David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘Twins well,’ said Edward, his face going red with the effort. ‘Lord Powerscourt is well too.’ He beamed at Sarah as if he had just climbed a mountain. Perhaps he had. ‘Accounts. Puncknowle accounts. Head of Chambers said to keep going even though Mr Stewart dead. My head is spinning.’

Sarah had noticed before that once one verb appeared, others were sure to follow. Maybe Edward’s problem had to do with verbs rather than words in general.

‘Want to make a suggestion, Sarah,’ Edward carried on bravely. This after all was the reason for his mission.

‘And what might that be?’ asked Sarah, looking at Edward in her most flirtatious manner. His eyes, she thought suddenly, his eyes were a wonderful sort of soft brown colour and looked as if they might melt if their owner was maltreated.

‘Oxford,’ said Edward in his most authoritative tone. ‘Let’s go to Oxford for the day on Saturday.’ Then he nearly spoilt it all by adding, ‘There’s a special offer on the train. From Paddington.’

Sarah had never been to Oxford. She didn’t think Edward had either. She had a sketchy picture in her mind of ancient colleges, of a river running through the city, of great libraries, of hundreds and hundreds of young men lying about on the lawns, or draping themselves across punts and rowing boats with straw hats on.

‘Why, Edward,’ she said, ‘that would be lovely. Would you like me to bring lunch? Isn’t there a river up there where we could have a picnic?’

‘I believe there is,’ said Edward hesitantly. ‘I’ve not been there before, Sarah. One of the young silks is going to brief me, a man I did a lot of work for last month. He went to Magdalen College. He says that’s the best. It’s by the river. And it’s got a deer park.’

‘Just like Calne,’ said Sarah sadly, thinking of Dauntsey’s funeral.

‘Will your mother be all right?’ asked Edward anxiously.

Sarah had long suspected that Edward must have or have had a close relation who was not well. Otherwise he wouldn’t understand how important these questions were.

‘As long as it’s not a surprise,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll tell her this evening.’ Just then they caught the faint mouse-like tread of Winifred’s return. Edward made his way back downstairs. Sarah continued with her typing. It was nobody else’s business after all if they were going to Oxford for the day on Saturday with a special offer on the train.

Johnny Fitzgerald’s stockinged feet were draped elegantly on the Powerscourt dining table. His right hand was holding a glass of crystal clear Sancerre, his left a bundle of papers filled with drawings that might have been birds. To his left, Lady Lucy was drinking tea, as was Powerscourt on the opposite side of the table. At the far end, sleeping peacefully in their Moses baskets, were the twins. Lady Lucy believed they should see a bit of family life from time to time and she knew how much her husband loved looking at them or talking way above their heads with poetry or whatever was passing through his mind.

‘It’ll make my fortune, I’m certain of it,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, waving his papers vigorously at his friends. ‘I’m astonished nobody’s thought of it before.’

‘What’s the plan, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Please forgive me, Lady Lucy, if I repeat some of what I told you just now.’ Johnny took an appreciative gulp of his Sancerre. ‘It all started the other morning, Francis. I woke up very early and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I went for a walk. I don’t know if you’ve been to Kensington Gardens at five o’clock in the morning, but the noise is fantastic. It’s the birds.’

Johnny doesn’t need to catch trains to obscure railway stations in the countryside any more, Powerscourt thought to himself. He can just take a stroll in the middle of London.

‘Some of them are singing,’ Johnny went on, ‘some of them are squawking, some of them are belting out bits out of forgotten operas, some of them seem to know some special hymns of their own, some are just saying this is my pitch, why don’t you bugger off, you other birds, some are screaming and some are twittering, some are chirping away to themselves and some seem to be saying “Pink, pink.” All this within two hundred yards of the Round Pond.’

Johnny paused and looked down at his papers. The old Johnny, Lady Lucy found herself thinking, would have taken another quaff of his wine at this point, a suitable moment for refreshment, but no. This Johnny carried on without a drop passing his lips.

‘Only thing is, Francis,’ Johnny went on, ‘I didn’t have a clue who these bloody birds were. In the dark, I mean. Couldn’t bloody well see. They could have been the black-browed albatross or the short-toed eagle for all I damned well knew. So I went to this Natural History Museum place in South Kensington – fascinating place, full of stuffed birds and things, you should take the big children there, they’d love it – and they sent me to an old chap who lives out Acton way, who knows the sound of almost every bloody bird in England. Used to be a sailor and he’s nearly blind, but I took him out to Hyde Park yesterday at five fifteen in the morning and this is what we’ve produced.’ He waved his papers at them enthusiastically. Powerscourt saw that they were full of rough descriptions of birds followed by rather precise descriptions of their sounds.

‘I’ve got great plans, Francis.’ At last Johnny Fitzgerald yielded to temptation and took a considerable pull of his wine. He eyed the bottle carefully as if trying to gauge how many glasses there were left in it. Powerscourt wondered if he would, unusually, restrict himself to a single bottle.

‘Do you remember that little chap we had working with us in Indian Intelligence, Francis? Fellow by the name of Cooper, Charlie Cooper, who did all the maps and could draw you a snake or a vulture right down to the last nail in its talon? Well, he works for a publisher now, illustrating books and magazines, and he’s said he’ll do all the birds for me, so you see them in their proper habitat, not just stuffed in a glass cage with no branches to cling on to. It’s going to be a book describing all these different creatures and the sounds they make. Lady Lucy, what do you think of that?’

Lady Lucy smiled. She was pleased Johnny had found something other than the vintages of France to occupy his spare time, but she doubted if he would meet many eligible females on his dawn patrol up and down Rotten Row in the hours before daybreak. ‘I think that’s tremendous, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Maybe you could put it in the newspapers in sections first, like the novelists used to do.’

‘Serialize it?’ said Johnny. ‘That would be good, we could all get paid twice. Mind you there’s me, and there’s the sailor man and there’s Charlie Cooper, all of us to get paid. Still, we can try. I give you a toast, doesn’t matter if it’s drunk in Sancerre or Darjeeling, let us drink to The Birds of London .’

‘ The Birds of London ,’ Francis and Lucy chorused in unison. There was a faint moan from the far end of the table. A twin was stirring in its sleep. They all fell silent for a moment.

‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think that’s a tremendous scheme. But I hope it isn’t going to drag you away from detection completely. I would be lost without you. And I have something I want you to do.’

‘Rest assured, my friend,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald with a grin, ‘that I shall not desert you in your investigations. The birds may have to wait, the birds on occasion may have flown, but the solving of the crime will take priority.’

With that he finished his glass, refilled it, and looked expectantly at Powerscourt, who was looking for something in his trouser pocket.