said: ‘I was sorry to hear you encouraging his confusions.’
‘Confusions?’
‘Speaking of ancient charlatans such as Paracelsus in the same breath as modern science. All this Hindu nonsense, too: all the fakirs and fakements being inflicted on us nowadays.’ His bleached aquiline features were as unyielding as those of some Old Testament prophet. ‘So many of our current social problems derive from such rubbish. Such dangerous rubbish. That, to be frank, was what I was hoping to speak about to you. To consult you. Now....’
He was too polite to say he was already having doubts. Caspian waited. It would take the man a moment or two to bring himself to confide in a near stranger.
Then it came, hesitantly. ‘I am given to understand that you yourself take quite an interest in...ah....’ A longer hesitation, and a fastidious pinching of the words: ‘Psychic phenomena.’
‘In dispelling misconceptions about them, yes.’
‘I heard you exposed two fraudulent mediums a month ago. Admirable. Yet the gullible still attend the meetings of these abominable charlatans. People who ought to know better.’
Hinde’s lips were bitten in so tightly that they almost disappeared.
After a moment Caspian prompted: ‘You have someone particular in mind?’
‘I have indeed. I can trust your discretion, Dr. Caspian?’
‘If you have any doubts on that score, better not confide in me.’
Hinde stared full into his face. ‘I apologize. I would not have ventured to approach you if I had not heard the highest praise of your methods, from people I respect. And my own judgment tells me I can rely on you.’ He cleared his throat, still unsure. ‘A glass of wine, sir?’
‘When we’ve finished, perhaps.’ It was another gentle nudge.
‘Very well. Dr. Caspian, I am a widower. I had one son, killed in the Zulu wars. And I have one daughter, Laura. She is growing strange. I fear she has fallen into evil company.’
‘What company?’
‘She’ll not let me close enough to find out. But when I’m kept late at the House or some official function, I’m convinced she sometimes goes out on mysterious errands of her own.’
‘She has an admirer?’
‘There would be no need for her to conceal any such. She’s of age, it’s high time she was married. But she puts men off with that self-sufficiency of hers. Her mother encouraged her to be a bluestocking, and if I become too much the disciplinarian now, I fear I’d further estrange her. Since my wife died—’
‘Yes,’ said Caspian: ‘your wife. Couldn’t it be that the loss of her mother may have temporarily unsettled the girl?’
‘It’s more than a year now. And in. fact, at first Laura was a great comfort to me. But now she has taken to brooding. Her uncle’s influence on her—the way he talks, the meetings he addresses—none of it has been to her good. I wouldn’t put it past her’—the words were wrenched from him—‘to attend those infernal séances which are all the fashion, trying to contact the dead. She denies it: but so evasively!’
‘You haven’t considered following her? Or questioning the servants about her absences?’
‘She is of age,’ Hinde repeated, ‘and she is my daughter. I would neither humiliate her nor demean myself by chattering with servants.’
‘But you’re prepared to seek my intervention.’
Across the coffee room came a jubilant guffaw from Sir Andrew Thornhill. His voice rose in boisterous argument. With one accord Hinde and Caspian moved into the shelter of the pillared alcove at the end of the room.
‘You’re acquiring something of a reputation for dealing tactfully with—ah—odd cases,’ said Hinde. ‘Some way of reading people’s thoughts, they say.’
‘Do they, indeed?’
‘Only metaphorically, of course.’
‘Yes,’ said Caspian, ‘of course.’
‘Something you doubtless perfected in your career as a stage illusionist. “Count Caspar,” wasn’t it?’
‘And still is, from time to time. But domesticity has given me a taste for keeping my evenings free nowadays.’
‘I envy you. I wish that for me, too....’ Hinde broke off. For the first time Caspian caught a glimpse of a vulnerable human being behind that bleak façade.
He said: ‘Your daughter may simply be suffering from some extended fit of the vapours. That will either cure itself, or be more appropriately dealt with by a physician than by someone like me.’
‘Our family physician finds nothing wrong with her. Such disorders are outside his field. Nor will she confide in him.’
‘If we’re to meet, it must be done without arousing her suspicion.’ Caspian thought for a moment. ‘When is your birthday?’
‘In October. What has that to do with it?’
‘I was hoping Miss Hinde could be persuaded to have her photograph taken as a birthday present to you. But seven months away...no, that’s rather unconvincing.’
‘Her own birthday’s next week—the 24th of March.’
‘Capital. You shall ask her to sit for her portrait as a birthday present from you. Not quite as plausible as the other possibility, but she can hardly refuse.’
Hinde allowed himself a wry smile. ‘In her present mood she’s capable of saying she wants no such present. In any case, I fail to see what you’re hoping to achieve.’
‘My wife runs a photographic studio in South Audley Street. I shall be glad to make an appointment on your daughter’s behalf. People are very much off their guard when their picture is being taken, and in the most unobtrusive way we shall find what she has to tell us.’
He had only to think of Bronwen and he was already with her: she was at once so close that here in this male stronghold he felt it would be the easiest thing in the world just to put out his hand and touch her. Across the streets that separated them he seemed to detect the tremor of a response, the loving turn of a head and mind.
‘I’m in your hands, Dr. Caspian,’ Hinde was saying. ‘When shall I bring her?’
‘Monday at ten, say?’
‘She shall be there. And you’ll want me to remain?’
‘I should prefer you to occupy yourself elsewhere for at least an hour, and then call back for her.’
‘And you’ll report to me afterwards?’
‘Here or at your home, as you choose.’
Hinde took his arm. ‘Now, Doctor, for that glass of wine.’
As
