Rennie Airth - The Blood-Dimmed Tide

‘What about the Bridgers?’ he had asked Helen then. They were standing close together in the small hallway of the Henshaws’ cottage, where the telephone was. ‘What have they been told?’

‘Nothing, so far as I know.’ Shocked by the news her husband had brought from Capel Wood, Helen had wanted only to get him home. Sensing his intention then, she had put a staying hand on his arm. ‘Leave it to the police, my darling. It’s not your business any longer.’

But Madden had refused to be shaken from his course. ‘They have to be told,’ he’d insisted. ‘They can’t be left in ignorance. It’s not right. Who knows what time the police will get back?’

So she had taken him to the Bridgers’ cottage, leaving him in the kitchen there to wait while she went in search of the murdered girl’s father, wishing there was some way she could ease the burden he had taken on himself. A few minutes later, standing alone in the back yard, Helen had watched through the lighted window as her husband spoke words she could not hear and had seen the other man clap his hands to his ears as though in agony and lay his head like an offering on the table before him.

Catching Madden’s eye now, she smiled, hoping to dispel his dark mood. ‘What’s happened to Topper?’ she asked. ‘Are the police still holding him?’

‘He spent the night in the cells at Guildford. Only by invitation, mind you – they’d no right to detain him – but it seems to have loosened his tongue. He told them all he knew and they let him go this morning. He’s been ordered to appear at the inquest on Friday.’

‘Will he do that?’ Helen looked sceptical.

‘I doubt it. To quote Will, he’ll more likely be in the next county by then. Unless he drops in to see you, of course.’

‘I’ll be hurt if he doesn’t.’

Her words brought a smile to Madden’s lips, just as she’d hoped they might, and they laughed together.

The old tramp had first come into their lives several years before, knocking on the back door one summer afternoon, another in the legion of homeless: tramps, vagrants, men of no fixed abode in the language of the law courts, whose numbers had swelled vastly with the years of the Depression. The Maddens’ cook, Mrs Beck, had standing orders to offer food and drink to these wanderers whenever they presented themselves. Whether or not she admitted them to her kitchen was up to her, but Helen had returned that afternoon from her rounds to find Topper seated at the table, with his hat beside him and his bundle on the floor at his feet, busily plying knife and fork under Cook’s approving eye. He had risen to his feet when she entered and made her a courtly bow.

‘A proper gentleman, this one, ma’am.’ Mrs Beck had purred her approval.

Ordering her own tea to be served in the kitchen, Helen had sat with the old man, eliciting little more from him than his name and some account of his recent journeyings, but finding herself drawn to the dusty, travel-stained figure with his absurd attire. Although he told her nothing of himself – either then, or later – she’d been moved by the sound of his soft voice and by his gentle manner. His grey eyes, seeking hers across the table in fleeting, timid glances, had spoken of pain and loss; of some past to which he could never return.

His meal done, she had given him directions to their farm, with a note to her husband. Topper had stayed for a week, helping with the harvest and sleeping at night in a corner of the barn. On the morning of his departure Mrs Beck had found an old jam jar on the back steps outside the kitchen filled with pink campion and the yellow buds of St John’s Wort, picked from the hedgerows. Tucked beneath it was a scrap of paper bearing a roughly pencilled message: For the lady.

She had presented them to Helen at the breakfast table with a smile. ‘Looks like you’ve made a conquest, ma’am.’

‘What did Topper tell them?’ Helen asked Madden now.

‘He said he came into the wood from the same side we did – from the fields – and left the path to get to that camp site I told you about. Most of these old tramps have hidden spots tucked away, places where they can lie up for a while. They like to keep them secret, especially if they’re on private land. Capel Wood belongs to the farmer Bridger works for. Topper told the police he’d been using the site for years. When he got there yesterday he spotted the shoe lying on the bank across the stream. Then he saw the girl’s foot.’

‘It’s a wonder he didn’t run off at once.’

‘He easily might have,’ Madden agreed. ‘He must have felt terrified. But instead he collected it and brought it to Brookham. It was a brave thing to do.’ He smiled at his wife again.

‘How have the police reacted? Do they believe him?’

‘Oh, I think so. But they wanted to know more about this man Beezy. According to Topper they met at a dosshouse in London last winter. Beezy’s usual summer base is Kent – he finds hop-picking work there. But this year for some reason he decided to join up with Topper and come down to Surrey instead. They were moving in our direction: Topper told the police you were expecting him. “Mustn’t let Dr Madden down,” he said.’

‘Quite right, too.’ Helen nodded approvingly.

‘However, Beezy fell ill while they were doing some odd jobs on a farm near Dorking. He caught bronchitis and was laid up for a week in the barn there. The farmer’s wife took care of him. Topper moved on – he’d heard of some work going in Coldharbour – but they agreed to meet up again this weekend. Topper gave him directions to Capel Wood and told him how to find the camp site.’

‘But he never got there, did he? Beezy, I mean?’

‘Ah, but he did.’ Frowning, Madden put down his coffee cup. ‘I saw his sign at the camp site.’

‘His sign?’

‘A lot of these tramps have their individual marks. They carve them on trees at meeting spots.’

‘Oh, I know about those.’ She nodded. ‘Topper’s is a circled cross. Go on.’

‘I noticed several cut into the trunk of a birch tree by the camp site, but only one of them was fresh: a triangle with a line drawn through it. According to Topper, that’s Beezy’s mark.’

Helen absorbed this information in silence while she refilled their cups. ‘So if Beezy was there before Topper found the girl’s shoe, that must mean he’s a suspect,’ she said.

‘He’s bound to be, I’m afraid.’ Madden scowled at the tablecloth in front of him. He lifted a hand to his forehead where a faint, jagged scar, the souvenir of a shell blast from the war, showed white against his sunburned skin. Unaware that he was signalling his concern to his wife, he touched it with his fingertips. ‘Topper’s in the clear himself, you’ll be glad to hear,’ he went on. ‘He got a lift in a lorry from Coldharbour to Shamley Green yesterday afternoon – the police have already spoken to the driver – and couldn’t have reached Capel Wood before three o’clock at the earliest, which was hours after Alice Bridger disappeared.’

‘The very idea!’ Her tone of scornful dismissal brought the smile back to Madden’s lips. Nevertheless she saw there was still some unspoken worry on his mind and would have questioned him further if his glance hadn’t shifted just then to the open window behind her.

‘Look – there’s Rob.’ Madden gestured with his coffee cup. ‘Has he been up in the woods?’

‘He left the house when I did.’ Turning in her chair, Helen followed the direction of her husband’s gaze across the sunlit terrace, down the long lawn to the orchard at the foot of the garden, where their ten-year-old son, clad in shorts, was just then emerging from the trees, swinging a policeman’s lamp in his hand. ‘He told me Ted Stackpole was going to show him a badger’s sett he’d discovered. The boys thought if they got there before dawn they might see the cubs.’