David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

She looked at him suddenly, ‘It doesn’t matter now, Lord Powerscourt, it doesn’t matter at all. Alex is dead. Nothing is going to bring him back.’

Powerscourt took her hand. It felt cold, even though she had been close to the fire. ‘I will do whatever I can to help you, Mrs Dauntsey. I may have to come back to see you again in a few days. But before I go – forgive me for causing yet more embarrassment but it is important. The name of the young woman with whom your husband was going to spend some time would be most useful to me, if you would be so kind. And the professional address of her husband.’

For the first time since Powerscourt had known her, Elizabeth Dauntsey blushed. ‘It might be easier all round,’ said Powerscourt, sensing her discomfiture, ‘if you wrote them down, the names and addresses, I mean.’

Elizabeth Dauntsey crossed to a small writing table by the window. Powerscourt did not read her piece of paper at once but waited until he was in the train back to London. Rivers Cavendish, he read, 24 Harley Street, W1. A fashionable address. Mrs Catherine Cavendish, 36 Tite Street, Chelsea, SW3. He didn’t think it likely, however you looked at it, that Catherine Cavendish was the killer. Excitement and romance were meant to be on the menu as far as she was concerned. But Dr Rivers Cavendish, a man being cuckolded in the last months of his life? At the speed the criminal justice system worked, he would probably have been able to kill Dauntsey and pass away several months later without even being brought to trial. And there was something else. Doctors, Powerscourt said to himself, know all about poison.

Sarah Henderson was thinking about Edward. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning in Queen’s Inn but she had been thinking about him for some time already. Sarah spent quite a lot of her waking day thinking about Edward. She had discovered that her fingers could shoot out and turn her shorthand into sheets of typewritten paper on her keyboard while her mind was elsewhere. She wondered when, or maybe if, Edward was going to ask her to marry him. Only the previous evening, encased in the fog, they had spent a passionate forty-five minutes wrapped round a lamp-post together on the Embankment. She had felt then that he might pop the question. After all, ‘Will you marry me?’ didn’t have any of those awkward b’s or p’s or s’s that sometimes gave Edward so much trouble. She wondered if she should suggest that they needed to have a talk about things. But Sarah wasn’t sure about this plan of action. Men, according to an old school friend who had been observing two elder brothers at home for years and who had nearly been engaged to half a dozen young men, were always happy to go for walks, to take you to the theatre, to make love to you, but if you suggested serious talks or discussing things like relationships, their eyes would glaze over and suddenly they would have urgent engagements elsewhere. It wasn’t their fault really, her friend had explained, it was just the way they were made, rather like they enjoyed watching cricket or playing football. But then there was so much to discuss. If, just supposing, if they were married, where would they live? Ever since she was a small child Sarah had believed that one of the main, if not the principal, reasons for getting married was that she could move furniture about all over her own house whenever the fancy took her. But now, in the real world, there were difficulties. She couldn’t leave her mother, but it wouldn’t be fair to Edward to ask him to start married life with a sick mother-in-law who took you to her own updated version of the Inquisition about the law courts every time you crossed her threshold. And then there was Edward’s future to consider. After his triumph in the Puncknowle case was he going to take up the speaking side of the law, or was he content to go on devilling for ever? Sarah had not detected any eagerness on Edward’s part for a change of direction in his career. And then she heard his footstep on the stairs. Edward appeared to have a telepathic knowledge of when her room mate had gone out to deliver some work or to take dictation elsewhere.

‘Morning, Sarah,’ said Edward, ‘you’re looking very smart today.’ Sarah was wearing a dark skirt, a cream blouse and a dark blue jacket that had a slightly masculine look about it.

‘Thank you, Edward,’ Sarah replied, thinking suddenly of the two of them wrapped round the lamp-post the evening before.

‘I’ve got some splendid news, Sarah,’ said Edward, admiring the way the red hair curled down those pale cheeks. ‘Lord Powerscourt has asked us round to Manchester Square any time next weekend. He was going to invite us to their place in the country but Lady Lucy thought that might not suit the twins.’

‘And where is the Powerscourt place in the country?’

‘It is, in the good lord’s words, in the splendidly unfashionable county of Northamptonshire. It’s near Oundle. They’ve got a cricket pitch and a tennis court, though it’s a bit early for that. It’s frightfully old, Sarah. Powerscourt thinks men went out from it to fight at Crecy and Agincourt.’

‘My goodness,’ said Sarah, not quite sure how far back in the past those two battles were. It was the kind of thing Edward always knew.

‘And there’s a ghost, Sarah. Mr Ghost, not Mrs Ghost or Miss Ghost. A real clanking-about-in-the-middle-of-the-night-ghost. But look, I’ve got to go and look up those wills for Lord Powerscourt. I’m not due in court at all today.’

‘Wills, what wills, Edward? What does Lord Powerscourt want with wills?’

Edward lowered his voice. ‘It’s the benchers’ wills, Sarah. He thinks there’s a very faint chance they might be connected with the murders. I’ll see you later.’

With that Edward clattered off down the stairs. Less than five minutes later Sarah heard an unfamiliar pair of boots tramping up towards her attic fastness. Big man, she thought, quite heavy. That stair near the top only squeaks if you’re over fifteen stone. There was a grunt as if the climb up the stairs had taken its toll. Then the door was opened and her visitor was beside her, towering above Sarah at her station by the typewriter.

‘Miss Henderson,’ said Barton Somerville, ‘forgive me for calling on you like this. I was looking for the young man they call Edward. They said I might find him up here.’

Sarah wondered what was going on. Never before had the Treasurer of the Inn been to see her. Nor could she see what he might want with such a humble person as Edward. He might be all the world to her, she knew, but he was a very junior member of these chambers let alone the Inn.

‘Edward’s not here, sir,’ she said.

‘I can see that,’ said Barton Somerville testily. ‘Do you know where he is, by any chance?’

‘I think he’s gone to look up some benchers’ wills for Lord Powerscourt, sir.’

‘Benchers’ wills?’ Somerville suddenly sounded quite extraordinarily angry. ‘Working for Powerscourt now, is he? Not for the chambers that pay his wages. We’ll see about that, young lady.’

‘I’m sure he would have cleared it with Mr Kirk, sir. Edward’s always very scrupulous about things like that.’

Barton Somerville snorted. He slammed the door and departed noisily down the stairs. Edward had not told Sarah not to mention where he was going or anything like that. She hoped she hadn’t got Edward into trouble. And, once more, as she looked out at the innocent lawns of New Court, a frock-coated porter pushing a mighty pile of documents down the path that led to the law courts, Sarah felt very frightened. And it would be hours before Edward came back.

Two days later Powerscourt was waiting for a visitor in the first-floor drawing room in Manchester Square. Catherine Cavendish was due in ten minutes’ time. And he had written to ask for an appointment with Dr Cavendish at his Harley Street consulting rooms for the following day.