David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

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‘And then consider this. Downstairs in your Hall you have one of the most famous and beautiful paintings in London. People come from far and wide to see The Judgement of Paris by Rubens, a glorious and sensuous account of the decision that led to the Trojan War. There is no record, unfortunately, as there might be if it happened today, of either of the two losing ladies going to the Court of Appeal. I am not concerned today with the technique or the overall impression given by the work apart from noting that the three goddesses, as everyone knows who has seen it, are wearing rather less than Catherine Cavendish was in her days as a chorus girl. Rather I am concerned with the way it was purchased twelve years ago. A plaque, as you well know, Mr Treasurer, says that it was paid for by the generosity of past and current benchers and benefactors. I do not believe that to be strictly true. The painting cost twelve thousand five hundred pounds, say fourteen thousand with commissions and taxes and so on. That was the precise total, less one hundred and forty-seven pounds, of a bequest made to the Inn a year before in the will of bencher Josiah Swanton for the relief of barristers rendered unfit for work by injury or illness. There are no records, Mr Treasurer, of any payments going to such people though the chaplain has informed me that there must be four candidates at least who are eligible for such payments today and whose lives would be transformed by them. The sick and the maimed paid for the Rubens. At least its beauty can be enjoyed by all, it has not, like the appropriation of so much other money intended for good causes, ended up in the Treasurer’s Account.

‘I could go on, Mr Treasurer, with more examples. I have dozens of them here in my papers. All tell the same story. The rich are robbing the poor. Money intended to relieve suffering, to enable poor young men to acquire an education here, has been taken from them and given to old men already wealthy beyond the dreams of most Londoners. They have no voice, the sick barristers fallen on hard times, the young men from the East End who have been denied their proper place by old men’s greed. Your greed, Mr Treasurer. Your actions, in fraudulently changing the bequests of generous people who died long ago, are a disgrace to your Inn and to your profession. No wonder the cartoonists so often portray the lawyers of London as greedy fellows only interested in enormous meals and enormous retainers and even more enormous refreshers. I can only make a rough estimate about the amount of money diverted. You, of course, as Treasurer are liable to re-election by your fellow benchers every five years. Maybe you embarked on your criminal career over twenty years ago when you first came up for re-election. A little bribe to the electors never went amiss. The only problem is that they expect a slightly larger bribe next time. Well, you were certainly able to provide it. My calculation, based on the Bank of England figures and some of your own accounts, is that each bencher, who received virtually nothing for being a bencher twenty-five years ago, now enjoys an annual income of between ten and fifteen thousand pounds. Each. For doing precisely nothing. The position is exactly like some of those late eighteenth-century sinecures that paid out thousands and thousands of pounds for doing nothing that so enraged William Pitt the Younger. The value of the principal required to produce such figures is around twenty million pounds, a sum well within the range of the stolen bequests we know of when adjusted to today’s values.’

Powerscourt paused again. The Chief Inspector was still scribbling. Somerville looked as though he would like to vault over the desk and hit him.

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ the Treasurer sneered. ‘A third rate Irish peer and a jumped-up constable from Clerkenwell?’ He banged his fist on the desk. Powerscourt looked at him, unmoved by the insult, and untouched by the threat of violence.

‘No, Mr Treasurer,’ he went on, ‘that is certainly not all we’ve got. We’ve got, you’ll be delighted to hear, a whole lot more. That last part of my report dealt with finance. It’s now time to go back to murder, to the murders of Alexander Dauntsey and Woodford Stewart. Stewart had been elected a bencher some two months before Dauntsey. The two men were very close. They had prosecuted in some of the great financial cases of their times. Dauntsey was one of the few barristers of any Inn who was rated by the sharper minds in the City of London. With his demise they lengthened the odds against a conviction in the Puncknowle fraud trial. So Dauntsey knew about money. It is my belief that he discovered what had been going on in the accounts of Queen’s Inn. There are reports of his saying to his wife that he was worried about the accounts, and looking at some figures with a junior member here and saying things weren’t right. Shortly before his death Dauntsey had a meeting with the previous Financial Steward in Fulham and asked about bursaries for poor students. He was obviously on the right track. He asked for a meeting with you just days before he died. He brought Woodford Stewart with him. I believe that on that occasion he threatened to go public with the frauds that had been going on. Whatever his weaknesses, lack of courage wasn’t one of them. Your blustering and banging of your fists wouldn’t have had any impact on Alex Dauntsey. So you killed him. Woodford Stewart was not at the feast. You killed him several days later, probably hiding the body in your private rooms above this one and taking him to Temple Church in the middle of the night. We have heard, Mr Treasurer, about the First, Second, Third and Fourth Suspects. You are the Fifth Suspect. And, I put it to you in conclusion, Mr Treasurer, the other four are innocent. You are guilty.’

Barton Somerville snarled at them. He stopped writing and pointed his pen at them as if it were a spear he could hurl into their hearts.

‘What a load of nonsense!’ he spat. ‘You can’t possibly prove any of it. I’ve never seen such incompetence in a criminal investigation in my life! You!’ He turned and glowered at Chief Inspector Beecham. ‘I shall report your disgraceful conduct to the Home Secretary!’

‘You tried the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police last time,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘and that didn’t work. I don’t suppose you’ll have any better luck this time.’ He and Powerscourt had agreed on a policy of initial politeness but that if Somerville turned nasty, they would turn nasty back.

‘And you, Powerscourt, you’re a disgrace to your class. I shall make sure it’s known in society that you’re nothing better than a fraud and a charlatan, a man who brings ridiculous charges with no evidence at all.’

‘On the contrary, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt smiled his broadest smile at Somervillle, certain that this would enrage him even further, ‘we can prove lots and lots of things. Figures don’t lie. Your own records don’t lie. Wills don’t lie. Only senior barristers, who ought to know better, lie and they’ve been lying for years.’

‘How dare you?’ shouted Somerville, banging his fist so hard on the table that he must have nearly dislocated his wrist. ‘That’s slander, a bloody slander. I’ll take you to court for that!’

‘I fear, Mr Treasurer,’ said Powerscourt at his silkiest, ‘that you’re much more likely to be appearing in court conducting your own defence than you are to be prosecuting me. And there’s another development you ought to know about.’ He looked across at Beecham. ‘Ought to know about’ was another signal. ‘I took the liberty of speaking to Maxwell Kirk this morning. He is, as you know, a bencher, and the head of the chambers where Alex Dauntsey worked. I showed him the figures. Only the figures, we did not talk about the murders but I could see he had his suspicions. Not for nothing is Kirk now prosecuting Jeremiah Puncknowle. He was appalled by what has been happening. He is going to call an extraordinary general meeting of all the members of this Inn tomorrow afternoon. He is going to tell them what you have been doing for the last twenty years. He had no idea that the extra income he received from being a bencher had arrived with a trail of deception and criminality behind it. I believe he is going to put forward a motion calling on you to resign before you are forcibly removed from your office and stripped of your powers. By the time he has finished, you won’t have a single friend left in this Inn.’

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