River of Darkness

Madden and Stackpole looked at each other.

'Let me get this clear,' the inspector said. 'There was something in the sidecar?'

'That's right — a shape. That's all I could see. Like I said, at first I thought it was a passenger. But it just didn't look right, not for a person. It was too low.

There wasn't much showing over the rim of the sidecar.'

'How fast was it travelling?'

'Not fast. He was watching for the ruts.'

'He? You saw the rider?'

Wellings shook his head. 'Just his shape. Big bloke.

He was wearing a cloth cap. That's all, Mr Madden, I swear. It was only for a few seconds, then he was gone, heading back towards the road.'

Madden stared at him. 'You could have told us this two weeks ago,' he said.

Wellings said nothing.

The inspector stood up. 'Stay here.' He signed to Stackpole and the two of them went outside into the road. The constable filled his lungs with fresh air.

'I suppose he'll get off now, the little bastard.'

'Not at all.' Madden shook his head firmly. 'No bargain was struck. We're going to charge him. But don't tell him that yet. Get his statement first. Then tell him, but leave it for a few days. He may remember something more.'

Stackpole's grin returned. He took out his notebook.

'Before you go back in, I need a telephone.'

'There's only one in Oakley, sir, at the post-office counter. That's in the store. You'll have to go through the Guildford exchange.'

Five minutes later Madden was connected with the Scotland Yard switchboard. He caught Sinclair on his way out to an early luncheon appointment.

'We need to get the Surrey police on to this, sir.

They'll have to go over their tracks, question the same people in the same villages. On this side of the ridge, at least.'

'But now we've something specific. A motorcycle and sidecar. A big man in a cloth cap. Well done, John!'

'We've Stackpole to thank, sir. He doesn't miss much.'

'I'll be sure to mention that to Norris when I speak to him. What was he carrying in the sidecar, I wonder?'

Madden thought. 'Assuming he had a rifle with him, he wouldn't want to cart it around in the open.

Perhaps a bag of some kind?'

'Hmmm…' The chief inspector mused. 'It was after eleven when Wellings saw him. Say he quit Melling Lodge around ten o'clock, what was he doing for the next hour? It wouldn't have taken him that long to get back to his motorcycle.'

They fell silent. Then Madden spoke: 'I'll be back in a couple of hours, sir-'

'No, you won't, John. There's nothing we can do from here at present. You need a break. Take the weekend off. I'll see you at the office on Monday morning.'

'But I think I should-'

'Inspector!'

'Yes, sir?'

'That's an order.' Sinclair hung up.

Coming out of the shop, Madden saw Helen Black well sitting in her car in the shade of the chestnut tree. Two women stood with folded arms chatting to her, but they moved off as he approached. She accepted, with a smile, his offer of a cigarette. When he bent over to light it, he caught a whiff of jasmine, reminding him of the evening he had gone to her house.

'I don't know whether it's unusual,' he began, 'but you are the first woman doctor I've met.'

'Not unusual at all. Twenty years ago there were barely a dozen of us in the whole country. Of course, the war helped.' She drew thoughtfully on her cigarette.

'It's terrible to say that, but it's true.' She glanced up at him with a smile. 'My grandfather was a gentleman, you know. That's to say he did nothing.

When Father came down from Cambridge and said he wanted to be a doctor the old boy nearly had a fit. He thought it was almost as bad as going into trade. And the funny thing was, Father was just the same. "You can't," he said. "You're a woman." But we got over that.'

Sunlight filtering through the chestnut leaves touched her hair with gold. He already regretted the moment of their parting. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

'I took over the practice after the war. Most of the villagers seem happy enough with the change. That is, apart from one or two.'

She was smiling broadly and he saw she was looking at Stackpole as he approached from the direction of the pub.

'How's my patient, Will?' she called out.

'Sicker than when you saw him, Miss Helen.' The constable tapped his jacket pocket. 'I've got his statement, sir, signed and sealed.'

'We think the man we're after came through here on a motorcycle,' Madden explained to her. 'It's a start.'

'Don't wait for me, Miss Helen,' Stackpole said.

'Are you sure, Will?'

'I've still got Gladys Maberley's statement to write out, and then I want to have a word with Fred. Get him calmed down. The post van will be through in an hour. I'll get a lift back to Highfield.'

Madden shook his hand. 'Good work, Constable.

You'll get those statements off to Guildford?'

'First thing in the morning, sir.' He touched his helmet and was gone.

Madden walked around to the passenger side. She reached over and opened the door.

'You don't have to go back to London right away, do you?'

It sounded more like a statement than a question, and Madden shook his head.

'Come back to the house and have lunch with me.'

She smiled at him as he climbed in and then, unaccountably, laughed.

'What is it?' he asked. And when she didn't reply, 'Why are you laughing?'

'I'm ashamed to tell you.' She started the car. 'I was thinking about my locum falling off his horse.'

She seated him in the arbour on the terrace with a glass of beer.

'I'll be back in a minute.'

Madden looked out over the sunlit garden at the woods beyond, rising like a green wave. The heat of the day was still building. He sipped his beer. It was a moment of peace, rare in his life, and he wanted to arrest it and clasp it to him: to stop time in its tracks.

He heard a noise and looked round, expecting to see her. But it was Mary, the maid. She was carrying a wicker hamper and a plaid blanket.

'Good afternoon, sir.'

'Hullo, Mary.'

She smiled at him and put down the basket with the blanket on top of it, then went back inside the house, but returned in a moment with a pair of cushions.

'I thought we'd have a picnic'

Helen Blackwell stepped from the doorway on to the terrace. She had shed her skirt and blouse of the morning and was wearing a cool chemise-type dress of white cotton. Her hair, freed from the ribbon she used to tie it back, lay on her shoulders. Madden saw that her legs were bare.

'Thank you, Mary,' she said to the maid. 'That will be all.'

She picked up the cushions and the blanket. Madden assumed the burden of the hamper. Together they went down the steps from the terrace. As they started across the lawn the black pointer he remembered from his first visit rose from a pool of shadow beneath a walnut tree and joined in the procession behind them.

They reached the orchard at the bottom of the lawn and passed beneath plum trees heavy with sun-ripened fruit. The buzz of wasps sounded loud in the dappled shade. A stone wall marked the boundary of the garden. She opened the gate and let him through, then closed it quickly before the dog could follow them.

'Not you, Molly.'

The animal whined in disappointment.

'Stay!' she commanded, without explanation. She smiled at him. 'You can't come on a picnic dressed like that. At least take your jacket off.'

He did as she said, then stripped off his tie as well and draped both garments over the green wooden gate.

They were close to the edge of the shallow stream.

On the other side, the woods came down almost to the water, but where they were a carpet of meadow grass extended for a short distance downstream. He followed her until their way was blocked by a thicket of holly bushes.