David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Lady Lucy found him pacing up and down the room. She was smiling broadly.

‘Francis, my love, you’ll like this!’ she said happily.

‘What news, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt.

‘It’s Catherine Cavendish, Francis. She was born Catherine Chadwick. She was a chorus girl. At the Alhambra and the Duke of York’s and the Gentleman’s Relish. They say she was the senior dancer at the Alhambra, a sort of Head Prefect.’

Powerscourt tried to get his brain around what would be entailed in being the Head Girl of a chorus line and failed. ‘God bless my soul, Lucy, I didn’t know you had any relations in what one might call the saucier part of the West End.’

Lady Lucy laughed. ‘I don’t, Francis. I mean I don’t have any relations in that world. Mrs Trumper Smith told me.’

Powerscourt’s face registered complete ignorance, if not astonishment, at the mention of Mrs Trumper Smith.

‘You know Mrs T, Francis. That’s what everyone calls her, behind her back at any rate. She lives three doors down from here. Her son is in the same class at school as Thomas. The husband’s a doctor, quite a fashionable one, I think, with a practice in Harley Street or Wimpole Street. He knows the Cavendishes, says the chorus girl is quite delightful.’

‘Did the woman say what was wrong with Dr Cavendish, the one who’s meant to be leaving this world quite shortly?’

‘She did not, Francis.’

There was a ring at the front door bell. A tall, dark-haired woman in a long grey dress was shown in and took her seat in front of the fire. Powerscourt noted that she was very slim, with a tiny waist and a very beautiful face. The eyes, even in the sad circumstances in which Mrs Cavendish presumably found herself, were grey and slightly cheeky and her lips looked as if they wanted nothing better than to be kissed. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the rather vulgar assessment of female beauty carried out by some of his more disreputable fellow officers stationed at Simla, summer residence of the British Raj in India. It was known as the ships test and was based on Marlowe’s famous line about Helen of Troy: ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ The great beauties of Simla were awarded ships by the hundred according to the male estimates of their beauty. Powerscourt thought he remembered one gorgeous creature reaching the dizzy heights of seventy hundred and fifty. That record stood all through that summer, up to and including the Viceroy’s Ball. Mrs Cavendish, Powerscourt felt, would have been most eager to play the game. Her score would certainly have approached the record, perhaps even bettered it. An entire chorus line, led by Catherine Cavendish in person, he reckoned, would muster a combined score of many thousands.

‘Mrs Cavendish,’ he began, ‘how kind of you to call.’ The eyes, which he had originally thought to be cheeky, had turned cautious as Mrs Cavendish took a lightning appraisal of the room and its furnishings.

‘Nice place you’ve got here, Lord Powerscourt,’ she replied.

‘I’m afraid I want to ask you some questions about Mr Dauntsey, Mrs Cavendish.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you’d asked me here to talk about the political situation in the Balkans.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘How long ago did you meet him, Mrs Cavendish?’

‘Mr Dauntsey? I met him about nine weeks ago. It was in my husband’s waiting room. He was running very late that day, like the doctors often do, and Alex, Mr Dauntsey I mean, was the last patient waiting to go in. I was there waiting for Dr C to come out as we were already late for a reception. We just got talking, the way you do.’

Mrs Cavendish looked rather defiant as she said this.

‘And things just went on from there, Mrs Cavendish, regular meetings, that sort of thing?’

‘I think he was the most charming man I’ve ever met, Lord Powerscourt. He used to buy me lunch, lovely lunches, they were, and always with lovely wines. He had a wonderful nose for a wine and a great love for the names, Chateau La Tour Blanche, that’s a Sauterne, Lord Powerscourt, Chateau Fleur Cardinale, Chambolle Mussigny, Les Amoureuses, Chassagne Montrachet.’

Powerscourt was very impressed that she did not pronounce either of the two t’s in Montrachet. Johnny Fitzgerald had been heard describing people who did as little better than Philistines. Powerscourt found himself wondering if Johnny Fitzgerald might replace the late Alex Dauntsey in Mrs Cavendish’s affections with their shared love of fine vintages. But however hard he tried he couldn’t see Mrs Cavendish in enormous boots, wrapped up to the chin, waiting before dawn for a flight of rare birds over the Suffolk marshes.

Lunch in expensive restaurants with expensive wine lists was one thing, Powerscourt said to himself, weekends away in riverside hotels something rather different.

‘Would I be right in saying, Mrs Cavendish, that on the weekend of the feast, you and Mr Dauntsey were planning to go away together?’

Catherine Cavendish looked down at the Powerscourt carpet. ‘I’m going to be frank with you, Lord Powerscourt, and I’ll thank you to keep what I’m going to say to yourself.’ She paused for a moment. ‘There’s people out there,’ she made a vague nod towards the window as if referring to the population of Manchester Square and the wider purlieus of Marylebone, ‘who will say that I married Dr C for his money. Well, that’s as maybe. He’s always been very kind to me. I have no complaints. But there’s more to marriage than kindness, Lord Powerscourt, as I’m sure you know. Any girl who heard the sob stories of the sad husbands who used to buy time to talk with the chorus girls could tell you that. Think of what it says in the Good Book. Man and woman created he them, Lord Powerscourt, man and woman. I’ve always said there was more going on in that Garden of Eden than eating apples, if you follow me. Dr C, well, poor soul, he wasn’t up to any of that man and woman created he them business, not up to it at all, I can tell you. It’s because of his illness – he’s not got very long to live, you know. Alex was, if you follow me, Lord Powerscourt. So, yes, I was going away with him. We were going to a flat that belonged to a friend of his after that feast and going off to Moulsford the next day. That’s on the Thames up towards Oxford. I was really looking forward it. You can miss things for too long, know what I mean, Lord P?’

‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, wondering how to reach the more delicate ground yet. ‘Did you talk about children at all, Mrs Cavendish?’

‘What about them, Lord P? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I’m quite sure you do,’ said Powerscourt, remembering suddenly that nobody had called him Lord P since the lady who came to make his bed at Cambridge. ‘Let me be blunt, Mrs Cavendish, did you discuss what might happen if you became pregnant?’

Catherine Cavendish tossed her head back and roared with laughter. ‘Is there anything you don’t want to know, Lord P? You’re the curiousest man I’ve ever met. Quite what any of this has to do with Alex ended up crocked in a bowl of beetroot I don’t know. Yes, we did talk about children once. I said I couldn’t stand the little buggers, pardon my French, Lord P, but they’ve always seemed to me to be an unimaginable amount of work for very little return. It’s as if the whole chorus line dances its heart out for one man in the audience and he doesn’t even bother to clap. Alex told me he’d been trying to have children with his wife for years and failed so he thought he couldn’t have any anyway. Not that that would have got in the way of the man and woman created he them business, I can tell you that for nothing, Lord P.’