Godwit spoke at once. “Commissioner, you must attend to my young colleague first. My news can wait. He is due to give a hockey lesson directly. It’s a Saturday. I’ll return in a moment.”
“Five minutes, sir?” Gosling suggested.
“Right, Gosling.” Joe settled at the desk. “Spielman. What have you to report?”
“Bugger all, sir. Phone engaged—or off the hook more like—for hours, but I kept trying. Finally I got the butler. Shifty, I thought. Or perhaps just in the dark like yours truly. Didn’t want to speak to me. What possible business could it be of mine? ‘Put your headmaster on if you deem it absolutely essential,’ and all that going on. You know what butlers are like. I kept at it and managed to get out of him that he really hadn’t a clue either. The master was still out in deepest Sussex and, after a brief phone call just after five o’clock, the mistress had packed and gone off in the Dodge to join him.”
“Five o’clock. Remind me where we were at five o’clock, Gosling.”
“Just turning out of the driveway of the asylum, sir. Sir? I hope you don’t mind—I thought all this sounded a bit off key. I rang my boss and asked him if there was anything of interest in Spielman Senior’s situation. Regarding his professional attachment to the German Embassy or his domestic life. Masterson’s going to ring back. I, er, didn’t mention your involvement, sir.”
“Very wise. We would always want to avoid a lecture on the dangers of fraternization. I hope you got further with the research clinic.”
“A little. Again, I can find no trace of young Spielman. The duty matron I spoke to refused to discuss patients or admissions. I threw everything I had at her, including manly charm, but she resisted me. Quoted hospital policy. I might be a scurrilous journalist, after all. Any rogue with tuppence in his pocket can ring them up from a phone box these days, she explained. Their patients value their anonymity. But she did offer to make an appointment for you. Three P.M. This afternoon. Professor Bentink will grant you fifteen minutes. That’s if you are who you say you are. You must be sure to have your authorisation with you. Sorry, sir. It’s the best I could do. They’re well within their rights, of course.”
“That will do well, Gosling. Anything more of any urgency?”
“No sir. I’ve really got to dash—fourteen small boys waiting down in the gym for seven-a-side hockey. They’re armed with sticks. Lord knows what they’re up to! The rest of my report can wait until you’ve seen old Godwit. Sir—he’s always worth hearing.”
“Thank you, Gosling. Wheel him in will you?”
Mr. Godwit entered, twitching with excitement. “Ten minutes to go before my class,” he said. “I have something to confide.”
He declined to take a seat, and they stood together on the rug. “You remember asking me what the three headmasters had in common? I told you nothing. And I still believe nothing. But—”
“The slightest thing, sir, will interest me.” Joe was determined to encourage him. “They wore the same stone in their cufflinks. Each had a nanny called Edith. Each was a member of the Society of Druids?”
“No, no, nothing like that at all. But there’s one thing they have all done. A rather strange habit. Being so old—bridging the three tenures—I’m the only one who would have noticed and remembered. The first Wednesday of each month, Streetly-Standish used to go off into town—Brighton, I mean. By himself. No one thought anything of it. He never spoke of it. In the school carriage. Horse-drawn, of course, in those days. Oddly, he used to dispense with the services of the groom and drive himself.”
“Returning?”
“Always before midnight. Then Dr. Sutton took over, and he did exactly the same thing. Straight after tea on the first Wednesday of every month, a taxi would come to pick him up. Mrs. Sutton used to wave him off. Clearly no clandestine object to these excursions. Then our present head, Mr. Farman, took over seamlessly and—blow me if he didn’t keep up the tradition. The Wednesday taxi comes for him. At exactly the same time. Oh, sorry. It’s not much is it?”
“On the contrary, it’s very interesting,” Joe said, trying not to sound disappointed. A monthly trip to Brighton was all too easily explained, even for a married head. Hadn’t Godwit put two and two together? Obviously too unworldly for such suspicions. “Well, well! Are we perhaps thinking … cinema visit?” he suggested innocently, having no wish to shock the old classicist.
“The visits of Streetly-Standish predate the arrival of a picture palace, Sandilands. And he couldn’t bear the notion of moving pictures. A bad influence on the young, he thought. None of the men were involved with masonry or druidry or any such mumbo jumbo. Perfectly normal, all three.”
“Think back, Mr. Godwit. Their behaviour when they returned—did they show any signs of, um, weariness, elation, resolve, mood or behaviour change of any kind?”
Godwit pondered this for a moment. “Ah, yes. Two of those: elation and resolve. It would take a knowing eye to discern it.” He smiled with quiet triumph. “And a sharp mind to connect events.” He fixed Joe with a watery blue eye. “I don’t speak of it, but you don’t strike me as a loose-tongued gentleman, Commissioner? Thought so. I worked in Intelligence during the war. Too old to be of any other use, I’m afraid. Cryptography. Connections are what I’ve always noted. Like you, Commissioner, I had suspected post-coital euphoria of a culpable nature, but I eliminated the unworthy thought. I remember, however, being struck by a more than usually confident address to the school made by Farman at the Thursday assembly following one of his Wednesday outings and groaning inwardly with boredom because the theme he chose had been a particular favourite with both the previous heads. Of course, the boys were not to know that—they come and go so quickly.”
“The theme, Mr. Godwit?”
“Oh, an entirely innocent piece from … now was it Matthew or Luke? The usual stirring stuff headmasters churn out as an exhortation to the boys in their care. Ah! Matthew seven, verse sixteen.” He looked challengingly at Joe.
Joe shook his head. “You’ll have to remind me, sir.”
“It’s the grape-picking bit.”
Godwit recited from memory in a suddenly firm and mellifluous tone:
“ ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
“ ‘Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
“ ‘A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
“ ‘Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
“ ‘Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.’ ”
“Ah, yes. The apple scrumper’s license to rob the best trees. I remember quoting bits of that to my father before he gave me a well-earned whacking for scrumping in our neighbour’s orchard. He wasn’t amused.”
“Another Thursday morning favourite of the headmasters was the parable of the sower. Matthew again: chapter thirteen. He seemed to relish the bit about the seeds being scorched in the sun and withering away because they had no root. He finishes with much benignity: ‘But others fell into good ground and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.’ Then he tells them they are good little seeds of good stock and he expects them to go forth and multiply. Thank heaven they’re all too young to fall in with his exhortations.”
“Mmm … that chimes well with the views he was expressing to Miss Joliffe over lunch. He seems to have dismissed three quarters of the population of the capital as seed sown on stony ground, I’m afraid. Any mention of Sodom and Gomorrah? Noah and his Ark, perhaps?”
Godwit beamed. “Rem acu tetigisti, Sandilands! I thought you’d get there.”
“It’s a fascinating insight you hand me, Mr. Godwit. I shall go and confer with my local colleague and seek his opinion. If you have any further thoughts, I shall be pleased to hear them.”