‘Thank Goodness you’ve come, Will.’ Molly Henshaw’s plump, motherly features were flushed with distress. Before Stackpole had even unlatched the gate she appeared at the back door of the cottage, with her husband behind her, and came hurrying across the bricked yard to meet them. ‘I can’t keep old Topper sitting still any longer. He’s all for running off. Dr Madden…!’ Her face lit up when she saw Helen and she bobbed her head in greeting.
‘Molly, dear! How are you? What a dreadful business this is.’ Helen took her hand. ‘Have you met my husband?’
Molly Henshaw’s reply was drowned in a clap of thunder. Stackpole glanced anxiously at the heavens.
‘Quick now, love, before we go inside – tell us about this shoe. Did Topper give it to you?’
‘Give it me?’ She appeared not to understand the question.
‘Of his own accord?’ Madden spoke for the first time, and she stared at him as though she had not yet taken in his tall, commanding presence.
‘Oh, I see what you mean – yes, sir, he did.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘He knocked on the door – it must have been half an hour ago – and I asked him in. We know Topper, Dick and I.’ She nodded to her husband beside her. ‘He’s been coming to these parts for years, usually in the summer. If there’s something needs doing in the garden he’ll lend a hand, otherwise I’ll just give him a meal and a cup of tea. He never says much. Sometimes you don’t get a murmur out of him. But he likes to sit here with us. I reckon he knows he’s welcome.’
‘The shoe, Molly,’ Stackpole urged her.
Mrs Henshaw bit her lip. She wiped her hands nervously on her apron. ‘I could see he was bothered about something as soon as I opened the door, but I wasn’t surprised, not with all the fuss going on. I brought him inside and right away he went and sat down in the corner. Then I noticed he was carrying something in his hands, both hands, and when he held them out to me I saw what it was…’
‘A child’s shoe?’
She gave the barest nod.
‘Do you know that it belongs to Alice?’
‘Oh, no, not for sure.’ She swallowed. ‘But Jenny Bridger brought her a new pair only the other day. Alice came and showed them to me. They were shiny black with pearl buttons on the straps, just like the one Topper brought.’
‘But he wouldn’t say where he’d found it?’
‘No, nor anything else.’ Molly Henshaw dabbed at a teary eye. ‘So I gave him a cup of tea to keep him occupied and ran outside to look for Dick.’
‘We’d just come back from the fields, Will, and I saw Molly waving to me.’ Her husband took up the story. ‘She told me what had happened and I went in to see Topper myself, tried to get him to talk. But it were no good. He wouldn’t say a word. So I came to fetch you.’ Noticing the tears that were coming down his wife’s cheeks now, Henshaw put his arm around her shoulders. ‘There, there, old girl,’ he said gruffly. ‘Don’t take on now.’
Stackpole caught Helen’s eye, his glance bright with urgency.
‘Molly, dear, could we go inside now?’ She pressed the hand she was holding. ‘I need to see Topper myself.’
The room lay in shadow, the only illumination coming from a shaft of dull grey light entering through the back window. It fell on the kitchen table, where a child’s shoe, black and shiny, showed starkly against the scrubbed wooden surface.
Surveying the scene from the doorway, Helen heard the murmur of Stackpole’s voice. It came from the hallway at the front of the cottage. He was speaking on the telephone to the Surrey police headquarters in Guildford. Madden stood behind her in the narrow passage, out of sight of the shabby figure seated on a straight-backed chair in the far corner of the room. She felt his reassuring hand on her shoulder and reached up to press it with her own. Then she crossed the room to where Topper was sitting.
He showed no awareness of her approach. Well into middle age, or perhaps past it – his white-stubbled cheeks were deeply grooved – he sat slumped in the chair with his chin resting on his chest and his hands loosely linked on his knees, seemingly oblivious of his surroundings. Like others who’d encountered the old tramp in the past, Helen knew him only as Topper, a name that derived from his hat, a battered piece of evening headgear, cracked at the brim and missing half the crown, but given a jaunty, individual air by the addition of a cock pheasant’s tail feather stuck in a red velvet band. The manner in which he wore the hat – square, and pulled down low – gave it the appearance of a permanent feature, and he was seldom seen without it. Dressed in a black cloth jacket over striped trousers, his feet were shod in heavy boots, worn down at the heels and tied with a combination of string and broken shoelaces.
‘Hullo, Topper,’ she said softly.
At the sound of her voice he lifted his head. She drew up a chair beside him.
‘How have you been?’
He gave a slight shrug, but made no other response.
‘Are you well?’
He nodded. A smile came to his lips, and he fixed her with a look of shy affection.
‘We missed you at harvest time. Why haven’t you come to see us?’
‘Was coming…’ The muttered words brought a faint gasp from the doorway behind Helen where Molly Henshaw had appeared and was watching them. ‘Had to meet Beezy first…’
‘Beezy?’
The tramp nodded again.
‘Who’s Beezy? Where were you meeting him?’
Topper’s grey eyes lost focus. He looked away.
Helen regarded him in silence for a few moments. Then she took his left hand in hers. ‘Let me see your arm.’ She pushed up the sleeve of his jacket and then the threadbare flannel shirt beneath it, revealing a fresh scar fully six inches long running from the top of his wrist up the back of his sunburned arm towards the elbow. She ran her fingers lightly over it.
‘Look, Molly,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘That’s where Topper cut his arm last year. He was helping us with the haymaking and his scythe slipped. I had to sew him up.’
‘You fixed it…’ The old tramp chuckled. He brought his eyes back to hers. ‘You mended old Topper.’
‘It was a nasty cut, but it’s healed well.’
Still holding his hand in hers, and continuing to stroke his arm, she spoke again. ‘You were right to bring the shoe, Topper. But we need very badly to know where you found it. Can you help us?’
The fingers she was holding stiffened and she saw the fear in his eyes. His glance shifted and went past her shoulder. She looked round again. Madden had come quietly into the room with Molly Henshaw. Stackpole’s uniformed figure hovered in the doorway behind them, and when Topper caught sight of it his eyes fell. He slumped lower in the chair.
‘Now none of that,’ the constable rumbled. ‘You know me, Topper. There’s no need to take on.’
Helen turned back. ‘The shoe,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Where did you find it? You must tell me, Topper. Please…’ She had kept hold of his hand, and after a moment she felt renewed pressure on her fingers. When she bent closer he whispered in her ear.
‘What was that?’ She struggled to hear his husky murmur. ‘Did you say Capel Wood?’
Behind her, Stackpole stiffened in the doorway. ‘We’ve already looked there,’ he muttered to Madden. ‘Is he sure?’ he asked Helen.
‘Capel Wood?’ She repeated the name clearly and looked into the tramp’s eyes for confirmation. He nodded. ‘Would you take us there?’ she asked. ‘Would you show us where you found it?’
A tremor went through his body and his grip on her fingers tightened. He shook his head violently.
Helen studied his face for a few moments. Then she leaned close again. ‘Whereabouts in the wood, Topper?’
Silent at first, he simply stared at her. But then, as though drawn by her steady gaze, he bent forward and whispered to her once more.
Helen glanced behind her. ‘By the stream, he says…’ She rose and came over to him. ‘Will, this is going to take a long time, and I’m not even sure how much more I can get out of him.’
A scowl crossed Stackpole’s features. ‘Sir?’ He addressed Madden. ‘Could we have a word?’ The two men went out into the passage. The constable gestured. ‘What do you think, sir? Should I try and squeeze him harder?’
Madden shook his head. ‘Helen knows him better than anyone. You’d be wasting your time.’
‘By the stream…’ Stackpole grimaced. ‘It’s not much to go on. And we’ve already been there. There’s a path that runs alongside it. It goes through the wood. I took some men and we walked the length of it, calling her name. Once you get off it you can’t see three feet in front of you.’ He shook his head in despair. As he glanced at his wristwatch, a flash of lightning lit the dim passageway for an instant, and the answering peal of thunder set the windowpanes in the kitchen rattling. ‘Well, those detectives from Guildford will be here soon. Better wait for them, I suppose…’
His glance seemed to suggest another course of action, however, and Madden responded to it. Despite the formality of address which the constable insisted on maintaining towards him, they were friends of long standing.
‘No, we can’t do that, Will. We must get out there right away. I think Topper found more than a shoe.’