Sweating slightly in spite of the frosty air, glad of the boots he’d put on that morning, Madden strode down the narrow lane. Walled on either side by dense woods, the road was more than ankle-deep in fresh snow and the louring sky threatened another fall soon. Since leaving the outskirts of Liphook he had not seen a living soul; only the cries of a flock of plovers wheeling overhead had broken the silence of the white-clad countryside all around him, and in the deep stillness he had found his thoughts drifting back to the past: to the bitter winter of 1916 when he had huddled with others around flickering spirit stoves in the trenches before Arras, trying to thaw the thick chunks of bully beef in their mess tins. Once a prey to memories of the slaughter, and to the nightmares that had plagued his sleep for years afterwards, he seldom thought of that time now. But on emerging from the woods into a landscape of flat, gently rolling contours not unlike the killing fields of northern France, he found long-forgotten images returning to fill his mind.
He had wasted little time in Liphook, staying only long enough to warm his hands at the small wood fire burning in Leonard’s office and to receive directions from the constable on how to reach the Grange.
‘There are no signposts up any more. They took them down during the Jerry invasion scare. I dare say it’s the same over at Highfield. But if you follow the road to Devil’s Lane and turn right at the crossroads, you can’t go far wrong. Watch out for a fork in the road when you reach the old mill, though. Left will take you to the MacGregors’ farm, and you don’t want to end up there.’
There seemed to have been little traffic on the lane recently — he saw no marks of tyre tracks in the virgin snow — but after he had been walking steadily for a quarter of an hour he heard the sound of muffled hoofs behind him, and, turning round, spied a pony-and-trap driven by a broad-shouldered figure well wrapped in winter garments coming his way. He moved to one side of the road to give it passage, but when the trap reached him it came to a halt.
‘Where are you headed? Can I give you a lift?’
The voice was a woman’s, though it would have been hard to judge her sex by appearance alone: clad in an old army greatcoat, she was also wearing a fur-lined cap whose earflaps, tied beneath the chin, hid most of her features.
‘I’m going to a house called the Grange,’ Madden replied.
‘Are you now?’ The answer seemed to interest the driver, and she leaned down from the trap’s seat to peer at his face. ‘Well, hop on, if you like. I can only take you as far as the crossroads, but that’ll save you half a mile’s walk.’
As Madden put his foot on the step, she reached down a gloved hand and hauled him up beside her.
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ The face she turned to him, framed in fur, was fiftyish and weathered.
‘No. I came over from Highfield, in Surrey.’ He settled himself beside her. ‘Madden’s my name. John Madden.’
The woman had been on the point of flicking the reins; now she hesitated.
‘Not the John Madden who married Helen Collingwood that was?’
‘The very same.’ Madden grinned. ‘And you are-?’
‘Elizabeth Brigstock. Bess.’ She offered him a hand which he shook. ‘I knew your wife years ago, but only slightly. It was when we were girls. Our mothers were friends, but Helen’s died young.’
‘So she did. Before the war — the last war. I never knew her.’
‘We used to be hauled by our mas out to dances in the neighbourhood. In my case, anyway.’ She chuckled. ‘I was the perennial wallflower. I used to sit watching the couples, thinking the evening would never end. But Helen was such a beauty; she had to fend the young men off. But I did like her; she had such lightness of spirit. One of those people you were always pleased to see. I went abroad after the war and we lost touch, but I was told she’d got married again.’ She was still looking at him; but her gaze had lost focus and she seemed to be searching her memory. ‘And what was it I heard? There was some story about you …’
‘About me?’ Madden grinned. ‘I doubt that.’
‘No, I’m sure … It’ll come back to me in a moment.’ She smiled in turn and then clicked her tongue. ‘Wake up, Pickles.’ She flicked the reins. ‘Get a move on, you lazy beast.’
Soon they were travelling at a sedate trot.
‘I’m the village postlady. One of them. I have to make a circuit of the farms on this side of Liphook. I’ll get to the Grange eventually, but only later, I’m afraid, otherwise I’d offer you a lift all the way. You know Mary, do you?’
‘Mary-?’ Madden looked at her questioningly.
‘Mary Spencer.’ She returned his glance. Her eyebrows had risen fractionally; in surprise, perhaps.
‘No, but I know who she is.’ Madden paused. ‘Is she a friend of yours?’
‘Very much so.’ Steering carefully, Bess Brigstock negotiated a dead branch that had fallen on to the road in front of them beneath the weight of snow.
‘Actually it’s not Mrs Spencer I want to speak to. It’s the Polish girl who works for her. Eva Belka is the name I’ve been given.’
Expecting her to say something more — to question him, perhaps, ask him his business — he waited; but they were approaching the crossroads and Bess slowed the pony to a walk before bringing it to a halt.
‘That’s your way.’ She pointed to her right. ‘I doubt you’ll find another soul on the road today so you’d better not get lost. Make sure you take the right fork when you reach the mill.’
Thanking her, Madden stepped backwards down from the seat. When he looked up he found her steady gaze fixed on him. Her face bore an expression he couldn’t quite read: half curious, half wary.
‘I’ve just remembered what it was I heard about you,’ she said, settling the reins in her hands again. ‘My mother wrote to me while I was working in Africa and told me Helen was getting married again and how surprised everyone was.’
‘Surprised — why?’
‘Because of whom she was marrying.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Ma said he was a policeman.’
26
‘Well, at last we seem to be getting somewhere, sir.’
Sinclair bustled into Bennett’s office with his file under his arm, limping, it was true, but more from habit than anything else. As though in keeping with the festive spirit, the pain in his toe had eased somewhat and he was enjoying the momentary respite from discomfort.
‘We’ve had a sighting of Ash. Tentative, but encouraging. I’ve just had word of it from Brixton. A local landlady called in at the station this morning and said she was reasonably sure he’d been staying at her boarding house until a few days ago. She said she recognized his face from the passport photograph published in the papers.’
‘Reasonably sure?’ Bennett paused in the middle of slipping some papers into a drawer to look up. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, bear in mind the snapshot’s an old one, taken when he was a young man, so it would have been hard for her to be certain. But in spite of that she seemed to think the resemblance was strong. The detective she spoke to at Brixton pressed her hard, but she stuck to her guns: she said she was ninety per cent sure it was the same man. And there are other factors that seemed to support her story.’
‘Such as …?’ The assistant commissioner closed the drawer. He was on the point of leaving for his Christmas break, but had asked Sinclair at their meeting earlier that morning to keep him informed up to the last minute.
‘His behaviour, in a word.’ The chief inspector sat down. ‘He was there for a week, but his landlady saw very little of him. He didn’t mix with her other lodgers — she served them breakfast and supper — but had his meals in his room. And he always seemed to manage to slip in and out without encountering anyone. Quiet as a cat, she said.’ Sinclair’s eyes had narrowed. ‘The cat who walked by himself, perhaps. My nose tells me it was Ash and I’m acting on that assumption. Especially as we have a name.’