Not My Blood (24 page)

Francis Crabbe knocked at a big oak door and put his head round it. Joe heard him say: “There’s a party here again, sir. Two gents and a lady. Will you see them now?” and the jovial response: “Why not! Wheel ’em in, Francis! It
is
the Association Hour, after all.”

Francis crooked a finger at them, smiled, and retreated back down the corridor with his chattering flock, leaving them to face the superintendent.

A grey-haired, bespectacled man looked up at them with curiosity from the tea table that had been laid in front of a roaring fire. He put down the copy of the
Times
he’d been busy with and came forwards to greet them. In his late fifties and of massive build, he was wearing a thick Orkney fisherman’s sweater and a pair of old trousers with leather patches on the knees. He made no apology for his informal getup. “Gerald Chadwick at your service. Dr. Chadwick. New bugs, eh? I’ll ask you to sign the book in a moment,” he said agreeably. “What about a cup of tea first and a hot mince pie? We’re finishing off the last of the Christmas batch. Our own production, of course. Our bakery is second to none. Mrs. Chivers has won the Victoria Sponge prize in the county competition for three years running. And you are …?”

Dorcas again spoke for the three of them while he bustled
about fetching three more cups from a dresser. “Dr. Chadwick, in a second I shall fall upon a mince pie and a cup of tea. There’s nothing I should like more. But I will not accept your hospitality under false pretences. We are not the hospital visitors you take us for.”

“Oh, really?
Not
from the Lunacy Commission, then? You look like the usual mixed bag of earnest sobersides come to catch us on the hop. Well, I’ll settle for crossword addicts. I’m stuck on six across, if you’d care to take a look. Whoever you are, sit down. You must be frozen through.” And, as they settled awkwardly in a row on the edge of the sofa opposite: “Why don’t you pour, my dear? I expect you’re familiar with the gentlemen’s requirements. My hands are a bit unsteady these days.”

A minute later, apparently unimpressed by the selection of warrant and identity cards he’d been offered and which he’d inspected carefully, he spoke again, his tone light and amused: “Well I never! A detective, a spy and a pretty girl walk into a loony bin.… Haven’t I seen you before, in a
Punch
cartoon?”

Joe could not summon up a reciprocal smile. “Sir. We are in a hurry. A life—a young life—may be at stake,” he said sternly. “I speak to you in my police capacity in requesting—no, let’s make that
commanding
—your cooperation in the matter.”

Chadwick’s bonhomie faded, and pale blue eyes glinted over the half-moon spectacles as he said crisply, “Commissioner, I don’t much care to be commanded or even requested by a complete stranger to do anything in my own drawing room. This is the first and only hour of the day when I have been at what passes for rest around here. Don’t suppose, will you, that I spend my days with my feet up munching on muffins! At five precisely I shall be at it again, making the first of my evening rounds. Whether you are here or not. If you wish to accompany me, you’ll be very welcome to tag along. I don’t much mind which one of you is speaking to me and in what capacity—though I’d prefer to deal with the
young lady rather than her pet bull terriers. You’ll get the same straight answers. So get on with it.”

Joe’s story was told with a conciseness the superintendent obviously appreciated. He asked one or two sharp, short questions for clarity and then gave his reply: “No. I’ll tell you straight up—we do not have the child here. I wish I could produce him, hale and hearty, but I can’t. The scenario you describe, it grieves me to say, is distressing but not as far-fetched as you yourselves seem to think. I do see that you are all still struggling with the enormity of such a suspicion. Either natural events have unfolded in just the way you have been told—in which case the boy will turn up, temporarily at least, back on his feet again—or something underhand has occurred. And you are right to view the prospect with dread. It wouldn’t be the first time. Indeed, I commend the speed with which you have reacted.”

“You’ve encountered such a case of kidnap yourself, sir?” Dorcas asked.

He smiled. “Encountered? Say rather dealt with. You see what we are, Miss Joliffe. A community of nearly a thousand patients. Coming and going.…”

“Children? Do you have children on the premises?”

“Some. We have groups of adult men and women, segregated for work and sleeping, but a few children too, the majority of whom have family members here. Unaccompanied young derelicts I am relieved to be able to send on to an excellent specialist youth unit elsewhere in the county. I am a medical clinician myself. Theoretical these days, I’m sorry to say. I like to think of Prince Albert’s more as hospital than asylum—a place to be cured of your ills and from which you pass out in as short a time as possible. But the state sends me increasing numbers of incurables—victims of nothing more than poverty, mental deficiency, sexual abuse, melancholia, general inadequacy and, yes, epilepsy. We are overwhelmed. We are sinking under the weight. But I do what I can.

“This could be a dust bin, my friends, a stinking receptacle for the dregs of a pullulating society. I won’t have that! I run a healing village. Fresh air, hard work—congenial work—and a good, if spare, diet. The patients do most of the work themselves. They have to earn their crust. They work hard. I allow no shirking. In laundry, bakery, market garden and farm. They are the villagers. And in their hours of recreation they do exactly that—they recreate themselves. They paint, they write, they play music. Some even get well!”

He caught himself and smiled. “But I’m launching into my welcome speech and neglecting your business. Your child—Spielman, did you say?—is not here, and if he’d been presented in the circumstances you describe I would first have treated him and secondly have contacted everyone who had an interest: his parents—
both
parents—but also his school even though he had just left it. I would also have notified the local police force. You never know.”

“Why did you stress
both
parents, sir?” Dorcas asked.

“A personal experience. In the case of a desperately sick child—mentally unstable or with low intellectual powers or even epilepsy—the strain on the family becomes too great to bear. One parent, usually the father, takes it upon himself to relieve the household of the burden. A scurrilous father or simply one who is a moral coward may make arrangements, unbeknownst to the wife, with a sympathetic local practitioner to ‘get him certified’ and presented at an establishment like this one. The required number of signatures and acceptances is well regulated. Inspections are made. Nevertheless it is always wise to check rigourously that the consent comes from both parties as well as the medical agent. I take no risks.”

“They made less fuss in ancient Sparta,” muttered Gosling, disgust in his voice. “Just hung them from a lintel. If they fell off—”

“Yes, they led a simpler life!” the superintendent said. “And in many ways we have made little progress over the centuries, you’d say. It was my uncomfortable lot to trip across one such attempt a few years ago. To my cost. I dealt with it. Now, do you want to be on your way, or would you like to accompany me on my rounds? I can unlock the padded cells for you, but you’ll find no occupants. We have nasty electric-shock equipment on the premises, but I’m not sure I could lay hands on it if you asked me to. There are the usual chemical remedies to which we may have recourse in extremis—pacifying drugs and such-like. I use other methods. Restraint is necessary occasionally, but only applied when a patient is in danger of harming himself or herself. That’s the rule here.”

Seeing them hesitate, he added, “Look, if I were some sort of a Bluebeard keeping wailing children behind locked doors, you could hunt around this building till kingdom come, and you wouldn’t come across a child I wanted to hide. It’s enormous. Bigger than Buckingham Palace and with twice as many rooms. Hidey holes everywhere, a farm with outbuildings, a stable block, a working well, a dovecote—stocked. Even a folly or two. Some of it I haven’t set foot in myself.” He paused and fixed Joe with a challenging glare that had an edge of dark humour. “We even have our own cemetery! Hundreds of bodies in it. No one’s ever counted. Going back to Saxon times, I shouldn’t wonder. Prince Albert’s was an abbey centuries ago. Most country hospitals and asylums were. Some graves have marker stones, most are just grassy mounds covering a thousand secrets. But feel free to move about. I’ll detail an escort for you. Francis and his merry men will take you wherever you ask to go.”

“Thank you, Dr. Chadwick, for your offer and for your understanding, but I think we’ll be on our way.”

Murmuring her thanks as they made for the door, Dorcas asked, “Francis Crabbe?”

“He’ll be waiting at the door to show you out. Francis is the leader of the watch teams. Everyone has a job or a duty to do. That is his. He has great authority with his fellow patients. An intelligent man with considerable powers of leadership. He makes an excellent deputy.”

“I’d noticed. What I didn’t observe is any sign of … mental disturbance. I was wondering why he was here with you.”

The doctor smiled. “He’s been here for nearly twenty years and will die here, Miss Joliffe. As you observe, he’s as sane as I am. The other patients know that. Though the judge in his case begged to differ. Francis Crabbe was a young beater on a grouse shoot in Norfolk just as the war was looming. Of the anti-war faction, his hot young blood urged him to make a protest. Many pacifists were marching with banners or chaining themselves to railings in Parliament Square in outcry against the unnecessary slaughter the high and mighty were about to thrust us into. Our Francis decided on a more flamboyant gesture. He grabbed a shotgun and drew a bead on one of the shooting party guests. His target was his Majesty, King George. Missed, as you will have noted. Nevertheless, His Honour Justice Bentwood’s judgement on the would-be regicide was milder than most had expected and many had hoped for. ‘Man’s mad!’ he declared. ‘Can’t hang a maniac.’ So they sent him to us.”

He opened the door. “Ah, Francis! Our guests are in your hands.”

T
HE DOCTOR CAME
loping down the corridor after them, catching them as they reached the front door. “Sandilands, you ought to have this. May be all nonsense but, well, child at risk, as you say. One would like to help.” His words came fast, his tone was dismissive. “I mentioned an establishment I have close dealings with, a hospital at—I would say ‘the cutting edge,’ but you would despise me for a punster—of modern treatment in the
realms of paediatrics. From surgery to psychiatry. It occurs to me that, in your confessedly garbled account of the morning’s events, the child you seek may have fetched up—entirely innocently and in his best interests—at this place. It’s further off your route, but its reputation is wide. The director is … not a friend, but a colleague. Very highly regarded in the profession. If you want to pursue the matter with him—and I would recommend it as a course of action—I would ask you, out of professional sensibilities, not to mention my name.”

He handed Joe a card. “I’ve scribbled his personal telephone number on the back.”

“I shall take your advice, doctor. Thank you very much.” Joe slipped the card away in his pocket. “And allow me to hand you something in return. The answer to six across? ‘Ancient killer at home at last to a pair of idiots.’ Eight letters. Try ‘assassin.’ ”

The doctor shook with laughter. “Idiots in plain view but where, Sandilands, is the home in question? Let me know if you find it!”

T
he waiter at The Bells handed around menus and Joe and Dorcas looked at them, unseeing, preoccupied.

“All the same, Joe, finishing off a man’s crossword like that—it’s just not done!”

“Oh? I rather think he invited us to help.”

“He was just making polite noises. Burbling a bit.”

“Dorcas, I don’t think Dr. Chadwick ever burbled anything inconsequential in his life. Every word was weighed. Intriguing man. I do wonder why he spends his afternoons dressed like a rat-catcher, though. Quite put me off my stride.”

“Perhaps he’d been catching rats,” Dorcas said huffily. “Something you don’t seem too keen on yourself. Why didn’t you go on, Joe, to the next hospital? Goodness knows where that child may be by now.”

“State of the road, darkness, late hour—”

“Oh, you can stop. You won’t say it, so I’ll do it for you—the child’s dead already and was before we started out on our wild goose chase.”

“Either that or he’s recovered and back with his family. We’ll know in the morning, but there’s nothing else we can do tonight. Except try to enjoy our supper. Now can we concentrate on the menu?”

“What are you going to have? Not a wide choice at The Bells, I see, in spite of its efforts to turn itself into some sort of a fashionable roadhouse to attract the fast motoring set.”

“Yes, it’s not exactly the cobwebbed old barn I’d expected—full of yokels in smocks lifting tankards of foaming ale. Much more entertaining! Glad you packed your blue silk.”

She looked about her with curiosity and Joe smiled to see the old Dorcas appear briefly. “I’ve never stayed in a roadhouse before,” she confided.

“Glad to hear it! Dens of iniquity. I should be shot for bringing you here.”

He noted with approval the dinner dress she’d changed into. It was well cut and discreet. Not one of those backless creations all the women seemed to wear these days. A chap never quite knew where to put his hands anymore when he encountered nothing but flesh down to a partner’s waist, and he said as much to his companion.

Dorcas looked around the gathering of dinner dancers. “The lady crossing the floor,” she murmured. “Do look, Joe! She’s found an entirely new part of her anatomy to put on show.”

“Good Lord! It’s to be hoped her partner’s wearing gloves. Otherwise I may have to step in and arrest them for public indecency.”

He looked quickly back at Dorcas and found himself admiring the single strand of pearls, the mascaraed lashes that didn’t need the attention, the mouth rouged in red lipstick. Freshly bathed, she smelled of a blend of Pears soap and perfume. He felt suddenly unworthy of the effort the girl had made.