of string and broken shoelaces.
‘Hullo, Topper,’ she said softly.
At the sound of her voice he lifted his head. She drew up a chair beside him.
‘How have you been?’
He gave a slight shrug, but made no other response.
‘Are you well?’
He nodded. A smile came to his lips, and he fixed her with a look of shy affection.
‘We missed you at harvest time. Why haven’t you come to see us?’
‘Was coming…’ The muttered words brought a faint gasp from the doorway behind Helen where Molly Henshaw had appeared and was watching them. ‘Had to meet Beezy first…’
‘Beezy?’
The tramp nodded again.
‘Who’s Beezy? Where were you meeting him?’
Topper’s grey eyes lost focus. He looked away.
Helen regarded him in silence for a few moments. Then she took his left hand in hers. ‘Let me see your arm.’ She pushed up the sleeve of his jacket and then the threadbare flannel shirt beneath it, revealing a fresh scar fully six inches long running from the top of his wrist up the back of his sunburned arm towards the elbow. She ran her fingers lightly over it.
‘Look, Molly,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘That’s where Topper cut his arm last year. He was helping us with the haymaking and his scythe slipped. I had to sew him up.’
‘You fixed it…’ The old tramp chuckled. He brought his eyes back to hers. ‘You mended old Topper.’
‘It was a nasty cut, but it’s healed well.’
Still holding his hand in hers, and continuing to stroke his arm, she spoke again. ‘You were right to bring the shoe, Topper. But we need very badly to know where you found it. Can you help us?’
The fingers she was holding stiffened and she saw the fear in his eyes. His glance shifted and went past her shoulder. She looked round again. Madden had come quietly into the room with Molly Henshaw. Stackpole’s uniformed figure hovered in the doorway behind them, and when Topper caught sight of it his eyes fell. He slumped lower in the chair.
‘Now none of that,’ the constable rumbled. ‘You know me, Topper. There’s no need to take on.’
Helen turned back. ‘The shoe,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Where did you find it? You must tell me, Topper. Please…’ She had kept hold of his hand, and after a moment she felt renewed pressure on her fingers. When she bent closer he whispered in her ear.
‘What was that?’ She struggled to hear his husky murmur. ‘Did you say Capel Wood?’
Behind her, Stackpole stiffened in the doorway. ‘We’ve already looked there,’ he muttered to Madden. ‘Is he sure?’ he asked Helen.
‘Capel Wood?’ She repeated the name clearly and looked into the tramp’s eyes for confirmation. He nodded. ‘Would you take us there?’ she asked. ‘Would you show us where you found it?’
A tremor went through his body and his grip on her fingers tightened. He shook his head violently.
Helen studied his face for a few moments. Then she leaned close again. ‘Whereabouts in the wood, Topper?’
Silent at first, he simply stared at her. But then, as though drawn by her steady gaze, he bent forward and whispered to her once more.
Helen glanced behind her. ‘By the stream, he says…’ She rose and came over to him. ‘Will, this is going to take a long time, and I’m not even sure how much more I can get out of him.’
A scowl crossed Stackpole’s features. ‘Sir?’ He addressed Madden. ‘Could we have a word?’ The two men went out into the passage. The constable gestured. ‘What do you think, sir? Should I try and squeeze him harder?’
Madden shook his head. ‘Helen knows him better than anyone. You’d be wasting your time.’
‘By the stream…’ Stackpole grimaced. ‘It’s not much to go on. And we’ve already been there. There’s a path that runs alongside it. It goes through the wood. I took some men and we walked the length of it, calling her name. Once you get off it you can’t see three feet in front of you.’ He shook his head in despair. As he glanced at his wristwatch, a flash of lightning lit the dim passageway for an instant, and the answering peal of thunder set the windowpanes in the kitchen rattling. ‘Well, those detectives from Guildford will be here soon. Better wait for them, I suppose…’
His glance seemed to suggest another course of action, however, and Madden responded to it. Despite the formality of address which the constable insisted on maintaining towards him, they were friends of long standing.
‘No, we can’t do that, Will. We must get out there right away. I think Topper found more than a shoe.’
3
The first fat drops of rain splattered the windscreen of Madden’s car as he turned off the paved road onto a rough track that ran through hedgerows and overhanging trees around the dark flank of Capel Wood. The dull grey afternoon light had changed to a deep leaden gloom. Black, swollen clouds were racing in from the west.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Stackpole predicted, squinting up through the glass. He glanced behind him at the roll of canvas lying on the back seat as though to reassure himself of its presence there. It was Madden who’d suggested they bring it with them.
‘I don’t know what we’ll find, Will, but you may need to cover the area.’
The piece of tarpaulin had been provided by Dick Henshaw. He’d used it to patch a hole in the roof of his cottage the previous year when a number of shingles had blown off in an autumn gale. While he was fetching it from the garden shed Helen had come out of the kitchen to talk to Madden.
‘I must go and see how Jenny Bridger is. I won’t say anything to her about Capel Wood.’ She eyed her husband unhappily, upset to see him becoming involved. Madden’s life as a policeman lay in the distant past, and it was one she did not wish to recall. To the constable she added, ‘You’d better keep an eye on Topper, Will. He’ll slip off if he gets the chance.’
Stackpole had charged both Henshaws with this duty and cautioned them to say nothing to the neighbours until the reinforcements from Guildford arrived.
‘I don’t want word of this spreading. Not till we’ve gone over there and seen what there is to see.’
‘Please God you find her,’ Molly Henshaw had murmured as they departed.
The hope – it was more of a prayer – that the child might be no worse than lying injured and in need of succour had lent speed to their preparations, but glancing at Madden’s expression as he steered the car down the narrow, rutted lane, Will Stackpole felt they shared the same grim premonition as to the girl’s fate.
‘We’ll be taking the same route Topper took, will we?’ Madden’s low voice was barely audible over the sound of the car’s motor as they ground along in bottom gear.
‘Yes, sir. If he was heading for Brookham he’d have come into the wood from the other side and walked through it on the path, the one that runs by the stream. It leads straight to Brookham.’
They’d debated taking this same path themselves, following Topper’s route in reverse and walking up to the wood from the hamlet. But the likelihood of being caught in the open by the advancing storm had persuaded them to use the car instead and they had driven along the road to Craydon for half a mile before turning off it close to the point where Alice Bridger had last been seen.
As the track they were on now continued to circle the wood, the hedgerows on either side dropped away and they saw to their right a wide, open field where a herd of Friesians stood close together, their sturdy black and white bodies barely visible in the dying light. Although the rain continued to fall in isolated drops the storm was fast approaching and a number of cows were already lying down in anticipation of the deluge that was about to break on them.
Their way ran close to the wood now, the spreading branches of oak and chestnut brushing against the side of the car, the road making a slow bend to the left which they followed until they came to a circular patch of dried
