'Put that over your nose, son.'
'Please, sir, I don't need-'
'Do as I say.'
Without waiting to see if his order was carried out, the inspector crossed the room to where the body lay.
Brushing aside the flies he bent down and unfastened the blouse, drawing it apart. From where he was standing Billy could see the wound, neat as a buttonhole, between the tops of the veined breasts. Madden stayed staring at it for a long time. When he rose his eyes had that unseeing 'other world' look, and Billy was relieved. The damp mask across his nose made the stench in the kitchen bearable, but the handkerchief felt like a badge of shame. As soon as they were back in the passage he tugged it off.
They returned to the hallway and he followed Madden up the stairs to the floor above. When they came to a landing the inspector paused.
'Do you see?' he asked, pointing.
Billy peered into the shadows. Embedded in the pile of the wine-coloured stair carpet were tiny pinpricks of reflected light. 'What are they, sir?' he asked.
'Seed pearls. From a bracelet, I should think.
They've been trodden in. Watch your step.'
At the top of the stairs there was another passage, like the one below, running the length of the house.
'Wait here,' Madden told Billy.
He walked down the corridor to his right, checking the rooms, and then returned to the stairway. At the first doorway on the other side he paused.
'Over here, Constable.'
The inspector's voice carried a note that gave Billy time to prepare himself. He walked the few steps to the door and followed Madden into the room. At first he could make nothing of the twilight gloom. The curtains, which must have been drawn the previous evening, still blocked out most of the daylight. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness, he saw the body. Mrs Fletcher, Billy thought. The colonel's lady. (The painting in the drawing-room was fresh in his mind.) She was lying on her back on the bed, flung across it, it seemed, with her legs parted and her arms spread out, the fingers clenched. A silk dressing-gown of Oriental design, embroidered with red flowers and tied at the waist with a sash, was spread out on the bed on either side of her like a half opened fan. Her legs and the bottom of her stomach were bare. The sight of her pubic hair made Billy blush and turn away. He couldn't see her face — her head was hanging over the other side — but when he followed Madden around the foot of the bed he saw the fair hair cascading down.
'Keep clear,' Madden warned him sharply. 'There'll be blood on the floor.'
Billy was just wondering how the inspector knew that — could he see in the dark? — when the answer became clear. Staring down at the livid gash in the white column of flesh, he felt a sense of violation stronger than anything he had experienced that day.
'Why'd they do that?' Billy couldn't stop himself.
'Why'd they have to cut her throat?'
Boyce was waiting for them when they came out on to the terrace again. The sun was lower in the sky, the shadows lengthening.
'Mr Sinclair rang from Guildford,' he told Madden.
'He'll be here soon.'
'You can start the men searching the gardens.' The inspector lit a cigarette. 'But stay out of the woods for now.'
Boyce wondered what Madden had made of the shambles inside the house. He searched in vain for any hint in the dark, withdrawn eyes.
'You don't think they came that way, do you?'
The inspector shrugged. 'If they drove in the front gates, why come round to this side to break in? They could have knocked on the door.' To Billy, he said, 'Find that village bobby — what's his name?
Stackpole?'
Billy returned in a few minutes with a tall, moustached constable. Madden greeted him.
'Do you know these woods?' he asked.
'Well enough, sir.' Stackpole eyed him warily.
Word had spread about the Scotland Yard inspector who'd told the Lord Lieutenant where to get off.
'Come along, then. You too, Styles.'
A gravel path through the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden led to a wooden gate. On the other side of the wall they found a uniformed constable patrolling a small expanse of meadow grass bordering a shallow stream. He was a young man, not much older than Billy himself, and with similiar colouring — fair skin and reddish hair. His face was flushed by hours spent in the broiling sun.
'Excuse me, sir.' He hurried over to them.
'What is it, Constable?'
Madden had paused to take off his hat and jacket and hang them on the gate. When he rolled up his sleeves Billy saw a random pattern of scars spread over his forearm the size and shape of sixpences.
'A footprint, sir. Down by the stream. I noticed it earlier.'
'Show me.'
The constable led the way down the gently sloping bank. He pointed. 'There, sir, next to the steppingstones.
Coming this way.' The stream, diminished by weeks of drought, had shrunk to half its normal size. The earlier course of the water was marked by a surface of smooth dried mud. It was on this that the faint imprint of a footmark showed beside one of a line of flat stones crossing the stream. Madden nodded his approval.
'Well spotted, Constable.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Go up to the house. My compliments to Mr Boyce and ask him to send a couple of men down here with some plaster-of-paris. Tell him the footprint's shallow but well defined and if they're careful they should get a good cast of it.'
'Right away, sir.' The constable set off briskly.
Madden went down on his haunches. Stackpole joined him, squinting at the stream bed.
'He might have missed his footing, sir. Coming across last evening, just as it was getting dark.'
'Big man.' The inspector frowned. 'Size eleven, I should say. That looks like a boot mark.'
Stackpole pursed his lips. 'Course, it could be anyone's.'
Billy felt the prick of envy. First the young constable.
Now the village bobby!
Madden led them across the stepping-stones to the opposite bank. Almost at once they were in the wood, moving uphill through a stand of saplings that ended when they came to the tall beeches. A sea of fern and brush covered the ground on either side of the path, which was well used and easy to follow. The air was hot and still.
'Do the villagers come up here often?' Madden spoke over his shoulder.
'A fair bit, sir.' Stackpole kept pace with the inspector's long stride. 'Time was when the whole hanger was a shoot, but that was before the war. Now his lordship only has two keepers and they don't come over this way, except once in a while.'
Panting at the rear, trying to keep up with them, Billy had to watch for branches whipping back in his face. When he caught the cuff of his jacket in a bramble thicket, the constable paused to help disentangle him. He was grinning under his helmet. 'City boy,' he whispered.
Billy flushed a deeper red. He saw that Madden was watching them from above, hands on hips.
The hill steepened as they neared the top of the ridge. Madden stopped. He sniffed the air. 'Constable?'
'Yes, sir. I smell it…'
Stackpole cast about him with narrowed eyes. Billy caught a whiff of something. They were in the middle of a steeply sloping forest of pines. The carpet of ferns stretched unbroken on either side of them.
'Can't tell which way the wind's blowing,' the constable complained.
