The Blood-Dimmed Tide (7 page)

‘Mr Boyce… how are you?’ Helen shook his hand. She had come from talking to Mrs Bridger, the murdered girl’s mother, who was standing by the steps to the courthouse in a circle of Brookham villagers, clinging to her husband’s arm as though she required its support to remain upright. Bridger himself, white-faced and with a glazed expression, was hardly more steady on his feet. Molly Henshaw hovered in attendance on them both.

‘They’re close to collapse, the pair of them,’ Helen said, taking refuge in her dispassionate doctor’s voice. ‘He won’t like it, but I’m going to write a note to Dr Rowley. He really must take proper care of them.’

During the court proceedings, Madden had noticed Fred Bridger sitting two rows from the front in the public seats. Their eyes had met for an instant and he had felt the force of the other man’s anguish as he listened to the flat accounts offered by various witnesses of the circumstances surrounding his child’s last agonized moments on earth.

‘This man you’re searching for,’ Helen said to Boyce. ‘Is he the mysterious Beezy?’

‘He is, and I don’t know why we haven’t laid hands on him yet.’ The Surrey police chief looked glum. ‘These tramps know how to lie low, mind you – they’ve places to hide where we wouldn’t think of looking. But all the same, he must show himself soon. He’ll need to find food, if nothing else.’

Madden had seen the description circulated by the Surrey police. It had been sent not only to village bobbies in the district but to farmers and gamekeepers as well, and Will Stackpole had brought him a copy of the poster.

Beezy was described as being of middle age, bearded and dressed in rough clothes – words that could be applied to a good many vagrants, as the constable had pointed out. However, he had one distinguishing feature noted by the farmer he’d worked for recently at Dorking: the lobe of his right ear was missing.

‘And we haven’t seen any sign of Topper either since we let him go,’ Boyce complained. ‘Wright had to strike his name off the witness list today. I wonder where he’s got to.’

The suspicious glance he directed at Helen as he spoke these words provoked no reaction, beyond the amused smile it brought to her lips.

‘Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong,’ she declared. ‘I haven’t set eyes on him since that evening in Brookham, and I haven’t the faintest idea where he is now.’

Both statements were true, Madden reflected, though, as an old policeman, he might have been tempted to charge his wife with being less than entirely frank. The previous day their gardener, Tom Cooper, had found a bunch of rose hips and old man’s beard bound in a willow branch lying on the grass outside the gate at the foot of the orchard. He’d been somewhat put out to discover, in addition, a crude design scratched on the green paint of the wooden gate – it showed a cross with a circle round it – and had been for taking a brush and a tin of paint down and repairing the damage, until Helen had stopped him. ‘Let it stay there,’ she’d decreed.

Madden had found the tramp’s gesture mystifying until his wife explained it to him.

‘He’s lying low,’ she said. ‘He knows the police will be looking for him again. They should have hung on to him while they had the chance.’

‘Yes, but since he was here, why didn’t he come in and see you?’

‘Because then we would have had to decide what to do – whether to inform the police or not – and he didn’t want to put us in that position. Mrs Beck was right. He’s a proper gentleman, my Topper. But I do worry about him. He’s getting too old to be wandering about.’

Boyce, meanwhile, had turned his attention to Madden. ‘To get back to what I was saying, John – the girl’s injuries aside, do you think there’s something unusual about this killing?’

Listening to the Surrey policeman, Helen felt a twinge of unease. Well aware of the regard in which her husband had once been held by his colleagues – and not only those at the Yard – she knew that his views would be eagerly sought, particularly in a case as grave as this one. But watching it happen now, she was filled with misgivings.

‘Oh, it’s shocking, I grant you,’ Boyce went on, having failed to elicit an immediate response. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that poor child’s face. But ten to one this Beezy will turn out to be the man we want. Or someone very like him.’

‘A tramp, you mean?’ Madden sounded surprised.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I do. That sort of man.’ The chief superintendent pursed his lips. ‘Look, it’s not inconceivable, living the life they do… tramps… vagrants… they lack so much… they’ve no opportunity…’ He directed an embarrassed glance at Helen, who’d divined the source of his discomfiture.

‘You’re implying they’re sexually deprived,’ she said.

‘Well, yes. Since you put it that way.’ The Guildford chief sought refuge in his handkerchief. He blew his nose loudly. ‘And that sort of feeling can build up, can it not? You get pressure, more and more pressure, and when the dam finally breaks, well, it can be sudden and savage. That’s what happened here, I think. Whoever killed that girl lost control of himself.’

‘Are you certain of that?’ Madden’s quiet interjection took both his listeners by surprise. Boyce stared at him.

‘What are you saying, John?’ he asked. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I’m not sure, exactly.’ Scowling, Madden seemed suddenly a prey to doubts himself. ‘I don’t want to burden you with half-baked ideas.’

‘Never mind that.’ Boyce frowned in turn. ‘Just tell me what you think.’ And when Madden remained silent. ‘Are you saying I should call in the Yard?’

Helen saw that her husband had been expecting the question. But his reply was not what she had thought it would be.

‘I don’t see how you can,’ Madden said. ‘Not yet. You could be right about the tramp. And in any case he has to be found. But I’d make sure the Yard was informed about this.’ He spoke more confidently now; his mind was made up. ‘And I wouldn’t waste any time, either, Jim, if I were you. I’d get in touch with them right away.’

The drive back to Highfield was a silent one. Madden’s habit of withdrawing into himself when preoccupied was deeply engrained, and Helen had learned from experience to be patient with him.

It had taken her many weeks when they’d first met to learn the details of his past. To draw from him the story of the young wife and baby daughter he had watched die in an influenza epidemic before the war: to hear from his own lips of his subsequent descent into the hell of the trenches, an experience from which he’d emerged so injured in spirit that, until fate cast him into her arms, he had ceased to have any hope or belief in his future.

Long dispelled, these shadows no longer troubled their lives. What concerned Helen now was the irrational fear she had felt at the sight of her husband being drawn once more into a police investigation after so long an absence from the profession. His decision to quit his job and start a new life with her had not been taken lightly. Nor was it one he had ever regretted. If he was allowing himself to become involved now it could only be in response to some deep anxiety, and this realization kept the pulse of uneasiness throbbing inside her.

The happy years they had spent together had been born out of tragedy, something she could never forget. Indeed, the thought was fresh in her mind as they drove through the village, past the green and the moss-walled churchyard and along the straggling line of cottages that led to the high brick wall surrounding Melling Lodge. Leased by a succession of tenants in recent years, it was empty at present and the locked gates and dark, elm-lined drive lent it a mournful air.

Time had dulled the pain of that summer morning more than a decade past when an urgent summons from Will Stackpole had brought her, the village doctor, speeding through those same gates to confront the unimaginable reality of a household brutally slain; her dearest friend among the victims. When she drove by now it was of her husband she was thinking.

Yet the two were inextricably linked. It was the subsequent police investigation that had brought them together, and although the love that had flowered between them had drawn a line under Madden’s tortured past, their future together had been dearly purchased. The case, one of the bloodiest in the Yard’s annals, had come close to costing him his life.

Feeling out of place in his town clothes – he was clad in a grey pinstriped suit and homburg – Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair paused at the edge of the green to take in the scene before him. Quite close to where he stood a cloth banner erected on poles bore the words HIGHFIELD FLOWER AND VEGETABLE SHOW in bold capitals, and beyond it, the broad stretch of grass ringed with cottages was filled with stalls, where the fruits of a long summer were on display.

Vegetables piled high in baskets – beans, peas, potatoes, carrots – rubbed shoulders with swollen marrows, while beside them there were tables overflowing with bunches of late roses and chrysanthemums. Pumpkins, apples, pears, blackberries, nuts, brown speckled eggs – there seemed no end to the variety of items arrayed for inspection and the avenues between the stands were thronged with villagers dressed in their Sunday best.

Searching the crowd, the chief inspector’s eye lit on a tall, elegant figure wearing a cream-coloured linen dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat standing beside a table stacked with preserves. He gave a grunt of appreciation. A widower now for several years, Angus Sinclair considered Helen Madden to be the best-looking woman of his acquaintance, and it always gave him particular pleasure to see her.

The long tresses she had worn when he first knew her, the fashion of the time, and a legacy of girlhood, perhaps, had long since vanished, but the chief inspector found consolation in the slender white neck their disappearance had revealed. His spirits, dampened earlier that morning by the pathologist’s report and accompanying photographs he’d been obliged to examine at Guildford police station, rose at the sight of her.

But his relief was shortlived. Aware of his approach, Helen put down the jar of honey she was holding.

‘I was wondering when you’d appear, Angus.’

Taken by surprise – he’d expected a friendly greeting at the very least – Sinclair stood abashed.

‘It’s that poor child’s murder, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here.’

Struck speechless, the chief inspector sought refuge in action. Bending beneath the brim of Helen’s straw hat, he planted a firm kiss on her cheek. The jasmine scent she’d always favoured was a reminder of happier occasions.

‘I’ll admit I’ve been at Guildford all morning, talking to Jim Boyce about it.’

‘And now you want to see John. Angus, you’re not to drag him into this. I won’t allow it.’ Her dark blue eyes offered no concession.

‘Drag him in! It was John who found the child’s body, for heaven’s sake.’ Sinclair broke off. The subject was a delicate one between them. He continued in a different tone. ‘My dear, I must speak to him. Surely you see that.’

The smile he tendered her was conciliatory. But in truth it was no more than a gesture. Though he had never doubted the strength of Helen’s feelings for her husband, he had equally never forgiven her for the part she had played in persuading the man she loved to give up his job with the police and start a new life with her. It still rankled with the chief inspector that an officer as talented as his former colleague should have quit the force, and fond as he was of Madden’s wife, he could never quite bring himself to absolve her of responsibility for this loss to the public weal.

‘Oh, very well. I see I’ve no choice in the matter.’

Relenting, she returned his kiss. In spite of their differences, they were firm friends.

‘He’s here somewhere. Probably over in that tent.’ She pointed towards a tan-coloured marquee topped with flags near the back of the green. ‘John’s had to stand in as chairman of the prize-giving committee this year. It ought to be Lord Stratton’s job, but he’s managed to come down with gout, rather cunningly.’ She paused. ‘Do stay for lunch, Angus. We don’t see nearly enough of you.’

‘I wish I could, my dear.’ The chief inspector recognized the olive branch he was being offered and declined with regret. ‘Unfortunately, I’ve an engagement in London. I have to get back.’

‘Then you must come down and spend a weekend with us. I’ll write and let you know when.’

Her smile brought momentary relief to Sinclair. But then her expression changed and she grew serious again.

‘You may think I’m making too much of this, but I know John. He won’t turn his back on it now. He feels involved, and that worries me. I can’t explain why, but I feel threatened. I know you have to speak to him, but don’t let it go further than that, I beg you.’

She looked at him directly, and not for the first time the chief inspector felt the effect of her personality, that particular combination of physical beauty and firmness of will against which he felt powerless. But just as he was about to reply – he wanted to reassure her – they were interrupted.

‘Excuse me, sir… Mr Sinclair?’

Angus Sinclair’s grizzled eyebrows shot up in mock astonishment. He peered down at the eager young face that had materialized in front of them.

‘Robert Madden? Is it you?’ Despite his forty years on the force, the chief inspector retained the precise accents of his Aberdeen upbringing. ‘I can scarcely believe my eyes. You were six inches shorter the last time we met. How are you, my boy?’

They shook hands solemnly.

‘Have you come about the murder, sir?’ Despite a peeling nose and one scabbed knee, Madden’s son managed to convey the earnestness of his inquiry. His frown, the near image of his father‘s, brought a wistful smile to Sinclair’s lips. He and his wife had been childless, to their sorrow. ‘It was Daddy who found the body, you know?’

‘I’m aware of that.’ The chief inspector looked grave.

‘The police are looking for a tramp.’

‘I see you’re well informed.’