The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth Read Free Book Online Page B

listeners by surprise, and it was clear from Wright’s relieved expression that he felt he had won his point, that his line of reasoning had prevailed at last. Madden’s next words only served to strengthen that impression.
    ‘You’re right about the tramp, by the way. He must be found. And the sooner the better.’
    Driving to the farm later that morning, Madden had much to occupy his mind, but little chance to explore it. On his return from Brookham he had called in at the house for a moment that nevertheless proved long enough for him to acquire a passenger before he departed again in the shape of his six-year-old daughter. Lucy had been left in the sole charge of Mrs Beck since breakfast and the Maddens’ cook was in sore need of relief.
    ‘Can I play with Belle today?’
    Flaxen at birth, Lucy Madden’s hair now matched her mother’s honey-coloured shade. A tireless child, her fair skin had been golden brown all summer from hours spent playing in the open air.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Madden spoke over his shoulder to the restless presence in the back seat. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. She was still coughing on Saturday. She may not be allowed outside yet.’
    ‘Then I’ll ask May if we can play inside.’
    ‘Don’t you mean Mrs Burrows?’
    Lucy’s last nanny had left them six weeks earlier after less than a year’s employment, citing urgent family reasons for returning home to Bradford. Helen had diagnosed a case of loss of nerve. No replacement for her had yet been found and the Maddens were wondering if they could manage their daughter on their own from now on with the help of the household staff. Lucy would be going to the village school soon, and when she started it would take some of the strain off them, Madden had pointed out. ‘Off us and on to poor Miss Tinsley,’ had been Helen’s pessimistic prediction.
    ‘Can we go and see the waggle-taggle gypsies?’
    ‘Raggle-taggle. And don’t call them that. They’re Mr and Mrs Goram to you.’ Her eyes, blue as sapphires, challenged his in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes, we can,’ he said, after a moment. ‘They’re leaving soon, and I want to talk to Mr Goram before they go.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Never you mind.’
    The dirt road to the farm sparkled with muddy puddles. The land on which it lay, overlooked by Upton Hanger, was little more than a mile from the Maddens’ house and less than three miles from Highfield itself. They had bought it from Lord Stratton, a local landowner, soon after their marriage, when Madden had quit his job at Scotland Yard to return to the life he had known as a boy.
    Although the rain of the previous day had fallen heavily here, too, he was relieved to see no sign of damage to the lines of late tomatoes flanking the roadway. When he and Helen had acquired the property wheat had been its principal crop. Since then cheap grain from Canada and Australia had driven down prices and like many farmers in the area Madden was devoting more land each year to growing vegetables and fruit, which found a ready market.
    As he drove past the brick-built, shingled farmhouse, May Burrows waved to them from the kitchen doorway. She had been May Birney when he first came to Highfield; her father owned the village store. Later, she had married George Burrows, a worker on the Stratton estate, and they had moved into the house which came with the farm, a primitive structure when the Maddens had bought it, but now, with the addition of two new rooms and the installation of indoor plumbing, a comfortable house for a young couple.
    Madden had made George his farm manager, though not without a qualm. There had never been any thought that he and Helen might move from the house where they lived: a handsome, half-timbered dwelling, it had been in her family for three generations. But living away from his land, leaving it each evening in the hands of another man, made him feel at times like a gentleman farmer, and he was in the habit of