He paused, squaring a piece of paper from his file on the table in front of him, then turned to Bennett.
‘Do you know who I mean by George Ransom, sir? He’s a pathologist at St Mary’s in Paddington.’
‘I’m familiar with the name.’
‘I bumped into him by chance this week and he told me about the body taken from the river at Henley. He offered it more as a curiosity than anything else, but with the Brookham case fresh in my mind, I pricked up my ears. How Ransom came to hear about it was through a dinner he’d attended, some annual medical get-together. You might think it a curious mealtime subject, even for pathologists, but he happened to be sitting next to the doctor who’d performed the autopsy – an Oxford medico named Stanley – so he got the whole story. Stanley said he was convinced the injuries were caused by blows struck to the face – he marked half a dozen at least from the bone evidence – which points to an assault. He told Ransom the Oxfordshire police were holding back for the moment, looking for another explanation.’ Sinclair rubbed his chin. ‘I can’t blame them. We don’t seek out murder, do we?’ He glanced at his listeners. ‘We look for a natural explanation first. But it’s hard to find one in this case, or so Stanley thinks.’
‘River traffic?’ Bennett shifted in his chair. ‘That’s a busy stretch of the Thames. Half the year round it’s jammed with pleasure craft.’
‘A boat’s propeller, you’re thinking, sir? It would have to be several blows.’ Sinclair nodded. ‘They’ve considered that. But Stanley gave it as his opinion that the marks on the bones weren’t consistent with the shape of propeller blades. He wouldn’t go beyond that.’
‘What about a paddle steamer?’ the chief super suggested.
‘It’s the Thames, sir, not the Mississippi.’
Crushed, Holly muttered, ‘Still there must be other things that could have caused it. We can’t be sure it’s murder.’
‘No, we can’t. That’s true.’
‘And aren’t there are two quite separate questions here?’ The chief superintendent’s tone was gruff. He’d not yet recovered his poise. ‘First, was it murder at all? And second, is it connected to the Brookham assault?’
‘Quite right, Arthur.’ Sinclair sought to soothe his superior. ‘And I’m not for a moment insisting that it is. But we can’t ignore the common factors in these cases: I mean the ages of the girls involved and the damage inflicted to their faces.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, there’s a problem with the time lag, as well. A gap of three years between crimes of this type is most unusual. I’m having a check made of prison records on the off chance that he may have been inside during this period – that’s assuming it’s the same man – but I’m not overly optimistic. I’m sure if he’d been arrested for a serious sexual offence we would have heard about it by now.’
He caught the assistant commissioner’s eye. ‘That’s all for the present, sir.’
‘Good.’ Bennett glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve another meeting in five minutes. But let’s see if we can reach some interim conclusions before we part.’
Rising, he went to the window and stood there, hands on hips, gazing out. The other two watched him in silence.
‘The tramp’s still the key, isn’t he? Beezy? We must wait till they find him, I think. Until he’s been interviewed, until we know whether he’s responsible for the Brookham murder. The Surrey police are quite capable of handing a straightforward inquiry, if that’s what this turns out to be. I don’t want the Yard butting in and seeming to steal their thunder. All the same, I want to be kept informed of the progress of the investigation. They’ve no objection to the interest we’re showing, I take it?’ He glanced over his shoulder.
‘Quite the contrary,’ Sinclair assured him. He closed his file. ‘After listening to Madden, Jim Boyce is as nervous as a cat. Any hint that the case might stretch beyond his domain and he’ll be on the phone to me.’
‘Still, you seem unsatisfied, Chief Inspector.’
‘Oh, no, sir. Not that.’ Sinclair shed the frown his superior had noticed. ‘By all means let them search for Beezy. What’s more, if he can be shown to have been the killer, I’d be inclined to let the whole matter drop, at least as far as the Yard is concerned.’
‘You don’t think he could have been involved in the Henley business?’
‘Hardly. Beal’s a man in his fifties. He’s known to have spent these past ten summers in Kent. I can’t see him suddenly transporting himself to Oxfordshire.’ Sinclair shook his head. ‘No, if Beezy’s their man, I’d be disposed to let this inquiry lapse.’
‘What, then? What’s troubling you?’
The chief inspector sighed. ‘It’s what Madden thinks that worries me. He feels we’ve only touched the surface of this case: that there’ll be worse to come. And if past experience is anything to go by, I have to tell you his instincts in these matters are usually right.’
9
The Maddens’ house stood at the end of a drive shaded by lime trees. Alerted by the sound of the approaching car, Helen was waiting in the portico to greet Sinclair when he drew up in front.
‘Angus… how lovely to see you.’
She was wearing an apron, the sleeves of her white blouse rolled to the elbow, and as they exchanged kisses, the chief inspector was prompted to reflect that in years gone by, when Helen’s father was still alive and sharing the house with his daughter and son-in-law, visitors had invariably been met at the door by a uniformed maid: the times were indeed changing.
‘Mary’s busy in the kitchen helping Mrs Beck,’ she explained, as though in answer to his unspoken thought. ‘We’ve been bottling all morning. Come inside. I’ve got a surprise for you. Franz Weiss is here. He’s spending a few days with us.’
‘Is he really?’ Sinclair’s face brightened at the name. A psychoanalyst of note, Weiss had been a friend of Helen’s late father. Born in Vienna, but now living in Berlin, he was a man for whom the chief inspector felt not only affection, but uncommon respect. ‘I had no idea. How is the good doctor?’
‘Well enough, but worried. The situation in Germany’s so unsettled. They should never have left Vienna.’
She drew him into the house and they passed through the hall to the drawing room.
‘Come outside. He’s waiting to see you.’
As they stepped out on to the stone-flagged terrace, a figure emerged from the shade of the vine-covered arbour that stood at one end of it. White-haired, and somewhat stooped now – he was in his early seventies – Franz Weiss paused in his tracks to bow with old-world courtesy.
‘Chief Inspector! This is an unexpected pleasure.’
‘So it is, sir.’ Smiling, Sinclair came forward to shake his hand. ‘But the pleasure is mine, I insist.’
Though fully two years had passed since their last meeting – the occasion had been a dinner given by the Maddens when Weiss had been in London for a conference on psychoanalysis – he was pleased to see that the doctor had lost none of his alertness; that his eyes, dark, and crinkled at the corners, shone with the same mixture of intelligence and wry humour which the chief inspector remembered with such pleasure from past encounters.
Their acquaintance went back more than a decade to the police investigation into the murders at Melling Lodge when Weiss, by chance, had been visiting England, and Madden, through his relationship with Helen, had obtained advice from him that later proved critical in tracking down the killer he and Sinclair were seeking. The episode had left a deep impression on the chief inspector, who had come to believe as a result of it that insights offered by the new discipline of psychiatry into criminal behaviour might well prove useful to the police in their work. It was a question he had continued to pursue with the analyst on the rare occasions when they met.
‘Are you staying in England long, sir?’ he asked. ‘I was hoping we might lunch in London next week.’