Death at the Jesus Hospital

12

Powerscourt saw Monk turn on his heel and head back towards the front gate of the hospital. Colonel Arbuthnot was coming his way. He was small, about five feet eight inches tall, with a handlebar moustache and a Roman nose. He fiddled constantly with a white rose in his buttonhole, as if he was on his way to a wedding. Powerscourt stepped out of the shadows into the middle of the road.

‘Good morning, Colonel,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and what brings you to Marlow today?’

Arbuthnot looked at him carefully. ‘Ah, Powerscourt,’ he replied. ‘I’d heard you were involved in this matter.’

What on earth, Powerscourt said to himself, was a senior British intelligence officer doing at the Jesus Hospital? It didn’t make sense.

‘I am indeed,’ he replied, ‘and what, pray, has the death in the almshouse got to do with you or with your department?’

‘I don’t feel obliged to answer any of your questions, Powerscourt. This is a matter of state security. You, of all people, know the rules.’

Powerscourt remembered that these people made Trappist monks seem talkative.

‘For God’s sake,’ he went on, ‘was Abel Meredith one of yours? I find that scarcely possible.’

‘In the world of intelligence, Powerscourt, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to London.’

‘I will not excuse you, Colonel, until you have told me something of your business here.’

Arbuthnot gazed up and down the little road as if he suspected German agents might be lurking behind the trees. He twisted the rose in his buttonhole once more. ‘This is all very difficult,’ he said finally. ‘Under the terms of the paper you signed those years ago you are still committed to serving the interests of the department whenever you are called to do so. It will be much more convenient for me if I can learn whatever you have discovered from your lips rather than having to make repeated trips to this bloody backwater. Are you happy to do that for your country?’

‘I am, but only on condition that you tell me what the department’s interests are with the late Meredith.’

Arbuthnot paused again. A lone horseman galloped slowly down the road. When he had passed out of sight, the colonel spoke again. ‘We do not like having to conclude bargains with people who are, in effect, our own agents. But I will make you an exception in this case. If you tell me what you know about the death of this wretched man, I will tell you something of our interest in him.’

Was this a genuine offer? Would Arbuthnot take on board all he knew and give him nothing in return? How much did he know already? For all Powerscourt knew, he could have been in touch with one or more of the inspectors on the case already.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘The first thing to say is that I have, for the present, no idea at all who killed him. There is one thing you should know. Meredith’s body had a strange series of marks on his chest. The same marks were found on the bodies of two other men, murdered in the days after the death in Marlow, both connected with the Silkworkers Company. One was a former Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, whose body was found by the water at the Silkworkers Hall near Tower Bridge. The other was the bursar of Allison’s School at Fakenham in Norfolk which has always had very close links with the Silkworkers. The existence of the strange marks is known only to those at the very heart of the inquiry. It has not been made public.’

‘Do you believe that the marks hold the key to the mystery, or mysteries?’

‘I do not know, Colonel. There is a plan, organized by the current Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, to sell off the company’s assets and distribute them among the members. This plan has proved contentious. There are disagreements about the provenance of some ancient documents which would seem to give sanction to the sale of the assets. The members here, like the members at the school, were mainly opposed to the sell-off. The chief opponent, the figurehead of the opposition, was the body found by the Tower, Sir Rufus Walcott. Apart from that, we have little to go on. So far we know very little about the past lives of the men in the Jesus Hospital. Maybe you could enlighten me on that.’

‘You have been very frank, Powerscourt. Thank you for that.’ The colonel took another furtive look up and down the road. Secrecy, Powerscourt thought, their own secrecy will be their undoing. ‘Let me try to give you such information as may be useful to you. The department, shall I say, has always had an interest in the Silkworkers. They are able to travel to and from Europe freely, ostensibly to meet with other guilds and similar ludicrous organizations. It’s bizarre, the extent to which the middle classes of Europe like dressing up in uniforms and livery from the distant past.’

‘You mean they are messengers? Picking up reports from agents? Dropping off requests for more information?’

‘You may think what you will,’ Arbuthnot smiled a glacial smile, ‘it is not for me to comment.’

‘Was Meredith a messenger for you? How long had be been working for you then?’

‘That is a difficult question to answer. I am now going to tell you the most sensitive part of our position, in return for your earlier and future help. If you agree to the future, that is?’

Powerscourt felt he had little choice. ‘I do,’ he said. Visions of endless future meetings, held like this one, on the nation’s side roads or in derelict buildings in the capital flashed across his mind.

‘Meredith was originally employed by us as a courier. We now suspect the Germans may have turned him, through bribery or brute force, to work for them. But we are not sure.’

‘Heavens above, man, are you saying he turned into a double agent? Do you think the Germans might have killed him? God in heaven.’

‘You may think what you will. I have told you the relevant points. It is not for me to comment any further. We shall meet again.’

Colonel Arbuthnot adjusted the rose in his buttonhole once again and set off towards the railway station. Powerscourt watched him go.

Lady Lucy was taking tea once again with David Lewis, her agent inside the schoolboy population of Allison’s. She was now in her second week as French conversation mistress, the permanent holder of the position ostensibly still down with flu. The boy was nervous, rocking slowly to and fro in his chair.

‘Look here, Mrs Hamilton, I’ve been thinking about things and there’s something I’ve just got to say…’

His words tailed off. Lady Lucy didn’t like the sound of this one little bit.

‘More tea, David? What do you think of this chocolate cake? The staff here recommend it highly.’

Reluctantly the boy tried out a large piece of cake.

‘Now then,’ Lady Lucy went on brightly, ‘have you anything further to report from the classrooms and the corridors of Allison’s? Your last piece of information was most useful. I was asking then if you could find out anything about the late bursar, Roderick Gill.’

David Lewis spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of cake. ‘Yes, I have, but you have to understand the rules about the Sixth Form.’

‘I see,’ said Lady Lucy.

‘Once you are over eighteen you are allowed to go and have a pint of beer in the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays, not on the other days. If you come back drunk or anything like that, the privilege is withdrawn from everybody in the school. It works pretty well on the whole.’

‘But you’re not eighteen yet, David, are you?’

‘No, I’m not. I’m seventeen and a half, actually. But the older chaps bring back some gossip about what they’ve seen in the town, if any of the masters are getting drunk, any new motor cars to be seen.’

The boy paused to brush some chocolate crumbs off his trousers.

‘There are three pubs in Fakenham itself, and one, the Farmers’ Arms, a little way out on the Cromer Road. It used to be a pub, now it’s been turned into a smart hotel but they still have a bar where people who wouldn’t be seen dead in an ordinary pub can go and have a drink. Here in the town, there’s the Crown where we are now. Some of the masters use it, so the boys don’t come here very much. It might be a touch embarrassing all round. There’s the Green Man which is a dump and the Royal Oak which is said to be haunted but has the cheapest beer. That’s the school favourite.’

‘More tea?’ said Lady Lucy.

‘Thank you,’ said David Lewis, and continued his story. ‘For some reason, two of the chaps got fed up with the Royal Oak and went to the Farmers’ Arms instead. Every time they went there the bursar was in the place with a woman.’

‘What sort of woman?’ asked Lady Lucy, trying to remember the details of the stonemason’s wife. ‘Was she young? Pretty?’

‘Well, Longford and Fairfax said she must have been very good looking when she was young.’

Male cruelty begins very young, thought Lady Lucy. ‘Age?’

‘Well, they thought she must have been fairly old, well over forty. The thing is they were behaving as if they were twenty-one, all over each other. Longford said it was rather vulgar, not the way proper people that age ought to behave. And she looked like she had plenty of money. They used to leave together and she had a car waiting outside with a chauffeur.’

Whatever else she might have had, Lady Lucy said to herself, the stonemason’s wife did not have a car and a driver.

‘I don’t suppose your friends managed to catch a name for the lady?’

‘Only a Christian name, I’m afraid. Maud, that’s what the bursar called her, Maud.’

Lady Lucy thought that with the name of the pub and the man and the Christian name of the woman, it should not be too difficult to find a name and an address. ‘Well done, David, that’s very useful. I’m so proud of you!’

‘Do you think she might have killed him?’ David Lewis was beginning to enjoy the many possibilities of detective work. ‘Now I think about it, mind you, she’s not likely to have dressed up as a man with a great black beard and walked up the school corridor first thing in the morning. Did she go to London to hire a killer to do it for her?’

‘I don’t think we should assume that just because she was seen having a drink with Mr Gill that she had anything to do with his death. It sounds from what your people said that they were friends, not enemies.’

‘Hmm,’ said the boy, in that tone of voice people adopt when they don’t believe a word of what they’ve just been told. ‘I must go to my piano lesson in a minute, Mrs Hamilton. Is there anything you’d like me to make inquiries about?’

Lady Lucy poured herself a final cup of tea. ‘Well, there is, but I don’t know how you’d set about finding the answer. We’d like to know what Mr Gill was doing before he came to the school. Maybe somebody at Allison’s who was already in post when he arrived would know.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said David and rose to leave.

‘Do you like playing the piano? Are you good at it? Any favourite composers?’

The boy stopped by the door. ‘The piano? It’s the best thing for me at the school next to cricket. I just love Mozart, Mrs Hamilton. It makes me think I’m in some elegant building where all the rooms and everything are perfectly proportioned. The windows are open and there’s a garden outside, drenched in sunshine. Mind you, I like Tchaikovsky too.’

‘I shouldn’t think you’re in a Georgian jewel of a house then, David.’

The boy laughed. ‘No, it’s dark and there’s a storm outside. I’m striding out over the moors with that chap Heathcliff, tortured by unspeakable thoughts.’

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were taking coffee with Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant in the garden room of the Elysian Fields Hotel. They were the only people in the room. A constable had been placed on watch near the front door to check the entrances and the exits. Powerscourt told his colleagues about his encounter with the secret service man earlier that day.

Inspector Fletcher was astonished. ‘I find it impossible to believe that intelligence work has been going on at the Jesus Hospital. It’s such an unlikely place for it.’

‘Maybe that’s the point,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It works because it’s so improbable. What do you think we should do, Francis?’

‘My man,’ Powerscourt had been careful not to mention Arbuthnot’s name, ‘didn’t say if there is any connection with the other two murders. Maybe the intelligence people used the Silkworkers indiscriminately, wherever they were to be found, I just don’t know. Did Meredith join the hospital of his own free will? Or did the secret service place him there for reasons of their own? It would be a good place to hide people, if you think about it. Known largely by your number not your name, hardly ever out of the building apart from expeditions to the Rose and Crown. All strangers immediately visible and probably suspect. If you were looking for somebody, you wouldn’t necessarily think of an almshouse, or, put it the other way round, if you didn’t want to be found, what better place to hide than an almshouse? Damn it,’ he looked round at his companions, ‘there are too many questions and not enough answers. The first thing we need to do, and this, I feel, is going to fall on your shoulders, Inspector, is to find out as much as we can about Abel Meredith’s past life. Where he was born, how he earned his daily bread, wives, children, criminal convictions, spells in prison, you know, the works.’

‘Fine,’ said the Inspector. ‘We’ve done this before.’

‘Not like this, I think you’ll find. I don’t think my friend has stopped yet. There’s more to come.’

‘How did you know, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’m like our friend the Inspector, I’ve been here before too.’

‘I don’t understand, my lord.’ Inspector Fletcher was looking confused. ‘What else do you want me to do?’

‘I’m afraid I think we need the past lives of more than Abel Meredith, Inspector.’

‘Which ones?’

‘All of them in the hospital.’

‘Great God!’

The man they called Eye Patch was looking out to sea in the daytime just as he did in the night. As then, he kept well back from the windows. The sun was shining this morning, dancing over the water, lighting up the pretty buildings on the seafront. Eye Patch was pleased. Most of his mission had been successfully accomplished. There was only one task left for him to perform, and he could do that once they had a really dark night. He found he was no in hurry now. At the start, with nothing accomplished, he had been unusually nervous. Now he was so near the end he felt calm. He had grown very attached to the little town, not that he had met any of the inhabitants. The closest he came to contact with them was when the locals came to the door to deliver supplies of food and drink. Very soon, maybe in a couple of days, he could close his operation down and go home. He thought he would go through a city where you could buy women by the hour or the afternoon, so much quicker than the boring rituals of flirtation and conquest. Eye Patch smiled and stared out at the water.

‘Which of these two knights of the realm would you like to start with?’

‘Let’s start with Sir Peregrine, at least he’s still alive.’

Inspector Miles Devereux had gone to the home of a retired newspaperman. Sammy Wilson had covered the City of London for a variety of newspapers for over forty years. Even in retirement he kept his hand in, composing short biographies of financial grandees for small but welcome sums. He was a small man, who looked, even his friends admitted, remarkably like a gnome, a benevolent one, but nonetheless a gnome. Devereux had known him for years. He was always a useful source of information, much of which had never made its way into the public prints. Now they were drinking Mrs Wilson’s finest tea, and consuming her lemon cakes in front of the fire, the walls lined with prints of famous cricketers and famous matches from long ago.

‘Well,’ Sammy Wilson began, ‘I’m not surprised you’re asking questions about Sir Peregrine. I’ve thought for years that he might get into trouble for some of his activities.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, my young friend, that Sir Peregrine has often sailed pretty close to the wind. I don’t think he’s gone in for massive fraud against the public, against the people who’ve invested in his companies. Rather, it’s the way that he gets to the top of them that’s always interested me. It’s happened twice, as far as I know. There may well be more examples that I don’t know of. And these are only rumours, you understand, just rumours, nothing you could issue an arrest warrant for, if you follow me.’

‘You’re talking in riddles, Sammy, and you know it,’ said Inspector Devereux, popping his second lemon cake into his mouth. ‘Can you be more specific? We’re talking off the record here, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Sammy Wilson. ‘The pattern is the same in both cases. Sir Peregrine gets himself appointed to the board of some medium-sized outfit, London Wall Insurance was the first one. He sits there for a while, good as gold. Doesn’t query the accounts or anything troublesome like that. Eighteen months in, there’s an emergency meeting of the board, called by our friend. A vote of no confidence in the managing director is passed by a small majority. Sir P, surprise, surprise, becomes the new managing director. The word on the street is that his supporters were either bribed or blackmailed into following him. His supporters’ club, surprise, surprise again, are given large increases in salary under the new regime. The cynics said that a promise of future cash would not have been enough to persuade his colleagues to vote the previous man out. Money must have changed hands beforehand. Or they were blackmailed. Or both.’

‘What happened to the previous managing director? Did he make a fuss?’

‘I can see the way your devious mind is working, young Devereux. Previous man loses job, loses income, bears a grudge against Sir P for years, bumps him off in the basement of the Silkworkers Hall. Well, Sir Peregrine was too clever for that. Not long after his expulsion from London Wall Insurance, the previous managing director, Young was his name, Randolph Young, gets another job in a different company specializing in shipping. Guess who was on the board there? Finding it difficult, are you? Too tricky a problem perhaps? Let me enlighten you. Sir Peregrine was on the board there too. Seemed to have no problem working with the man whose job he’d stolen, as you might put it. Rum, that, I thought, rum.’

‘Nothing ever came out about what had been going on? Not a word?’

‘Well, as you might imagine, there was a lot of whispering and muttering around the City. Terrible place for the speed of rumour, as you know. But no, nothing firm ever emerged, just one more strange happening in an environment where strange things happen all the time.’

‘And the second time, Sammy? I think you said there were two examples.’

‘You’re quite right, I did. The second was slightly different. But once again it happened at a company where Sir Peregrine was on the board. Lombard Electricity, they were called, installing and researching electric supply, that sort of thing. Doing very well, it was, too. Still is, I think. Anyway, Sir Peregrine is on the board again, as before. Very well behaved again to start with. Then there’s another extraordinary board meeting. The charge is that the managing director has been fiddling the books. Hand in the till, that sort of thing. Poor man says all the documents are forgeries but the monies do seem to have been extracted from the company’s bankers and transferred over. The board, led, with great reluctance, more in sorrow than in anger, by Sir Peregrine, how unfortunate that one of our best and brightest should have had a temporary fall from grace and what probity he has always displayed in the past, the board don’t believe this unfortunate managing director. Out he goes. In comes our friend, Sir P, top dog once again, the man who overcame his friendship with the previous incumbent to restore that honest dealing for which the City is famed. Hypocrisy was being handed out in ladlefuls and Sir Peregrine was the chief beadle.’

‘Were the documents forged?’ The Inspector was on his fourth lemon cake.

‘I was told,’ Sammy Wilson was talking very quietly at this point as if even his own wife should not be privy to such sensitive material, ‘told by a source very close to the action, that they were forgeries. Clever forgeries, but forgeries none the less. Certainly that managing director, man by the name of Ibbotson, never admitted anything.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Ibbotson? I knew you were going to ask me that. I don’t know, to be honest with you. I think he just dropped right out of the Square Mile altogether. Would you like me to find out where he is?’

‘I would. Very much so.’

‘My God, Inspector, you’ve got a very suspicious mind. Are you fitting him up already for the handcuffs and the rope?’

‘Certainly not. Far too soon. Inquiries, as my colleagues are fond of saying, will have to take their course. What of the other man, Sir Rufus Walcott? Let me tell you for a start that there are fifteen years or so missing from his life in Who’s Who. Any idea what that’s all about?’

‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to what’s in there, young man. They only print what their subjects tell them, those Who’s Who people, they don’t check anything out or do any research of their own. If I were compiling some of those entries they’d be a lot juicier than the ones that appear, I can tell you.’

‘But why do you think Sir Rufus left this great blank in his life?’

‘Could be any one of a number of things. Failed business ventures? Founder and managing director of Croesus Holdings, went bankrupt towards the end of the last century? I don’t think you’d want people knowing about that. He could have gone to the colonies or to America and gone bad rather than good, if you see what I mean. Failed gold prospector somewhere or other? I don’t think you should bother too much about those missing years. The thing about Sir Rufus is that in so many ways he was the exact opposite to Sir Peregrine. Sir Peregrine, you might say, is a rather slippery character, one or two doubtful episodes in his past. Sir Rufus was completely different. I doubt if there was even a small bone let alone a skeleton in his closet. He was a man of honour. He was known for his integrity. That’s why he ended up on so many boards and being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk. You’ve got to be clean as the driven snow to hold a position like that with its links to the monarchy. I doubt if anyone would appoint Sir Peregrine Lord Lieutenant of Wandsworth Prison even if there was such a post.’

‘How odd that two such different characters succeeded each other as Prime Warden of the Silkworkers.’

‘I spent a lot of time years ago on a story about the City of London School, Inspector. Fellow there told me that it is almost a tradition at the public schools that the man taking over is as unlike his predecessor as possible. Maybe that applied to the Silkworkers too.’

Inspector Devereux rose to go. ‘I am most grateful for your help, Sammy. If you could find out the name of the managing director supposed to have cooked the books, I’d be grateful.’

‘Would you like me to arrange a meeting with you if I find him?’

‘Yes please. And could you pass on my thanks to your wife for these lovely lemon cakes? I look forward to more of them when I return.’

‘They’re infuriating, Lucy, just infuriating.’

‘Who is infuriating you now, Francis? I haven’t seen you this furiated for a while.’ Lady Lucy smiled at her husband, pacing up and down the imaginary quarterdeck that masqueraded as a drawing room in their hotel in Fakenham.

‘Sorry, Lucy, it’s those secret service people. I told you I met one of them, a man called Arbuthnot, outside the Jesus Hospital. They don’t tell you anything. The late Meredith may have been a courier for them. Or he may not. Other silkmen in the hospital or elsewhere may also have been couriers. Or again, maybe not. They never give you anything concrete to work with. It’s the same as the time I worked for them before. They nearly drove me mad then. I suspect they’re going to do it again.’

‘Can’t you just ask the old men if they have worked for the government in the past, Francis? They can’t have been major spies, surely, just messengers or couriers.’

‘I don’t know, Lucy. Arbuthnot implied the dead man might have been turned round from being a British agent into a German one. If you wanted to hide the ace of spies away somewhere, you could do a lot worse than the Jesus Hospital.’

‘Is there nobody you can talk to, Francis? Are there any retired spies? People who have left the service and might be more able to talk?’

‘I don’t think there are any of those. The service has only just been founded. Hold on a minute, though.’ Powerscourt stopped by the fireplace and stared at Lady Lucy for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘I’ve just thought of something, Lucy. It’s a long shot, but it might just work. I’m going to go to Paris to see a man in the Place des Vosges.’

‘Who is this French gentleman, Francis?’

‘I met him when I was working on the death on the Nevskii Prospekt, my love. His name is Olivier Brouzet and he is the head of the French secret intelligence service.’

Inspector Grime swore violently when he heard the news of Roderick Gill’s meetings in the Farmers’ Arms. He despatched a young constable who lived round the corner from the pub and knew the landlord well for more information.

‘Bloody man Gill,’ he raged at his sergeant. ‘Why isn’t one woman enough for him? Why does he need to have two on the go?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’ His sergeant had long ago decided that the minimum number of words were the safest course of action on these occasions.

‘Do you suppose we would find yet more women if we went on a trawl round the pubs of Holt and Swaffham? Is the bloody man never satisfied? I’m beginning to suspect this womanizing may have been the death of him.’

Constable Parrish, all of twenty-four years old, returned from his trip to the Farmers’ Arms.

‘Well, Constable, what’s the news?’

‘The woman’s name is Lewis, sir, Mrs Maud Lewis. Widow, thought by the publican to be in her late forties.’

‘You don’t often hear them say they’re in their late fifties, do you?’ The Inspector was scowling at a picture of Queen Alexandra on his wall. ‘Some of these women have been in their late forties for years.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Constable Parrish carried on, ‘She lives in a huge house a couple of hundred yards from the pub. She only moved there about six months ago, sir. The publican thinks she lived in Birmingham before that. Plenty of money, sir. Kind to the servants apparently.’

‘Never mind whether she was kind to the bloody servants or not for now, did she have any family?’

‘She does, sir, sorry, sir. She has two sons in their early twenties. The publican believes they live in London now.’

‘Do they come to visit their mother? Devoted sons perhaps?’

‘Well, sir, this was one of the most interesting things. I should have mentioned it earlier. Two or three weeks ago the two boys were having a drink with their mother. There was a row. The publican wasn’t in the room himself at the time but one of the bar staff told him about it when they’d gone. They were arguing about the money in her will. The boys kept saying they couldn’t see why they should lose out in favour of somebody she hardly knew.’

‘My God,’ said Inspector Grime, ‘if that’s not a motive for murder I don’t know what is. Sergeant, take yourself off to interview the merry widow this minute. Don’t leave without an address for her sons.’