David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘I’m sure my husband will be most interested to hear all this news, Chief Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, upset far more than she could have imagined by this new death. ‘And now perhaps you would like to come and see him and talk to him before you have to leave. The doctor is very keen people should talk to him.’

On this day too, other visitors began to arrive. There were relations, always too sombre in their appearance and too gloomy in their assessments. ‘They look,’ Johnny Fitzgerald observed sourly to Lady Lucy, ‘as if they’ve decided he’s dead already and are trying to work out what to wear for the funeral.’ But some of them had been involved in earlier Powerscourt investigations. Patrick Butler, the young editor of the local newspaper in the cathedral city of Compton in the West Country, called late in the afternoon. He had been very closely involved in the Powerscourt investigation into the mysterious deaths in the cathedral the year before. He gave Lady Lucy an enormous kiss and a huge bunch of flowers. She took him straight in to see her husband and told him the details of the shooting. Compton Saviour Shot in Legal Feud was the headline that flashed through his newspaper brain. Patrick Butler thought in headlines just as farmers think of the seasons and the weather. He always had. The young Patrick sensed that beneath the surface optimism, the good cheer and the impeccable manners reserved for visitors in this politest of households, despair was probably not very far away.

‘I saw him, Lady Lucy,’ he began with a smile, ‘the morning after those bastards tried to kill him with all that falling masonry in the cathedral. Do you remember? Of course you do. Well, he looks to me very like he did then. He pulled round on that occasion and I’m sure he will this time.’

He stopped talking suddenly. Lady Lucy remembered that this was a fairly rare occurrence and waited for what was coming next. They were sitting side by side by the edge of Powerscourt’s bed. Patrick Butler reached out to take her hand.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Lady Powerscourt, with your permission.’ A whole front page of his paper, the Grafton Mercury , was flashing through his brain as fast as the paper would come off the presses. A long article on Powerscourt’s role in the salvation of Compton the previous year. A brief description of his present difficulties. A prayer for his recovery from the Dean, maybe even the Bishop. ‘We’ll give the whole front page of the next edition of the Grafton Mercury over to Lord Powerscourt! An account of his role as the Saviour of Compton. A brief summary of his current predicament. And a prayer from the Dean or the Bishop! I’m great pals now with the new Dean, Lady Powerscourt. He says I’m the only person in the city of Compton who can tell him the whole truth about what went on before. Tell you what, even better, I’ll get the Dean to organize a service of prayer for Lord Powerscourt’s recovery. The whole of Compton will turn up and pray he gets better. That’s bound to help!’

Lady Lucy remembered Patrick’s wife’s description of him as being rather like a puppy. He hadn’t changed.

‘That would be very kind, Patrick,’ she said, smiling at her editor. ‘Francis and I were very fond of Compton. But tell me, how is Anne and what brings you to London at this time?’

Patrick Butler blushed. ‘Anne is well, Lady Powerscourt. She is expecting our first child in August.’ He made a close inspection of the nearer twin at this point as if intent on getting some practice in child care early on. ‘And I,’ he was going rather red at this point, ‘I have been asked to London for an interview about a position on The Times . I should know in three or four days if I have been accepted.’

‘That’s wonderful news, Patrick,’ said Lady Lucy, feeling, as she often did with Patrick, like an elderly aunt with her favourite nephew. ‘It would be splendid to have you and Anne in London.’

‘I must flee, Lady Powerscourt,’ said Patrick, pulling a reporter’s notebook from his pocket, ‘or I shall miss my train. Please give my very best love and wishes to your husband. I shall write part of the front page on the train!’ He took a last sad look at Powerscourt as he left the room. Patrick Butler had tried his best to be cheerful, to keep up the spirits of the little band on the second floor of 8 Manchester Square. But anybody watching him set off up Marylebone High Street towards Baker Street station would have seen that his eyes were filled with tears.

On the next day Dr Tony came early in the morning. He went through the usual routines with his patient and had a long conference with the nurse on duty. Then he went downstairs to talk to Lady Lucy.

‘What news, Dr Tony?’ she asked him with a smile.

‘Some of the time, Lady Powerscourt, we doctors swing between very different emotions. At eleven we may have to tell some unfortunate person that there is no hope, their time is almost gone. At twelve we may be in the fortunate position of having to tell some other luckier soul that the treatment has worked, that they are cured and may well live for another thirty years.’ He watched Lady Lucy’s face swing between hope and despair as he spoke. The lights were going on and off in her eyes. Perhaps that was a mistake, he said to himself, and hurried on.

‘Lord Powerscourt is much the same as he has been since he was shot, more or less. I can detect little change in him today from yesterday, Lady Powerscourt. I shall return after lunch to see him again.’

‘Hope?’ said Lady Lucy, very quietly.

‘As I said before,’ briefly he took her hand, ‘there is always hope. You must not give up. You must not let your household give up. I can only guess how difficult it must be for you all. But, please, please, hope, hope for your husband, hope for your children, hope for yourself.’

Thomas and Olivia had decided on a different tactic for their papa on this day. They were going to read to him together, they told Lady Lucy over breakfast, well, not exactly together because Olivia wasn’t a great reader yet while Thomas was quite proficient by now. But they were going to read Treasure Island , a work their father had often read to them. Thomas was to do most of the reading. Olivia had a number of tasks to perform. She had some paper and a pair of scissors and pens of different colours as she had to make a black spot for Blind Pew to press into the palms of his victims as he did in the story. She had to join in the reading every time the book said ‘Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum’ or the longer version with the two extra lines ‘Drink and the Devil Had Done for the Rest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.’ The children had agreed upstairs that they should be able to make enough noise with this chorus to wake their father, if not the persons at rest in the nearest graveyard.

In the end the nurse put them off. Nurse Winifred was one of the kindest people alive and loved children of every age. But her appearance, what Olivia privately thought of as that sea of starched white at the front of her, put you off if you were only six years old.

There was one very important visitor late that afternoon. Shortly after five o’clock a beautifully dressed man of about forty years presented himself at the door. He had an enormous bunch of flowers. ‘They’re from Lord Salisbury’s Hatfield greenhouses, Lady Powerscourt. The Prime Minister was most insistent I should deliver them in person.’

The impeccable suit bowed. Inside it was Schomberg McDonnell, Private Secretary to Prime Minister Salisbury, now, so the gossip said, nearing the end of his tenure at Number 10 Downing Street. Powerscourt had taken his orders twice before, once in saving the City of London from a terrible plot, and on the second occasion taking up, at Salisbury’s request, the position of Head of Army Intelligence in the war in South Africa. Truly, the great world had come to pay its respects to Francis Powerscourt in his hour of need in Manchester Square.