As they looked across the fields and the moors of Sir Hugh’s estates from the steep road which snaked its way up the valley side, Lucie remarked how strange and different it felt to be looking in on them with Atticus an unwelcome outsider rather than an honoured guest.
Atticus smiled grimly as he pushed his bicycle up the steepening slope and reminded her that in their capacity as investigators, it was important that they should always be the outsiders in any enquiry.
“I know it brought the wrath of Sir Hugh down onto me, but it really is the only way to maintain proper objectivity,” he added.
“I suppose you are right, Atticus,” she conceded, “but it is nice to stay at the Tower. It makes one feel so very grand… Hello, what’s that up on the skyline?”
Atticus turned and shielded his eyes to look. There, on what must have been the Hayden Bridge road which crept across the top of the valley, was a little block of red. Now and again, there were flashes of light as the morning sun glinted off bare, polished steel and a distant, rhythmic crunching carried in the still air.
“Soldiers!” exclaimed Atticus. “But on a Sunday? That is very unusual. Come on, Lucie, they are coming along the road towards us. If we are very quick we might catch a word with them as they pass.”
Despite the punishing gradient and the weight of their bicycles, Atticus and Lucie made the junction at the top of their lane in double quick time. The company of red-coated soldiers was still some hundred yards away and as they waited, their eyes were drawn irresistibly to the little patch of flattened grass that marked the place of Bessie Armstrong’s last few brutal moments of life. It felt almost as if her shade had lingered to haunt it.
A sudden, puzzling thought occurred to Atticus. He said, “Lucie, do you remember your suggestion that one or more of the murder victims might have been having an affair with Jennifer Lowther?”
Lucie nodded.
“And I said that the idea falls apart if one includes Bessie Armstrong?”
“Yes I remember. I suggested that perhaps Jennifer was having an affair with her too.”
Atticus expression of bafflement deepened.
“I meant to ask at the time, but how could that be? How could she be involved that… that way with both men and a woman at the same time? I mean, it was a man – most probably Arthur – who caused her to be pregnant, surely?”
Lucie giggled.
“Atticus, we’ll make a medical man of you yet. Yes, it would have certainly been a man who caused that. But let me explain it to you. Unless Jenny is firmly of the ‘third sex’ as Bessie Armstrong was for example, it is quite possible, even quite fashionable these days I’m told, for a lady, or indeed for a man, to be intimate with both men and women. They call it bisexuality. It used to be treated in mental asylums with cold baths and electrifying apparatus, but not so much these days.”
Atticus felt at that moment as if he too had just been subjected to one or other of those very same pieces of apparatus. His racing thoughts galloped ahead of the marching of the approaching troops.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” he called eventually to a soldier marching to one side of the main body. The soldier did not reply immediately. Instead he brought the troop smartly to a halt before striding briskly over to where the Foxes stood watching.
“Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. I must warn you both to take great care,” he warned. “There is a dangerous lunatic at large. My men and I have been detailed to search for him today.”
Atticus feigned surprise.
“A dangerous lunatic, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir, a lunatic murderer what has now killed at least five people. We are to capture or kill him on sight. If I were you, I would stay away from this area until we have dealt with him lest you and the lady become his next victims.”
Atticus had a suspicion that the sergeant was rather enjoying the drama of his Sunday morning diversion.
“It is a big moor to search.”
“Indeed it is, sir, but we’re just one part of an entire battalion that’s searching the moors too. Every man is a Northumberland Fusilier so we are the best there is. We’re all beginning at a different point of the compass and converging in towards one another.”
“Converging on Sewingshields Castle perhaps?” Atticus ventured
The sergeant’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “But how did you know that?”
Atticus ignored the question. “At Sir Hugh Lowther’s own request I would imagine?”
“You are correct again, sir. The colonel offered the regiment’s assistance to the Hexham police this morning. And he has called out the local pack of foxhounds too.”
He glanced at Lucie. “If you and the lady wish, I could spare one of my men to escort you safely down to the village.”
“Thank you, Sergeant, but we won’t need an escort. We are actually commissioned investigators who are trying to apprehend the murderer ourselves. We were the ones who discovered the body of the latest victim just yonder.”
The sergeant followed the sweep of Atticus’s arm to the trampled square of verge. An expression of shock flickered briefly on his tanned, battle-hardened face. He and his men traded in death daily on the battlefields of the world, but it was a very different thing to stumble across it on the grassy verge of an English country lane.
Atticus continued, “But thank you for your warning. We will of course take every care for our safety.”
They watched as the detail, still in its perfect formation, marched briskly off. Once it was out of earshot Atticus said, “It would seem that there is no time at all to lose if summary justice is to be avoided.
“Lucie, the focus of the search is to be Sewingshields Castle. Let’s make Godspeed there and we can only pray that we’re not too late!”