'Don't worry, sir. I won't breathe a word.'
He shook hands with Madden and nodded to the other two men.
'Constable Styles will see you out.' Sinclair sat down. 'And thank you again.'
Tozer had his hand on the doorknob when he checked and turned to face them. 'There's one more thing I'd like to say, sir…'
'Go ahead.' The chief inspector looked up.
'When you catch up with him, with Pike, you'll watch yourself, won't you?'
'Indeed we will,' Sinclair replied. 'And thank you for the warning. But why do you say that?'
'I forgot to tell you before, I should have mentioned it. We met him, the captain and me.'
'No, by God, you didn't mention it.' Sinclair was on his feet again.
'Only we didn't know, of course. Not then Tozer bit his lip. 'It was when the captain was interrogating those men from B Company. Pike was the man who marched them in.'
'The company sergeant major. Of course! What about him, Mr Tozer?'
'Well, the funny thing is we talked about him afterwards, Captain Miller and me.' Tozer frowned.
'The captain was just saying he didn't think it was any of the lads he'd questioned, and then he laughed and said: "But did you get a look at that sergeant major? Now if he'd been in the line-up…" And I knew just what he meant, because I'd had the same feeling myself. As soon as Pike walked in, I thought:
Now there's a killer! Eyes like stones.'
Pike was able to keep to his schedule that Saturday morning. Mrs Aylward had caught the nine-twenty train to Waterloo, as planned, confirming with her last words to the household staff her intention of returning the following Tuesday. He had the weekend free, and although his employer had asked him to attend to some outdoor tasks on Monday he had no intention of obeying her wishes. He knew that neither the maid, Ethel Bridgewater, nor Mrs Rowley, the cook, would report his absence to their mistress. They took care not to cross him.
It was ten minutes past eleven by his hunter — the watch was engraved with his father's initials and had been his parting gift to him — when he opened the wooden gate in the back fence and stepped into Mrs Troy's garden.
Already his excitement was stirring, throbbing in the pit of his stomach like a deep, slow pulse. He was impatient to be on his way. But he'd been troubled by the memory of the old woman's distress on his last visit. He regretted having departed in haste then without first determining its cause. Unease had plagued him all week.
Now he walked past the shed and went directly to the kitchen door, entering without knocking as he always did. He deposited the parcel of food he had brought on the kitchen table and continued soft-footed through into the narrow hallway. The door to the front parlour was open. He paused on the threshold and looked in.
She was in her customary chair by the window with the tortoiseshell cat on her lap. The knitted shawl she favoured was draped about her shoulders and a plaid blanket covered her knees. The day was cloudy, the air cool and autumnal. Pike shifted on his feet, making a small sound. He didn't want to startle her.
'Mr Biggs…?' She turned eagerly.
'No, it's me,' Pike said gruffly. 'Grail.'
His words had an astonishing effect on her. She started in shock and clutched involuntarily at the cat, which she had been stroking. It let out a yowl of surprise and sprang from her lap. Her eyes stared blindly at him.
'What's the matter, Mrs Troy?' He seldom used her name.
Her mouth opened and shut. She seemed unable to speak.
'Are you sick? Can I get you something?' He had never made such an offer before.
'No…' At last she managed to produce a word.
'No, thank you Pike checked an impulse to approach nearer. He saw that she was terrified, but couldn't think why. He was accustomed to causing fear in others. In the past he had reduced men bigger and stronger than he to white-faced silence with a single look. They had sensed the menace he presented, terrible in its stillness. But he had never by word or action sought to intimidate her. The word 'irony' was not in his vocabulary, but he would have appreciated its significance in this instance. She was the one person who had nothing to fear from him. Her physical well-being was almost as precious to him as his own. He lived in perpetual anxiety that she might die suddenly, ending his occupation of the shed, bringing havoc to his enterprises.
The situation was beyond him. In the whole of his bleak existence he had never learned how to coax or comfort. He could no more have led her gently, by degrees, to the point of revelation than he could have soothed a sick child. He saw only that it was his presence that disturbed her and he acted accordingly, turning on his heel and leaving the room.
But his mind was in turmoil as he paused briefly in the kitchen to put away the food he had brought.
Mr BiggsP
Pike had never heard the name before.
He walked quickly across the small patch of lawn to the shed and unsnapped the heavy padlock. Daylight flooded the dark interior as he flung open the door and at once he noticed the white envelope lying on the cement floor at his feet.
Harold Biggs paused in the shadow of the hawthorn hedge to dry the sweat on his forehead. He was thankful that the days were growing cooler. If he was perspiring heavily it was only partly due to the two mile walk from Knowlton to Rudd's Cross. His nervousness had been increasing all morning.
'You're going out there again?' Jimmy Pullman had professed disbelief when Biggs announced his plans for that Saturday in the Bunch of Grapes. 'You should tell old Wolverton to go hopping sideways. What's the old girl's problem, anyway? What's it you're supposed to be doing for her?'
Biggs had been vague in his reply. Some minor legal business, he implied. He didn't tell Jimmy either that Mr Wolverton had given him the whole day off in recognition of his spontaneous offer to return once more to Rudd's Cross in order to deal with the Grail situation.
The thought of the tankards in Mrs Troy's silver cabinet had weighed on Harold's mind all week. Even now, as he approached her cottage through the stubbled fields, he didn't know whether, in the end, he would have the nerve to act on his plan.
But he'd come prepared. He had brought his briefcase, a bulky, old-fashioned article with clumsy straps which he wanted to change for the sleeker, more modern versions now on sale. Today, though, he was glad of its size. The mugs would fit inside it comfortably.
He knocked on the front door of the cottage and then waited patiently, remembering how long it had taken her to get to the door on his last visit. After a full minute he knocked again. There was no response from within.
Biggs walked around the cottage to the kitchen door. As he pushed it open he heard a subdued tapping coming from the direction of the garden shed behind him. The green wooden door was shut, but the padlock had been removed. He could hear someone moving about inside.
So Grail had come, and presumably was getting his things together preparatory to moving out.
Harold felt his stomach tighten. It was all going according to plan. Once Grail had departed, no doubt angry and resentful at having been turfed out at such short notice, he could remove the tankards from the cabinet, safe in the knowledge that their disappearance, if it was noted at all, would be laid to the other man's account.
But he still didn't know if he had the courage to do it…
Harold took a deep, calming breath. He went into the kitchen, calling out in a low voice as he did so, 'Mrs Troy, are you there? It's Mr Biggs from Folkestone…"
Again there was no reply.
Removing his checked cap, he laid it on the kitchen table alongside his briefcase. Then he went through to the hallway and looked into the parlour. The chair by the window was empty. His glance shifted automatically to the glass-fronted cabinet on the opposite side of the room. The tankards were where he had left them.