David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Mrs Henderson looked rather frightened all of a sudden. Sarah suddenly remembered that they had hardly had time to talk about the disappearance of Mr Stewart so at least her mother wouldn’t worry about that.

‘I’ll have to think about that, Sarah. It’s very kind of you to suggest it, very kind indeed. I’m not sure I feel strong enough for it now, let alone in a couple of months’ time. And I’ve got nothing to wear.’

‘Just think about it, mama, you don’t have to decide now.’

Later that night, after Sarah had helped her mother up the stairs and into bed, she decided that she needed some assistance in the planning of this escapade. Tomorrow, she decided, she would talk to Edward.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had evolved a new routine all of his own in his new house in Manchester Square. After breakfast he would go and see the twins, sometimes talking to them or reciting poetry if they seemed to be awake, and then he would cross to the Wallace Collection for a ten-minute visit. Usually he would go and look at some of the paintings in the Great Gallery on the first floor where the Gainsboroughs and the Van Dycks held sway, but today he was looking at the hardware of death on the ground floor. Just round the corner, on this very floor, he thought, there were some exquisite pieces of craftsmanship, a French musical clock that could play thirteen different tunes including a Gallic equivalent of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, an astronomical clock, again from France, where you could find the time in hours, minutes and seconds, solar time as on a sundial in hours and minutes, the sign of the zodiac, the day, the date of the week, the time at any place in the northern hemisphere, the age of the moon and its current phase, and the position of the sun in the sky or the moon if it was night. But here, right in front of Powerscourt, resting innocently inside their glass cases, lay a couple of daggers from India and a tulwar, previously owned by the Tipu Sultan, which could have ripped a man’s innards out or cut his throat so that he would die inside a minute, pausing only to reflect, as the light faded fast from his eyes, on the exquisite carvings on the sword blade and the diamonds and gold inset into the pommel. Upstairs Watteau’s musicians danced out their private version of a pastoral heaven. Downstairs lurked long swords from Germany with very sharp edges, thin rapiers from Italy intended to cut and thrust their way into their victims, a curved Sikh sword that could cut a person in two, an Arabian shamshir with a walrus ivory grip which would leave terrible wounds. Above, Gainsborough’s Perdita, one-time mistress of the Prince Regent, gazed enigmatically down the Long Gallery. Down below stood suits of armour, rich men’s attempts to counter the stabs and the slashes and the thrusts, armour for men, armour even for horses, armour that grew so heavy that most warriors discarded it, armour designed to replicate the fashions of the day so that the Elizabethan Lord Buckhurst, in his armour with its peascod doublet with a point at the waist and an extravagantly puffed trunk hose reaching from waist to middle thigh, could probably have clanked into court at Greenwich or Westminster without anybody paying much attention. Upstairs gods danced across the sky and various versions of heaven, mythical and Christian and metaphorical, were on display. Down here – Powerscourt looked suspiciously at a deadly Italian falchion, a broad sword tapered to a vicious point at the end – was a stockpile of weapons that could send a man to heaven or hell in less than ten seconds.

He wondered, as he made his way out towards Bedford Square and Queen’s Inn, what had happened to Woodford Stewart. Had he too been poisoned? Or had the murderer turned to an easier and older means of death, a mighty blow from a steel sword, a thrust through the throat with a scimitar, a fatal stab with a dagger or kris?

The reception area for Plunkett Marlowe and Plunkett was pretty standard stuff, Powerscourt thought, as he surveyed the comfortable but fading chairs, the anonymous carpet, the prints of hunting and other rural pursuits on the walls. It was as though heaven for the solicitor breed was to be found somewhere in the hunting territory of Hampshire or Gloucestershire. The barristers, he thought, would prefer something more confrontational, perhaps some secret county with cock fighting and bear baiting. But Mr Plunkett, the younger Mr Plunkett as he had been referred to by the receptionist, was certainly a surprise. He was young for a start, very young. Powerscourt thought he could not have been out of university very long. He wondered, indeed, if the young man had started shaving yet as his cheeks were as smooth as silk. He positively bounded across the room to greet Powerscourt warmly.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome. Matthew Plunkett. What an honour to meet you in person! Come with me!’

With that the young man led his visitor at breakneck speed up two flights of stairs, along a corridor, past a small library and into Mr Plunkett the younger’s spacious office, decorated with prints of London. At least this one wants to stay where he is, Powerscourt said to himself, rather than escape to the Elysian Fields of horn and fox.

‘Now then, please take a seat across my desk, Lord Powerscourt, and we can get down to business.’

Powerscourt thought this was the youngest solicitor he had ever seen . Normally they were middle-aged or elderly citizens. Perhaps the younger ones were sent away to practise elsewhere until they came of age, hidden away in the attics until sometime beyond their fortieth birthdays.

‘Mrs Dauntsey has given me full discretion in what I tell you about the will,’ he said cheerfully, smiling at Powerscourt. ‘In some ways it’s a simple document, but it does have one fascinating oddity.’ He collected a group of papers together on his desk but Powerscourt noticed that he did not refer to them once as he gave his description of Dauntsey’s last will and testament.

‘The estate itself, the house, the land, the paintings and so on are all covered by the family trust. I believe that this document was started at about the same time Moses was found among the bulrushes in Egypt. It covers every possible eventuality and it stipulates, quite simply, that in this case of an owner dying with no children, the estate should pass to the eldest brother, if there is one, in this case Nicholas Dauntsey, currently thought to be resident in Manitoba and expected back to claim his little kingdom in the next month or so.’

Matthew Plunkett paused to inspect a tattered seagull that had taken up temporary residence on his window sill.

‘Mrs Dauntsey, of course, is well provided for, with accommodation inside the house if that should suit, or in one of the decent houses on the fringes of the estate. There is ample financial provision, as we lawyers like to say. There are a number of small bequests to staff or local institutions like the cricket club. And then we come to the mystery bequest.’

Matthew Plunkett was enjoying this. He leaned forward and addressed Powerscourt directly.

‘After the ten pounds here, and the five pounds there, Lord Powerscourt, we have the spectacular sum of twenty thousand pounds left to one F.L. Maxfield. Maxfield the mystery man we call him here now, my lord.’

‘You can’t find him?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Correct. Now you know as well as I do that solicitors have to spend a lot of time tracing people in cases like this. Plunkett Marlowe and Plunkett is also a founder member of a specialist firm devoted to finding persons like this Maxfield. We can’t find him. They can’t find him. We’ve tried Mr Dauntsey’s old school, his Cambridge college, his regiment in the Army, every single chambers he’s ever served in. We can’t find a birth certificate but they do get mislaid sometimes, or he might have been born abroad. We can’t, you won’t be surprised to hear, find any evidence of marriage or even death which would make our lives easier.’