David Dickinson - Death of an Old Master

There were a couple of policemen on guard outside the house in the Banbury Road when he arrived. The building was of recent construction, a solid red-brick edifice with a decent garden at the back.

‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. Very kind of you to come. You haven’t changed a bit, my lord.’

Chief Inspector Wilson was plumper now, the waist slightly larger, the hair considerably less. But his honest, worried face was still the same.

‘Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how very good to see you again. You are well, I trust?’

Wilson led Powerscourt into the ground floor of the building. ‘I am well, my lord, but all is not well here at 55 Banbury Road. A young man has been murdered. Name of Jenkins, Thomas Jenkins, former fellow of Emmanuel College. He was garrotted, my lord. The same method of killing as in the murder of that man Montague in London. I read about that in the papers. I got in touch with Inspector Maxwell down there and he told me you were investigating the Montague murder, my lord.’

Powerscourt turned pale. Jenkins, who had been the closest friend of the late Christopher Montague, Jenkins who had walked him across Port Meadow for lunch at the Trout Inn, refusing to answer his questions.

‘Was he killed here, in this house?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘He was. Let me explain the layout here first of all, my lord.’ Chief Inspector Wilson advanced along the hallway. ‘This house belongs to the college. Three of its younger fellows live here. They take all their meals except breakfast at Emmanuel and do their teaching in rooms up there. This room here,’ Wilson opened a door to the left, ‘was Jenkins’ bedroom.’

The room was of a good size, windows opening out on to the Banbury Road, quite tidy. Powerscourt supposed that somebody must come to clear up.

‘This little room here,’ Wilson went on, ‘was a simple kitchen where the gentlemen could make tea and toast for themselves.’ Two cleaned cups were standing on the draining board.

‘Does the college servant remember washing these cups up, Chief Inspector?’

Powerscourt was back in Christopher Montague’s flat in Brompton Square with the clean wine glasses.

‘The servant, my lord, is emphatic that he did not wash up those cups. And he says that Mr Jenkins never washed up anything at all in his life. He just placed his dirty things in the kitchen.’

Powerscourt was wondering about a tidy murderer, a murderer who took the trouble to clean up wine glasses or teacups even after he had killed somebody. Did he have something to hide?

‘This room here,’ Wilson opened another door on to a large room with an ornate ceiling, looking out over the gardens at the back, ‘was his living room and his study combined.’

There was a large desk by the window, a wall full of bookshelves, a leather sofa and a couple of brown armchairs. Powerscourt noticed that the bookshelves, unlike those of Christopher Montague, were still full.

‘Thomas Jenkins was found by the desk here,’ the Chief Inspector went on, ‘sitting in his normal swivel chair. As I said, he’d been garrotted, my lord. There were great purple and black marks around his neck. The doctors think he must have been killed between four and seven o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

‘Who found him? Was anything found in the room?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘A college servant found him, round about nine o’clock yesterday evening. He was worried that Mr Jenkins hadn’t been down to evening hall at the college. He thought he might have been ill, so he looked in. And there he was, stone cold.’

Powerscourt walked over to the window and looked out into the garden. A couple of squirrels were climbing up a tree. A garden bench sat empty in a corner of the lawn. He pulled at the window frame. It shot up easily as if it were opened often.

‘Any evidence of how the murderer got into the house, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Do either of the other two remember letting him in at all? Could he have climbed in through this window?’

‘The other two gentlemen are not here at present, my lord,’ said Chief Inspector Wilson wearily. ‘They are out of Oxford altogether, one in London, one in Germany, looking at medieval manuscripts, they say.’

‘God help him,’ said Powerscourt, peering down at the grass underneath the window. There was no sign of any footprints but the rain could have washed them away.

‘It’s the garrotting that troubles me,’ said Wilson. ‘Never come across it before. Not in these parts anyway.’ Powerscourt told Wilson about the article Christopher Montague was writing on fake paintings, about the gaps in the bookshelves, about his friendship with Mrs Rosalind Buckley.

‘Did the servant say anything about the man’s papers, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt. He opened the desk and pulled open all the drawers. As in Brompton Square, they were completely empty.

‘Was Jenkins in the habit of moving his papers up and down between here and the college?’ Powerscourt asked.

‘I asked the man about that,’ said Wilson. ‘He said that Mr Jenkins never moved his papers away from that desk. Not for as long as he’d been here. He might take a few bits and pieces up to the college but he always brought them back.’

‘There was a reason why someone might want to remove the papers from Christopher Montague’s desk. Lots of reasons, in fact. But why take Jenkins’ papers too? He was a historian, wasn’t he, Chief Inspector?’

‘He was, my lord. An expert in the Tudors, so his man said. Couple of Henrys and an Elizabeth if my memory serves me.’

‘I can’t see,’ said Powerscourt, staring into the garden, ‘how detailed knowledge of the religious questions at the time of the Reformation could make you a target for a murderer.’

‘Two murders, Lord Powerscourt. Maybe only one murderer. Do you think they are connected?’ Wilson went on, more confused than ever.

‘Yes, I do,’ replied Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they are connected, though for the moment I am damned if I know how. Could I make a suggestion, Chief Inspector?’

‘Of course you can, my lord, your suggestions are always helpful.’

‘It would be most interesting to discover if this person had been in Oxford recently. It’s a lawyer who has vanished from his offices in London, a Horace Aloysius Buckley, of the firm Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, husband of Montague’s lover Mrs Rosalind Buckley. You might inquire about the wife as well, while you’re about it. I think she was a friend of Jenkins.’

The Inspector was writing the name in a small brown notebook. Powerscourt had pulled the desk out from the wall and looked down the back. There was nothing there, only the dust of Oxford.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ Wilson was putting his notebook back in the breast pocket of his uniform. ‘I almost forgot. You asked if the college servant found anything in the room. He found this under the chair.’

He picked up a tie that had been carefully placed on the bottom tier of Thomas Jenkins’ bookshelf. ‘According to the servant, this is not one of Thomas Jenkins’ ties,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘It looks as if the murderer may have left it here by mistake.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly why a man would want to take off his tie before committing murder. Or after he’d done it. It didn’t make sense.

‘I know where that tie comes from,’ he said. ‘It’s not an Oxford tie at all. It comes from Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge, to be precise.’

And where, he wondered, as the two squirrels performed some daring acrobatics in their North Oxford garden, had Horace Aloysius Buckley gone to university?

‘Now then, Edmund,’ said William Alaric Piper, ‘it’s time to begin planning the next exhibition. Our Venetians are going to New York in six months’ time, as you know. What next?’