David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Mr Puncknowle was on the verge of losing his temper. ‘Stuff and nonsense, sonny! Stuff and nonsense! Fairy stories, that’s what he’s telling you, members of the jury, he’s still of an age when fairy stories are all he can understand.’

Edward had had enough. ‘I would remind you, Mr Puncknowle,’ – the age difference between the two must have been nearly forty years – ‘of the conventions concerning the behaviour of defendants and witnesses towards the barristers appearing before them in court. Any more insults from you and I shall have to ask the judge to arraign you for contempt.’

There was a smattering of applause from the public gallery. Mr Justice Webster glowered fiercely at the spectators and the noise fell away. Jeremiah Puncknowle looked down at his boots. A smile flickered across the normally sphinx-like features of Sir Isaac Redhead. Charles Augustus Pugh slapped his thigh. Sarah squeezed Powerscourt’s hand even tighter. Edward looked at his watch. He was extraordinarily tired.

‘If I could make a suggestion, my lord,’ Edward was addressing Mr Justice Webster directly now, ‘the next area of cross-examination has to do with the dividend payments, my lord, a complicated matter, needing considerable exposition. It could take well over an hour. I have no doubt that the jury are perfectly capable of holding half of the matter in their heads overnight, but I would feel I had performed my service to the Crown with more clarity if we could handle the question all together.’

He’s saying the jury are too stupid to take it in two halves, Powerscourt said to himself. He felt the pressure of Sarah’s hand beginning to abate.

‘Sir Isaac, do you have a problem with this suggestion?’ said the judge.

‘No, my lord, we are in agreement with it.’

And so Mr Justice Webster ended Edward’s first day in court as a speaking barrister. Both Sir Isaac and Charles Augustus Pugh congratulated him on his debut. Edward watched in a daze as the spectators and the barristers and the instructing solicitors left the court. Powerscourt hastened off to Queen’s Inn to a meeting with Detective Chief Inspector Beecham. Eventually only Edward and Sarah were left.

‘Edward,’ said Sarah, ‘I am so proud of you. You were wonderful.’

Edward’s reply was to hold her very tight and kiss her passionately on the lips. He had had enough of words for one afternoon.

In the middle of the embrace Edward heard a door opening. The judge had forgotten some of his papers. Edward and Sarah disengaged themselves as fast as they could. Edward looked anxiously at Mr Justice Webster. He seemed to be staring at Sarah with some interest. Was there some terrible penalty, Edward wondered, for being caught kissing your beloved right under the judge’s chair in a Court of the Queen’s Bench?

‘Objection, my lord?’ Edward asked in a quizzical voice.

The judge smiled at the two of them. It was, though they did not know it, the smile of a grandfather looking at his favourite granddaughter, rather than the smile of a High Court judge.

‘Objection overruled, Edward. Carry on.’

The judge shuffled off back to his quarters. As the door closed behind him they heard the faint echo of a judicial chuckle echoing down the corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice.

Spring seemed to have turned back to winter as Powerscourt’s cab took him on the short journey from railway station to house at Calne. Sheets of rain were pounding on the vehicle’s roof and the wheels were throwing up jets of spray as they raced through the wide puddles that formed on the narrow road. The sky was dark and angry. The deer in the park had become invisible, huddling beneath the trees or trying to take shelter behind one of the great stone walls that enclosed the house and inner estate.

Mrs Dauntsey’s enormous butler ushered him into the drawing room. His mistress, still looking radiant in black, was sitting peacefully by the fire reading a novel. Powerscourt felt nervous as the pleasantries were exchanged. This was the third time he had been entertained in this house and, while the nature of his mission was not as delicate this time as it had been on his previous visit, it was still fraught with great potential for embarrassment. What if his theory about the mysterious visitor was wrong? Suddenly what had seemed so certain in Manchester Square seemed vaguer, less likely in this drawing room in Calne.

‘Mrs Dauntsey,’ he began, ‘yet again you have in front of you a man with a delicate subject to discuss. I must ask your forgiveness in advance if my theories turn out to be wrong.’

‘Have you come with some more fairy stories, Lord Powerscourt? I did enjoy the last one, most of the time. I was never sure about the end. Endings can be quite difficult in fairy stories, don’t you think?’

‘They can indeed, Mrs Dauntsey,’ Powerscourt smiled at his hostess, ‘but I’m afraid there is no fairy story this time.’

‘Perhaps there will be a surprise instead, Lord Powerscourt. Please carry on.’

Powerscourt took a deep breath. ‘I do not know if you are aware of it, Mrs Dauntsey, but on the day of the feast there was a mysterious visitor to Queen’s Inn. Every single member of the institution and everybody who attended the feast was questioned about who or what they had seen by the police.’

Powerscourt suddenly remembered that he had not mentioned his theory about the mysterious visitor to Detective Chief Inspector Beecham. Maybe he was failing in his duty. But he felt that if the police knew Mrs Dauntsey had been in her husband’s room a few hours before he died, she would be arrested immediately.

‘Little is known about the visitor. The person did not speak. They were seen in the vicinity of your husband’s rooms and they were seen again leaving the Inn by one of the porters where they did not say goodnight.’

He looked at her very carefully. There were no signs of nervousness at all. Maybe she was just a very good actress.

‘It only occurred to me very recently, Mrs Dauntsey, that the reason the mysterious visitor did not speak was related to gender. To speak would be to betray the fact that the visitor was female, not male. This was Viola turned into Cesario, come not to the Middle Temple Hall on Twelfth Night, but to Queen’s Inn on the day of the feast. I put it to you, Mrs Dauntsey, as the barristers say, that you were the mysterious visitor, that you walked into Queen’s Inn dressed as a man and that you visited your husband in his rooms. Am I right?’

Mrs Dauntsey remained silent for some moments. Powerscourt though he could see tears forming in her eyes. But she brushed them aside.

‘Yes,’ she said very quietly, ‘it was me.’ There was another period of silence.

‘Mrs Dauntsey,’ Powerscourt said, trying to be as emollient as he could, ‘I think it would be best if you told me the truth, all of it. I do not believe you poisoned your husband,’ – Are you sure about that, a small inner voice asked him insistently – ‘but I think your position is difficult. Had you owned up to being the mysterious visitor, or told us that you went to see your husband on that day, your position would still be problematic, but not as awkward as it is now. You see, the police do not know that you were the mysterious visitor. They have very suspicious minds. The fact that you have concealed this information up till now will leave them thinking you have something to hide. They may assume that you were the murderer. Juries have been known to convict on flimsier evidence than that, I assure you.’

Elizabeth Dauntsey rose from her chair and went to stand by the window. Even in her hour of difficulty her back was as straight as a soldier on parade. The rain was still falling, racing down the glass and dropping with a plop on the gravel beneath. One or two deer could be seen in the distance running quite fast from one place of shelter to another.