River of Darkness

This in turn seemed to upset Mrs Merrick, as she readily admitted to Annie. 'I don't want them hanging on. I want them to go.'

'Will you listen to yourself?' Annie had laughed at her. 'Your own flesh and blood, and you can't wait to see the back of them.'

'I was looking forward to us being here alone. Just you and I, Annie.'

'Now don't you worry, Miss Hattie.' Annie addressed her as Mrs Merrick in front of others, but always as Miss Hattie when they were alone, just as she had for the past forty years and more. 'We'll have plenty of time on our own, you'll see. They'll be off for three weeks.'

'Not if they don't go,' Mrs Merrick had pointed out with unanswerable logic, but Annie just shook her head at her.

'What a great silly you are! Always getting yourself worked up for no reason.'

Annie was right — there was no reason to be upset.

But this, paradoxically, seemed to distress her all the more, and the night before she had hardly closed her eyes for worrying.

'Oh, Annie, I don't know what's the matter with me. Why do I want them away from here?' They were walking in the garden together after breakfast. 'I'm starting to feel the way I did when Tom died. Do you remember? I was so afraid then, even before I knew.'

Annie had drawn her into a recess in the yew alley and put her arms around her.

'There, my dear,' she murmured. 'Aren't you forgetting it's four years since the poor dear boy was killed?'

'How could I forget?'

'Almost to the day…" 'Oh! Do you think it's that?' Mrs Merrick drew back. Tom had been killed in the second week of October. The anniversary was near. 'Oh, I do hope so.'

She caught her breath at her own words, wondering how she could have said such a thing.

But it was true, none the less, and the thought had comforted her for the rest of the day.

She felt better still when she went up to the nursery later with Annie and they found the invalid's temperature had come down. He declared himself fit enough for a game of Happy Families, and although his nanny, Enid Bradshaw, opposed the idea she was overruled by Annie whose writ ran in all departments of the household.

Mrs Merrick smiled as Robert's seven-year-old sister fussed over him, fluffing up his pillows and settling him comfortably in his bed. She giggled with them both when Annie fixed the patient with a glittering eye. 'Now tell me the truth, Master Robert — and may a lie never stain your lips — are you by any chance holding Miss Bun, the Baker's Daughter?'

The game continued until the arrival of Dr Fellows, who pronounced Robert to be on the mend after only the briefest of examinations. 'A case of nerves, I think.

Losing the dog must have upset him more than we realized. Poor beast, do you know yet how it happened?'

It was also Mrs Merrick's day for her weekly checkup and Dr Fellows apologized for having come an hour later than usual. 'I was just leaving the surgery when they brought in Emmett Hogg with a broken ankle. It seems he had to hobble and crawl for half a mile before he found help. Fell into a pit in the woods, he says.' Dr Fellows lifted an eloquent eyebrow. 'Not many men hereabouts manage to be dead drunk at two o'clock in the afternoon, but Hogg makes quite a habit of it. Now what have you been up to, madam?'

The doctor lowered his jowly visage over the gauge of his blood pressure apparatus. He pumped air into the cuff around Mrs Merrick's arm. He frowned. 'Been overdoing it again, have we?'

Mrs Merrick, who liked neither being addressed as 'madam', nor being referred to in the first person plural, acknowledged that she had been for a walk earlier that day. She made no mention of Shooter's Hill.

'Take it easy for the next few days,' Dr Fellows advised her. 'We'd better make that a week. No more walks outside the garden until I see you again.'

Mrs Merrick's thoughts were elsewhere. Something he had said had jogged her memory.

'Fell into a pit, you say?'

'That's Hogg's story.' Dr Fellows snapped his bag shut. 'I hae me doots.'

Harriet Merrick winced. 'If it happened in Ashdown Forest he must report it,' she said firmly. 'The police want to know about any fresh digging there. My son was telling me only the other day.'

William was a Justice of the Peace.

'I'm not sure anyone will believe anything Emmett Hogg tells them,' Dr Fellows remarked. He paused at the bedroom door.

'Nevertheless, he must report it. And you must make sure he does,' Mrs Merrick added, pleased for once to be in a position to dictate.

11

The door to the adjoining office opened and Hollingsworth and Styles entered. Chief Inspector Sinclair, immaculate in grey pinstripe and pearl tie-pin, sat behind his desk. The windows at his back, which so often during the long summer had sparkled diamond bright in the sunshine, were flecked with rain. Lightning streaked the black sky above Kennington. He motioned the two men to come closer. 'No doubt you've heard the rumours that I'm to be replaced as head of this investigation. I'm sorry to have to tell you they're true. I'm due to see the assistant commissioner in a few minutes. It's my understanding he'll hand the inquiry over to Chief Superintendent Sampson.'

Hollingsworth muttered some words.

'Sergeant?' Sinclair raised an eyebrow.

'Nothing, sir. Sorry, sir.'

'I want to take this opportunity to thank you both for the work you've put in. Long hours, with little to show for it, you may think. But I assure you that's not the case. I've no doubt that the information gathered in this file will eventually lead to the arrest and, I hope, conviction of the man we've been seeking.' He patted the thick buff folder lying on the desk in front of him.

'As to the future, neither Inspector Madden nor myself expects to play any further part in this inquiry.

Chief Superintendent Sampson will be putting together his own team and I think it likely he'll want to include you both, given your familiarity with the history and details of the case. I know you'll offer him the same loyalty and devotion to a difficult job you have always given me, and for which I thank you now.'

The chief inspector stood up and held out his hand to Hollingsworth, who shook it. Styles followed suit.

'You'll be informed shortly of any change in your assignments. That will be all.'

The two men returned to the side office, shutting the door behind them. Sinclair resumed his seat and took out his pipe. He glanced at Madden, who had listened in silence at his desk. 'Well, John?'

'I think it's a damned shame.'

'An opinion not shared by Mrs Sinclair, who is pleased at the thought of my spending more time at home. She comforts me with the assurance that I need not fear to find myself less usefully employed in the future. Only the area of my activities will change. Are you familiar with the term "mulching"?'

The grin that came to Madden's face reminded the chief inspector that there was at least one satisfaction he could take from the weeks of labour they had shared. His pleasure at seeing his partner more like his old self had been heightened for a brief time when it seemed likely that Madden's suggestion that they track down Captain Miller's clerk would bear dividends.

Against all odds the War Office had been able to supply them, without delay, with the identity of the driver of Miller's staff car. The names of both men had been on the casualty report.

Corporal Alfred Tozer had survived the blast that killed his superior and in due course had been invalided back to a hospital in Eastbourne where medical records retained since the war gave an address for him in Bethnal Green.

Madden had sped there in a taxi with Hollingsworth only to discover that while it remained Tozer's residence — he lived with his sister and her husband, the three of them running a newsagent's and tobacconist's business together — he was absent from home.

'On a walking holiday? In North Wales?' The chief inspector had raised his eyes to the ceiling in disbelief.