The village was empty. Billy Styles couldn't understand it. They hadn't seen a living soul on the road from the station, and even the green was deserted, though the weather was the kind that normally brought people out of doors.
The finest summer since the war!
The newspapers had been repeating the phrase for weeks now as one radiant day followed another, with no end to the heatwave in sight.
But here in Highfield, sunshine lay like a curse on empty cottage gardens. Only the headstones in the churchyard, crowding the moss-covered stone wall flanking the road, gave mute evidence of a human presence.
'They're all at the house,' Boyce said, as though in explanation. He was an inspector with the Surrey police, a thin grey man with an anxious look. 'Word got around this morning.'
Boyce had come to the station to meet Inspector Madden and Billy. In a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, no less! Billy wanted to ask who'd sent it, but didn't dare. With less than three months' experience in the QD he knew he was lucky to be there at all, assigned to a case of such magnitude. Only the August bank holiday, combined with the heavy summer-leave schedule, had brought it about. Scotland Yard had been thinly manned that Monday morning when the telephone call came from Guildford. Minutes later Billy had found himself in a taxi with Madden bound for Waterloo station.
He glanced at the inspector, who was sitting beside him staring out of the car window. Among the lower ranks at the Yard, Madden was reckoned to be a queer one. They hadn't met before today, but Billy had seen him striding down the corridors. A tall grim man with a scarred forehead, he seemed more like a monk than a policeman, the young detective constable thought. An impression that gained strength now each time the inspector's glance fell on him. Madden's deep-set eyes seemed to look at you from another world.
He had a strange history — Billy had heard it from one of the sergeants. Madden had left the force some years before after losing his wife and baby daughter, both in the same week, to influenza. The son of a farmer, he had wanted to return to the land. Instead, the war had come, and afterwards he'd returned to his old job with the Metropolitan Police. Changed, though, it was said. A different man from before. Two years in the trenches had seen to that.
They had cleared the village, leaving the last cottage behind. Rounding a bend in the road, the chauffeur braked. Ahead of them, blocking the narrow country lane and facing a set of iron gates, a crowd had gathered. Whole families were there, it seemed, the men in shirtsleeves and braces, the women wearing kitchen aprons and with their hair tied up in scarves and handkerchiefs. Children stood hand in hand, or else played together on the dusty verges. A short way down the road two little girls in coloured smocks were bowling a hoop.
'Look at them,' Boyce said wearily. 'We've asked them to keep away, but what can you expect?'
The chauffeur blew his horn as they drew near and the crowd parted to let the car through. Billy felt the weight of their accusing stares.
'They don't know what to think,' Boyce muttered.
'And we don't know what to tell them.'
The drive beyond the gates was lined with elms, linked at their crowns like Gothic arches. At the end of it Billy could see a house built of solid stone, clothed in ivy. Melling Lodge was its name. Madden had told him. A family called Fletcher lived there. Had lived there. Billy's mouth went dry as they approached the gravelled forecourt where a fountain topped by a Cupid figure, standing with his bow drawn, sprayed silvery water into the bright sunlit afternoon. Blue uniforms stirred in the shadows.
'We brought a dozen men down from Guildford.'
Boyce nodded towards a police van parked at the side of the forecourt. 'We may want more.'
Madden spoke for the first time. 'We'll need to search the land around the house.'
'Wait till you see the other side.' Boyce groaned.
'Woods. Nothing but woods. Miles and miles of them.'
Madden's glance had shifted to a group of three men standing together in a shaded corner of the forecourt. Two of them wore light country tweeds.
The third sweated in a double-breasted serge suit.
'Who are they?' he asked.
'The old boy's Lord Stratton. Local nob. He owns most of the land hereabouts. That's the Lord Lieutenant with him. Major-General Sir William Raikes.'
'What's he doing here?' Madden scowled.
'He was a weekend guest at Stratton Hall, worse luck.' Boyce pulled a face. 'He's been raising merry hell, I can tell you. The other one's Chief Inspector Norris, from Guildford.'
As Madden opened the car door, Raikes, red-faced and balding, came striding across the gravel.
'About time,' he said angrily. 'Sinclair, is it?'
'No, Sir William. Madden's the name. Detective Inspector. This is Detective Constable Styles. Chief Inspector Sinclair is on his way. He'll be here shortly.'
Madden's glance roamed the forecourt.
'Well, for God's sake!' Raikes fumed. 'What's keeping the man?'
'He's getting a team together. Pathologist, fingerprint squad, photographer…' The inspector made no attempt to disguise his impatience. 'It takes time, particularly on a bank holiday.'
'Indeed!' Raikes glared at him, but Madden was already turning away to greet the older man, who had joined them.
'Lord Stratton? Thank you for sending the car, sir.'
'It was nothing. How else can I help you, Inspector?'
He held out his hand to Madden, who shook it.
His face showed signs of recent shock, the eyes wide and blinking. 'Do you need any transport? I've a runabout at the Hall. You're welcome to use it.'
'Would you mention that to Mr Sinclair? I'm sure he'll be happy to accept.'
'Now see here, Madden!' Raikes tried to force himself back into the conversation, but the inspector ignored him and went on speaking to Lord Stratton.
'There's something I need to know. The woods behind the house, do they belong to you?'
'Upton Hanger? Yes, the ridge extends for several miles.' He seemed eager to help. 'I keep a pheasant shoot over by the Hall' — he pointed in the direction of the village — 'but this side the woods run wild.'
'What's your policy on trespassing?'
'Well, technically it's private property. But the villagers have always had the run of the woods. Over on this side, at least.'
'Would you change that, sir? Make it clear no trespassing will be allowed and ask the police to enforce it.'
'I understand.' Stratton frowned. 'Better to keep people away.'
'I was thinking of the London press. They'll be here soon enough.'
'Boyce!' Chief Inspector Norris spoke.
'I'll see to it, sir.'
'One other thing.' Madden drew Lord Stratton aside. 'There's a crowd of villagers outside the gates.
Could you speak to them? Tell them what's happened here. There's no point in keeping it a secret. Then ask them to go home. We'll be questioning them later.
But they're no help to us standing out there blocking the road.'
'Of course. I'll see to that now.' He set off up the drive.
Watching, Billy could only marvel. How did Madden do it? He wasn't a nob himself, that much was certain. There was a rough, unpolished air about the inspector that set him apart from the likes of his lordship. But when he talked, they listened! Even Sir William Whatsit, who could only stand there glowering.
'Chief Inspector,' still ignoring Raikes, Madden turned to Norris, 'could we have a word?'
He moved away, and after a moment's hesitation Norris joined him. The Guildford chief was red in the face and sweating heavily in his thick serge suit.
'I'll need some details, sir.'
'Speak to Boyce.' Norris blinked rapidly. 'Good God, man! You can't treat a lord lieutenant that way.'
Madden regarded him without expression. Norris opened his mouth to speak again, then changed his mind. He spun on his heel and rejoined Raikes, who stood with his back ostentatiously turned to them, glaring up the drive at the retreating figure of Lord Stratton.
Madden nodded to Boyce and led the way out of the forecourt around to the side of the house. When they came into a pool of shade he paused and took out a packet of cigarettes. Billy, encouraged by the sight, lit up himself.
'I was told four in the house.' The inspector was speaking to Boyce.
'That's right.' The Surrey inspector took out a handkerchief. 'Colonel and Mrs Fletcher. One of the maids, Sally Pepper, and the children's nanny, Alice Crookes.'
'Who found the bodies?'
'The other maid, Ellen Brown. We haven't talked to her yet. She's in hospital in Guildford. Under sedation.' He wiped his face. 'Brown returned this morning. Mrs Fletcher had given her the weekend off — Saturday and Sunday — but she was due back last night, and the other maid, Pepper, was to have had today off. Brown missed her train — she's got a young man in Birmingham — and only arrived this morning.
She was seen passing through the village, running from the station, looking to be in trouble with her mistress, I dare say. Half an hour later she was back again, not making much sense by all accounts.'
'Half an hour?' Madden drew on his cigarette.
Boyce shrugged. 'I don't know what she did when she found them. Fainted, I would guess. But she had enough sense to get herself to the local bobby. He lives at this end of the village. Constable Stackpole.
He didn't know what to think — whether to believe her, even. He said she was raving. So he got on his bicycle and pedalled like blazes. He rang Guildford from the Lodge. I was the duty officer and I informed Chief Inspector Norris and he rang the chief constable who decided to call in the Yard right away.'
'When did you get here?'
'Just before midday. Mr Norris and I.'
'You went through the house?'
Boyce nodded. 'We didn't touch anything. Then Sir William arrived with Lord Stratton.'
'Did they go inside?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Both of them?'
Boyce looked shamefaced. 'Mr Norris tried to stop them, but… Anyway, they didn't stay long. It was getting to be ripe inside. The heat, you know 'Anyone else?'
'Only the doctor.'
'The police surgeon?'
'No, Stackpole couldn't raise him — he lives in Godalming — so he rang the village doctor.'
'What time did he get here?'
'She.' Boyce glanced up from his notebook. 'Her name's Dr Blackwell. Dr Helen Blackwell.'
Madden was frowning.
'Yes, I know.' Boyce shrugged. 'But it couldn't be helped. There was no one else.'
'Was she able to cope?'
'As far as I can tell. Stackpole said she did what was necessary, confirmed they were all dead. It was she who found the little girl.' He consulted his notebook.
'Sophy Fletcher, aged five. Apparently she's a patient of the doctor's.'
'The child was in the house?'
'Hiding under her bed, Stackpole said. She must have been there all night…' Boyce looked away, biting his lip.
Madden waited for a moment. 'You said "children".'
'There's a son. James, aged ten. He's been spending a few weeks with his uncle in Scotland. Lucky, I suppose, if you can call it that.'
'Do we know if the girl witnessed the murders?'
Boyce shook his head. 'She hasn't said a word since Dr Blackwell found her. The shock, I imagine.'
'Where is she now?'
'At the doctor's house. It's not far. I sent an officer over there.'
'We must get her into hospital in Guildford.'
Madden killed his cigarette on the sole of his shoe and put the stub in his pocket. Billy, watching, followed suit.
'Any idea of time of death?'
'Dr Blackwell says between eight and ten last night — based on rigor. Couldn't have been before seven.
That's when the cook left. Ann Dunn. She lives in the village. I've had a word with her, but she couldn't tell us much. She fixed them a cold meal, then took herself off. Didn't notice anything unusual. Didn't see anyone hanging about.' Boyce glanced back towards the drive.
'The gates were open. They could have driven in.'
'They?'
'Has to be more than one man.' Boyce looked at him. 'Wait till you see inside. Most likely a gang.
There's stuff been taken. Silver. Jewellery. But why they had to-' He broke off, shaking his head.
'How did they get into the house?'
'They broke in from the garden side. Come on, I'll show you.'
Boyce led the way to the front of the house, out of the shade on to the sun-washed terrace. It was late afternoon, past four o'clock, but the cloudless summer sky held hours of daylight yet. Shallow steps led from the terrace to a lawn bordered by flower-beds with a fishpond in the middle. Further on another set of steps led to a lower level bordered by a shrubbery. Where the garden ended the woods of Upton Hanger began, rising like a green wave, filling the horizon.
'See! They smashed in the French windows.' Boyce pointed. 'They're not cracksmen. Not professionals.'
One of a pair of tall glassed doors at the front of the house had been knocked off its hinges. The empty frame lay across the doorway. Broken glass glittered in the sunlight. Madden crouched down to examine it.
In the silence Billy heard the sound of flies buzzing. It came from inside the house. He wrinkled his nose at the rotten-sweet smell.
'We can't leave 'em there much longer,' Boyce observed. He watched Madden with narrowed eyes.
'Not in this heat. There's a mortuary wagon standing by in the village. Should I bring it up to the house?'
'Better wait till Mr Sinclair gets here.' Madden stood up. 'You can begin fingerprinting, though. Start with the people who've been in the house.'
A grin replaced the anxious frown on Boyce's face.
'Does that include the Lord Lieutenant and Lord Stratton?'
'Certainly.'
'Sir William told Mr Norris they hadn't touched anything.'
'I'm sure he did. Print them both.'
Madden glanced at Billy. 'Constable?'
'Sir?' Billy straightened automatically.
'We'll go inside now.'
As Billy stepped over the broken door frame into the house, the smell of decaying flesh triggered a rush of nausea and he had to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to stop himself retching.
Eyes watering, he tried to block out the stench and concentrate on what was before him. They had entered the drawing-room, that much he could see. Madden was bending over the body of a young woman sprawled on the floor in the middle of the room. She lay on her side with her legs splayed like a runner in mid-stride, hands clutching at emptiness. Billy noted the black dress and frilled cuffs. This must be the maid, Sally Pepper, he told himself.
His glance took in the tray and coffee things silver pot and two small cups and saucers — strewn across a cream-coloured carpet edged with vine leaves.
The spilled coffee had spread into the shape of a flower. Black petals for a funeral wreath.
He knew the woman had been stabbed, Madden had told him earlier, but he couldn't see where. Then he noticed the inspector examining a small tear in the maid's uniform over her chest. It looked as if the black cloth had masked the flow of blood.
Billy was struck by how little had been disturbed.
Take away the smashed door and the pitiable figure on the carpet and the room was relatively untouched.
Chairs and tables stood in their places. Nothing was disarranged. A cabinet where china was displayed remained shut, with the glass unbroken. Above the carved stone fireplace a pair of shepherdesses graced the mantelpiece beneath a painted portrait of a woman sitting on a sofa with two young children, a boy and a girl, on either side of her. All three were fair-haired.
Billy was starting to sweat. If anything, the smell was getting worse. He saw Madden's eyes were on him.
'If you're going to throw up, Constable, do it outside.'
'I won't, sir. Truly.'
Madden's glance implied disbelief. Billy gritted his teeth. He watched as the inspector started to move away from the body, then changed his mind and returned to it, this time to look at the back. He bent and peered at the area between the shoulder-blades.
Billy wondered why. There was nothing to see there.
He took a deep breath, then checked himself hurriedly as the surge of nausea returned.
He couldn't understand it. In three years on the force he'd seen his share of corpses, not all of them pretty. Week-old cadavers found in abandoned tenements.
Floaters hauled from the Thames. Earlier that year he had worked on his first murder case since moving from the uniform branch to the CID. An old pawnbroker battered to death in his shop in the Mile End Road. His skull had been reduced to a red pulp, yet Detective Constable Styles hadn't turned a hair.
Why now?
Searching for an explanation, Billy was left with the feeling that it had something to do with the enormity of what had happened in this house. He had seen it in the faces of the villagers and of the men who waited outside. Even Madden's grim features had registered a sense of disbelief as he recounted the bald details on their taxi ride to Waterloo. It was something that shouldn't have happened — that was the closest Billy could come to explaining it — not in the peaceful Surrey countryside, barely an hour's train ride from London. Not in England!
Madden rose. Skirting the body, he went to an inner door that stood open and paused on the threshold.
Billy joined him. In front of them was a hallway with a passage branching off it, running the length of the house. To their left, a trousered leg protruded from a doorway. Madden went towards it, walking in the middle of the carpeted passage, his eyes on the floor in front of him. Billy stayed on his heels.
They came to the body of a middle-aged man lying on his stomach with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross. His head was twisted to one side, the lips drawn back in a rictus of agony. A stab wound in the middle of his back had left a dark stain in the checked hacking jacket he wore. Some deep internal injury was signalled by the gush of blood from his mouth on to the surrounding floorboards. At the very edge of the pool of dried blood, a curved indentation was visible.
'Do you see that?' Madden pointed. 'Someone's walked there.'
'One of the killers, sir?' Billy peered over his shoulder.
'I doubt it. The blood was already dry. Make a note for Mr Sinclair.'
Madden stepped carefully over the body. Billy followed, fumbling for his notepad. They were in an oak panelled study, furnished with a desk and two stuffed-leather armchairs. The walls were hung with photographs, mostly of men in military uniform. Some showed them sitting on chairs, stiffly posed. Others were less formal. There were pictures of polo matches and clay-pigeon shooting. Madden seemed more interested in a pair of shotguns mounted on a wall rack.
'Was he trying to reach one of those, I wonder?' He spoke the thought aloud.
'Or the telephone, sir?' Billy seized on the chance to participate. He indicated the instrument standing on the desk.
Madden grunted. He was still looking at the gun rack, frowning.
'Something's missing from the mantelpiece, sir.'
Billy tried again. He was feeling better. The smell was less strong in here. 'That mark on the wallpaper 'A clock, most likely.' Madden spoke without turning.
'There might have been other stuff up there.
Silver cups. The maid will know.'
He led the way out and walked back along the passage, checking each room as he came to it. He paused at only one, the dining-room, where plates and cutlery from the previous night's meal lay on the uncleared table.
At the far end of the corridor was a swing door.
The inspector pushed it open and went through. Billy, following on his heels, retched involuntarily and almost threw up as a pungent reek assailed his nostrils.
They were in the kitchen. The afternoon sun poured through unshaded windows on to a table where the remains of a roast chicken rested on a platter beside a glistening ham. As Madden approached, a cloud of flies rose into the air and then settled on the food again. Beyond the table a chair had been knocked over on its back and directly behind it a woman's body lay on the flagstoned floor, half propped against the wall.
Grey-haired, plump-featured, she was dressed in a bloodstained white blouse and an ankle-length skirt of dark blue material. Her face wore a surprised expression.
'The nanny,' Madden murmured. He glanced at Billy, who had chosen that moment to shut his eyes while he tried to control his heaving stomach. 'Give me your handkerchief, Constable.'
'Sir?' Billy's eyes shot open.
'You've got one, haven't you?'
'Sir!' He gave it to Madden, who wet the cloth at the sink and handed it back to Billy.
'Put that over your nose, son.'
'Please, sir, I don't need-'
'Do as I say.'
Without waiting to see if his order was carried out, the inspector crossed the room to where the body lay.
Brushing aside the flies he bent down and unfastened the blouse, drawing it apart. From where he was standing Billy could see the wound, neat as a buttonhole, between the tops of the veined breasts. Madden stayed staring at it for a long time. When he rose his eyes had that unseeing 'other world' look, and Billy was relieved. The damp mask across his nose made the stench in the kitchen bearable, but the handkerchief felt like a badge of shame. As soon as they were back in the passage he tugged it off.
They returned to the hallway and he followed Madden up the stairs to the floor above. When they came to a landing the inspector paused.
'Do you see?' he asked, pointing.
Billy peered into the shadows. Embedded in the pile of the wine-coloured stair carpet were tiny pinpricks of reflected light. 'What are they, sir?' he asked.
'Seed pearls. From a bracelet, I should think.
They've been trodden in. Watch your step."
At the top of the stairs there was another passage, like the one below, running the length of the house.
'Wait here,' Madden told Billy.
He walked down the corridor to his right, checking the rooms, and then returned to the stairway. At the first doorway on the other side he paused.
'Over here, Constable.'
The inspector's voice carried a note that gave Billy time to prepare himself. He walked the few steps to the door and followed Madden into the room. At first he could make nothing of the twilight gloom. The curtains, which must have been drawn the previous evening, still blocked out most of the daylight. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness, he saw the body. Mrs Fletcher, Billy thought. The colonel's lady. (The painting in the drawing-room was fresh in his mind.) She was lying on her back on the bed, flung across it, it seemed, with her legs parted and her arms spread out, the fingers clenched. A silk dressing-gown of Oriental design, embroidered with red flowers and tied at the waist with a sash, was spread out on the bed on either side of her like a half opened fan. Her legs and the bottom of her stomach were bare. The sight of her pubic hair made Billy blush and turn away. He couldn't see her face — her head was hanging over the other side — but when he followed Madden around the foot of the bed he saw the fair hair cascading down.
'Keep clear,' Madden warned him sharply. 'There'll be blood on the floor.'
Billy was just wondering how the inspector knew that — could he see in the dark? — when the answer became clear. Staring down at the livid gash in the white column of flesh, he felt a sense of violation stronger than anything he had experienced that day.
'Why'd they do that?' Billy couldn't stop himself.
'Why'd they have to cut her throat?'
Boyce was waiting for them when they came out on to the terrace again. The sun was lower in the sky, the shadows lengthening.
'Mr Sinclair rang from Guildford,' he told Madden.
'He'll be here soon.'
'You can start the men searching the gardens.' The inspector lit a cigarette. 'But stay out of the woods for now.'
Boyce wondered what Madden had made of the shambles inside the house. He searched in vain for any hint in the dark, withdrawn eyes.
'You don't think they came that way, do you?'
The inspector shrugged. 'If they drove in the front gates, why come round to this side to break in? They could have knocked on the door.' To Billy, he said, 'Find that village bobby — what's his name?
Stackpole?'
Billy returned in a few minutes with a tall, moustached constable. Madden greeted him.
'Do you know these woods?' he asked.
'Well enough, sir.' Stackpole eyed him warily.
Word had spread about the Scotland Yard inspector who'd told the Lord Lieutenant where to get off.
'Come along, then. You too, Styles.'
A gravel path through the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden led to a wooden gate. On the other side of the wall they found a uniformed constable patrolling a small expanse of meadow grass bordering a shallow stream. He was a young man, not much older than Billy himself, and with similiar colouring — fair skin and reddish hair. His face was flushed by hours spent in the broiling sun.
'Excuse me, sir.' He hurried over to them.
'What is it, Constable?'
Madden had paused to take off his hat and jacket and hang them on the gate. When he rolled up his sleeves Billy saw a random pattern of scars spread over his forearm the size and shape of sixpences.
'A footprint, sir. Down by the stream. I noticed it earlier.'
'Show me.'
The constable led the way down the gently sloping bank. He pointed. 'There, sir, next to the steppingstones.
Coming this way.' The stream, diminished by weeks of drought, had shrunk to half its normal size. The earlier course of the water was marked by a surface of smooth dried mud. It was on this that the faint imprint of a footmark showed beside one of a line of flat stones crossing the stream. Madden nodded his approval.
'Well spotted, Constable.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Go up to the house. My compliments to Mr Boyce and ask him to send a couple of men down here with some plaster-of-paris. Tell him the footprint's shallow but well defined and if they're careful they should get a good cast of it.'
'Right away, sir.' The constable set off briskly.
Madden went down on his haunches. Stackpole joined him, squinting at the stream bed.
'He might have missed his footing, sir. Coming across last evening, just as it was getting dark.'
'Big man.' The inspector frowned. 'Size eleven, I should say. That looks like a boot mark.'
Stackpole pursed his lips. "Course, it could be anyone's.'
Billy felt the prick of envy. First the young constable.
Now the village bobby!
Madden led them across the stepping-stones to the opposite bank. Almost at once they were in the wood, moving uphill through a stand of saplings that ended when they came to the tall beeches. A sea of fern and brush covered the ground on either side of the path, which was well used and easy to follow. The air was hot and still.
'Do the villagers come up here often?' Madden spoke over his shoulder.
'A fair bit, sir.' Stackpole kept pace with the inspector's long stride. 'Time was when the whole hanger was a shoot, but that was before the war. Now his lordship only has two keepers and they don't come over this way, except once in a while.'
Panting at the rear, trying to keep up with them, Billy had to watch for branches whipping back in his face. When he caught the cuff of his jacket in a bramble thicket, the constable paused to help disentangle him. He was grinning under his helmet. 'City boy,' he whispered.
Billy flushed a deeper red. He saw that Madden was watching them from above, hands on hips.
The hill steepened as they neared the top of the ridge. Madden stopped. He sniffed the air. 'Constable?'
'Yes, sir. I smell it…'
Stackpole cast about him with narrowed eyes. Billy caught a whiff of something. They were in the middle of a steeply sloping forest of pines. The carpet of ferns stretched unbroken on either side of them.
'Can't tell which way the wind's blowing,' the constable complained.
'Quiet!' Madden spoke sharply.
They stood in silence. Billy heard a low rustle in the undergrowth away to their left. Madden picked up a stick and threw it. A raucous cry broke the stillness, followed by the flapping of black wings as a pair of crows rose from the ground and flew off, threading a path through the lofty pines.
Madden and Stackpole looked at each other.
'Let's take a look,' the inspector said.
Madden left the path and began wading through the waist-high ferns. Keeping his eye fixed on the spot where the crows had appeared, he worked his way up and across the slope. Stackpole stayed close behind.
Billy, struggling in the rear as before, lost his footing on the steep slope and had to grab at a root to keep himself from sliding down. His hat fell off. He caught it with his other hand. For a moment he lay spreadeagled like a starfish on the hillside. The others paused and looked back.
'It's all right, sir,' Billy gasped. 'I'm coming.' He could see Stackpole chuckling.
By the time he caught up with them they had stopped and were standing with their backs to him looking down. Madden held out a hand to check Billy's puffing uphill progress. The young constable saw they were at the edge of an area where the undergrowth had been flattened. The body of a small white dog lay on the ground in front of them. Beyond it was the corpse of a man, clad in a soiled cloth coat.
He lay on his back with his head pointing down the slope. His hands, clutching at his chest, had torn apart his blood-soaked shirt. Where his eyes had been there were only pits. Billy blenched at the sight of the sockets, filled with congealed blood.
'Do you know him, Constable?' Madden's tone was detached.
'Yes, sir.' Stackpole, too, had paled. 'Name of Wiggins. James Wiggins. He's from the village.'
'What would he be doing up here?'
'Poaching, most likely.' The constable mopped his brow. 'That coat of his has got the deepest pockets in the county. Like as not we'll find a bird in one of them. Must have come across here from his lordship's shoot to dodge the keepers.' He pointed a finger at the dog. 'That's Betsy, Jimmy's bitch. Wonderful nose for a pheasant, or so Jimmy always said.'
'You've had dealings with him?'
'You could say that.' Stackpole grunted. 'He's been up before the bench. But not nearly as often as he should have. Hard man to lay a hand on.' The constable bit his lip. 'Poor Jimmy. I always said he'd come to a bad end.'
Madden was peering at the ground in front of them.
Something had caught his eye. He bent down and slipped his hand into the trampled ferns, then withdrew it holding a cigarette stub delicately between his fingertips. He held it up to the light.
'Three Castles. One of his?'
'Not likely. Pipe and a tin of Navy Cut — that was Jimmy's style.' Stackpole's brow was knotted in a frown. 'Sir, I don't see how this could have happened.'
Madden, occupied with folding the stub into a handkerchief, glanced at him questioningly.
'I just can't see anyone creeping up on Jimmy. You wouldn't have got within twenty feet of him. If he didn't spot you, the bitch would have.'
Madden put the handkerchief carefully into his trouser pocket. He said, 'I think it was the other way round.'
'Sir?'
The inspector turned so that he was facing down the slope. The others followed the direction of his glance. Melling Lodge lay directly below them, clearly visible through a gap in the pine forest. Billy could make out a group of men in plain clothes standing on the terrace. A line of blue uniforms moved slowly across the sunlit lawn.
'I think whoever killed them was sitting here, waiting for dark.'
Stackpole nodded slowly, comprehending. 'Betsy would have picked up their scent,' he said. 'Come looking to see who it was.' He touched the small body with the toe of his boot. A thin trickle of blood had dried on the white jaw. 'When she was stabbed she must have squealed, kicked up a racket, and Jimmy came running.'
Madden was frowning. 'I didn't see a dog at the lodge,' he said. 'Did the Fletchers have one?'
'Yes, sir, Rufus. An old Labrador. But he died not long ago.'
Leaving Billy posted by the body, Madden and the constable returned to the path. The inspector wanted to climb to the top of the ridge. It took only a few minutes, the pines thinning out as they scaled the stony crest. On the other side was a vista of farms and woodland stretching for miles. In the distance, hazy in the afternoon light, they could just make out the blurred contours of the South Downs.
Not far from the base of the ridge a cluster of cottages stood with a square church tower in the middle.
'That's Oakley, sir,' Stackpole said, without prompting. 'I was born there.'
Madden pointed to a narrow track that led from the hamlet through fields of ripening corn to the edge of the woods beneath them.
'Could you get a car along there?'
The constable shook his head. 'Tractor, maybe. Car springs wouldn't take the ruts.'
They went back down the path and crossed the slope to where Billy was standing by Wiggins's body.
Madden paused for only a moment. 'Stay off the flattened area,' he told the young constable. 'It needs to be searched. I'll be sending some men up.'
Billy felt his cup of bitterness brim over. The inspector had finally found something he was fit for.
To stand watch over a body until others came to do the police work.
'Isn't there something I can do, sir?'
'Yes, keep the crows off him,' Madden called back as he hastened away. 'They go for the eyes.'
Stackpole clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically as he went by. 'Not yours, lad,' he said, with a wink.
Chief Inspector Sinclair drew Madden aside, leading him down the shallow steps from the terrace on to the now deserted lawn. They made an oddly contrasting pair: Madden, tall and rumpled, with his jacket slung over his shoulder; Sinclair, slight and no more than medium height, almost the dandy in his tailored pinstripe suit and soft felt hat. They stood close together, casting a single shadow in the dying sunlight.
'A question. Have we any idea what we're dealing with here?' The chief inspector's restless glance took in the squad of uniformed police who had moved off the grass and were searching the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. At Madden's behest he had just dispatched two CID sergeants to deal with the body in the woods. 'An armed gang, I'm told, a robbery gone wrong.' He nodded towards the terrace where Boyce and Chief Inspector Norris stood watching them. 'In that case, perhaps someone would explain to me why there's stuff in the house in plain view worth more than what was taken. Did you see the china in the drawing-room? And that brace of Purdeys on the gun rack? Good of them not to loot the place, wouldn't you say? Especially since they had all night to do it.' Angus Sinclair's consonants had the precision of cut glass. A native of Aberdeen, he'd been a policeman for more than thirty years. 'Your thoughts, John?'
Madden lit a cigarette before replying. Sinclair studied his face. He noted familiar signs of strain and deep-seated fatigue in the dark, shadowed eyes. They were aspects of Madden he had come to recognize, souvenirs of the war, as permanent and unalterable as the scar on his forehead.
'Starting with the door, sir,' Madden's deep voice rose little above a murmur, 'why break it down? It wasn't locked. Then the victims' hands and arms.
Apart from Mrs Fletcher, they were all killed the same way, but there isn't a cut or scratch on any of them.'
'Your point?' Sinclair cocked his head attentively.
'Whoever did this was in a hurry. The victims had no time to react or defend themselves. I think those downstairs were all dead within seconds of the door being smashed in.'
'Which means the killings were deliberate. That was the intention from the outset.' The chief inspector paused, reflecting on what he had said. 'So much for a robbery gone wrong! Anything else?'
'The weapon, sir. It was unusual. No injuries to the hands and arms, as I said. And then there's Colonel Fletcher, killed from behind in that way.'
'Would you care to be more specific?' Sinclair frowned. 'Have you any idea what it was?'
Madden shrugged. 'I'd rather hear what the pathologist says. I don't want to put ideas in his head.'
'Or mine?' The chief inspector raised an eyebrow.
'But as regards Colonel Fletcher, I take your meaning.
You'd think he would have faced his attacker. Why did he turn and run?'
'He might have been trying for one of the guns in the study.'
'Even so, an old soldier… You'd expect him to take on a man with a knife. If it was a knife…'
Sinclair grimaced. 'An armed gang? Could they be right?' He gestured towards the terrace.
Madden shook his head. 'I think it was one man,' he said.
The chief inspector looked hard at him. 'I was hoping you wouldn't say that,' he admitted.
Madden shrugged.
'I have the same feeling.' Sinclair's gaze shifted to the house. 'It's got the smell of madness about it.
That's one man's work. But we have to be sure. What about the woman upstairs, Mrs Fletcher? There could have been two of them.'
Again Madden shook his head. 'He broke the door down and killed the maid in the drawing-room, then went for Colonel Fletcher. The colonel tried to reach the study — where the guns were — but he only got as far as the doorway before he was caught from behind.
As for the woman in the kitchen, the nanny, I doubt she even knew what was happening. You can see the surprise in her face.'
While Madden was speaking Sinclair had taken a briar pipe from his pocket. He stood now, tapping the empty bowl in the palm of his hand.
'Aye, but that still doesn't explain Mrs Fletcher.
She wasn't killed like the others.'
'I think she heard the disturbance and came down the stairs. That's where they met. Did you notice the pearls in the carpet?'
The chief inspector nodded. 'From a bracelet, I'd say. It must have broken. I think he seized her there and dragged her upstairs to the bedroom. Tell the pathologist to look for bruises on the wrists and arms.'
Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. 'If you're right, then since he didn't kill her on the stairs, he must have had something else in mind. Rape, by the look of it. Poor woman. Well, we'll know soon enough.' He slipped the pipe back into his pocket.
'That would explain why she wasn't stabbed. He wanted her alive. But what did he use to kill her with?'
'A razor, I'd say.'
'Yes, but whose? The colonel's? Or did he bring his own?'
The chief inspector expelled his breath in another long sigh. He watched as a plain-clothes detective stepped over the broken door frame to deposit a white envelope in a numbered cardboard box, one of four standing in a row on the terrace. Close by was a leather holdall, Sinclair's 'black bag', containing equipment he deemed necessary for a murder investigation: gloves, tweezers, bottles, envelopes. The new scientific approach to crime detection was slowly gaining ground, though not without meeting resistance. Juries remained suspicious of forensic evidence. Even judges were inclined to give it little weight in their summings-up.
'I've sent for the mortuary wagon.' Sinclair was speaking again. 'We'll do the post-mortems in Guildford tonight, as many as we can. I want to run the investigation from down here, at least in the early stages. Bring a bag when you come tomorrow. You'll be sleeping in the pub.
'Meantime, there's that little girl to think about.
Get over to Dr Blackwell's house, would you, John?
Find out if the child saw anything. And arrange to have her moved to hospital right away. We can take the doctor's statement tomorrow. I must get back.' He glanced up at the house again. 'I want to keep an eye on that pathologist. He's new to me. I asked for the sainted Spilsbury, but he wasn't available. On holiday in the Scilly Isles, if you please! I had to take one of his assistants at St Mary's.' As he spoke, photographer's flash powder, like sheet lightning, lit up a window. 'All this and the Lord Lieutenant, too!'
'You met him, did you?' Madden donned his jacket.
'He was leaving when I arrived. With inky fingers and a foul disposition. He said you were impertinent.
No, damned impertinent.'
'He went inside the house — did he tell you that?'
Sinclair was amused. 'You are aware, are you not, that he's head of the magistracy and chief executive for the county of Surrey? Take care, John. That type likes to make trouble.'
Madden scowled. 'I've had a bellyful of that type.'
'Then again, someone stepped in that pool of blood in the study. I might send an officer after him to look at the sole of his shoe. That should spoil his supper.'
Madden's glance, straying to the bottom of the garden, was arrested by the sight of Styles sitting on a bench at the edge of the lawn. The constable's red hair was plastered to his sunburned forehead. He was picking burrs from his socks.
'Aye, I'm sorry about that.' Sinclair had followed the direction of his gaze. 'I shouldn't have landed you with a green one. There was no one else on hand this morning. I'll have him replaced tomorrow.'
Madden shook his head. A smile touched his lips.
'No, leave him,' he said. 'He'll do.'