Death at the Jesus Hospital

10

Lord Francis Powerscourt was entertaining a brace of police inspectors in his drawing room in Markham Square. Rhys the butler had just finished serving coffee. Neither of his guests asked Powerscourt where his wife was. Draped across a chaise longue by the window, Inspector Miles Devereux of the Metropolitan Police looked as if he might have been born in this house and into this social circle. Inspector Fletcher of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary was less at home, sitting nervously by the edge of the fire, twirling his hat in his hands. Both had reported their latest developments to Powerscourt, Fletcher the astonishing discovery of Sir Peregrine in the vicinity of the hospital late in the evening the day before the first murder, Devereux his equally surprising encounter with the history man from University College London who was paid such a large number of guineas for his advice on the codicil.

‘Let’s think about Sir Peregrine first, shall we?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Inspector Fletcher, have you any theories about what was going on?’

The Inspector gave his cap another twirl. He paused for a moment or two before he spoke. ‘I do, my lord, I certainly do. The first theory — we have to consider it, however unlikely it sounds — is that he really was at the hotel on business. He is a director, after all. His normal activities in the City kept him occupied all day so he had to drive over in the evening. My second theory is that he was there on Jesus Hospital business. Maybe he had come to see Warden Monk to discuss the votes in the Silkworkers ballot. Fishborne may have been trying to devise a way to persuade all those who would have voted against his plans while Abel Meredith was still alive to change their minds. Maybe Monk was telling Sir Peregrine how much money he would have to spend to buy the votes.’ Inspector Fletcher looked round for approval.

‘I like that theory,’ said Inspector Devereux, ‘but I still find the whole thing pretty incredible. Late in the evening, Sir Peregrine, travelling by night in case anybody recognizes him perhaps, a meeting with person or persons unknown at that time of night, nobody seeing him leave. In my book there’s one likely explanation for this behaviour. If it barks, it’s a dog. If it mews, it’s a cat. If it’s an elderly rich man charging round in the middle of the night to a hotel where he has a permanent suite, it’s a woman. Suppose the mysterious man was actually female? And suppose the meeting took place, not in some private room downstairs but between the sheets in some vast bed in the Baron Haussmann Suite upstairs? What do you say, my lord?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘It’s certainly possible. I don’t think we could rule it out. But it’s a pretty odd coincidence. Inspector Fletcher, you are the only one of us who has actually met this potential Casanova by the Thames. Do you think it likely? Possible?’

‘I tell you this, my lord, when my sergeant and I were talking on our way back from the hotel, neither of us even considered it. Later on we did, and we thought it impossible. He’s not a nice man, my lord, that Sir Peregrine. I’m not an expert on what makes women tick, far from it, but it’s hard to see any female jumping into bed with Sir Peregrine.’

‘Forgive me,’ Miles Devereux stretched and moved to a sitting rather than a recumbent position on his chaise longue, ‘isn’t that the point? The women are dealing in a currency other than love. They’re dealing in money, possibly in gold. Maybe Sir Peregrine brought a high-class tart with him in the car, or his secretary perhaps. I’m sure there may be some form of crime involved, procurement, prostitution, God knows what all going on, but this isn’t relevant to the murder. Or is it?’

Powerscourt took another sip of his coffee. ‘It’s very unlikely that it is relevant, but it might be. I don’t think we should dismiss it altogether. If nothing else it might be a useful lever against Sir Peregrine. Now then, somebody has to talk to the wretched man, ask him what he was doing down there in Marlow late at night. Maybe we should talk to the chauffeur too. What do you say, Inspector Fletcher?’

Inspector Fletcher turned a bright shade of pink. ‘I’m happy to do that, my lord. The thing is’ — he paused and gathered his courage — ‘I don’t think he thought very highly of me when we met before. In fact he complained about me to my Chief Constable. I know he did.’

‘I think that’s commendable, your telling us that,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I really do. But don’t you see, we can turn that to our advantage. If I go and see him, it’ll put him on his guard. Same with Devereux here. But if it’s you, he won’t bother to put up his defences at all if he has a low opinion of you already. Much better from our point of view.’

Inspector Fletcher managed a small smile. ‘Right, my lord, I shall go and call on him tomorrow and see what he has to say for himself. I’ll take my sergeant for protection and moral support.’

‘Good man,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now then, what do you think of this codicil business, gentlemen?’

‘Before we do that, my lord, I’ve just thought of something.’ Inspector Devereux looked excited all of a sudden. ‘Why don’t we just arrest Sir Peregrine now? He was on site at the Silkworkers Hall the night of the murder there. We only have his word for it that he left when he did. He was in the vicinity hours before the first murder. In both cases he had a very powerful motive for killing his victims, they stood between him and a fortune. I’m sure any jury would look kindly on such a prosecution, my lord.’

‘Maybe they would,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I have wondered myself if we shouldn’t arrest him. But I don’t think our case is strong enough. We have a possible motive, we have proximity to the deed itself, but we don’t have any hard evidence. Not yet at any rate. And if we picked him up now, London’s finest solicitors would be on our backs straight away. London’s finest barristers would be on parade at the Old Bailey. For the time being, I think we should consider the codicil. Inspector Fletcher, you have not been exposed in person to the academics who are arguing about the thing. What is your view of the matter?’

‘We don’t have much to do with codicils and livery companies down in Marlow, my lord,’ Fletcher began, and inspected his boots for a moment. ‘What strikes me as curious is the discrepancy in the payments. Twenty guineas for the man in Cambridge, five hundred for the man in London. That sounds pretty damned fishy, even in Buckinghamshire.’

‘Your man in Cambridge, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Devereux, ‘he said that the London fellow must be the forger with that sort of payment. Why on earth did Claypole tell me that in the first place? He didn’t have to, he didn’t have to say a word about it. “My financial affairs are private,” that sort of thing.’

‘Vanity?’ said Powerscourt. ‘He seems to have been pretty keen to tell you he had to be in the House of Lords very soon. Very clever people can get superiority complexes, they think they’re above everybody else. I’m very certain of one thing though. It makes a great hole in any possible defence for Sir Peregrine in court.’

‘How?’ said the two Inspectors, more or less in unison.

‘Suppose you are the counsel for the prosecution, gentlemen. You line up a little collection of these academics who gave their views on the codicil. Up comes Professor Number One, he does his stuff. “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Professor Number Two, “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Up comes Professor Number Three. “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Now it’s Professor Wilson Claypole’s turn in the witness box. “How much were you paid?” “Five hundred guineas” “Five hundred guineas? Would you just like to repeat that figure, Professor Claypole, so the gentlemen of the jury can be in no doubt of it?” “Five hundred guineas.” With a skilful barrister the jury would be left in little doubt that Claypole was the forger.’

‘And once we know that Claypole was the forger,’ Miles Devereux was now walking up and down the room, ‘the whole codicil sideshow disappears. Sir Peregrine’s plans collapse like a pack of cards. The man’s a crook.’

‘He may be a crook,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer.’

The headmaster of Allison’s School was a worried man. Even now, many days after the murder, no boy had come forward with any details of the fake postman who had arrived in the school to strangle its bursar. The boys had been invited to speak to Inspector Grime after the second visit. None had done so. The headmaster had tried speaking, in confidence, to the boys he considered most influential with their schoolfellows. Nothing had happened. He had enlisted the help of the local bishop, the Bishop of Norwich. That mighty churchman had preached an eloquent sermon on the theme of render unto Cesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s from St Matthew’s Gospel. He spoke of the obligations on Christians to pay their taxes, to support the civil authorities, to be law-abiding citizens. The headmaster thought at the time that short of telling the boys to tell what they had seen on either of those days, the bishop had done all he could to persuade some boys, impressed by the weighty presence of a prince of the Church among them, to tell what they knew. The bishop’s message fell on stony ground. Now the headmaster’s last hope lay in the slender figure of Lady Lucy Powerscourt, pretending to be Mrs Hamilton, the French language teacher. The headmaster had little hope in that direction.

That evening Inspector Grime, at Powerscourt’s suggestion, was taking dinner with Lady Lucy at the Crown Hotel in Fakenham. The Inspector was wearing his best suit for the occasion. But he, like the headmaster, was in despair. He was not making any progress, he told her sadly. His principal suspect, Jude the stonemason, seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. The boys of Allison’s School would tell him nothing. His Chief Constable was making ominous noises, threatening, so Grime had heard on the grapevine, to take him off the case altogether. When Lady Lucy moved the conversation on to Inspector Grime himself, a sad picture emerged. His wife had died some years before. There had been no children. He had his aged mother living with him and her memory had gone, she was liable to wander off into the fields or on to the main road if she was not watched twenty-four hours a day. The Inspector paid a woman to look after the old lady when he was at work. At weekends he did it himself. It was, he said, running his fingers through the remains of his dark hair, getting him down. Lady Lucy listened with a sympathetic ear and congratulated the Inspector on caring for his mother. Apart from expressions of sympathy, she felt there was little she could do. To tell Inspector Grime about her one tiny glimmer of good news would, she thought, give him false hope and, perhaps, false optimism. The boy who had followed her to the hotel might be sufficiently besotted to tell her something important. But she would certainly tell Francis when he came the following day. The tiny glimmer would come, if it was going to come, the following afternoon shortly after four o’clock.

Inspector Fletcher checked once more the polish on his boots. He fiddled yet again with his tie. He and Sergeant Donaldson were in the reception of Sir Peregrine’s vast headquarters in the City of London. Teams of secretaries and stenographers and dark-coated financiers hurried in and out of the building with an air of great purpose. Sergeant Donaldson thought to himself that he much preferred the quiet backwater of Maidenhead where the police knew most of the people and life passed by at a much slower pace. Here everything moved so quickly.

Earlier that day the policemen had received a valuable piece of ammunition for their interview with Sir Peregrine. Warden Monk had replied to their messages and presented himself at the police station. Yes, he admitted readily enough, he had been seeing Sir Peregrine at the hotel, late the other evening. He had met him there before at that time. It was, he said belligerently, a free country, wasn’t it? A man could go where he wanted and talk with whomever he wanted, couldn’t he? As far as he, Thomas Monk, was aware, there weren’t any laws against any of that, were there? Not yet at any rate. He and Sir Peregrine had been discussing Jesus Hospital business. No, he did not want to tell the officers exactly what had been discussed. That was private. Both Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant were sure that Monk was hiding something, but they could not tell what it was. Inspector Fletcher felt sure that news of the interview would reach Sir Peregrine long before he and Sergeant Donaldson crossed the portals of his domain. Not for the first time he cursed the invention of the telegraph.

A tall slim young lady in a fashionable trailing skirt brought them up to Sir Peregrine’s office on the top floor. The room was huge, with spectacular views over the City of London. Many of these captains of industry filled their walls with hunting prints or views of English cathedrals. Sir Peregrine’s walls were hung with battles. Before he sat down, Inspector Fletcher caught a glimpse of a sweaty Leonidas holding the pass at Thermopylae.

‘Thank you, Miss Davis,’ boomed Sir Peregrine, as the young lady ushered the policemen on to a couple of chairs. ‘Tea, Miss Davis.’ She had almost reached the door when the qualification came, ‘For one.’

Bloody rude, thought Inspector Fletcher. Bloody rude.

‘Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you?’ Sir Peregrine addressed his visitors as if they were the lowest variety of office boy in his employ.

Inspector Fletcher had agreed with Inspector Devereux that the Marlow police would confine themselves to the murder at the Jesus Hospital. The complicated questions of the authenticity of the codicil could be left to Devereux and Powerscourt. Now Inspector Fletcher could feel his nerves rising. No pauses between sentences, he said to himself. No hesitations. He thought he might start to shake quite soon if he didn’t get a grip on himself. He began taking a series of deep breaths as his wife advised.

‘We would like to know,’ he began hesitantly, ‘what you were doing in the Elysian Fields Hotel outside Marlow the other evening.’

The Inspector had gained in strength as his question progressed. He felt slightly better. Maybe it was going to be all right.

‘Who says I was there?’ Sir Peregrine remembered Inspector Fletcher from the day of the murder at the Jesus Hospital. He had thought little of him then. He saw nothing to make him change his mind.

‘Your car was seen on the road leading to the hotel, Sir Peregrine. And the hotel manager confirmed your presence.’

‘What if I was? I’m a director of the damned hotel. Man can visit any damned hotel he likes, especially if he’s on the board.’

‘Could we ask who you saw when you were there, Sir Peregrine. At the hotel, I mean.’

‘That’s none of your damned business either.’ Sir Peregrine paused while Miss Davis placed an ornate tea tray in front of her master. As a further insult to the visitors, it was laden with scones and sandwiches and three alluring slices of cake. ‘Man can see who he likes, damn your eyes.’

‘I put it to you, Sir Peregrine,’ Inspector Fletcher was feeling almost confident now, ‘that the man you went to see was Thomas Monk, Warden of the Jesus Hospital which, as you know as well as I do, is run by your own livery company the Silkworkers.’

‘I do wish you would mind your damned business. Monk or no Monk, it’s got nothing to do with you.’ Sir Peregrine paused to eat an enormous mouthful of chocolate cake. For some reason, Fletcher was to tell his sergeant later, the sight of the chocolate cake made him very angry indeed.

‘I do not feel, Sir Peregrine,’ he said firmly, happy in the knowledge that he had not paused for the last five minutes or so, ‘that you are taking our questions as seriously as you should. There was a murder at the Jesus Hospital a matter of hours after your car was seen at the nearby hotel. We have no reports of anybody seeing the car leave. For all we know, it, and you, could still have been there at the time of the killing. There was a second murder at the Silkworkers Hall in the City of London. You were the last person to see the victim alive. Your position is more serious than you seem to think, Sir Peregrine.’

‘Are you saying that I am a murderer? Am I a suspect?’

‘I am not saying that you are the murderer. As to whether you are a suspect or not I leave that up to you to decide for the moment. Now, if we could return to the business in hand, perhaps you could tell us, Sir Peregrine, when you left the Elysian Fields the night before the murder?’

‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? It’s none of your damned business!’

‘Then we can assume, can we, Sir Peregrine, that you were still there on the morning of the murder?’

Sir Peregrine made a mighty noise that sounded like a cross between a howl of pain and a yell of triumph. He rose to his feet. His face had turned purple. He was pounding his enormous fist on the table. ‘Get out! Get out now! You insult me in my own office! How dare you? A couple of failed police officers from the back of beyond! Ignorant clodhoppers! Get out! Go on! Clear off!’

Oddly enough it was Sergeant Donaldson who had the last word in the interview. ‘Good day to you, Sir Peregrine,’ he said, opening the door. ‘So glad you enjoyed your tea.’

Sir Peregrine sat down and took a quick swig straight from the half bottle of whisky concealed in his bottom drawer. He pressed a button underneath his desk. Miss Davis appeared as if by magic.

‘Get me the bloody solicitors,’ he snarled. ‘And get them now!’

Mrs Hamilton’s spoken French classes were going well. The Lower Sixth were well advanced into ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. They had passed the point where the King of Bohemia reveals himself to Holmes and Watson and they have made the acquaintance of Irene Adler, the well-known adventuress. Mrs Hamilton wondered if she had picked too exotic a story, if she wouldn’t have done better with some more domestic problem set in Surrey with governesses and gamekeepers. She hadn’t yet tried to change the subject to murder at Allison’s — she rather feared there was no actual murder in ‘Scandal in Bohemia’ — as she hadn’t deemed it appropriate.

The boys read their section of the story or gazed longingly at Mrs Hamilton when they were not on duty. She had become the focus, the depository of the teenage longings and the teenage fantasies of an entire class. As she made her way back to the hotel that afternoon she checked behind herself a couple of times. It was as she thought. She was being followed. Francis had told her years before of a tingling sensation when somebody is coming after you. For Mrs Hamilton this was the second day of the pursuit. It was as she had predicted. She smiled slightly as she went into the hotel. Then she ran up the stairs and turned all the lights on in her suite of sitting room, bedroom and bathroom. After that she went out of the side door of the Crown, round the back of the green and tapped David Lewis lightly on the shoulder. ‘Come and have some tea,’ she said sweetly. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold out here.’

David Lewis followed his new teacher into the hotel. He thought he had turned red permanently. He suspected his face might never return to its normal condition. His eyes still had the look of puppy-like devotion they had shown in class.

Lady Lucy ordered tea and scones. The room was large with Georgian windows looking out over the green. ‘You’ll never make a detective like Sherlock Holmes if you follow people like that, David,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think you need to be more subtle, not so much sudden jumping behind trees.’

‘I just wanted to be close to you, Mrs Hamilton. I don’t quite know how to say this. I’ve never felt like this in my whole life, not ever…’

Lady Lucy was saved by the arrival of the tea. The maid poured two cups and handed them round before she left. Lady Lucy had been wondering how to extricate herself from this situation which could prove so embarrassing.

‘My husband should be here in a minute,’ she said brightly, buttering a scone. ‘He’s on his way up from London.’ She thought that might buy some time. She watched as David’s face fell. Maybe he hadn’t thought of her with a husband at all. Lady Lucy decided to take a gamble, a huge gamble.

‘He’s a detective, my husband, like Sherlock Holmes, only he’s real, my husband I mean.’

‘Really?’ said David Lewis. ‘And is he working on a case at present?’ There had been mention in the school of a detective who had talked to the headmaster and to Inspector Grime. What was his name? David Lewis didn’t think it was Hamilton.

Lady Lucy got there before him. ‘My married name is Powerscourt, Lady Lucy Powerscourt,’ she said. ‘Before that I was called Hamilton. And my husband’s called Francis.’

‘And are you detecting something up here?’ David Lewis had temporarily forgotten about love in favour of crime and investigation. This was like one of those shockers that passed round the school.

‘Of course we are, silly. And we’d like you to join us, to become part of our team. It depends, of course, on your being able to keep a secret.’

‘Of course I can keep a secret, Lady Powerscourt, Mrs Hamilton, dear me, what should I call you?’

‘You’d better go on calling me Mrs Hamilton, I think, David. In case the other name slips out in class.’

David Lewis stared at Lady Lucy for a moment. ‘You’re here because of the death of the bursar, aren’t you? Mr Gill. Is that the secret?’

‘Part of it, David, just part of it. There are other matters I can’t tell you about just yet. Very deep, very dark matters.’

‘What can I do to help? I’ll do anything, Mrs Hamilton, I’m so happy to be a part of the team.’

Lady Lucy cut him off. She thought he might be about to go back on to dangerous ground.

‘There is one thing,’ she said, ‘that would really help the investigation.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You remember there was a lot of talk about the false postman who came to the school, and who was almost certainly the murderer? And how the police repeated the exercise a couple of days later, exactly like the first visit?’

‘I do.’

‘The strange thing is that nobody has come forward with a description of the fake postman. Somebody must have seen him. If you’re looking for somebody, it helps if you know something of what he looked like. Was he short, was he tall, was he clean shaven, was he bald, did he have a crutch and a parrot on his shoulder, that sort of thing.’

David Lewis gazed helplessly into Lady Lucy’s eyes. ‘Some of us have felt badly about this for some time, Mrs Hamilton. It’s just that Inspector Grime rubbed so many of the boys up the wrong way. They decided not to cooperate.’

‘Of course,’ said Lady Lucy, unwilling to be drawn on the matter of the Inspector, ‘but what a way to begin your work with us, David. The information would be so very valuable. And inside our little band of investigators you would get the credit.’

This was it, David Lewis thought to himself, he was becoming part of a secret society like the Red-Headed League in the Sherlock Holmes stories. ‘Well, I was one of three or four people who got a good look at the man on the day of the murder,’ he began. ‘He looked about thirty to thirty-five, just under six feet tall, I would say, with an enormous black beard.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Just one tiny thing. He bumped into me quite heavily and said, “I’m so sorry.” The thing is, Mrs Hamilton, I have a bit of a reputation for being a mimic which means I always listen very carefully to how people sound when they talk. This chap didn’t come from round Norfolk way. I don’t think he was English at all. And he wasn’t American either. I lived in Washington for a while when my papa was at the embassy there and I can tell a Southern drawl from the sound of New York.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘That’s really useful, David. What a way to join the team! Francis will be so pleased when I tell him.’

‘Would it have been easier if he had been English, Mrs Hamilton? Easier for the detecting team, I mean?’

‘I’m not quite sure I follow you.’

‘Well, if he had been English, he would be here in England, wouldn’t he? But think of all the other places he could have come from. Australia? New Zealand? South Africa? What happens if he’s going home? Or if he’s already gone home? That would make our lives very difficult.’

Lady Lucy thought that young David Lewis might have a promising career in the detection business.

‘Just think of them as fresh fields to conquer, David. Fresh fields to conquer. Now then,’ she said, smiling at the boy, ‘we need to make a plan. We need to secure our communications. I think it would be best if we kept our meetings absolutely secret. You mustn’t tell anybody, not even your best friend in school.’

‘Of course, Mrs Hamilton. If I told anybody it wouldn’t be a secret.’

‘Quite right. I think we should meet here every other day. If we made it every day then somebody might notice. And there is one thing I would like you to do before our next meeting.’

‘What’s that, Mrs Hamilton?’

‘I want you to find out everything you can about the man who was killed, Roderick Gill the bursar. I know he didn’t teach you or anything like that, but there’s usually some gossip or scrap of information that might be useful.’

As the lovestruck David Lewis returned to school, Lady Lucy wondered if she could be prosecuted for corrupting the young.

Inspector Miles Devereux was back in the Silkworkers Hall. This time there were no bodies by the water, only a hard-working cleaning lady and a pervasive smell of floor polish. He had come to meet the Silkworkers Secretary. He would be the man, in Devereux’s judgement, most likely to know about the voting patterns and the voting timetable of the Silkworkers Company. Fletcher had informed him of his sulphurous interview with Sir Peregrine and the solitary teacup. Devereux wondered if it would be morning coffee for one on this occasion.

The Secretary, Colonel James Horrocks, a retired military man with an enormous moustache and a faint hint of the parade ground still lingering about his person, was not alone. ‘Buckeridge, Inspector, Antony Buckeridge of Buckeridge Johnston and Forsyte, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, solicitors.’ He pronounced the word solicitors very solemnly indeed. ‘Here to keep an eye on things, don’t you know!’

Miles Devereux shook hands with his opponent pleasantly enough, like a man before a duel. He didn’t think there was much the solicitor could do to prevent him finding out what he wanted to know. Buckeridge was in his forties, tall and slim, and he interrupted the proceedings from time to time by sneezing loudly after a pinch of snuff.

‘Colonel Horrocks,’ Devereux began, ‘we would like to know more details of the forthcoming ballot among the members of the Silkworkers Company.’

Horrocks began tapping on the table with his pen. He looked over at his solicitor.

‘I see,’ said Buckeridge. ‘I fail to understand how the internal procedures of my client’s company can be of interest to the police.’

Miles Devereux had seen this tactic before. You could use an interview like this one to discover how much the police knew and where they had obtained the information.

‘It is,’ he said with a wintry smile, ‘for us to decide what is and what is not relevant to our inquiry. I repeat, Colonel Horrocks, we would like to know more details about the forthcoming ballot of members of the Silkworkers Company.’

‘And it is for his legal advisers, Sergeant, to advise on when it is or is not necessary to answer questions. And I am advising him that he need not reply to your request.’

The one thing you must never do in these situations, Miles Devereux said to himself, is to lose your temper. Much better to make the other man lose his. ‘Colonel Horrocks, could I remind you of two things? The first is that we are dealing with a murder inquiry here. And the second is that there is an offence known as obstructing the course of justice. Police officers like myself are perfectly entitled to arrest people who are actively hindering the police in the course of their inquiries. Magistrates do not look kindly on those who hinder the work of officers of the law, particularly in murder cases. I say again, we would like to know more details of the forthcoming ballot among members of the Silkworkers Company.’

There was a pause. Buckeridge shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to some more snuff. Devereux wondered if they had a fallback plan if the initial objections failed to work.

‘There is to be such a ballot,’ Horrocks said finally.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Inspector Devereux. ‘Thank you for cooperating. Now perhaps you could tell us when the ballot is to take place or the date when the relevant papers have to be lodged with the company.’ Devereux didn’t know if the election was going to take place on a single day, or whether the papers were sent out beforehand to all potential electors with a date by which they must be returned.

‘The closing date has not yet been finalized,’ Horrocks said after another long pause.

‘But the voting papers have been sent out?’

‘They have.’

‘But with no fixed date for the return?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What does not exactly mean?’

Horrocks looked at Buckeridge once more. The solicitor shrugged. Devereux doubted if he had decided to keep quiet for long.

‘The papers had to be returned by the end of February or possibly a little later. That is the date not yet fixed in stone.’

‘Does that mean that the vote could be closed if the organizers decided it had gone the way they wanted? Even if all the votes weren’t in?’

‘Come, come, Sergeant,’ Buckeridge was back, snorting and sneezing, ‘that’s a question of motive or intention, not a matter of fact. I advise you not to answer it, Colonel, there is no need.’

‘And where are the votes kept? The ones that have been sent in?’

‘They’re kept here in this office,’ said Horrocks.

‘And who has access to the papers, the votes?’

‘Well, the senior members of the company, naturally. They all have keys to the safe over there by the window.’

‘Really, Colonel, really? So Sir Peregrine or anybody else with a key could come in and check on the votes? It’s like the cabinet checking on the ballot boxes on election day before the polls have closed.’

‘I object, Sergeant!’ Anthony Buckeridge was getting cross now. Inspector Devereux thought he might be on the verge of losing his temper. ‘The procedures here are all governed by ancient statute. Your assumptions are totally unwarranted and potentially slanderous.’

Ancient statute, Devereux said to himself, that’s good. That wretched codicil. About as ancient as nineteen hundred and eight, if the man from Cambridge was to be believed.

‘Another question for you, Colonel, if I may.’ Horrocks was looking like a boxer who has had quite enough for one day. ‘Did the voting slips mention the place they were going to, if you follow me. Would they have said, Thomas Dixon, Jesus Hospital, Marlow, that sort of thing? Or would the location be omitted?’

‘I object, Sergeant.’

‘It’s Inspector, actually.’ Devereux smiled beatifically at the solicitor. ‘Let’s get our facts right, shall we? I was promoted two years ago.’

‘You are imputing motive to my clients.’

‘What motive am I meant to be implying?’

‘You are implying that my clients might be forging votes if there was no specified location on the ballot paper.’

‘What a suspicious mind you have, Mr Buckeridge! I hadn’t thought of that before. Thank you for drawing it to my attention. I’ve nearly finished, Colonel, just a couple of small points to clear up. What was the total number of those entitled to vote, the size of your electorate, if you like.’

‘Just over seven hundred and fifty,’ he said, ‘seven hundred and sixty-three, including the outstations like the almshouses and the school and so on. The location is specified at the top right-hand corner of the ballot paper.’

‘And do you know how many have voted up until today? There must be some sort of a tally, I presume.’

‘I object.’ Buckeridge had returned to the ring. ‘The voting figures are a private matter for the Silkworkers Company. You do not have to answer that, Colonel.’

‘I’m afraid he does, Mr Buckeridge. Let me repeat the question with another one. Do you know how many have voted up until today? And have the votes come in from the Jesus Hospital in Marlow and Allison’s School in Norfolk?’

‘You do not need to answer that, Colonel. That is private information for the company,’ Buckeridge was looking pleased with himself now.

‘You could probably argue that it should be classified information in normal times, gentlemen.’ Inspector Devereux wasn’t about to lose his temper but he was angry. ‘But these are not normal times. One murder would be bad enough. We are dealing not with one or even two but with three murders, one in this very building, one at the Jesus Hospital and one at Allison’s School in Norfolk. For the last time. How many votes have been cast up till today? And have the votes come in from the Jesus Hospital in Marlow and Allison’s School in Norfolk?’

‘I object.’ Buckeridge was off again. Devereux cut him off.

‘I wouldn’t pursue your objection any further if I were you, Mr Buckeridge. Any further refusal to answer questions, or advice to the same effect, and I shall arrest you both right now for obstructing the police in the course of their duty. It’s your choice. You can spend the rest of the day at liberty. Or you can spend it in a police cell. Our formalities can sometimes take a very long time to complete. In cases like this I have known them spread out into the following day or even the day after that. It’s entirely up to you.’

There was a pause. Eventually the colonel cracked. ‘Six hundred and eighty votes have been received so far. No votes have been received from Marlow or Fakenham.’

‘Thank you, Colonel, thank you very much indeed.’