River of Darkness (34 page)

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.'

446 447 RENNIE AIRTH RIVER OF DARKNESS

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