widen the search area.’
‘What about detectives?’ Madden’s scowl was unconscious. It signalled his concern.
‘I’ve asked for them, and I’m told a couple of plain-clothes men are coming.’ Stackpole grimaced in turn as he caught the other man’s eye. ‘Ah, there’s nothing worse in this job, is there, sir? Nothing so bad as a child gone missing. All we can do is put out the word to other stations and keep looking.’
Distressed though she felt, Helen was relieved to hear that her husband wouldn’t be needed. She pressed his arm. ‘I’ll go and see how Mrs Bridger’s doing,’ she said, but just then her attention was caught by something she saw on the other side of the road, and she paused. The front door of a cottage near the end of the row had opened and a sandy-haired man had come outside. He was looking about him in an agitated manner.
‘Isn’t that Dick Henshaw?’ she asked. ‘He and Molly used to live in Highfield. She was a patient of mine.’
Stackpole glanced round, and as he did so the man caught sight of him and hastened in their direction. ‘That’s Dick, all right.’ The constable frowned. ‘Now what’s this about, I wonder?’
He moved away and the two met in the middle of the road. Taller by a head, Stackpole had to bend to listen to what the other man was saying. They stood like that for perhaps two minutes while Madden and his wife watched from beside their car.
Abruptly, the constable wheeled and came striding back to them.
‘It seems I’m going to need your help after all, sir.’ He spoke to Madden in a low, controlled voice, but there was no disguising the urgency of his manner.
‘What is it, Will? What’s happened?’ Helen’s fingers tightened on her husband’s arm.
‘I’ll tell you in a moment, Miss Helen. But could you come with me now, both of you? Just move away quietly. I don’t want that lot over the road getting wind of this.’
Accompanied by Henshaw, they walked up the lane to the end of the line of cottages and then, following the constable’s lead, joined a path that went around the back of the houses. As soon as they were out of sight of the men, Stackpole halted.
‘Run along and tell Molly we’re coming, Dick. And mind you keep this quiet now.’
He waited for Henshaw to move out of earshot. But Helen couldn’t contain her anxiety.
‘What is it, Will?’ she whispered. ‘What’s this about?’
The constable shook his head in frustration. ‘I can’t say for sure. All I know is there’s an old friend of yours sitting in Molly Henshaw’s kitchen and he’s acting strange.’ He eyed them meaningfully. ‘It’s Topper,’ he said.
Helen’s eyebrows rose at the name. She glanced at her husband. ‘I didn’t know he was back. We’ve been expecting him for weeks. I was starting to get worried.’
‘Has he seen the girl?’ Madden asked urgently.
‘That’s just it, sir. I don’t know…’ Stackpole’s face was grim. ‘There’s some business about a shoe. Molly’ll tell us more. But the thing is, he’s gone silent. She can’t get a word out of him. Now you know old Topper. One sniff of a police uniform and he’ll close up tighter than a clam. So what I was wondering, sir, is would you try? See if you can get him to open up.’
As he waited for an answer, thunder boomed out again, louder than before, and the afternoon light dimmed still further.
‘I’ll try if you want me to, Will,’ Madden said, after a pause. He sounded dubious. ‘But you’ve got the wrong person.’ Smiling, he glanced at his wife. ‘Helen’s the one to ask. If he’ll talk to anyone he’ll talk to her.’
2
‘Thank Goodness you’ve come, Will.’ Molly Henshaw’s plump, motherly features were flushed with distress. Before Stackpole had even unlatched the gate she appeared at the back door of the cottage, with her husband behind her, and came hurrying across the bricked yard to meet them. ‘I can’t keep old Topper sitting still any longer. He’s all for running off. Dr Madden…!’ Her face lit up when she saw Helen and she bobbed her head in greeting.
‘Molly, dear! How are you? What a dreadful business this is.’ Helen took her hand. ‘Have you met my husband?’
Molly Henshaw’s reply was drowned in a clap of thunder. Stackpole glanced anxiously at the heavens.
‘Quick now, love, before we go inside – tell us about this shoe. Did Topper give it to you?’
‘Give it me?’ She appeared not to understand the question.
‘Of his own accord?’ Madden spoke for the first time, and she stared at him as though she had not yet taken in his tall, commanding presence.
‘Oh, I see what you mean – yes, sir, he did.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘He knocked on the door – it must have been half an hour ago – and I asked him in. We know Topper, Dick and I.’ She nodded to her husband beside her. ‘He’s been coming to these parts for years, usually in the summer. If there’s something needs doing in the garden he’ll lend a hand, otherwise I’ll just give him a meal and a cup of tea. He never says much. Sometimes you don’t get a murmur out of him. But he likes to sit here with us. I reckon he knows he’s welcome.’
‘The shoe, Molly,’ Stackpole urged her.
Mrs Henshaw bit her lip. She wiped her hands nervously on her apron. ‘I could see he was bothered about something as soon as I opened the door, but I wasn’t surprised, not with all the fuss going on. I brought him inside and right away he went and sat down in the corner. Then I noticed he was carrying something in his hands, both hands, and when he held them out to me I saw what it was…’
‘A child’s shoe?’
She gave the barest nod.
‘Do you know that it belongs to Alice?’
‘Oh, no, not for sure.’ She swallowed. ‘But Jenny Bridger brought her a new pair only the other day. Alice came and showed them to me. They were shiny black with pearl buttons on the straps, just like the one Topper brought.’
‘But he wouldn’t say where he’d found it?’
‘No, nor anything else.’ Molly Henshaw dabbed at a teary eye. ‘So I gave him a cup of tea to keep him occupied and ran outside to look for Dick.’
‘We’d just come back from the fields, Will, and I saw Molly waving to me.’ Her husband took up the story. ‘She told me what had happened and I went in to see Topper myself, tried to get him to talk. But it were no good. He wouldn’t say a word. So I came to fetch you.’ Noticing the tears that were coming down his wife’s cheeks now, Henshaw put his arm around her shoulders. ‘There, there, old girl,’ he said gruffly. ‘Don’t take on now.’
Stackpole caught Helen’s eye, his glance bright with urgency.
‘Molly, dear, could we go inside now?’ She pressed the hand she was holding. ‘I need to see Topper myself.’
The room lay in shadow, the only illumination coming from a shaft of dull grey light entering through the back window. It fell on the kitchen table, where a child’s shoe, black and shiny, showed starkly against the scrubbed wooden surface.
Surveying the scene from the doorway, Helen heard the murmur of Stackpole’s voice. It came from the hallway at the front of the cottage. He was speaking on the telephone to the Surrey police headquarters in Guildford. Madden stood behind her in the narrow passage, out of sight of the shabby figure seated on a straight- backed chair in the far corner of the room. She felt his reassuring hand on her shoulder and reached up to press it with her own. Then she crossed the room to where Topper was sitting.
He showed no awareness of her approach. Well into middle age, or perhaps past it – his white-stubbled cheeks were deeply grooved – he sat slumped in the chair with his chin resting on his chest and his hands loosely linked on his knees, seemingly oblivious of his surroundings. Like others who’d encountered the old tramp in the past, Helen knew him only as Topper, a name that derived from his hat, a battered piece of evening headgear, cracked at the brim and missing half the crown, but given a jaunty, individual air by the addition of a cock pheasant’s tail feather stuck in a red velvet band. The manner in which he wore the hat – square, and pulled down low – gave it the appearance of a permanent feature, and he was seldom seen without it. Dressed in a black cloth jacket over striped trousers, his feet were shod in heavy boots, worn down at the heels and tied with a combination
