River of Darkness Read Free Page A

and coffee things silver pot and two small cups and saucers -- strewn across a cream-coloured carpet edged with vine leaves. The spilled coffee had spread into the shape of a flower. Black petals for a funeral wreath. He knew the woman had been stabbed, Madden had told him earlier, but he couldn't see where. Then he noticed the inspector examining a small tear in the maid's uniform over her chest. It looked as if the black cloth had masked the flow of blood. Billy was struck by how little had been disturbed. Take away the smashed door and the pitiable figure on the carpet and the room was relatively untouched. Chairs and tables stood in their places. Nothing was disarranged. A cabinet where china was displayed remained shut, with the glass unbroken. Above the carved stone fireplace a pair of shepherdesses graced the mantelpiece beneath a painted portrait of a woman sitting on a sofa with two young children, a boy and a girl, on either side of her. All three were fair-haired. Billy was starting to sweat. If anything, the smell was getting worse. He saw Madden's eyes were on him. 'If you're going to throw up, Constable, do it outside.' 'I won't, sir. Truly.' Madden's glance implied disbelief. Billy gritted his teeth. He watched as the inspector started to move away from the body, then changed his mind and returned to it, this time to look at the back. He bent and peered at the area between the shoulder-blades. Billy wondered why. There was nothing to see there. He took a deep breath, then checked himself hurriedly as the surge of nausea returned. He couldn't understand it. In three years on the force he'd seen his share of corpses, not all of them pretty. Week-old cadavers found in abandoned tenements. Floaters hauled from the Thames. Earlier that year he had worked on his first murder case since moving from the uniform branch to the CID. An old pawnbroker battered to death in his shop in the Mile End Road. His skull had been reduced to a red pulp, yet Detective Constable Styles hadn't turned a hair. Why now? Searching for an explanation, Billy was left with the feeling that it had something to do with the enormity of what had happened in this house. He had seen it in the faces of the villagers and of the men who waited outside. Even Madden's grim features had registered a sense of disbelief as he recounted the bald details on their taxi ride to Waterloo. It was something that shouldn't have happened - that was the closest Billy could come to explaining it -- not in the peaceful Surrey countryside, barely an hour's train ride from London. Not in England! Madden rose. Skirting the body, he went to an inner door that stood open and paused on the threshold. Billy joined him. In front of them was a hallway with a passage branching off it, running the length of the house. To their left, a trousered leg protruded from a doorway. Madden went towards it, walking in the middle of the carpeted passage, his eyes on the floor in front of him. Billy stayed on his heels. They came to the body of a middle-aged man lying on his stomach with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross. His head was twisted to one side, the lips drawn back in a rictus of agony. A stab wound in the middle of his back had left a dark stain in the checked hacking jacket he wore. Some deep internal injury was signalled by the gush of blood from his mouth on to the surrounding floorboards. At the very edge of the pool of dried blood, a curved indentation was visible. 'Do you see that?' Madden pointed. 'Someone's walked there.' 'One of the killers, sir?' Billy peered over his shoulder. 'I doubt it. The blood was already dry. Make a note for Mr Sinclair.' Madden stepped carefully over the body. Billy followed, fumbling for his notepad. They were in an oak panelled study, furnished with a desk and two stuffed-leather armchairs. The walls were hung with photographs, mostly of men in military uniform. Some showed them sitting on chairs, stiffly posed. Others were less