get in touch with her. They were both going to be away for a few days, but Rosa said she would ring her when she got back. She had our telephone number, but she never rang and Eva was quite upset. She was hoping they could get together again.’
She had looked at him questioningly, as though hoping that he could supply the missing pieces of the puzzle, but at that moment, deaf to the conversation going on behind her, Mrs H had risen from her knees with an effortful groan.
‘There we are …’
Dusting off her hands, she had picked up a kettle that was whistling on top of the stove, spouting steam, and brought it to the table.
Aware that he and his hostess were about to embark on a sensitive topic, Madden had decided to delay any further explanation. But during the next ten minutes, while Mrs Spencer poured their tea and the talk had been of small matters, he had twice caught her glancing at him with what seemed to be more than mere curiosity. With a guarded look.
‘Come on, Ezra. Up you get.’ Mrs H had nudged her husband, who’d fallen into a doze at the table. ‘There’s lots to do.’
Mary Spencer had escorted them to the door.
‘And you will look in on us later this afternoon like you promised?’ Mrs H spoke anxiously as she paused on the steps outside. We’d like to wish the lad a happy Christmas. You can tell him I’ll show him me glass eye if he likes.’
With a chuckle she turned her face in Madden’s direction in case he had failed to notice the object.
‘They’re going over to Mrs H’s sister in Liphook for Christmas dinner,’ Mary Spencer explained as she shut the door behind them. ‘So we won’t see them tomorrow. They’re such a kind pair. I don’t think I would have managed without them.’
Madden had been considering his next words.
‘I understand your move down here wasn’t voluntary,’ he had said finally, and as he’d hoped it brought her up short.
‘How on earth would you know that?’ she had asked, and when he made no reply she went on, ‘Why are you really here, Mr Madden? What do you want with Eva?’
The moment had come to reveal the purpose of his visit, but during the preceding ten minutes he’d become aware of a current of feeling emanating from Mary Spencer: not suspicion exactly, but a wariness which clearly had him as its object. His initial intention, which had been to sit down quietly with Eva Belka and find out what she remembered of the journey she had made with Rosa, now seemed impractical. He realized he would have to deal with her employer first, and in the circumstances frankness had seemed to be his best strategy.
‘I’m afraid I have some sad news for her,’ he had said. Rosa’s dead.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ She had put a hand to her mouth. ‘How dreadful. What happened to her? Was it a bomb? Eva said she’d told her she was staying in London for a few days.’
‘No, I’m sorry to say she was murdered.’
‘Murdered-?’
‘That same evening. In fact, only about half an hour after she and Eva parted at Waterloo.’
Mrs Spencer had stared at him dumbstruck. The shock on her face had been unmistakable.
‘I think something happened on the train — something Eva was a witness to — and I want to ask her about that. Also, whether Rosa said anything to her about it at the time.’
He had waited for her to respond. To his surprise she’d remained silent.
‘Did she talk to you about it, by any chance? Eva, I mean. Since she mentioned meeting Rosa, I wondered if she said anything more.’
While he was speaking Madden had noticed a further change in his hostess’s demeanour. For the first time she appeared ill at ease, and he saw that she was keeping something from him.
‘Mr Madden, who are you?’ Flushed in the face now, she had burst out with the question. ‘You say Rosa worked for you as a land girl. But you sound more like a policeman than a farmer.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He had smiled. ‘Old habits die hard. I was a policeman years ago, and funnily enough I met a friend of yours on the way here who asked me about that. Bess Brigstock. She and my wife knew each other once.’
He had deliberately mentioned a name that he knew would be familiar to her, and was relieved to see her face relax a little on hearing it.
‘Bess was a friend of your wife’s?’
‘When they were girls. Helen Collingwood was her name then. She grew up in Highfield.’
‘But why are
‘It is, but I’ve been helping them. I still have friends at Scotland Yard.’
He had paused at that point, hoping she might relent, but after a moment he saw she was still obdurate.
‘I don’t know how to put it exactly, but I feel Rosa was my responsibility. That I owe it to her to help find her murderer and …’
‘Yes, yes, I understand now. I see what you mean. But …’ She had sat biting her lip. ‘Oh dear … this is so difficult.’
Madden waited. But finally he could contain himself no longer.
‘Obviously you know something,’ he had said. ‘And if that’s the case I do urge you to tell me what it is. The man who killed Rosa is a particularly dangerous criminal, one of the worst the police here have ever had to deal with, and though they’re on his trail they haven’t caught up with him yet.’
She had bitten her lip. ‘I suppose they could be connected …’
‘Connected? What do you mean?’ He had pressed her at once, but still to no avail.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Madden, I really am, but this is something I can’t discuss with you, not until Eva gets back. You must ask her.’
Mary Spencer’s eyes strayed to the clock on the wall once more.
‘ should be here by now. Let me go and have a look.’ She rose from the table. ‘ along if you like.’ As if to excuse her stubborn refusal of a moment ago, she smiled an invitation to him.
Madden followed her out of the kitchen and down a short stretch of passage to a sitting-room on the opposite side of the house. A pleasant room furnished with a mixture of pieces of no particular style but all dating from an earlier age, its walls were hung with an eclectic collection of paintings and other adornments that made Madden look twice when his eye fell on them.
‘This house belonged to an uncle of mine,’ she explained, having seen his expression. ‘I never really knew him, only about him, that he was a great traveller. But he certainly had the most extraordinary taste in art, or perhaps no taste at all. If you think all this is peculiar, you should see what I left in the attic.’
Madden had already noted a Chinese silk screen rubbing shoulders with a picture of a wide expanse of prairie across which a lone cowboy galloped, the brim of his hat blown back by the speed at which he was riding. Now he paused to examine a pair of Turkish carpets hung like tapestries on either side of the fireplace and, most unusual of all, a Zulu ox-hide shield crossed with an assegai mounted above the mantelpiece.
‘I put those there for safety.’ She had caught the direction of his glance. ‘My son longs to get his hands on them.’
She had crossed the room, meanwhile, to one of two sash windows facing the door, and when Madden joined her there he found himself looking at a snow-clad garden, formal in design, but much neglected to judge by the unclipped box hedges and pieces of broken statuary dotting the white landscape.
‘This is the way they’ll come,’ she said. ‘Eva and Freddie. Look, you can see their tracks going down.’ She pointed to a set of fresh footprints running from the terrace in front of them down some shallow steps to a path that led to an open gate at the bottom of the garden. ‘’ve gone over to the MacGregors’; it’s only a mile away. I collected our turkey from them yesterday but forgot to pick up the Christmas pudding Annie MacGregor made for us. Eva said she’d go and get it and Freddie insisted on accompanying her. There are two puppies over there he’s fallen in love with, and I dare say we’ll be landed with one of them ourselves sooner or later.’
