As he drove north-east out of London, he enjoyed the mellow countryside of East Anglia. It looked ridiculously peaceful in its ripe, late-summer apparel of harvested fields, heavy-laden trees, slow-moving rivers and gentle white clouds. Who could think there was a war on?
The going was smooth to the pretty little medieval town of Clade in Suffolk. Just before arriving, he slowed down to crane his neck and watch a squadron of Hurricanes rising from a nearby airfield and thundering eastward. He drove on into the centre of the town, just past the church. He had no map to guide him through its myriad streets, so he stopped and asked a shopper for Old Cottage.
She looked puzzled.
‘The Hartwells’ house,’ Wilde continued.
‘The Reverend Hartwell?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he doesn’t actually live in the town, you know. He’s out near the school.’
‘Ah, which school would that be?’
The woman was well spoken, probably in her sixties. She was walking an old black bicycle with a basket full of groceries attached to the handlebars. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,’ she said.
‘Thomas Wilde. Professor Wilde.’
‘I’m sure it’s none of my business, but why exactly are you looking for the reverend?’
‘I have something to return to him. It’s a private matter.’
‘I see, well, you’ll probably find him there. He usually goes to the Lakes for the summer, but I imagine he’s back to get ready for the new term.’
‘The school?’
‘Athelstans, of course.’ She sounded exasperated. ‘He teaches Latin and Greek. There’s no other school here unless you include the elementary for the local boys and girls.’
‘I’m sorry, I live in Cambridge and I’ve never been here before. Could you direct me to the school?’
She sighed, considering the request. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You don’t look like a German agent, whatever they look like. You carry on along this road. Two miles north of here, you’ll see two rather grand and ancient gateposts. There’s no sign on them, but that’s the way into Athelstans. Opposite the gates, outside the wall, there is a narrow, unmade road. That’s the way you go to Old Cottage. It’s about half a mile along there.’
Wilde thanked her and wound up the window. He was still reeling. He had always known that Athelstans was in Suffolk, of course, just as one knew that Eton was in Berkshire, but that was as far as it went. So the Reverend H. Hartwell was a teacher at Peter Cazerove’s old school. Might that explain the connection between him and Harriet Hartwell? Assuming there was a connection. It was only surmise after seeing the young man’s photograph on the wall at the Dada Club.
He engaged first gear, and drove on out of town.
*
Wilde stood in front of Old Cottage, having parked the car fifty yards further back along the track. He looked at the building from end to end. It was on two levels, perhaps built at different times. The thatch was in need of attention but, that aside, it was breathtakingly beautiful, a straggling half-timbered building that must once have been the home of a well-to-do yeoman farmer. Wilde reckoned its age at 500 years or more, which meant it must have been standing here before anyone had even heard of the Tudors.
The gardens all around were a mad profusion of flowers, not well tended, which could have been the result of the owner of the property spending the summer months elsewhere. That said, the colours and the heady mix of fragrances were quite spectacular. This was a proper English country garden. It really was quite exquisite, the sort of house he would love if he and Lydia and Johnny were ever to escape the smoke of Cambridge and move out of town.
He knocked at the door and waited. He thought he heard a sound from within, but it was very faint. He waited half a minute then knocked again, slightly harder and louder. Still no one came.
Perhaps the occupant was at the far end of the house or around the back. Wilde followed the flagstone path towards the rear. He could see no one outside in the garden so he knocked on the back door. Again, no one came. And yet he was sure he had heard something inside. He tried the door handle and it was unlocked. He called out.
‘Hello, anyone at home?’
From somewhere deep in the house he thought he heard another noise, muffled and strange. Almost human, but not quite. A cat or dog perhaps? He called out again, louder. ‘Hello, Reverend Hartwell?’ And louder still. ‘Hello! Hello!’
Now there was certainly a sound from within. A scuffling, a minor crashing of wood, like a small table or chair falling over, then another noise, a little like a cupboard door or window being opened. Wilde was alarmed. It sounded like a fight and he could no longer afford to observe the niceties of waiting to be invited in. He entered the house and found himself in a small and rather pleasant kitchen with pans, utensils and bunches of herbs hanging from hooks. The floors were broad, dark-stained boards which were worn with time and might have been there as long as the house had stood. As he made his way through the low-ceilinged rooms and dark, narrow corridors, he felt as if he was in some sort of medieval time capsule. On another day, the thought might have occurred to him that the house should be classified as a museum or national monument but for the moment, he was filled only with dread and foreboding.
At the highest point of the house, in an ancient room that was being used as a bedroom, he found the source of the noise he had heard.
An elderly man was lying on the floor at the end of a single bed. He was bound and bleeding. It looked as though his throat had been cut, but he was still moving, still alive, his feet twitching, his mouth gurgling. Blood was pouring from the wound, pooling on the floor like a crimson halo around his old white-grey head. The pool grew and seeped through the spaces between the boards.
Wilde crouched at the man’s side, pulling and tearing at a bedsheet, bunching it into a ball to try to stem the flow of gore. But he could see it was hopeless. The wound was deep and deadly, cut savagely with a single, powerful strike that had almost certainly severed both jugular and carotid.
The dying man’s eyes were open but empty. His lips were moving as though he had something to say, but no words emerged, just a ghastly frothing and bubbling of the incessant blood.
The window was open. That must have been the sound he heard. That must be the way the assailant had fled, for someone did this to the old man. There was no blade visible, so it was reasonable to assume this wound was not self-inflicted.
Wilde felt utterly impotent. His hands and clothes were drenched with blood as he cradled the man’s head, desperately trying to think how he could give him a little comfort in his final moments. If this was the Reverend Hartwell, then he was almost certainly Church of England. Wilde had been born and raised a Catholic, yet he could not remember the words to say and, not being a priest himself, he could not give extreme unction, but he had to say something.
‘Bless you, reverend. The Lord is with you . . .’ The pathetic emptiness of the words sickened him.
The man had gone limp in his arms. The flow of blood had decreased to a trickle. Wilde held him for a few more moments, then gently lowered his head to the floor. The light had completely gone from the man’s eyes so Wilde closed them with his thumbs.
As though weighed down by an anchor of solid iron, he slowly pulled himself to his feet. He went to the window and looked out. Somewhere out there a murderer was making his getaway. But that was not Wilde’s concern at this moment. His first duty was to call the police and ambulance, though there was nothing that medical science could do.
He despised his hypocrisy. Amidst the blood and horror, he had said those religious words to the man, but he believed none of them. They didn’t even serve as a bromide, for the dying man would have heard nothing. Wilde hadn’t believed since childhood and, if he was honest, he hadn’t really believed then. His visits to church and the confessional had only been performed at the behest of his mother.
*
As he moved about the house, he soon discovered that the telephone wires had been cut, so there was no way of calling for assistance. There was no hurry, for no one’s life was at stake, yet he felt compelled to act at speed. He looked around the rooms as quickly as he could and soon confirmed that this was, indeed, the home of Harriet Hartwell. There were several photographs of her, including a couple with the dead man, who was clearly her father. In one of them he wore a clerical collar, and they stood together, Harriet aged about seventeen or eighteen, on the forecourt of a large building. The words at the bottom of the frame said simply, ATHELSTANS, SUMMER 1935.
On the bedside table near the body, there was a photograph from a former age of a rather lovely, though slightly serious-looking, young woman who must surely be Harriet’s mother. The absence of any further pictures of her suggested she might have died when Harriet was a child.
It wasn’t ideal, but he had no option but to go and find a police station or a telephone. Perhaps the school would be the best port of call. He opened the front door and was relieved to see a woman in Royal Mail uniform appear at the end of the path on a bicycle.
The look on her face changed in an instant from one of workaday nonchalance to a mask of sheer panic and terror. For the first time, he realised the sight he must present: covered in blood – hands, face, shirt, jacket. He put up his hands as though to say, ‘Look, I am no threat to you,’ but the postwoman’s mouth opened in a silent scream. In a frenzy, she tried to make a 180-degree turn, almost falling from her bike in the process. Regaining her balance, she pedalled off back along the path at breakneck speed.
Wilde climbed into the embassy car. He looked at his hands, wiped them on his jacket. If he were to go to the police now, how would he explain his presence here in Clade? How would he explain his interest in meeting the Reverend Hartwell? How would he explain to the police that he had walked into a stranger’s house uninvited because he had heard a noise?
And why would they not immediately conclude that he was the murderer?
The postwoman’s reaction told him everything he needed to know. The local police would have no option; they would have to lock him up as their prime suspect until he could prove otherwise. And how long would that take?
He switched on the engine, but for a few moments he did not drive, trying to work this through in his mind. There were other things to think of – in particular, the fact that the real murderer was on the loose and almost certainly still in the vicinity. He switched off the engine. At the very least there was time to make a cursory search before the police arrived. He might not be armed, but against a man with a knife, he had to believe his skills in the ring would neutralise the threat.
Beneath the open window, a path of trodden-down flowers and nettles showed the way the assailant had gone. Wilde followed the trail through the wildflower garden. He came to an apple orchard at the end of the patch. No more than a dozen trees, all heavy with fruit, but behind them there was a low iron gate, which was swinging and creaking in the breeze. Surely, the fugitive must have gone this route?
On the other side, the land dipped away into a meadow. Twenty or more cows were grazing. At the other side of the pasture, there was a boundary of hornbeam, hawthorn and bramble with an opening that seemed to give on to a track of some sort. Wilde trudged across the field, ignored by the cattle. He was almost at the gap in the hedgerow when he heard the roar of an engine, and then caught a glimpse of a motorbike surging past, billowing smoke from its exhaust.
It was ridden by a young man, a man he had seen twice before. Mortimer.