'Or mine?' The chief inspector raised an eyebrow.
'But as regards Colonel Fletcher, I take your meaning.
You'd think he would have faced his attacker. Why did he turn and run?'
'He might have been trying for one of the guns in the study.'
'Even so, an old soldier… You'd expect him to take on a man with a knife. If it was a knife…'
Sinclair grimaced. 'An armed gang? Could they be right?' He gestured towards the terrace.
Madden shook his head. 'I think it was one man,' he said.
The chief inspector looked hard at him. 'I was hoping you wouldn't say that,' he admitted.
Madden shrugged.
'I have the same feeling.' Sinclair's gaze shifted to the house. 'It's got the smell of madness about it.
That's one man's work. But we have to be sure. What about the woman upstairs, Mrs Fletcher? There could have been two of them.'
Again Madden shook his head. 'He broke the door down and killed the maid in the drawing-room, then went for Colonel Fletcher. The colonel tried to reach the study — where the guns were — but he only got as far as the doorway before he was caught from behind.
As for the woman in the kitchen, the nanny, I doubt she even knew what was happening. You can see the surprise in her face.'
While Madden was speaking Sinclair had taken a briar pipe from his pocket. He stood now, tapping the empty bowl in the palm of his hand.
'Aye, but that still doesn't explain Mrs Fletcher.
She wasn't killed like the others.'
'I think she heard the disturbance and came down the stairs. That's where they met. Did you notice the pearls in the carpet?'
The chief inspector nodded. 'From a bracelet, I'd say. It must have broken. I think he seized her there and dragged her upstairs to the bedroom. Tell the pathologist to look for bruises on the wrists and arms.'
Sinclair examined the bowl of his pipe. 'If you're right, then since he didn't kill her on the stairs, he must have had something else in mind. Rape, by the look of it. Poor woman. Well, we'll know soon enough.' He slipped the pipe back into his pocket.
'That would explain why she wasn't stabbed. He wanted her alive. But what did he use to kill her with?'
'A razor, I'd say.'
'Yes, but whose? The colonel's? Or did he bring his own?'
The chief inspector expelled his breath in another long sigh. He watched as a plain-clothes detective stepped over the broken door frame to deposit a white envelope in a numbered cardboard box, one of four standing in a row on the terrace. Close by was a leather holdall, Sinclair's 'black bag', containing equipment he deemed necessary for a murder investigation: gloves, tweezers, bottles, envelopes. The new scientific approach to crime detection was slowly gaining ground, though not without meeting resistance. Juries remained suspicious of forensic evidence. Even judges were inclined to give it little weight in their summings-up.
'I've sent for the mortuary wagon.' Sinclair was speaking again. 'We'll do the post-mortems in Guildford tonight, as many as we can. I want to run the investigation from down here, at least in the early stages. Bring a bag when you come tomorrow. You'll be sleeping in the pub.
'Meantime, there's that little girl to think about.
Get over to Dr Blackwell's house, would you, John?
Find out if the child saw anything. And arrange to have her moved to hospital right away. We can take the doctor's statement tomorrow. I must get back.' He glanced up at the house again. 'I want to keep an eye on that pathologist. He's new to me. I asked for the sainted Spilsbury, but he wasn't available. On holiday in the Scilly Isles, if you please! I had to take one of his assistants at St Mary's.' As he spoke, photographer's flash powder, like sheet lightning, lit up a window. 'All this and the Lord Lieutenant, too!'
'You met him, did you?' Madden donned his jacket.
'He was leaving when I arrived. With inky fingers and a foul disposition. He said you were impertinent.
No, damned impertinent.'
'He went inside the house — did he tell you that?'
Sinclair was amused. 'You are aware, are you not, that he's head of the magistracy and chief executive for the county of Surrey? Take care, John. That type likes to make trouble.'
Madden scowled. 'I've had a bellyful of that type.'
'Then again, someone stepped in that pool of blood in the study. I might send an officer after him to look at the sole of his shoe. That should spoil his supper.'
Madden's glance, straying to the bottom of the garden, was arrested by the sight of Styles sitting on a bench at the edge of the lawn. The constable's red hair was plastered to his sunburned forehead. He was picking burrs from his socks.
'Aye, I'm sorry about that.' Sinclair had followed the direction of his gaze. 'I shouldn't have landed you with a green one. There was no one else on hand this morning. I'll have him replaced tomorrow.'
Madden shook his head. A smile touched his lips.
'No, leave him,' he said. 'He'll do.'
2
The forecourt was becoming crowded. A second police van was drawn up behind the first, and on the other side of the fountain a big Vauxhall tourer was parked against the creeper-clad wall. The numbers of uniformed police had thinned, but several plainclothes men were gathered in a group near the front steps. Searching for Stackpole, Madden found him beside a trestle table on which plates of sandwiches and a large tea urn rested.
'Courtesy of the village ladies, sir. Would you care for a mug?'
Thank you, not now. I have to see Dr Blackwell.
Could you tell me the way to her house?'
'I'll do better than that, sir.' Stackpole emptied his tin mug and wiped his moustache. 'I'm going there myself. Mr Boyce sent a man over this morning, but he needs to be relieved.'
'You could do with a break yourself, Constable.'
'Oh, I'm all right, sir,' said Stackpole, who was thinking the same applied to Madden. The inspector's dark eyes seemed to have sunk even deeper into his gaunt face. 'And at least I'll get my supper later, which is more than can be said for this lot.'
He led the way out of the forecourt and through a kitchen garden. A gate in the high brick wall opened on to a path that joined the road some distance past the entrance to Melling Lodge. Looking back, Madden saw that the crowd of villagers had dispersed. But now there were several cars parked outside the gates.
That'll be the London press,' he said.
The winding lane ran between hedgerows. The two men tramped along it side by side. After a while, Madden spoke: 'Just between us, Constable, we're not inclined to treat this as a robbery. It looks as though the killings were deliberate, even planned.'
Stackpole sucked in his breath. 'That's hard to believe, sir. If you'd known the family…'
'Well liked, were they?'
'More than that. Miss Lucy — Mrs Fletcher — she was born here, at Melling Lodge. The house would have gone to her brother, but he was killed in the war.
When she and the colonel settled at the Lodge, it must have seemed like coming home to her. And as for the village — well, you won't find a soul who wasn't that pleased to see her back.'
They had come to a belt of forest, a spur of woodland spilling down from the slopes of Upton Hanger. The road bore to the right, but Stackpole pointed out a narrow track in the woods ahead. 'That's a short cut to the doctor's house, sir. It'll save us ten minutes.'
The path, dark as a tunnel, ran beneath a dense canopy of beech and chestnut. The sun had almost set.
When they came to a garden gate, Madden paused.
