"Oh, very well—if you must." She yawned. "Just don't wake up Cathy. And don't wake up Sergeant Digby either."
He reached with his toes for his slippers, and with his hand for his dressing gown. Everything was exactly to foot and to hand in the darkness, with no blind groping. And no blind groping in his brain, either: he knew at last what he was doing.
Cathy's bedroom door across the passage was open, as always. In the soft light of the shaded 25-watt bulb outside he could see her lying under the sheet with the abandoned innocence of childhood, long legs and slender arms resting where they had fallen. That was how the dead on the battlefield lay, uncaring and oblivious of prying eyes.
Mustn't think of that now, he shook his head fiercely. Must leave her to her dreams, to pursue his own nightmares.
He stared past the sleeping child into the darkness of the open window beyond her. Somewhere out there lay Charlie Ratcliffe secure in the dreamless sleep of success.
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Dreamless until this moment, when a stranger bent his mind towards the tiny flaw in his otherwise perfect crime.
Now was the instant when Charlie ought to stir uneasily for the first time.
7
AUDLEY drew the crudely cyclo- styled pages of the Battle Scenario out of the plastic folder.
7. The battle will commence at 3.15 p.m.
He had left the pages in the wrong order, from the time when he had read them through quickly the first time, just before dinner.
Henry Digby had watched him in silence as he read, without any sign of expectation. And that had annoyed him a little—
that loyal assumption that he would get nothing more out of them than Superintendent Weston—and everyone else— had done.
But now, thanks to Faith, things were different. Now there were four names on his blotter.
Swine Brook Field: Battle Scenario.
Swine Brook Field: Murder Scenario.
—and it had annoyed him because it was correct. If there had been nothing here for Superintendent Weston then there dummy5
couldn't possibly be anything here for anyone else.
Only now, as he ordered the pages, he realised that he was smiling to himself. For now the game had changed. Or the rules of the game, which had shackled Superintendent Weston, had been abolished—that was the difference.
1. Roundhead Objective: to raise siege of Standingham Castle, or alternatively to deliver supply of artillery shot and to reinforce garrison.
Royalist Objective: to prevent above and to capture supplies for own use.
Of course it wasn't surprising that the Royalists too had been short of powder and shot after the siege of Bristol and with the siege of Gloucester in prospect. And as Digby had explained, they had been fatally short of ammunition at the battle of Newbury next month.
Unimportant.
2. Topography.: At the battlefield site the Swine Brook flows between two parallel ridges, with the Old Road to Standingham (ten miles distant) running beside stream, the course of which is marked by clumps of vegetation.
Audley closed his eyes for an instant, in an effort to recreate not what he had seen a few hours earlier, the ten-week growth which had sprung up since the Murder Squad had painstakingly cut back the bushes in a search for nonexistent clues, but the Swine Brook as it had been—
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"It wasn't like this, sir."
"No, Sergeant? Then tell me what it was like."
"Clumps" hadn't been altogether accurate. Except for the thirty-yard gap in the centre, where Digby had been stationed under one of the willow trees with his canisters of red dye, the tangle of blackberry and hawthorn bushes had formed an almost continuous and impenetrable hedge on each side of the stream—an overhanging hedge which met and interlocked above the water.
Members of both armies will cross the Swine Brook ONLY
between points x and y (see Map "A") . . .
In fact, members of both armies could only cross the stream in that gap, between points x and y.
Under Sergeant Digby's eye.
And then, on the far side, the farm track running beside the stream, and beyond it the field of wheat stubble, freshly cut and dotted with bales of straw.
But it hadn't been a stubble field then.
Members crossing the Swine Brook must NOT walk on the growing corn, but will keep STRICTLY to the track, where they will form up in regimental groups . . .
The Double R Society knew which side its bread was buttered; they were always very careful to keep in with the local farmers.
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". . . I see, Sergeant. So you were under this tree, pouring in the dye."
"Yes, sir." Digby wasn't overawed, just ten times as cautious as Weston had been. But there was no percentage in rushing him or pushing him, as he had pushed Weston. He had enough time at least to try to win the young man's confidence during the first twenty-four hours.
"A rather dull job."
"Sir?"
"A dull job, pouring dye."
"I was recovering from a sprained ankle, sir."
"Sprained in the line of duty?"
"Yes . . . sir."
And now a sprained tongue. It looked like being an uphill struggle, winning Sergeant Digby's confidence.
"But normally you would have been— ah—fighting, is that right?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you're an officer in Orme's regiment?"
5. Roundhead Army will muster on Barford Village Green by not later than 2.45. Order of march will be: Allen's Regiment, Clarke's Regiment, Bradley's Regiment, Orme's Regiment, Cox's Regiment, Seager's Regiment, Wheeler's Regiment, dummy5
Edward's Regiment, Ratcliffe's Regiment. Ms Anderson will assemble Angels of Mercy . . .
"Yes, sir."
Audley wondered what Ms Anderson would make of Ms Fitzgibbon on Saturday.
Unimportant. What was important was that Ratcliffe's Regiment—Charlie Ratcliffe's Regiment—was last in line of march, and therefore on the extreme left wing of the coming battle. Which, knowing Charlie Ratcliffe, was the appropriate place for them . . . but which also put them farthest away from where James Ratcliffe had met his killer.
"And where exactly was James Ratcliffe?"
Sergeant Digby pointed upstream. "About twenty yards from here, sir. I'll show you."
The trailing blackberry shoots and young hawthorn growth were fighting with the vigorous crop of stinging nettles at the actual scene of the crime. Death left no mark on the ground for one man, recently despatched, any more than it had for hundreds who had been once cut down all around. For a time the nettles would rule here, but by next spring the bushes would again be dominant, and within a year or two this spot would be indistinguishable from any other along the Swine Brook.
The Sergeant led the way to the edge of the stream.
"He was down there, tucked in right against the bank," he said simply. "Out of sight, practically."
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In the central gap the banks had been trampled down to the water's edge, but here there were miniature cliffs two or three feet high.
"There was a narrow opening to the brook here," explained Digby. "On this side, anyway—on the other it was solid brambles, four or five feet high."
"What was he actually doing here— James Ratcliffe?" asked Audley.
"He was in charge of two of the burning wagons. There were four wagons in all— old things we hired from the farmers—"
"To burn?"
"They weren't actually burnt. They were loaded with smoke-canisters, and it was the job of the special effects section to set them off at intervals."
"So James Ratcliffe was in the special effects section?"
"Yes, sir ... and he was also chairman of the Safety Committee, sir." Sergeant Digby closed his mouth on the last word as though he wanted to make sure no other words escaped custody.
Audley nodded patiently. "And just what does the special effects section do . . . when it's not making smoke without fire?"