David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Powerscourt laughed. ‘I don’t think I could do that, William. I don’t think it would be ethical to bet against my current employers, however unpleasant they may be.’

Try as she might, Sarah Henderson could not see how she could disguise from her mother her unease at what was happening in Queen’s Inn. For she was more concerned, much more concerned than she had told Edward, about the events of the afternoon. She felt sure Mr Stewart was dead. You just had to look at the policemen, or at Lord Powerscourt, to realize that. And now, here she was, clearing away the tea things, her mother about to start the evening interrogation across the fire. Sarah wondered about a headache and going to bed early, but that would only postpone matters. She wished she could have stayed with Edward all evening and not had to come home to her sick mother.

‘I think I’d like a cup of hot chocolate, Sarah dear, when you’re through in there.’

‘Any cake, mama?’ said Sarah, playing for time. There were still a couple of slices left of the Victoria sponge baked in honour of Mr Dauntsey’s funeral.

‘No thank you, dear, the chocolate will do me fine. I only bought it today in the grocer’s. Mrs Wiggins was in there, telling me for the third time how well that son of hers was doing in the Metropolitan Railway. I was able to tell her you’d been to Mr Dauntsey’s funeral in a first class carriage and had conversed on the way with the Head of Chambers. She left quite soon after that, Mrs Wiggins.’

Even in the confined quarters of the little kitchen Sarah could appreciate the glory in her mother’s victory, the forces of darkness or the Metropolitan Railway in the person of Mrs Wiggins routed and forced to flee from the field.

Sarah knew she was looking anxious as she went to sit on the opposite side of the fire. She wondered if she could tell her mother about Edward as a means of avoiding telling her about Mr Stewart, though quite what she would actually say about Edward she had no idea. Her mother had, she felt, been fairly unmoved about the death of Alexander Dauntsey, even though she, Sarah, had been so very upset.

‘Something went wrong at chambers today, dear, didn’t it?’ Mrs Henderson took a preliminary sip of her chocolate. ‘I can tell.’ Privately Mrs Henderson suspected that Sarah was not very accomplished as a shorthand typist. As a child she had been clumsy, awkward with her hands, often dropping things. Her mother could not imagine how she would be able to keep up to the exacting standards of an Inn of Court. In fact, she could not have been more wrong: the twenty-year-old Sarah was a very different character from the child Sarah and knew very well how highly her work was valued.

‘It’s Mr Stewart, Mr Woodford Stewart, mama. He’s disappeared.’

In spite of all the months of conversations about the Inn the name of Stewart had not yet been entered into Mrs Henderson’s filing system.

‘Mr Stewart? Is he one of the porters?’

‘No, mama, he’s a KC in a different chambers from mine. He is or was a great friend of Mr Dauntsey. They were going to work together on that big fraud case I’ve been telling you about.’

‘Mr Bunkerpole? I read about him today in the paper.’

‘Puncknowle, mama, pronounced Punnel, like funnel on a ship.’

‘I don’t need lessons in pronunciation from my own daughter, thank you very much, Sarah.’ Mrs Henderson paused to take a large mouthful of her chocolate. ‘So what do they think has happened to this Mr Stewart? Has he run off with somebody?’ Mrs Henderson’s paper and her magazines contained regular features about wicked men running off with people who were not their wives and causing great unhappiness. Less than a year ago she had given Sarah a long lecture on the Dangers of Being Run Away With by Wicked Men which Sarah had completely ignored.

‘There’s no sign of any running away, mother. That’s all nonsense. People think he may have been murdered, like Mr Dauntsey.’

The minute she said it, Sarah regretted it. She was only trying to take out a pathetic revenge for the pronunciation remark, this over her mother who was ill and in pain all the time and might not be around much longer. Surely now her mother would be worried.

‘He might well have run away with somebody, Sarah. People like that always take very good care to keep it secret. That’s probably why nobody knows where he is. He’ll turn up sooner or later, maybe travelling in the South of France under a false name, mark my words.’

For some reason that Sarah had never understood, the wicked runners away always seemed to end up in her mother’s version in the South of France. The place seemed to carry spectacular undertones of villainy, a Mediterranean equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah, in her mind. But she doubted it would have much appeal for Mr Woodford Stewart, whose holidays, she had overheard somebody telling one of the policemen that very afternoon, were usually spent in the Highlands where he could pursue his twin delights of walking the hills and playing golf. But she knew how difficult it would be to shake her mother’s belief in the running away theory. She tried.

‘I don’t think any of the policemen or Lord Powerscourt think he’s run away, mother. They think he’s disappeared or he’s dead.’

‘This Lord Burrscourt, Sarah. Is he a friend of the Punchbowl man?’

Sarah was gripped by a moment of panic and a moment of total recall. She was back in the doctor’s surgery with Dr Carr, old and white-haired now, the man who had looked after her father so well in his last, fatal illness. Dr Carr was talking to Sarah and her mother, his voice weary now after forty years of dealing with the sickness of London’s poor, a dead look in his eyes. He had almost finished describing the likely course of her mother’s illness, when he told them that in a few cases, not many at all in his experience, the mind began to deteriorate, not into senile decay as the doctors called it, but the memory began to fail, particularly about what had happened very recently. Sarah looked closely at her mother before she spoke. The last drop of chocolate was being drained with great enjoyment. She prayed that her mother was tired today, maybe the pain had dulled her wits.

‘Lord Powerscourt, mama, is the man the benchers brought in to investigate Mr Dauntsey’s death. I shouldn’t think he knows Mr Puncknowle at all. Edward says that Lord Powerscourt once solved a murder mystery for the Royal Family.’

‘What sort of age is this Lord Powerscourt?’

Sarah smiled at the transparency of her mother’s behaviour. ‘He’s in his early forties, I think. His wife’s just had twins. Edward and I saw them last Saturday. They’re very sweet – the twins, I mean.’

‘Your father’s sister had twins long ago. Bad lot, both of them. Your father used to say how unfair it was. One bad one might just be bad luck, but two bad, it was terrible. Nearly killed the parents.’

Sarah wanted to ask what form this wickedness had taken. Had they, perhaps, ended up in the been-run-away with category? But there was a tightened look about her mother’s lips which hinted that the topic was now closed. Suddenly Sarah decided to float her idea of a treat to her mother. She felt so sorry for her, so frail, growing less and less able to cope all the time.

‘I’ve been thinking, mama, about a treat for you when the weather gets better.’

‘A treat, my dear? I don’t think people get treats at my time of life and in my condition.’

‘Listen carefully, mama. It would involve putting you in a wheelchair some of the time, but we could say you’d twisted your ankle. People wouldn’t have to think you weren’t very mobile. Anyway we’d get you down to Queen’s Inn and we could wheel you round the courts and you could meet lots of these barristers we’ve talked about so often. With any luck we could get you invited to lunch in the Hall, as a guest of one of the barristers. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’