The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth

of the world to which his old colleague had retreated; and where he had found such deep contentment.
    Having relayed the message entrusted to him, he had seated himself on the low stone wall bordering the garden, taking out his pipe and tobacco, and waited while Madden went in search of his daughter, who was playing by the stream nearby, and whose cries of delight as she splashed ankle-deep in the shallow water showed precious little sign of repentance. Presently they returned, hand in hand, and trailed by Lucy’s companions of the morning, two floppy-limbed puppies, both wet from paddling with their mistress, and generous with the amount of water they distributed about them as they shook themselves dry.
    Prompted by her father, the little girl had paused to welcome their guest. The chief inspector had been offered a damp cheek to kiss along with a smile so dazzling he had felt his heart skip a beat.
    ‘And remember to wash your feet under the tap before you go inside.’
    The grave tenderness of Madden’s expression as he spoke to his daughter reminded Sinclair with a pang of the loss his old friend had suffered many years before. Of the little girl and her mother whom he’d watched die. It was this double blow, the chief inspector believed, that his driven his erstwhile partner to seek oblivion in the trenches.
    Madden had waited until they were alone before speaking.
    ‘Well, Angus… What can you tell me about the Brookham case?’
    He listened now as the chief inspector, puffing on his pipe, revealed what little result his own inquiries had produced.
    ‘There’s nothing in the files, as I say; there’s only this business at Henley, which has yet to be established as a murder case. The facial assault points to a connection with Brookham, I grant you, and there’s also the fact that an attempt seems to have been made to dispose of the body afterwards. But there are still difficulties in linking the two cases, not least the three-year interval separating them. If it was the same man, what’s he been doing all this while?’
    Madden grunted. ‘I take it you’ve checked prison records?’ He was staring at the ground in front of him.
    ‘In detail. We’re satisfied he wasn’t inside.’
    ‘Mightn’t he have gone abroad, then?’
    Sinclair shrugged. ‘That’s certainly a possibility. But not one I can pursue at present: not until the case is officially in my hands, and even then not without further evidence.’
    Grimacing, he knocked out his pipe on the wall beside him and then watched as Madden stood brooding, testing the jagged edge of the saw with his fingertips. Plainly he’d hoped to hear better news, and the chief inspector sighed.
    ‘I’m sorry, John. But without some fresh development, it’s hard to see how this matter can be taken any further. All we can do now is wait while the hunt for this missing tramp goes on.’
    The feeling, however irrational, that he had let his old colleague down continued to haunt the chief inspector during the day and was still lodged like a burr in the back of his mind when, with the clock on the mantel striking five o’clock and the shadows in the drawing room deepening, he looked up and saw Franz Weiss standing in the doorway.
    ‘Ah, there you are, Mr Sinclair! I was hoping to find you alone. We have not yet had a chance to talk.’
    Smiling, the analyst crossed to where his fellow guest was seated by the fireplace with a book on wild flowers open on his lap.
    ‘Is it true our hosts have abandoned us?’
    ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Sinclair rose to his feet to receive the older man. ‘But not for long. John’s gone over to Guildford to collect Robert. He took Lucy with him.’ The Maddens’ son, an absentee from the household, had been playing that day in a school cricket match. ‘Then, soon after they left, Helen was called out to see a patient. You find me holding the fort.’
    It was the first time the two men had been alone. Apart from a brief appearance