'It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Mr Sinclair gave me the weekend off. There's something I want to do.' He looked at the constable, bronzed and smiling under his helmet. He felt a warmth for this man who had kissed Helen Blackwell. 'Are you busy today?'
Stackpole shook his head. 'Saturdays are usually quiet. We've got the wife's sister and her brood coming over at lunchtime. Now, if I could find a good excuse to get away…' He grinned.
'Let's walk along,' Madden suggested. 'I'll tell you what I have in mind.'
Stackpole listened carefully while he explained.
'I see what you mean, sir — he didn't care about tossing his cigarette stubs around so if he'd eaten anything there we ought to have found some traces.
Maybe a tin or a crust or an empty packet.'
'More than that,' Madden admitted. 'We haven't put this about, but we're fairly sure he kept coming back to the woods over a long period so that he could watch the Fletchers.'
'And I never knew it!' The constable looked grim.
'No fault of yours,' Madden hastened to assure him.
'He must have taken good care not to be seen. I think Wiggins only came on him by chance.'
'Still, I see what you mean, sir. He might have had some other spot up there. A hide, or a lair.'
'How well did the police search the woods?'
'Search?' Stackpole's snort was contemptuous. 'They just tramped around, flattening things. They gave up after four days, and none too soon, if you ask my opinion.' He raised his hand in greeting to a pair of men sitting on a bench in the forecourt of the pub.
'Tell you what, sir. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to get out of my jacket — you could do the same — then we could go up there and take a look around.'
They walked on until they reached the Stackpoles' cottage near the end of the village. While the constable got ready, his wife sat with Madden in the small parlour. A plump, curly-haired young woman with a deep dimple, she seemed unawed at finding herself in the presence of a Scotland Yard inspector.
'Just you see you get home in good time, Will Stackpole,' she called through the doorway. 'There's the lawn needs mowing, and the baby's chair's broken again.' To Madden, she said, 'You've got to keep after them.'
The constable came in in his shirtsleeves carrying a brown-paper packet. 'I see you bought some things at the shop, sir. I've got a few bits myself. We'll have enough for a bite of lunch.'
'What's this, then?' his wife inquired of the ceiling.
'A picnic in the woods?'
She missed the inspector's deep blush.
A uniformed constable sent from Guildford was on duty outside Melling Lodge, but Stackpole said there wouldn't be one there after the weekend.
'We'll just lock up the gates, and I'll keep an eye on the place. Mr Fletcher will come down from Scotland to see what needs doing. The Lodge will go to young James, I'm told, but that won't be for years.
Can't see anyone wanting to live there. Not for a while, anyway.'
Water still sprayed from the fountain in the forecourt.
The Cupid figure, bow drawn, cast a shadow on the white gravel at their feet. Madden noticed that the ivy clothing the walls of the house was freshly trimmed.
'Tom Cooper's been told to keep up the garden,'
Stackpole informed him. 'Poor old Tom, he hates having to come here now. This was a happy house.
Anyone in the village will tell you that.'
They walked down the terraced lawn to the gate at the bottom of the garden and crossed the stream on the stepping-stones. A rumble of thunder broke the stillness of the morning. Clouds like hewn marble darkened the sun.
Madden paused at the foot of the path. 'Now, my idea is, if he laid up anywhere it wouldn't be on this side, towards Lord Stratton's land and his keepers, it would be in the other direction.' He pointed west along the ridge, away from the village. 'Let's climb up a bit, then look for a way across.'
All along the length of the path the ferns and undergrowth on either side had been trodden down.
'That lot from Guildford, they just spread out in a line and walked up the hill,' Stackpole said, in disgust.
'Then, when they got to the top, they spread out some more and came down again.'
'How much of the woods did they search?' Madden was sweating freely in the stifling heat.
'No more than a mile across. The keepers scouted around a bit, but they didn't find anything.'
Two-thirds of the way up the slope they came to a track branching to the right, and Madden took it. The trampled undergrowth continued for some distance, then the ferns sprang up again and the forest seemed to draw in on them. The inspector kept his gaze on the ground ahead, though the footpath showed no sign of recent use. The narrow track was littered with dead twigs and leaves.
Thunder boomed, louder than before. The air was close and still. Stackpole swatted a midge. 'You can't see more than a few yards,' he complained, his glance probing the bushes on either side of them.
'Look for a broken branch,' Madden advised. 'Anything that seems disturbed.'
The path began to descend and they came to a natural bowl in the side of the hill, circled by a ring of lofty beech trees. The track went around it, resuming its straight course on the far side. Taking a short cut, the two men walked across the shallow depression. Successive generations of dead leaves had given the surface a soft, yielding quality, and midway across Madden was assailed by a sudden sharp memory of a trench, springy with bodies like a mattress, and the eyes of dead men staring up at him. These fragments of a past he had tried to forget came without warning, often accompanied by dizziness and a feeling of vertigo, and he hurried to regain the footpath.
'How far have we come?' He saw that Stackpole was looking at him with concern, and realized he must have paled in the few seconds it had taken them to cross the bowl.
'More than a mile, I'd say, sir. Dr Blackwell's house is below us.' He pointed down. 'You can see it from further on.'
Lightning crackled in the darkening sky, followed almost at once by a loud peal of thunder. A sudden gust of wind brought a shower of leaves and twigs from overhead.
'Let's find some shelter,' Madden suggested.
A short distance along the path they came to another clearing where a huge sweet chestnut stood.
The spreading branches, decked with graceful leaves shaped like spearheads, provided ample protection from the fat raindrops that were starting to fall.
'Good place to stop for a bite, sir.' The constable was still anxious about his companion.
'Why not?'
They settled down under the tree. Madden peeled back the top of the tin of sardines. Stackpole sliced bread with his pocket knife. The constable had brought two bottles of beer with him. They ate and drank, sitting comfortably with their backs against the deeply scored trunk, while the sky at first grew darker, and then brightened. By the time they had finished eating the sun had come out again, but at that moment it began to rain in earnest and they sat in the shelter of the great tree and watched the drops falling like a shower of golden coins through the sunlight.
'It won't last,' Stackpole predicted with the assurance of a countryman, and after a minute he was proved right. The rain ceased. Perversely, however, the sky began at once to darken again and the thunder continued to roll.
Madden had been thinking. 'I don't believe he'd have picked a spot too far from Melling Lodge. Can we find a path to the top of the ridge? I'd like to have a look around up there.'
'We passed one a quarter of a mile back.'
Gathering the remains of their lunch, they set off again, retracing their steps. Lightning flashed, followed by a detonation of thunder. Madden increased his pace, striding out along the path. They had come to the circle of beeches where the footpath bent like a bow, and this time the inspector followed it, avoiding the bowl of leaves. The dusty track had darkened in colour with the earlier shower. Madden's eyes were fixed on the ground ahead of him. Suddenly he halted.
'What is it, sir?' Stackpole hurried forward.
