David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘My goodness me, Mr Baker,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I had no idea you were so devoted to the Royal Family.’

‘It’s not me, my lord, it’s Mabel, the wife. She’s been collecting this stuff for years. There’s a lot more of it upstairs. Whole bloody house is turning into a royal junk shop.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Such devotion!’

‘I’ll just see if I can persuade Mabel to make us some tea, my lord. I’ll be back in a second.’

The tea, when it arrived, came in an Edward the Seventh Coronation teapot, and was served on Edward the Seventh Coronation saucers in Edward the Seventh teacups. Mrs Baker was breathing heavily as she performed her duties. Powerscourt thought she had the air of one about to confirm with her doctor that she did indeed have a serious illness.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ she spoke with great reverence, ‘seeing that you are a lord and all that, could I ask you…’ Mrs Baker paused, her eyes fixed on Powerscourt’s face. He thought he knew what was coming. He prepared the necessary lies. ‘Have you, in your time as a lord, I mean, oh dear, maybe you’ve always been a lord, have you met…’ She paused again, wondering, Powerscourt thought, whether she would be struck down if she uttered the names out loud, like one who dared speak the ninety-nine names of God. ‘Have you met any of the Royal Family in your time?’

‘I have as a matter of fact,’ said Powerscourt, omitting to mention that one of his earliest cases in England after his return from India had involved examining the corpse of an important member of the family, his throat cut from ear to ear, his blood, not blue alas, but the normal red, lying in puddles on the floor in a Sandringham House bedroom. ‘Very charming they were too, Mrs Baker.’

She purred with delight. Her husband, feeling perhaps that the due tax had been paid to the local authorities, reminded her that he needed to speak to Lord Powerscourt alone. Their business was important and confidential.

‘Of course, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you in peace now. But I would like to ask a question of our guest before he goes, if I may.’

‘I think I may turn into a republican or an anarchist before my time is up.’ Baker was running his fingers through the remains of his hair. ‘One of those people who takes a pot shot at the Sovereign as they drive up the Mall on the way to some service or other. Since Mabel turned monarchist like this I’ve come to have increasing admiration for the Gunpowder Plotters and that fellow Catesby. Reckon they had the right idea – get rid of the whole lot of them in one go. Enough of this. Let us turn to your problem with the gun in Norfolk.’

The former policeman walked a few times up and down his little front room and eventually settled himself in front of an enormous cream-coloured plate in honour of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

‘I can still remember how excited some people became when the fingerprinting came in, my lord.’ Walter Baker was making a steeple with his fingers as he spoke. ‘Some people could hardly believe it – that every single person had a set of fingerprints unique to them. We had one chap, a Detective Inspector I think he was, who was a devoted Baptist or Quaker or one of those funny religions, who said the fingerprints were God’s filing system, the Good Lord’s way of putting his mark on every one of his creatures. Cynics told the man it’d have to be a bloody big file, big enough to hold every single person on the planet. And did God remove the dead from the files, asked the cynics? Otherwise he’d have a system clogged up with people going right back to Adam and Eve themselves. Other people like me thought at the beginning that it was going to be a very useful tool in solving crimes and putting criminals away. Well, I still think it’s useful, but I don’t think it’s as useful as we thought it might be.’

‘And why is that, Mr Baker?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘It’s like this, my lord. At the start when nobody knew how it all worked, the criminals didn’t know what to do. Now they realize that all they have to do is to wear gloves. There’s a couple of sergeants over in the East End who are keeping an unofficial record of the sales of fine gloves in Shoreditch and Whitechapel. They talk to the relevant shopkeepers and so on. Fine glove sales in those parts are going up at the rate of ten per cent a year. That might be the fashion but it might be something else.

‘I don’t know if the Norfolk police are using fingerprint analysis on the gun in this murder case of yours, but let’s suppose they are. On the face of it, you might think it is all straightforward. If the living brother, Cosmo I believe you said he was called, had his fingerprints on the gun, you might think that was pretty serious. But then you tell me the gun probably came from the drawer in the desk in his brother’s house where he was a regular visitor. At any rate the gun used to kill Randolph Colville was the same make and so on. It used the same ammunition. If it came from that drawer, it could well have had his fingerprints on it. Even if it came from somewhere else – in other words we might be talking about two different guns here – there could be perfectly innocent explanations for Cosmo’s prints, if they are there. He could have picked it up off the floor or taken it from whoever was holding it at the time. A good defence counsel could run rings round the jury with fingerprint evidence in cases like this.’

‘What happens,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if the gun is found to have other fingerprints on it? Prints that might be those of the murderer?’

‘That gets very hypothetical, my lord. Think about it. On this gun there are Cosmo’s fingerprints. If he has been holding the gun he must surely have left fingerprints. Fine. Now, gentlemen of the jury, says the defence barrister, hold on a minute, we have this other set of prints or two other sets of prints, also on the gun. We do not know who they belong to, these fingerprints, but they could well belong to the murderer, a man who spent no time at all in Brympton Hall but just long enough to kill his victim. It’s not surprising we don’t know who he is, he has got clean away.’

‘Ah,’ said Powerscourt, his fingers touching an imaginary gown, and addressing an imaginary judge, ‘in my role as counsel for the prosecution, objection, my lord, objection. My learned friend is trying to present conjecture and guesswork as if they were fact. There may well be other sets of prints on the weapon, my lord, but we do not know who they belong to. For all we know they could belong to Mr Lloyd George or the Bishop of London. I submit, my lord, this is not evidence, it is mere conjecture.’

‘Mr Defence Counsel?’ Former Inspector Baker, now playing the part of the judge, had watched these games all too many times before.

‘I was merely trying to let the jury know, my lord,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that there are other marks on the pistol which must have belonged to somebody else, and that the somebody else could well have been the murderer.’

Powerscourt turned into the judge, rising to his feet and turning from time to time to address an imaginary jury. ‘Could well have been, Mr Defence Counsel,’ he boomed, ‘is not good enough. It is guesswork. Mr Foreman, gentlemen of the jury, I direct you to place no weight on these imaginary suppositions. They bear no credibility in this court. Objection sustained.’

Powerscourt and Walter laughed as they reached the end of their courtroom drama. ‘Mr Baker,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I must confer with the real defence counsel before I decide what is for the best. But would you be willing to appear in court for us if necessary?’

‘I would,’ said Baker.

There was a sudden rustling noise by the door. Mrs Baker swept in, past Henry the Eighth and Queen Anne, and came to rest in front of a small picture of George the Second. ‘Don’t you let this Lord Powerscourt go without my question now, Walter.’