Bennett's going to talk to the War Office. We'll get a list of patients who've been released and start running them down. He'll also ask them to look into Colonel Fletcher's military service record. Did he have a run in with one of his men? Some deep-held grudge?' The chief inspector shook his head. 'Motive's still our main problem. I told them that. Revenge is a possibility, but this notion of an armed gang losing their heads and going berserk is pure balderdash, and Bennett knows it. Those killings were deliberate.'
At the coroner's inquest, held in Guildford the following day, verdicts of murder by person or persons unknown were returned in the case of all five victims. The coroner, an elderly man with red-veined cheeks and a drooping eyelid, spoke of the horror felt 'not only in Highfield, but here in Guildford' at the 'heartless, brutal murders of Colonel and Mrs Fletcher'.
'He seems to have forgotten about the maid and the nanny,' Sinclair remarked to Madden afterwards. 'Not to mention Mr Wiggins, the poacher.'
They were standing in the street outside the courtroom.
Madden nodded to the Birneys as they went by with a group of villagers, heading for the station. The public benches had been crowded.
Helen Blackwell had been one of those testifying.
She had arrived with Lord Stratton and a tall, silver haired man whom she seemed to resemble. Now she brought him over.
'Chief Inspector, I'd like you to meet my father, Dr Collingwood.' Sinclair shook hands. 'And this is Inspector Madden.'
Dr Collingwood told them he had been driving through France with friends when word of the murders had reached him. 'I thought I'd got over the shock, until I drove past Melling Lodge yesterday evening.'
He had the same dark blue eyes as his daughter, and he looked at her with concern. 'My dear, this has been harder on you than you realize. You seem quite worn out.'
It was true, Madden thought. She was paler than he remembered, tense and stiff-backed, and for the first time her manner with him was cool and distant.
'Don't treat me like a patient,' she scolded her father. 'Anyhow, my main worry's over now, thanks to Mr Sinclair.' She turned to the chief inspector. 'I can't thank you enough for agreeing to let Sophy go to Scotland.'
Sinclair tipped his hat to her and bowed. 'You should thank Inspector Madden, ma'am. He was a most persuasive advocate.'
Dr Blackwell looked at her watch. 'We ought to go. Sophy gets anxious if I'm away too long.'
Dr Collingwood moved off towards Lord Stratton's Rolls-Royce, which was parked nearby. Sinclair accompanied him. Dr Blackwell lingered.
'I almost forgot,' she said. 'Sophy keeps doing those squiggles. But today she produced something different.
Or, rather, it's the same, only bigger.'
She opened her handbag and took out a sheet of drawing paper. It bore a single, enlarged version of the smaller figures the child had drawn earlier.
'I can't think what she means by it.'
She gave the drawing to Madden, who studied it.
'It looks like a balloon,' the doctor said. 'But why does she keep repeating it?'
Madden stared at the drawing, frowning. 'Has she ever done anything like this before?'
'I don't think so. Mary says not. To tell the truth, I haven't the faintest idea what's going on in her mind.' Or yours, Inspector, Dr Blackwell thought, as she turned away and went off to join her father and Lord Stratton.
Walking briskly, briefcase in hand, Chief Inspector Sinclair threaded a path between the headstones and joined Madden where he was standing in a corner of the Highfield churchyard.
'Has something happened, sir?' Madden had been expecting him earlier — in time for the funeral service — but there had been a message from Scotland Yard to say the chief inspector would be delayed.
'Later, John.'
Sinclair nodded to Lord Stratton, who was with a small group of mourners making their way from the graveside. The sexton was already at work filling in the twin graves of Charles and Lucy Fletcher. A silent line of black-clad villagers filed through the churchyard gate.
'I've something to show you.' He hefted his briefcase.
Lord Stratton led one of the group aside, a lean, suntanned man with greying temples.
'That's Robert Fletcher, the colonel's brother,' Madden told the chief inspector. 'He and his wife came down from Edinburgh yesterday. They're going to leave things at Melling Lodge as they are for the time being. They want to get Sophy back with her brother as soon as possible.'
They watched as the two men crossed the churchyard to where a black-suited figure stood in the shade of a cedar tree. Madden recognized the florid features of Sir William Raikes, the Lord Lieutenant.
'I'd better go, too, and pay my respects to his nibs.'
Sinclair glanced at his companion. 'No need for you to trouble yourself, Inspector.'
Madden was glad to be left on his own. The funeral scene took him back to his youth. He'd been too young to remember his mother's death, but his father had perished in a barn fire when he was sixteen. The boy, home on holiday from the Taunton grammar school where he was a scholarship pupil, had helped to drag the body from the blazing timbers. The sight of the charred corpse, shocking to him then, now seemed like a foretaste of what had awaited him on the fields of northern France. His father had been buried in late summer. It had been a day like today.
Helen Blackwell's face, white beneath a veil, appeared before him. 'Inspector, I've come to say goodbye.' Her voice was strained. 'My father and I are going up to Yorkshire to stay with friends for a few weeks. I imagine you'll be gone by the time we return.'
Madden stared at her. Finally he spoke. 'Yes, we're moving out this weekend. The Surrey police will stay on for a time.'
'I hardly dare ask — have you made any progress?'
'Some…' He checked himself. He felt the need to be open with her. 'Hardly any, I'm afraid. It's a case where the answers aren't obvious.' He wanted to say more, to detain her further, but the words dried in him.
She smiled briefly and held out her hand. He felt her firm grip for the last time.
'Goodbye, then, Inspector.'
She rejoined her father. Madden followed her figure with his gaze as they left the churchyard together.
'It makes fascinating reading, doesn't it?'
Sinclair stood with his hands on his hips while Madden sat studying the typewritten pages. Both men had removed their jackets in the stifling heat of the snug bar.
'Good of Dr Tanner to let us know finally. A pity he couldn't have told us earlier. But, then, the government chemist is a busy man. It moves me to think that one day the police will have their own laboratory.
It moves me even more to know I haven't a hope in Hades of being alive to see it!'
'Tanner's sure about it being tobacco ash?' Madden asked.
'I put the same question to him. He said there's no doubt in his mind. He'll swear to it.'
'What made you look there?' Madden was curious, but not surprised. The chief inspector's meticulousness was legendary.
'The lavatory bowl was clean, but there seemed to be dust on the rim. Now that was strange, I thought.
The rest of the bathroom was spotless. So I took some scrapings and sent them off with the other stuff.'
'Colonel Fletcher didn't smoke, did he?'
'No, he gave up three years ago, on doctor's advice.
Nor did Mrs Fletcher.' Sinclair cocked his head. 'And somehow I couldn't see the upstairs maid sneaking a quick fag in the master's bathroom. No, it was our man, all right. He likes a cigarette now and again you'll see.'