The Reckoning (5 page)

‘I'm delivering these vegetables to Mr Dobie,' he announced. Horace Dobie was the village grocer. ‘I can give you a ride home, sir.'

‘Thanks, Fred, but I have to water Mr Sinclair's roses. And I fancy a walk through the woods.'

The cottage, brick-built and well proportioned, was set back from the stream and, with his hand on the wooden gate, Madden paused to admire the neat garden in front, whose principal showpiece was a pair of rose beds planted on either side of the path leading up to the front door. Formerly occupied by a widow named Granny Meacham, a near-mythical figure thought by generations of village children to be a witch, it was now the home of a personage no less terrifying (or so Helen averred): none other than Angus Sinclair, lately a chief inspector with the
Metropolitan Police in London and a man with a string of notorious murder investigations behind him.

‘Your name is spoken in whispers in the village, Angus,' Helen had teased him. ‘You are held in awe. Wicked children are warned by their mothers that if they're not good, the chief inspector will come to call.'

A detective himself in his younger days, Madden had learned his trade under Sinclair's eye and, despite differences of age and rank – and even after he had left the force to become a farmer – the two had remained friends; so much so in fact that when the latter had retired from his post at the end of the war he had elected to make his home in Highfield and, at Helen's urging, had bought the vacant Meacham cottage, which was near to the Maddens' own house.

With its occupant away at the moment – he was spending three weeks with his sister in Aberdeen – Madden had volunteered to see that Sinclair's roses were kept watered and, after parting from George Burrows, he had walked down to the bottom of his land, crossed by a set of stepping stones the stream that ran there and continued along a path bordering the rivulet until he reached the cottage.

Ten minutes spent with a watering can were enough to see the job done and, having cast a quick eye on the shuttered windows of the cottage to see that all was in order there, Madden resumed his walk home, choosing a roundabout route, however, turning his back on the stream and climbing the ridge until he struck a familiar path, one he had walked many times, but so overgrown now that in parts he had to pick his way through the overhanging branches of bramble and holly. He was just negotiating one such barrier when a movement in the ferns clustered about the trees below him caught his eye and he froze; then he sank silently to his haunches. As he watched, the handsome red head of a fox appeared, ears pricked forward. It was a vixen whose presence in the woods he had noted previously.
She had a dead rabbit in her jaws and stood motionless, sniffing the air for long seconds, before emerging fully into the small clearing in front, followed by three cubs that tracked their mother, nose-to-tail, across the leaf-strewn ground. In a moment all four had vanished behind the thick trunk of a horse chestnut. Madden expelled his breath in a sigh and stood up. A countryman at heart, he had never felt at home in the city despite his years with the Met and, at moments such as these, with the last rays of the evening sun piercing the dark greenery above him like golden spears and the deep, rich scent of the woods filling his nostrils, he was not above counting his blessings, which seemed many to him.

Twilight had fallen by the time he unlatched the gate at the bottom of the garden, and as he walked up the long lawn from the orchard he was greeted by the baying notes of a basset hound; and, seconds later, by the beast itself as it came galloping down the lawn to meet him.

‘For heaven's sake, Hamish – don't you know me yet?'

A chance acquisition, the animal had belonged to a patient of Helen's who had died the previous winter, childless and without close relations. Discovering that the dog was destined for the Guildford pound, Helen had decided to adopt it instead, and its good-natured, albeit noisy presence was now a fixture in their lives.

Stooping to fondle the silky head pressed against his knee, Madden saw his wife come out of the house onto the terrace above and, at the sight of her still-slender form silhouetted against the light behind her, his heart skipped a beat and in an instant he was transported back years, to an evening just such as this when, in gathering twilight, he had walked up to the house from the gate at the bottom of the garden and seen her for the first time.

‘We thought you might be coming back this way.'

Helen smiled a greeting from the terrace as he climbed the steps to join her.

‘I saw our vixen,' he told her. ‘She's got a new litter. That's her third, by my count.'

‘Don't you dare call her
our
vixen. She's yours, not mine.' She greeted him with a kiss. ‘At this very moment she's probably off plundering some hen-coops. The woods have run wild – I hear about it from my patients all the time. They want me to speak to Violet when she gets back.'

She meant the daughter of the late Lord Stratton, Highfield's largest landowner who had died the previous year. A childhood friend of Helen's, Violet Tremayne, as she was now, was married to a diplomat currently posted to the British Embassy in Moscow.

‘Are you expecting them?' Madden asked.

‘Next week. I had a card from her today. Ian's got leave.'

Helen took her husband's arm.

‘And I've got more news. I had a letter from Lucy today. She's coming home. She says she's penniless.'

‘Penniless?'

Their twenty-year-old daughter had been in Paris for three months, learning French. Under new regulations introduced recently by the government, it had become impossible to send money abroad and Madden had been concerned about her, wondering how she was coping. Not so his wife.

‘A relative term, where Lucy's concerned, my darling.' She kissed him. ‘Our daughter is nothing if not resourceful. I shouldn't bother my head about it, if I were you. Just think how nice it will be to have her back. We never seem to see our children any more.'

Their son Rob, a naval officer currently serving on a destroyer in the Far East, had not been home for nearly a year.

‘What you must do, though, is call Billy Styles at the Yard. He wants to talk to you.'

‘Now?' Madden glanced at his watch.

‘He said to tell you he'd wait for your call, even if you were late back. It must be something important.'

‘Do you mean to say he went out fishing and somebody
shot
him? Why, for heaven's sake?' Helen gave her husband the glass of whisky she had poured for him. He had made his call from the study and then joined her in the sitting room.

‘The Sussex police have no idea. Billy was down in Lewes today. He's only just heard about the letter.'

‘And your name was in it?'

‘Apparently. Or at any rate the name Madden. But the man who wrote it – the man who was shot – said he knew this Madden had worked at the Yard years ago, so it must be me.'

‘And they don't know why he wanted to get in touch with you, or why he didn't send the letter?'

‘They haven't the first notion. His brother doesn't know, either. It's a mystery.' Madden shook his head. ‘Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it's got anything to do with him being killed a few days later. He had a visitor, this Oswald Gibson, before he was shot – some person who upset him. It was after that that he began to write the letter.'

He paused, biting his lip.

‘And that's not all. According to Billy, something similar happened up in Scotland a month ago. A doctor, a GP, was shot in his surgery in exactly the same manner.'

‘So both men could have been killed by the same person?'

‘It's possible. The bullets used have been retrieved and they'll be tested shortly. If they match . . . well, then it becomes a different matter. I've told Billy I'd be happy to look at a photograph of Gibson, if he can get hold of one. Perhaps it'll ring a bell.'

They stood in silence. Then Helen spoke.

‘And you're sure you've never met him?' She was still having difficulty believing what she had just heard.

‘As sure as I can be.' Madden shrugged. ‘I haven't the faintest recollection of an Oswald Gibson. The only Gibson I knew was a boy at school called Henry. He was our cricket team's leg-spinner.'

Helen regarded her husband fondly. Madden's memory was legendary.

‘You can remember that Henry was a leg-spinner, but you don't remember Oswald at all. It's obvious there's been a mistake. I don't believe you ever met.'

‘Neither do I.' Madden looked at her. ‘But if I can't remember his name, how is it that he knows mine?'

4

‘H
AVE YOU FIXED AN
appointment?' Madden asked. ‘Is Gibson's brother expecting us?'

‘Any time this morning, he said. He's got some photographs to show you.'

Billy had been waiting at Waterloo station to greet Madden when his train pulled in.

‘He offered to send them to the Yard, but I thought it would be quicker if we did it this way. Besides, you might have some questions for him.'

There was no need for him to explain the need for urgency that lay behind his decision, least of all to the man who had taught him his trade, or the better part of it, as Billy liked to say. As an old investigator himself, Madden knew how important it was to resolve murder cases quickly – how trails tended to go cold after a few days – and the shooting of Oswald Gibson had now taken on a critical importance, thanks to the news Madden had received from Billy the evening before.

‘It didn't take the lab boys long. The slugs were in good shape, better than they expected.'

The call had come half an hour after Madden had got back from the farm. Billy had stayed late at the Yard waiting for the results of the ballistics examination of the two bullets.

‘The reason for that was that both had iron cores.'

‘Say that again.' Madden wondered if he'd misheard.

‘Well, bullets are made of lead usually. But these had iron cores coated in lead, which was why they kept their shape so well. According to the lab technicians, they must have been made in Germany during the last war.'

‘In
Germany
?'

‘Apparently the Jerries started producing them when they ran short of lead. I'm trying to get more on that.'

Madden absorbed the information in silence.

‘But there's no doubt about your lab's findings?' he asked finally.

‘None at all. The bullets were fired from the same pistol.'

‘Time's become an important factor now,' Madden had explained to Helen later, when he told her he had decided to go up to London the following day. ‘The murder in Scotland happened a month ago, and the police still have no lead in either case. I've no idea whether Gibson mentioning my name in that letter is significant or not. But there's just a chance that if I can remember him – his face, at any rate – it might give the police a starting point for their investigation.'

Greeting Madden on the platform now, Billy told him he had a police car outside that would take them up to St Pancras, where Edward Gibson's office was located.

‘He's as keen as we are to get this question cleared up. Then I'm going to have to go down to Lewes again to talk to Vic Chivers. It's odds-on this will become a Yard case now, with the Sussex police taking the lead, at least for the present. But it'll all have to be sorted out and the chief constable informed.'

Glancing at his companion as they walked briskly out of the station concourse, Billy felt the tidal pull of the past. Although it was many years since they had worked together, he had never forgotten those days. The occasion had been a murder case that had held the nation in thrall, the slaughter of an entire household
in Highfield, and despite his youth and inexperience Billy had found himself pitchforked into an investigation led by Chief Inspector Sinclair, in which Madden had played a leading role and in which he himself had come of age (or so he had always believed). Now, as they strode side-by-side out of the station deep in discussion, it seemed that nothing had changed.

‘We still don't know much about the medico who was shot – his history, I mean, or whether he had any tie to Gibson, though that seems unlikely. But there's no doubt now that we're looking for a solo killer.'

When they got to the car Billy handed Madden a transcript of the half-written letter salvaged from Gibson's desk. Sitting in the back seat, Madden scanned the few lines it contained, quoting from the text: ‘“. . . I would very much like to get in touch with a person who I know worked at Scotland Yard many years ago. His name was Madden. He was a detective. I realize this is an imposition, but I would be very grateful if you could tell me whether he is still employed there and, if not, how I might get in contact with him . . . ”'

Madden weighed the piece of paper in his hand.

‘I still find it strange that he knows my name.'

Billy shrugged. ‘He might have read it in the papers years ago. I'm thinking of that Melling Lodge business,' he added, referring to the case on which they had worked together a quarter of a century before and which was known simply by the name of the house in Highfield where the murders had occurred.

‘Yes, but that was years ago.' Madden shook his head. ‘Why bring it up now?' He gnawed at his lip. ‘There must be a reason for it. I wonder why he didn't finish the letter.'

‘Changed his mind?' Billy suggested.

‘Or lost his nerve?' Madden pondered the problem. ‘And the wording's strange. “I would very much like to get in touch with a person who I know worked at Scotland Yard . . .” I was thinking we might have met in the course of some other investigation,
but now I'm not so sure. It doesn't sound like it. Have you checked the files?'

Billy nodded. ‘We've found nothing. No mention of Gibson's name, though that's not surprising. One of the problems is he doesn't seem to have been the sort of chap who was ever in trouble, and particularly not with the police. And if he was just a minor figure in some inquiry that you were involved in – a casual witness – there might have been no reason to make a note of his name.'