flicking blood angrily from her eye, pressing a pad of silk that must have come from her underclothing to Madden's side.

'Open my bag. You'll find a dressing inside.'

Stackpole did as he was bid. She quickly replaced the makeshift pad. Then she took his hand in hers and held it firmly on the surgical dressing.

'Keep it like that. Don't press too hard. I have to fetch a bandage from upstairs. I'll only be a moment.'

Shocked by the sight of Madden's bloody torso and ashen face, Stackpole couldn't check the words that came to his lips: 'Will he… is he going to…?'

'No!' she said fiercely. 'He's not going to die, do you hear me?' She turned her pale, bloodstained face to his. 'We're going to keep him alive. You and I.'

Barely aware of the pain from his injured leg, the constable knelt beside Madden's body, holding his hand steady on the dressing. The patter of running footsteps sounded overhead. He let his gaze wander about the room. Despite the shambles that met his eye — Pike's body lying stark not a foot away, the smashed glass and furniture all around — and notwithstanding the inspector's dreadful pallor, he felt strangely comforted.

He had known her for many years, since childhood indeed, and long since learned to trust her word and judgement.

'He had Biggs's body in the car with him,' the chief inspector explained. 'Somehow he managed to set it behind the steering-wheel, though that can't have been easy. He was hurt himself, and the room was full of smoke. He was on the point of leaving when we arrived, you know, getting ready to make a run for it. Perhaps he thought it a good idea to take the body with him and bury it in some place where it wouldn't be found. That way he'd keep us guessing.

Was it Biggs who had stolen the silver? Was Carver really Pike?'

Dr Blackwell's steady glance told Sinclair she was paying close heed to what he was telling her.

'God knows how he slipped away. We had the place surrounded, but the men were running this way and that, and the stables were on fire, too. It was all confusion. My guess is he went out through the kitchen and across the stableyard.

'But how he survived at all is the real mystery. He drove flat out into the side of the house. The pathologist who examined his body found three cracked ribs and injuries to his head. Plus he had a revolver bullet in his arm. The man had incredible strength and endurance.'

How did he get to Highfield?" Dr Blackwell's gaze shifted to the white-painted bedstead on the other side of the hospital room. Sinclair noted that her eyes seldom left Madden for long. The inspector was deeply asleep.

'A farmer who lived a few miles from Mrs Aylward's house reported his car stolen during the night. It was found abandoned in a wood near Godalming ten days ago. He must have come the rest of the way on foot.

Amazing strength. Amazing perseverance.'

'Will Stackpole says he was stealing food over on the Oakley side of the hanger. A farmer there reported some minor thefts.' Dr Blackwell's gaze returned to the chief inspector.

'He went back to his old dugout,' Sinclair affirmed.

'He couldn't reconstruct it, he hadn't the tools. All he had was his bayonet. But he dug a hole in the loose soil. More of an animal's burrow, really. I wonder how human he was at the end.'

He regretted his words at once and looked at her quickly to gauge their effect. He could only imagine how it might feel to have been the object of so twisted and murderous a passion. But if the doctor was disturbed by the thought she gave no sign of it. 'I realized afterwards he must have come back for me. I have the same kind of looks as Lucy Fletcher. He could have watched us both from the ridge. But what about the others? Mrs Reynolds and Mrs Merrick?'

She seemed genuinely curious.

'They were fair-haired, like you.' And good-looking, he almost added, but didn't wish to sound over familiar. Dr Blackwell's manner towards him had been cool. Remembering her smile from their previous encounters at Highfield, he wondered if he would see it today.

'We were his type, then. One look and he was smitten. The fatal glance. Like Tristan and Iseult.' She spoke with bitter irony. Her gaze went again to the still figure in the bed.

'His mother had the same colouring.'

'His mother? Her eye kindled with renewed interest.

'Yes, we know quite a lot about his past now. Let me finish telling you about the body first.'

Sinclair was starting to enjoy their conversation, which hadn't seemed likely at first. During his frequent visits to Guildford and Highfield over the past fortnight he had called in at the hospital several times, only to find Madden asleep or sedated. On his last visit, a few days before, he had seen Dr Blackwell in her clothes and white doctor's jacket lying stretched out on the only other bed the ward contained, and had crept from the room.

That afternoon he had come on her sitting in a chair beside the inspector's bed with his hand resting in hers on the white counterpane. Madden's eyes were shut. The doctor, too, was nodding, but she started awake as he entered and stood up at once, turning to face him. Sinclair was put in mind of a lioness guarding her wounded mate and he approached the bedside cautiously.

'He's asleep. You're not to wake him."

Her thick fair hair was tied back tightly in a ribbon, her face pale above the white doctor's coat. The cut over her eye showed an ugly red scab. He saw she had made no attempt to cover it with powder.

Sinclair was shocked by his colleague's appearance.

The inspector's sunken cheeks and chalky skin gave his pallid features the aspect of a death's head.

Dr Blackwell noticed his reaction. 'I know he looks terrible,' she said. 'But he's getting better. It was mainly the loss of blood, the shock. I wasn't sure at first… I didn't know whether we could save him.

But he's very strong…" She touched Madden's cheek and then kissed his forehead. It was as though she needed to reassure herself of his physical presence.

'You don't know how strong,' she burst out, anger sharpening her tone.

The chief inspector rather thought he did, but wasn't disposed to argue the point.

'We've no idea, you or I, what men like him suffered in the war, what they endured. To see him like this now..!' Her voice broke.

He understood then where her anger came from.

He saw that she held him and the whole unsuffering world guilty of indifference to the inspector's long Calvary. And he accepted the justice of this injustice humbly and in silence.

On the point of leaving, he had mentioned his disappointment at not finding Madden awake. 'We've got most of the answers now. John would be interested to hear them.'

'Then why not tell me?' she had suggested coolly.

It afforded the chief inspector some amusement on his train journey back to London later to reflect that it hadn't even occurred to him to demur.

They had taken their chairs over to the window, away from the sickbed. A brisk wind was blowing outside. Golden leaves from the chestnuts lining the street batted against the window-panes. The pale autumn sunshine brought out the shadows beneath Helen Blackwell's eyes.

Now it had shifted and lay on the polished linoleum at their feet, slowly lengthening and moving across the floor towards the sleeping figure in the white bed.

'The Folkestone pathologist naturally examined the body we retrieved from the car. It was badly disfigured.

There was little he could learn from it. But one thing bothered him. Army records gave Pike's height as a touch over six feet and his physique as muscular.

The body seemed about two inches shorter. I say "seemed" because it was so severely burned the flesh had shrivelled, altering its natural size and, besides, it was fixed in a sitting position, making it difficult to measure accurately.'

'And there was no possibility of checking for distinguishing marks.' The doctor's attention was fully engaged.

'None. But in the course of his examination the pathologist had found something interesting. A key ring that must have been in the pocket of the man's clothing and which had adhered to the flesh of his leg.

He gave it to the Folkestone police who tested the keys on the padlocks Pike had used to lock the shed where he kept his motorcycle and found they didn't fit. However, it was equally possible they were for locks at Mrs Aylward's house or in the stables, and there was no way of checking those.

'Then one of the detectives had a fresh idea. He took a good look at the key ring itself. It was made with a shilling piece — a hole had been drilled in the coin — and he remembered that was something men returning from the war had done. The shilling was the King's shilling they were given on enlistment and they kept it as a memento.

'Now Pike had certainly served in the war, but he'd enlisted as a professional soldier years before. Even supposing he still had his shilling, it seemed unlikely to the detective that a man like Amos Pike would have done anything so sentimental as to turn it into a key ring.' The chief inspector smiled approvingly.

'That's what I call good detective work. Seeing past the evidence. He's a man called Booth. Fine copper.

He'd already helped us a great deal.'

'The key ring belonged to Biggs?' Dr Blackwell asked.

'It did. Booth learned that from a friend of his, but not until lunch-time on Sunday. By then I was returning myself from Stonehill by train. I got to the Yard in the late afternoon, found Booth's message waiting for me and tried to ring John in Highfield right away.'

'I was at the constable's cottage when you rang,' Dr Blackwell said. Sinclair already knew that — he had read her statement to the Guildford police. But he let her speak. 'We tried to ring John at my house, but there was no reply, so we decided to go over and fetch him. Pike must have been waiting outside in the garden when John switched the lights on. We found the body of our dog near the terrace.'

'Thank God Stackpole was with you,' Sinclair observed. 'But I wondered why he didn't go into the house when you did? Why he stayed outside?'

'He was opening up the dicky,' she explained. 'He was going to have to sit there on the way to the station. Poor Will, it's a terrible squeeze for him.' She looked away. 'We owe him our lives, John and I. You won't forget that, will you?'

The chief inspector assured her that indeed he would not.

'You mentioned Pike's mother…' Dr Blackwell resettled herself. "I read in the paper his father murdered her and was hanged for it.' "The press have got on to that," Sinclair acknowledged.

He'd been half hoping she'd forgotten his dropped remark. 'They're digging around for the rest.

I dare say it'll all come out in the end.'

He paused. His superiors at the Yard had decreed that some of the facts of the case should be kept from the general public. But he didn't believe the prohibition should apply to her.

'Ebenezer Pike confessed to the killing. He said he'd found his wife in bed with another man. He made the admission in open court. The trial didn't last long. All the same, I was surprised when I read the police file to find no mention of the man caught with Mrs Pike. Not even his name. The implication seemed to be that he'd run off and not been found.'

Dr Blackwell nodded, as though comprehending 'It was their son, wasn't it? That's who he found her with.'

The chief inspector gazed at her in admiration.

He'd made the same deduction himself, though not quite so quickly.

'Yes, his father acknowledged it. But only on condition it wasn't included in his confession. He was adamant on that point, and in the end they had to take what he gave them. I spoke to an inspector who'd worked on the case. He said the boy had been found in the bedroom covered with blood, sitting crouched in a corner. He was naked, like his mother. She was stretched over the bed with her hair hanging down and her throat cut. It was one of those cases nobody likes to think about. The boy was packed off to live with his grandparents. A few years later he went for a soldier-'

Sinclair broke off to stare at the floor. When he lifted his eyes he found that the doctor's forehead was creased with a questioning frown. 'That's not the end of the story, is it?'

He wondered how she had guessed. Or was this an example of so-called women's intuition? A revolutionary thought occurred to the chief inspector: he wouldn't half mind having a Helen Blackwell or two working beside him on the force! 'I read through the file several times, but I wasn't satisfied. Don't ask me why.' He was prepared to claim a modicum of intuition on his own account. 'I took a day off and went down to Nottingham and then out to the village where the Pikes had lived. It's called Dorton. Their cottage was a mile or so away on a big estate where Ebenezer Pike was head gamekeeper. I spoke to the local bobby. The murder was before his time, but he put me on to his predecessor who was still living there, retired."

Sinclair smiled. 'George Hobbs is his name. He's over seventy, full of rheumatism, but bright as a button. He remembered the case only too well. In fact, he's still in a huff about it.' 'A huff? 'He was the first policeman on the scene. He knew all the characters involved. He was the one they ought to have turned to to get it sorted out. That was George Hobbs's opinion then, and nothing has occurred since to alter it!" Sinclair's smile broadened. 'A wonderful institution, the village bobby. I pray we never lose him.'

The quick glance Dr Blackwell directed towards Madden, who was muttering in his sleep, contrived to suggest impatience without expressing it.

'Hobbs was able to flesh out the picture for me.

First, about the Pikes as a family. Ebenezer, the father, was a cold, hard man, he said. He married the daughter of a local farmer, Sadie Grail was her name, and that was interesting. Grail was the name Pike used at the village where he kept his motorcycle. Now, according to Hobbs, Miss Grail was by way of being damaged goods. The young lady had already achieved a certain reputation in the countryside and it seems that marriage by no means curtailed her activities.'

The chief inspector caught Helen Blackwell's eye and shrugged. 'Anyway, they had a son together, Amos Pike, but Hobbs said he had no end of trouble from them. Pike gave his wife a beating on several occasions. She ran away twice. Once she assaulted him with a kitchen knife. Meanwhile, young Amos was growing up — and making of it all, who knows what? He was becoming a problem, too.'

'A problem?'

'According to Hobbs, strange things had been found in the woods, small animals sliced up, some hanging from branches. Two cats from the village were killed… in unpleasant ways. The finger pointed towards Amos Pike, but no one had caught him at it.

He was growing up fast, Hobbs said. A big lad, even before he was in his teens. And there was something else, something between him and his mother, that seems to have upset the constable.'

'What was that?' The doctor's eyes had taken on a distanced look.

'The way she treated him, even in public' Sinclair made a gesture of distaste. 'I can only tell you what Hobbs told me. She'd run her hands over him, he said.

"Not in a good way" — that was how he put it. He thought she did it partly to anger her husband. But there was more to it than that, he reckoned. He called her "a dangerous woman". One has to form one's own picture, I think.'

The chief inspector felt momentarily embarrassed until he realized that Dr Blackwell wasn't similarly affected.

'He was trying to say she corrupted the boy, it sounds.'

'I believe so. On the day in question, the first he heard of the murder was when a local woman called Mrs Babcock arrived at his house in a state of hysterics and said she'd found Sadie Pike lying dead in her cottage. Hobbs rushed out there. On the way he encountered Ebenezer Pike with a bloody shirt-front and carrying his razor. He told the constable he'd killed his wife. When Hobbs reached their cottage he found the scene I've described.

'He sent for outside help immediately and a pair of detectives came from Nottingham. They made it clear they didn't require his assistance, but he went about making his own inquiries none the less. He discovered Pike had been with another keeper near the cottage shortly before the murder. This man couldn't say what time that was, but he remembered hearing the church bell ringing while they were talking.'

Sinclair cocked his head. 'Hobbs was intrigued.

He'd heard the bell himself and wondered why it was ringing — it was the middle of the afternoon and there seemed no reason for it. So he asked the vicar, who told him he'd had a new clapper installed and was trying it out. Hobbs went in search of Mrs Babcock again. He asked her if she remembered hearing the bell. Apparently she did. After finding Mrs Pike's body she'd gone outside into the backyard and thrown up. It was while she was being sick that she heard the bell ringing. She remembered particularly because she thought someone was sounding the alarm.'

The chief inspector was silent, musing.

'Ebenezer couldn't have been in two places at once.

His wife was dead before he ever got to the cottage.

Hobbs tried to explain this to the two detectives, but they wouldn't listen. They had their murderer — he'd already confessed. They didn't want to hear about bells ringing in the middle of the afternoon and new clappers. Two slick city lads, Hobbs called them. They must have thought him a yokel.'

Dr Blackwell sat with bowed head. 'She took him to bed and he killed her.'

'So it would seem.' The chief inspector sighed.

They sat in silence for a while. Then Sinclair spoke again: 'Madden met someone recently. Perhaps he told you. A Viennese doctor. He talked about blood rituals and early sexual experience. How patterns could be fixed for life. Those animals found in the woods, the cats… I've been wondering…' He grimaced. 'Interesting man, that doctor. I wish I'd met him myself.

We need to know more about these matters.'

He glanced at Helen Blackwell. She sat unmoving.

'Well, the boy grew up, but you don't leave that sort of thing behind, do you? It must have been in his mind all these years. I don't say on his mind. There's no sign his conscience ever troubled Amos Pike.'

She broke her silence, speaking softly: 'Poor child.

Poor man. Poor damned creature.'

He looked at her, astonished. 'Aye, there's that, too,' he conceded, after a moment.

Dr Blackwell rose and crossed the room to Madden's side. She bent over him, adjusting the bedclothes, smoothing the hair on his forehead. She kissed him once more. Sinclair again had the sense of her needing to touch him, to feel the assurance of his live presence.

He saw it was time to leave.

As they walked down the corridor to the entrance, the linoleum squeaking beneath their shoes, he remembered a commission he'd been charged with.

'There are many people asking after John. But one in particular wants his name mentioned. Detective Constable Styles. The young man is most insistent. Would you pass that on? John will be glad to hear it.'

'I'll tell him,' she promised.

When they reached the entrance lobby he turned to take his leave, but saw she had something more to say.

She was looking to one side and frowning, weighing her words it appeared. Finally she faced him. 'I'd better tell you now. You're not likely to get him back.'

The chief inspector found himself temporarily speechless.

'I mean to keep him here with me if I can. Lord Stratton's selling off some of his farms. Most of the big landowners are. They've had to retrench since the war. I've been thinking we might buy one. John always wanted to go back to the land. He'd be happy living in the country.'

It seemed to Sinclair's addled brain that he'd lost a battle before he knew he was fighting one. 'What does he say? Have you spoken to him?' He cast around for ground on which to make a stand. 'He's a damn fine copper, I'll have you know.'

'He's more than that,' she said simply.

The chief inspector took a moment to reflect on this. Then he bowed, accepting the truth. 'Aye, I'll not deny it."

His reward was to see the smile he had waited for in vain all afternoon.

'Are you and he friends?' She looked at him with new eyes.

'I should hope so!' Angus Sinclair was affronted.

'Then I look forward to seeing you again, very often.' She shook his hand in her firm grip. 'Goodbye, Mr Sinclair.'

As he watched her walk away down the long corridor with urgent strides, the scowl faded from the chief inspector's face and a smile came to his lips.

He'd just had a thought that made him chuckle.

All evidence to the contrary, and present circumstances notwithstanding, his friend John Madden was a lucky dog!