Arrangements in place, Jackie dashed off to play indoor hockey, leaving Joe and Dorcas staring at each other.
“Now what was all that about? Was it wise, all that spoiling? Not a good idea for a boy to get dependent on female attention in a place like this.”
“What do you know? Jackie’s from a loving family who show their affection readily. He’s used to being grabbed and hugged. And it’s more than a good idea, it’s essential! It’s a crime against nature to send little squirts like that away from their mothers!”
“He’s nearly ten, Dorcas. A lad that age revels in the company of his fellows. The pack instinct, don’t you know. If he’d been born a Spartan, he’d have killed his first man by now.”
“Look, Joe, I’ve been involved with … witnessed … some pretty groundbreaking experiments. I shouldn’t be telling you because it’s very hush-hush, and the piracy that goes on in the experimental psychology world you wouldn’t believe!”
Joe was alarmed. This was out of character for Dorcas. She loved to gossip, but she was never indiscreet. She had her own secrets and knew how to keep those of others. But he sensed in her an excitement, the troubled excitement of someone who has something unpleasant to convey. He listened.
“Monkeys are the nearest living relative of Man’s—thanks to Darwin everyone knows that. I looked in on some work being done in the laboratory with baby monkeys, work designed to find out what are the essentials in the normal development of human infants, whom they much resemble. Fascinating stuff! Food and physical closeness quite simply are the two most vital things and the greater of these is physical closeness. Hugs, Joe! A monkey infant will forego food in favour of a hug. If you deprive it of its mother, it will seek its comfort from an inanimate piece of fur—or even a bit of old cloth—in preference to food when it’s made to choose. They’re very like humans in their responses.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Given a choice between Hector the Horse and a sticky bun, I’d have gone for the bun every time.” Joe thought he’d keep it light. He was not comfortable with the direction of this conversation.
Dorcas sighed in exasperation. “Can’t you be serious?”
“Very well. ‘Made to choose,’ you say? I’m not sure I want to contemplate the method by which they made their infernal discoveries. Or why anyone thought it necessary to bother.”
Dorcas looked sad and shifty, he thought, at the same time. “No. I know what you mean. And it was most unpleasant to hear the protests and screaming that went on when the mothers had their babies taken from them. But an essential part of the process of course.”
Gently he said, “A torment for you as well as the monkeys. You didn’t have to put yourself through this sort of experience to understand yourself and your origins, Dorcas. I’m sure it’s a bad idea to have a personal motive for scientific enquiry. And I was always there to help you. Standing by—your own piece of substitute fur. I could have talked to you, helped you to digest it all and reconcile yourself to your parentage. And your upbringing. I’m the only one who’s aware of all the ramifications of your family tree. I know more about you than your father does, if you think about it. And I’m a good explainer.”
This was received with a sad smile. She reached up and briefly stroked his cheek. “You’re part of my problem, Joe, but you can’t see it.”
“I’m damned sure I could come up with some better answers than a few screaming monkeys! What knowledge that’s of any use to man or beast did they expect to give to the world by applying this torment? They’re no better in my book than medieval torturers—worse! They applied their foul techniques to extract information and confession. These modern Torquemadas in lab coats do it to insert their own dubious theories and hear them confirmed back to them by the screams of innocent creatures. And the real cruelty is they’ve no sure idea when they start what the information they seek may be or what they can possibly do with it when they have it. They perform their grotesque experiments on the off chance their fancies will prove to have substance. Tell me the creatures didn’t suffer in vain.”
After a moment: “I can’t. They did. The experiment was abandoned.”
“Ah. Someone saw the light of reason.”
“Not even. It was heard that an American laboratory was working on the same ideas. And they were six months ahead.”
“What a waste of time, lives and money!”
“Can you say that? I’d no idea you had a Luddite streak in you, Joe. Others may uncover some truth we ought all to have knowledge of.”
“At best, what earth-shaking results might those sad monkeys have revealed?”
“Deep truths about attachment … nurturing.” Her voice lost some of its certainty. “We were starting to learn that, deprived of their real mothers, the babies were capable of transferring their affections to an inanimate scrap of fabric if that’s all that was on offer. If they were then further deprived of even that comfort, they went quite mad. I hated to see those poor creatures clinging on to scraps of woolly cloth thinking it was their mother. When they pulled them off they cried so, Joe, and twitched and grasped with their little hands. They have hands, you know, not paws.”
Joe took one of Dorcas’s hands and held it steadily until the clenched fingers relaxed. “I can’t say we’ve ever discussed the creatures before, but I know about monkeys. I admire them. I’ve watched them for hours in India. They’re revered in that country. Any man maltreating one of the tribe of Hanuman the monkey god would be beaten with sticks by an angry crowd—probably led by me if I was on hand. Though everyone knows the roving bands are a darned nuisance—messy, thieving rogues and not always kind to each other, I may say. But I’ll share with you the fruits of my monkey-watching, Dorcas. Monkeys are a tree-dwelling breed. The babies spend their earliest days aloft, swinging about in the branches, hanging on to their mother’s fur. Let go, ungrasp the handful of fur for one second, and they fall and crash to the ground and die. A good grasp is more important to their survival in the short term than mother’s milk. Of course they scream when they’re torn from what they sense to be their hold on life! It must feel like an attack of vertigo, but much, much worse. What chumps your scientists are!”
Dorcas waited for him to simmer down. “Now you see why I’ve never discussed it with you. Has anyone ever told you what an ugly brute you are when you’re angry?”
“Not many live to mention it.”
“Ah. I’m having a lucky escape.”
“Well, it sounds a revolting procedure to me, Dorcas. Knowing your attitude to animals I’m surprised that you didn’t set the whole monkey tribe free in Regent’s Park and burn the laboratory down.”
“I thought about it. But there was no park on hand. This was going on at the research clinic I told you about. St. Raphael. In the end I walked out in a cowardly way. It’s hard for a lowly student to decide she knows better than a doctor of philosophy talking German in a white lab coat. And they’d have known it was me. I think they may even have guessed who put something sticky in his lab boots.”
“All this nonsense about nature and nurture—I’m not sure it’s a good thing for you to be wrapping yourself up in. The last time we spoke—seven years ago, do you remember?—you said you were going to make a study of it, the better to understand yourself. Has it helped? I thought I heard you giving a smart reply to Langhorne when he was whispering Shakespeare into your left ear over the coffee urn.”
“ ‘A devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick.’ It’s from The Tempest, and the devil being insulted is Caliban. Langhorne was just testing me out. And enjoying the jinglejangle of the words. I don’t think he really understood what he was saying. He’s got a mind like a thesaurus. Mention ‘nurture,’ and it falls open at the letter ‘n.’ When I started to talk to him about inheritance and environment and the interdependence of the two influences, with references to genetic input, quantitative and qualitative relevance of seed and soil to final product, his eyes glazed over.
&n
bsp; “Yes, like that, Joe. You can unglaze now if you wish. Time, I think, to go and interview the Bellefoy child. The inspector said if we went after eleven, we’d find Betty there too. She gets off early on a Saturday.”
THE CHILD, HARRY, was sitting curled up like a baby on Betty’s knee when they arrived. Far too big for such a perch, he spilled over in an ungainly way. When he saw Joe and Dorcas come in he struggled to get up and flee, but Betty held on to him tightly and whispered in his ear. She put down the alphabet book they’d been studying and said in a country voice that managed to be bright and yet soft at the same time, “Harry’s doing well with his letters, sir, miss. I won’t ask him to show you because he’s too shy, but he’s a dab hand at M for motor car and O for orange. He can even draw them with a pencil.”
“May I see?” Dorcas took the book and opened it. “See there, Harry … that’s D for dog, but it’s also D for Dorcas. That’s my name. Can you find me H for Harry?”
Betty quietly turned the pages, and the child pointed excitedly at H for house and mumbled his name.
“Well done! That’s right! Why don’t you show me your motor cars, Harry? I hear you’ve got a terrific collection. May I have a look?”
“Off you go, Harry,” Betty said. “The inspector told us you might like to see them and talk about them. Harry’s got them all lined up ready in his bedroom if you’d like to go along with him, miss.”
“Where’s your mother this morning, Betty?” Joe asked when they had clumped upstairs.
“It’s a Saturday. When I get back down from the school she always goes off into town and does the shopping. Sometimes she goes to the pictures—there’s usually a matinee on. It’s bad enough working up at that place, sir, but it’s worse being cooped up here with Harry, day in, day out. I try to relieve her when I can. Cup of tea? We’ve got Earl Grey if you can stomach it.”
Betty got up and made her way across the sparsely furnished room towards the small outshot housing the kitchen. Joe watched her. Small, neat-waisted with an abundance of dark, curly hair and a shy under-the-lashes way of looking up at a man. Yet she remained unmarried, and Joe wondered what was wrong with the men of Seaford that they hadn’t snapped up this pearl. Could it be her slight limp? Hardly likely, but Joe could see no other flaw.
“I love Earl Grey,” he called after her. “Let me help you.”
“Gerraway with you! A gentleman in the kitchen! I wouldn’t know where to put myself!”
“I fend for myself in London, Betty. I’m an ace with a teapot. And I won’t get under your feet.”
Five minutes later Joe emerged from the kitchen carrying the tea tray and having inspected the range of kitchen knives to his satisfaction.
They drank their tea, smiling to hear the sounds of toy motor cars revving up and brakes squealing, grunting and laughter from upstairs. Joe plunged into a conversation about the relative merits of James Cagney and Paul Muni. Neither appealed much to Betty, who disliked gangster movies. Clark Gable—now that was more like it. But she especially liked perky blondes like Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard, who talked back and got their own way. They shared a view of Greta Garbo: two yards of pump water, according to Betty; overrated and moody, according to Joe.
Dorcas came back down to the parlour at last, full of praise for Harry’s motoring knowledge.
“Oh, he sits by the roadside up on the turnpike for hours, miss. He clocks every car going up to London or coming down to The Bells. A lot of the drivers know him and give him a wave. He knows all the makes. He can do a good impression of the noises their engines make, did Mum tell you?”
“He identified it for me just now,” Dorcas said, ignoring a warning frown from Joe. “He picked it out of his lineup of models and showed me. Making the matching big-car noise. It was a Talbot. He’s seen it before on the road. He said I could bring it down to show you, Joe. And here it is.”
She held out a tin replica of an elegant car with grey and black paintwork.
“What model is it?” Joe asked. “It usually tells you underneath.”
Dorcas read out: “1926 Talbot 18/55. It’s one of those with the spare wheel over the driver’s side running board. Big cars—you can get seven passengers in there, and they have a reputation for being fast. Plush inside, too. I rode in one once. It has grey velvet upholstery, I remember, and little silver holders to put your nosegays in.”
“May I see it?” Joe took it from her hand and peered at it, then he placed it carefully on the table. “Do you recognise the type, Betty?”
Betty gave him a shy smile. “Oh, sir, I don’t know one car from another—except for a Model T Ford, perhaps. A lad I know in town—his dad’s got one of those. Lends it to Tom at the weekends sometimes.” She blushed and bit her lip. “But that one—no. Looks expensive to me. I wouldn’t be giving a car like that a second look. Harry may have seen one on the main road.”
“I expect so. Well, thank you so much for your hospitality and your information, Betty. Must be getting back. Many phone calls to make before lunch.”
“DID YOU NOTICE the marks, Joe?”
“I did. The child had done them himself, I think.”
“Yes, in indelible pencil. He’d scratched off whatever it said originally on the number plate and put his own letters on. Two of them: ‘O’ and another ‘O.’ Not much is it?”
“Considering he can only do two letters anyway, it’s next to nothing!”
“But—number plates—I wonder. Boys set much store by them, you know, Joe. I noticed other cars had had their plates painted over by an adult hand. They were the familiar cars he knows in the village. He showed me. There was a Morris, a Ford and a Riley. All with authentic Sussex numbers filled in. That Talbot means something to him. He kept pointing to it and making a noise. He was so earnest I took out a pencil and drew the letters in my notebook to show I’d got it. That calmed him down. They may be part of the registration of a car he’s seen on the road.”
“I’ll grasp at anything. I’ll pass this over to Cottingham when I get back to the telephone. He can get on to records. He’ll thank me for that on a Saturday!”
They walked back along the path bordering the muddy courtyard that linked the Bellefoys’ cottage with the school buildings and stopped for a moment to look at the police flag marking the spot in the centre of the sodden grass where the knife had been found.
“Now, what would Rapson have been doing crossing an open area already under snow?” Joe wondered. “Wherever he was heading, he’d have stuck to the path.”
“Someone could have thrown it. Pulled it out and chucked it as far away as possible into the snow. From here.” Dorcas demonstrated. “Now, why do that?”
“I think you know. Leave a knife in the wound, and provenance can easily be established. If you have to get rid of it in a hurry, throw it into a snowdrift. Seems to have worked. It took Martin’s men two—or is it three?—days to find it.”
“Tell you something else, Joe. Bit odd. Betty is the only wage earner in that household, isn’t she?”
“The only one, yes. The cottage is a tied one, of course, so they pay no rent. All the same it must be hard to manage. They seem to do all right.”
“Careful management and no frills, that’s evident. The women don’t indulge themselves but—you must have noticed—they do indulge that boy. His set of cars, Joe, was rather special. The box it came in was still there being used as a garage. By mail order from the Gamages catalogue. I remember Orlando making a fuss about the cost when my brother asked for a tin car. Just one. Harry has thirty. They’re really collectors’ models and must have cost a month of Betty’s wages.
“But there’s more. His room was kitted out in—oh, not extravagant—but good-quality furnishings. His bed is a sort of heavy-duty large-sized cot with sides you can put up. Perhaps he falls out of bed still? Specially made to order, I’d say, supplied by Heals on the Tottenham Court Road. And, tucked up in this splendid little bed, there’s a teddy bear. Not just any bear, o
ne of those new continental ones by Steiff. Soft carpet. Thick curtains, good fire going and a full coal scuttle. The rest of the house—well, you saw for yourself—is on the edge of poverty.”
“With all that cosseting and attention, I’m thinking young Harry is one lucky little monkey!”
“Yes, I’d say they spend every penny they have on that boy.”
“Penny? Would you say—penny?” Joe asked thoughtfully.
CHAPTER 22
“Immediately after surgery? Will that do? I finish at twelve noon. Do you know where to find me? High Street, the double-fronted Georgian next to the iron-monger’s. I look forwards to meeting you, Assistant Commissioner Sandilands.”
Dr. Carter put down the receiver and muttered, “Curse you!” In truth, he’d just said goodbye to the last of his patients for the day, but he needed some time to think about things. So. It had come to this. Was there any point in arguing, remonstrating, self-justification? Yes, there bloody well was! He felt no guilt. Whatever he’d done, he’d done it out of principle. For easement in a harsh world. To improve the lot of the unfortunates who were powerless to do it for themselves. But how had the buggers arrived at his name? Who had mentioned it in connection with the removals?
Inspector Martin, the local man, was a good chap—he’d understand if the circumstances and the benefits were explained to him. Might even be persuaded to look the other way. Perhaps he should have taken the officer into his confidence earlier? Involved him? But then, individual placeholders came and went, the office remained and was never more congenial than the man occupying it. That had been his reasoning. And now he had this Sandilands buzzing round. The man who’d just been on the phone was an unknown quantity. Metropolitan CID officer. He’d throw the book at him without a qualm. Or make Martin do it. By the time the coppers had trawled through the records they’d have enough to get him struck off the medical register at the very least.
Sighing, he went to his filing cabinet, extracted one file, checked the name on the spine, and grimaced. Who’d have thought this innocent would have brought about his downfall? He placed it on his desk. It would be a mistake to make them search for it. Everything aboveboard—that was the tone to take.
Not My Blood Page 22