4
Madden found the chief inspector on the church hall steps talking to Helen Blackwell. The doctor was wearing a man's white linen jacket with the cuffs rolled up over a light summer dress. She greeted Madden with a smile.
'Dr Blackwell has been giving us a statement.'
Sinclair's grey eyes held a hint of wry amusement. 'She has also explained to me her reasons for wanting to keep Sophy Fletcher at her house, rather than send her to hospital. I found her arguments… persuasive. The child will stay here.'
'Thank you again, Chief Inspector.' The doctor shook his hand warmly. Her eyes brushed Madden's.
'Good morning to you both.'
Sinclair's nod was approving as he watched her walk away. 'A fine-looking lassie.' He gave Madden a sideways glance. 'Dragon indeed! You might have warned me, John.'
'Nothing from Oakley, I'm afraid, sir.' Madden was smiling. 'The press are waiting for you at the pub. I bumped into Ferris.'
'Is that rodent here?' The chief inspector's face darkened. 'It must be the smell of blood.'
'He's already guessed we've got problems.'
'He doesn't know the half of it. Come with me.
There's something I want to show you.'
Inside the hall a low hum of voices sounded from a line of tables where detectives were taking statements.
Madden saw Styles, bent over a pad, sitting opposite an elderly woman in a black coat and hat. Inspector Boyce was at another table before a growing pile of statement forms. With a nod to him, Sinclair picked up his file and led Madden to one side, out of earshot.
He removed two typewritten sheets of paper clipped together from the folder and handed them to the inspector. 'Have a look at that.'
It was the post-mortem report on Lucy Fletcher.
Madden spent several minutes studying it. Sinclair waited until he had finished.
'So he never touched her.' Eyes narrowed, the chief inspector stood with folded arms. 'Ransom looked everywhere. Vaginal swabs. Anal swabs. He even tested the poor woman's mouth. Not a trace of semen.'
'He grabbed her, though, just as we thought,'
Madden said. ' "Bruises on the upper arms…"' he quoted.
'He grabbed her and dragged her up the stairs to the bedroom and cut her throat. Why didn't he rape her? There was nothing to stop him. She was naked under that robe. What was he doing there? Why was he in that house?'
Madden was silent.
'He killed her with a razor, Ransom thinks. But it wasn't the colonel's — that was with his shaving things in the bathroom. We found no trace of blood on it.
He brought his own.'
Madden put the report back in the file. 'Did you show this to Dr Blackwell?' he asked.
'Yes. Why?'
'They were childhood friends. She needed to know.'
Sinclair sighed. He pointed to the pile of forms in front of Boyce. 'Go through those, John. See if you can find anything. I must talk to the press. When I come back we'll sit down together. The assistant commissioner's called a meeting for tomorrow morning.
The Yard is making its concern clear,' he added drily. 'I expect to be told they want an early result.'
'I doubt they'll get one this time.' Madden weighed the file in his hand.
'Spare a thought for me tomorrow when I'm telling them that.'
The tea urn had appeared again; it was sitting on a table by the door. Madden poured himself a mug and took a sandwich from the heaped plate beside it. He collected the pile of forms from Boyce and settled down in a quiet corner.
The statements, short for the most part, were mainly testaments to the unchanging nature of village life. Most of those questioned had seen the Fletchers at church on Sunday morning — for the last time, tragically. Several of them had spoken to Lucy Fletcher afterwards. 'Such a lovely lady,' Mrs Arthur Skipps, the butcher's wife had said, unprompted, and the detective interviewing her had let the remark stand.
Such a lovely lady.
Tom Cooper, the Fletchers' gardener, had been one of the last to see them alive. Although he was free on Sunday, he had gone over to Melling Lodge in the late afternoon to water the roses growing beside the kitchen-garden wall. The long drought had made it a difficult summer for him and he was determined not to see his labours go for nothing. Colonel Fletcher had found him busy with a watering-can and chided him in a friendly way for working on his day off. The colonel had been in his 'usual good spirits'. Later, Mrs Fletcher and her daughter Sophy had walked by and Cooper had waved to them. They were talking about the puppy the Fletchers were planning to buy for Sophy and her brother when they returned from Scotland at the end of the summer.
Lord Stratton, in his statement, said he had taken the Lord Lieutenant and his wife to dine with the Fletchers on Saturday evening. It had been 'a pleasant occasion'. The Fletchers had talked about their plans to drive through France later that summer to visit friends in Biarritz.
Helen Blackwell, who had also been at the dinner, was more forthcoming. Sophy Fletcher was to have spent the whole summer with her uncle and aunt Colonel Fletcher's brother and his wife — at their home outside Edinburgh. An attack of measles had kept her in Highfield, however, and her brother James had been sent on ahead. She was due to have travelled to Scotland by train the following week in the company of her nanny, Alice Crookes. Shortly thereafter the Fletchers had planned to leave for France.
The last part of Dr Blackwell's statement, an account of her urgent summons to the house on Monday morning, was given in cold medical language.
She had examined each of the victims in turn and pronounced them dead. Rigor was starting to recede and she had estimated the time of death at a little over twelve hours earlier. She said 'something' had made her look under the bed in the nursery. She employed the same phrase as she had used with Madden to describe Sophy's condition when she found her. 'Profound shock.'
The question of strangers in the village over the weekend was dealt with in several of the statements.
Frederick Poole, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, reported a busload of passengers in a Samuelson motor coach stopping at the pub for lunch on Saturday. The company had alerted him ahead of time. As far as he knew, all those who alighted from the bus had boarded the vehicle again later. Apart from that, there had been upward of a score of motorists and cyclists who had called in at the pub on Saturday and Sunday.
None had stuck in his mind. All had continued their journeys.
Freda Birney, the wife of the owner of the village shop, Alf Birney, reported seeing two hikers picnicking by the stream between the outskirts of the village and Melling Lodge on Sunday just before twelve o'clock. She had been taking the dog for a walk before preparing lunch for her family. Madden made a note to have the hikers traced and questioned.
Running his eye over the next statement in the pile, he paused, went back and reread it carefully, checked the name of the interviewing officer, and then put it to one side.
Billy Styles pushed the form across the table, watched the man sign it, said, 'Thank you, sir, that'll be all for now,' then leaned back in his chair and stretched. His tenth interview of the day. Harold Toombs, the village sexton. Billy had had to fight to keep a straight face as he wrote it down. Toombs had spent the weekend working in his garden. He had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary.
It was a matter of amazement to Billy that he was still part of the investigation. After his experiences of the day before he had expected to find himself back in the CID pool at Scotland Yard.
Detective Sergeant Hollingsworth, who'd brought him the news, seemed equally surprised. A stocky, nut-faced man with twenty years on the force, he affected to find Billy's presence among them a source of wonder. 'Can't think what the guv'nor has in mind.
No bloodhounds in your family tree, are there, Detective Constable Styles? No hidden talents we're not apprised of?'