Free Troubled Midnight by John Gardner Page B

was there at a quarter to six, sir. When he didn’t come down by six-fifteen I got out to investigate. Went up the steps and found the door ajar. Just loose, you know, sir. Open about half-an-inch. Maybe less.”
    “So you went in?”
    “Pushed the door open and went in, sir, yes. I felt there was someone there so I called out. ‘Colonel Weaving,’ I called. Felt someone was upstairs and it didn’t feel right. You know how it is, sir.”
    “No,” Tommy said with some kind of finality.
    “Well, you can be out in the field, or clearing a house and you get this kind of second sight. Makes you twitchy, taps into your nerves, like. I was carrying a weapon, here, sir,” he swivelled slightly to reveal the holster on the left side of his webbing belt. Left side for the cross draw, lanyard attached to the butt going up and looped around his neck, under the lapels of his battledress blouse.
    “So I drew my weapon and went up the stairs, slowly, making hardly any noise.”
    “How exactly do you manage that, Roy?”
    “Training, sir. Rubber soles on the boots. It’s the way you test each stair and transfer your weight to the riser. Takes practise. Sometimes the full foot, sometimes just the toe. Even an old staircase can be traversed without a creak if you’re careful.”
    “And at the top?”
    “I was wrong. There was nobody there. Upstairs anyway. I went through each room, as thought I was clearing it, ready at each door.”
    “Nice bathroom, isn’t it?”
    “Very nice, sir. Very tasteful. Victorian isn’t it, sir?”
    “The whole house is Victorian, yes.”
    Inwardly Suzie smiled, knowing the sergeant was taking Tommy for a bit of a ride. She got the impression that he knew the house pretty well: had been there before.
    “Bathroom was the last room I did,” Gibbon continued. “I was just coming out when I thought I heard a noise from downstairs. I was on that landing again like a thunderflash, convinced someone had been through the hall. And they had. The door, the front door, was open wide. I had almost closed it. But it was as though I could sense someone had passed through the hall and out of the door. You know, as though I’d seen them.”
    “You went after him?”
    “I didn’t say it was a him…”
    “No, but…”
    “It probably was, but I don’t know how many. I don’t see how one person…” he trailed off.
    “Go on. You can’t see how one person…”
    “When I finally came across the bodies. I couldn’t see how one person on his own could’ve … Well, could’ve…”
    “Could have killed them?”
    “Quite, sir.”
    “You were on the landing. You knew someone had left the house while you were up there: in the bathroom?”
    “Yes, in the bathroom, sir.”
    “You went down. Went after them did you?”
    Gibbon nodded, head down, shaking his head, then nodded. “Of course, sir. Of course I went down, went after him … them. Out into the street, onto the pavement but there was no sign of anyone. I walked down to the Royal Oak and out into the road. Crossed the road. Nobody. Either way there was nobody about.”
    “What was the time?”
    “Must’ve been six-thirty, maybe a little after that. I can’t say I looked. I went back. There’d been nobody else out in Portway. The whole place was deserted. I mean you could see a fair distance. Cold though: very chilly. It was dawn, sir.”
    “Coming up like thunder,” Tommy mused. Then, “And you went back into the house?”
    “Of course, sir. I did notice the door to the cellar, on the left hand side before you go down the passage to the study and the kitchen. That was open, that door.”
    “You didn’t investigate?”
    “Not straight away, no, sir. I went into their front room and the dining room, then down the passage, looked in the study and the kitchen. Even went into the larder. The kitchen table had been laid for breakfast. Must’ve done that the previous night, last night.”
    Tommy nodded.
    “Then I went back and down