“Yes, and imposed by the vagaries of the English weather. February. Telephone lines down, roads blocked. The boy’s family is about to return to Germany, and they’re finding their plans disrupted. Various people have involved themselves in lending a hand. You see before you a selection of those Good Samaritans.”
“A German family, you say … Spielman.…”
“Diplomatic service.”
“Not just any child, then. Embassy involved? Guaranteed to whip up a froth. I begin to see why they’ve got you chasing about the countryside, Sandilands. Our German cousins are exercising an ever stronger influence over our top brass. Hah! Gosling! I know you’re understaffed in the Cromwell Road, but you’re also blinkered. Focused on the Red Menace and the Green, Russia and Ireland. Have I at last got through to your superiors with the suggestion that they give more attention to the old enemy? Germany! I was over there last year with a delegation, on a professional visit. Cozying up, breathing admiration, swearing eternal friendship, meeting their top scientists. Not being classed as a top scientist myself, I was paired with a policeman. A certain Rudolph Diels. Heard of him? No? You’d better do some homework, then. Because you will hear of him. Impressive fellow! Young and vigorous, gallantly scarred face of a duellist, and head of the Prussian Political Police. We had a long conversation about the work he is commissioning from men like me—from my German confrères, that is.”
“Work for which the National Socialist government sees a need?” Joe asked.
“Ah, yes. All spies cozily together as we are, I suppose I may divulge these things. Just a few days into his new office—the thirtieth of January, wasn’t it, the election victory? Mere days! Chancellor Hitler is sweeping through government. Heads are rolling. Resignations being tendered, appointments being made. That’s probably what your Spielman is up to. Been recalled to do his patriotic duty at the side of his new master. And we see changes already in the university psychology departments. Jews—or those who merely have a Jewish wife—who have been at the forefront of research are packing up and coming to England or crossing the Atlantic. Before any lecture can begin in the universities—you’ll find this hard to believe—the academic giving it is now required, on pain of instant dismissal, to salute and say the words ‘Heil Hitler!’ ”
He gave a low rumbling laugh. “Just imagine! If I were to stand before a hundred students in a London lecture theatre, raise my right hand, and proclaim ‘All hail MacDonald!’ ”
“The outcome would be much the same, professor,” Joe said easily. “You’d lose your post. But the charge in England would be one of imbecility.”
“And well deserved!” Bentink agreed. “But over there—you know how it is. You’ve fought these fellows. Highly efficient, but soldier ants. No sense of the ridiculous.”
“Not all, sir,” Joe murmured. “Not all.”
“Oh, yes. If it’s exceptions you look for, look no further than the director (for the present moment!) of the Berlin Psychological Institute. Wolfgang Köhler is finding all this saluting rubbish a bit hard to comply with. He performs the action but with all the eager anticipation of a vegetarian who’s just been served with a juicy steak. But most have accepted the situation—politics and leanings in a country that has never been democratic are less compelling when large grants are on offer to any prepared to stick their arms in the air and make a Roman salute.”
He sighed and shook his shaggy head. “It seems what we have now is a Ganzheitpsychologie. The larger unity, the nation—the Volk, if you like—overrides the interests and rights of the individual. The plan is to put German applied psychology to the service of the National Socialist government, which values it.”
“A science-backed Nazi ideology,” Joe murmured. “Interesting. You are well informed, professor.”
“And shall be even better informed when I return from the Dresden conference in April.” He gave Gosling a knowing look. “Confidential exchanges over the port with your top brass on the cards, young Gosling? I think so. As Miss Joliffe will confirm, the Prussians are more generously funded, less heavily supervised by government, and more adventurous in their approach. Imaginative, ruthless and productive—they are most impressive. And they are not our friends. No matter what the Times leader writers tell us.”
Puzzled as to where he was going with this, Joe picked up an odd point that had intrigued him. “You are not regarded as a topranking scientist, you say?”
“Not quite yet. And certainly not in our own country. Psychology? What’s that? Ask a selection of people in Piccadilly, and one third will say it’s to do with the spirit world, one third will say it’s to do with sex, and the remaining third will say it’s a load of bollocks. Ask the same question on the Kurfürstendamm, and they’ll tell you it’s a practical science that will solve the nation’s problems.”
He was wasting their time deliberately with the useless generalities of a man propping up the bar at his local pub. In five minutes he’d look at his watch and claim he had to bustle off to his next appointment, so sorry not to have been of more help. Joe decided to push things along.
“The headmaster at the school—St. Magnus—from which the boy Spielman disappeared sends his regards, by the way. And he hopes you found some benefit in the use of the twins he sent you for research last term.”
Bentink bowed his head briefly in automatic acknowledgement but seemed not to remember the name.
“Mr. Farman is the headmaster. I believe you know him from your mutual membership of the Eugenic Society?”
Bentink’s brow furrowed. “Ah—the Brighton chapter? Yes, now you come to mention it. Farman. Got him! He takes the stage occasionally. Corpulent old windbag. But a true and tenacious spirit, I have to say.”
“One of a strong series. The two previous headmasters were equally supportive of the eugenic cause, I understand.”
“It passes down the generations. The young absorb knowledge and resolve at their father’s knee. Nature and nurture in harmony. Supporting each other. Fatuous to argue about which is the more influential. Miss Joliffe will tell you. Good genes, good family are the lifeblood of this country, Sandilands, but we must never disregard the effect of a good upbringing working with them. My father was a guiding light in the Eugenic Education Society, as it was called originally. My brother-in-law James’s father also. He was a contemporary of Galton, you know, and one of the founder members. You could say we were a eugenic family. Tribe, even, since we make a point of making strong bonds with each other’s family.”
He paused to allow this to sink in, his face stiff with pride.
“Good wombs have borne bad sons, Shakespeare tells us,” Gosling remarked annoyingly. “Really, he’s said it all, hasn’t he? Who needs psychology when we have the wisdom of the Bard to guide and inform?”
Bentink waited with a pained expression for the interruption to be over, then he bent a keen look on Joe. “Many of your own profession, Sandilands, are eugenists, if not in practice, at least in spirit. But then you, a policeman, would consider yourself to be in the front rank of the struggle against degeneracy. And so you are! Hats off to you! Your profession has our support and our sympathy. London—the Great Wen!—with its pullulating under-classes, is consuming ever more of the country’s resources. Most unfairly. The willing, the able and the well-bred of our country are struggling to fund the feckless and the incapable. A sparrow feeding a cuckoo! The crime rate rises at the very time when the London bobby himself is challenged to riposte. I hear it is ever more difficult to recruit men of a certain stature—physical and moral—to combat this fast-breeding, self-propagating slime. No consolation, but they find they have much the same problems to confront in Germany.