“There were problems at home. The father is a big-fisted man with a short temper who feels duty-bound to toughen up his soft son. The household is going through straitened times, with the work drying up. Not so many horses about these days, and money’s short. Tensions in the family. Little Walter was bearing the brunt of all this. His mother feared for the boy’s life and took the drastic step of sending him away without his father’s knowledge. Chadwick was unwilling at first to take the boy under such circumstances. He’d done it before and got into trouble for it. I advised him otherwise on account of the good Dr. Carter has done us many a favour. And knows some of our secrets.
“So here he is. I see to it that he’s having as happy a time as is possible in this place. Young Jessica here is trying to teach him to read. Walter’s a bit bewildered, but at least he’s alive. He’s not had the snip yet, they’ve—”
Dorcas could not keep the horror out of her voice as she interrupted. “Snip? What do you mean, Francis?”
He looked at her with the eyes of a clapped-out horse on its way to the knacker’s yard, pained and accepting. “It’s routine, Miss Joliffe. We’ve all had it. He says the state supports and encourages it. Can’t be doing with any hanky-panky leading to procreation of more idiots, can we? Too many of us already.”
“But, Francis, it’s not legal! Every time they put forwards a bill, it’s defeated in Parliament.”
Francis breathed in deeply and looked about him in despair. “How would we know? What could we do?” And, suddenly focussing his gaze: “Oh, my God!”
His eyes, constantly sweeping the horizon, had suddenly fixed. His voice rapped out: “Children—quick march! Run and report to Mrs. Dunne. Now! Go!”
The three picked up their dolls and fled.
Picking his way towards them, two hundred yards distant, came the figure of Superintendent Chadwick.
Dorcas shuffled close to Francis Crabbe. “Any use running for it? He’s between us and the car. And we couldn’t take off without Joe.”
Francis grimaced. “I’ve nowhere to run anyway. What do you think he could do to harm you, posh folk that you are?”
“It’s life and death, Francis. If he knows that we’ve found out about the killings, he’ll know that he’ll be swinging at a rope’s end within six months.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. I’d like to see justice done, but he’s a clever man. Mad, as I’ve told you, and bad, as you’ve learned, but clever. Monomaniac like Napoleon. Running his own little kingdom. He enjoys having power of life and death over everyone. Here he comes, all smiles and a cosh—or is it a gun this time?—in his pocket. He’ll talk his way out of this. He’ll have made his plans. I know his mind. He’ll be planning a little motoring accident for you. ‘On these slippery roads, can one wonder? The young driver was clearly going too fast on that tight bend, that killer loop just outside Seaford,’ is what they’ll say. There’s no way out of this. Well … perhaps one.…”
Advancing on them at a fast trot, one hand still in his right pocket, Dorcas noted, the menacing figure grew larger.
JOE SEIZED A grey-cloaked figure, shook him, and shouted his demand. He released him on hearing the spluttering reply.
“The graveyard! They’ve gone to the bloody graveyard!”
They burst out of the front entrance to see Chadwick’s Talbot parked, engine still steaming, but no sign of the superintendent.
“Bugger him,” said Joe. “Let’s find them! Graveyard—which way?”
Turning the corner they caught sight, silhouetted against the declining sun, of Chadwick making at a fast pace towards the collection of headstones that marked the cemetery. As they watched, three small figures hitched up their skirts and ran from the scene. Chadwick forged on. He broke into a trot. Straight towards Dorcas and Francis Crabbe, who seemed, like frightened rabbits, to be huddling close for comfort and backing slowly away.
Joe couldn’t hear the exchange of words as they hurled themselves across the squelching turf but his eyes, wide with horror, took in the scene that seemed to happen in slow motion in front of him.
THE WORDS EXCHANGED were short and crude.
“Judas!” yelled Chadwick, coming to a halt a few feet away.
“Murdering swine!” Francis Crabbe shouted back, holding his ground. His voice was firm, even exultant, but the arm he passed protectively around Dorcas’s shoulder was trembling.
The two men stood a few feet apart, raw emotion pulsing between them. A lifetime of unspoken words dammed up on each side, and there was no time to deliver them.
“End of the road, Crabbe! And you have three others on your conscience now. They’ll have to go with you. If you’d kept your trap shut—but you never learned anything profitable in your useless life, did you?”
“I learned this much!” screamed Francis. “From your Bible classes!” He held out a staying hand and thundered in a priestly voice: “ ‘I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.’ ”
“I’ll put it on your tombstone,” Chadwick jeered. “An epitaph!”
With a speed that took Dorcas by surprise, Francis plunged a hand into her satchel and came up with her gun.
No warning, no bargaining. One shot. With a look of surprise, Chadwick buckled at the knees and slumped to the ground, a red hole between the staring eyes.
Joe panted up with Gosling at his side. Gently he took the gun from Crabbe’s grasp and put the safety catch on. His next act was to seize a shivering Dorcas in a tight and wordless hug.
Tactfully, Gosling went to check the body, which was lying collapsed backwards over a tombstone.
“A bit slow on the draw.” With a toe he pushed a Browning revolver away from Chadwick’s hand. “He’s a goner, sir.”
“Hit by a Smith and Wesson at point blank range, he would be,” Joe said, back in control again. “I don’t need to ask why, but I wish you’d left him for us to deal with, Crabbe.”
“Couldn’t be certain he’d not get away with it. He always has. This was the only sure way. I’ve had mad fantasies about this for years, sir,” he admitted with a shaky grin. “Look at it this way—if I hadn’t shot, Miss Dorcas would have. I could feel her hands twitching. Right now she’d be in all kinds of bother. I’m not sure she’s the kind of lady who’d get over killing a man, even a monster like that. She might have had to stand trial. Wouldn’t want that. Anyway, I’m mad. Officially mad. What are they going to do? Send me to a loony bin?”
Francis Crabbe smiled a smile of pure reason.
“Christ Almighty, Crabbe! I believe you’ve just set the waterworks on fire,” said Joe, admiring.
CHAPTER 31
They met for the last time in the equipment room, sitting at the table while whistling coppers cleared the place of documents and evidence boxes.
Joe looked around him with the familiar blend of regret, anxiety and triumph that always accompanied the closing of a case. Anxiety was winning the struggle for his attention. He grimaced. “Tin hat and a one-way ticket to the Riviera, I think you suggested earlier, Martin? Advice we might need to take, all four of us.”
“You’ve knocked the top off a beehive, Sandilands. And it’s you they’re all buzzing after. But I’ll tell you, if anyone needs watching it’s that professor we’ve got under lock and key in Tunbridge. I warn you, he’s got all sorts of mischief planned for you when we let him loose.”
“Let him loose? Why would you do that?”
“He seems confident he’ll get bail. Seems to think you’ll know why. Pity we couldn’t get him for the St. Magnus murders. I thought when the lid came off the Spielman coffin, we’d have it sewn up. Oh, it was all tickety-boo on the surface; death well documented and accounted for. All aboveboard. Nasty scene,” Martin confided. “Spielman blustering and claiming immunity, Madame Spielman shrieking and distraught. But—alerted—our doc confirmed suspicious death, signs of electrodes applied under the hair.”