Now it had shifted and lay on the polished linoleum at their feet, slowly lengthening and moving across the floor towards the sleeping figure in the white bed.
'The Folkestone pathologist naturally examined the body we retrieved from the car. It was badly disfigured.
There was little he could learn from it. But one thing bothered him. Army records gave Pike's height as a touch over six feet and his physique as muscular.
The body seemed about two inches shorter. I say 'seemed' because it was so severely burned the flesh had shrivelled, altering its natural size and, besides, it was fixed in a sitting position, making it difficult to measure accurately.'
'And there was no possibility of checking for distinguishing marks.' The doctor's attention was fully engaged.
'None. But in the course of his examination the pathologist had found something interesting. A key ring that must have been in the pocket of the man's clothing and which had adhered to the flesh of his leg.
He gave it to the Folkestone police who tested the keys on the padlocks Pike had used to lock the shed where he kept his motorcycle and found they didn't fit. However, it was equally possible they were for locks at Mrs Aylward's house or in the stables, and there was no way of checking those.
'Then one of the detectives had a fresh idea. He took a good look at the key ring itself. It was made with a shilling piece — a hole had been drilled in the coin — and he remembered that was something men returning from the war had done. The shilling was the King's shilling they were given on enlistment and they kept it as a memento.
'Now Pike had certainly served in the war, but he'd enlisted as a professional soldier years before. Even supposing he still had his shilling, it seemed unlikely to the detective that a man like Amos Pike would have done anything so sentimental as to turn it into a key ring.' The chief inspector smiled approvingly.
'That's what I call good detective work. Seeing past the evidence. He's a man called Booth. Fine copper.
He'd already helped us a great deal.'
'The key ring belonged to Biggs?' Dr Blackwell asked.
'It did. Booth learned that from a friend of his, but not until lunch-time on Sunday. By then I was returning myself from Stonehill by train. I got to the Yard in the late afternoon, found Booth's message waiting for me and tried to ring John in Highfield right away.'
'I was at the constable's cottage when you rang,' Dr Blackwell said. Sinclair already knew that — he had read her statement to the Guildford police. But he let her speak. 'We tried to ring John at my house, but there was no reply, so we decided to go over and fetch him. Pike must have been waiting outside in the garden when John switched the lights on. We found the body of our dog near the terrace.'
'Thank God Stackpole was with you,' Sinclair observed. 'But I wondered why he didn't go into the house when you did? Why he stayed outside?'
'He was opening up the dicky,' she explained. 'He was going to have to sit there on the way to the station. Poor Will, it's a terrible squeeze for him.' She looked away. 'We owe him our lives, John and I. You won't forget that, will you?'
The chief inspector assured her that indeed he would not.
'You mentioned Pike's mother…' Dr Blackwell resettled herself. 'I read in the paper his father murdered her and was hanged for it.' 'The press have got on to that,' Sinclair acknowledged.
He'd been half hoping she'd forgotten his dropped remark. 'They're digging around for the rest.
I dare say it'll all come out in the end.'
He paused. His superiors at the Yard had decreed that some of the facts of the case should be kept from the general public. But he didn't believe the prohibition should apply to her.
'Ebenezer Pike confessed to the killing. He said he'd found his wife in bed with another man. He made the admission in open court. The trial didn't last long. All the same, I was surprised when I read the police file to find no mention of the man caught with Mrs Pike. Not even his name. The implication seemed to be that he'd run off and not been found.'
Dr Blackwell nodded, as though comprehending 'It was their son, wasn't it? That's who he found her with.'
The chief inspector gazed at her in admiration.
He'd made the same deduction himself, though not quite so quickly.
'Yes, his father acknowledged it. But only on condition it wasn't included in his confession. He was adamant on that point, and in the end they had to take what he gave them. I spoke to an inspector who'd worked on the case. He said the boy had been found in the bedroom covered with blood, sitting crouched in a corner. He was naked, like his mother. She was stretched over the bed with her hair hanging down and her throat cut. It was one of those cases nobody likes to think about. The boy was packed off to live with his grandparents. A few years later he went for a soldier-'
Sinclair broke off to stare at the floor. When he lifted his eyes he found that the doctor's forehead was creased with a questioning frown. 'That's not the end of the story, is it?'
He wondered how she had guessed. Or was this an example of so-called women's intuition? A revolutionary thought occurred to the chief inspector: he wouldn't half mind having a Helen Blackwell or two working beside him on the force! 'I read through the file several times, but I wasn't satisfied. Don't ask me why.' He was prepared to claim a modicum of intuition on his own account. 'I took a day off and went down to Nottingham and then out to the village where the Pikes had lived. It's called Dorton. Their cottage was a mile or so away on a big estate where Ebenezer Pike was head gamekeeper. I spoke to the local bobby. The murder was before his time, but he put me on to his predecessor who was still living there, retired.'
Sinclair smiled. 'George Hobbs is his name. He's over seventy, full of rheumatism, but bright as a button. He remembered the case only too well. In fact, he's still in a huff about it.' 'A huff? 'He was the first policeman on the scene. He knew all the characters involved. He was the one they ought to have turned to to get it sorted out. That was George Hobbs's opinion then, and nothing has occurred since to alter it!' Sinclair's smile broadened. 'A wonderful institution, the village bobby. I pray we never lose him.'
The quick glance Dr Blackwell directed towards Madden, who was muttering in his sleep, contrived to suggest impatience without expressing it.
'Hobbs was able to flesh out the picture for me.
First, about the Pikes as a family. Ebenezer, the father, was a cold, hard man, he said. He married the daughter of a local farmer, Sadie Grail was her name, and that was interesting. Grail was the name Pike used at the village where he kept his motorcycle. Now, according to Hobbs, Miss Grail was by way of being damaged goods. The young lady had already achieved a certain reputation in the countryside and it seems that marriage by no means curtailed her activities.'
The chief inspector caught Helen Blackwell's eye and shrugged. 'Anyway, they had a son together, Amos Pike, but Hobbs said he had no end of trouble from them. Pike gave his wife a beating on several occasions. She ran away twice. Once she assaulted him with a kitchen knife. Meanwhile, young Amos was growing up — and making of it all, who knows what? He was becoming a problem, too.'
'A problem?'
'According to Hobbs, strange things had been found in the woods, small animals sliced up, some hanging from branches. Two cats from the village were killed… in unpleasant ways. The finger pointed towards Amos Pike, but no one had caught him at it.
He was growing up fast, Hobbs said. A big lad, even before he was in his teens. And there was something else, something between him and his mother, that seems to have upset the constable.'
'What was that?' The doctor's eyes had taken on a distanced look.
'The way she treated him, even in public' Sinclair made a gesture of distaste. 'I can only tell you what Hobbs told me. She'd run her hands over him, he said.
'Not in a good way' — that was how he put it. He thought she did it partly to anger her husband. But there was more to it than that, he reckoned. He called her 'a dangerous woman'. One has to form one's own picture, I think.'
The chief inspector felt momentarily embarrassed until he realized that Dr Blackwell wasn't similarly affected.
