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Monk looked Hooper up and down. ‘And expect to be believed?’ he said incredulously.
Hooper grinned. ‘Maybe not, but it would be a bit late for me then,’ he pointed out.
They arrived in the golden autumn morning. Many of the fields were already harvested and the stooks stood sharp in a bucolic kind of beauty. After rubbing the horse down and giving it shelter and water, which was plentiful in the old stables, Hooper gave it a small portion of the oats they had brought for it, and then they turned their attention to the house.
‘The local police have already been right through it,’ Monk said thoughtfully as they stood in the kitchen. ‘What could we see that they missed?’
‘Something we know is here and they didn’t,’ Hooper replied without hesitation.
Monk thought for a moment, turning round slowly, staring at the walls, cupboards, storage bins. ‘Food,’ he said. ‘The local shop should be able to tell us what stores were bought, over the last few years. Let’s look for laundry supplies. Sick people need a lot of laundry doing. They also need the place clean. You don’t clean the house every day if there’s no one living here. We’ll see what there is, what sort, what amounts. Old cartons could tell us a lot. How much bed linen is there? Later we can look for a workshop and the tools where Rand made the machine that delivers the blood drip by drip.’
‘Right,’ Hooper agreed.
‘And another thing,’ Monk added. ‘Maybe this one isn’t his first machine. If we can find the remains of another, older one, that would be evidence of his trying this for a long time.’
‘Not proof by itself,’ Hooper pointed out ruefully.
‘It is if there are traces of blood in it,’ Monk retorted. ‘Let’s start looking for bits and pieces that would have been parts. Notice everything with that in mind. It might look like a hosepipe or part of the plumbing now.’
Hooper rolled his eyes, but he did it with a smile, albeit a wry one.
They worked until it was dark, then lit the oil lamps and did what little could be done in their light. They found enough bed linen to offer changes for eight beds. Some of it was very old, as if it had been there when Rand was a child. Similarly they found a few toys in the boxroom that could have belonged to anyone in the last half-century. There was even an old rocking horse.
There was not storage for more food than three or four people would need, but the gardener grew potatoes, carrots, green vegetables, onions, lots of beans and most of the herbs that were common. The orchard was laden with apples, pears and plums, and there were wild berries in the hedges. There was a milking space in the cow shed, although the cows had gone, but perhaps not so long ago.
‘Perfect place,’ Monk said with a touch of bitterness. ‘But what the hell proof is there of anything? All the experiments could have happened here.’
Hooper pointed to a pile of odd pipe lengths, plumbing joints, valves and lengths of wood sitting in the corner. ‘He certainly used his workshop. Could have made the machine in the downstairs bedroom in here easily. But I couldn’t find proof that there was an earlier one, although I believe there was. Maybe several.’
‘If he’d any sense he would have got rid of the bits,’ Monk agreed. ‘Probably buried them. He’s got acres to choose his spot. We’ll get an early night. Can’t search much with a lantern. Let’s start questioning the villagers tomorrow; see who they remember being here.’
Hooper’s face was bleak. ‘See how many kids have gone missing that were never accounted for.’
‘That too,’ Monk agreed softly. ‘If this is where he did earlier experiments then there’s got to be something.’
But the villagers could tell them nothing that was definitive. Many were willing to stand in the street and recall all that Monk and Hooper would listen to. Yes, this person or that had gone missing, but usually it was easily explained. This one had gone on a drunken spree and returned home without any recollections of where he had been. These two had eloped. Heard to be living a few miles away. That one had joined a travelling fair, so they said. Of course there were those no one could account for, but that was always so. Maybe more of them than might be normal were young and healthy. This was always very sad, but such things happened. Was it more here than happened in any other village? Who could say?
Monk and Hooper had a stroke of luck at the local pub. Both were weary and by now also disheartened. Talking about it only made it worse.
Monk was considering returning home. He hated having to tell Hester that they had found a dozen things that were indicative, but even taken all together, they proved nothing. There was no witness who could testify to anything, and also no signs of the gardener. He had apparently gone to recuperate from his misadventures with a relative over a hundred miles away, they learned.
‘Wish I’d known that when we arrived,’ Hooper said unhappily, when he and Monk had returned to the cottage. ‘I wouldn’t have been looking over my shoulder half the time.’
‘He’ll come back,’ Monk said, standing near the potting shed. ‘These tools are worth a fair bit. And well kept. No dirt on any of this, all clean, practically polished.’ He walked over to the rack where spades and forks were neatly arranged. ‘Lot of them. He must do a fair bit of digging. This one’s got a brand-new head on it.’
‘Digging,’ Hooper repeated the word thoughtfully. ‘Lot of garden here, but only so much digging you can do. Mostly a weeding and raking sort of thing, except when you dig up the potatoes. I’d do that with a fork, myself, not a spade.’
A horrible thought crept into Monk’s mind, making him cold in the pit of his belly. He looked at Hooper, and saw the same thought in his eyes.
‘What do you suppose they intended to do with the bodies, if they had to kill the children, or Hester?’ Monk said.
‘Bury them,’ Hooper replied without hesitation, as if saying the words were somehow drawing their venom.
‘Where?’ Monk looked around.
‘Not here!’ Hooper said quickly. ‘Somewhere that no one would notice the disturbed earth. Somewhere that the grass would grow thick and green over it quickly, and where that wouldn’t be noticed either. New green is easy to see.’
‘Pretty thick grass in the orchard,’ Monk said thoughtfully. ‘But it’s all a bit lush and untended in there. Some of the apple trees look as if they could do with pruning.’
