David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘I wish I could make up fairy stories like you, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe that would make life easier.’

‘Take your time, Mrs Dauntsey, there’s no rush.’

She came back to her chair and looked into the fire for a while. ‘It all has to do with children,’ she said finally, ‘with Alex’s wish to have descendants for Calne and with my inability to give them to him. I’m sure he wouldn’t have married me if he’d known I was barren.’

A small trickle of tears broke through her defences and ran slowly down her cheeks. Powerscourt offered a handkerchief. ‘Why do men always have clean handkerchiefs, Lord Powerscourt? It’s always been a mystery to me that they’re never dirty.’ Elizabeth Dauntsey just managed a slight smile.

‘We’d reached the end of the road as far as my having children was concerned, Alex and I,’ she went on. ‘As you know from your last visit, we, or rather I, had tried everything possible to become pregnant. That wasn’t going to work. So Alex was going to try and find somebody else.’

This somebody, Powerscourt reflected, had managed to pass completely undetected through the filter of Lucy’s relations. This was most irregular. He waited.

‘About two months ago . . .’ Elizabeth Dauntsey paused and stared into the flames once more. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Powerscourt, I haven’t told this to anybody before, about two months ago, maybe more, Alex thought he had found somebody. She was a young woman in good health, she was married to a much older man, she had no children of her own and her brother played cricket for Middlesex. I’m sure that last fact must have been an important factor in Alex’s calculations.’

For the first time Powerscourt thought he detected a hint of sarcasm, dislike maybe, towards her late husband. He wondered about the different Elizabeth Dauntseys presented to him each time he came, as if she was like one of those Russian dolls with different characters packed inside each other.

‘We talked about it a lot,’ Elizabeth Dauntsey went on. ‘Alex kept me informed about what was going on, not in detail, just the broad picture. And then, the night before he died, Alex and I had the most enormous row.’

Powerscourt dreaded to think what the police might make of that.

‘We hardly ever rowed, Lord Powerscourt. And this one went on for a very long time. You see, Alex had arranged to go away for the weekend with this woman. As far as I know, it would have been the first time. They were going as husband and wife to some hotel on the Thames where Alex knew the owner so there wouldn’t be any questions asked. Her husband was going to be away at a medical conference.’

‘Is he a doctor?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Yes, he is. He’s a Professor of something or other medical, I can’t remember what. That’s what the row was about, not about the husband, but about Alex going away with this woman. I knew why Alex was doing it. Part of me approved of it. But the other part of me couldn’t bear it. I shouted at him over and over again that he was betraying me, that he would destroy our marriage, that it would break my heart. The worst thing was that he never spoke. He hardly said a word, this man who earned his living by speaking and arguing in the courts of law. When we stopped rowing he went off to sleep in some other part of the house and he left very early the next morning. So if I hadn’t gone to see him that afternoon, I would never have seen him alive again. I had to tell him, you see,’ her voice began to crack slightly, ‘that I still loved him, that he had my blessing for the weekend, that he was to ignore anything I said the night before. I wanted everything right between us. I couldn’t bear it when he was angry with me.’

She stared at Powerscourt as if he could make things better.

‘But why did you go in disguise? You didn’t have to do that, surely?’ Powerscourt spoke very softly.

‘You’ll think me very silly,’ she said, ‘but I thought one or two of his work colleagues must have known about the other woman, had probably met her. Once anybody in that place knew anything the gossip went round the entire Inn faster than a Derby winner. They would all have known that the two of them were going away for the weekend. You know how men like to speculate about successes with women. I couldn’t face the embarrassment. I couldn’t have borne it. So I adapted some of Alex’s old clothes and went as a man. Even then I was terrified somebody might speak to me. I was completely exhausted when I got back here.’

Powerscourt wondered yet again if Elizabeth Dauntsey was a tragic figure or a murderer. He couldn’t tell.

‘Did you meet anybody when you were in your husband’s chambers? Anybody at all?’

‘Not a soul,’ replied Elizabeth Dauntsey.

‘Was he drinking anything while you were with him? It must have been about a quarter to six.’ Powerscourt could see, very faintly in his mind, the shadow of the gallows.

‘He was drinking Chateauneuf-du-Pape,’ Elizabeth Dauntsey had gone pale, ‘the stuff they were going to have later at the feast.’ Only Alex Dauntsey never got that far, Powerscourt said to himself, the strychnine got to him first. The poison concealed, perhaps, behind the strong taste of the red wine.

‘And did you put a drop of poison in his drink when you were there, Mrs Dauntsey?’

There was a slight pause, whether through guilt or insult Powerscourt could not decide.

‘I did not.’ He couldn’t decide if she was telling the truth. He thought she probably was.

Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to walk to the window. A jury, he thought, could well convict on what he had heard this afternoon. The rain had stopped. Spring sunshine was beginning to dry the park out. The deer had abandoned their hiding places and were gambolling about on the grass.

‘I have to ask you this question, Mrs Dauntsey. I seem to need a sentence of permanent apology virtually every time I speak in this house. What were you all going to do if the woman became pregnant?’ Don’t even think of asking the really nasty question today, he said to himself – what happens if it’s a girl. ‘To put it at its crudest, did you think he was going to divorce you?’

‘No,’ said Elizabeth Dauntsey firmly, ‘I don’t believe he was. Alex said the woman’s husband wasn’t going to live very long.’

‘Was the man ill? Did he have some terminal illness?’

‘I don’t know, Lord Powerscourt, Alex didn’t say.’

Christ in heaven, Powerscourt said to himself. Maybe other murders were contemplated, Alexander Dauntsey and his mistress plotting to push an old man down the stairs or shove him under the wheels of a train.

‘Did Alex have a time scale, Mrs Dauntsey? Did he think the doctor would have departed in six months, nine months maybe?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Let’s play make believe, Mrs Dauntsey. Not quite a fairy story, more of a let’s suppose. Would you be agreeable to that?’

‘Of course, Lord Powerscourt. I’m only trying to help you.’

‘I know you are. Now then, let’s suppose that in a couple of months’ time the young woman becomes pregnant. The husband dies, conveniently, well before the child is due. Then she gives birth, let us say to a son. How, if Alex is still married to you, would he get his hands on the child? The two of them can hardly come and live here. Perhaps the young woman would be happy to give up the child for Alex to bring up here with you. It’s all frightfully complicated.’

Elizabeth Dauntsey looked at the ring on her wedding finger. ‘Alex said he would work something out, that we had to take one step at a time. He was always an impulsive sort of thinker.’

Powerscourt wondered if it was time for him to go. Mrs Dauntsey was looking tired and drawn all of a sudden, as if these confessions had taken their toll.