Chapter One
The murder appeared to be a crime of passion, the killer
having left a trail of evidence behind him that even a
blind man might have followed.
It was the identity of the victim, not the murderer,
that brought Scotland Yard into the case.
No one knew who she was. Or, more correctly perhaps,
what name she might have used since 1916. And what had
become of the man and the two children who had been with
her at the railway station? Were they a figment of the
killer's overheated imagination? Or were their bodies yet
to be discovered?
The police in Dorset were quite happy to turn the
search over to the Yard. And the Yard was very happy
indeed to oblige, in the person of Inspector Ian Rutledge.
It began simply enough, with the London train pulling into
the station at the small Dorset town of Singleton Magna.
The stop there was always brief. Half a dozen passengers
got off, and another handful generally got on, heading
south to the coast. A few boxes and sacks were offloaded
with efficiency, and the train rolled out almost before
the acrid smoke of its arrival had blown away.
Today, late August and quite hot for the season, there
was a man standing by the lowered window in the second-
class car, trying to find a bit of air. His shirt clung to
his back under the shabby suit, and his dark hair lay
damply across his forehead. His face was worn, dejection
sunk deep in the lines about his mouth and in the circles
under tired eyes. He was young, but youth was gone.
Leaning out, he watched the portlystationmaster
helping a pale, drooping woman to the gate, the thin
thread of her complaining voice just reaching him. "...
such hardship," she was saying.
What did she know about hardship? he thought wearily.
She had traveled first class, and the leather dressing
case clutched in her left hand had cost more than most men
earned in a month. If they were lucky enough to have a
job.
There had been no work in London. But he'd heard there
was a builder hiring down Lyme Regis way. The train was a
luxury Bert Mowbray couldn't afford. Still, jobs didn't
wait, and you sometimes had to make the extra effort. He
refused to think what he would do if he'd guessed wrong
and there was nothing at the end of his journey but a grim
shake of the head and "No work. Sorry."
His gaze idly followed a porter awkwardly trundling
his cart full of luggage across the platform, followed by
a pair of elderly women. The cars were already jammed with
families on their way to the seaside, but room was found
for two more. Then his eye was suddenly caught by another
woman outside one of the cars farther down the train,
kneeling to comfort a little girl who was crying. A boy
much younger, not more than two, clung to the trouser leg
of the man bending protectively over them, speaking to the
woman and then to the little girl.
Mowbray stared at the woman, his body tight with shock
and dismay. It couldn't be Mary โ
"My God!" he breathed, "Oh, my God!"
Turning from the window, he lunged for the door,
almost knocking the wide-brimmed hat from the head of a
startled farmer's wife who couldn't get out of his way
fast enough. He tripped over her basket, losing precious
seconds as he fought for his balance. Her companion stood
up, younger and stouter, and demanded to know what he
thought he was doing, her red, angry face thrust into his.
The train jerked under his feet, and he realized it was
moving. Pulling outโ
"No! Noโ wait!" he screamed, but it was too late, the
train had picked up momentum and was already out of the
small station, a few houses flashing by before the town
was swallowed up by distance and fields.
He was nearly incoherent with frustration and the
intensity of his need. He yelled for the conductor,
demanding that the train be stoppedโ now!
The conductor, a phlegmatic man who had dealt with
drunken soldiers and whoring seamen during the war years,
said soothingly, "Overslept your stop, did you? Never
mind, there's another just down the road a bit."
But he had to restrain Mowbray before they reached the
next stationโthe man seemed half out of his mind and was
trying to fling himself off the train. Two burly coal
stokers on their way to Weymouth helped the conductor
wrestle him into a seat while a prim-mouthed spinster
wearing a moth-eaten fox around her shoulders, never mind
the heat, threatened to collapse into strong hysterics.
Mowbray had gone from wild swearing and threats to
helpless, angry tears by the time the train lurched into
the next town. He and his shabby case were heaved off
without ceremony, and he was left standing on the station
platform, disoriented and distraught.
Without a word to the staring stationmaster, he handed
in his ticket for Lyme Regis and set off at a smart pace
down the nearest road in the direction of Singleton Magna.
But the woman and children and man were gone when he
got to the town. And no one could tell him where to find
them. He went to the only hotel, a small stone edifice
called, with more imagination than accuracy, the Swan,
demanding to know if a family of four had come in by the
noon train. He stopped at the small shops that sold food
and the two tearooms nearest the station, describing the
woman first, then the children and the man. He badly
frightened one clerk with his furious insistence that you
must have seen them! You must!
He tracked down the carriage that served as the town
taxi and angrily called the driver a liar for claiming he
hadn't set eyes on the woman or the man, much less the
children.
"They're not here, mate," the middle-aged driver
declared shortly, jerking a thumb toward the back. "See
for yourself. Nobody like that came out of the station
today while I was waiting. If you was to meet them here,
it's your misfortune, not mine. May be that you got your
dates wrong."
"But they can't have vanished!" Mowbray cried. "I've
got to find them. The bitchโ the bitch! โthey're my
children, she's my wife! It isn't rightโI tell you, if
she's tricked me, I'll kill her, I swear I will! Tell me
where she's got to, or I'll throttle you as well!"
"You and who else?" the man demanded, jaw squared and
face flushed with an anger that matched Mowbray's.
All afternoon he haunted Singleton Magna, and a
constable had to caution him twice about his conduct. But
the fires of anger slowly burned down to a silent, white-
hot determination that left him grim faced and ominously
quiet. That evening he called at every house on the
fringes of the town, asking about the woman. And the
children. Had they come along this road? Had anyone seen
them? Did anyone know where they'd come from, or where
they were going?
But the town shook its collective head and shut its
collective doors in the face of this persistent, shabby
stranger with frantic eyes.
Mowbray spent the night under a tree near the station,
waiting for the next day's noon train. He never thought of
food, and he didn't sleep. What was driving him was so
fierce that nothing else mattered to him.
He stayed in Singleton Magna all that day as well,
walking the streets like a damned soul that had lost its
way back to hell and didn't know where to turn next.
People avoided him. And this time he avoided people, his
eyes scanning for one figure in a rose print dress with a
strand of pearls and hair the color of dark honey. By the
dinner hour he had gone. Hardly anyone noticed.
When a farmer discovered a woman's body that evening,
the blood from her wounds had soaked deeply into the soil
at the edge of his cornfield, like some ancient harvest
sacrifice. He sent for the police, and the police, with
admirable haste, took one look at her there on the ground
and ordered a warrant for the arrest of the man who had
been searching for her. Although there was no
identification on the body, they were fairly sure she
wasn't a local woman. And the way her face had been
battered, there had been a hot, desperate anger behind the
blows. The missing wife, then, had been found. All that
was left was to see that her murderer was brought to
justice.
Late that same evening Mowbray was run to earth,
roughly awakened from an exhausted sleep under the same
tree outside the railway station. In a daze, not
understanding what was happening to him or why, he allowed
himself to be led off to the small jail without protest.
Afterward, the inspector in charge, congratulating
himself on the swift solution of this crime practically on
his doorstep, boasted to the shaken farmer on the other
side of his tidy desk, "It was all in a day's work. Just
as it should be. Murder done, murderer brought in. Can't
stop crime altogether, but you can stop the criminals.
That's my brief."
"I thought he was the one hunting all over town for
his lost family?"
"So he was. Silly bugger! All but advertising what he
was going to do when he found them."
"But where are they, then? The husband and the
children? They aren't somewhere in my fields, are they? I
won't have your men tramping about in my corn, do you
hear, not when it's all but ready for the cutting! My wife
will have a stroke, she's that upset already! The doctor's
been and gone twice."
Inspector Hildebrand sobered. He much preferred
expanding on his success to any discussion of his
failure. "We don't know where they are. Yet. I've got my
men searching now along the roadside. More than likely
he's done for the lot, but so far he's sitting in his cell
like a damned statue, as if he's not hearing a word we say
to him. But we'll find them, never fear. And they'll be
dead as well, mark my words. Probably saved the woman for
last, she got away from him, and he had to chase her. Just
a matter of time, that's all. We'll find them in the end."
He didn't. In the end, it was Scotland Yard and
Inspector Rutledge who had to sort through the tangled
threads of deception and twisted allegiances. By that time
it was far too late for Hildebrand to retreat from his
entrenched position.
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