David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Normally this would have been the focus of intense study and excitement, but Powerscourt seemed to have no interest in birds or anything other than his own thoughts. He was pacing up and down his drawing room like Nelson on his quarterdeck, muttering to himself from time to time, shaking his head, pausing to look out of the window into Manchester Square.

At last he stood still by the fireplace. Even then Lady Lucy could tell his mind was still far away. She waited. Johnny looked at his bird drawings. He had known his friend in this sort of mood before, once prowling outside their tent for a full hour and a half one winter’s night in India before returning inside to prophesy, correctly as it turned out, that the attack would come from the east, not from the south where everyone expected it.

‘Lucy, Johnny,’ he said at last, his hand stroking the top of the mantelpiece, ‘I’m sorry about that. I’ve had a most extraordinary idea I’d like to try out on you.’

There was a pause while he collected his thoughts. Outside they could hear a couple of cabs rattling round the square and heading north into Marylebone High Street.

‘Let me give you, for your consideration,’ Powerscourt began, ‘a series of apparently unconnected facts.’

He’s going to start numbering points soon, Lady Lucy thought, the index finger of the right hand slamming into the closed fingers of the left.

‘Fact Number One,’ Powerscourt went on, quite unaware that his wife had perfectly foretold his current actions, ‘is that there was seen hanging around the Temple Church before the service, but not attending it, a well-bred and very attractive young woman who gave her name as Eve Adams, living in Eden Street. There is no Eden Street where she said it was and the name is obviously false.

‘Fact Number Two is that on the day of Dauntsey’s murder, a mysterious visitor was seen in Queen’s Inn, including one sighting near his chambers. It is perfectly possible that the mysterious visitor actually went in to see the man and came out again without being seen. He was seen again, leaving the Inn by a porter. The visitor did not speak.

‘Fact Number Three, a couple of the porters saw, or thought they saw before they realized they were mistaken, the mysterious visitor again today at the memorial service. The reason they thought they were mistaken was that they saw Mrs Dauntsey’s back and when they realized the person was female, not male as on the day of the murder, they repented of their ways.

‘Fact Number Four. Early in January this year there was staged at the Middle Temple Hall a three hundredth anniversary production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night . It was first put on in the same hall on the same date in 1602. Among the audience, on her own admission, were Mr and Mrs Dauntsey. Twelfth Night has, as its main character, a girl called Viola disguised as a boy called Cesario. To add to the confusion she, or he, had a twin brother. In Shakespeare’s time when no women were allowed on the stage at all, the gender complications with boys who were cast as girls pretending to be boys must have been even more severe.’

Powerscourt paused. ‘Do you see it? Surely you must see it,’ he said. Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald both shook their heads.

‘It’s only a supposition. It could be completely wrong. But suppose we have read the Dauntsey marriage completely wrong. We know – well, we don’t know, we suspect that she cannot have his children or children bearing the Dauntsey blood in some admixture or other. Dauntsey decides to leave her. And the person of his choice is none other than the Eve Adams who cannot resist sniffing round the church where her late lover is to have his memorial service. But Mrs Dauntsey knew what was happening and determined to stop it. She decides to take revenge. Remembering the Viola/Cesario person from Twelfth Night she dresses in man’s clothes, goes to Queen’s Inn, pops into her husband’s room and poisons him.’

‘Good God,’ said Lady Lucy.

‘What about Woodford Stewart?’ asked Johnny.

‘Easy. He saw her leaving the Inn so he cannot be left alive. A couple of weeks later she comes back, probably with that giant butler of hers, and shoots Stewart. You can’t tell me that somebody who lives in that world of Calne doesn’t know how to shoot. She leaves the giant butler to dispose of the body. By that time she’s back safely in her own drawing room.’

‘Do you believe it, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Do you think it’s true? If it is, you’ve solved the murder.’

‘Different question, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘How are you going to find out if it’s true or not?’

‘That’s easy, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tomorrow morning I’m going to send her a telegram. In three days’ time I shall arrive at Calne for tea. Then I shall discover the answer.’

‘I shouldn’t eat anything while you’re there, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘not even the best chocolate cake. And I should watch your back all the way there and the way home.’

Petley Road was a terrace of respectable Victorian houses in Fulham not far from the river and its great warehouses. Schoolteachers, rising bank clerks, those sort of respectable citizens, Powerscourt reckoned, would be the inhabitants here. Mr John Bassett’s house was Number 15 and Mr Bassett himself opened the door. He was a small man, with ears that seemed to be pointed, and he sported a well-trimmed goatee beard that gave him the appearance of a troll or other resident of some forbidding German forest. His living room, Powerscourt saw, as he was ushered to the most comfortable chair, was full of painted panoramas of some of the world’s remotest places, the Sahara desert, the Arctic or the Antarctic, Powerscourt wasn’t sure which, a view of the back of Mount Everest, the vast steppes of Siberia.

‘Are you a traveller, Mr Bassett?’ Powerscourt asked. He wondered if the whole house was full of these kind of pictures, if you might have to cross the Gobi desert in the bathroom or traverse the sands of Arabia before you could go to sleep.

‘I wish I had been,’ said the little man. ‘I have a constitution fitted to the counting house, not to great liners and the rough conveyance of the wagon train or even to arduous treks on foot. But I like to contemplate these great spaces, as you see. Now, how can I be of assistance to you, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I presume, Mr Bassett, that you have heard about the terrible murders in Queen’s Inn?’

John Bassett nodded sadly.

‘I have been asked to investigate these murders and I understand that Mr Dauntsey came to see you shortly before he died. Is that so?’

The little man remained silent. Powerscourt wondered briefly if he had been sworn to complete secrecy by his employers. That hardly seemed necessary – why would they want to silence a man who knew all the details of the Inn’s plate and how many spoons went missing in an average year?

‘I must make a confession, Lord Powerscourt. And please forgive me. It is my age. I shall be seventy-seven next birthday if the Lord spares me that long. Sometimes, I must tell you, I rather wish he would call me home before that. But my memory comes and goes. I do not remember Mr Dauntsey’s visit. All I can remember is that he asked a question I could not answer and I had to check with the bencher who looks after the money at the Inn.’

‘Can you remember the question, Mr Bassett?’ Powerscourt asked gently, wondering if this visit had been a complete waste of time. ‘Anything at all?’

The little man’s face brightened. ‘I’ve got it, I think. It wasn’t anything important, just something about bursaries for poor students.’

Powerscourt felt rather disappointed. He wished suddenly that he had finished off the business of reading the rest of the wills. Edward had volunteered to do it for him, saying that it would be good experience for his legal work. He felt he could not in all decency just stand up and leave now, it would look so rude to leave the man to his remote corners of the globe in less than five minutes.