River of Darkness

2

The forecourt was becoming crowded. A second police van was drawn up behind the first, and on the other side of the fountain a big Vauxhall tourer was parked against the creeper-clad wall. The numbers of uniformed police had thinned, but several plainclothes men were gathered in a group near the front steps. Searching for Stackpole, Madden found him beside a trestle table on which plates of sandwiches and a large tea urn rested.

'Courtesy of the village ladies, sir. Would you care for a mug?'

Thank you, not now. I have to see Dr Blackwell.

Could you tell me the way to her house?'

'I'll do better than that, sir.' Stackpole emptied his tin mug and wiped his moustache. 'I'm going there myself. Mr Boyce sent a man over this morning, but he needs to be relieved.'

'You could do with a break yourself, Constable.'

'Oh, I'm all right, sir,' said Stackpole, who was thinking the same applied to Madden. The inspector's dark eyes seemed to have sunk even deeper into his gaunt face. 'And at least I'll get my supper later, which is more than can be said for this lot.'

He led the way out of the forecourt and through a kitchen garden. A gate in the high brick wall opened on to a path that joined the road some distance past the entrance to Melling Lodge. Looking back, Madden saw that the crowd of villagers had dispersed. But now there were several cars parked outside the gates.

That'll be the London press,' he said.

The winding lane ran between hedgerows. The two men tramped along it side by side. After a while, Madden spoke: 'Just between us, Constable, we're not inclined to treat this as a robbery. It looks as though the killings were deliberate, even planned.'

Stackpole sucked in his breath. 'That's hard to believe, sir. If you'd known the family…'

'Well liked, were they?'

'More than that. Miss Lucy — Mrs Fletcher — she was born here, at Melling Lodge. The house would have gone to her brother, but he was killed in the war.

When she and the colonel settled at the Lodge, it must have seemed like coming home to her. And as for the village — well, you won't find a soul who wasn't that pleased to see her back.'

They had come to a belt of forest, a spur of woodland spilling down from the slopes of Upton Hanger. The road bore to the right, but Stackpole pointed out a narrow track in the woods ahead. 'That's a short cut to the doctor's house, sir. It'll save us ten minutes.'

The path, dark as a tunnel, ran beneath a dense canopy of beech and chestnut. The sun had almost set.

When they came to a garden gate, Madden paused.

He took out his cigarettes. 'Constable?'

'Thank you, sir.'

'I was told you were with Dr Blackwell when she found the child.' He struck a match for them.

'So I was.' Stackpole drew in a lungful of tobacco smoke. 'I'd already been looking for her when Dr Helen — Dr Blackwell — arrived, and we started searching again. It was the doctor who found her, under her bed in the nursery. Poor little girl. She'd squashed herself up against the wall and was lying there with her eyes shut. She must have heard us calling, but she didn't make a sound. When Dr Helen pulled her out she was stiff all over and there were dust balls in her hair. She wouldn't say a word. The doctor wrapped her in a bedspread and put her in her car and drove her straight here.'

'Have you known Dr Blackwell long?'

'Since we were children, sir.' The constable grinned.

'Miss Helen's from the village. Fine doctor, they say.'

'But not yours?'

'Well, no, sir.' Stackpole looked embarrassed. 'I mean, the wife and children go to her, but somehow it doesn't seem right, her being a woman… Besides there's her father, old Dr Collingwood. He still sees a few patients.'

They put out their cigarettes. Madden unlatched the garden gate. Close by, a huge weeping beech spread its branches over a corner of the lawn. He saw the house outlined against the darkening sky. Like Melling Lodge, it faced the woods of Upton Hanger, deep and mysterious at this hour. The same stream they had crossed earlier that day divided the ridge from an orchard at the bottom of the garden, which was bounded by a low stone wall.

They walked up the sloping lawn to the house where the curtains remained undrawn on a wide bow window. Light from inside washed across a broad terrace lined with flower-pots. Roses clung to a trellis.

The air was heavy with the scent of jasmine.

As they drew near the house a dog began barking and a door opened. Stackpole touched his helmet.

'Evening, Miss Helen.'

'Hullo, Will.' The doctor was a tall silhouette against the light. 'Down, Molly!' she commanded as a black pointer slipped out of the door behind her and came prancing up to the men.

'This is Inspector Madden, from London. Sir… Dr Blackwell.'

They shook hands. Helen Blackwell had a firm grip.

'Come in, please.' She ushered them into the drawing-room.

'I've been expecting you. I only wish the circumstances were less appalling.'

Madden took off his hat. 'I'm sorry you had to be called in this morning, ma'am,' he said. 'I expect they were your friends.'

'They were. It was dreadful.' Helen Blackwell had thick fair hair, drawn back and tied with a ribbon behind her head. Her eyes were an unusual shade of blue, Madden noted, dark, almost violet-coloured. He registered her good looks, but was struck more by the signs of character in her face. Her glance was direct.

'I've known Lucy Fletcher all my life. We grew up together, people used to take us for sisters.'

She fell silent, but he saw she had something more to say and he waited.

'I didn't examine the bodies thoroughly this morning It wouldn't have been right. Can you tell me, was Lucy Mrs Fletcher…?'

'Assaulted?' Instinctively he avoided the more explicit term. 'We don't know. The pathologist will conduct the post-mortems in Guildford, probably tonight.'

Stackpole coughed. Dr Blackwell turned to him.

'I believe there's an officer here, Miss Helen.'

'In the kitchen, Will. You'll find Edith there. Ask her to make up a plate of sandwiches, would you? And have some yourself.'

As the constable left them, Madden began to speak, but she checked him with a gesture. 'Sit down, Inspector. Please. You must be exhausted.'

Gratefully, he obeyed. Dr Blackwell went to a drinks tray. She poured whisky from a decanter into a glass and brought it to him. 'Consider that a medical prescription.'

Her smile, open and friendly, took him by surprise.

She seated herself beside a table where a group of silver-framed photographs stood showing young men in officer's uniform. Madden's eye shifted away from them quickly, but she had caught the direction of his glance.

'Those two on the left are my brothers. David was killed on the Somme. He's the younger. Peter was a pilot. He only lasted three weeks. My mother died of a heart complaint the year before the war and now I can only think of it as a blessing.' She was silent. Then she gestured towards another of the photographs. 'And that's my husband, Guy. He was killed, too. A stray shell, they said.' Her glance met Madden's. 'Scenes from an English drawing-room, circa nineteen twenty one.'

He could find no words.

"I was thinking of them today when I went to the Lodge. How the thing I hated most about the war was the way it plucked up people at random and destroyed them. How I'd thought that that, at least, was over.'

There was a knock on the door and a maid came in carrying a tray with sandwiches on it. She put the plate on a side table near Madden. Dr Blackwell gathered herself. 'What can I do for you, Inspector?

Would you like me to make a statement?'

'We're concerned about the Fletcher child. We'd like her moved to hospital in Guildford as soon as possible.'

'I'm afraid that's out of the question.'

Her response was so swift that Madden had to check to assure himself he'd heard her correctly. He put down his glass. 'Dr Blackwell, this is a police matter.'

'I understand that. It changes nothing.' She spoke in a calm voice, but her expression was unyielding.

'Sophy was in a state of profound shock when I found her this morning. She was quite unable to move or speak. The stiffness — it's a form of hysterical paralysis — has eased somewhat, but she hasn't said a word, and I don't know when she will. The very worst thing now would be to put her among strangers. She knows me and everyone in this house and she trusts us. There's nothing that can be done for her in hospital that can't be done here.'

'She's a possible witness-'

'I'm aware of that. You're welcome to keep a policeman here. More than one, if you wish. But I won't have her moved.'

The steadiness of the doctor's gaze seemed to set a seal on her words. In spite of his surprise, Madden had listened carefully to what she said, while noticing that her pale silk blouse was embroidered with a pattern of green leaves. He came to a decision quickly. 'I believe you're right,' he declared. 'I'll say as much to my chief inspector.'

The severity of her expression dissolved at once into the same open smile as before. 'Thank you, Inspector.'

'But I must see the child.'

'Of course. She's in bed. Come with me.'

She led him out into a hallway and up the stairs.

Following, Madden caught a whiff of jasmine, like an echo from the terrace outside. They stopped at a closed door in the passage above.

'One moment, please.' She opened the door and glanced inside. 'Come in. Try not to wake her.'

'Isn't she sedated?'

'I gave her something earlier, but it'll have worn off by now. She's sleeping normally. I'd like that to continue.'

Madden followed her into a bedroom where a night light burned. A dark-haired young woman in a maid's uniform got up from a chair as they entered. Dr Blackwell motioned to her to sit again.

'This is Mary,' she whispered. 'Sophy knows her well. They go for walks in the woods together when she comes to visit.'

He went closer to the bed. At the sight of the blonde head buried in the pillow an old grief awoke in him and he stood for a long time, bent over her, listening to the faint rhythm of the child's breathing, so precious it seemed.

Watching him, Dr Blackwell was startled by the look of pain that crossed his face. Earlier her curiosity had been aroused. She had wondered about this rough looking man who bore the stamp of the trenches in his dark, shadowed eyes. A year spent working in a military hospital had taught her to recognize the signs, but she'd been surprised to see them on the inspector's face.

The police had been one of the reserved professions.

Now, all at once, another image came to her, raw and shocking, causing her to flush and bite her lip. And she thought then how cruel life could be. How heartless and uncaring.

Madden lived with ghosts. They came to him in dreams: men he had known in the war, some of them friends, others no more than dimly remembered faces.

Most were the youths with whom he had enlisted, shop assistants and drapers, clerks from the City and apprentices. Together they had marched through the streets of London in their civilian clothes to the bray of brass bands, heroes for a day to the flag-waving crowds, full of pride and valour, none dreaming of the fate that awaited them in the shape of the German machine-guns. Valour had died on the Somme in the course of a single summer's day.

One of the few survivors in his battalion, Madden had mourned the death of his comrades. For a time their loss had seemed like an open wound. But as the war went on he ceased to think of them. Other men were dying around him and their deaths, too, came to mean little. With no expectation of staying alive himself his emotions grew numb and by the end he felt nothing.

He never spoke of his time in the trenches. Like many others who came back, miraculous survivors of the carnage, he had tried to put the war from his mind, doing his utmost to block out all memory of it.

Offered his old job back, he had hesitated before accepting. His decision to leave the Metropolitan Police before the war had been taken in the hope of finding a new life in the familiar surroundings of the countryside. And although he came to accept the choice he had made, finding in the day-to-day demands of investigative work at least a partial shield against the charnel house of memories that threatened to engulf him, he could not shake free from the cold hand of the past. Always he sensed the abyss at his feet.

Sleep brought no respite, for what he kept from his mind by day he was forced to relive in his dreams where he was haunted by the faces of old comrades and by other, more terrible images from the battlefield, and from which he would wake, night after night, choking on the imagined smell of sweat and cordite and the stench of half-buried corpses.

For a while he had hoped all this would pass. That his memories would grow dim and peace of mind return to him. But he lived in the long shadow of the war, and as time passed and the shadow deepened he came to see himself as permanently injured, a casualty of the conflict, which had failed to kill him but left him none the less damaged beyond repair.

Increasingly solitary, he saw his life as all that was left to him: a tattered sail that might bear the wind but would bring him to no haven.