The Detective Wore Silk Drawers by Peter Lovesey Read Free Book Online Page B

the London mob. Get close enough to listen to ’em. I’ve got business here with Thackeray. We’ll take the first train back in the morning. Report to the station at nine tomorrow. I expect to be there. If I’m not, tell the Inspector everything that happened. And ask him, at my request, to get a squad of picked men out to Radstock Hall.”
    A minute later, still in some bewilderment, Jago was seated in the same carriage as the now intoxicated Stepney Ox, bound for London.
    ¦ Perhaps it appealed to Cribb’s sense of humour, forcing a man in his fifties across drenched fields in Essex, half an hour before midnight. It was possible, Thackeray speculated, that if he had gallivanted about the bar of the Fox like a penguin attempting flight, Cribb might have sent him back to a warm bed in London. He suffered because he was utterly dependable.
    As though he read the Constable’s thoughts, Cribb explained, “Far better for young Jago to keep a watch on Meanix and his friends. He’s more the Corinthian than you or I. Should be up to bandying talk of milling with that contingent, and might hear a useful word or two besides. You don’t mind a spot of night duty?”
    “No, Sarge,” lied Thackeray. He felt his left boot sink into a hollow. Water seeped through his sock. “But I begin to wonder whether we’re still on course. We haven’t passed so much as a shack this last half-hour, and there’s no sign of buildings ahead. I can’t say that I trusted that group in the pub. To be frank, Sarge, I can picture them back there somewhere laughing over our short cut.”
    “That may be so,” conceded Cribb. “But our direction isn’t far wrong, even if the going ain’t exactly Pall Mall. We’re following the same course the Ebony and his friend took. I don’t take the word of a bunch of swivel-eyed rustics without checking for myself.”
    One consolation was that the rain clouds were fast dispersing, and there were frequent short periods of moonlight. Between them huge shadows traversed the fields like black tides. The landscape was depressingly flat, relieved only by a few small silhouetted copses. Thackeray tried to put the grinning rustics out of his mind. He concentrated on planting each step on the most solid ground available.
    “There’s a chimney!” announced Cribb in some triumph fifteen minutes later. “Above the cedars there. Unmistakable.”
    They cut across a turnip crop, quickening their pace. As they approached the group of trees that increasingly dominated the landscape, a lane was revealed, snaking in from the right.
    “There’s the approach road,” Cribb announced. “Look where it comes from. Would have added miles to our walk.”
    Thackeray never openly questioned his sergeant’s infallibility. But he noted with satisfaction that Cribb’s right galosh was missing, claimed by some quagmire they had passed through.
    The estate of Radstock Hall was enclosed by a six-foot wall. This the detectives surmounted with the help of an overhanging branch. Their progress was deliberate and by no means stealthy. Instinctively they felt secure from guards, dogs or other hazards the grounds might contain. The trees and scrub were dense enough, anyway, to give them cover if necessary. The house was moonlit when they reached it—an elegant Elizabethan country house in glimmering red brick. The roof, still damp from the earlier downpour, gleamed theatrically. Gaunt, well-weathered chimneys jutted against the restless sky.
    They skirted the building, moving with more caution now, and keeping in the shadow of the foliage, although no lights were burning at the front. As they rounded the side of the house, Cribb stopped abruptly and said, almost aloud, “God Almighty!”
    Thackeray froze. His sergeant was not given to casual blasphemy. Around the corner was something exceedingly unpleasant. A procession of headless corpses would not have provoked a more extreme outburst. But the horror confronting Thackeray when he