‘The name’s Kilpin,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid I’m only from the Gazette.’ The Gazette was our harmless local rag. ‘I wondered whether . . .’
‘I am afraid, Mr Kilpin, that I cannot help you.’ Now at least I could guess where I stood with this visitor.
‘Mr Stafford,’ Kilpin went on unheeding, ‘has been good enough to talk to me once or twice in the past, but today he is unfortunately unavailable for comment. So I thought I’d try you, sir. Being the housemaster – if that’s the word – of one of those lads. A couple of pars in humorous vein is what I’d be thinking of. Our readers, you know, are always interested in a bit of light stuff about a great school like Helmingham.’ Kilpin appeared to feel he might safely pause for a space on this, since it conveyed a handsome compliment. So I had a moment to think. I mustn’t, I saw, react too vigorously to his impertinent intrusion, since I might thereby simply provide him with a little gratuitous copy. And I saw something else. The man could be only scantily informed of what had happened, since a couple of pars in humorous vein could scarcely be concocted on the theme of criminal abduction. So the police silence held, and here was a more or less harmless annoyance. Nevertheless it must be ended at once.
‘Taken French leave, haven’t they?’ Kilpin said agreeably. ‘A funny phrase, that. It’s because in France they leave parties without a thank-you-kindly. I’m interested in such things, Mr Syson, language being important to a journalist, as you’ll agree. German measles, French letters, Dutch elm disease – that’s a new one.’ Kilpin paused again, and apparently saw that this philological discourse failed to enchant me. ‘But to business,’ he said. ‘A bit of a lark, it sounds to be, on the part of Master Hayes and Master Daviot. It wouldn’t be exactly what you call a rag. A prank, perhaps. Might I have a few words on it from you, Mr Syson?’
‘Definitely not, Mr Kilpin. I have nothing to say to you.’
‘But you’ll have something to say to those two when they turn up again, I don’t doubt. And something to do to them as well. Six of the best, will it be? May I put that down, Mr Syson—six of the best?’
At this I was tempted to tell myself that it would be pleasurable to come at Mr Kilpin with a belt. I contented myself, however, with rapidly crossing my study and opening the door.
‘Mr Kilpin,’ I said, ‘I have no doubt that you are exercising your profession in a perfectly proper way. I make no complaint. But I am sorry I must say good-afternoon to you. Just how, by the way, did you come by your information?’
‘Servants, Mr Syson. Servants will talk – particularly if stood a drink or two in a pub. I don’t like it.’ Kilpin remained entirely amiable; he even seemed gratified that I had run to a question myself. ‘It’s demeaning, sir, I don’t deny. But first steps, you see. A man must walk before he can run, if I may coin a phrase. Investigative journalism is what I aim at, Mr Syson. It’s something there’s a big future in. Very much obliged for your co-operation.’
And Mr Kilpin withdrew – no doubt with his couple of pars already formed in his mind. When I returned to my study, it was to answer yet another telephone call.
‘Syson, come over here at once.’
‘Certainly, Head Master.’ To receive a command or instruction rather than a request or suggestion from John Stafford was altogether unusual, and at least suggested that he was as worried as anybody else. ‘I’ll come immediately.’
‘The noble six hundred’ – it was thus that Stafford occasionally designated the school as a body – ‘will be back with us in no time, and there are problems ahead. I’ve got Taplow here. Yours are the two houses chiefly concerned.’
‘Certainly they are. I’ll very much value your help.’
With this politic speech I hung up, and got into an overcoat. Even so, the walk through the grounds was a chilly business. The two men were drinking tea. Tim Taplow was looking gloomy. Stafford had very much the air of the man at the helm.
‘It mayn’t have occurred to you, Syson,’ he said, ‘but for a start we may probably have the press to contend with.’
‘Yes, so we may.’ Whether I got anything of what Robin Hayes would have called irony into this, I don’t know. ‘I’ve been trying to understand the police wanting to keep mum for a bit. They say the criminals themselves may come out with what they’ve achieved at any moment, but that they themselves don’t yet want to. It’s puzzling.’
‘The criminals have come out with it,’ Taplow said. ‘To both Hayes’s mother and the judge.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Stafford was impatient. ‘But they may believe that Mrs Hayes is still no more than bewildered – and distracted by her husband’s exploit into the bargain. And they can’t be certain that the judge isn’t keeping silent and thinking of coming to terms with them in a private deal.’
‘Daviot is certainly doing nothing of the kind,’ I said. ‘He started in on Scotland Yard and the Home Secretary and Lord knows who almost before his grandson’s disappearance became alarming. His paranoiac strain, you know. And he disclosed the arrival of that unspeakable parcel at once.’
‘Perfectly true.’ Stafford took this up incisively. ‘But this fellow Ogilvy – I gather he has been in contact with you, Syson – seems to believe in some kind of war of nerves. I get the impression that he has no high opinion of the average criminal intelligence – which may well be a mistake – and feels that keeping a low profile – an odd expression, to be sure – may lure them into some false step. Puzzle them, and they’ll commit themselves to something that gives them away. We can only hope he’s right.’
‘I take it,’ Taplow said, ‘that our trouble is this: in no time we’re going to have several hundred boys all agog to know what has become of Robert’s Head of House and his curly-headed little chum. And if we keep mum it mayn’t greatly help us that we are acting on police advice. I can even imagine, Head Master, the School Governors being eventually a little worried about it.’
This was at once an untimely and an implausible shaft, and I thought poorly of it. But it did no more than show that we were considerably shaken. Stafford, I thought, must be shaken if he really believed that the reassembling of the school after the half-term break constituted a problem anywhere near the heart of the matter. Inevitably it was the reputation of Helmingham that stood first in his mind, and he saw the whole shocking business, I suppose, in terms of degrees of scandal. Just why had the two boys run away? What were they running away from? If public attention were directed in this direction, the consequences might no doubt be uncomfortable. I was almost startled to find how little I myself seemed to be bothering about this. It might have been put that there were five hundred and ninety eight boys that I didn’t care tuppence for. There were two that I cared about very much.
This idle thought hadn’t time to grow, and I was never to know how Stafford received Taplow’s remark. For the telephone had rung – only this one discreetly buzzed – on his large and always impressively burdened desk.
He picked up the instrument. He said ‘Yes’. He listened, and said ‘Yes’ again. Then he listened silently for some time. It is impossible to be the part-auditor of an exchange of this sort without a sensation of awkwardness. Taplow and I tried muttering to one another in an unattending way. But then Stafford said firmly that it had occurred to him as a hopeful line of enquiry, and that his colleagues were with him and that he would tell them at once. After a further interval he said, ‘Thank you very much’, and hung up the receiver. He turned to us.
‘Ogilvy,’ he said. ‘He is most punctiliously keeping us informed. They’ve traced the taxi.’
‘The taxi?’ I asked, and immediately felt extremely stupid.
‘The taxi that the boys drove away in. They took it right across country to some inconsiderable station on a branch line. That has held things up a little. But now the police have located a booking-clerk who remembers them. Two lads, one a good deal older than the other. They bought a couple of second-class singles. To Uptoncester.’
XIII
So Miss Sparrow had been right, and Iain Macleod, although Robin’s closest friend, had got it wrong. Not Morocco or California, but Uptoncester. Whatever calamity had happened there, I ought to have experienced a certain relief in this discovery. Miss Sparrow had expressed faith in the boy’s basic common sense, and here was the admirable woman’s judgement vindicated. With whatever extravagance, whatever wounding rhetoric to myself the flight from Helmingham had been accompanied, its good-hearted character on Robin’s part was now established. Discovering or imagining young David Daviot to be in a horrible situation, he had simply decided to carry him off to his own home, his mother and his sister – from which refuge he no doubt intended, as Miss Sparrow had conjectured, to open negotiations with Sir Henry Daviot to secure the boy’s permanent removal from School House. There hadn’t been much knowledge of the world and its ways in the manoeuvre, but at least it had been unselfish and honourable.
It is a curious fact that at this juncture I have to record in myself an irrational tinge of disappointment. I can find no very secure explanation of this. Was it the issue of a kind of smothered romanticism lurking unsuspected in my own heart? Could I conceivably have felt anything alluringly romantic in the notion of those two ignorant boys attempting a get-away beyond the bounds of respectable society? A mere fleeting fantasy of the kind was thoroughly disturbing. I hurried back through the snow from the Head Master’s house to Heynoe, intent on giving the news – good so far as it went – to my sagacious Matron. I was halfway there before there returned to my mind with any force the remaining and overpowering horror of the affair. That dull house in its quiet crescent had been a goal unachieved.
Somewhere on their route to it the boys had vanished, had fallen into the hands of abominable criminals.
Miss Sparrow received my communication without surprise, and even with a slight impatience which was odd until she explained herself.
‘There has been a message for you,’ she said. ‘A telephone call that I took myself – and from Sir Henry. He would be grateful if he might so far trespass upon your kindness – you remember the way he talks – as to go up to town at once and confer with him.’
‘To confer with him?’ It came inconsequently into my head that I had been judged to have ‘conferred’ with Owen Marchmont and Ogilvy. ‘Has he invited Stafford and Taplow as well?’
‘I think not. It was my impression that he rather regards Robin Hayes as the clou to the whole riddle, and judges that you know more about him than anybody else.’
‘It’s the man being crazy again. Did he sound crazy?’
‘Not in the least. Wholly collected and purposeful. And what he seemed to be arranging was a formal meeting with the police authorities in charge of the case.’
‘I’d better go.’
‘Certainly you had. And I can get you through to the station in my car. With luck you’ll catch the fast train.’
I hadn’t even got out of my overcoat, and now there was no time to be lost. Bizarre as this unexpected summons to London appeared to be, I found a certain relief in the bustle of it. I worried about the train, estimating the possibility of its being held up by the atrocious weather. But it wasn’t so. I got myself (unlike the boys) a first-class ticket, and tumbled into an empty compartment in which, predictably, something had gone wrong with the heating. I wondered whether there was any heating, whether to go wrong or right, in whatever evil place the boys were secreted. And again and again there came back to me, with a sensation as of a sudden blow on the heart, the remoteness of what had happened from any experience I had my bearings in. Around me in a sense, or no further off than a newspaper before my nose, was a world in which not the march of armies or the thunder of cannon, but sporadic small-scale violence was becoming as common as football matches or bad weather. Airliners on their normal occasions were being ‘hijacked’ over every continent on the globe; ‘terrorist’ was a term ceasing to belong to French eighteenth-century or Russian nineteenth-century history and was cropping up in every bulletin from the BBC. Merely because one was a law-abiding citizen one had no title to a sense of outrage if coercive violence slapped out at one. These were my reflections as a taxi trundled me up Haverstock Hill to the Hampstead dwelling of Sir Henry Daviot. It was a house upon every lintel of which there might have been incised an assurance of the Queen’s peace. But a policeman, too impassive even to stamp his chilly feet, stood on the doorstep.
To this last circumstance the judge almost immediately alluded – and to an effect of slight embarrassment which surprised me.
‘Mr Syson, it is very good of you to come up. My car will be round in half an hour, and we will go and see those men at Scotland Yard. I suppose, you know, it must be acknowledged I am getting on, and occasionally subject to not very rational alarms. One of these occasions I know you have witnessed. How erroneously it was conceived, you will presently be made aware of. But there is a shade more substance, perhaps, to what has succeeded it. Hence the presence of that fellow on my doorstep.’
‘He did give me a hard look,’ I said. ‘But he made no move to search me for a bomb.’
Why I indulged this unsuitable levity I don’t know. Miss Sparrow’s ‘collected and purposeful’ was a just description of Sir Henry as he now was – which was not at all as I recollected him. Had I been an innocent man in a dock with this judge on the bench in front of me, I’d have had considerable confidence that he would steer things the right way. This change in Daviot may have thrown me out a little.
‘First about Hayes,’ he said, ‘the man who has decamped from that injudiciously conceived prison. Nobody has set eyes on him, you know, so he can’t be altogether a fool.’
‘I suppose not, Sir Henry.’ The judge’s speech, as may be imagined, was a considerable relief to me. Sooner or later he was bound to be given an account, even if in terms of Owen Marchmont’s tactful doctoring, which would invalidate what he had just said. But at the moment my improper conduct in the Hutton Arms was unknown to him and could occasion no awkwardness between us.
‘But that he left Hutton Green in pursuance of some vague design against me is a hypothesis I now unreservedly reject. The fellow is, as the policemen like to say, in the clear, so far as that is concerned. And the same is almost certainly true of his unfortunate son, the boy Robin. Robin’s rash conduct may well have been cleverly precipitated by the news of his father’s behaviour, but the connection between the two events stops there. It is true that Mr Ogilvy, whom I understand you have met, has given thought to another interpretation of the matter, which would imply the extraordinary postulate that Robin Hayes has been a party to a cunning deception, and is not in fact being held against his will. But I don’t believe it, and Ogilvy, a man of wide experience of criminals and their ways, doesn’t believe it either.’
‘I myself, Sir Henry, judged it incredible from the start.’
‘Quite so, Mr Syson, and the fact has had great weight with me. As has the opinion of that sensible woman I met in your company. Miss Wren, I think.’
‘Sparrow.’
‘Miss Sparrow. You both know the boy. I think it is equally true that I know my grandson. I am deeply attached to David, but I see him in one aspect as a rather vain and gullible child. There is all that nonsense about a theatrical career. But what bearing that may have on the situation must be regarded at present as obscure.’
‘Yes.’
‘So Robin, poor boy, is also in the clear. And if any harm has come to him, or to my grandson, or to both of them, I think I can assure you that the judiciary will take a severe view of the fact.’
I held my peace before this, the notion of retributive justice seeming to me to carry no comfort whatever. But it was, of course, Sir Henry Daviot’s sort of thing.
‘And now, Mr Syson, let us turn to Robin Hayes in his family connection. You may have remarked that I was considerably startled to hear that a man called Jasper Tandem is his uncle. Tandem happens to be known to me as not exactly a model citi
zen. He has had several close shaves, if the truth be told.’
‘With the law?’ The mild colloquialism in which the judge had indulged startled me a little. I could almost hear discreet mirth in court.
‘Certainly. And over a long period of years. When he was a very young man, and I was myself a junior counsel, hard up and practising at the criminal bar, I once tried to see him sent down. I didn’t succeed. Nor has anyone else since – although his subsequent life has certainly not been a blameless one. It is conceivable, indeed, that he has been involved in matters putting him uncomfortably in the power of professional criminals.’
‘These seem significant circumstances, Sir Henry.’
‘They may certainly be that – and you will see why there was a point at which I was disposed to suspect somewhat extensive conspiracy. But at least we here confront a puzzle. Tandem made his nephew that quite extraordinary gift of money. Was it in furtherance of some criminal intent to which the uncle was more or less constrained – and of which the nephew was quite unaware? Was its motive to get the boys into a situation more favourable for abduction than would be afforded while they were secure within a populous boarding-school? That is a question to which you must give the most careful consideration.’
For the moment I could only nod silently. It was as if Mr Justice Daviot had believed himself to be delivering his charge to a jury.
‘What I myself pause on,’ he continued, ‘is the amount of the gift. Indeed, its magnitude would be a reasonable term.’
‘It certainly seems to me an unnecessarily large sum for the purpose you are suggesting.’
‘But yet, Mr Syson, consider.’ Sir Henry raised a hand as if to restrain some headlong speed in my own cogitations. ‘Here in young Hayes is a normally level-headed boy – yet usefully (as one may put it) a little off balance as a consequence of the misfortune in his family. Might not the sudden gift of a very large sum of money serve to unbalance him further? I recall his friend who spoke up to me so well. With the Scottish name.’
An Open Prison Page 18
