River of Darkness (39 page)

'He had Biggs's body in the car with him,' the chief inspector explained. 'Somehow he managed to set it behind the steering-wheel, though that can't have been easy. He was hurt himself, and the room was full of smoke. He was on the point of leaving when we arrived, you know, getting ready to make a run for it. Perhaps he thought it a good idea to take the body with him and bury it in some place where it wouldn't be found. That way he'd keep us guessing. Was it Biggs who had stolen the silver? Was Carver really Pike?' Dr Blackwell's steady glance told Sinclair she was paying close heed to what he was telling her. 'God knows how he slipped away. We had the place surrounded, but the men were running this way and that, and the stables were on fire, too. It was all confusion. My guess is he went out through the kitchen and across the stableyard. 'But how he survived at all is the real mystery. He drove flat out into the side of the house. The pathologist who examined his body found three cracked ribs and injuries to his head. Plus he had a revolver bullet in his arm. The man had incredible strength and endurance.' How did he get to Highfield?" Dr Blackwell's gaze shifted to the white-painted bedstead on the other side of the hospital room. Sinclair noted that her eyes seldom left Madden for long. The inspector was deeply asleep. 'A farmer who lived a few miles from Mrs Aylward's house reported his car stolen during the night. It was found abandoned in a wood near Godalming ten days ago. He must have come the rest of the way on foot. Amazing strength. Amazing perseverance.' 'Will Stackpole says he was stealing food over on the Oakley side of the hanger. A farmer there reported some minor thefts.' Dr Blackwell's gaze returned to the chief inspector. 'He went back to his old dugout,' Sinclair affirmed. 'He couldn't reconstruct it, he hadn't the tools. All he had was his bayonet. But he dug a hole in the loose soil. More of an animal's burrow, really. I wonder how human he was at the end.' He regretted his words at once and looked at her quickly to gauge their effect. He could only imagine how it might feel to have been the object of so twisted and murderous a passion. But if the doctor was disturbed by the thought she gave no sign of it. 'I realized afterwards he must have come back for me. I have the same kind of looks as Lucy Fletcher. He could have watched us both from the ridge. But what about the others? Mrs Reynolds and Mrs Merrick?' She seemed genuinely curious. 'They were fair-haired, like you.' And good-looking, he almost added, but didn't wish to sound over familiar. Dr Blackwell's manner towards him had been cool. Remembering her smile from their previous encounters at Highfield, he wondered if he would see it today. 'We were his type, then. One look and he was smitten. The fatal glance. Like Tristan and Iseult.' She spoke with bitter irony. Her gaze went again to the still figure in the bed. 'His mother had the same colouring.' 'His mother? Her eye kindled with renewed interest. 'Yes, we know quite a lot about his past now. Let me finish telling you about the body first.' Sinclair was starting to enjoy their conversation, which hadn't seemed likely at first. During his frequent visits to Guildford and Highfield over the past fortnight he had called in at the hospital several times, only to find Madden asleep or sedated. On his last visit, a few days before, he had seen Dr Blackwell in her clothes and white doctor's jacket lying stretched out on the only other bed the ward contained, and had crept from the room. That afternoon he had come on her sitting in a chair beside the inspector's bed with his hand resting in hers on the white counterpane. Madden's eyes were shut. The doctor, too, was nodding, but she started awake as he entered and stood up at once, turning to face him. Sinclair was put in mind of a lioness guarding her wounded mate and he approached the bedside cautiously. 'He's asleep. You're not to wake him." Her thick fair hair was tied back tightly in a ribbon, her face pale above the white doctor's coat. The cut over her eye showed an ugly red scab. He saw she had made no attempt to cover it with powder. Sinclair was shocked by his colleague's appearance. The inspector's sunken cheeks and chalky skin gave his pallid features the aspect of a death's head. Dr Blackwell noticed his reaction. 'I know he looks terrible,' she said. 'But he's getting better. It was mainly the loss of blood, the shock. I wasn't sure at first ... I didn't know whether we could save him. But he's very strong ..." She touched Madden's cheek and then kissed his forehead. It was as though she needed to reassure herself of his physical presence. 'You don't know how strong,' she burst out, anger sharpening her tone. The chief inspector rather thought he did, but wasn't disposed to argue the point. 'We've no idea, you or I, what men like him suffered in the war, what they endured. To see him like this now . . !' Her voice broke. He understood then where her anger came from. He saw that she held him and the whole unsuffering world guilty of indifference to the inspector's long Calvary. And he accepted the justice of this injustice humbly and in silence. On the point of leaving, he had mentioned his disappointment at not finding Madden awake. 'We've got most of the answers now. John would be interested to hear them.' 'Then why not tell me?' she had suggested coolly. It afforded the chief inspector some amusement on his train journey back to London later to reflect that it hadn't even occurred to him to demur. They had taken their chairs over to the window, away from the sickbed. A brisk wind was blowing outside. Golden leaves from the chestnuts lining the street batted against the window-panes. The pale autumn sunshine brought out the shadows beneath Helen Blackwell's eyes. Now it had shifted and lay on the polished linoleum at their feet, slowly lengthening and moving across the floor towards the sleeping figure in the white bed. 'The Folkestone pathologist naturally examined the body we retrieved from the car. It was badly disfigured. There was little he could learn from it. But one thing bothered him. Army records gave Pike's height as a touch over six feet and his physique as muscular. The body seemed about two inches shorter. I say "seemed" because it was so severely burned the flesh had shrivelled, altering its natural size and, besides, it was fixed in a sitting position, making it difficult to measure accurately.' 'And there was no possibility of checking for distinguishing marks.' The doctor's attention was fully engaged. 'None. But in the course of his examination the pathologist had found something interesting. A key ring that must have been in the pocket of the man's clothing and which had adhered to the flesh of his leg. He gave it to the Folkestone police who tested the keys on the padlocks Pike had used to lock the shed where he kept his motorcycle and found they didn't fit. However, it was equally possible they were for locks at Mrs Aylward's house or in the stables, and there was no way of checking those. 'Then one of the detectives had a fresh idea. He took a good look at the key ring itself. It was made with a shilling piece - a hole had been drilled in the coin -- and he remembered that was something men returning from the war had done. The shilling was the King's shilling they were given on enlistment and they kept it as a memento. 'Now Pike had certainly served in the war, but he'd enlisted as a professional soldier years before. Even supposing he still had his shilling, it seemed unlikely to the detective that a man like Amos Pike would have done anything so sentimental as to turn it into a key ring.' The chief inspector smiled approvingly. 'That's what I call good detective work. Seeing past the evidence. He's a man called Booth. Fine copper. He'd already helped us a great deal.' 'The key ring belonged to Biggs?' Dr Blackwell asked. 'It did. Booth learned that from a friend of his, but not until lunch-time on Sunday. By then I was returning myself from Stonehill by train. I got to the Yard in the late afternoon, found Booth's message waiting for me and tried to ring John in Highfield right away.' 'I was at the constable's cottage when you rang,' Dr Blackwell said. Sinclair already knew that - he had read her statement to the Guildford police. But he let her speak. 'We tried to ring John at my house, but there was no reply, so we decided to go over and fetch him. Pike must have been waiting outside in the garden when John switched the lights on. We found the body of our dog near the terrace.' 'Thank God Stackpole was with you,' Sinclair observed. 'But I wondered why he didn't go into the house when you did? Why he stayed outside?' 'He was opening up the dicky,' she explained. 'He was going to have to sit there on the way to the station. Poor Will, it's a terrible squeeze for him.' She looked away. 'We owe him our lives, John and I. You won't forget that, will you?' The chief inspector assured her that indeed he would not. 'You mentioned Pike's mother. . .' Dr Blackwell resettled herself. "I read in the paper his father murdered her and was hanged for it.' "The press have got on to that," Sinclair acknowledged. He'd been half hoping she'd forgotten his dropped remark. 'They're digging around for the rest. I dare say it'll all come out in the end.' He paused. His superiors at the Yard had decreed that some of the facts of the case should be kept from the general public. But he didn't believe the prohibition should apply to her. 'Ebenezer Pike confessed to the killing. He said he'd found his wife in bed with another man. He made the admission in open court. The trial didn't last long. All the same, I was surprised when I read the police file to find no mention of the man caught with Mrs Pike. Not even his name. The implication seemed to be that he'd run off and not been found.' Dr Blackwell nodded, as though comprehending 'It was their son, wasn't it? That's who he found her with.' The chief inspector gazed at her in admiration. He'd made the same deduction himself, though not quite so quickly. 'Yes, his father acknowledged it. But only on condition it wasn't included in his confession. He was adamant on that point, and in the end they had to take what he gave them. I spoke to an inspector who'd worked on the case. He said the boy had been found in the bedroom covered with blood, sitting crouched in a corner. He was naked, like his mother. She was stretched over the bed with her hair hanging down and her throat cut. It was one of those cases nobody likes to think about. The boy was packed off to live with his grandparents. A few years later he went for a soldier--' Sinclair broke off to stare at the floor. When he lifted his eyes he found that the doctor's forehead was creased with a questioning frown. 'That's not the end of the story, is it?' He wondered how she had guessed. Or was this an example of so-called women's intuition? A revolutionary thought occurred to the chief inspector: he wouldn't half mind having a Helen Blackwell or two working beside him on the force! 'I read through the file several times, but I wasn't satisfied. Don't ask me why.' He was prepared to claim a modicum of intuition on his own account. 'I took a day off and went down to Nottingham and then out to the village where the Pikes had lived. It's called Dorton. Their cottage was a mile or so away on a big estate where Ebenezer Pike was head gamekeeper. I spoke to the local bobby. The murder was before his time, but he put me on to his predecessor who was still living there, retired." Sinclair smiled. 'George Hobbs is his name. He's over seventy, full of rheumatism, but bright as a button. He remembered the case only too well. In fact, he's still in a huff about it.' 'A huff? 'He was the first policeman on the scene. He knew all the characters involved. He was the one they ought to have turned to to get it sorted out. That was George Hobbs's opinion then, and nothing has occurred since to alter it!" Sinclair's smile broadened. 'A wonderful institution, the village bobby. I pray we never lose him.' The quick glance Dr Blackwell directed towards Madden, who was muttering in his sleep, contrived to suggest impatience without expressing it. 'Hobbs was able to flesh out the picture for me. First, about the Pikes as a family. Ebenezer, the father, was a cold, hard man, he said. He married the daughter of a local farmer, Sadie Grail was her name, and that was interesting. Grail was the name Pike used at the village where he kept his motorcycle. Now, according to Hobbs, Miss Grail was by way of being damaged goods. The young lady had already achieved a certain reputation in the countryside and it seems that marriage by no means curtailed her activities.' The chief inspector caught Helen Blackwell's eye and shrugged. 'Anyway, they had a son together, Amos Pike, but Hobbs said he had no end of trouble from them. Pike gave his wife a beating on several occasions. She ran away twice. Once she assaulted him with a kitchen knife. Meanwhile, young Amos was growing up - and making of it all, who knows what? He was becoming a problem, too.' 'A problem?' 'According to Hobbs, strange things had been found in the woods, small animals sliced up, some hanging from branches. Two cats from the village were killed ... in unpleasant ways. The finger pointed towards Amos Pike, but no one had caught him at it. He was growing up fast, Hobbs said. A big lad, even before he was in his teens. And there was something else, something between him and his mother, that seems to have upset the constable.' 'What was that?' The doctor's eyes had taken on a distanced look. 'The way she treated him, even in public' Sinclair made a gesture of distaste. 'I can only tell you what Hobbs told me. She'd run her hands over him, he said. "Not in a good way" -- that was how he put it. He thought she did it partly to anger her husband. But there was more to it than that, he reckoned. He called her "a dangerous woman". One has to form one's own picture, I think.' The chief inspector felt momentarily embarrassed until he realized that Dr Blackwell wasn't similarly affected. 'He was trying to say she corrupted the boy, it sounds.' 'I believe so. On the day in question, the first he heard of the murder was when a local woman called Mrs Babcock arrived at his house in a state of hysterics and said she'd found Sadie Pike lying dead in her cottage. Hobbs rushed out there. On the way he encountered Ebenezer Pike with a bloody shirt-front and carrying his razor. He told the constable he'd killed his wife. When Hobbs reached their cottage he found the scene I've described. 'He sent for outside help immediately and a pair of detectives came from Nottingham. They made it clear they didn't require his assistance, but he went about making his own inquiries none the less. He discovered Pike had been