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'But what about Mr Sampson?' Ferris persisted. 'I don't see him here today. Hasn't he been advising on this inquiry?'

'The chief superintendent is indisposed.' Bennett's tone was bland. 'But we hope to have the benefit of his expert assistance again before long.'

'Severe indigestion,' Sinclair confided to Madden, when they returned to his office. 'His wife rang in this morning. Comes of having your nose out of joint, I'm told.'

He leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. 'All we can do now is wait. His picture will be in the Sundays. Pray God someone recognizes him.

And pray God this is the last weekend we have to sit through waiting for the phone to ring.'

His glance moved from Madden, who was at his desk, to Hollingsworth and Styles, who stood facing him, awaiting orders.

'Well? Have we forgotten anything? Is there something more we can do?'

Madden shifted in his chair.

'Yes, John?'

'I was thinking, sir — that batch of photographs we're sending down to Highfield. Why don't I take them? I know most of the villagers and I could help Constable Stackpole to get them spread around.'

Sinclair frowned. It was the only way he could keep a straight face. 'I could send one of the others. I hate to impose this on you, John.'

'I don't mind, sir.'

'Well, if you're sure…'

A little while later, after the door had shut behind Madden's departing figure, Hollingsworth and Styles in their cubby-hole were startled to hear the sound of humming coming from the adjoining office. The song was an old one and they were both familiar with the words which presently reached them, carried on the chief inspector's surprisingly tuneful tenor: 'Taking one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not a happy one…'

Billy Styles nudged the sergeant. 'Hark at the guv'nor. He's gone mad as a maggot.'

'None of that lip, Constable,' Hollingsworth growled, though he was more than half inclined to agree.

The canvass OF Highfield residents brought little result. Although they walked the village from end to end knocking on doors, only one household yielded a positive response, and as Stackpole remarked, you had to wonder if May Birney wasn't overstretching her imagination.

'You think she might be trying too hard?' Madden asked. 'Because she was right about the whistle?'

The constable had been at the station to meet him and together they had put up copies of the poster in the ticket hall and waiting-room. Frowning, Stackpole had stared hard at the heavily moustached face. 'I know I haven't seen him, sir. At least, not that I recognize.'

As they walked into the village he told the inspector he had a message for him from Dr Blackwell.

Madden had rung the house from London but failed to reach her.

'She asked if you could pass by her surgery later.

She's had to go to Guildford. They had some typhoid cases brought into the hospital there and they needed help.' Stackpole smiled under his helmet. 'You're looking well, if I may say so, sir.'

'Am I, Will? I can't think why. We've been working like the devil.'

The Birney family lived above their store in the main street. Neither parent had recognized the face on the poster, but May, pink-cheeked from having been caught in the middle of washing her bobbed brown hair, looked hard at it for ten seconds and then said, 'I've seen him before.'

'Now, don't be hasty, girl.' Mr Birney rubbed his bald spot anxiously. 'You don't want to mislead the inspector.'

'The moustache was different.'

'He had a moustache?' Madden sat forward in the chintz-covered armchair. 'You're sure of that?'

'Yes, sir. But not as big as this one. But I'm positive it's the same man. I remember the chin.'

'So you saw him from the side, in profile?'

May Birney nodded.

'Try and picture him without the cap,' the inspector suggested, but she shook her head at once.

'No, he was wearing a cap. That's how I remember him.'

'What sort of cap?'

She didn't know. She couldn't recall. 'Just a cap. It was pulled down low over his eyes, like in the picture.'

'It can't be a military cap,' Madden remarked later, when they paused on the village green to confer. The autumn afternoon was drawing in. Lights were starting to come on in the cottages flanking the grass triangle.

'If there's one place we won't find Pike it's in the Army.'

'There's lots of other kinds, sir. Charabanc drivers, chauffeurs, delivery-men. They all wear caps of one sort or another. And what if it was just an ordinary cloth cap? Most of us have got one of those.'

'Whatever he was wearing, I think she saw him.

Talk to her again, Will.'

Madden had noticed the red two-seater parked in front of one of the cottages across the green. Stackpole had seen it, too. 'There's Dr Blackwell now. You'll find her in her surgery, sir. She rents rooms from old Granny Palmer. I'll leave some posters in the pub and the church hall as I go by.'

The doctor's waiting-room was empty. The inner door stood ajar. He paused on the threshold.

She was sitting behind a desk writing in a notebook, her brow creased in a frown of concentration.

Lamplight gave a glow to her fair skin and he could see the fine golden hairs on her forearms where she had rolled back the sleeves of her white blouse.

'Is that you, John?'

When she looked up and saw it was him, she rose and came straight into his arms. He kissed her. She stood back to study his face. He had always felt she had the power to see into him.

'You're sleeping better.' The doctor spoke approvingly.

'Have you had any luck with your poster?'

He took one from the manila envelope he was carrying and showed it to her. She glanced at it for a few seconds and then shook her head.

'May Birney thinks she's seen him, but she can't remember where.'

He put his arms around her again. Her neck smelled faintly of jasmine. He could never find the words he wanted.

'Let me finish what I'm doing. I won't be long.' She returned to her chair. 'How soon must you go back?

Can you stay for dinner? Can you spend the night?'

'The night…?' He hadn't expected it. 'I've got nothing with me.'

'Never mind that. I'll find whatever you need. But I warn you, the house is full of relations. Father invited a whole shoal of cousins for the weekend. I can only put you in the old nursery.' She paused. Their eyes met. 'We'll have to be quiet,' she said, smiling. 'Aunt Maud's in the room next door and she's got ears like a bat.'

The joy he felt whenever they were together was tempered by the knowledge of what it would mean to lose her. He knew he would never meet anyone like her again.

She picked up her pen. 'I'm filling in my day-book, my record of patients. I didn't have time this morning.

The hospital in Guildford rang and asked me to go in.'

'Typhoid, Will said.'

'Food poisoning.' She made a wry face and went back to her notebook.

He looked about him. A glass-fronted cabinet held medical books and bandages, rolls of lint and wool, splints and surgical gauze. Behind her a partition divided the room and on the other side was a dispensary with shelves of glass-stoppered bottles. A faint smell of antiseptic hung in the air. He saw that she was watching him.

'This is my life,' she said softly. She coloured and looked down.

Her life?

She had given his back to him.

When he spoke the words seemed to come of their own accord, as if he were simply breathing. 'I love you,' he said.

She looked up, still flushed. 'So you've got a tongue, John Madden…' Her eyes were bright in the lamplight.

It was as though a wave had lifted him and carried him to her side. He was shaking like a leaf.

'My darling, it's all right… Didn't you know…?'

She held him fast in the circle of her arms. He heard a noise somewhere near, but he clung to her.