David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

Where they would have been cleaned, if cleaning were necessary, Powerscourt thought. Or thrown away by the butler.

‘Can you remember what your friend was wearing when he came to see you that evening?’

Again that slight, barely detectable pause. ‘He was wearing a brown suit with a pale blue shirt,’ said Dr Blackstaff. John Eustace had at least fifteen brown suits and a dozen pale blue shirts.

‘And when he stayed here overnight, I presume you lent him a nightgown or some pyjamas or something similar?’ Dr Blackstaff nodded. His interrogator went straight on.

‘And in the morning, did he get dressed again, or did he, please forgive me, did he die in his nightgown?’

‘He passed away in his nightgown, I’m afraid,’ said the doctor. He got up suddenly. ‘I’m finding all this rather a trial, Lord Powerscourt. Can I interest you in a whisky? A glass of port?’

‘A whisky would be delightful,’ said Powerscourt, knowing that time was being bought while glasses were found, bottles opened, drinks poured. He looked at an oil painting on the far side of the fireplace. It showed a naval surgeon at work in the height of battle, probably during the Napoleonic Wars. The centre of the painting showed a line of sailors, covered in blood, with different varieties of arm and leg severed or broken, lying on a long table. At the top of the painting there was a small patch of blue sky. The rest was obscured by the smoke of battle. Mentally, if not physically, you could hear the great guns being run out to pound Britain’s enemies into pulp. The surgeon had an enormous knife in his hand. He was covered in blood from the top of his chest. Blood was flowing out of the room as the ship tilted in combat. The surgeon’s assistant was trying to pour something, almost certainly rum, Powerscourt thought, down the patient’s throat. Another sailor was going to have an arm or a leg amputated.

‘Thank you so much,’ said Powerscourt, cradling a large glass of whisky as Dr Blackstaff lowered himself into the position opposite. There had been a certain hesitation about the question of clothes. He decided to continue in the same vein.

‘Just one last question about Mr Eustace’s last hours here, doctor,’ he said gravely. ‘Was he wearing boots or shoes?’

Again that slight hesitation. For a fraction of a second Dr William Blackstaff wished to confess. He could tell the truth and this interrogation, none the easier to bear for the studied politeness with which it was carried out, could stop. Then he thought of the scandal. Temptation passed.

‘Boots, I think. It was rather a wet day, Lord Powerscourt. It usually is round these parts at this time of year.’

He’s playing for time again, with these remarks about the weather, Powerscourt felt.

‘Black or brown?’

Blackstaff would have said they were purple with yellow stripes if he thought the questioning might stop.

‘Black,’ he said, almost recklessly.

‘One last question, doctor, and then I shall trespass on your time and your hospitality no longer,’ said Powerscourt. Dr Blackstaff looked more cheerful. ‘John Eustace’s request that nobody should look at him in his coffin, was that an unusual one? I mean, have other patients of yours asked for the same thing?’

‘Unusual, yes. Uncommon, no. Quite a number of my patients have made similar requests in the past. With some of them, I think it is because they believe more in the old superstitions than in the God of the cathedral. There are a number of ancient pagan sites within twenty miles from here.’

Powerscourt made a mental note to make a pilgrimage to the pagans when time afforded. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes before eight o’clock.

‘Thank you so much for your time, doctor,’ he said, finishing his glass and rising to his feet. ‘Perhaps I could call on you again, and we can discuss more pleasant matters, like your collection of medical prints and paintings. I think they’re absolutely fascinating.’

Dr Blackstaff escorted him to the door. ‘I used to hang some of the prints in my surgery,’ he said, ‘but then I had to take them down.’

‘What happened?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.

‘It was all very regrettable,’ Dr Blackstaff replied. ‘I used to get lots of small boys with imaginary illnesses who came to enjoy the blood and gore. Then I had a farmer whose arm had been severed in an accident. He took one look at that naval painting and passed out clean, right in the middle of the surgery floor.’

As Powerscourt made his way back to Fairfield Park, he was sure of one thing, that Dr Blackstaff had been lying for some if not all of the time. The uncertainty about the clothes convinced him on that point. And there had been that very strange comment right at the beginning of the interview: ‘That bloody woman,’ Dr Blackstaff had said, ‘she’ll be the death of us all. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she was having us all watched twenty-four hours a day.’ Us all . . . Powerscourt said it to himself a number of times as he tramped the couple of hundred yards up the rain-drenched road. Who is us? Or rather who are us? More than one person? A single accomplice? A number of accomplices?

In one minute’s time, Powerscourt said to himself, I am due to talk to Andrew McKenna, the last man in Fairfield Park to see his master alive. Powerscourt had timed the interview so there could be no opportunity for doctor to confer with butler. He felt an almost overwhelming curiosity coming over him. An overwhelming curiosity about suits and shirts and boots and shoes.

Andrew McKenna was waiting for Powerscourt in the drawing room. Outside the wind was rattling the windows and the rain was lying in puddles on the steps of the stone staircase. Powerscourt took a careful look at the Fairfield butler. McKenna was in his forties, cleanshaven, with very dark hair that was beginning to thin on top. His pale brown eyes, Powerscourt thought, were frightened.

‘First of all, McKenna, I must make a confession to you and to everybody else in this house. I am not a family friend of the Eustaces’ or the Cockburns’. I am a private investigator, employed by Mrs Augusta Cockburn to look into the circumstances surrounding her brother’s death.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said McKenna in a quiet voice. Inwardly he was terrified. This, or something like this, was what he had been dreading ever since the events of that terrible night. At least this Lord Powerscourt wasn’t wearing a police uniform.

‘I’m sure we can clear things up very quickly, McKenna. There’s no cause for any alarm,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. He was beginning to feel sorry for Andrew McKenna. ‘Can you remember what Mr Eustace was wearing the last time you saw him?’

‘Wearing?’ said McKenna in a mystified voice. Powerscourt thought that both the butler and the doctor seemed to have trouble with clothes.

‘What sort of a suit, if he was wearing a suit that day, what sort of shirt, that sort of thing?’

‘Sorry, my lord,’ said McKenna, seeming to recover himself. But then a terrible thought struck him. Powerscourt had just come from the doctor’s house. He must have asked the doctor the same questions. If his answer wasn’t the same, then the police might come and take him away. What would the doctor have said? Why hadn’t the doctor worked out that somebody might ask this question?

‘He was wearing a brown suit, my lord,’ said McKenna, but he didn’t sound convinced.

‘And the shirt?’ asked Powerscourt. Once more there was a pause.

‘I think it was a grey shirt, my lord.’

‘Grey, you say,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. Up the road in the doctor’s house John Eustace had been wearing pale blue.