A Hundred Thousand Dragons (5 page)

‘That's good,' said Ashley, shrugging himself deeper into his overcoat. ‘They'll be able to give me his address. By jingo, it's sharp this morning.'

They walked on between the great soaring columns of beeches to where the road opened out into a grassy clearing. It was wide enough to turn a car and, judging by the tyre tracks, had been used for that purpose by more than one hapless motorist.

‘Hello,' said Jack, stopping. ‘What's this?' He knelt down at the side of the road, seeing where car tyres had dug into the banks of the path, ploughing up the reddish-brown earth in a raw slash of frost-rimmed colour. ‘These are fresh, Ashley. The tracks are still sharp and the earth would have crumbled if they'd been here for any time.' A doleful line of crushed grass, cow parsley and nettles marked the trail. ‘It looks as if he was trying to turn the car.' He stood up and retraced his steps back up the road.

Ashley followed him. ‘That's him, isn't it?' he asked, pointing to where a diamond-patterned tyre had left its imprint against the sloped earth of the bank. He crossed the road and looked carefully at the mud at the side of the road. ‘There's another imprint of those diamond-patterned tyres here, too. There are more tyre tracks, too, a wire-cord pattern. They've come from another car.'

Jack looked at the patch of earth. ‘It definitely is a different car, not just a mixed set of tyres on the same car. You can tell that from the way the tracks are overlaid.'

‘We've got a trail going down to the clearing,' said Ashley, following the tracks, ‘and the same trail coming back up. The diamond pattern's driven away, so that's not the car which caught fire.'

‘Hold on a minute,' said Jack. He walked across the clearing and went a little way down the path to the glade. He stooped and examined the ground, stood up and slowly walked back, his face puzzled. ‘This is a bit odd, Ashley. The wire-cord car which is, I presume, the one which crashed, was here first and the diamond-patterned one came afterwards.' He shrugged. ‘I suppose it could be someone who lost their way or realized there was a kerfuffle in the valley and stopped to take a look.'

They walked back to Dr Wilcott and Mr Tarleton, Jack idly following the trail of the diamond-patterned tyres. ‘Hang on a minute,' he said, stooping. ‘What's this?'

There was a rainbow-coloured liquid pooled into the depression made by the tyre tracks. He dipped his fingers in, rubbed them together and sniffed. ‘Oil. The car's dropped oil. That usually means it's standing still.'

‘There's something else, Haldean,' called Ashley. He pointed to a broad mark beside a slender footprint with a clearly marked heel. ‘Footprints,' said Ashley. ‘A man and a woman.'

Jack scratched his ear. ‘That means that sometime after the crash, this couple in the car with the diamond-patterned tyres drove down here, got as far as this clearing, stopped the car, got out, then got back in the car and drove away.'

‘Don't get too excited,' warned Ashley. ‘They might not have anything to do with the accident.'

‘Accident?' queried Jack.

Ashley smiled. ‘I'll call it an accident for the time being, if you don't mind. It saves unnecessary explanations.' They walked across the clearing to where Dr Wilcott and Mr Tarleton were waiting for them. ‘We were looking at car tracks,' said Ashley.

‘You can see where the car's been,' said Dr Wilcott, starting down the path. ‘The tracks are clear, to say nothing of the way the grass and vegetation have been crushed. I wondered, when I heard where the accident was, if it was some sort of farm vehicle that had got off the beaten track and come across the Hammer.'

‘The fire engine came across the Hammer last night,' said Jack. ‘The firemen took their water from the river, too, of course.'

‘I suppose a motorist could think driving into the valley and fording the river was a short cut,' said Dr Wilcott with a frown. ‘Goodness knows where it's a short cut to, mind. The man must have been an idiot. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd had a bit too much to drink.'

‘That's what my pal, Arthur Stanton, said last night,' remarked Jack. ‘Hello, Ashley, what have you found?'

Ashley had stopped and crouched down once more. ‘More tyre tracks,' he said in an abstracted voice. ‘These are from the first car, the wire-cord pattern, but look, Haldean. What d'you think of that?'

He was staring at a woman's footprint, a footprint evidently made by the same shoe as had left the print in the clearing.

Jack whistled. ‘What the dickens was she doing here?' He walked on a few steps further, then stopped and brushed away a clump of overhanging grass, looking at the ground intently. ‘She's here again, Ashley,' he called. ‘The man too.' He stood up. ‘As I see it, there were two cars here last night. Car number one, the wire-cord, went on to crash in the valley. Car number two, with the diamond-pattern tyres, stood in the clearing for a time, long enough to drop some oil, while the couple in the car walked down the path.'

‘There's a couple more footprints further on, as well,' said Ashley after a brief examination. He turned to Mr Tarleton. ‘I think we'd better get a photograph of this.' He shook his head in a puzzled way as Mr Tarleton set up his tripod. ‘I can't imagine what these people were doing here. It's one thing to stop and take a look from the clearing, it's quite another to plunge down this path, especially in the pitch dark and wearing heeled shoes. I wouldn't mind taking a plaster cast of both the tyre tracks and the footprints. I'll do that on the way back. I'd better advertise for this couple to come forward, too. They could be witnesses and if they were innocent sightseers, there's no reason why they shouldn't get in touch with us.'

Dr Wilcott frowned. ‘What other kind of sightseer could they be?'

Ashley cleared his throat. ‘We think the crash might not be as straightforward as it appears at first sight, Doctor. I'd be obliged if you'd keep that to yourself, though.'

The doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Fair enough. I'll keep it under my hat. But d'you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't straightforward. It seems so odd that anyone would drive down here by mistake.'

‘As I say, keep it to yourself, Doctor. Let's get on, shall we?' He raised his voice to call to the photographer. ‘Mr Tarleton, can you follow us down when you're finished?'

They set off again, scrambling down the path into the valley. ‘I wouldn't like to come down here at any speed,' said Dr Wilcott. ‘It'd be a tight squeeze for most cars, to say nothing of the damage to the suspension. I've never been down this path, although I know the Hammer fairly well. It's shallow enough to wade through for most of its length, although there are a couple of interesting pools. It's very picturesque but not much good for fishing and useless for bathing or boating. I'm a bit of a fisherman in my spare time and I'm fairly well up on most of the rivers in this area. All the really interesting bits of river come further downstream, where it joins the Breeden. There's some nice picnic spots, though, I believe,' he added. ‘And people paint and so on, too.'

‘Mark Stuckley said the glade is a favourite spot for picnics,' agreed Jack. ‘The glade is where it happened, of course,' he added, his nose wrinkling as the dismal, damp, decayed smell of burnt wet wood wafted up to them. ‘I don't think anyone will fancy picnicking here for while.'

The path opened out into what should have been, on this crisp spring morning, a delightful place. Great gusty masses of white cloud scurried overhead, blown by a stiff breeze that shook the trees and the bracken, but the grass was scarred and blackened and the trees were reduced to sooty skeletons.

Ashley drew his breath in as he took in the scene. The twisted metal of the car lay smashed against a beech tree and forlorn, burnt fragments scattered the glade.

In the car, sprawled over what had been the front seats, was a lumpy black shape, still identifiable as human. ‘Yours, Dr Wilcott, I believe,' Ashley said quietly. He had turned pale and was obviously making a huge effort to act as unemotionally as possible. ‘After Mr Tarleton has taken his photographs, of course.'

‘Lucky me,' said Wilcott grimly. ‘I'm not going to do anything much here. We'll need a stretcher to take the remains back up to the clearing.'

Two uniformed policemen were standing by the car. Ashley went to talk to them. Jack, overcoming his reluctance, followed him. It wasn't the first time he had seen a victim of fire. The war had hardened him to many things but the sight and the smell of a pilot in a burnt-out plane or the scorched remains of men once the Germans had turned their
Flammenwerfers
loose in a trench was always ghastly, no matter how many times he had to look at it. He glanced at Ashley and felt oddly protective of the older man. Ashley hadn't had his experience and was obviously finding this very hard.

‘My God, that's nasty,' said Ashley with feeling. ‘Anyway,' he said with a shudder, ‘the men report there've been no sightseers, male or female. And you've been here since what time?' he asked, turning back to the men.

‘Since first light, sir,' said one of the policemen. ‘We haven't heard a peep from anyone.'

Jack looked at the wreck. It had been, as he'd seen last night, a very substantial car. ‘It's a Rolls-Royce,' he said in surprise. ‘Look, Ashley, even all twisted up like this, the grill's very distinctive and although the mascot's damaged, it's identifiable.'

Ashley looked at the broken flying lady on what had been the bonnet. ‘A Rolls? Well, that shouldn't be too hard to place. They're not that common.'

Dr Wilcott crouched down beside the car, looking at the body. ‘I can't tell you if it's a man or a woman yet,' he said. ‘However . . .' With a professional calm that Jack could only admire, he reached out and touched the corpse's temple. ‘I thought as much,' he said after a moment. ‘He – I'll say ‘he' for convenience – he's got a nasty head injury.' He rocked back on his heels. ‘He could have cracked himself on the dashboard, I suppose, but I can't see anything that would cause the injury. It's a pretty severe blow. I'll be able to say for certain after the post-mortem, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was dead before the fire started.'

Ashley glanced at Jack. ‘That would support your idea.' He broke off as Mr Tarleton arrived. With considerable reluctance the photographer set up his camera and, under Ashley's direction, got to work.

Leaving him to it, Jack walked away from the car up the slope to Hammerholt. In the daylight it was easy to see how vital their efforts had been. The grass was blackened and scorch marks ran all the way up to the balcony above. Something grey caught his eye. It was the remains of a man's hat, a grey homburg, which, although damaged by fire, looked as if it had been new. He showed it to Ashley, who examined it in satisfaction, turning it over in his hands.

‘It's a pity it's burnt,' said Ashley, looking inside the brim. ‘I can't make out the maker's name but we might be able to see what it is back at the station.' He glanced round the glade. ‘I wonder if anything else was thrown out of the car?'

They quartered the glade, but the hat was the only thing they found. Leaving Ashley by the car, Jack followed the path between the hawthorn bushes down to the river. He hoped he might find more footprints from the mysterious couple but, although there were plenty of footprints in the churned-up mud of the glade, they seemed to be all of firemen's boots. On the opposite side of the river, the grass showed clear marks where the fire engine had come across the fields, and the little pebbly beach was deeply rutted by its wheels. Apart from that, there was no damage, and no footprints either. The sun-flecked water chattered over the stones, a blackbird sang and a wood pigeon cooed somewhere out of sight. It was a pleasant spot, with grassy banks sloping down to either side of the water. Jack found it a relief to see something that wasn't scarred by fire.

He turned back at the sound of his name. ‘Come and see what you make of this,' called Ashley. He crouched down at the back of the car. ‘I'm trying to read the registration plate,' he said. ‘The front plate's a goner, of course, but the back one's not too bad.'

Jack sacrificed his handkerchief to wipe the plate. ‘I think it says A and that's a P followed by 61 something but I can't make out the next bit very clearly. There's an eight, I think, but I can't be sure.' He looked up. ‘AP? That's a Sussex plate, of course.'

Ashley clicked his tongue. ‘AP? I wonder if the driver was a local man.' He turned to the two policemen who were standing placidly by. ‘Do you know who has a Rolls-Royce in this area?'

Constable Marsh and Constable Hulme looked at each other. ‘Well, there's not a lot of them about, sir,' said Constable Marsh. ‘I can't say I know them all, like, but there's Mr Wintergreen over at Lower Haverly. He has one, that I do know. Major Warren of Handcross has one and there's Sir Philip Rivers of Stanmore Parry, if you'd call that local.'

‘It's not Uncle Philip's,' put in Jack.

‘And then there's Mr Vaughan of Chavermere, not that that's so very close by. Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, like.'

‘It's not Mr Vaughan's,' said Jack. ‘He was talking to me last night when the crash happened. His chauffeur could have been driving the car, I suppose. Not that I know he has a chauffeur, of course, but surely Mr Vaughan would have reported it if his car had gone missing.'

The two policemen looked at each other. ‘But Mr Vaughan's car has gone missing, sir,' said Constable Hulme slowly. ‘That was before this car crash, of course. About eight o'clock in the evening, it was. We had a report that Mr Vaughan's Rolls-Royce had been stolen.'