The Bedlam Detective (4 page)

They crossed a field and entered a copse. The two men separated and spent the best part of an hour going through it. Some of the trees here had been marked for felling, but there was no sign of the woodsmen. Sebastian scared off a fox.

After making certain of the copse, they moved on. A track from the wood led to a disused set of rails, which in turn led to a mine shaft about a quarter of a mile farther on.

“How far is it to Sir Owain Lancaster’s estate?” Sebastian said.

“You’re on it,” said his garrulous partner, and that was that for a while.

This place was more menacing than magical. The shaft was a vertical hole in the ground capped with wooden railway sleepers. The middle beams of the cover had collapsed in, and when Sebastian looked through the rotted hole he could see black water fifteen feet down. He cast all around looking for signs, but saw none.

He stepped back. Arthur was plucking at his lips, thoughtfully. He saw that Sebastian was watching him, and stopped doing it.

“Anywhere else we can look?” Sebastian said.

“There’s not a lot more we can do before nightfall,” Arthur said, and then, sadly and unexpectedly, added, “God bless them.”

Suddenly he was no longer a surly old local, but some child’s grandfather. And the places they were visiting might well have been his own remembered playgrounds, from a life spent on this land.

As they crossed a field to join a lane that looked very like the one that they’d left, they saw someone running down the hill. A lad, by the looks of him. He saw them at the same time, and diverted to meet them.

As he drew close, Sebastian could see that it was the youngest-looking of the boy soldiers. He was white-faced and flustered.

He said to Sebastian, “Are you the detective?”

“No,” Sebastian said. “He’s down at the inn. What’s the matter?”

“We found them,” the boy said.

Then was violently sick.

T
HE TWO BODIES HAD BEEN PULLED FEET-FIRST FROM A SCRUB-FILLED
gully, and now lay side by side. They were like white china dolls in a woodland clearing. Their cotton dresses had been dragged upward to cover their faces as they were pulled out of the gorse. One still wore underthings, the other none. Their feet were bare. Half a dozen of the boy soldiers were picking around the site to no convincing purpose, and a couple were staring at the exposed parts of the unclad child.

“Hey,” Sebastian called out across the clearing. “Who’s in charge, here? Has someone moved those bodies?”

Most of their faces turned his way, but none of them responded. There they stood, all pale and slack in their ill-fitting khaki. As Sebastian drew closer he could see that a soldier near the bodies had emptied a wicker picnic basket onto the ground at his feet and was stirring through the contents with the toe of his army boot, nosing them around like the muzzle of a clumsy dog.

“Stop that!” Sebastian said. “Put everything down!”

He was breathless from his dash to the scene, but not too breathless to shout. The soldier looked up and the others continued to stare, as if Sebastian were some madman who’d come crashing into a private function to blurt out obscenities.

Good God, was there
nothing
they hadn’t disturbed? One was down among the gorse bushes in the gully and had lifted a bloodied cotton bag of some kind on the end of a stick. He appeared to have been poking around in the undergrowth and passing up anything he could find. This included a wooden box that one of the others had paused in the act of trying to open.

“For God’s sake!” Sebastian said, turning here and there to address them all, his voice so sharp and loud that it scared a bird or two out of the trees above their heads. “Am I talking to myself? Stop trampling the ground and handling all the evidence! This could well be the scene of a crime! You have two dead children here! How do you expect anyone to account for them?”

Not one of the young men showed any sign of having understood, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d come upon some regiment of mutes or simpletons. He took three long strides and grabbed the wooden box from the soldier’s hands, and he called down to the boy with the bloodied sack on a stick.

“Put that back wherever it was,” he said. “As close as you can manage it. Step out of there and don’t touch anything else.”

At that moment he heard the engine of a motor truck, laboring hard, and turned to see the vehicle coming into sight at the other end of the clearing. It was the same truck that he’d seen collecting the boys from the station. At the wheel was its operator and beside him was the youngest soldier, the one who’d been sent down the hill, now returning to act as guide.

The truck pulled into the clearing and stopped, and from around the back there was a crash as the tailgate dropped. A second later a figure swung into view, followed by another. One was the gray-headed sergeant, and the other, in a rather sharp tan overcoat, was the detective from the Sun Inn’s snug.

Stephen Reed looked first at the bodies, and stopped. Some of the will seemed to go out of him, just for a moment, as if he’d absorbed a blow, and Sebastian saw the youth behind his authority. Serving officers quickly grew hardened and could view wasted adult life with little emotion. But a dead child was a grief to all the world.

From the bodies, he looked up to Sebastian. He saw the box in Sebastian’s hands, and his face grew dark.

Before Sebastian could speak, Stephen Reed was walking toward him. His expression was one of fury.

“That man!” he said, and he pointed a finger. “Tampering with evidence! What do you think you’re doing?”

Sebastian stood his ground. “In your absence, I was doing your job,” he said.

Stephen Reed looked back at the army sergeant and said, “Arrest this man.”

“You heard him, boy!” the sergeant said to the nearest of his squad. “What are you waiting for?”

So they weren’t deaf after all. Having borne his abuse, here was their license to respond. The box was knocked from Sebastian’s hands and he was seized by the arms and collar and rushed toward the back of the waiting truck. He could hear Stephen Reed saying, “Sergeant, I need you to remove everyone from this place, now,” and he tried to call something back over his shoulder, but a sly punch in his side made it impossible to speak.

He was shouted at and forcefully propelled into the back of the motor truck, where he just about managed not to land on the dirty floor but made it onto one of the side benches.

Two of the boys climbed in after and sat, one with a rifle, to guard him. Sebastian’s last sight of the scene, as the truck made a bumping circle and returned to the lane, was of Stephen Reed crouching and gingerly starting to uncover the face of one of the dead girls.

He took a deep breath and relaxed back against the side of the wagon, as much as he was able. The seat was hard and the track was rough, and every now and again he had to grab the slats to keep from being thrown around. The only light came from the open back and through vents cut into the canvas, making the wagon a moving box of musty shadows.

The boy soldiers were watching him with dead eyes. Their manner had changed. They were no longer passive but had been given the upper hand.

One said, “What do we do with him?”

And the other, the one that he’d berated, shrugged and then blew air out through closed lips in a gesture that said,
Don’t ask me
.

Sebastian said, “If there’s a police station, you take me there.”

“You shut yer mouth,” the second one said.

So Sebastian settled back for the rest of the grim ride, and closed his eyes and looked inward, where he saw again the uncompleted moment as the county detective reached to uncover a dead child’s face.

Molly or Florence. He didn’t know which.

Perhaps he should have stayed in his room. For he’d surely achieved nothing for anyone by leaving it.

T
HE MOTOR TRUCK STOPPED RIGHT BY THE
S
UN
I
NN’S COACHYARD
gate. In the absence of the parish constable, who was now out on a bicycle making house-to-house visits to all of Arnmouth’s holiday villas, Sebastian was placed in the charge of the cook.

“What am
I
supposed to do with you?” she said.

“Strictly speaking,” Sebastian said, “you ought to lock me up. Tempers were frayed up there and I’m supposed to be under arrest. Don’t fear, ma’am. It was a misunderstanding in the moment. And I’m not the most pressing thing for the authorities to deal with right now.”

“Have they found the girls?”

“I don’t think that’s for me to say.”

“It’s something bad, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Did they drown?”

“It’s worse than that.”

She knew. Her hand flew to her mouth, and for a moment she looked drained and ill.

Sebastian said, “I’m sorry. I gather it’s not the first time that children have come to grief?”

But she left him then, too upset to say.

A
FTER ANOTHER
fifteen minutes or so, a rocket was sent up from the harbor. It burst high above the town and came down in a shower of light, like an angel winged by grapeshot. It was the signal for all of the search parties to abandon their efforts, for whatever reason. It was to be a good two hours until Stephen Reed returned. In that time, Sebastian obeyed the letter of his arrest and did not leave the inn. He did, however, go up to his room.

He could not settle, nor even think of returning to his reading. Sir Owain’s book would have to wait. He went through to the upstairs dining room and watched through various windows as the Specials gathered on the street and climbed into cars and wagons to be transported up to the site.

Only the Sun Inn’s landlord wore the police uniform. The others wore volunteer armbands and apprehensive looks. Missing children were one thing, murdered children another. Those who’d willingly joined a search party now found themselves being shepherded up the hill to less welcome duties.

There was a telephone close by. It was across the way in the house of the preventative officer, the town’s own customs official, and was in constant use with people running back and forth with messages.

After about an hour, activity began to center on a large building three doors down, separated from the customs house by a row of alms cottages. This building was tall and churchlike, with high windows and a bricked-up Gothic doorway. The entrance in use was to the side of it, and much less striking.

Gaslights were lit inside, and all the doors were thrown open. After a while a cart arrived, bearing a number of well-used trestle tables. By now a crowd had gathered, and some lent a hand to carry them. Blackout curtains were raised at the windows to create a private space within.

Throughout all this time, the light was fading; and at the point where the day was all but extinguished in the sky, a number of the Specials returned and moved everybody back. They set up a ring around the building, where they stood facing outward and looking uncomfortable at this implied confrontation with their neighbors. But the small crowd complied, as if they, too, had a role to play here, and wished only to be told what was proper.

Where were the parents, Sebastian wondered? Not here and waiting on the pavement for news, that was for sure. But no one would ever envy them this day. In fact, Florence Bell’s mother was in their rented villa, and her father on his way up from London. The parents of Molly Button—childhood friend, now fixed in her childhood forever—would know nothing about anything until the next morning, when a telegram would reach them at their hotel in Aix-les-Bains.

And now the light was gone. It was not so much like the fading of the day as the looming of a terrible shadow, rising from the woodland on the far side of the hill and inking out the sky.

The wagons came then, down from the hill in a silent convoy. The one bearing the stretchers led, and the ring of volunteers opened to let it pass through. The bodies were taken into the hall and one of the Specials gave a hand to help the vicar, who’d made the journey with them, to climb down and follow after. He was elderly, and the climb was difficult for him. The girls were fully sheeted, but their small forms were unmistakable. Some of the women turned away. The men stared, bleakly.