Death Called to the Bar

2

‘Poison,’ said the pathologist, peering sadly at the human organs that had once been Alexander Dauntsey on the slab in front of him.

‘Are you sure?’ said the policeman, waiting respectfully some distance away, twirling his hat in his hands.

‘Yes, I am,’ replied the pathologist, ‘but quite what sort of poison it was or how fast it acts upon the human body, I do not yet know. I shall have to send this lot away for further analysis.’

The two men, their faces pale in the antiseptic colours of the mortuary, were very different. James Willoughby, the pathologist, was old and bald and bent. He had only two more years to go before he retired to the little cottage he had already bought in Norfolk. Chief Inspector Jack Beecham had many many years to go before his retirement. He was tall and slim with light curly hair and he looked even younger than his thirty-two years. His superiors in the Metropolitan Police suspected from the start that Dauntsey had been murdered – the doctor had alerted them – and had assigned one of their most intelligent detectives to the case.

Forty minutes later Beecham was shown into the Treasurer’s quarters in Queen’s Inn. They were on the first floor in Fortune Court, in a glorious room nearly forty feet long, looking out over the Thames with high ceilings and old prints of London adorning the walls. Here you could have seen one of the earliest extant prints of the Temple Church and fine watercolours of the Queen’s Inn and its gardens. Barton Somerville was seated at an enormous desk, with a couple of briefs lying at the corner.

‘Good morning, constable,’ he said, looking with some disdain at the policeman. ‘What can I do for you?’

Jack Beecham was well used to people making the wrong assumptions about him. ‘I stopped being a constable some years ago, sir,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Beecham now. I’m in charge of the case of the late Mr Dauntsey, sir.’

‘In charge, are you?’ said Somerville incredulously. ‘Are you the most senior person they’ve got?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Beecham, trying to remain polite, ‘I am. And I’m here to tell you that we believe, or rather the pathologist believes, that we are dealing with a case of murder here.’

With difficulty Somerville resisted the temptation to ask how old the pathologist was. Fifteen? Twenty-one? ‘Are you sure it was murder? Are you saying he was poisoned? Do you yet know what sort of poison it was?’

The policeman was beginning to grasp just how difficult this investigation could turn out to be. These lawyers were used to cross-examining policemen in the witness box, trying to undermine their evidence and their credibility. They would not appreciate it when the boot was on the other foot.

‘I am not at liberty, sir, to say how the murder was carried out at this stage.’

‘Heavens above, young man,’ Barton Somerville banged his fist on the table and raised his voice to nearly a shout, ‘I am the Treasurer of this Inn. Surely I have the right to know how one of my own benchers died? Surely I have the right to ask for that?’

The policeman had had enough for now. It was time, Jack Beecham thought, for a little salvo back just to let this pompous and self-important man know that he could look after himself.

‘The position remains as I outlined it earlier, sir,’ he said. Then he paused and looked Somerville straight between the eyes. ‘I will tell you more when I can, sir. But for now, I’m afraid, you are a suspect in this case, just like all the other members of your Inn. At the moment I don’t see how anybody can expect preferential treatment. And now, with your permission, sir, I and my team would like to begin questioning the people in Mr Dauntsey’s chambers and on his staircase.’

With that the policeman picked up his hat and strode from the room. Barton Somerville stared after him in fury. He composed a sulphurous letter of complaint to the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police and had it sent round by one of the porters. He demanded the removal of Detective Chief Inspector Beecham at once. If his request was not granted, he went on, he would be forced to request his barristers to offer the police the minimum co-operation necessary to comply with the law. And, he concluded, he was going to take steps to ensure that the Inn was in a position to conduct its own investigation which would, he felt sure, be more likely to succeed than any inquiry conducted by the infant or cadet branch of the Metropolitan Police. After that he walked north to Gray’s Inn to confer with a man he knew who had some expertise about London’s private investigators.

Shortly after six thirty that evening a tall man in a very beautiful suit knocked on the front door of the Powerscourt house in Markham Square in Chelsea. Inside he found chaos. There were packing cases everywhere, all along the hallway, in the dining room, stacked high at the bottom of the stairs. Upstairs further noises of departure could be heard, trunks or suitcases being dragged along the floor, small children shouting, a bath being run. The reason for all this confusion and excitement had to do with the two people who knew least about it – the twins. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy had decided that they needed more room with the extra nurses and probably the need for extra bathrooms and bedrooms. It might have looked as if they were moving house but the move was only temporary. Powerscourt had solved the problem of space by buying the house next door, which had come on the market after the sudden and unexpected death of its owner. The family was going to Manchester Square in Marylebone while various alterations were made, alterations which were likely to make more dust than would be good for the twins.

‘Powerscourt!’ said the man in the beautiful suit, as he saw a rather harassed owner descending the stairs with a small green valise in his hand.

‘Pugh, by God! Charles Augustus Pugh!’ said Powerscourt, sprinting down the stairs to shake his friend by the hand. In an earlier case involving art fraud an innocent man had been put on trial for his life. Powerscourt and Pugh, with the assistance of some splendid forgeries displayed in court, and the forger himself, had secured his acquittal. Ever since, they had kept in touch with lunches and the occasional dinner at the Pughs’ beautiful house by the river.

‘I see your crimes have finally caught up with you, Powerscourt,’ said Pugh, waving a hand at the packing cases and surrounding confusion. ‘Leaving the country before the law comes knocking at the door? I could offer my services free, you know, if they try to deport you.’

‘If moving to Marylebone constitutes leaving the country, my friend, then we are indeed in flight. But come upstairs, the drawing room is still free of all this paraphernalia.’

‘I’m sure you must be very busy, I could come back another day, or in the morning if that would be convenient. I don’t want to get in the way.’

‘You’re never in the way, Charles, certainly not in a suit as elegant as that.’

As Pugh seated himself on the sofa, Powerscourt organized the drinks and wondered, not for the first time, what the judges and juries made of the Pugh clothes. Would the juries be jealous of a man who could afford such expensive clothes? Would the judges wish that they had such a fine figure to show off the tailors’ best? One thing was certain. Both judges and juries would remember Charles Augustus Pugh. Maybe that was the point of it all.

‘Had a visitor this afternoon,’ Pugh began, ‘man by the name of Somerville, Barton Somerville. Can’t say I care for the fellow very much. He’s the Treasurer – Head Boy, if you like – at Queen’s Inn. They had a dramatic death there the other day. Man dropped dead into his soup in the middle of a feast.’

‘What sort of soup?’ said Powerscourt flippantly.

‘Borscht. Beetroot variety, laced with some potent Russian vodka. Possibly laced with something else too, some sort of poison. Post-mortem says Dauntsey – that’s the name of the corpse – was poisoned. The point is this, Powerscourt. Somerville has fallen out with the police in a spectacular fashion. Policeman in charge of the inquiry far too young for Somerville, he must want some greybeard with a limp who’s about to shuffle off. Anyway, letter of complaint has sped off to the Commissioner and the case is barely a day old. It has to be said, mind you, that Somerville could fall out with the angels inside half an hour of arriving in heaven. Anyway, he comes to see me to ask about you, Francis. Was it true that you were the most accomplished private investigator in London? Were you discreet? Would you respect the privacy and the private lives of his members? And so on. Naturally enough I gave you a very good write-up, Francis. You would have been proud of me.’

With that Charles Augustus Pugh flicked a speck of dust that had had the impertinence to land on the cuff of his jacket to the floor. ‘I shall of course be expecting my normal slice of the fee. You could charge for this one in the way we barristers do, Francis, a charge of five hundred guineas for retainers and refreshers at fifty guineas a day. I could do with some new shirts.’

‘Did this Somerville inquire about my age, Charles? You can never be too careful.’

‘Must have been the only thing he didn’t mention,’ said Pugh, ‘but it’s a pound to a penny you’re going to get invited into their lair tomorrow and asked to take the case on.’

‘I suppose it’s one way to get out of the chores of moving,’ said Powerscourt ruefully. ‘Whole business bores me to tears and the truth is I’m completely useless at it. Lucy knows by instinct where everything ought to go while I wander round like the proverbial lost sheep. But tell me, Charles, you know this world, what is your opinion of Queen’s Inn?’

‘Queen’s?’ said Pugh thoughtfully and he stared at the fireplace, temporarily lost for words. ‘The surface things are easy. Smallest Inn of Court. Youngest too, only about a hundred and forty years old. Founded in 1761 as a tribute to George the Third’s new bride, his Queen a brood mare called Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz who produced fifteen children for him. Situated right next to the Middle Temple on the river. They think they’re special, those people in Queen’s, they’re arrogant to a man, all of them. I think the best way I can put it, Francis, is that they’re like a fashionable cavalry regiment that isn’t quite as special or as fashionable as it thinks it is.’

Powerscourt, who had known many cavalry regiments, fashionable and unfashionable, in his time in the Army, smiled. ‘And what of the dead man? Did you say his name was Dauntsey?’

‘Alexander Dauntsey, he was. About our sort of age, been a KC for about six years, I think, recently elected a bencher – sort of senior prefect – of his Inn. Unusual sort of barrister, he was. On his day he was quite brilliant. He did all sorts of cases, criminal, divorce, Chancery, he could handle the lot. When he was on form he could have got Jack the Ripper off. On a bad day, he was simply hopeless. It made the instructing solicitors rather nervous as they were never sure which Dauntsey they were going to get.’

‘Did he have any vices you heard about?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Women, gambling, expensive clothes?’

Charles Augustus Pugh laughed. ‘There were always whispers about Dauntsey and the women. Nothing you could get your teeth into, but then there never is unless people are foolish enough to land themselves in the divorce courts.’

‘Married?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Yes, he was, very beautiful woman he married too. That was another thing about Dauntsey. He had this enormous house in the country, in Kent I think, hundreds of rooms, ancient deer park with hundreds of bloody deer roaming all over the place. Wonderful art collection.’ Pugh paused and smiled to himself briefly. ‘Man told me last year that all his relatives thought Dauntsey was mad. He was taking down the Van Dycks and the Rubens and replacing them with those French Impressionist people, water lilies in the garden, strange wiggly lines pretending to be fields or mountains, you know the sort of thing.’

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this case very much,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. ‘I don’t mean the man’s taste in pictures, he can put whatever he likes on his own walls. It’s the thought of all those people who think they’re in the fashionable cavalry regiment. I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime. If you were me, Charles, would you take it on? I don’t have to.’

‘I think,’ Pugh replied, ‘that it is entirely a matter for yourself. But think about it. If you hadn’t become involved in that art forgery case a couple of years ago, Horace Aloysius Buckley, an innocent man, on trial for murder at the Central Criminal Court, would have been hanged by the neck until he was dead.’

There was one small corner, with room for four chairs, left fit for human rather than packing case habitation in the Powerscourt dining room. There was one day left before the removals men came to take them to their temporary home in Manchester Square. As they took their breakfast Lady Lucy looked like a general on the eve of a great engagement. Powerscourt was turning an envelope over and over in his hand. It was a very expensive envelope, the stationery equivalent of one of Charles Augustus Pugh’s shirts. He wasn’t going to open it yet. He had told Lady Lucy about Pugh’s visit and his news the night before.

‘For heaven’s sake, Francis,’ she said, irritated perhaps that while she was being so decisive about the move, the man of the house couldn’t even make up his mind whether to open an envelope or not, ‘there isn’t a bomb in there. It’s not going to explode.’

‘Sorry, Lucy, sorry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s just that I know what’s inside.’ With a grimace rather like somebody plunging into a cold bath, he opened his envelope and peered sadly at its contents. ‘Pretty pompous,’ he said and handed it over to his wife.

‘“Dear Lord Powerscourt,”’ Lady Lucy read it aloud, ‘“I write as the Treasurer of Queen’s Inn. On 28th February at an Inn feast, Mr Alexander Dauntsey KC, one of our benchers, dropped dead. The post-mortem produced evidence that he had been murdered. I am not satisfied with the personnel, the methods or the attitude of the officers of the Metropolitan Police assigned to investigate this matter. I have written to the Commissioner to convey my most serious reservations. I understand that you are one of the most distinguished private investigators in London and I am writing to ask if you would be able to come and discuss the necessary measures with us. If so, I would be grateful if you could call on me at my chambers at noon today.”’

Lady Lucy put the letter back in its envelope. ‘I don’t think he’s very taken with the police, Francis, what do you think?’

‘No, he’s not. What am I to do, Lucy? I don’t want to take this on. I don’t like the sound of all these lawyers. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time, with the move and everything.’

Privately Lucy thought it couldn’t have come at a better time. She was certain she would sort out the move much more quickly and efficiently without Francis hanging around and getting in the way. She thought the case came from providence but she wasn’t going to say so.

‘You know my views, Francis.’ However bad the circumstances, however dangerous the situation, Lady Lucy Powerscourt had never suggested that Francis and Johnny Fitzgerald should abandon an investigation. ‘Somebody has killed Mr Dauntsey. That person may kill more people unless you go and find them. Don’t worry about the move.’ She leant over and covered his hand with her smaller one. ‘We’ll manage somehow.’

The mood was subdued in the Dauntsey chambers after his death. The young men stopped skylarking on the stairs and having paper fights in the library. The seniors looked grave and conversed with each other in hushed tones about the particular kind of poison that had disposed of their colleague. At the very top of the chambers there was one person who mourned him particularly. Sarah Henderson was their stenographer, secretary and mascot. She was twenty years old, tall and slim with a shock of red hair and bright green eyes. She repulsed all the advances of the Queen’s males of whatever age with the same apologetic tone, as if she was greatly flattered to be invited to the theatre, the opera, lunch, dinner, the ballet, but her mind was on other things. The one crucial fact installed in her and all her fellow students at the secretarial college she had attended in Finsbury was that emotional entanglements with people at work were to be avoided like the plague. Nothing, not even bad spelling or mistakes in dictation or arriving at work improperly dressed, was likely to cause such complication or such unhappiness. The lecturer who had warned them of these terrible perils was herself a spinster of over fifty. There was much speculation among the girls that some such error might have wrecked her life, a long affair with a married man who refused to leave his wife perhaps, a lover who ran away and deserted her at the advanced age of twenty-eight.

Sarah had been very fond of Dauntsey. She adored the sound of his voice, quite light, not one to dominate a courtroom by sheer power of delivery, but it had great variety. It danced, she used to say, as he leant back in his chair, feet caressing the desk, and dictated the course of an opening or closing speech. Unlike many of his colleagues, he seemed to find dictating the most natural thing in the world. Sarah knew that he always had one eye on the movement of her pencil, waiting till it stopped before he carried on. He had charm, lots of charm, Sarah thought, remembering how polite he always was and how he took the time and trouble to inquire after her sick mother.

Had Dauntsey or any of the other barristers known how central a role Queen’s Inn in general or their chambers in particular played in Mrs Bertha Henderson’s life they would have been astonished. Every evening Sarah had worked there she was quizzed on the day’s events when she went home. It wasn’t intrusive, the questioning, it wasn’t rude but it was persistent. Her mother was almost bedridden with arthritis in her early fifties and could only just get around their small house in Acton. She also suffered from a rare form of cancer which meant she might only have two or three years left to live. Queen’s Inn had become an alternative world, a world she could escape to in her imagination during the daytime when the external world of London’s shops and buses and traffic and movement was closed to her. She could have told you, Mrs Henderson, what prints were on the wall of every room on her daughter’s staircase. She could have told you what cases the various gentlemen were currently engaged on. Sarah would bring law journals home so her mother could read about her heroes in print. By now, her daughter suspected, she could have carried out a perfectly respectable prosecution or defence in a simple case in the county court. Queen’s had become for her a serial story like the ones they published in such quantities in the women’s magazines she read so avidly.

Mrs Henderson had said to Sarah that she would have liked to attend Dauntsey’s funeral. But, she went on, she had had a trial run the day after his death was announced to see if she could walk to the end of their road. Just over halfway down, only fifty yards from her house, she reported, her legs simply gave out and a kind stranger had had to help her back to the sanctuary of her home. Could Sarah, therefore, be extra vigilant in reporting the proceedings? Sarah had smiled and promised a detailed account whenever the funeral might be.

Sarah was working on a secret treat for her mother in the springtime. There was only one snag in the scheme. It involved a wheelchair, and wheelchairs, even the mention of wheelchairs, brought her mother to rage and despair. Sarah always wanted to cry when this happened. She felt so sorry for her mother. Wheelchairs, Sarah knew, spelt the end in her mother’s mind, the end of activity, the end of choice, the start of dependence, the start of the long, maybe short, decline into the final immobility. But if the wheelchair enabled her mother to be whisked round Queen’s Inn, to see the various courts and the rooms where the lawyers who now peopled her imagination actually lived, what a delight that would be. With luck they could make the short journey to the Inner and Middle Temple and her mother could rest in the beauty of Temple Gardens and watch the majesty of the law stalk past her en route to the Central Criminal Court. What a day that would be! Sarah had one brother and one sister, both older, both living away from home. To her great irritation the brother approved the scheme, the sister did not, leaving Sarah no wiser than before. But she thought about it all the time, something to bring joy to her mother’s heart before it was too late.

Barton Somerville was flanked by two other benchers of Queen’s Inn when Powerscourt was shown into his room. On the left sat Barrington Percival KC, a specialist in commercial law, a thin little man with a thin face and a tiny beard. On the right was Gabriel Cadogan, KC, a specialist in criminal law, a huge bear of a man with an enormous beard and a booming voice.

‘Thank you for coming to see us, Lord Powerscourt,’ Barton Somerville began. ‘We thought we’d like to have a little discussion before we proceed further. We don’t want to rush things, do we? I presume you know why you are here?’

Powerscourt nodded. Even after less than a minute he was beginning to have some sympathy with the policeman. He was being made to feel as if he was applying for a junior position in somebody’s chambers and that he would be extraordinarily lucky to be taken on. Most people inquired about his past cases and came to him with recommendations from previous clients. His first sponsor, Lord Rosebery, was a former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister for God’s sake. His reputation had been enough for the minders of the Prince of Wales, apparently, but not for the benchers of Queen’s Inn.

‘What do you think of the police, Lord Powerscourt? The Metropolitan Police, I mean.’ Cadogan sounded as though he could do duty as a foghorn at weekends if he wanted alternative employment. His voice echoed on even after he had stopped speaking.

‘I think very highly of them, sir,’ said Powerscourt, determined not to let down the people who had assisted him so nobly down the years. ‘I understand there has been some unfortunate misunderstanding between them and yourselves in this matter, but I am sure that can be patched up.’

Powerscourt, advocate of friendship with all men, smiled at the trio. They stared at him. ‘It may be that the age of the Chief Inspector is an issue,’ he went on. ‘I do not believe it should be so. I have heard only the highest reports of his abilities. And surely, gentlemen, there must be times when a shooting star will cross the Bar, some young man of such brilliance that he immediately rises to the top by sheer ability.’

Barton Somerville snorted. ‘Haven’t seen one of those for years, not in my Inn at any rate.’ Something told Powerscourt that brilliant young men might not be very welcome in Queen’s Inn.

‘Tell us this, Lord Powerscourt,’ Barrington Percival’s thin voice sounded insubstantial after Cadogan’s, ‘why should we co-operate with the police at all? If they were that successful, people wouldn’t employ investigators like yourselves. You’d all be out of a job. But you’re not.’

‘I have always worked with the police most carefully in all the cases I have been involved with,’ said Powerscourt. ‘They have always been most useful. To take but a few examples of their uses, they have extensive records. They can tell, in a way I could not, if people have criminal records. They have resources of manpower which I could only dream of. I have one close friend who works with me and one gentleman from Scotland I sometimes send for. That is the extent of my manpower. The police have thousands of officers all over the country. They can be very useful when you need them.’

The boom was back. Gabriel Cadogan was cross-examining now. ‘So tell us what your plan of campaign would be if, and I emphasize the word if, we hired you to investigate this murder, Lord Powerscourt. How would you solve it?’

Powerscourt was beginning to feel really irritated. He wondered if the murderer might have enough poison left to return and polish off this troublesome threesome. He rather hoped he had. He just managed to smile. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Until I start, no idea at all.’

‘Surely you must have some general principles you adhere to?’ Cadogan was now clutching the lapel of his jacket. The jury, Powerscourt thought, were right behind him. ‘I find it hard to believe that an investigator of your experience does not have some scheme he adheres to.’ Once more the boom lived on, hurtling across the room to perish in the velvet curtains.

‘No,’ said Powerscourt. The three benchers looked at each other. Even the delights of this interview had not prepared Powerscourt for what was to come.

‘Perhaps,’ said Somerville, ‘you’d like to wait outside for a few minutes. We’ll call you when we’re ready for you.’

Powerscourt was incandescent as he made his way to the outer office. Outside the wind whipped across the grass and the gravel. Further away tiny wavelets were beating helplessly against the side of the Thames. The seagulls were out in force, complaining about something as usual. Five minutes passed, then ten. Groups of people, three or four at a time, were making their way out of the Inn for lunch in one of the neighbouring restaurants. Fifteen minutes gone. Powerscourt seriously considered walking out. Almost twenty had passed before Gabriel Cadogan opened the door and boomed at Powerscourt to return. His anger had ebbed in the outer room. Now he felt it returning.

‘Thank you for waiting,’ said Barton Somerville with the air of a man who couldn’t care less how long anybody had waited. ‘I am pleased to be able to tell you that by a majority verdict we have decided to appoint you as investigator to this matter.’

So one of these bastards doesn’t want me, Powerscourt said to himself. To hell with him. To hell with them all. There was a pause. Powerscourt said nothing.

‘Have you got nothing to say, man? Don’t you want to know about your terms of employment? The manner in which you would be expected to conduct yourself?’

Powerscourt rose to his feet and looked down coldly on the three lawyers. ‘I think you are labouring under a misapprehension, gentlemen. I’m sure it must be rare in your world. But let me remind you of a few things. I did not apply for this position. You invited me to come here this morning. I came. It is not for you to appoint me to a position I did not apply for. I have urgent business to attend to. I shall consider your offer with family and friends this evening. I shall let you know of my decision in the morning. And, I fear that, like yours, it may be a majority verdict. Good day to you.’

Johnny Fitzgerald had left a message for Powerscourt at Markham Square while he was away. It said that he had returned from his bird watching and would call on them in the evening. He would bring his own packing case to sit on. Birds and bird watching had become a major, if not the principal, interest in Johnny’s life. All his days he had been interested in them, once endangering his and Powerscourt’s life in the Punjab when he had refused to take evasive action because some exotic Indian vulture was passing overhead. Now he followed them everywhere, not just in Great Britain but across Europe as well. Birds migrating, birds nesting, yellow-flanked and yellow-nosed, red-vented and blue-cheeked, black-headed, black-faced and black-crowned, crested honey and double-crested, spotted, striped, great spotted, lesser whistling, Johnny loved them all. Powerscourt had accompanied him for part of a day the year before, rising in the dark to stride out to a position on the edge of a marsh near the sea in Norfolk. There were plenty of birds but Powerscourt did not feel the appeal. Johnny could never explain it. He liked to see them fly and soar and swoop, he would say. He liked knowing where they had come from and where they were going. He liked watching the young ones taking their first experimental flights under the watchful eye of their parents. But he could never transmit the secret of the appeal, if there was one, any more than some lovers of classical music could explain their devotion. Lady Lucy wondered if it all had to do with Johnny being single. He had simply adopted an enormous airborne family with wings, she would say, to compensate for the lack of a two-footed one rooted to the earth.

It was the patience Powerscourt admired most. Johnny seemed to pass into a world on the other side of time, lying there for hours and hours with never a pang of hunger. And sometimes he would talk of the exotic birds he wanted to see one day, a list as romantic as those of the train fanatics who wish to visit the last station on the remotest train lines in the world, somewhere out in the remote snows of Siberia or the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The short-toed eagle, he would murmur, the king eider, the spectacled eider. Then the birds would become more exotic yet. Johnny would enthuse about masked and brown boobies, about Chinese pond herons and goliath herons or the semi-collared sometimes double-spurred francolin, the magnificent frigate bird, the black-winged pratincole. Some might be able to recite the names of the major English football clubs. Johnny could respond with yet more species on his journey of discovery. Some day, he promised, he would be able to tick them all off his list, sapsuckers, shelducks, shrike, snowcocks, stonechats, silverbills, smews, scaups, shikras and shovelers, sanderlings and shearwaters, siskins and sprossers.

‘It’s like a rather bad public school,’ Powerscourt said to Johnny and Lady Lucy in the early evening in Markham Square, ‘one where they concentrate on the games because they haven’t got any good teachers, and they beat the boys too much. This man Barton Somerville is the headmaster, and those other two are his housemasters. Like schoolmasters everywhere they can’t bear not being in control.’

Powerscourt had explained his lunchtime encounter with the benchers of Queen’s Inn. In his heart he knew, and he knew the other two knew, what he was going to do, but he wanted to hear what they had to say.

‘It’s almost as though they have something to hide,’ he went on. ‘There was an obsession with control. The policeman, Chief Inspector Beecham, mentioned it to me this afternoon. He noticed it as well.’

‘Do you think they know who killed Mr Dauntsey?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘And that they’re worried you would find out the truth?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Institutions can go very strange when they’ve got something to hide,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, scratching his head as he spoke. ‘Do you remember that terrible case in India, Francis, where half the regiment were carrying on with the Colonel’s wife and everybody knew except the Colonel? Very strange atmosphere there.’

‘Even stranger,’ said Powerscourt, ‘when the Colonel found out what was going on and began shooting the officers one by one. Regimental Sergeant Major, only sane man in the place, put it down to the heat.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Lady Lucy, who had always believed that the main danger in the sub-continent came from rebellious or ambitious native warlords rather than fellow officers of the regiment. ‘Are you going to take the case, Francis? That’s what we all want to hear.’

‘Do you think I should, Lucy? Even with these dreadful people?’

‘You know my views.’ Lady Lucy looked steadily at her husband. ‘However dreadful they are, you must do it. You may save some lives. We don’t want any more people collapsing into their soup.’

‘Johnny?’ said Powerscourt, turning to his friend.

‘Well, Francis, I don’t know a lot about this case yet. No doubt if you accept you will write them a most ferocious note, sounding like the Lord Chancellor himself, outlining your terms of reference and reserving the way you conduct the investigation to yourself. I can think of three reasons for taking it on.’ Lady Lucy was hugging herself secretly. Surely an investigation like this couldn’t be very dangerous. She would have felt differently if it was. But she felt sure that Francis would be out of her way and the move could be accomplished in peace and efficiency.

‘The first one, I think, is rather childish,’ Johnny Fitzgerald went on, ‘but at some point in our inquiries I am sure there will be an opportunity to pay back those bastards – forgive me, Lucy – for the way they treated you. Petty maybe but valid nonetheless. And the second is to do with our reputation. Think of it. We have conducted investigations into the secrets of the Royal Family, into the machinations of the City of London, into the world of fine art and fraudsters and into the strange intrigues of a Church of England cathedral. Now we could add the law to our list of successes – if we succeed, that is.’

Johnny Fitzgerald paused for a moment.

‘And the third reason, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt, feeling rather important suddenly as their investigations were rolled out one after the other.

‘The third reason,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘is the most important of all. A man told me years ago, I can’t remember where, that if you want to drink the finest wine in London, you have to go to the Grosvenor Club, or to any one of the Inns of Court. Any one of them, Francis. Bloody great cellars they all have under those pretty buildings. A chap might get very thirsty wandering around and talking to counsel, don’t you think?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think you will be anywhere near the Strand or the Inner Temple for a while, Johnny,’ he said. ‘You see, even after that dreadful meeting I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take it on. So when I had calmed down I had a long chat with the clerk who looks after Dauntsey’s chambers. He drew up a list of his major cases over the last seven years, concentrating on the criminal trials. The clerk was concerned with the case of a man called Howard, Winston Howard, who’d been on trial for armed robbery at the Old Bailey. Dauntsey defended him on the instructions of the solicitors, firm called Hooper. The solicitors implied to the robber Howard that Dauntsey would get him off. And he was innocent, it would seem, of this particular bit of armed robbery. Done lots of it before and not been caught, too smart for that. But Dauntsey didn’t get him off. Howard went down, apparently absolutely livid about the injustice. He swore he’d get even with the fools who’d sent him down.’

‘This is all very interesting, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘but what has it to do with me?’

‘I’m just coming to that,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think you should go and see this solicitor, Mr Brendan Hooper, of Hooper Hardie and Slope, 146 Whitechapel High Street. You see, Howard came out of Pentonville ten days ago.’

‘Pentonville,’ Johnny Fitzgerald muttered to himself, ‘White-chapel, where the Ripper plied his ghastly trade. Why do I get all the best locations?’

‘According to what Hooper told Dauntsey’s clerk, Howard was even angrier on coming out than when he went in. Hooper’s had to move house for the time being. He’s under police protection. Dauntsey, of course, isn’t here at all. Dauntsey’s dead.’