Death at the Jesus Hospital

17

‘Lord Powerscourt, delighted to meet you.’ Colonel Somerset White had a head shaped like an egg with a few wisps of hair above the ears. He had a solid moustache and a red complexion as if he spent a lot of time out of doors. The Oaks was a modern house, looking, Powerscourt thought, as if its owner might have designed it himself after a long spell in the Deep South of the United States. A great veranda ran round the building as if the inhabitants of Buckinghamshire needed deep shade for half the year.

‘How is my friend Smith Dorrien?’ he inquired. ‘Temper under control, eh?’

‘I’m not sure I’d go that far,’ said Powerscourt. ‘One fellow seemed to be getting well roasted before I went in and there was another man being trussed for the oven as I left.’

‘Dear me,’ said Somerset White. ‘He should be more careful, he really should. The pity of it is that he’s done more than anybody to improve the lot of the ordinary soldier. It’s the officers he has the rows with.’

‘He was very helpful to me,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now then, let me tell you what my business is about.’ For the second time that day Powerscourt went through the catalogue of murders, the list of suspects, the marks on the bodies that he was now beginning to suspect might have been inflicted by knobkerries from the Zulu wars.

‘We’d better go over to the barn, Lord Powerscourt. I think I’ve got a couple of them over there. I just hope we’ll be able to find them.’

Powerscourt wondered what conditions in the barn-cum-museum would be like if their owner was unsure about finding his exhibits.

The first section of Somerset White’s building was all order and neatness, row upon row of ancient swords and shields and lances and daggers, all neatly lined up on trestle tables down one side of the barn. Each item had a label in White’s spidery hand beside it. Along the other side were pistols, guns, flintlocks, blunderbusses, Baker rifles from Wellington’s time, even, to Powerscourt’s great delight, an early version of Congreve’s rockets from the Peninsular Wars which usually caused more panic in the companies of their owners with their boomerang flight path than they did in the ranks of their enemies. Once more the labels bore witness to hours and hours of research, with a description of the firepower of each weapon, its probable date of construction and a list of the battles where they would have been used.

In the middle of the barn there was a rough partition with a door in the centre. On the far side it was chaos. There was a great pile of stuff in the centre of the floor, weapons of every shape and size, bits of uniforms, regimental colours, small pieces of artillery, curved swords, straight swords, krises and tulwars from Ceylon and India. And that was just the surface. God only knew, Powerscourt thought, what was underneath.

‘Sorry about this,’ said Somerset White. ‘You need to understand how I collect all this stuff. Auctions maybe in provincial towns, never in London, house sales where the owners sell everything in the place after a death, a few advertisements in the local newspapers in places near Aldershot and Camberley. Our ancestors were a pretty rapacious lot. I don’t know if you were aware of that, Lord Powerscourt. Sometimes I have thought that there must have been some enormous emporium by the quayside, Harrods International perhaps, or Harrods India, where the victorious officers and men could buy up booty to take home with them. The raw material, if you like, for a triumph, not through the streets and temples of Rome, but at the Limes or the Old Rectory in Bracknell or Pangbourne. Anyway, if you keep records of annual deaths in The Times, you can work out that more people die in the time between October and April than they do in the rest of the year. Pretty obvious, I should say. So that’s when I do my collecting, attending the auctions and so on. In the summer I sort it all out so I can display the stuff on the shelves. I’ve got a sword and gun man from the Wallace Collection up in London who comes down to give me a hand with the dates.’ Somerset White paused and wiped his hand on the side of his trousers. Powerscourt wondered what was going to happen next.

White grabbed a couple of aprons from a hook on the back of the door. ‘You’d better put this on,’ he said. ‘It’s amazing how much dirt and dust these old weapons collect on their journeys here. Now then, this what I always say to myself on these occasions, rummage, rummage!’

With that White got down on his hands and knees and began riffling through the heap of assorted weaponry in front of him. A collection of tunics, sashes, spears and cutlasses began forming another pile to his left. Powerscourt, on the opposite side of the mound of weapons, began to do the same.

‘It’s amazing the stuff people hang on to,’ said White, pausing briefly to examine a long straight spear with a lethal blade. ‘Do you know, I’ve got three white shirts worn by Charles the First on the morning of his execution at the Banqueting House. I’ve got four pairs of boots as worn by Lord Cardigan at the charge of the Light Brigade. And I’ve got five nightshirts as worn by Admiral Nelson during his time with Lady Hamilton. Not exactly sure he’d have bothered with nightshirts myself.’

‘Colonel,’ said Powerscourt, his right arm deep into his vast heap of stuff, ‘you don’t, I suppose, have any idea where your knobkerries might be? I mean, can you remember when you bought them and where they might be in our treasure trove?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Somerset White cheerfully. ‘If I’d known where the bloody things were, we wouldn’t have had to embark on this fishing expedition, would we?’

Powerscourt reflected bitterly that it was like fishing without bait. He felt his hand touching the hilt of a sword. Pulling firmly, he drew the weapon out of the pile. It was like no sword he had ever seen. It had a short blade. One side had been cut away in sections so that a row of serrated indentations like irregular teeth ran down the blade to the tip.

‘What in God’s name is this contraption, Colonel?’ said Powerscourt, waving the object above his head like some demented warrior from long ago.

‘Do you know,’ said the colonel, sitting on the floor rather than rising to his feet, ‘that’s only the second one of those things I have ever seen. It’s Italian, I think, and it’s called a sword breaker. Your enemy’s sword would be destroyed in the teeth. All you’d have to do would be to finish him off. It’s as if you’ve disarmed your opponent, effectively.’

Powerscourt put it to one side and plunged back into the pile. He had decided to try a new policy now. Rather than going straight into the section in front of him, he decided that a better approach might be to open everything up, to scoop out great swathes of weaponry until the top resembled the surface of a volcano, a shallow shape like a dish, that enabled you to see much more of the assorted memorabilia. He was just sitting back to enjoy his new creation when there was a shout of triumph to his left.

‘I told you there were a couple of the bloody things here!’ said Colonel Somerset White, pulling out a pair of sticks with thistle-shaped markings on the circular ball at the top. ‘This one has twice as many spikes or studs as the other one, not sure what that means for your corpses. But you’d better have these, Powerscourt, as you said, you’ll need them for the medical men to pronounce one way or another.’

‘Can you remember where you got them, Colonel? Something might come back to you if they’re a fairly recent purchase.’

Somerset White got slowly to his feet. He looked as though he might have trouble with his back. He took off his apron very slowly.

‘I think I’ve got it. They were at an auction in Basingstoke, property of a Major Digby Holmes, who had recently passed away. The auctioneer, I remember now, said the knobkerries had come back with the major from the Zulu wars. Mind you, bloody auctioneers would say anything to sell you things. I’ve had one or two real disasters from dodgy auctioneers. Maybe Major Holmes fought in that battle with the unpronounceable name you were telling me about. Never fought in Africa myself, even managed to avoid the Boer War. Served in India all my time. Enough of this. I expect you want to be on your way with our little friends here, Lord Powerscourt. If I can help in any other way, please let me know.’

‘Thank you so much, Colonel, there is one thing. Does the Major leave a widow behind him, or was he single at the end?’

‘There is a widow, a Mrs Laetitia Holmes, I believe. They said at the auctioneers that she’d been wanting to throw out all her husband’s military stuff for years. His end was an opportunity not to be missed.’

Johnny Fitzgerald was beginning to think he had been abandoned, rather in the fashion of Robinson Crusoe. True, the rather louche purlieus of the Elysian Fields, illuminated from time to time by the visitations of Frankie the masseuse on missions of mercy to Sir Peregrine, were more than comfortable, certainly better than Crusoe’s island. Johnny had noticed that Frankie carried a large handbag on occasions, filled, he presumed, with the instruments of torture of the masseuse’s trade. He still spent a number of evenings in the Rose and Crown entertaining the old men of the Jesus Hospital. He had continued his policy of lunching the silkmen one at a time and it was on one of those occasions, on a bleak day in Buckinghamshire with the rain lashing against the windows of the hotel, that he hit the jackpot.

He was entertaining Freddy Butcher, Number Two, a cheerful little man who had once been a bus driver by trade and had family connections with the Silkworkers. Number Two was cleanshaven with a great red mark down the right-hand side of his face. One section of informed opinion in the almshouse said that he had crashed his bus on the Clerkenwell Road, killing a couple of elderly passengers. The other view was that he had been caught misbehaving with the wife of a well-known criminal who had set about his face with a knuckleduster.

By this stage the first bottle of Pomerol had come to an end, and Johnny, who had only had a couple of glasses, ordered a refill. Something told Johnny that Number Two wasn’t used to this amount of alcohol at lunchtime. Maybe he would let slip something important. Johnny poured him another glass. Two plates of roast duck arrived, groaning with apple sauce and roast potatoes and parsnips.

‘I’ve felt for some time,’ said Johnny, ‘for all the convivial evenings in the pub, that people are holding back on me. There’s something they’re not telling me. If somebody would tell me, maybe the mystery would clear up and you could all be left in peace.’ Johnny had been a foot soldier in the great demonstration to the Maidenhead police station, reasoning that there needed to be somebody able bodied present in case one the old boys had a heart attack or keeled over from some other ailment. In the event the old boys had cut quite a dash, marching the last hundred yards in their best uniforms, attracting a good deal of public sympathy for their efforts and an article in the local newspaper.

It was the red wine that did for Freddy Butcher, Number Two, and possibly for Number Four, Bill Smith, known as Smithy, as well.

‘You’re quite right, of course,’ said Number Two, holding up his glass for a refill. ‘We have been holding something back.’

Johnny waited for a forkful of duck and parsnip to go down.

‘There was a feud, you see, it had been going on for months.’

Johnny remained silent, hoping for more intelligence.

‘Number Four and Number Twenty, the man who was killed, they had been at each other’s throats, you see.’

‘What was it about?’

‘Well, nobody knew for certain, I think it had to do with something in Number Twenty’s past. I think he may have told Smithy about whatever it was and Number Four took against Number Twenty from then on. Number Four was forever telling anybody who would listen that Number Twenty was a bloody coward.’

‘When was the last time they fell out?’ asked Johnny.

‘The day before Number Twenty was killed actually. This time they had the row in the middle of the quadrangle, nearly coming to blows.’

‘Did anybody hear what they were saying?’

‘Oh yes. It seems odd now, but that Abel Meredith, Number Twenty, was shouting at Number Four, “if you call me a coward once more, I’m bloody well going to kill you, so I am.”’

‘Wrong way round,’ said Johnny

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, it wasn’t Number Twenty who did the killing. He was the victim, wasn’t he? What happened then?’

‘What happened then?’ Number Two, Freddy Butcher, who had been making his way pretty steadily down the second bottle, sounded suddenly as though the drink might have got the better of him. Then he seemed to get a second wind, cheered on by another large draught of the Pomerol. ‘Well, Warden Monk came out of his office wearing his best blue cravat and told them to shut up. He said that if there were any more rows like that, he would have them thrown out of the hospital, dumped outside the front door with their belongings in a paper bag. He sounded as though he meant it too.’

‘How very interesting,’ said Johnny. ‘Did Warden Monk also tell you all not to mention the row to the police or anybody else?’

‘How did you know that? He did, as a matter of fact. He said that anybody who told the police would also be thrown out, dumped by the front gate and the rest of it, complete with possessions in a paper bag. It’s a pretty powerful threat, Johnny. Most of us don’t have anywhere else to go. That’s why we ended up in the Jesus Hospital in the first place.’

‘And nobody knows any more about what they were arguing about?’

‘No. You know what it’s like in these places, Johnny. If anybody heard any more detail, every single person in the hospital would have known all about it before you could brew a cup of tea.’

When Johnny had seen his guest off the premises after a large helping of apple pie and a glass of calvados, he took a taxi to Maidenhead police station. He thought Inspector Fletcher would be keen to hear his news.

Powerscourt left the knobkerries with the doctor at the Maidenhead Hospital who had examined Abel Meredith, with a request that he telephone Powerscourt as soon as he had reached a decision. There was something at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite retrieve, something he thought was important. He tried to remember which of the three murders it concerned. Not the Jesus Hospital, he felt sure. Not the murder in the Silkworkers Hall. It had to be something to do with Roderick Gill up at Fakenham. But what? With the boys running up and down the corridor? With Blackbeard himself, sidling into Gill’s office and killing him? With Gill’s papers in their box files lined up by the wall? Hold on a minute. It certainly had to do with Gill and with Gill’s maths teacher friend whose name he could not for the moment remember, but who had told him as they patrolled the school grounds that Gill had been frightened of something in the days before he died. The teacher had never discovered what had frightened him, but the merry widow, who regularly entertained her friend from the church, might know. Powerscourt grabbed his coat and fled into Markham Square, looking for a taxi to take him to Liverpool Street Station and north to Fakenham.

‘Did you say your name was Lord Francis Powerscourt? And that you are an investigator with our policemen?’ Mrs Maud Lewis was inspecting her visitor from London as if he might just have landed in an extraterrestrial vehicle on the edge of her garden.

‘I did, Mrs Lewis.’

‘And are you really a lord? I mean Lord isn’t just some unusual Christian name your parents gave you when you were born?’

‘I’m a real lord, I’m afraid, Mrs Lewis. But I’m what’s called an Irish peer because the family estates were there. I don’t have the right to sit in the House of Lords. Just as well probably, with all the trouble up there at the moment.’

‘Goodness me, how very exciting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a lord, even one who couldn’t sit in the House of Lords, in my humble abode before! And we never had anybody like that in the house when we lived near Birmingham. I don’t think they do lords in Birmingham. Lord Powerscourt, should I call you Lord Powerscourt or Powerscourt or just Lord?’

‘Lord Powerscourt would be fine, Mrs Lewis, don’t worry about it.’ By this stage they had reached the drawing room, with a fire and a couple of dogs asleep on the hearth. Mrs Lewis showed Powerscourt into a chair on the left of the fire.

‘That’s where dear Roderick used to sit, in that very chair. He never sat anywhere else. Such a lot of trouble everybody seems to be having trying to find the murderer.’ Mrs Lewis produced a deep blue handkerchief and began to dab at her eyes. Powerscourt began to fear for the worst.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs Lewis.’

‘About the chair where dear Roderick used to sit?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Powerscourt, ‘more about his state of mind in the weeks leading up to his death.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Lord Powerscourt, but I normally partake of a little refreshment at this time of day. Sherry, sweet sherry, naturally. Could I interest you in a glass?’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly if she and the late Roderick Gill spent their evenings taking refreshment of one sort or another.

‘That’s very kind, but no thanks.’

Mrs Lewis made her way to a drinks cabinet by the window and came back clutching what looked to Powerscourt to be one of the largest sherry glasses he had ever seen. She settled back into her chair and beamed at her visitor.

‘Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, for the interruption. Horace — he was my first — used to say I was incapable of sitting still for any length of time. Forgive me. You were saying about Roderick?’

‘I was wondering about his state of mind in the weeks before his death, actually, Mrs Lewis. Whether he was upset or depressed, that sort of thing.’

‘That’s a very good question, Lord Powerscourt. He was, I’m not sure if I would call it depressed, he was certainly upset. A woman can usually tell these things, particularly with their loved ones. I thought it had something to do with the church accounts actually, he’d been worried about those in the past. But it wasn’t, it was something even more serious.’

‘What was it, Mrs Lewis? Did he tell you?’

‘Well, at first I thought it had to do with that other woman he used to consort with, the one married to the stonemason who’s disappeared. I saw her looking at my Roderick in church one Sunday and it was so brazen you couldn’t believe it. You could not believe it. She was practically lying down on the ground in front of him. But it wasn’t that, or I don’t think it was that.’

Powerscourt thought Mrs Lewis must have some pretty good intelligence sources if she knew all about the other woman. He was beginning to see what Horace, her first, meant when he said that she was incapable of sitting still. It wasn’t so much a physical sitting still, but a mental one.

‘So what was it, Mrs Lewis?’

There was an uncharacteristic pause. For a second Powerscourt wondered if the woman might be ill.

‘I’m trying to remember exactly what Roderick said, Lord Powerscourt. I think there was a letter that caused the problem. It came from so long ago, he told me, that he had virtually forgotten about it. And that was all he said. He tried to keep up his spirits. He talked of going away for a while but he wasn’t definite. I could never work out if I was included in his plans for going away and so on but I never got an answer, not a satisfactory one anyway. It was all very strange.’

‘Did he show you the letter? Were you able to read it?’

Mrs Lewis shook her head sadly. ‘I never saw it.’ Powerscourt wondered about the collection of files and written material all over Roderick Gill’s office at the school. He hoped they had not been disturbed. He wondered about the papers that had been burnt.

‘Do you keep a diary at all, Mrs Lewis? I wonder if that might jog your memory.’

‘How very clever of you, Lord Powerscourt. I do have a diary. I’ll just go and fetch it from the morning room.’

Powerscourt wondered how to proceed in the affair of the diary. Should he ask if he could take it away, as an important piece of evidence to be returned later? Or should he ask her to read the relevant excerpts?

They were pink, the diaries, two of them, each with a great bow on the front. ‘Here we are, Lord Powerscourt. I thought you should have last year’s as well. How nice to think that one’s diaries are an important piece of evidence in a murder trial! You will let me have them back, won’t you? Will you change your mind about that glass of sweet sherry now?’

Powerscourt arranged with the headmaster’s office that he could come to inspect Gill’s papers first thing the following morning. He arranged to see Inspector Grime in an hour. He proposed to fill in the time with an inspection of the pink diaries and their contents in his hotel room. He decided his life would not be the poorer if he omitted all the entries before the entry of Roderick Gill.

Sunday, 19th September. Went to church this morning. First visit to morning service in Fakenham! Was welcomed afterwards by a most charming man called Roderick Gill, bursar at the school. He was most attentive! Also met vicar, nondescript little man who preached a dreary sermon, and his mouse of a wife.

Sunday, 3rd October, church, matins. Talked again to Mr Gill who is taking a most Christian interest in my settling down in Fakenham. Has asked me to meet him in the church for another chat on Wednesday afternoon. He has to do things with the money for the vicar. How kind, seeing he does all that already for the school!

Powerscourt wondered what the secret of Roderick Gill’s success with women might be. He suspected he flattered them, he made them feel better about themselves so they thought better of him.

Wednesday, 6th October, called on Mr Gill at the church. He bought me tea and a slice of cake at that cafe by the square! My new neighbours invited me to tea. Quite pleasant, except we finished at six thirty and not a drop of drink was offered! Maybe they’re too poor. House poky, so-called dining room so small you couldn’t swing a cat. I should be ashamed to be offering hospitality in such a place. Maybe they’re too poor for that too! Oh dear, hope I’m not being uncharitable to my new neighbours!

Sunday, 24th October, met that nice Mr Gill at church again. Vicar’s wife has excelled herself this morning, wearing a pink creation with frills that was most unsuitable. Have asked Mr Gill to dinner a week on Thursday! He says he’ll come!

He’s off the mark now, Powerscourt said to himself. I wonder if she knows what she’s getting herself into. He skimmed some more dates and found an interesting entry.

Thursday, 4th November, Roderick came to supper! He brought me a bottle of wine and some perfume from Norwich! I hope he thinks I made it worth his while!!!

There were a number of further entries about his visits with triple exclamation marks. And in one case, four.

Saturday, 25th December, 1909, what joy! What happiness! That this should happen to me! Dear Roderick has asked me to be his wife! After the midnight carol service yesterday! And I have said Yes!!!!

Powerscourt flicked on to the days before Gill’s death in the diary.

Friday, 14th Jan. Dear Roderick has not been himself today. He has been withdrawn and rather uncommunicative. Naturally I tried my best to fill in the gaps in the conversation. He will not say what the trouble is. I hope he is not sickening for something.

Sunday, 16th Jan. For the third day running, dear Roderick has not been himself. He tried to laugh everything off but I can tell he is not himself. The boys came and were most unpleasant about Roderick, saying he was just a bounty hunter and other horrid things. I shall leave my money where I want to. They’ve got plenty of it anyway.

Monday, 17th Jan. Boys gone back to London. Dear Roderick still not well. Jumpy, staring out into the garden as if he thinks there’s somebody hiding there. He’s talking of going away for a while and it’s not clear whether I am to be a member of the party or not. Don’t suppose he’s been canoodling with that stonemason woman again. Or has he? Said hello to the vicar in the town this morning. He’s got a hole in his trousers, right where his knees are meant to be.

Friday, 21st January. At last managed to get sense out of Roderick. It’s something from his past, he says, something so long ago that he can hardly remember it. He won’t tell me what it is. But he says there might be some unpleasantness, that’s why he might go away on his own. He doesn’t want me to be upset, he says. I think that’s very gallant of him, to save me from unpleasantness. Had another cup of tea with the neighbours this afternoon. They can’t even serve proper tea over there, their stuff tasted like warmed-up soap.

Some unpleasantness, Powerscourt thought, I’ll say there was some unpleasantness, enough unpleasantness to kill him. Not long to go now.

Sunday, 23rd January. To church for matins. Roderick very jumpy on the way, peering round corners as if he were some sort of hunting dog. Vicar preached a sermon on the text of it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And he said the definition of rich was any person who had so much money they didn’t have to work! Idlers and wastrels, he called them, the wretched vicar. That means me! Denounced from the pulpit of my own church to which I give generously out of the kindness of my heart! I shall write a stiff letter to the vicar when I have calmed down.

Monday, 24th January. Poor Roderick still very worried. The headmaster’s wife, he says, has called him in to see if she can offer any help. That means the headmaster must be worried about him too. He says the wife is a very superior sort of person. Well, she may seem like that to him, Vera Staunton. The vicar’s wife told me of the times when her family hadn’t two pennies to rub together and lived in a one-bedroom railwayman’s cottage by the side of the train tracks. Roderick has to go to a late meeting at the school. He is very worried when he comes back, not so much about himself now but about the future of the school. He says there is a plot by some wicked man from London to take away all the money that comes from the Silkworkers. Roderick is in despair.

25th Jan. Some wicked person has killed Roderick at the school this morning. I cannot write any more.

Powerscourt put down the second volume of diaries, most of whose pages were still awaiting further entries. He felt he would be intruding on private grief if he read any more. Just before he went to meet Inspector Grime he asked the hotel reception if they could put him through to his home telephone number. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler-cum-chauffeur, greeted him in his normal telephone manner, that of one welcoming a colleague back from the dead, and put Lady Lucy on the line.

‘Francis,’ she said, ‘how good to talk to you. Listen, there’s been a development. The doctor in Maidenhead called about half an hour ago. He’s going to get a second opinion tomorrow, but he’s virtually certain that a knobkerrie, similar to the ones you sent him, was the weapon used to make those marks on the dead men’s chests.’

‘Did he really, Lucy? Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. That’s very interesting, very interesting indeed.’