Madden sank to his knees and fell sideways to the floor.
'John…' Helen Blackwell scrambled across the floor to his side. 'My darling…' She knelt beside him, tearing at his blood-soaked shirt.
Stackpole hobbled towards them. A sudden drumming on the floor made him check. Pike's heels beat a spasmodic tattoo on the carpet. The constable plucked the bayonet-tipped pole from his chest. He saw it was a roughly trimmed sapling. The long sword bayonet had been wired to one end. He raised it, prepared to strike again. The drumming ceased.
'Is he dead?' Dr Blackwell didn't look up.
'Dead as he'll ever be.'
'Will, go to the phone. Ring Guildford hospital.
They must send an ambulance with a nurse right away. Immediately. When you've done that, fetch my bag from the car. Hurry!'
The constable was already on the move, half limping, half running. When he returned a few minutes later he found her in the same position, kneeling beside the inspector, flicking blood angrily from her eye, pressing a pad of silk that must have come from her underclothing to Madden's side.
'Open my bag. You'll find a dressing inside.'
Stackpole did as he was bid. She quickly replaced the makeshift pad. Then she took his hand in hers and held it firmly on the surgical dressing.
'Keep it like that. Don't press too hard. I have to fetch a bandage from upstairs. I'll only be a moment.'
Shocked by the sight of Madden's bloody torso and ashen face, Stackpole couldn't check the words that came to his lips: 'Will he… is he going to…?'
'No!' she said fiercely. 'He's not going to die, do you hear me?' She turned her pale, bloodstained face to his. 'We're going to keep him alive. You and I.'
Barely aware of the pain from his injured leg, the constable knelt beside Madden's body, holding his hand steady on the dressing. The patter of running footsteps sounded overhead. He let his gaze wander about the room. Despite the shambles that met his eye — Pike's body lying stark not a foot away, the smashed glass and furniture all around — and notwithstanding the inspector's dreadful pallor, he felt strangely comforted.
He had known her for many years, since childhood indeed, and long since learned to trust her word and judgement.
'He had Biggs's body in the car with him,' the chief inspector explained. 'Somehow he managed to set it behind the steering-wheel, though that can't have been easy. He was hurt himself, and the room was full of smoke. He was on the point of leaving when we arrived, you know, getting ready to make a run for it. Perhaps he thought it a good idea to take the body with him and bury it in some place where it wouldn't be found. That way he'd keep us guessing.
Was it Biggs who had stolen the silver? Was Carver really Pike?'
Dr Blackwell's steady glance told Sinclair she was paying close heed to what he was telling her.
'God knows how he slipped away. We had the place surrounded, but the men were running this way and that, and the stables were on fire, too. It was all confusion. My guess is he went out through the kitchen and across the stableyard.
'But how he survived at all is the real mystery. He drove flat out into the side of the house. The pathologist who examined his body found three cracked ribs and injuries to his head. Plus he had a revolver bullet in his arm. The man had incredible strength and endurance.'
How did he get to Highfield?' Dr Blackwell's gaze shifted to the white-painted bedstead on the other side of the hospital room. Sinclair noted that her eyes seldom left Madden for long. The inspector was deeply asleep.
'A farmer who lived a few miles from Mrs Aylward's house reported his car stolen during the night. It was found abandoned in a wood near Godalming ten days ago. He must have come the rest of the way on foot.
Amazing strength. Amazing perseverance.'
'Will Stackpole says he was stealing food over on the Oakley side of the hanger. A farmer there reported some minor thefts.' Dr Blackwell's gaze returned to the chief inspector.
'He went back to his old dugout,' Sinclair affirmed.
'He couldn't reconstruct it, he hadn't the tools. All he had was his bayonet. But he dug a hole in the loose soil. More of an animal's burrow, really. I wonder how human he was at the end.'
He regretted his words at once and looked at her quickly to gauge their effect. He could only imagine how it might feel to have been the object of so twisted and murderous a passion. But if the doctor was disturbed by the thought she gave no sign of it. 'I realized afterwards he must have come back for me. I have the same kind of looks as Lucy Fletcher. He could have watched us both from the ridge. But what about the others? Mrs Reynolds and Mrs Merrick?'
She seemed genuinely curious.
'They were fair-haired, like you.' And good-looking, he almost added, but didn't wish to sound over familiar. Dr Blackwell's manner towards him had been cool. Remembering her smile from their previous encounters at Highfield, he wondered if he would see it today.
'We were his type, then. One look and he was smitten. The fatal glance. Like Tristan and Iseult.' She spoke with bitter irony. Her gaze went again to the still figure in the bed.
'His mother had the same colouring.'
'His mother? Her eye kindled with renewed interest.
'Yes, we know quite a lot about his past now. Let me finish telling you about the body first.'
Sinclair was starting to enjoy their conversation, which hadn't seemed likely at first. During his frequent visits to Guildford and Highfield over the past fortnight he had called in at the hospital several times, only to find Madden asleep or sedated. On his last visit, a few days before, he had seen Dr Blackwell in her clothes and white doctor's jacket lying stretched out on the only other bed the ward contained, and had crept from the room.
That afternoon he had come on her sitting in a chair beside the inspector's bed with his hand resting in hers on the white counterpane. Madden's eyes were shut. The doctor, too, was nodding, but she started awake as he entered and stood up at once, turning to face him. Sinclair was put in mind of a lioness guarding her wounded mate and he approached the bedside cautiously.
'He's asleep. You're not to wake him.'
Her thick fair hair was tied back tightly in a ribbon, her face pale above the white doctor's coat. The cut over her eye showed an ugly red scab. He saw she had made no attempt to cover it with powder.
Sinclair was shocked by his colleague's appearance.
The inspector's sunken cheeks and chalky skin gave his pallid features the aspect of a death's head.
Dr Blackwell noticed his reaction. 'I know he looks terrible,' she said. 'But he's getting better. It was mainly the loss of blood, the shock. I wasn't sure at first… I didn't know whether we could save him.
But he's very strong…' She touched Madden's cheek and then kissed his forehead. It was as though she needed to reassure herself of his physical presence.
'You don't know how strong,' she burst out, anger sharpening her tone.
The chief inspector rather thought he did, but wasn't disposed to argue the point.
'We've no idea, you or I, what men like him suffered in the war, what they endured. To see him like this now..!' Her voice broke.
He understood then where her anger came from.
He saw that she held him and the whole unsuffering world guilty of indifference to the inspector's long Calvary. And he accepted the justice of this injustice humbly and in silence.
On the point of leaving, he had mentioned his disappointment at not finding Madden awake. 'We've got most of the answers now. John would be interested to hear them.'
'Then why not tell me?' she had suggested coolly.
It afforded the chief inspector some amusement on his train journey back to London later to reflect that it hadn't even occurred to him to demur.
They had taken their chairs over to the window, away from the sickbed. A brisk wind was blowing outside. Golden leaves from the chestnuts lining the street batted against the window-panes. The pale autumn sunshine brought out the shadows beneath Helen Blackwell's eyes.
