Madden's brow creased. 'Was there a breeze blowing?' he asked.
The girl's face lit up. 'Yes, sir, that was it. That's what happened. It came and went on the wind. I heard it twice. But it was so faint…'
'You wondered if you'd heard it at all?'
She nodded vigorously. Shooting another defiant glance at Billy, she said, 'I just wasn't sure.'
'But you are now?' Madden leaned forward. 'Take your time, May. Think about it.'
But she paused for only a moment. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Now I'm sure. Positive.'
On their way back to the church hall, Madden paused outside the Rose and Crown. A low brick wall enclosed the cobbled yard in front of the pub and he sat down on it and took out his packet of cigarettes. 'I believe you smoke, Constable?'
'Thank you, sir.' Surprised and pleased, Billy fumbled with his matches. Madden accepted a light. He sat for a while in silence. Then he spoke.
'This job we have,' he drew on his cigarette, 'it gives us a lot of power in small ways.'
'Sir?' Billy didn't understand.
'It's tempting to use it, particularly with people who… who don't know how to defend themselves.'
Billy was silent.
'Do you understand what I'm saying, Constable?'
He shook his head.
'Don't take the easy way, son.' Madden looked at him now. 'Don't become a bully.'
The cigarette in Billy's mouth had turned to gall.
'Now go and see if Mr Boyce has something for you to do.'
The following morning the inspector went from cottage to cottage on the Melling Lodge side of Highfield, inquiring whether any of the occupants had heard a whistle on Sunday evening.
The third door he knocked on was opened by Stackpole. The village bobby, still in his shirtsleeves, carried a small curly-haired girl in the crook of his arm whom he introduced as 'our Amy'.
'Can't help you, sir,' he told Madden. 'It wasn't me that whistled, that's for certain. Sunday evening the wife and I were over having supper with her parents.
They live on the other side of the green.'
A tow-haired boy peered out of a doorway behind him. Madden heard a baby's wail.
'Pardon me for saying so, sir, but young May Birney isn't what I'd call a reliable witness. Got her head in the clouds half the time, that young lady. She's sweet on a lad who works for one of Lord Stratton's tenants, but her parents are dead set against him. I've seen her down by the stream, mooning about.'
Madden smiled. Like all good village bobbies, Stackpole made everyone else's business his own. 'In the end, she seemed quite sure she'd heard it,' he said.
'Could have been something else,' the constable suggested. 'Jimmy Wiggins whistling up his bitch.
Or one of his lordship's keepers.'
'Perhaps.'
The inspector gave an account of his visit to Oakley the day before. 'I didn't take to Wellings. He didn't strike me as being truthful.'
'I'm not surprised,' Stackpole observed. 'Lies as he breathes, that one.'
'Gates said he handles stolen goods.'
'You weren't thinking…?' The constable raised an eyebrow.
'The stuff taken from Melling Lodge?' Madden shrugged. 'It did cross my mind. What's your view?'
Stackpole shifted the little girl to his other arm.
'I'd say if someone offered Sid Wellings a set of silver candlesticks, or a piece of jewellery, he'd snap it up.
But by the time you talked to him he must have known what happened at the Lodge and if he had any connection with it, even by chance, he'd have been wetting himself.'
Madden nodded. 'All the same, next time you're over there, speak to him. Ask him the same questions.
What was he doing over the weekend? Who did he see passing through the village? Let him know we're not satisfied with his answers.'
Stackpole looked at the inspector curiously. 'Do you still think he came through Oakley, sir?' And then, after a pause: 'It is 'he' we're looking for, isn't it? Not some gang?'
'We believe it's one man,' Madden confirmed. 'But keep that to yourself for now. About Oakley, I'm not sure. He had to have some kind of transport. We think he was carrying a rifle, and when he left he must have had what he took from the Lodge. I don't think he could have come into the area on foot, even through the fields, without someone spotting him.'
'A rifle, sir?'
'He killed them with a rifle and bayonet — we're fairly sure of that. All except Mrs Fletcher.'
'Is he a soldier then?' Stackpole scowled.
'I doubt it. There's no military camp anywhere near.
An ex-soldier, more like it.'
'Plenty of them about.' The constable pressed Madden to come in for a cup of tea, but he declined the offer. Stackpole himself was due at Melling Lodge to join the party searching the woods. 'Between you and me, sir, it's a waste of time. Even with Lord Stratton's keepers helping. Most of these lads are town-bred.
They'll more likely step on something than see it.'
An hour later Madden was back at the church hall.
He had found no one to confirm May Birney's story of the whistle. Sergeant Hollingsworth was seated at the table where Boyce had been the day before. The Guildford inspector was supervising a check of all boots in the village.
'He's got a fingerprint team with him, too, sir.
They'll take the prints of anyone who called regularly at the Lodge.'
'Anything else?' Madden began leafing through the pile of statements on the table.
'Only the lady doctor, sir. She came by, asking for you. It's to do with the little girl.'
'What about her?' Madden looked up quickly. 'Is something the matter?'
Not that I know of, sir.' Hollingsworth scratched his head. 'Dr Blackwell just wants a word with you.
But she said it was important.'
Madden broke the police seal on the front door of Melling Lodge and went inside. The house lay in semi- darkness, with the curtains pulled. The metallic smell of blood was still strong in the hot, musty air.
Standing in the flagged hall, he pictured the scene as it must have happened. The man with the rifle bursting into the drawing-room from the terrace, glass and wood splintering, the maid with the coffee tray turning, mouth open, ready to scream- In! Out! On guard!
The commands he'd once been taught came back to him, accompanied by a sickening image.
The killer had caught Colonel Fletcher before he could reach the guns in the study, then the nanny in the kitchen, running from room to room down the long passage.
In! Out! On guard!
Why such haste? Madden wondered. What was driving him?
Racing up the stairs he had encountered Lucy Fletcher, dropped his weapon and seized her by the upper arms. He was big and strong, judging by the size of the footprint in the stream bed, if it was his.
Madden saw him picking up the woman by the arms and holding her clear of the floor — they had found no heel marks dragged across the carpet — carrying her into the bedroom and flinging her across the bed like … Lord Stratton's words returned to him: like a sacrifice.
He saw the white throat hideously slashed, the cascade of golden hair…
The nursery, papered with daffodils and bluebells, was at the end of the passage upstairs. It contained two beds, one unmade. Dolls and stuffed toys sat in a row on a wooden shelf. A model aeroplane hung from the ceiling. Madden took a laundry bag off its hook behind the door, emptied it and put in fresh clothes from the cupboard and two pairs of girl's shoes retrieved from a foot locker. Other items went into a brown paper bag he found on top of the cupboard.
