'You're suggesting this mythical clerk might have known what was in Miller's mind. Who he thought the guilty man was.' The chief inspector looked sceptical.
'More than that. He'd most likely have typed up that memorandum. And it wouldn't have been a routine job for him. He'd remember what was in it.'
Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. 'So what is it we need to know? The name of Miller's special clerk, if he had one. I'm not sure there's time. Thursday's our deadline.'
'I know, but I've thought of a short cut,' Madden said. 'Miller was travelling in a staff car when he was killed. It's likely he was on an investigation, which means he had a clerk with him, probably the driver.
He could be our man.'
'Now you're telling me he's dead!'
'He might be.' Madden was unfazed. 'But we don't know that.'
'Nor do we,' Sinclair agreed after a moment. He gave an approving nod. 'You're right, John, it's worth a try. I'll pester the War Office again. I'm in the mood to twist someone's tail.'
When she came to a convenient tree stump, Harriet Merrick paused and sat down, fanning her face with the wide straw hat she had put on to please Annie McConnell. (Mrs Merrick had pleaded in vain that the mild October sunshine was hardly likely to cause her sunstroke!) She was finding the gentle slope to the top of Shooter's Hill heavy going today. A slight pain in her chest, like a bolt tightening, had persuaded her to stop and rest for a while. She waited now for the sensation to pass.
She was reluctant to admit it, but she'd not been feeling herself these past few days. A nagging headache that had started on the night of her sixty-first birthday had continued to plague her since. At her son's suggestion they had taken advantage of the unusually warm autumn weather to dine outside that night, and Mrs Merrick thought at first she might have caught a chill. But the cold she feared did not develop. Instead, her head had continued to ache, keeping her awake at night and allowing her thoughts to wander restlessly in a state of increasing anxiety.
The trouble had started with Tigger's death.
Poisoned, Hopley reckoned. He blamed the farmers hereabouts who, he said, were laying down strychnine and other poisons against the foxes, which took a heavy toll of their hen coops. The gardener had come across the poor animal dragging itself on its stomach through the shrubbery in the early morning. Tigger had been missing all night, though Annie had called to him repeatedly before she went to bed.
The children's attention had been distracted while the dog was carried to the potting shed where presently he died. After lunch their father had told them what had happened. They had wept, but then, as children did, dried their tears and taken a lively interest in the funeral arrangements, which Hopley was charged with. That evening they had stood hand in hand with their parents and with Annie while prayers were said and the remains of the spaniel laid to rest in a grave dug behind the croquet lawn.
Their father had assured them he wouldn't let the matter rest there and had already informed the village bobby, Constable Proudfoot, who intended to look into it. The next day Harriet Merrick took her grandchildren aside and promised to buy them a new puppy on their return from holiday in Cornwall.
But, like spreading ripples in a pond, the brutal disturbance to domestic life at Croft Manor continued to claim its victims. On Tuesday night little Robert had become tearful again, and it was discovered he was running a temperature. He had been packed off to bed immediately by his mother while the unspoken thought hung in the air: if it turned out to be anything serious the whole family would have to delay their departure for Penzance at the end of the week.
This in turn seemed to upset Mrs Merrick, as she readily admitted to Annie. 'I don't want them hanging on. I want them to go.'
'Will you listen to yourself?' Annie had laughed at her. 'Your own flesh and blood, and you can't wait to see the back of them.'
'I was looking forward to us being here alone. Just you and I, Annie.'
'Now don't you worry, Miss Hattie.' Annie addressed her as Mrs Merrick in front of others, but always as Miss Hattie when they were alone, just as she had for the past forty years and more. 'We'll have plenty of time on our own, you'll see. They'll be off for three weeks.'
'Not if they don't go,' Mrs Merrick had pointed out with unanswerable logic, but Annie just shook her head at her.
'What a great silly you are! Always getting yourself worked up for no reason.'
Annie was right — there was no reason to be upset.
But this, paradoxically, seemed to distress her all the more, and the night before she had hardly closed her eyes for worrying.
'Oh, Annie, I don't know what's the matter with me. Why do I want them away from here?' They were walking in the garden together after breakfast. 'I'm starting to feel the way I did when Tom died. Do you remember? I was so afraid then, even before I knew.'
Annie had drawn her into a recess in the yew alley and put her arms around her.
'There, my dear,' she murmured. 'Aren't you forgetting it's four years since the poor dear boy was killed?'
'How could I forget?'
'Almost to the day…' 'Oh! Do you think it's that?' Mrs Merrick drew back. Tom had been killed in the second week of October. The anniversary was near. 'Oh, I do hope so.'
She caught her breath at her own words, wondering how she could have said such a thing.
But it was true, none the less, and the thought had comforted her for the rest of the day.
She felt better still when she went up to the nursery later with Annie and they found the invalid's temperature had come down. He declared himself fit enough for a game of Happy Families, and although his nanny, Enid Bradshaw, opposed the idea she was overruled by Annie whose writ ran in all departments of the household.
Mrs Merrick smiled as Robert's seven-year-old sister fussed over him, fluffing up his pillows and settling him comfortably in his bed. She giggled with them both when Annie fixed the patient with a glittering eye. 'Now tell me the truth, Master Robert — and may a lie never stain your lips — are you by any chance holding Miss Bun, the Baker's Daughter?'
The game continued until the arrival of Dr Fellows, who pronounced Robert to be on the mend after only the briefest of examinations. 'A case of nerves, I think.
Losing the dog must have upset him more than we realized. Poor beast, do you know yet how it happened?'
It was also Mrs Merrick's day for her weekly checkup and Dr Fellows apologized for having come an hour later than usual. 'I was just leaving the surgery when they brought in Emmett Hogg with a broken ankle. It seems he had to hobble and crawl for half a mile before he found help. Fell into a pit in the woods, he says.' Dr Fellows lifted an eloquent eyebrow. 'Not many men hereabouts manage to be dead drunk at two o'clock in the afternoon, but Hogg makes quite a habit of it. Now what have you been up to, madam?'
The doctor lowered his jowly visage over the gauge of his blood pressure apparatus. He pumped air into the cuff around Mrs Merrick's arm. He frowned. 'Been overdoing it again, have we?'
Mrs Merrick, who liked neither being addressed as 'madam', nor being referred to in the first person plural, acknowledged that she had been for a walk earlier that day. She made no mention of Shooter's Hill.
'Take it easy for the next few days,' Dr Fellows advised her. 'We'd better make that a week. No more walks outside the garden until I see you again.'
Mrs Merrick's thoughts were elsewhere. Something he had said had jogged her memory.
'Fell into a pit, you say?'
'That's Hogg's story.' Dr Fellows snapped his bag shut. 'I hae me doots.'
Harriet Merrick winced. 'If it happened in Ashdown Forest he must report it,' she said firmly. 'The police want to know about any fresh digging there. My son was telling me only the other day.'
William was a Justice of the Peace.
'I'm not sure anyone will believe anything Emmett Hogg tells them,' Dr Fellows remarked. He paused at the bedroom door.
