Joe poked the fire. Gosling poured more tea and helped himself to a second slice of jam sponge.
The clock chimed the half hour.
The clock chimed the three quarter hour.
“That’s enough!” Joe snapped. “What kind of trusting idiots are we? To sit here and be made fools of by that maniac? He’s probably taken Dorcas hostage and forced his way out of the house. He’s got her into one of the boss’s stable of motor cars and they’re halfway to Brighton by now.”
“Calm down, sir,” Gosling advised. “You know the girl better than I do, I think, so you ought to know she just wouldn’t allow any such nonsense. All the same.…”
They raced to the door together.
“There’s the old graveyard, miss.”
He pointed to a collection of ancient headstones leaning at drunken angles to each other, confidingly close, passing on gossip. Some stones were flat on the ground, some at the height of a low drawing room table.
“It’s a favourite place for the little girls to come and play. A safe place. They don’t understand the significance. They can get away from the adults here and the rougher lads. They use the tombstones to play house.”
“In this weather?”
“In any weather. They’re well wrapped up. Mrs. Dunne wouldn’t let them out otherwise. They’re enjoying the sunshine. See there!” Francis pointed. “They’re having a pretend tea party. We’ll have to interrupt their game.”
Dorcas noticed he was still looking about him anxiously. His finger directed her towards a tombstone. Sitting on top of it were three little girls in bonnets and scarves, holding rag dolls and chattering happily.
When they came face to face with the little group, one of them took off the bonnet, revealing a shock of short fair hair and a cross face. The child addressed Francis. “Have you brought Dr. Carter, sir? He said he’d come and see me today.”
Astonished, Dorcas sank to her knees in front of the child. “Walter? Are you Walter?”
“Yes, missis. An’ I want to see Dr. Carter and my Mum.”
“He’s coming, lad. He’s coming. The doc always keeps his word.” Francis turned to Dorcas and led her a discreet distance away. “Walter, as you see, is a little boy who doesn’t at all mind playing with girls. They make something of a pet of him. He’s very gentle and,” he whispered, “not quite all there. He’s a regular admission,” Francis explained. “Signed for and supervised. His family doctor is his sponsor. Along with his mother. She signed the papers and forged the father’s signature. That was just a cross anyway. Verified by the doctor probably. Now he’ll be in trouble, I expect. I hope not. He’s a good bloke.”
“Walter’s mother committed him? This little poppet?” Dorcas was aghast.
“There were problems at home. The father is a big-fisted man with a short temper who feels duty-bound to toughen up his soft son. The household is going through straitened times, with the work drying up. Not so many horses about these days, and money’s short. Tensions in the family. Little Walter was bearing the brunt of all this. His mother feared for the boy’s life and took the drastic step of sending him away without his father’s knowledge. Chadwick was unwilling at first to take the boy under such circumstances. He’d done it before and got into trouble for it. I advised him otherwise on account of the good Dr. Carter has done us many a favour. And knows some of our secrets.
“So here he is. I see to it that he’s having as happy a time as is possible in this place. Young Jessica here is trying to teach him to read. Walter’s a bit bewildered, but at least he’s alive. He’s not had the snip yet, they’ve-”
Dorcas could not keep the horror out of her voice as she interrupted. “Snip? What do you mean, Francis?”
He looked at her with the eyes of a clapped-out horse on its way to the knacker’s yard, pained and accepting. “It’s routine, Miss Joliffe. We’ve all had it. He says the state supports and encourages it. Can’t be doing with any hanky-panky leading to procreation of more idiots, can we? Too many of us already.”
“But, Francis, it’s not legal! Every time they put forwards a bill, it’s defeated in Parliament.”
Francis breathed in deeply and looked about him in despair. “How would we know? What could we do?” And, suddenly focussing his gaze: “Oh, my God!”
His eyes, constantly sweeping the horizon, had suddenly fixed. His voice rapped out: “Children-quick march! Run and report to Mrs. Dunne. Now! Go!”
The three picked up their dolls and fled.
Picking his way towards them, two hundred yards distant, came the figure of Superintendent Chadwick.
Dorcas shuffled close to Francis Crabbe. “Any use running for it? He’s between us and the car. And we couldn’t take off without Joe.”
Francis grimaced. “I’ve nowhere to run anyway. What do you think he could do to harm you, posh folk that you are?”
“It’s life and death, Francis. If he knows that we’ve found out about the killings, he’ll know that he’ll be swinging at a rope’s end within six months.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. I’d like to see justice done, but he’s a clever man. Mad, as I’ve told you, and bad, as you’ve learned, but clever. Monomaniac like Napoleon. Running his own little kingdom. He enjoys having power of life and death over everyone. Here he comes, all smiles and a cosh-or is it a gun this time? — in his pocket. He’ll talk his way out of this. He’ll have made his plans. I know his mind. He’ll be planning a little motoring accident for you. ‘On these slippery roads, can one wonder? The young driver was clearly going too fast on that tight bend, that killer loop just outside Seaford,’ is what they’ll say. There’s no way out of this. Well … perhaps one.…”
Advancing on them at a fast trot, one hand still in his right pocket, Dorcas noted, the menacing figure grew larger.
Joe seized a grey-cloaked figure, shook him, and shouted his demand. He released him on hearing the spluttering reply.
“The graveyard! They’ve gone to the bloody graveyard!”
They burst out of the front entrance to see Chadwick’s Talbot parked, engine still steaming, but no sign of the superintendent.
“Bugger him,” said Joe. “Let’s find them! Graveyard-which way?”
Turning the corner they caught sight, silhouetted against the declining sun, of Chadwick making at a fast pace towards the collection of headstones that marked the cemetery. As they watched, three small figures hitched up their skirts and ran from the scene. Chadwick forged on. He broke into a trot. Straight towards Dorcas and Francis Crabbe, who seemed, like frightened rabbits, to be huddling close for comfort and backing slowly away.
Joe couldn’t hear the exchange of words as they hurled themselves across the squelching turf but his eyes, wide with horror, took in the scene that seemed to happen in slow motion in front of him.
The words exchanged were short and crude.
“Judas!” yelled Chadwick, coming to a halt a few feet away.
“Murdering swine!” Francis Crabbe shouted back, holding his ground. His voice was firm, even exultant, but the arm he passed protectively around Dorcas’s shoulder was trembling.
The two men stood a few feet apart, raw emotion pulsing between them. A lifetime of unspoken words dammed up on each side, and there was no time to deliver them.
“End of the road, Crabbe! And you have three others on your conscience now. They’ll have to go with you. If you’d kept your trap shut-but you never learned anything profitable in your useless life, did you?”
“I learned this much!” screamed Francis. “From your Bible classes!” He held out a staying hand and thundered in a priestly voice: “ ‘I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.’ ”
“I’ll put it on your tombstone,” Chadwick jeered. “An epitaph!”
With a speed that took Dorcas by surprise, Francis plunged a hand into her satchel and came up with her gun.