David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

Powerscourt paused and looked down at his papers. The Chief Inspector’s pen stopped for a moment. Barton Somerville was fiddling with a biscuit. A pair of seagulls settled briefly on the window sill and moved on.

‘Suspect Number Three,’ he went on, ‘is the young woman Alex Dauntsey was going to spend time with in pursuit of a son and heir. Catherine Cavendish is a lively and attractive woman in her early thirties, a former chorus girl who is married to a doctor much older than herself. The doctor is dying of some unknown illness and is unable to perform some of the more intimate functions of the married state. He has, he says, no objections to his wife partaking of these pleasures, forbidden fruit we might almost say, in some mythical Eden, with another man. That man was Dauntsey.’

Powerscourt paused and took another sip of his tea. Barton Somerville was taking notes too. Powerscourt suspected that he might be subjected to a fearful cross-examination at the end.

‘I have talked at length with the two ladies involved in this delicate transaction and it seems to me that there was a misunderstanding about Dauntsey’s intentions after the first husband had passed on. Mrs Dauntsey was convinced that he would never leave her. Mrs Cavendish, for her part, believed Dauntsey would leave his wife and marry her. If Catherine Cavendish discovered that Dauntsey was taking his pleasure with her, but not, as it were, prepared to pay his bills, then I believe she would have been capable of murdering him. And in a perverse way I think we have to count her husband as Suspect Number Four. For it is one thing to announce that you have no objections to your wife carrying on with another man, quite another when it is about to happen under your very nose and you realize that your objections may be more visceral and more irrational than you had thought. Far from not minding, you suddenly find that you mind very much. And there are two further reasons for placing Dr Cavendish in the suspects’ pound. Here was a man with but a few months left to live. The chances are that he would be dead by normal means before his case could come to court. So he wouldn’t care about the hangman’s noose as others might. And he was an expert on poisons, he had written at least two books on them.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Powerscourt.’ Somerville was peering at him over the top of his spectacles, half a biscuit dangling from his left hand. ‘What about Woodford Stewart? You talk as if there was only one murder. There have been two.’

‘I am coming to that, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt continued. ‘There is absolutely nothing in Mr Stewart’s private life that either the Chief Inspector or I could discover which might have led to somebody wanting to kill him. His domestic life was beyond reproach. There is, of course, as there is with Alex Dauntsey, the outside chance of some prisoner whose conviction they secured years ago now achieving release and coming to exact revenge. But I do not think that likely. What killed Woodford Stewart had to do with this Inn and it had to do with his friendship with Dauntsey. It may be that he knew who the poisoner was and had to be silenced. It may be that the reasons that led to Dauntsey’s murder also led to Stewart’s.’

Powerscourt paused again. He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, rather a lot of footsteps. The Chief Inspector looked across at him. Barton Somerville did not react. Maybe his hearing was not what it was.

‘You will know far better than I, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt went on, smiling slightly at Somerville ‘how sometimes in important cases the defending barrister sets out on what seems to be a completely pointless line of argument, apparently having little to do with the case under trial. The prosecuting counsel objects. The judge quizzes the defence. Eventually, though not always, the judge permits the line of questioning because he believes the defence’s assurances that the information is relevant. So it is with me here. Every word I say from now on has, in my judgement and that of my colleague on my left, the greatest relevance to this case, whatever you may think at the time. And, in deference to the surroundings, Mr Treasurer, I am going to call some witnesses. I am sure you will be interested to learn that they are all dead, and, more surprising perhaps, that some of them are here in this very room.’

Powerscourt rose from his chair and walked to the wall farthest away from Somerville’s desk.

‘This is my first witness,’ he said proudly, ‘and what a handsome fellow Sir Thomas Lawrence has made him.’ Powerscourt waved airily at the full-length portrait which showed the sitter in red judicial robes, looking as much a cardinal as a judge, staring crossly at a long piece of paper which could have been a will or some other legal document. Behind him and slightly to the left was a beautiful room with long Georgian windows and a view over the Thames. ‘As you can see, Mr Justice Wallace is a former Treasurer of this Inn, who has presided over this kingdom as Mr Treasurer Somerville does now. He is examining his paper in the very room in which we are now meeting.’

Powerscourt resumed his seat and began to turn over one or two of his papers. ‘The good judge,’ he went on, ‘who came from a respectable family in Dorset, one brother becoming a Cabinet Minister, another an Admiral of the Blue, lived to the ripe old age of eighty-seven. In his will of 1824 he left a lot of money and property to his numerous family.’

Powerscourt now pulled out a will from inside the sheaf of documents in front of him. ‘He also left ten thousand pounds to the Queen’s Inn for the relief of poverty among the barristers and servants of this Inn and their families. A generous bequest, you might think, and one which is worth, according to the Bank of England, about three hundred thousand pounds in today’s money.’

There was a sharp look from Somerville, upset perhaps to learn that the Bank of England were ranged against him. ‘We may presume,’ Powerscourt continued, ‘that the executors made sure the formalities were followed. Thirty years ago, before your time, Mr Treasurer, there were indeed in the accounts of Queen’s Inn various payments made according to the Wallace bequest. They are described as such in the documents. But they are not there now. The Wallace legacy has been absorbed into the general accounts of Queen’s Inn. When I say the general accounts, I don’t quite mean that. The general accounts relate to the running costs, maintenance of property, provision of meals and so on and are all covered, amply covered, by the monthly payments made by the residents of chambers. But there is another account, called the Treasurer’s Account, controlled by this office. The Wallace hundreds of thousands have been diverted into there and there they remain to this day.

‘Consider this other gentleman behind me, Benjamin Rockland, a barrister rather than a judge, a bencher of this Inn rather than a Treasurer, a man famous for his abilities for the defence in capital cases and much sought after by instructing solicitors. He was famous in his day, according to the official Inn history, for his generosity towards the young. He left four thousand pounds in his will in 1785 for the maintenance and upkeep and clothing of poor students attending the Inn. He hoped to ensure that the poorer citizens were not denied the advantages he had enjoyed. Turning once more to the Bank of England reckoning, that figure would amount to two hundred thousand pounds in today’s money. You could support a number of poor students on the interest from that sum. How many Rockland students are there in the Inn at present? Not one. Thirty years ago there were a number of these young men gracing the walks and courts of this institution. Once again the monies have been diverted, not into the general accounts where they might benefit everybody, but into the Treasurer’s Account, controlled from this office.