No warning, no bargaining. One shot. With a look of surprise, Chadwick buckled at the knees and slumped to the ground, a red hole between the staring eyes.
Joe panted up with Gosling at his side. Gently he took the gun from Crabbe’s grasp and put the safety catch on. His next act was to seize a shivering Dorcas in a tight and wordless hug.
Tactfully, Gosling went to check the body, which was lying collapsed backwards over a tombstone.
“A bit slow on the draw.” With a toe he pushed a Browning revolver away from Chadwick’s hand. “He’s a goner, sir.”
“Hit by a Smith and Wesson at point blank range, he would be,” Joe said, back in control again. “I don’t need to ask why, but I wish you’d left him for us to deal with, Crabbe.”
“Couldn’t be certain he’d not get away with it. He always has. This was the only sure way. I’ve had mad fantasies about this for years, sir,” he admitted with a shaky grin. “Look at it this way-if I hadn’t shot, Miss Dorcas would have. I could feel her hands twitching. Right now she’d be in all kinds of bother. I’m not sure she’s the kind of lady who’d get over killing a man, even a monster like that. She might have had to stand trial. Wouldn’t want that. Anyway, I’m mad. Officially mad. What are they going to do? Send me to a loony bin?”
Francis Crabbe smiled a smile of pure reason.
“Christ Almighty, Crabbe! I believe you’ve just set the waterworks on fire,” said Joe, admiring.
CHAPTER 31
They met for the last time in the equipment room, sitting at the table while whistling coppers cleared the place of documents and evidence boxes.
Joe looked around him with the familiar blend of regret, anxiety and triumph that always accompanied the closing of a case. Anxiety was winning the struggle for his attention. He grimaced. “Tin hat and a one-way ticket to the Riviera, I think you suggested earlier, Martin? Advice we might need to take, all four of us.”
“You’ve knocked the top off a beehive, Sandilands. And it’s you they’re all buzzing after. But I’ll tell you, if anyone needs watching it’s that professor we’ve got under lock and key in Tunbridge. I warn you, he’s got all sorts of mischief planned for you when we let him loose.”
“Let him loose? Why would you do that?”
“He seems confident he’ll get bail. Seems to think you’ll know why. Pity we couldn’t get him for the St. Magnus murders. I thought when the lid came off the Spielman coffin, we’d have it sewn up. Oh, it was all tickety-boo on the surface; death well documented and accounted for. All aboveboard. Nasty scene,” Martin confided. “Spielman blustering and claiming immunity, Madame Spielman shrieking and distraught. But-alerted-our doc confirmed suspicious death, signs of electrodes applied under the hair.”
The inspector looked steadily across at Joe. “He’s a good bloke, that one. Came straight out and said if he hadn’t been warned to look for something a bit fishy, he’d have passed the body straight through. No question. Then we looked more carefully at the documents. And the bottom fell out of our theory. Two unknown medical signatures on the death certificate-both bona fide doctors used regularly by Chadwick. No, neither of ’em Dr. Carter. He’s well in the clear on the eugenics racket. And then we tracked the delivery van back to the Prince Albert.”
He paused to puff his pipe into life. “That was a bad hour you put us through, commissioner. You were out there on the road. We were busting a gut to get hold of you and warn you. Leaving messages here there and everywhere. The school, The Bells, the RAC patrol boys. Ringing and ringing. But you’d disappeared … gone off the dial. Blimey, I’d have-” He glanced at Dorcas and censored the soldier’s phrase which had been on the tip of his tongue, “-been extremely concerned had I know you were driving straight into that snake pit!”
“We were shitting bricks too, inspector,” Dorcas said.
“So, you’re all off this afternoon, leaving me carrying the can?” Martin concluded with affected grumpiness.
“Not all. Gosling’s staying on here for a bit.”
“Liaising with the new headmaster when he gets here,” Gosling said. “Calming things down. Providing some continuity.”
Martin expressed the hope that when the interviews took place, somebody would have the sense to check whether the applicant’s featured on the Eugenic Society list. He suggested a little blackballing might be advisable. “You know, Farman really thought we were making a silly fuss. Tried to make out he didn’t know he was sending those poor boys off to their deaths-they were just onward bound to further specialised treatment at the parents’ request. Huh! He’s got his lawyers quite convinced he’s been misunderstood! Deluded or what?”
“Self-deluded,” Dorcas suggested. “The very best kind of liar. Like his Matron. She was just doing what the headmaster asked her to do, of course. Packing the boys’ trunks and waving them off.”
“Matron aided and abetted, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t privy to the hideous truth. Didn’t know because she didn’t ask. Well rewarded. Money closes more than mouths, it closes minds. She claims that, insofar as she had any thoughts at all, she reckoned all that discreet leaving by the back door after dark was designed to avoid any disturbance to the other boys.”
Martin sighed. “Very persuasive lady. Runs rings round the men. She’ll move on unscathed. But not unchecked.”
“From a London perspective, Farman has been quite useless when it comes to rolling up the conspiracy. They were too smart to give away names and contacts. He received his orders by telephone. Not always the same voice. And he, in turn, rang up the Prince Albert. Chadwick amp; Son, your friendly family undertaking business, established 1895. Purveyors of bespoke death through two generations.”
“Christ! Why? Chadwick and Bentink-two butchers operating in my county? Why?” Inspector Martin’s outburst voiced everyone’s horror and disbelief. They listened in hope of enlightenment to a carefully delivered explanation by Dorcas, who was the only one prepared to take a shot at it, though Joe noted with understanding that her voice lacked its usual confidence.
They nodded in agreement with her suggestion that eugenics was a two-sided coin. One side urged the improvement of the quality of the population by breeding selectively from worthy stock, which would appear to be Bentink’s philosophy, the other side urged and attempted to licence the removal of undesirable elements, preventing them from reproducing their faulty genetic makeup. An approach put into practice by Chadwick. The two faces, each unaware of the other, shone out from a freshly minted but utterly counterfeit coin.
“Any chance these devils were working in concert, sir?” Martin asked.
“No sign of it. I think they operated totally independently of each other, though it’s clear that at least Chadwick had some suspicion of what Bentink was up to. Both were members of the Eugenist Society through the generations. They were at least each aware of the other’s existence and, perhaps, proclivities. And what did our fine, idealistic Utopians do when push came to shove? Chadwick betrayed Bentink, just handed us his card. Simple as that. Distraction. Laying off the blame.”
“And successfully,” Dorcas said. “We fell for it. Well, no. It was my fault. I was only too pleased to seize the chance to hurry you along to the St. Raphael clinic, which I had decided deserved an investigation.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Martin. “If ever a place needed a light shining on it, that one did! Bentink is now busy blaming everyone he can think of and calling in favours from the greatest in the land. Think on!” the Inspector warned. “With all the discretion that bloke has guaranteed over the years for god-knows-what delicate conditions amongst the high and mighty, some of them will be only too ready to hear his pleas. The embarrassing secrets he must hold in his files! These birds’ll go to a lot of trouble to squash a revelation of anything from syphilis to face lifts.”