‘Alas, I leave tomorrow to return to Berlin.’ Weiss spread his hands in a gesture of regret. His English, though fluent, was marked by a strong accent. ‘But we have the whole day ahead of us. I’ve no doubt we will find an opportunity to talk.’
He turned to Helen.
‘The chief inspector’s work is a source of endless fascination to me. My occupation, I fear, must seem dry by comparison to his. But he is good enough to pretend otherwise.’
He smiled at his hostess.
‘And now, my dear, would you excuse me? I have only been waiting here in order to greet our friend. I must return to my labours. We will meet again at lunch… yes?’
With a bow to them both, he left the terrace. Helen’s eyes followed his departing figure.
‘Franz has been up to London twice to talk to old colleagues of his,’ she informed Sinclair. ‘Men who gave up their practices in Germany to settle over here. He wants to do the same himself, but there are difficulties. Mina is unwell for one thing. He’s not sure she’s strong enough to travel.’
‘Are things so bad in Berlin, then?’
‘Bad enough. And likely to get worse, if you happen to be Jewish, or so Franz says. He thinks the Nazis will soon be in power. Who knows what will happen then? I do worry about them all.’
Her concern came as no surprise to the chief inspector, who knew that as a young woman she had spent six months with the doctor and his wife in Vienna, learning German, and that they had treated her like a daughter.
He was still seeking for some words of reassurance when she turned away to look out over the garden, and he followed the direction of her glance, taking in the vista of the long lawn, bordered by shrubs and flower beds and backed by the green woods of Upton Hanger. It was a view he’d come to love over the years, one he associated with the many happy hours he had spent in this house.
‘John’s down in the orchard. He’s waiting for you.’
The chief inspector said nothing. With some foreboding, he had sensed a slight change in her manner. The memory of their recent conversation at the village fair was still fresh in his thoughts, and he wondered if he was about to be reminded of it.
‘You’ll find Lucy with him. But don’t be deceived by appearances. She’s in deep disgrace.’
‘Oh, dear…’ In his relief, Sinclair allowed a grin to escape his lips.
‘You may smile, but it’s no laughing matter.’ Helen’s own expression suggested otherwise. ‘On her first day at school last week she poured ink over another child and was made to stand in the corner. A whole bottle, no less. People are kind enough to tell me I was just the same at that age, but I refuse to believe them. Ask John to send her up to the house, would you? It’s almost time for her lunch.’
She paused then, and he felt her gaze on him.
‘You and he can have your talk. But don’t be long, please. And remember what I said.’
‘I had a cup of tea with Jim Boyce in Guildford on the way down. Not only haven’t they laid hands on Beezy yet, they’ve not had a single report of his whereabouts. Your friend Topper’s been spotted, though, in the fields near Basingstoke last week. The local bobby was a bit slow off the mark. He sent a message to headquarters asking for instructions, but by the time the reply came back telling him to pick him up, Topper had disappeared again.’
Sinclair had come on his host jacketless and with his sleeves rolled up, hard at work sawing up an old plum tree. The orchard had long since been picked clean, but a sweet smell lingered in the dappled shade from fruit that had rotted on the ground and the sound of the saw was counterpointed by the higher, more delicate buzzing of wasps, few in number now and seemingly weary as the Indian summer drew to its end.
‘Tom Cooper’s down with rheumatism,’ Madden had explained as he broke off his labours to greet his guest. ‘I’m standing in for him.’
Mention of the familiar name brought a smile to the chief inspector’s lips. Cooper had been the gardener at Melling Lodge, a minor player in the tragedy that had first brought them to Highfield years before, and a reminder of the smallness of the world to which his old colleague had retreated; and where he had found such deep contentment.
Having relayed the message entrusted to him, he had seated himself on the low stone wall bordering the garden, taking out his pipe and tobacco, and waited while Madden went in search of his daughter, who was playing by the stream nearby, and whose cries of delight as she splashed ankle-deep in the shallow water showed precious little sign of repentance. Presently they returned, hand in hand, and trailed by Lucy’s companions of the morning, two floppy-limbed puppies, both wet from paddling with their mistress, and generous with the amount of water they distributed about them as they shook themselves dry.
Prompted by her father, the little girl had paused to welcome their guest. The chief inspector had been offered a damp cheek to kiss along with a smile so dazzling he had felt his heart skip a beat.
‘And remember to wash your feet under the tap before you go inside.’
The grave tenderness of Madden’s expression as he spoke to his daughter reminded Sinclair with a pang of the loss his old friend had suffered many years before. Of the little girl and her mother whom he’d watched die. It was this double blow, the chief inspector believed, that his driven his erstwhile partner to seek oblivion in the trenches.
Madden had waited until they were alone before speaking.
‘Well, Angus… What can you tell me about the Brookham case?’
He listened now as the chief inspector, puffing on his pipe, revealed what little result his own inquiries had produced.
‘There’s nothing in the files, as I say; there’s only this business at Henley, which has yet to be established as a murder case. The facial assault points to a connection with Brookham, I grant you, and there’s also the fact that an attempt seems to have been made to dispose of the body afterwards. But there are still difficulties in linking the two cases, not least the three-year interval separating them. If it was the same man, what’s he been doing all this while?’
Madden grunted. ‘I take it you’ve checked prison records?’ He was staring at the ground in front of him.
‘In detail. We’re satisfied he wasn’t inside.’
‘Mightn’t he have gone abroad, then?’
Sinclair shrugged. ‘That’s certainly a possibility. But not one I can pursue at present: not until the case is officially in my hands, and even then not without further evidence.’
Grimacing, he knocked out his pipe on the wall beside him and then watched as Madden stood brooding, testing the jagged edge of the saw with his fingertips. Plainly he’d hoped to hear better news, and the chief inspector sighed.
‘I’m sorry, John. But without some fresh development, it’s hard to see how this matter can be taken any further. All we can do now is wait while the hunt for this missing tramp goes on.’
The feeling, however irrational, that he had let his old colleague down continued to haunt the chief inspector during the day and was still lodged like a burr in the back of his mind when, with the clock on the mantel striking five o’clock and the shadows in the drawing room deepening, he looked up and saw Franz Weiss standing in the doorway.
‘Ah, there you are, Mr Sinclair! I was hoping to find you alone. We have not yet had a chance to talk.’
Smiling, the analyst crossed to where his fellow guest was seated by the fireplace with a book on wild flowers open on his lap.
‘Is it true our hosts have abandoned us?’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Sinclair rose to his feet to receive the older man. ‘But not for long. John’s gone over to Guildford to collect Robert. He took Lucy with him.’ The Maddens’ son, an absentee from the household, had been playing that day in a school cricket match. ‘Then, soon after they left, Helen was called out to see a patient. You find me holding the fort.’