“Sounds like a good offer to me.” The light voice came from the doorway. “I’d take it if I were you, Commissioner.”
Dorcas was standing in the doorway, Drummond in hand and a quartet of small open-mouthed boys behind her. She turned to her flock. “All’s well, you see. The gentlemen are just having a rag. And making far too much noise. I shall speak to them! Go back to your drawing, will you, boys, and I’ll join you in a tick. If I’m not back before the tea bell goes in … five minutes time … you may all go straight down to the dining hall.”
Closing the door, Dorcas eyed the two red faces as the combatants straightened ties and dusted down trousers. Her expression grew fierce. “What a sight for young eyes! What am I to tell them? No use saying you were having a practice bout. They’re not stupid. It was quite obvious the commissioner was trying to kill their schoolmaster. It’ll be all round the school in no time. You, young man! Gosling, isn’t it? What have you done to irritate Joe? Didn’t anyone warn you he fights fast and dirty?”
“I’d heard he’d learned tricks in the East,” Gosling offered hesitantly, scrambling to his feet. “India, was it?”
Dorcas gurgled. “East India Docks more like. Or The Bucket of Blood in Seven Dials. He’s a member of some pretty louche establishments where the pugilist arts are taught and the Marquess of Queensberry has never set foot. You can count yourself lucky he’s getting on a bit and losing his edge. Now, when you’ve had a chance to get your breath back and master your palpitations, Joe, perhaps you’ll tell me what provocation gave rise to this murderous attack.”
“No bloody time!” Gosling’s cry was alarming. “For God’s sake! There’s a child out there who’s been snatched from under our noses. You saw it happen yourself, Miss Joliffe. Spielman. The little kid with the big ears. We all waved him off! He’s paid for and on his way.”
“What? Calm down, Mr. Gosling. On his way to where? The boy I saw going off happily this morning by Daimler was on his way to London. To the bosom of his family.”
“But was he? For God’s sake, Sandilands, tell her.”
Joe had never spoken more swiftly and to a more receptive audience. Before he had even finished, Dorcas was reaching for the telephone. “Only one way to find out. Give me Spielman’s home number. They won’t want to talk to a policeman. Thank you. I’ll check on him. I expect the little chap is tucking into his warm milk and custard creams.… Shush both of you! Ah, am I through to the Embassy? This is St. Magnus School here, where Master Spielman is a pupil. Matron speaking. I was wondering if I could have a word with our young man. It’s rather urgent. No?… Not yet arrived … In that case, may I have a word with one of his parents? Either Mister or Mrs. Spielman.”
They waited for an extraordinarily long time.
Finally, as Dorcas was about to give up and break the contact, a voice was heard at the other end.
“Mrs. Spielman? It’s Matron here at St. Magnus.” Dorcas listened intently to a tumbling of words the men could not distinguish, her face growing very grave. “Please, Mrs. Spielman,” she interrupted, “try to calm down. I’m not quite understanding this. Harald is not with you in London? Taken ill … on the journey.… Can you tell me exactly when this happened? This morning? Four hours ago?… Hospital? Which hospital?”
The torrent recommenced and Dorcas listened intently until finally: “I’m devastated to hear your news, madam, and I apologise for disturbing you at such a time. I will inform the headmaster who will reply to you later at a less stressful moment.”
“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.”