'Quiet!' Madden spoke sharply.
They stood in silence. Billy heard a low rustle in the undergrowth away to their left. Madden picked up a stick and threw it. A raucous cry broke the stillness, followed by the flapping of black wings as a pair of crows rose from the ground and flew off, threading a path through the lofty pines.
Madden and Stackpole looked at each other.
'Let's take a look,' the inspector said.
Madden left the path and began wading through the waist-high ferns. Keeping his eye fixed on the spot where the crows had appeared, he worked his way up and across the slope. Stackpole stayed close behind.
Billy, struggling in the rear as before, lost his footing on the steep slope and had to grab at a root to keep himself from sliding down. His hat fell off. He caught it with his other hand. For a moment he lay spreadeagled like a starfish on the hillside. The others paused and looked back.
'It's all right, sir,' Billy gasped. 'I'm coming.' He could see Stackpole chuckling.
By the time he caught up with them they had stopped and were standing with their backs to him looking down. Madden held out a hand to check Billy's puffing uphill progress. The young constable saw they were at the edge of an area where the undergrowth had been flattened. The body of a small white dog lay on the ground in front of them. Beyond it was the corpse of a man, clad in a soiled cloth coat.
He lay on his back with his head pointing down the slope. His hands, clutching at his chest, had torn apart his blood-soaked shirt. Where his eyes had been there were only pits. Billy blenched at the sight of the sockets, filled with congealed blood.
'Do you know him, Constable?' Madden's tone was detached.
'Yes, sir.' Stackpole, too, had paled. 'Name of Wiggins. James Wiggins. He's from the village.'
'What would he be doing up here?'
'Poaching, most likely.' The constable mopped his brow. 'That coat of his has got the deepest pockets in the county. Like as not we'll find a bird in one of them. Must have come across here from his lordship's shoot to dodge the keepers.' He pointed a finger at the dog. 'That's Betsy, Jimmy's bitch. Wonderful nose for a pheasant, or so Jimmy always said.'
'You've had dealings with him?'
'You could say that.' Stackpole grunted. 'He's been up before the bench. But not nearly as often as he should have. Hard man to lay a hand on.' The constable bit his lip. 'Poor Jimmy. I always said he'd come to a bad end.'
Madden was peering at the ground in front of them.
Something had caught his eye. He bent down and slipped his hand into the trampled ferns, then withdrew it holding a cigarette stub delicately between his fingertips. He held it up to the light.
'Three Castles. One of his?'
'Not likely. Pipe and a tin of Navy Cut — that was Jimmy's style.' Stackpole's brow was knotted in a frown. 'Sir, I don't see how this could have happened.'
Madden, occupied with folding the stub into a handkerchief, glanced at him questioningly.
'I just can't see anyone creeping up on Jimmy. You wouldn't have got within twenty feet of him. If he didn't spot you, the bitch would have.'
Madden put the handkerchief carefully into his trouser pocket. He said, 'I think it was the other way round.'
'Sir?'
The inspector turned so that he was facing down the slope. The others followed the direction of his glance. Melling Lodge lay directly below them, clearly visible through a gap in the pine forest. Billy could make out a group of men in plain clothes standing on the terrace. A line of blue uniforms moved slowly across the sunlit lawn.
'I think whoever killed them was sitting here, waiting for dark.'
Stackpole nodded slowly, comprehending. 'Betsy would have picked up their scent,' he said. 'Come looking to see who it was.' He touched the small body with the toe of his boot. A thin trickle of blood had dried on the white jaw. 'When she was stabbed she must have squealed, kicked up a racket, and Jimmy came running.'
Madden was frowning. 'I didn't see a dog at the lodge,' he said. 'Did the Fletchers have one?'
'Yes, sir, Rufus. An old Labrador. But he died not long ago.'
Leaving Billy posted by the body, Madden and the constable returned to the path. The inspector wanted to climb to the top of the ridge. It took only a few minutes, the pines thinning out as they scaled the stony crest. On the other side was a vista of farms and woodland stretching for miles. In the distance, hazy in the afternoon light, they could just make out the blurred contours of the South Downs.
Not far from the base of the ridge a cluster of cottages stood with a square church tower in the middle.
'That's Oakley, sir,' Stackpole said, without prompting. 'I was born there.'
Madden pointed to a narrow track that led from the hamlet through fields of ripening corn to the edge of the woods beneath them.
'Could you get a car along there?'
The constable shook his head. 'Tractor, maybe. Car springs wouldn't take the ruts.'
They went back down the path and crossed the slope to where Billy was standing by Wiggins's body.
Madden paused for only a moment. 'Stay off the flattened area,' he told the young constable. 'It needs to be searched. I'll be sending some men up.'
Billy felt his cup of bitterness brim over. The inspector had finally found something he was fit for.
To stand watch over a body until others came to do the police work.
'Isn't there something I can do, sir?'
'Yes, keep the crows off him,' Madden called back as he hastened away. 'They go for the eyes.'
Stackpole clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically as he went by. 'Not yours, lad,' he said, with a wink.
Chief Inspector Sinclair drew Madden aside, leading him down the shallow steps from the terrace on to the now deserted lawn. They made an oddly contrasting pair: Madden, tall and rumpled, with his jacket slung over his shoulder; Sinclair, slight and no more than medium height, almost the dandy in his tailored pinstripe suit and soft felt hat. They stood close together, casting a single shadow in the dying sunlight.
'A question. Have we any idea what we're dealing with here?' The chief inspector's restless glance took in the squad of uniformed police who had moved off the grass and were searching the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. At Madden's behest he had just dispatched two CID sergeants to deal with the body in the woods. 'An armed gang, I'm told, a robbery gone wrong.' He nodded towards the terrace where Boyce and Chief Inspector Norris stood watching them. 'In that case, perhaps someone would explain to me why there's stuff in the house in plain view worth more than what was taken. Did you see the china in the drawing-room? And that brace of Purdeys on the gun rack? Good of them not to loot the place, wouldn't you say? Especially since they had all night to do it.' Angus Sinclair's consonants had the precision of cut glass. A native of Aberdeen, he'd been a policeman for more than thirty years. 'Your thoughts, John?'
Madden lit a cigarette before replying. Sinclair studied his face. He noted familiar signs of strain and deep- seated fatigue in the dark, shadowed eyes. They were aspects of Madden he had come to recognize, souvenirs of the war, as permanent and unalterable as the scar on his forehead.
'Starting with the door, sir,' Madden's deep voice rose little above a murmur, 'why break it down? It wasn't locked. Then the victims' hands and arms.
Apart from Mrs Fletcher, they were all killed the same way, but there isn't a cut or scratch on any of them.'
'Your point?' Sinclair cocked his head attentively.
'Whoever did this was in a hurry. The victims had no time to react or defend themselves. I think those downstairs were all dead within seconds of the door being smashed in.'
'Which means the killings were deliberate. That was the intention from the outset.' The chief inspector paused, reflecting on what he had said. 'So much for a robbery gone wrong! Anything else?'
'The weapon, sir. It was unusual. No injuries to the hands and arms, as I said. And then there's Colonel Fletcher, killed from behind in that way.'
'Would you care to be more specific?' Sinclair frowned. 'Have you any idea what it was?'
Madden shrugged. 'I'd rather hear what the pathologist says. I don't want to put ideas in his head.'
