Joe was not very certain about any of those assertions and kept silent. He was wondering with suspicion how she had come to develop such a warm opinion of the man on such a short acquaintance and decided that Hunnyton must have doubled back for a further consultation with Dr. Hartest after he’d dropped Joe off into the clutches of the Wild Man of the Woods.
“Can I tell you something? Something of a professional nature?” Adelaide was saying hesitantly. “I studied psychology as an element of my training and found it utterly fascinating. Mens sana in corpore sano is something all doctors should have written on their surgery walls. Broken limbs and infections are straightforward stuff but the tricky—and the repeated—illnesses are not so easy to diagnose and cure. I don’t believe one-half of everything Freud has to say, but there is much work being done—and has been done—in laboratories which can enlighten us. Listen, Joe. It may be nonsense or it may be of help … Imprinting. That may be the key. Have you heard of imprinting?”
Joe shook his head.
“Investigation’s been going on for some years. If you take a batch of fledgling birds—geese, or is it storks? seem to give clear results—and deprive them of their parent birds …”
“Here we go again!” Joe objected. “More animal torment. But—birds? This is a new one.”
“Not new, in fact. Douglas Spalding was working on it sixty years ago. Oskar Heinroth took it up. But don’t interrupt. When they’re ready to fly, they have to be shown how to do it or they’d remain forever earth-bound. If an experimenter runs about in front of the baby birds, waving his arms up and down like wings, they catch on straight away and do the same. They follow him about flapping and squawking, copying him with the clear conviction that he is the parent bird. He takes the process further and by even more energetic flapping and leaping into the air, or off a cliff perhaps, convinces them that they can take off. They actually learn to fly by human example. It’s not perfect but it works.”
Joe stayed silent, sensing she was getting to her point.
“The thing is, they grow up believing that the scientist is their parent, totally devoted to him and disregarding any other attentions, even that of their genuine parents. The same results have been recorded from creatures closer to humans—dogs, chimpanzees. It has been suggested, though not yet proven, that a similar process may take place in children. The theory is that at a particular moment in their development, a moment of change and need, they imprint on an adult or older child and follow and copy and revere this chosen one.”
“You’re saying Dorcas may, at a low point in her life, and finding herself without any other adult she could respect, have imprinted on me?”
“Think about it. It’s not a very long step from ‘imprinting’ to ‘falling in love,’ which is the label we stick on a badly understood and otherwise unaccountable impulse. That’s something every fourteen-year-old girl does understand. And if the chap she has in her sights is every girl’s idea of a dashing hero—good-looking, energetic, chest full of medals, romantically scarred—well, poor love, she didn’t stand a chance. If everything else had been normal or supportive in her background, what she felt for you would have been nothing more than a crush, soon outgrown. Poor Dorcas! I wonder if she has any idea?”
Joe longed to point out that he was suffering, too. If this psychological gobbledegook, which in spite of himself he had listened to in fascination, were halfway true, he had a worse situation on his hands than he’d realised.
“That’s a very alarming condition you describe,” he mumbled.
“It gets worse. It would seem that the imprinter himself,” she poked Joe playfully in the ribs, “that’s you—is not unaffected. His own behaviour changes, adjusting, through a desire for scientific knowledge (we’ll rule that out) or a sense of duty and a kind nature (more likely), to what he perceives to be the needs of the creatures he is imprinting. He strives to see the world through the eyes of his subjects and modifies his own responses accordingly.”
“Are you saying I’ve been flapping and quacking and leaping off cliffs all these years to chime with Dorcas’s needs?”
“Something like that,” she said, shaking with suppressed laughter.
“Am I destined to go on doing bird imitations for the rest of my life or is there a cure?” was the only thing he could think of to ask.
“No. Shouldn’t think so. But you could change the condition, having recognised it for what it is. Yes. Accept it, understand it and change it for something else. I’ve known old gents swap their gout for arthritis—or the other way around—when it suited them. Listen to Adam. Take her for a new person. Make a fresh beginning. Flirt with her, ask her about her life—her present life—and don’t rake up the past. None of that ‘Do you remember when you were in pigtails?’ stuff. And, above all, don’t leap in and slap down a proposal of marriage at her feet. You’ve so far avoided this and I’m quite sure your instinct has been guiding you well. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly, I’d say your Dorcas had already started on the road back to normality by distancing herself from you for the past few years. You must hope she can love the man you are now, not the one she imagined you were when she first came running after you.”
“Hmmph. Flirt and hope? You make it sound rather straightforward, Adelaide. It’s not. I had rather thought my flirting days were over. There comes a moment when audacious charm begins to look like geriatric seduction. A boyish smile turns into a suggestive leer overnight.”
She peered at him. “Oh, I think you’re quite safe. Not grey yet and no moustache. You have all your teeth. Very nice teeth. Yes—you could get away with a well-directed leer still, I reckon.”
“But before I can even expose her to that—I first have to keep her safe. Get her out of James Truelove’s clutches.”
Adelaide’s voice had lost its certainty when she replied. “Joe—how would you know that’s not where she wants to be?” She looked at him, her amber eyes suddenly filling with pity and fear, and she took hold of his hand to squeeze it gently in sympathy.
“Will someone tell me what precisely is going on here?” an angry voice demanded from the doorway. “The moment my back’s turned I come home to find my daughter, discarded garments round her ankles, sitting on the sofa, spooning with a complete stranger! A stranger who’s parked his red racer by my front door.”
Veterinary surgeon Hartest, moustache bristling with parental wrath, stomped into the parlour in his socks. “Good afternoon, sir! Do I need to fetch my shotgun?” Large, red-haired, smelling of the countryside and clearly at the end of an exhausting day, he reduced Joe to quaking confusion.
“Father!” Adelaide said crossly. “Joe came seeking medical help for a face wound and psychiatric advice on a personal problem.”
“Looks more like hands-on treatment he’s getting,” Hartest said, unable any longer to contain his mischievous amusement. “Are you billing him or is this one of your charity cases, Adelaide?”
“This is Assistant Commissioner Joseph Sandilands of Scotland Yard and he’s up to his ears in a murder case. The murder case. He was disappointed not to see you, Pa.”
“He seems quite happy with the substitute. Has the feller been here since eleven this morning?”
Hearing the mantel clock chime six, Joe was taken aback. He hurriedly shook hands with Hartest and made his excuses to father and daughter. “On duty at seven … must bathe and change into evening suit … Must find an opportunity to discuss the case and meantime thank Miss Hartest for filling in so effectively …”
He dashed off on the bicycle, but even the Swine could not go fast enough to leave his confusion behind and he arrived back at the Hall four minutes later, both cheeks aflame.
CHAPTER 15
ST. JAMES’S, LONDON. SATURDAY 23RD JUNE, 6P.M.
“Stop fussing, Ducks! The kids are just fine. I left them bathed and ready to go to bed. They were boring the boots off your long-suffering Emma, reading her a bedtime story. Swallows and Amazons isn’t really
her cup of tea, I think.” Aunty Phyl settled at the table, twinkled at her escorting waiter and asked him to arrange for the immediate arrival of a bottle of Pol Roger. Phyl couldn’t bear lists and menus and preferred to give her requirements straight out as soon as she arrived. “We’re dining unfashionably early, aren’t we? Six o’clock? That’s more like kiddies’ tea-time. Planning to go on somewhere? The Ambassadors, perhaps? Now—who do you want me to help you watch?”
Lily’s aunt, slim, vibrant and wearing with professional elegance a gown of her own design complemented by a mist of Mitsouko, looked askance at her niece. Lily’s plain maroon crêpe de chine dinner dress was strained a little too tightly around the bust and drooped a couple of inches too long at the hem. The frumpish look was reinforced by an ill-considered pearl necklace and a pair of her father’s reading glasses with tortoiseshell frames.
“Gawd! I hope you’re in disguise, gel! I wouldn’t want to think you were letting yourself go. I took you for your mother until you smiled.” She looked about her at the other diners, noting their correct evening dress and general air of understated affluence with satisfaction. Phyl fitted in seamlessly. “We’re a bit mismatched, you and I. Not out of the same bandbox tonight.”
“That’s quite all right. If anyone wants to know, I’m taking my rich publisher, that’s you, out to dinner—so kill the Cockney. I’m aiming to persuade you to look favourably on my latest romantic oeuvre. I’ve written up the first two chapters already. No kidding! It’s been pretty boring watching his nibs over there … Yes … the good looking dark bloke, fidgeting with his gardenia, at the far table.”
Phyl unobtrusively located the target. “Oh. You’re supposed to keep an eye on him all evening? Not one of your more demanding jobs, then. I see he’s got his champagne chilling and his engine revving. But he’s nervous. Or perhaps just excited.” She flicked another glance sideways as Mr. Fitzwilliam looked at his watch for the third time in thirty seconds. “I see why he’s having an early dinner … not so much going on as going up?” Phyl raised her eyebrows suggestively. “I expect if you checked, Lil, you’d find he has a sumptuous flower-bedecked suite booked upstairs. I’ve seen him somewhere before … Let’s hope she doesn’t keep him waiting long. This is fun! I didn’t know you were doing divorces, Lil! Do we expect fireworks and a floor show? Anyone I’ll recognise?”
They fell into a natural conversation about Phyl’s exploits at Ascot as the maître d’hôtel eased by their table, leading a young girl. She looked ahead eagerly and smiled as Fitzwilliam leapt to his feet in welcome.
“Oh, my! A pair of love birds! Is that what you were expecting, Lil?”
“Well, no. I was prepared for one of Herr Hitler’s generals, the Russian ambassador or Lady Astor. Possibly all three. What do you make of her, Phyl?”
Aunt Phyl, Cockney-born and proud of it, was known professionally as Madame Claude, Couturière, Londres et Paris, and could sum up a woman’s character and class and tell you to a penny how much her husband had in the bank from one brief look. She was completely trusted in these matters by Lily. “Early twenties. Very pretty. A bit tricky to read. A lady, definitely, but I’d say not out of the top drawer. More Bloomsbury than Berkeley Square.”
“That’s a nice dress, though. Well cut, unpretentious …”
“Victor Stiebel, dear. Clinging but flared at the hem—that’s flattering. Shows off her neat waist and ankles. Navy silk with a flash of peacock blue. A nice touch. Not expensive but it looks the part. Like the girl in it. She’s no debutante. Never was. There’s something about that unnatural walk they train those girls to do. As though the top of their head is attached to the ceiling by a string. Now, my mannequins—the moment they knock off, they relax and slouch about like anything, but being a deb does permanent damage to your spine. That girl swings when she walks and she’s not wearing stays. No whalebone and not much elastic either under there … French knickers and that’s about all, I’d say. I can’t imagine her dropping a curtsey. Not a tennis player by any chance, do you suppose? They’re beginning to arrive for Wimbledon and there’s a contingent of women this year. She’s got short hair and good shoulders. I can imagine her whacking a ball.”
“She may need a stinging back-hand by the end of her evening. I’d say he was head over heels and on mischief bent, wouldn’t you?” Lily noted the glance that sent the sommelier away, leaving the ice bucket by Fitzwilliam’s elbow, and she tried to lip-read the toast he whispered as they raised their glasses.
The two women took it in turns to observe their man and reported back to each other anything that caught their interest. They’d done this before. Two females chattering together was an arrangement that never aroused suspicion.
By the time the Dover sole was served, Phyl had made up her mind. “You can come off watch, Lil. The girl’s not unwilling. I thought at first she didn’t want to be here—nervous, looking about her, checking her exits—but she soon settled down and they’re having a really good talk. Funny pair though. This whole set-up shrieks seduction but no one’s flirting. No eyelash batted, no moustache twirled. They’re just chatting. Give and take. He’s really listening to what she’s saying—and that’s plenty—and he’s making her laugh. You know, Lil, I think they’ve known each other for years. She just passed him the salt a split second before he asked for it. You don’t do that with a stranger. It’s sort of … intimate.” Phyl watched and came to a conclusion. “They’re in love. Now, why’s it taken us so long to come out with that? You can see it from here, even with your pa’s glasses on.” She sighed. “Lucky girl, I’d say. He’s a cracker.”
“Brides-in-the-Bath Smith was charming and personable,” Lily said. “I’m staying alert.”
“Here comes the moment critique,” Phyl whispered. “They’ve both refused dessert and cheese and asked for coffee. He’s lighting a cigar. If he calls for a brandy, assume the worst. Always beware of a bloke who finishes his evening with brandy—it perks him up where he wants to be perked and you can bet he knows that from experience. Ah, he’s signalling the waiter.”
A prepared tray was instantly brought to their table bearing a bottle and two glasses. A small package done up in silver paper, tied up in white ribbons and topped with a fresh white rose accompanied the Napoleon brandy. Fitzwilliam poured out the drinks then handed the package with mischievous ceremony to the girl. A birthday present? Lily tried to put an innocent explanation on the appearance of such a sumptuously decked-out offering but there was a discordant note in the girl’s reaction. Her surprise appeared genuine and she shied away with a distancing flutter of her hands. Lily could only read from her lips: “But why? You shouldn’t have! No need … really …” as she tucked the rose into her neckline and set about untying the ribbons.
Annoyingly, Lily couldn’t make out the contents when the wrapper was discarded. It appeared to be a pair of items … earrings, perhaps? She caught a flash of gold. The girl was holding the objects, one in each hand, looking with astonishment from one to the other. Fitzwilliam drew his chair closer to hers until their heads were touching, slipped an arm around her waist and leaned into her shoulder talking quietly in her ear. What he had to say stunned and moved the girl. Lily could have sworn there were tears in her eyes as she looked down at the gift, looked back at him with some tenderness, then shook her head and spoke slowly in reply.
“Whatever he’s suggesting, she’s turning him down,” Phyl murmured. “Silly cow!”
His response to the show of emotion was to take the girl’s hands in his and speak even more urgently.
She seemed suddenly to crumble under the pressure and got to her feet, picked up her bag, made hasty excuses and set off across the room heading towards the ladies’ cloakroom.
Lily leaned towards Phyl. “Do you still carry a sewing kit around with you? Good. May I?”
She took the offered box and slipped it inside her own bag and, after half a minute, set off in the wake of the fleeing girl.
Entering th
e magnolia-scented washroom tucked away down a short flight of stairs, Lily first greeted the attendant in charge. A whispered, “I’d like a few minutes in private with my daughter if you wouldn’t mind, Miss …” and a half crown slipped into the ready hand removed the audience.
The girl was standing, holding onto a washbasin, staring at her image in the mirror above and not much liking what she saw, Lily guessed. Sadness? Despair? Disgust? She took the rose from her dress and carefully inserted it into the small bouquet decorating the counter.
“Ah! Caught you!” Lily sang out. “I couldn’t help noticing as you swept past that you’ve put a heel through the hem of your dress.” She sank to her knees and lifted up the hem, sliding a determined thumb nail along the stitching until there was indeed a four inch tear in the fabric. “There it is! It’s your lucky day! I’m an expert seamstress if I do say it myself. I always carry the necessary about with me. Black and white thread always at the ready.” She produced the sewing kit with a flourish and selected the black-threaded needle. “Just as well you’re not wearing yellow. This will do very well on navy.”
The girl was irritated and anxious and clearly this intervention was the last thing she wanted at that moment but her good manners took over. She murmured her thanks and seemed prepared to suffer in silence until the old nuisance had finished.
Lily took off the distorting spectacles and began to stitch swiftly and neatly. “There, that’s done. You’ll be wanting to get back to your young man. My dear! What an elegant and handsome fellow! My friend and I were just saying what a wonderful pair you make.”
A sudden rush of tears and a stifled howl of pain greeted this comment. Lily was taken aback by the grief she appeared to have caused and instinctively flung an arm around the shaking shoulders, offering a lace-edged handkerchief from her pocket and clucking sympathy. “Oh, no! I’m always putting my foot in it! Have I got it completely wrong? Look here, my dear, if the fellow’s making demands you feel uncomfortable with, I can help you out of here, call you a taxi home. No girl has to suffer unwanted advances. I know a way out that doesn’t take you back through the dining room. Do you live in London?”
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