Authors: Barbara Cleverly
He slid the pictures roughly into a pile like cards with Spielman on top. “This boy. The most recent? Epileptic? Sad. Had the child been brought to us here, we would have been able to treat him, I’m sure. But—‘lost,’ you say? An ‘unknown’ hospital? I find this difficult to understand. An odd set of circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, and imposed by the vagaries of the English weather. February. Telephone lines down, roads blocked. The boy’s family is about to return to Germany, and they’re finding their plans disrupted. Various people have involved themselves in lending a hand. You see before you a selection of those Good Samaritans.”
“A German family, you say … Spielman.…”
“Diplomatic service.”
“Not just any child, then. Embassy involved? Guaranteed to whip up a froth. I begin to see why they’ve got you chasing about
the countryside, Sandilands. Our German cousins are exercising an ever stronger influence over our top brass. Hah! Gosling! I know you’re understaffed in the Cromwell Road, but you’re also blinkered. Focused on the Red Menace and the Green, Russia and Ireland. Have I at last got through to your superiors with the suggestion that they give more attention to the old enemy? Germany! I was over there last year with a delegation, on a professional visit. Cozying up, breathing admiration, swearing eternal friendship, meeting their top scientists. Not being classed as a top scientist myself, I was paired with a policeman. A certain Rudolph Diels. Heard of him? No? You’d better do some homework, then. Because you
will
hear of him. Impressive fellow! Young and vigorous, gallantly scarred face of a duellist, and head of the Prussian Political Police. We had a long conversation about the work he is commissioning from men like me—from my German confrères, that is.”
“Work for which the National Socialist government sees a need?” Joe asked.
“Ah, yes. All spies cozily together as we are, I suppose I may divulge these things. Just a few days into his new office—the thirtieth of January, wasn’t it, the election victory? Mere days! Chancellor Hitler is sweeping through government. Heads are rolling. Resignations being tendered, appointments being made. That’s probably what your Spielman is up to. Been recalled to do his patriotic duty at the side of his new master. And we see changes already in the university psychology departments. Jews—or those who merely have a Jewish wife—who have been at the forefront of research are packing up and coming to England or crossing the Atlantic. Before any lecture can begin in the universities—you’ll find this hard to believe—the academic giving it is now required, on pain of instant dismissal, to salute and say the words ‘Heil Hitler!’ ”
He gave a low rumbling laugh. “Just imagine! If I were to
stand before a hundred students in a London lecture theatre, raise my right hand, and proclaim ‘All hail MacDonald!’ ”
“The outcome would be much the same, professor,” Joe said easily. “You’d lose your post. But the charge in England would be one of imbecility.”
“And well deserved!” Bentink agreed. “But over there—you know how it is. You’ve fought these fellows. Highly efficient, but soldier ants. No sense of the ridiculous.”
“Not all, sir,” Joe murmured. “Not all.”
“Oh, yes. If it’s exceptions you look for, look no further than the director (for the present moment!) of the Berlin Psychological Institute. Wolfgang Köhler is finding all this saluting rubbish a bit hard to comply with. He performs the action but with all the eager anticipation of a vegetarian who’s just been served with a juicy steak. But most have accepted the situation—politics and leanings in a country that has never been democratic are less compelling when large grants are on offer to any prepared to stick their arms in the air and make a Roman salute.”
He sighed and shook his shaggy head. “It seems what we have now is a
Ganzheitpsychologie
. The larger unity, the nation—the
Volk
, if you like—overrides the interests and rights of the individual. The plan is to put German applied psychology to the service of the National Socialist government, which values it.”
“A science-backed Nazi ideology,” Joe murmured. “Interesting. You are well informed, professor.”
“And shall be even better informed when I return from the Dresden conference in April.” He gave Gosling a knowing look. “Confidential exchanges over the port with your top brass on the cards, young Gosling? I think so. As Miss Joliffe will confirm, the Prussians are more generously funded, less heavily supervised by government, and more adventurous in their approach. Imaginative, ruthless and productive—they are most impressive. And they are not our friends. No matter what the
Times
leader writers tell us.”
Puzzled as to where he was going with this, Joe picked up an odd point that had intrigued him. “You are not regarded as a topranking scientist, you say?”
“Not quite yet. And certainly not in our own country. Psychology? What’s that? Ask a selection of people in Piccadilly, and one third will say it’s to do with the spirit world, one third will say it’s to do with sex, and the remaining third will say it’s a load of bollocks. Ask the same question on the
Kurfürstendamm
, and they’ll tell you it’s a practical science that will solve the nation’s problems.”
He was wasting their time deliberately with the useless generalities of a man propping up the bar at his local pub. In five minutes he’d look at his watch and claim he had to bustle off to his next appointment, so sorry not to have been of more help. Joe decided to push things along.
“The headmaster at the school—St. Magnus—from which the boy Spielman disappeared sends his regards, by the way. And he hopes you found some benefit in the use of the twins he sent you for research last term.”
Bentink bowed his head briefly in automatic acknowledgement but seemed not to remember the name.
“Mr. Farman is the headmaster. I believe you know him from your mutual membership of the Eugenic Society?”
Bentink’s brow furrowed. “Ah—the Brighton chapter? Yes, now you come to mention it. Farman. Got him! He takes the stage occasionally. Corpulent old windbag. But a true and tenacious spirit, I have to say.”
“One of a strong series. The two previous headmasters were equally supportive of the eugenic cause, I understand.”
“It passes down the generations. The young absorb knowledge and resolve at their father’s knee. Nature
and
nurture in harmony. Supporting each other. Fatuous to argue about which is the more influential. Miss Joliffe will tell you. Good genes, good family are
the lifeblood of this country, Sandilands, but we must never disregard the effect of a good upbringing working with them. My father was a guiding light in the Eugenic Education Society, as it was called originally. My brother-in-law James’s father also. He was a contemporary of Galton, you know, and one of the founder members. You could say we were a eugenic family. Tribe, even, since we make a point of making strong bonds with each other’s family.”
He paused to allow this to sink in, his face stiff with pride.
“
Good wombs have borne bad sons
, Shakespeare tells us,” Gosling remarked annoyingly. “Really, he’s said it all, hasn’t he? Who needs psychology when we have the wisdom of the Bard to guide and inform?”
Bentink waited with a pained expression for the interruption to be over, then he bent a keen look on Joe. “Many of your own profession, Sandilands, are eugenists, if not in practice, at least in spirit. But then you, a policeman, would consider yourself to be in the front rank of the struggle against degeneracy. And so you are! Hats off to you! Your profession has our support and our sympathy. London—the Great Wen!—with its pullulating under-classes, is consuming ever more of the country’s resources. Most unfairly. The willing, the able and the well-bred of our country are struggling to fund the feckless and the incapable. A sparrow feeding a cuckoo! The crime rate rises at the very time when the London bobby himself is challenged to riposte. I hear it is ever more difficult to recruit men of a certain stature—physical and moral—to combat this fast-breeding, self-propagating slime. No consolation, but they find they have much the same problems to confront in Germany.
“The difference between our approaches being that
they
take it seriously and are prepared for—indeed, are already engaged in—taking practical steps to combat the threat.”
He got to his feet. “And now, gentlemen, I leave you to make
a tour of inspection if that would amuse you. Take Matron along if you wish. Alternatively, take Miss Joliffe—she knows the building inside out, inquisitive little creature that she is. You may go about wherever you please.”
Joe spoke ritual words of departure. “… and thank you for taking the time to see us, professor,” he said politely. “We’ll leave you now to practice your salute.”
There was a tense moment as Ben Lomond crashed into Ben Levi in the craggy expanse of the face. Bentink managed to turn his frown into a benign smile as they left.
“Lord, Dorcas!” Joe whispered. “Whatever did you put in that man’s boots?”
“I know one of the lab technicians. I asked him to get me a particularly obnoxious sample of monkey diarrhea.”
T
hey walked disconsolately down corridors, occasionally peering into rooms that appeared to be unoccupied, ducking out of busy wards with murmured apologies to the duty nurses, preoccupied and getting nowhere with their token inspection.
“Sir, could you work out what that bloke’s point of view was? After all that chat, I couldn’t say whether he approves of the Nazi new boys or hates their guts,” Gosling said when they reached a deserted corridor.
“I was wondering if he knows himself. Many people are ambivalent. I’d say he started out by making vaguely antagonistic noises to draw a reaction from us. To find out where we stand. Was he reassured by the stiffness of our upper lips, Gosling? By our flamboyantly patriotic professions? Possibly. But I think it was his own instinct for glory-seeking and empire-building that swept him into a revelation, towards the end, of something much nastier. Well, nasty by my lights. Admiration for the new regime? Fascination?”
“You don’t know the half of it!” Dorcas said. “It’s obsession! It’s my belief he won’t return from Dresden! Your crack about the saluting really shook him. I think he’s heard the siren song of prestige and unlicensed power.”
“We came here for Spielman, not to put Bentink’s psyche under the microscope,” Joe reminded them.
“We may not know what we’re looking for, but we ought to make a serious start and stop casting about like a pack of masterless hounds,” was Gosling’s suggestion.
“Just one more ward,” Joe advised. “Keep your heads down. We’ve still got company! And we do know what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the Lethal Chamber,” he said grimly.
“Don’t be mealy mouthed! The Killing Room, in blunt old Anglo-Saxon,” Dorcas said. “We won’t find it anywhere close to these scenes of well-regulated medical care.”
“Where’s she taking us, sir?” Gosling wanted to know as they left the Edith Cavell Ward and their pace along the corridor accelerated.
Dorcas stopped, looking about her, and spoke urgently to them. “We’ve been given free rein, so he’s very confident we’ll find nothing. But I’m not wandering into this maze completely clueless. Think of the architecture—flat roof, so nothing over our heads. Modern, so no archaic features like cellars and basements. It’ll be on the ground floor with easy access to the rear for entry and disposal. Away from public and patient areas. Only one way to go. The animal research lab. No casual enquirer would go into that menagerie out of choice.”
M
INUTES LATER THEY
stood surveying cages and operating benches in a very long room, empty and scrubbed clean. White tiles and chrome pipes gleamed. The air was redolent of pine-scented disinfectant.
“Nothing here,” Gosling said, running a careful eye around the walls. “All activity abandoned, you’d say. A dead end.”
He jumped, startled, to find a green-coated technician had appeared at his side.
After a soft cry of recognition, Dorcas seized the stranger by
the sleeve and drew him forwards. “George, Joe, this is someone I know. It’s Adam. He’s one of the animal stewards. He cares for the creatures in their main quarters in the village and presents them here in the holding cages ready for experimentation and … clears up afterward.”
“Miss Joliffe!” The red-haired boy could not have been more than seventeen. He had eyes only for Dorcas, and his pale, sharp features flooded with relief. “I saw you come. My letter? You got it?”
“I did, Adam. That’s why we’re here. Thank you. Wheels in motion. These two gentlemen are inspectors from London. They’ll know what to do. Not much time. What have you to show us?”
“We should be all right. I watched the boss take off in his Rolls for the station a quarter of an hour ago. You were tracked as far as Cavell Ward. Then Matron decided you were a waste of time, gave up, and went for a cuppa.” He looked anxiously behind him. “Or else she passed on the baton.”
“I don’t believe we were followed this far,” Joe said.
Adam gave an uneasy grin. “Don’t be too sure. You didn’t see
me
. Nobody sees a bloke in a green coat pushing a trolley. And I’m one of a dozen. So prepare for a swift bailout. There’s a back exit. You needn’t cross Matron again.”
“This is where the boss torments baby animals?” Joe said, looking about him at the cheerless cages with dismay.
“Sir!” Adam turned an anxious look on him. “That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that. Tell him, Miss Joliffe!”
“Yes, Miss Joliffe,” Joe said invitingly, turning to her with a politely enquiring expression. “You’ve got our attention! Something you’ve been working towards for quite a while. Perhaps you’ll tell us why you’ve lured us to this charming spot?”
“I told you about the experiment that was abandoned. There were six of us students present to witness the torment. You can’t imagine what an inferno of pain and screams this room was!
Afterward, three of the students went away to write up notes, and three of us stayed behind.”