David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘How could I! One of the very few people I’ve painted I really liked! You wouldn’t expect me to like the bloody King’s Private Secretary, but I did. And he’s still here! Five months late! All because of that monocle! I should never have tried it! And here’s some bloody General with huge moustaches. Who the hell are you? I don’t bloody know. Here’s Dauntsey. Thank God for that.’

Muttering under his breath, Stone returned and placed Dauntsey on the easel. Edward was astonished. ‘Brilliant, Mr Stone,’ he said, ‘absolutely brilliant. It’s a perfect likeness. I can’t tell you how lifelike it is.’

Nathaniel Stone had painted Dauntsey in some great room with a grey wall, a pillar behind him and wooden boards at his feet. He was wearing a light grey suit with a cream shirt. The red bencher’s robes sat comfortably on his shoulders. Powerscourt saw that he had light brown hair, thinning slightly at the temples, a high forehead, a Roman nose and eyes of light blue. In his left hand he was holding a number of briefs, the fingers long and slender. His expression was serious but there was a very faint hint of a smile. Surely this was a man, Powerscourt thought, you could imagine walking the great park with its deer at Calne or playing cricket on his very own pitch in the hot and dreamy days of summer. Above all, he reflected, Stone had made him impressive, a man to be reckoned with. Powerscourt thought he would have liked him if he had met him alive.

‘Tell me, Mr Stone,’ said Powerscourt, ‘what did you make of Mr Dauntsey? Did you like him? You must have spent a fair amount of time with him at the sittings.’

‘It’s a very strange thing,’ said Stone, shaking his head, ‘how people behave when they’re sitting for a portrait. It can take up to ten hours, five two-hour sessions, if things aren’t going well. Some of them tell you their life story, they really do. I had a man last year, peer of the realm, no less, and he spent the entire ten hours complaining about his wife. You’d think he might take a break now and then, but no, on and on he went. Last month I had a woman who complained about her daughter all the time. Envy possibly. But Mr Dauntsey was different. He didn’t treat me as his father confessor. He was very polite, very considerate, asking if he was sitting the right way. Quite unusual, that, he treated me as an equal, not some hired hand.’

‘Did he mention Queen’s Inn at all?’ asked Powerscourt.

Stone looked at the Dauntsey in oil in front of him. ‘I don’t think he did,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘Hold on, he did say one thing, but I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. It was something about very strange things going on there. He didn’t say any more than that.’

‘He didn’t give any detail about the strange goings on?’

The painter thought for a moment. ‘No, he didn’t,’ he said finally, ‘he said it quite quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself.’

‘Anyway, it’s a very fine painting. You must be very pleased with it, Mr Stone,’ said Powerscourt tactfully.

There was a sort of low muttering from the man in the apron. ‘Fools they send me! Fools! Blind people despatched to look at pictures, my pictures! God help us all!’

Stone subsided into a battered chair to the left of his easel and glowered at them. Powerscourt suddenly realized what the trouble might be. The man might be a perfectionist. Plenty of people of his acquaintance wanted things, their clothes, their lawns, their horses, their women, to be as near perfect as possible, but knew that they were never going to reach one hundred per cent success. But a few, an unlucky few, were destined to be dissatisfied with anything less than perfection. One of Lady Lucy’s elderly relations was so obsessed with the perfection of tidiness in her home, as Lady Lucy called it, that she practically had a fit if you moved an ashtray two inches to the left. And for a painter it might be much worse. A section of Transylvanian fur, a conductor’s baton, a courtier’s monocle might reduce a man to despair. Powerscourt felt rather sorry for Nathaniel Stone.

‘It’s the bloody shoes, for God’s sake.’ Stone was speaking quietly now as if the long encounter with the unfinished works had exhausted him. Powerscourt and Edward peered closely at the shoes. Black. Leather. Highly polished. Expensive. New. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with them at all.

‘Can’t you see, Pursecourt or whatever your name is, that the shoes are all wrong?’

Powerscourt couldn’t see it at all. Stone leapt out of his chair. Some of the earlier vigour and all of the earlier bad temper seemed to be returning.

‘A child of three, for God’s sake, could tell you that the light in the painting is coming from the right of the sitter. There’s even a bloody great shadow behind him so the morons of Queen’s Inn could tell where it was coming from if they put their minds to it.’ Now he pointed dramatically at the two shoes. ‘The direction of the light means that the left-hand shoe should be in the light and the right-hand one in shadow. And what have I done, fool that I am? They’re the other way round, for Christ’s sake. I’ve tried three times to fix it and everything just gets worse.’

‘Mr Stone,’ said Powerscourt firmly, ‘I have absolutely no doubt that the benchers and the barristers of Queen’s Inn will be happy with your splendid painting just as it is.’ Little bit of pomposity might not go amiss, Powerscourt said to himself. ‘I go further. Speaking on their behalf, and as your patron as it were on this occasion, I forbid you to attempt to change the shoes. I shall arrange the transport of the painting from here to the Inn tomorrow and the completion of the payment of your fee. And soon there will be another commission. As I said when we arrived, Alexander Dauntsey is dead. A new bencher will be chosen to replace him after a decent interval. A new portrait will be required. I cannot speak for my colleagues but I am sure it is more than likely you will be asked to carry out the work.’

The mention of death seemed to subdue Nathaniel Stone. ‘How did he die?’ he asked very quietly. ‘He was here in this room only two weeks ago.’

‘He was murdered,’ said Powerscourt, rising to take his leave.

The red-headed man saw them out, down his creaking stairs. Even as the door closed behind them they could hear him muttering, ‘Murdered, murdered, murdered,’ over and over again.

‘Wish we could have seen them,’ said Edward, walking briskly beside the Thames on their way back to the underground railway.

‘Seen what?’ said Powerscourt, trying to populate Calne with various versions of Dauntsey, Dauntsey taking his dinner in the great dining room, Dauntsey walking through his estate, Dauntsey relaxing at his billiard table or looking at his paintings after supper.

‘Those other paintings,’ said Edward. ‘The Hungarian Ambassador. The Private Secretary. The Governor of the Bank of England. I bet they were all very good. Like our Mr Dauntsey.’

But as they reached Queen’s Inn, they could tell that something was wrong. Groups of porters were inspecting every staircase. Powerscourt thought he could see Chief Inspector Beecham and a couple of his men on the roof. The Head Porter told them what had happened in the middle of the great court.

‘It’s Mr Woodford Stewart, sir. He’s disappeared. We know he meant to leave early today, sir. He mentioned it to two people in his chambers and to his clerk. He meant to leave by two at the latest. It’s now five o’clock. He’s not at home, sir. We spoke to his wife by the telephone. His coat and his papers that he would take away with him are still here, sir.’

‘When was he last seen?’ asked Powerscourt, as two of Beecham’s policemen slipped into the staircase behind him and marched up the stairs.