Her cry made him turn quickly and he saw Pike on the floor behind him gripping a long pole with both hands. His strike was so swift Stackpole had no chance to avoid it. The tip of the bayonet caught the constable in the thigh and he stumbled to one side and fell over a chair, landing heavily on his back.
Dazed, he saw Pike, his bloodied face twisted with pain, hauling himself to his feet. He was leaning on the pole, pushing himself upright, when all of a sudden the prop was snatched from his hands and he crashed to the floor again. The figure of Madden rose to his knees behind him. He held the pole in his hands. The inspector's front was drenched in blood.
His face was ghastly pale.
Pike lay groaning on his back. He seemed to have come to the end of his strength. As Stackpole clambered up he saw that Madden, too, was on his feet.
The inspector stood swaying over the man stretched out on the floor. He lifted the bayonet-tipped pole in unsteady hands.
'Do it, sir!' Stackpole urged him hoarsely. 'Kill him! Send the bastard to hell!'
'John!' Dr Blackwell called to him from the sofa.
Her voice was pleading.
Madden held the point of the blade an inch from Pike's chest. The brown eyes met his through a mask of blood. They showed no emotion.
'Amos Pike!' Madden's voice was faint. 'I'm placing you under arrest.'
The eyes flared. The bloody face contorted. Before the inspector could stop him Pike reached up and seized the pole from his failing grip. With a single thrust he drove the point downwards into his own chest, impaling his body to the floor. Blood fountained from his lips. His body gave a last convulsive heave and was still.
Madden sank to his knees and fell sideways to the floor.
'John…' Helen Blackwell scrambled across the floor to his side. 'My darling…' She knelt beside him, tearing at his blood-soaked shirt.
Stackpole hobbled towards them. A sudden drumming on the floor made him check. Pike's heels beat a spasmodic tattoo on the carpet. The constable plucked the bayonet-tipped pole from his chest. He saw it was a roughly trimmed sapling. The long sword bayonet had been wired to one end. He raised it, prepared to strike again. The drumming ceased.
'Is he dead?' Dr Blackwell didn't look up.
'Dead as he'll ever be.'
'Will, go to the phone. Ring Guildford hospital.
They must send an ambulance with a nurse right away. Immediately. When you've done that, fetch my bag from the car. Hurry!'
The constable was already on the move, half limping, half running. When he returned a few minutes later he found her in the same position, kneeling beside the inspector, flicking blood angrily from her eye, pressing a pad of silk that must have come from her underclothing to Madden's side.
'Open my bag. You'll find a dressing inside.'
Stackpole did as he was bid. She quickly replaced the makeshift pad. Then she took his hand in hers and held it firmly on the surgical dressing.
'Keep it like that. Don't press too hard. I have to fetch a bandage from upstairs. I'll only be a moment.'
Shocked by the sight of Madden's bloody torso and ashen face, Stackpole couldn't check the words that came to his lips: 'Will he… is he going to…?'
'No!' she said fiercely. 'He's not going to die, do you hear me?' She turned her pale, bloodstained face to his. 'We're going to keep him alive. You and I.'
Barely aware of the pain from his injured leg, the constable knelt beside Madden's body, holding his hand steady on the dressing. The patter of running footsteps sounded overhead. He let his gaze wander about the room. Despite the shambles that met his eye — Pike's body lying stark not a foot away, the smashed glass and furniture all around — and notwithstanding the inspector's dreadful pallor, he felt strangely comforted.
He had known her for many years, since childhood indeed, and long since learned to trust her word and judgement.
'He had Biggs's body in the car with him,' the chief inspector explained. 'Somehow he managed to set it behind the steering-wheel, though that can't have been easy. He was hurt himself, and the room was full of smoke. He was on the point of leaving when we arrived, you know, getting ready to make a run for it. Perhaps he thought it a good idea to take the body with him and bury it in some place where it wouldn't be found. That way he'd keep us guessing.
Was it Biggs who had stolen the silver? Was Carver really Pike?'
Dr Blackwell's steady glance told Sinclair she was paying close heed to what he was telling her.
'God knows how he slipped away. We had the place surrounded, but the men were running this way and that, and the stables were on fire, too. It was all confusion. My guess is he went out through the kitchen and across the stableyard.
'But how he survived at all is the real mystery. He drove flat out into the side of the house. The pathologist who examined his body found three cracked ribs and injuries to his head. Plus he had a revolver bullet in his arm. The man had incredible strength and endurance.'
How did he get to Highfield?" Dr Blackwell's gaze shifted to the white-painted bedstead on the other side of the hospital room. Sinclair noted that her eyes seldom left Madden for long. The inspector was deeply asleep.
'A farmer who lived a few miles from Mrs Aylward's house reported his car stolen during the night. It was found abandoned in a wood near Godalming ten days ago. He must have come the rest of the way on foot.
Amazing strength. Amazing perseverance.'
'Will Stackpole says he was stealing food over on the Oakley side of the hanger. A farmer there reported some minor thefts.' Dr Blackwell's gaze returned to the chief inspector.
'He went back to his old dugout,' Sinclair affirmed.
'He couldn't reconstruct it, he hadn't the tools. All he had was his bayonet. But he dug a hole in the loose soil. More of an animal's burrow, really. I wonder how human he was at the end.'
He regretted his words at once and looked at her quickly to gauge their effect. He could only imagine how it might feel to have been the object of so twisted and murderous a passion. But if the doctor was disturbed by the thought she gave no sign of it. 'I realized afterwards he must have come back for me. I have the same kind of looks as Lucy Fletcher. He could have watched us both from the ridge. But what about the others? Mrs Reynolds and Mrs Merrick?'
She seemed genuinely curious.
'They were fair-haired, like you.' And good-looking, he almost added, but didn't wish to sound over familiar. Dr Blackwell's manner towards him had been cool. Remembering her smile from their previous encounters at Highfield, he wondered if he would see it today.
'We were his type, then. One look and he was smitten. The fatal glance. Like Tristan and Iseult.' She spoke with bitter irony. Her gaze went again to the still figure in the bed.
'His mother had the same colouring.'
'His mother? Her eye kindled with renewed interest.
'Yes, we know quite a lot about his past now. Let me finish telling you about the body first.'
Sinclair was starting to enjoy their conversation, which hadn't seemed likely at first. During his frequent visits to Guildford and Highfield over the past fortnight he had called in at the hospital several times, only to find Madden asleep or sedated. On his last visit, a few days before, he had seen Dr Blackwell in her clothes and white doctor's jacket lying stretched out on the only other bed the ward contained, and had crept from the room.
That afternoon he had come on her sitting in a chair beside the inspector's bed with his hand resting in hers on the white counterpane. Madden's eyes were shut. The doctor, too, was nodding, but she started awake as he entered and stood up at once, turning to face him. Sinclair was put in mind of a lioness guarding her wounded mate and he approached the bedside cautiously.