‘I am sure he has never forgotten that you rescued him from a life of destitution,’ said Frances.

Goodwin refused to be cheered by this observation. ‘My care is being used against him, now. The police have suggested that he is actuated by gratitude because his foster parents used him cruelly and turned him onto the street. It might prove necessary to tell them the truth.’

‘The truth? How hard a commodity that is to come by.’

‘We sometimes conceal it for the best of intentions, and then it comes back twisted by time and circumstance.’

Frances hesitated. ‘I know you have been asked this before, and please forgive me for asking again, but I feel you are about to be open with me at last. Is Isaac your natural son?’

‘No, he is not related to me by blood, but he is the son of a respectable person I cannot name. Soon after his birth I placed him with a good family who wanted a child, and he was well looked after, but when he was seven his foster parents died within a week or two of each other, the father in an accident and his wife after suffering a fit. There was no one to care for him. When I discovered his situation I adopted him. To anyone who asked I said that I had found him in the street, as I did not wish his actual parentage to become known.’

‘If there is no crime involved then I doubt the police would be interested,’ Frances reassured him. ‘I am of course naturally curious, but if it has no relevance to any wrongdoing I will not enquire further.’

‘I do not think revealing what I know would assist anyone.’ His face was hard and shadowed with despair, and Frances felt sure that the truth had once again slipped away from her.

The Inspector appeared, followed by Isaac Goodwin, who was being comforted by a lady teacher and escorted by a constable. Dr Goodwin immediately leaped up and ran to him. The constable looked worried and was about to intervene but Sharrock waved him back and permitted father and son to embrace and wipe away each other’s tears. There was a quick conversation in sign language, then Goodwin turned to the Inspector with an expression of horror.

‘You are charging him with murder? How can that be?’

‘No choice in the matter,’ said the Inspector, ‘and I’ve asked Dr Bond to have another look at the bones. Come into the office and I’ll explain.’

Goodwin signed what Frances was able to recognise was his grateful thanks to the lady teacher, who patted his arm sympathetically before he followed Sharrock to his office. Isaac, with a look of heartfelt appeal in his eyes, was taken to the cells. ‘Inspector, I wish to engage Miss Doughty to look into the matter and insist that she is present at our conversation,’ declared Goodwin. ‘One of us must have a clear mind to apply to the matter and I am afraid that today, under these terrible circumstances, it cannot be myself.’

‘As you wish,’ shrugged Sharrock. Once in his office he flung himself into his chair with an expression of extreme regret. ‘Young Mr Goodwin is a better class of person than we usually have in here, and if it wasn’t for all this business he’d be a credit to you.’

‘He is, and will always be, a credit to me. But why do you believe him to be guilty of a terrible crime? There must be a mistake! What motive could he have to kill this man? He knew nothing of the fellow’s threats against me.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t the case. We have interviewed the schoolboys who have admitted that they hid the bones on your son’s behalf. It turned out that the victim was unwise enough to repeat his threats against you as he was leaving the school, and some of the boys were nearby. He made the mistake of assuming that as they were deaf they could not understand the conversation. In fact they could, as one of them can hear a little and they can all read speech by looking at the shape of the speaker’s mouth. I don’t know how they do it, I’ve tried but it’s beyond me.’

A memory arose and flitted across Goodwin’s features. ‘I remember now. I thought I heard footsteps behind me, but when I turned around no one was there. Sometimes …’ He held a hand to his head. ‘Sometimes it is hard to tell if the noise is from inside or out.’

‘The boys think a lot of you, and they didn’t want any harm to come to you or the school, so they went and told your son what they knew. So you see, when the man came for his second visit Mr Goodwin was very well aware that he had been blackmailing you.’

‘But murder? You think him capable of that?’

‘It’s not what I think, Dr Goodwin. It’s gone beyond that now.’

‘I assume he has told you it was an accident.’

‘Yes, he says he asked the man to wait in the visitors’ room but he took the wrong door. Seems like a weak explanation to me.’

Frances decided to offer a suggestion. ‘Perhaps he tried to trap the man in the cellar so he could call the police and have him arrested, which is a very commendable thing to do, but the man had a bad leg and stumbled and fell.’

‘If he changes his story I’ll let you know,’ Sharrock grunted, ‘but juries don’t like it when the accused does that. It shows him to be a liar, and which story are they to believe? The first one, the second one, or neither?’

That, Frances was obliged to acknowledge, was very true. A change of tale was usually no more than the desperate attempt of a guilty person to escape justice by any means available.

Sharrock leaned forward. ‘Dr Goodwin, did you ever wonder why the blackmailer never returned?’

‘Naturally. He told me at the first visit that he would allow me some time to consider my position and accumulate the money he wanted and then he would come back. When I did not see him again I assumed that he had been arrested for some other crime. Ever since then it has been a constant worry to me that he might reappear.’

‘Well, he won’t do that now. And what about Mrs Antrobus? What did she think of it all?’

‘This is nothing to do with Mrs Antrobus,’ said Goodwin brusquely. ‘I know the criminal sought to imply that I would do these terrible things because of some fancied connection, but there was no such connection.’

‘But she was also accused, wasn’t she?’

‘Mrs Antrobus?’ queried Frances, glancing at Goodwin.

‘Wild foolish allegations, based on speculation. Really, these rumours about my private life are disgusting and intolerable.’

Sharrock looked unconvinced. ‘Yes, the boys said that the visitor accused Dr Goodwin of murdering Mr Edwin Antrobus not so much for the sake of his wife but at her very specific request.’

‘You can attach no importance to statements of that kind,’ snapped Goodwin, flushing with anger. ‘The man was a criminal and would say whatever he wanted in order to extract money from me. Why should I consent to such a thing, a thing quite against my nature, for someone who was no more than a patient?’

‘He thought there was more.’

‘I cannot help what he thought. He was wrong.’ Goodwin rose. ‘I have suffered these attacks on my good name for too long! Until now I have treated them with the silent contempt they deserve, but this cannot be permitted to continue. I will consult my solicitor at once, and you may expect a visit from him very soon.’

Goodwin was fuming as he left the station, but as Frances joined him in a cab home she was thoughtful. ‘I believe that the blackmailer, whoever he was, is the same man who was seen in the company of Mr Antrobus at Bristol station. He was later seen with some of the missing man’s property. I think he murdered Mr Antrobus but profited very little from his crime. Perhaps he imagined Mr Antrobus carried large sums of money on his person and was disappointed to find that he did not. So he tried to make further gains by using the rumours that have been circulating in Bayswater in order to blackmail you. He may have thought that if he made enough accusations then one of them would strike home.’