David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Detective Chief Inspector Beecham was waiting for Powerscourt on his return to the Inn from Somerset House. He was exceedingly angry.

‘Bloody man,’ he said, slamming the fist of his right hand into the palm of his left, ‘the bloody man.’

‘Have you been talking to the benchers again, Chief Inspector? You know how that upsets you.’

Beecham managed a laugh. ‘I have not been talking to any of those benchers. It’s the bloody man Newton, Porchester Newton.’

‘What about Newton? What’s he done to upset you?’

‘He’s come back, for a start,’ said Beecham. ‘And any sane person would have to put the wretch very high on his list of suspects. Huge row, as you know, with Dauntsey about that election. Dauntsey wins the election, Newton doesn’t, takes himself off in a huff after the wretched feast. He could easily have come back secretly to shoot Woodford Stewart and then disappeared again.’

‘Sorry, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I don’t follow you. What exactly is the latest problem with Newton?’

‘Sorry, my lord,’ said Beecham, running his hand through his hair, ‘he won’t speak.’

‘What do you mean, he won’t speak? Has he gone dumb or something?’

‘He won’t speak to me. He won’t answer any questions. He refuses to give an indication at all of his whereabouts on the day of the feast or any day since then. He has gone mute in this affair.’

Powerscourt remembered an old judge telling him years before that if you were guilty on a major charge your best course was to say nothing at all. Any information you gave to the police led them somewhere else, then to more questions which brought more discoveries until you were thoroughly trapped.

‘That’s not very wise of him, surely?’ Powerscourt said.

‘It’s not,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘And much bloody good it is going to do him. I’m going to put a team of my men on to his whereabouts since the Dauntsey murder full time. And if they find anything, however small, we’ll have him in and lock him up on a charge of obstruction. Maybe a night or two in the cells would restore his powers of speech.’

Powerscourt wondered if he should volunteer to try his own, different, powers of persuasion to induce some speech out of Porchester Newton. But he didn’t want to offend the Chief Inspector. Before he had decided, Beecham was already there.

‘Why don’t you try, my lord? You get on better with those bloody benchers than I do. He might talk to you more easily than to me. After all, I don’t care how we get the information.’

Three minutes later Powerscourt was knocking on the door of Newton’s rooms on the ground floor of the little Stone Court hidden away at the back of the Inn. Newton was an enormous man, well over six feet tall, going to fat about the face and stomach, florid of complexion and with rather brutal hands that looked to Powerscourt as though they should have belonged to a butcher rather than a barrister.

‘Good afternoon,’ Powerscourt began. Nobody could complain if you said good afternoon to them. ‘My name is Powerscourt. I have been asked by the benchers to investigate these murders. I wonder if you could spare me the time to answer some questions.’ Powerscourt was speaking in what he hoped was his most emollient voice. The reply was loud, virtually shouted.

‘No! Get out!’

‘Mr Newton, I am, I would humbly remind you, a man of some experience in murder investigations. It is my belief that refusal to answer questions makes people suspicious. It makes people, particularly policemen, think that the refusal is meant to conceal something. From there it is but a short step to the assumption that the person is refusing information about the murder. And from there it is only another short step to the assumption that the person refusing to speak may actually be the murderer. We are fortunate here that we have very intelligent policemen engaged on the case. I have known less intelligent policemen send those refusing to speak to court on the charge of murder because they thought silence denoted guilt. On one occasion it only transpired after the man had been sentenced, Mr Newton, that his silence had been to protect a woman. If she had not come forward, with all the shame and obloquy it brought her, the man would have been hanged. I ask you again. Could you spare me some time to answer a few questions?’

The voice was even louder. ‘No! Get out!’

Anybody listening might think, Powerscourt reflected, that the fellow doesn’t want to talk to me.

‘Let me make one last appeal, Mr Newton,’ Powerscourt suspected it was hopeless but was resolved on one last attempt. ‘Let me remind you of the difficulties your colleagues are facing each and every day these mysteries remain unsolved. There are policemen crawling all over the Inn. I haunt the place, asking uncomfortable questions from time to time. Nobody can be certain there will not be another murder, that they are not going to be the next victim. I am sure that some of the stenographers are contemplating leaving their employment here because of the uncertainty, not knowing if they will be poisoned as they eat their lunch or shot on their way to the underground railway station. I am sure you could help, Mr Newton. If your knowledge would advance the quest for the murderer, then surely it is your duty to talk to us.’

Porchester Newton stood up. Powerscourt saw with some alarm that those butcher’s hands were rising to his waist as if preparing to wring something that might have been a pillow case or a human form.

‘No! Get out! One more word and I’ll throw you out!’

Nobody could say, Powerscourt thought to himself as he made his way to confess his defeat to the Chief Inspector, that Porchester Newton had failed to make himself clear.

‘Is my hat straight?’ Sarah Henderson asked Edward the day after Powerscourt’s unsuccessful jousting with Porchester Newton.

‘Your hat is fine, Sarah,’ said Edward, thinking that she looked even more attractive in black. They were making the final adjustments to Sarah’s clothes in her attic office before proceeding to the memorial service for Alexander Dauntsey in the Temple Church. It was the custom in Queen’s Inn for all benchers not buried at the Temple Church to be given a sort of memorial service with addresses by their colleagues there within two months of their death. In less than a week, Sarah had reminded Edward gloomily that morning, they would be doing exactly the same thing for the unfortunate Woodford Stewart.

The church was full, not only with Dauntsey’s colleagues from Queen’s, but with lawyers from the other Inns of Court, instructing solicitors, two men from the East End he had saved from the gallows who had come to pay their last respects, a couple of men from the City he had played cricket with, and members of various financial institutions he had represented with distinction. There was a sprinkling of women, some wives who had known him closely, some stenographers he had employed like Sarah. The benchers sat in splendid isolation in their allotted rows at the front. Mrs Dauntsey sat alone in the left-hand pew at the front. Porchester Newton was staring bitterly at the benchers from halfway down the nave. Edward and Sarah were squeezed in right at the back with a couple of criminals and a Chancery judge in full regalia who looked as though he might have adjourned his court to attend.

Powerscourt was taking a special interest in the service. He had handed over the sum of five pounds to the Head Porter to be distributed among himself and his colleagues who were shepherding the guests into position in return for information relating to two particular questions. The first he regarded, at best, as a shot in the dark. Suppose Alexander Dauntsey had found a woman, a woman who might bear him a child to inherit the glory and the desolation that was Calne, would she appear at this memorial service? Surely she wouldn’t have gone to the funeral in the alien county of Kent. But might she just pop in here, maybe sometime before the service started, for a last encounter with the ghost of Dauntsey? Powerscourt had left instructions with his team that anybody unknown to them was to be asked to give their name and address. If questioned, they were to say it was for insertion in the record of the service that would appear in the respectable newspapers and for Queen’s own records. Nobody could refuse such a request, Powerscourt thought, though they might give a false name. Any Mrs Smiths, those regular visitors to the divorce courts, he would regard with extreme suspicion. And his second line of inquiry related to the mysterious visitor to Dauntsey’s chambers on the day of the feast. The porter who had seen this person had been told to brief all his colleagues on the appearance of the stranger. Powerscourt had offered a further reward of five pounds if anybody recognized this person again. Powerscourt had protected himself from false sightings by saying that this further instalment of cash would be handed over only when the visitor admitted his earlier trip to Queen’s on the day of Dauntsey’s death.