Ethel's fine head of hair was piled up under her lace cap in a new way, but Pike barely noticed it. His thoughts, agonized and bloody, ranged far beyond the confines of the kitchen.
He was ravenous. He hadn't eaten a proper meal for thirty-six hours. Having poured himself a cup of tea he cut three thick slices of bread from the loaf on the kitchen counter and sat down opposite the maid, who was holding the open newspaper in front of her face.
When Pike lifted his head he received a shock that went through his nervous system like a bolt of electricity.
He saw his own eyes staring at him from the front page of the newspaper.
Stunned witless, it took him several seconds to realize that what he was looking at wasn't a photograph but an artist's impression.
The caption was printed in bold letters: MAN SOUGHT.
Beside it, filling the whole of the next column, was a story headlined: 'KILLER STRIKES AGAIN'.
A sub-heading bore the words: 'Police Net Spread In Southern Counties'.
Pike's jaws moved automatically as he chewed his bread. He couldn't make out the small print of the report. But beneath the picture, in darker lettering, he read his own name: Amos Pike.
Another shockwave went juddering through him.
He stared at the letters in disbelief. The police knew his name! But how?
He was dead. Army records had him listed among the fallen. He was sure of it.
But they had his name. And they knew what he looked like.
Pike put his cup to his lips while the thoughts flailed about inside his head. It hardly mattered to him that the sketch, now that he looked at it, did not, in fact, portray his features with any degree of accuracy.
True, the eyes were those that stared at him every day from his shaving mirror. But his own head was squarer than the one shown in the drawing and his mouth quite different. The artist had failed to catch his thin, tightly drawn lips which, in any case, had been altered by a wound he had suffered during the war. A shell fragment had struck his cheek, severing a nerve and causing one corner of his mouth to droop. The effect was to give his face a skewed look. But none of that mattered…
Pike touched the fresh scabs on his neck. He felt his self-control deserting him. Each day now it was worse, each day harder to maintain his poise. The shell he had built for himself so painfully over the years was starting to crack. What lay beneath he could only sense as yet, but the intimation of it left him fearful.
He who had never known fear the way other men did.
Ethel Bridgewater reached the end of the newspaper.
She folded it and turned back to the front page.
Pike dropped his eyes — the eyes she must be looking at now.
How could she not recognize them?
But then he lifted them again, fastening his gaze on the paper masking her face. He waited to see how she would react. Better to know now. A vein throbbed in his temple.
After two minutes, perhaps three, she laid the paper down on the table and gave it a little push, as though offering it to him. She did not meet his eyes. But, then, she never did.
Her hands went to her hair, patting and shaping the coiled tresses. Her glance went to the kitchen clock on the wall. Then she stood up, brushing the crumbs off her white slip, and left the room.
Pike relaxed with a slow exhalation of breath. He had been ready to kill her.
After breakfast he returned to his room above the old stable and lay down on the narrow bed. Mrs Aylward was not due back until after lunch and he had the morning free if he chose. His head ached. The dull thudding pain had started on the ride back from Ashdown Forest and seemed linked to the frenzied excitement that had gripped him when he raced down the yew alley, rifle at the ready.
Just as his emotion then had found no release, but continued to throb undiminished at his nerve ends, so he seemed unable now to escape from the scenes that ran through his mind over and over again like images on a flickering screen.
He heard the sound of his whistle — a single piercing blast!
He felt the yew hedge brush by on either side of him as he charged towards the lighted room!
He saw the heel of his boot strike the centre of the latched doors, which burst inwards in a shower of broken glass!
As he broke into the room he saw two figures to his right and wheeled that way. A woman in the black of a maid's uniform was kneeling by the fireplace. She half rose, turning towards him, her mouth forming the O of a scream, but his bayonet was ready, quick and deadly, sliding in and out of her black-clothed breast before she had time to utter a sound.
He turned to the other figure, an older woman who was sitting on the couch, expecting to find her cowering and twisting away. Instead she sat upright, unmoving, as though rooted to the spot. The surprise of it caused him to hesitate for a moment and in that instant he was struck from behind, a vase shattering on his hooded head, and then two hands were scrabbling at his neck, striving to get beneath the canvas and, when that failed, taking hold of the cloth itself and tugging furiously at it. Momentarily dazed, he reacted with a vicious backwards jerk of his elbow and heard the grunt of pain behind him. But the fingers held on to the gas-mask hood, which began to tear at the back so that the mask swivelled around on his head and all at once he was blinded, with the glass eyeholes wrenched to one side and his eyes covered by bare canvas.
Dropping his rifle, he lashed back savagely — first with one elbow, then the other — and broke free of the clutching fingers. He dragged the gas mask off his head and flung it aside. Turning, he found his attacker coming at him again. It was a woman! He barely had time to register astonishment — he saw a thin lined face and blazing eyes — before her fingernails raked his neck, stabbing for his eyes.
He struck her with his fist and she gave a cry and dropped to her knees.
Quickly he seized the rifle from the floor and thrust the bayonet into her breast. She toppled over and lay still.
He swung round to the couch — and could hardly credit what he saw before him.
The woman hadn't moved. Her face, ashen with shock, was lifted to his. Wide blue eyes gazed at him unafraid.
He thrust quickly at her, turning his head away as he did so. He couldn't bear to face her without the mask. When he looked again she was lying on her side on the couch, the eyes still staring, but empty now.
He ran from the room.
In the hall outside he found a staircase that took him to the floor above where he raced up and down the passage, flinging open doors. Only empty rooms met his eyes. Furious and disbelieving, he ascended to the floor above that to search the servants' quarters, but with the same result. In the end there was nothing left for him to do but go downstairs again.
From the half-landing of the staircase he saw the woman he thought he'd killed — the one with the blazing eyes — dragging herself across the stone floor in her long black skirt. He reached her just as her hand grasped the telephone on the table and he smashed the rifle butt into her face and ran her through and then hit her in the face again and stamped on her with his heavy boots. His fury could not be contained. Growling and snarling he savaged her lifeless body.
He had never behaved in such a way. Not in any of his previous attacks on civilians. Not even when he had stormed a German machine-gun post single handed during the war and bayoneted the crew and three other men he found in the dugout.
Never!
He lost control.
Sickened and half dazed by the emotion that continued to swirl in his brain — the pulsing need that had brought him to the house was unassuaged — he had quickly searched the remaining rooms downstairs and then departed, stumbling back down the yew alley and leaving the garden by the gate that led to the water-meadow.