Crabbe walked ahead, chattering with Dorcas along a wide corridor whose tiled floor shone impeccably. Joe noted electric lighting, paintings crowding the walls, tables lining the way, each with a white lace cloth and vase of winter greenery. From behind closed doors as they passed along, Joe picked up a strange melange of sounds: a buzz of conversation, shouts of laughter, the tinkle of a piano very badly played and a crooning voice from a gramophone. The pervading odour was a blend of Wimsol bleach and toast.
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.”