Authors: Barbara Cleverly
“Too late. It’s too late. Joe, they’ve got him. He could be dead by now.”
“Can’t be. What the hell! Between here and London. What on earth happened?”
“That was his mother. She was very distraught. In floods of tears but I managed to understand her. En route for London in the back of the car, he was taken ill. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but I know what he was suffering from—it was epilepsy. Matron told me herself. She was glad to see the back of him because she was getting scared by the increasing frequency and ferocity of his attacks. The parents had agreed that he could no longer be accommodated at the school. He was recalled to London. Pending transit to Germany. The family is German—well, half: his father. They were planning to get treatment from a German clinic.”
“What did the chauffeur do?” Joe asked.
“The best he could. The lady had nothing but praise for
him
. Alarmed by the boy’s condition, he saw a sign on the road and the name of a hospital. He instantly drove off the main road and presented himself with the boy as an emergency at the hospital minutes later. Spielman was still alive, he says, when they arrived, and doctors whisked him away into a ward for treatment. The chauffeur telephoned London for instructions, following which he returned to the family home with his story, and the boy’s father set out to Sussex to perform his paternal duties. He left central London an hour ago.”
“Hold on,” Joe said calmly. “I think I need to check all this,
but it sounds as though a natural event has occurred and been handled in the best possible way—”
Gosling broke into this soothing speech. “Rot! If you’ll take advice from someone you’re determined to place on the wrong side of the fence, get in your car and drive while you can.” He took Joe’s keys from his pocket and threw them onto the desk. “Find this hospital. Get there before Spielman senior. Insist on seeing the boy. Dead or alive, as they say. The payment had been made; Rapson knew a boy was under threat. And now one has disappeared. If you ignore this, Rapson died in vain!”
“Take the keys back,” Joe said. “Go down to the garage and bring my car round to the front door. We’ll give you five minutes’ start. And stay in the driving seat, engine running. Something tells me you’re a better driver than I am. And as long as your hands are wrapped around a steering wheel I can keep an eye on them. Dorcas will map-read for you. Dorcas, which hospital are we looking for?”
Dorcas gaped for a moment. “She couldn’t say. She didn’t know or didn’t remember the name. Sorry, Joe. I was trying to—”
“Yes, I heard you. Go on.”
“We can rule out Brighton; that’s in the opposite direction. We must go north towards London.”
“It’s probably one of those little cottage hospitals, locals-for-the-use-of, you find scattered around the countryside. Some of them are very good. But which? Did she say how long they’d been on the road before the boy succumbed?”
“Um … wait a minute … she said an hour. Not that I’d take that as gospel; she was very upset and not at all clear. You’d say she’d only been told half the story. You know how men can be—‘Watch what you say! Mustn’t frighten the horses or the ladies, must we?’ ”
“The boy left here at ten,” Joe said, puzzled by Dorcas’s lack of her usual sharpness before he remembered that she was not a
motorist and didn’t think in terms of miles per hour. “So they were on the road for an hour at the most, probably less. An hour at what speed in the snow, in that car?”
“Thirty, tops,” said Gosling. “Say twenty. Twenty to thirty miles north of here on the London road or just off it. Country area, sparsely populated. Big centres to north and south of it supplying serious medical care—you’re right, Sandilands. It’ll be cottage hospitals at the best. The kind that handle mostly maternity cases or farming accidents. Shouldn’t we get hold of a county list and start ringing hospitals in that range?”
“That’ll take forever!” Joe was impatient. “And always assuming they’re prepared to confide in a stranger over the telephone. You know how discreet the medical trade can be. If we hit on the right one and it turns out to be the wrong one—if you see what I mean—they’re going to deny all knowledge anyway. Look, Dorcas, spend a moment cutting out this photograph of Spielman, will you? We may need to use it as identification. We’ll take it with us.”
“Tempting Fate, Joe? Finishing off Rapson’s work for him like that?” Dorcas’s voice was subdued. “I’m not sure I want to do this.”
“Superstitious nonsense—just get on!”
Dorcas supplied him with the cutout then searched for and found a motoring map in her bag. “It’s small scale, but it’ll do. How many hospitals can there be off the main London road? Not many, and if the chauffeur saw the sign with a drama going on in the back seat, I’m sure we can find it with three people looking out. I’ll find a suitable one and guide you there. Leave it to me.”
They listened as Gosling clattered down the staircase and Joe hastily began to collect up documents and put them away. Dorcas hurried to help him.
“Why did you lose your rag with that young man, Joe? Nasty scene. I’m sure he didn’t deserve it.”
“I don’t trust him. He works for the opposition. I wanted to
shock an admission out of him, and if you hadn’t poked your nose in I might have got it. It’s a well-known technique. You’ll have noticed that he’s younger and stronger than I am and that he’s no stranger to the noble art, so—”
“So you used your other advantages? The low cunning and clunking fist I mentioned. But what really provoked you to violence?”
“His pretence of cooperation was irritating me. And I don’t forget it was Gosling we came upon shunting little Spielman off in a Daimler.”
“We’re getting closer.”
“What is this? How many layers of the onion have you peeled off me so far? You know I can’t be doing with any of that analysis nonsense.”
“I think it was the boys, wasn’t it? The sudden realisation that Jackie and Spielman might be in danger. That caused the eruption. The translation of pent-up feelings into physical action. Good. I’m relieved to find there’s still a heart beating under the stiff navy suiting and the gold frogging. I could phrase that in more scientific terms, half of them German, but I don’t want to annoy you.”
“No time to be annoyed. One more thing to do before we shoot off into the night. Pass me that note pad, will you?” Joe scribbled on a sheet of paper and tore it off, talking at the same time. “Look, while I get this delivered, I want you to send Jackie straight to Matron to tell her he’s staying the night.”
“I take it you’re thinking he’s not in danger anymore?”
Joe sighed. “To be honest, I think another poor lad is on his way to meet old Charon, two obols tucked under his tongue. It’s time to fight another bout with the Infernal Lord or whatever Gosling called him. And this is one I’m not certain we can win. Hercules, where are you?”
“No idea what you’re maundering on about, but buck up, Joe! I’ve seen you take on the devil before and win.”
“Right. That looks tidy. Nothing more we can do. I expect old Farman will be straight in here the moment our backs are turned, but—what the hell!” Joe tucked the black book into the pocket of his overcoat and grabbed his scarf.
I
NSPECTOR
M
ARTIN GOT
the call just after 3:00
P.M
. He pulled on the gumboots he kept by the door and questioned the breathless young constable who was hopping from foot to foot in excitement just outside.
“I said we got it, sir! In the melt. Right in the middle of the yard. The knife. Six inches. Meat knife. Still got blood traces on it. You can cancel the dogs.”
“Good lad. Who needs bloodhounds when he’s got you and Sergeant Savage on a lead, eh?”
The two men sploshed their way down the path towards the farm buildings and Martin looked up anxiously at the sky. Not much daylight left—an hour at best, he calculated. But it would do. He stopped at the sound of a car engine starting up in one of the old covered horse-stalls that served as the school garage and watched as the Scotland Yard man’s Morris belted out backwards, skidded into a three-point turn, and then proceeded more carefully down the route to the front of the school.
“Yard buggering off early,” he remarked to the constable. “Will that be London hours he’s keeping, do you think?”
The constable nodded and grinned. “Perhaps he’s had enough and he’s off back to the bright lights for good. Had his snoop around, seen nothing, tucked his swagger stick under his arm, and suddenly—‘Carry on, Inspector’ is what we hear.”
“ ‘Sod off, Inspector’ is what I’m hearing,” Martin grunted.
“Except we don’t hear. Gone without so much as a ta-very-much.”
This rapid exit was exactly what Martin had been hoping for. A clear run at a demanding task without the Fancy Pants
Met officer breathing down his neck now lay before him. His departure was only to be expected, and the constable had it right. Of course. So why the dejection he was feeling? Deceived? Let down? Martin reviewed his vocabulary and selected:
Fucked up!
Always a man who could analyse his own feelings and motives, he further decided to condemn his own pride. He’d wanted to show off for this bird. To demonstrate to the Met that he could run a crime scene and come up with the goods. He’d looked forwards to conferring with the commissioner in the matey way the bloke had seemed to favour. All words. Slather. Veneer. Hadn’t even the manners to say he was taking off and wish him luck.
Martin sighed. Ah, well. Another entry in the book of experience.
“Sir! Sir!”
Martin turned to see a school steward slithering down the path in his indoor shoes, waving a bit of paper.
“What’s up, lad?”
“Message from that visitor. Sandilands. He said it was urgent.”
Martin took the folded sheet from him and read:
“Martin! Emergency. Boy missing. Another!
I leave in pursuit. Regroup your office, first light
.
Good luck with the sniffers! J.S.”
Martin smiled at the crisp officer’s phrasing and tucked the note in his pocket. “All’s well, constable. And don’t fret about the Met. He’ll be back to bother us.”
T
en miles north and the light was fading fast. The big car boomed on through the gloaming and Joe was glad of the powerful headlights. Glad also of the strong and confident young hands on the wheel. Gosling was a natural driver and—unusually for one his age and capability—silent on the subject. He didn’t refer to Joe’s modest, workmanlike motorcar as “she.” He didn’t bother Joe with questions he couldn’t answer on mileage, torque or the rattle under the near-side wheel arch. He managed even to avoid a sneering comparison with the Bentley most young men’s uncles seemed to own these days.
Dorcas was sitting next to him in the front passenger’s seat, a map in one hand and a police hand-torch in the other. She was alert and scanning both sides of the road.
“Not so cold now,” Gosling said. “That’s a soft southerly blowing in. The thaw’s well under way. This lot’ll be completely gone by morning.”
“Nasty underfoot?”
“Not bad. Slushy rather than slippery, and the gritters have passed this way. Thirty seems safe on this stretch. As long as I don’t do anything silly with the brake pedal, we’ll be all right. Miss Joliffe? Dorcas? Can you see anything on the map that might be a hospital?”
“No. A way to go yet. I’ve been studying the map, and I’ve got my eye on a likely place. Don’t worry—I’ll tell you in good time to make the turning off. Keep going.”
A few minutes later Gosling exclaimed, “There! A sign. Prince Albert’s Hospital. Half a mile.”
“That’s not marked on here,” Dorcas objected. “There’s no ‘H’ for hospital.” And added vaguely: “A capital ‘H’ does mean hospital, doesn’t it? Not hotel or hostelry?”
“Worth a look,” Joe decided. “Turn off, Gosling.”
Gosling eased the Morris off the main road and into a still snowbound side road.
“Not such good going, sir, but others have been up here before us, so we’ll manage.”
“I think you’re wasting your time. This has come up far too soon. It can’t be the one,” was Dorcas’s advice.
“Carry on, Gosling,” was Joe’s.
They rounded a bend, and there it was on a hilltop, silhouetted against the dying orange glow of the western sky. Gosling’s foot came off the accelerator, and the car shuddered to a halt.
“Blimey! What do we make of that? We’ve bolted down the wrong rabbit hole. Surely this isn’t what we’re looking for?” he said.
“Told you so! Let’s get back to the main road. We’re wasting time,” Dorcas snapped.
“Shush!” Joe said. “It’s not the cottage hospital I was expecting. More like a country house hospital! Grand. Extensive grounds.”
“ ‘Gothick pile dramatically placed within vestiges of monastic edifice … c. 1860,’ would the guide book say?”
“Yes. I think so. Mid-Victorian, I’d guess. And, say what you like about Mid-Victorians, when it came to throwing up a crenellation or two, they didn’t stint.”
“That’s not a hospital,” said Dorcas firmly. “It’s someone’s estate.”
“She’s right. It can’t be a hospital, sir.”
“If it
is
a hospital, it was put up with a good deal of loving care and pots of money by some doubtless Gradgrinding mill-owner to assuage a guilty conscience. There’s one like that on almost every hilltop in this county. Philanthropists trying to outdo each other in the charity stakes. Shall we go on up?”
“Wait a minute!” Gosling said. “What we don’t see is ambulances and other hospital vehicles parked at the ready in the grounds. No one coming or going. Who would come out all this way for medical care anyway? You’d go south on the main road to Brighton or north to London. Listen, I don’t think this is right.” Gosling squirmed in his seat. “Over there, still covered in snow. There’s a name plaque of sorts. Give me the torch, Dorcas.”
“Here you are. Do you want to borrow a glove, George?”
He dismissed the offer with a grin, got out and, with broad sweeps of his bare hand, cleared the marker and shone the torch full on the golden curlicued letters. In silence they read: