Children of the Archbishop (45 page)

He knew now that it was some sixth sense that had warned him. Even so, he did not swing the beam of his lamp directly on to the figure. Instead, he extinguished it altogether and crept silently forward, keeping carefully in the shadows himself. He wanted to be right upon the interloper before he pounced.

And as he drew closer he could hear that words were passing. The figure was saying something. It was carrying on a whispered conversation.

This itself was bad enough after he had forbidden all conversation. But what amazed him most were the words that were being spoken.

“Don't be frightened, Sweetie,” the figure was saying. “If you wake up, remember I'm here. I shall be here all night. If you call I shall hear you.”

Dr. Trump knew by then who it was that was speaking. And there was really no need for him to switch his lamp on suddenly and point the beam accusingly full at her.

But, as it happened, it was the most important single thing he did that evening. For the light showed Margaret up perfectly. Indeed, it was so bright, the beam was so powerful and well-focused, that the small boy up on the roof-top just above him could see everything.

The small boy was Ginger. He had been out for about half an hour on one of his little jaunts, just having a look round at things in general. And because he was cold and bored, he was on his way back to bed again, when Dr. Trump had suddenly chosen to press the special Rover-type safety switch.

“Leave that window immediately,” he heard Dr. Trump say to Margaret in a toothed, rasping kind of voice. “The. child is alone by my orders. I shall deal with you in the morning.”

Then, taking a key out of his pocket, Dr. Trump went inside. He was there for so long, that Ginger did not wait for him. With his colossal piece of news fairly bursting inside him, he was on his way back across the roof-tops.

Sweetie did not stir as Dr. Trump entered. With her cheek supported on her hand, she appeared to be sleeping blissfully. He stood motionless beside her. And it was impossible for him mentally not to compare his own tortured night with this deep, peaceful breathing. Certainly the little girl did not
look
wicked. On the contrary, the air of infant innocence was pronounced and unmistakable. As also was the sheer natural beauty of the child. The darkness of the hair and the pearly—yes, transparency was the word—the pearly transparency of the skin—were really quite remarkable. It was like gazing down on a little figure carved out of alabaster. Indeed, the emotion that he experienced was so
powerful that he felt an entire sermon taking shape as he stood there. “On Forgiving a Sleeping Child” he would call it.

And wasn't it possible, he asked himself, that already he had achieved his purpose?

Ginger woke Spud up as soon as he got back to the dormitory, and told him everything that he had seen. But Spud did not believe a word of it; simply did not believe a word. And as soon as the dressing-bell went next morning, Ginger made a few discreet inquiries. He tried Sergeant Chiswick. But Sergeant Chiswick had spent a quiet night dreaming of the chancy fortunes of the turf, and knew nothing. He could not even quite make out what Ginger was driving at. And Ginger was unable to enlighten him because he could not very well admit that he had been enjoying another of his little jaunts upon the tiles.

After the blank that he had drawn with Sergeant Chiswick, Ginger tried Mr. Dawlish. But here again he drew blank. Mr. Dawlish wasn't even interested. He simply told Ginger that he must have been dreaming—there had been no one flashing a torch about in the playground—and mooched off, smelling rankly of tobacco. So, finally, Ginger tried Annie. And from her, of course, he got everything.

Moreover, the news that she recounted was so startling, so melodramatic even to someone of Ginger's lurid tastes, that for a moment he was left stunned. Then at the thought of Sweetie, bricked up there, Ginger decided that it was time to act. Act, and act swiftly.

He began by calling a meeting. As soon as the Scripture lesson had dragged wearily through the misfortunes of Esau, and the mid-morning break had arrived, he signalled to Spud, and the two of them made their way to the space where the boiler house had once been. It was a good place for conferences, quiet, private and secluded. And as soon as they were settled, Ginger wetted his finger and drew it across his throat.

“There's one of ‘em locked in,” he said in a low whisper. “It's Sweetie.”

But Spud was not impressed.

“You're potty about Sweetie,” he answered.

“I'm not,” Ginger replied. “I'd do the same for any of them.

“Do wot?”

“Rescue her.”

“How?”

Ginger paused. The question was important. Fundamental, in fact. And, for the moment, Ginger had no answer. But he could hardly admit it. And more to play for time than for any other reason he replied: “Get the cops.”

“How?” Spud asked him, still intent upon establishing the practical details.

“Go and fetch ‘em, of course,” Ginger answered. “I can git out, can't I?”

“But yer can't git in again,” Spud replied callously. “Not in the daylight.”

“Well, we can shart, can't we?”

Spud shook his head.

“Nobody wouldn't take no notice,” he said. “Sharting's potty.”

“Well, chuck a note over the wall,” Ginger suggested.

Spud paused, considering.

“Wot'll it say?” he asked.

“It'll say what's going on,” Ginger told him. “That's wot it'll say.”

“Who's going to write it?”

“I am.”

“When?”

“Juring Jography.”

“Where?”

“In the lav. of course. Where d'yer fink?”

The message was well phrased. Written in pencil in large capital letters on a sheet of paper torn haphazard from a notebook, it carried the authentic notes of desperation and despair.

“HELP, HELP,” it read. “I AM DIEING IN A PRESON. HELP SEND A POLISEMAN. HELP.” And because it was written in the first person, Ginger signed it “SWEATY.”

Ginger was determined to deliver it at the very feet of the law itself. It was now eleven o'clock and at eleven forty-five the day's patrol of St. Mark's Avenue regularly took place. Provided that Mr. Dawlish could be persuaded to excuse him again—not that twice in one morning was going to be easy—he would take up a commanding position in one of the tallest plane trees and allow his amazing document to flutter down before the policeman's very nose.

As it happened, Ginger experienced no difficulty whatsoever in being excused. At the first sight of his wriggling body and painfully distorted features, Mr. Dawlish jerked his thumb over his shoulder and, without even being asked, indicated that Ginger was to leave them.

Indeed, it was the excess of leisure that was Ginger's undoing. For it gave him time to improve upon a plan that was already well-nigh perfect. Instead of allowing the paper to drift down lightly on the breeze, he weighted it. And he weighted it too heavily. When it finally left his hand, there was a good half-pound of brick-bat wrapped up inside it.

And all unsuspecting, P.C. William Glubb advanced up the Avenue to meet it. A large, robustly-built man, he moved slowly. There was a kind of courtly and majestic indifference about him that indicated that crime was to be approached on his terms and in his time, or not at all. And this morning he did what he had always done: when he reached the corner of St. Mark's Avenue and Ryecroft Gardens, he loosened his collar and stood there, idly shifting his weight from one massive black boot on to the other. He braced his shoulders, spread his legs a little wider apart and placed his clasped hands behind his back.

Then Ginger threw. It was a good twenty-five feet from the plane tree to where P.C. Glubb was standing. And, naturally, Ginger did not want to miss. Therefore he threw hard. Really hard, with all his strength behind it. Hard and straight. His aim was deadly and unerring. At one moment there was the policeman with the top hook of his collar undone and his mind laboriously trying to work out the details of his pension: and at the next, a flying brick-bat had carried away his helmet.

With one glance at the scene of havoc below, Ginger got down out of the plane tree as quickly as he could manage. And back into Mr. Dawlish's class-room. The class-room at that moment seemed the safest place. But none too safe at that. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Ginger was scared. Even Mr. Dawlish noticed that there was something wrong with him. The boy seemed to be muttering to himself. But Mr. Dawlish was too far away to know what the words were. And he would have been more concerned still if he could have heard them. For Ginger was saying the same thing over and over again.

“I've killed a policeman. I've killed a policeman,” were the words. “I've killed a policeman. I've killed …”

It was the arrival of the policeman, very red-faced and carrying his dented helmet, that finally tipped the scales of Dr. Trump's temper … Not that he was to be blamed for his little outburst.

Taken all in all, it had been an unusually trying morning. And after such a shocking night, too. Twice he had wakened suddenly, dreaming that Margaret was breaking into the detention room by force. And once it was not a dream at all: it was a nightmare. Instead of playing gaoler, he was now the prisoner. Shut inside the little cell, he was vainly groping round the walls searching for escape. And he was suffocating. Indeed, it was not until a hand gripped his shoulder and a voice, Felicity's voice, said into his ear: “Stop lying on your back. You're snoring,” that he was released from the nightmare. By then, moreover, it was six-thirty—too late for any serious thoughts of snuggling back down among the bedclothes.

And by nine o'clock Dame Eleanor was on the phone. This did not surprise Dr. Trump greatly because Dame Eleanor was an inveterate telephoner: she snatched up the instrument whenever anything occurred to her. But this morning he was more than her equal.

“Good morning, Dame Eleanor,” he began. “A truly beautiful morning …”

But that was as far as he was allowed to get.

“What's going on there?” Dame Eleanor demanded. “What's this I hear about locking children up in store-rooms?”

Dr. Trump drew in his breath sharply and involuntarily. So Dame Eleanor had heard! That could mean only one thing—treachery on the part of a member of his staff. Nevertheless, he kept his voice carefully controlled and modulated.

“I think your informant whoever he or she may be has unintentionally misled you,” he said. “I decided to release the child at least a quarter of an hour ago.”

But he was wrong in imagining that any reply at this moment
would satisfy Dame Eleanor. Unlike Dr. Trump, she had not enjoyed her breakfast. No sooner had she sat down to it, in fact, than Margaret had arrived.

And it had been only Margaret's downright insistence that had got her inside the house at all. At first, Dame Eleanor had refused to see her. Simply refused point-blank without giving any reason. But when Margaret had declined to go away again, had said that it was a matter of life or death, Dame Eleanor had finally admitted her. And, once she had heard, Dame Eleanor gave up all thoughts of eating. She simply sat there, food untasted on the plate. And the moment Margaret had gone—it had as a matter of fact been rather nice seeing her—she had asked for the telephone to be brought to the breakfast table.

She was talking at this moment from behind a pot of lukeish-warm coffee and a toast-rack in which the little pieces, once so hot and crisp, were now leathery and useless.

“… and children burning each other with hot irons, I never heard of such a thing in my life,” she was saying. “It's disgraceful. The whole place must be bedlam. Thank goodness, I've got Margaret there to tell me what's happening …”

So it was Margaret! He was still pacing up and down his study wondering why so admirable a woman should suddenly have turned viper, when the maid knocked at the door to say that Sergeant Chiswick and a policeman wanted to see him.

It was not, indeed, until after Dr. Trump had paid over thirty-one-and-sixpence in cash for a new helmet, and had written out a cheque for two guineas for the Police Orphanage, that Dr. Trump was able to reconsider his own position.

And clearly it was the worst possible. Dame Eleanor had been short with him. And more than short: rude. She had practically said in so many words that he had lost her confidence.

Moreover, the internal situation was developing most awkwardly. Things were being whispered in the kitchens and repeated in the laundry. With ugly rumblings as well. Miss Phrynne reported as much. There were, she said, signs of open friction. “A distinct nastiness in the tone of some of their remarks,” was how she put it; “even downright unpleasantness in Latymer.”

Altogether, it was as Dr. Trump realised, likely to prove the
supreme test of his own personality. To quell rebellion—that was his next task. And he was not going to flinch from it. The hand that ruled the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital would be one of iron; firm, cold, inflexible. But supposing other people were cold and inflexible, too? Dame Eleanor, it seemed, was distinctly taking Margaret's part in the matter. He did not want to face an entire institution organised against him. That would be dreadful. It would provide such opportunities for trouble-makers like Mr. Prevarius.

And then the brilliant idea came to him. He would forgive Margaret, too. And not merely forgive her—which would be construed as weakness. He would openly proclaim her forgiveness from the pulpit on Sunday. The effect, he was confident, would be terrific.

And so it was. Taken all in all, it was probably the best sermon that he had ever delivered. “Dare to be a Daniel” was the main theme, with bits on the side about the red badge of courage and inner voices speaking clearly. Most of the congregation—particularly the lower grades—could not make head or tail of it. But there was one passage which everybody understood. And that was when Dr. Trump referred to Margaret by name: “One of our number, our dear Sister Margaret,” he said, “misguided and misled by her emotions as she may have been, has nevertheless shown herself ready to risk everything when she thinks that justice is at stake. That is truly Christian, truly British, and truly in accordance with the great traditions of this Hospital. It is not therefore a matter of forgiving our dear Sister for a trifling breach of the rules, but of thanking her. She is our example and we are proud to have her with us. To one of our number, a little one, Margaret has shown herself all that a mother could possibly have been. …”