Death Called to the Bar

8

I have just entered the gates of Paradise, Powerscourt said to himself as his cab rattled past a couple of mock Tudor gateways that marked the entrance to Jeremiah Puncknowle’s estate. My appointment, confirmed yesterday, is for eleven o’clock.

They were up in the hills, nearly as high as the Chilterns reached, just past the little town of Wendover. The cabbie, a cheerful young man in his early twenties, had offered to point out some of the interesting features of the Puncknowle establishment as they went along. His commentary and directions usually led to very generous tips.

‘Prepare to look left after the next bend, sir,’ he called out, stooping down to adjust a piece of harness. Up till this point the road ran between tall trees of birch and oak, then suddenly Powerscourt saw a great rectangle of green, with a small square in the middle enclosed by thick posts with rope between them. And at the far end a large building in red brick, with wide windows looking out over the grass and balconies for spectators to view the action. Even as they went by, Powerscourt saw a couple of men painting the doors. Two flags were flying from the flagpole, the Union Jack and a strange white flag with a couple of rampant lions. He knew he had seen the building before. He remembered the last time he had been there, with William Burke and a colleague of his from the City. For this was a perfect reproduction of the pavilion at Lord’s Cricket Ground, home to the County of Middlesex and the headquarters of the Marylebone Cricket Club, the most famous of its kind in the world. As far as Powerscourt could tell, it was a perfect replica.

‘Lord’s pavilion,’ said the cabbie happily, ‘complete with Long Room and paintings of ancient cricketers and an honours board where they put your name up if you score a hundred or take five wickets in an international.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did they go down and make detailed drawings of the building?’

‘Nothing as complicated as that, sir. Mr Puncknowle just bought the plans off the architect who did the original one down there in London.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if perfect replicas of Buckingham Palace or St Paul’s Cathedral were about to appear round the next bend. The road was climbing steeply now but Powerscourt thought there must be a flat area of land, a small plateau at the top.

‘They say Mr Puncknowle took his holidays in France one year, sir, and came back determined to have one of them chateau things of his own. Must have cost a heap of money, they even built a special railway to bring the stones up to the bottom of the hill.’

‘How did they get them to the top?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘They had a French architect, and a French landscape designer, so they brought in teams of those Percheron mares, sir. Amazing what they could do.’

Even when you knew what was coming, the vista as you rounded the last corner was astonishing. There was a large area of Italian garden with gravel paths criss-crossing it. The cab, Powerscourt noticed, had slowed almost to walking pace so that visitors could be impressed. And there it was, the Bath stone gleaming in the sunlight, a building that could not have come from anywhere other than France with its mansard roofs, its turrets and pinnacles, its dormers and chimneys and ornamental bits of fantasy dotted all around it. Close your eyes, Powerscourt thought, and you could hear, faint but unmistakable in the clear Chiltern air, the sound of the Marseillaise.

Powerscourt asked the cabbie to wait. A sepulchral butler led him into the East Gallery, lined with Italian paintings and a chimney-piece from a post office in Paris. They went past a sumptuous dining room, virually choking on the richest collection of Sevres tableware Powerscourt had ever seen, and on into a great drawing room looking out over the valley.

Powerscourt’s first impression of Jeremiah Puncknowle was that he was a collection of billiard balls. His head, totally bald, with a very small nose and small eyes and hardly any chin, was the white ball. His centre, again perfectly round with a gold watch chain hanging off a round stomach surrounded by a scarlet waistcoat, was the red ball. He was quite short and even his feet seemed to be trying to become round though that might have been the shoes.

‘Mr Puncknowle,’ said Powerscourt, shaking his host by the hand, ‘thank you so much for agreeing to see me at such short notice, and let me say that I have rarely been so impressed by a house as I am by your magnificent mansion here.’ He bowed stiffly.

‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt, thank you. How very kind of you. Might I inquire as to which part of my house impressed you the most?’

The man likes flattery, Powerscourt thought, and he proceeded to offer it by the bucketful. ‘First of all there is the conception, Mr Puncknowle, the astounding idea of bringing a French chateau to England. So obvious when you think of it, but how daring and original in execution. I have most of my knowledge from a friend but I understand you have here one of the finest collections of French art, tapestry, sculpture, paintings and so on anywhere in the world. How blessed we are, sir, to have such glory in our midst!’ I pray to God, Powerscourt said to himself, that nobody I know hears me spouting this frightful tripe.

Jeremiah Puncknowle had still not had enough flattery. He wanted a sweet course, probably followed by cheese.

‘Did you see my cricket pitch, Lord Powerscourt? What did you think of that?’

‘My dear Mr Puncknowle,’ Powerscourt was rubbing his hands together now, ‘I thought that was genius, pure genius! The idea of reproducing the Lord’s pavilion here, what a wonderful idea! And I fancy your ground is slightly larger than the one at St John’s Wood, would I be correct?’

‘You would indeed be correct, sir. When I can find the time, we’re going to build seating all the way round. There’ll be more room for spectators here than there is down there in London. Then we can arrange some big matches. W.G. Grace has looked at the wicket and pronounced it excellent.’

Powerscourt wondered how much the Doctor had charged for that. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘what excellent news. I look forward to returning here for some great match, Mr Puncknowle.’

Something seemed to have upset the little round man’s equilibrium. He left his armchair and began walking – waddling might have been a more appropriate term, Powerscourt thought – along a narrow strip of carpet close to his windows and the spectacular views.

‘You see before you a man sadly misused by his time, Lord Powerscourt, sadly misused.’ Puncknowle had just passed Powerscourt’s position at the edge of the sofa. ‘I am sure you are aware of the misfortunes that have been heaped upon my poor head, heaped high indeed.’ The little man stretched his arms out as wide as they would go, as if he was about to be raised up on the Cross. ‘My enemies have no idea of business. They are merely consumed with their obsession to bring me down.’ Puncknowle had turned round now and was coming back down the room towards Powerscourt. He was about to pass under a magnificent full-length portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Colonel St Leger, friend and equerry to George the Third. The Colonel was leaning insouciantly on his horse, looking out into the distance, perhaps, Powerscourt thought, to the race that bore his name. ‘Any man of commerce would tell you, Lord Powerscourt, that the affairs of great businesses do not proceed in regular patterns. Trade does not beat regularly like a person’s heart. It is irregular. There are good years. There are bad years. Some years the sun shines upon the figures that mark your fortunes in this unhappy world, other years the figures are plunged into shadow.’

Puncknowle stopped now directly opposite Powerscourt’s position on the sofa. Outside, two peacocks, confident in their residence in one of the most unusual houses in England, were strutting arrogantly towards the garden.

‘But my enemies are wrong, Lord Powerscourt, to say that in the years of the shadow, theft and larceny were taking place, that I, Jeremiah Puncknowle, was robbing the honest citizens who had entrusted their savings to my care. That was not so! That was the trade cycle! Had my enemies not pulled the wool over the eyes of the police, my positions would have been restored, more than restored, when the sun came out again. Which it did, of course,’ Jeremiah Puncknowle had gone quieter now, almost speaking to himself, ‘only I was not here to profit from it, forced to flee the land of my fathers, and barred from trading on the Exchange.’

Powerscourt wondered if he was going to break down. But anger returned to fire his spirits.

‘The police! God help us all, Lord Powerscourt, the police! I am sure,’ he cast a crafty look at Powerscourt as he said this, ‘that you have had a lot to do with them over the years and they may be perfectly satisfactory in your line of business. But in mine? Hopeless, completely hopeless!’ Puncknowle began walking again, his hands now clasped firmly behind his back as he headed off towards a gorgeous Gainsborough of a society beauty. ‘One inspector did not know what the word dividend meant. He thought it had something to do with the Football Pools. One man, more senior yet, thought that if a firm made a loss in any given year, somebody, probably me, must have been stealing the amount of the deficit. And yet another, a Chief Inspector would you believe, a Chief Inspector, thought that double entry bookkeeping meant that you wrote up the notes from those little books they’re so fond of once, and then you wrote them up again! That’s why it was called double entry. Really, Lord Powerscourt, I ask you, what is to be done? I look forward to seeing them in the witness box, I tell you, I really do.’

The little man returned from his forced march and sat down opposite Powerscourt. ‘I’ve got Sir Isaac Redhead as my lead counsel, you know,’ he went on, ‘and I’ve got that young silk Charles Augustus Pugh. They say he’s a fearsome cross-examiner.’

Puncknowle referred to the pair as if they were leading stars in his favourite football team.

‘I know Charles Augustus Pugh, Mr Puncknowle. A tiger in the courtroom!’ Powerscourt had long since ceased being surprised at what he thought of as the moral neutrality of the Bar. Even with the little he knew he did not think he could go into court and defend Jeremiah Puncknowle. The man was too obviously a fraudster. Yet here were two highly respectable barristers, happy to take his shilling. Maybe it was more than a shilling. The lawyers, he had decided, were like the rows of cabs you could see outside the great railway termini, they were just waiting for the next fare to come along. Now seemed as good a time as any to raise his own business in Paradise.

‘It is of lawyers that I wish to speak to you, Mr Puncknowle, to ask your advice, really.’ Powerscourt was at his most emollient.

The white billiard ball bowed slowly to Powerscourt. ‘Please continue, Lord Powerscourt. Of course I shall be happy to help.’

‘You know only too well, Mr Puncknowle,’ Powerscourt purred, ‘that you are not alone in your forthcoming trials in the Royal Courts of Justice. There are a number of other characters appearing who do not appear to have any known connection with your companies or indeed with yourself.’ God forgive me, thought Powerscourt. If I were a Catholic I would have to go straight to confession after leaving this house. It was an offence for which his Irish grandmother, now long in her grave, would have told him to go and wash his mouth out with soap at once. But he was relieved to see that there was no eruption from the billiard balls. They seemed to be nodding in agreement. He plunged further in.

‘And people say, Mr Puncknowle, though I have no means of knowing whether this is true or not, that one or two of these gentlemen – and I could be completely wrong here – are none too scrupulous in dealing with their opponents.’ Privately Powerscourt was certain that these men were intimately linked with the Puncknowle activities. He referred to them in his mind as the enablers, the enforcers and the extractors.

‘At present,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘I have been engaged by the benchers of Queen’s Inn to investigate two murders. The first, fairly recently, was a man called Dauntsey, poisoned at a feast. The other, only a few days ago, a man called Woodford Stewart, shot twice in the chest.’

Jeremiah Puncknowle made suitably sympathetic mutterings. Powerscourt could not decide whether his host was a consummate actor or not. For he seemed to be hearing this news for the first time. Powerscourt felt it hard to believe that a man who took such pride in Sir Isaac Redhead and Charles Augustus Pugh would not know of the destruction of their opponents in court.

‘The point is this, sir. These two lawyers were the ones chosen by the Treasury solicitor to prosecute you and your companions. Now they are both dead. The reason for my visit is to ask you to make inquiries, discreet inquiries as only you would know how, as to whether any of your associates, in what we might call an excess of zeal for their own defence, arranged or organized for these two barristers to be put out of the way.’

Powerscourt held his breath. But there was no explosion of fury. Instead, to his astonishment, Jeremiah Puncknowle leant forward and seized his hand.

‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, of course I will make those inquiries for you. I shall start this very day. You can rest assured of my full support, my full support.’ With that he released his hand and sank back in his chair. ‘What wicked times we live in, Lord Powerscourt. I have often said that morality simply disappeared from public life with the death of our late Queen. How can you have proper standards from a sovereign with mistresses, an arbiter of behaviour in public life who consorts with grocers and money brokers?’

Powerscourt desisted from pointing that kings without mistresses were virtually unheard of. He thought he should retreat while the ground under his feet was still firm.

‘Mr Puncknowle, I am so grateful for your assistance. And I look forward to hearing from you in this sad and unhappy affair. Let me say how much I have enjoyed meeting you, and what a wonderful mansion you have built here. It is a masterpiece, sir, a masterpiece.’

Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy afterwards that he thought his host literally swelled with pride at this point. The sepulchral butler glided silently across the carpet to escort Powerscourt to the front door. As his cab rolled back down the hill towards the railway station he reflected that there was always a problem in Paradise. There was a serpent. In this case a rather chubby serpent in the person of Jeremiah Puncknowle. Powerscourt shivered slightly as they clattered their way down the hill. For he felt sure that if Puncknowle wanted people out of the way, be they barrister or investigator, he would not hesitate. The serpent would strike.

‘Two day returns to Oxford on the special offer, please.’ ‘Oxford, special offer, day return for two, please.’ ‘Special offer to Oxford, two for today, please.’ ‘Two day returns, special offer, Oxford, today please.’ Edward had been repeating these formulas and variants on them to himself for nearly two days now. He knew he would have to make his request in a busy ticket office. He imagined a large and tyrannical ticket man, far worse than Barton Somerville and wearing an intimidating uniform, mocking his efforts and laughing at his silence. If he couldn’t get the words out, then the people in the queue behind him would grow angry and start to shout at him. Edward had already written the words out in large letters on a piece of paper which he could send over the counter if speech failed him. It was all too irritating.

The day before, Friday, he had achieved, if not a breakthrough, then something very close to it, in his inspection of the accounts relating to Jeremiah Puncknowle’s companies. He saw that the figure missing from the amount raised in the flotation of the second company was virtually identical, except for a few pence, to the total amount of the dividend paid out to shareholders of the first company. By declaring just the dividend per share, they avoided giving the total amount of dividend paid out to all the shareholders. That way, they disguised the first of the Puncknowle frauds. But once you knew the dividend per share, all you had to do was to multiply that by the total number of shares issued in the first place. Edward expected to find the pattern repeated all the way down the various flotations. But in the gaps in his calculations, when his brain was reeling with the figures and he needed a break, he would walk round and round New Court repeating his mantra about the train tickets to Oxford.

Now it was Saturday morning and Edward was standing close to the epicentre of his fears, the ticket office at Paddington station. He had conducted a brief reconnaissance and discovered that there were four ticket clerks on duty that day. One kindly old man who looked as though he should have retired years ago. One sharp-faced young man who reminded Edward of a bookie’s runner. One middle-aged man with very thick glasses. And finally another middle-aged man who smiled kindly at his clients. Edward was torn between the old gentleman and the smiling one. He looked around for Sarah and checked his watch. The first train on the special offer left at twenty past nine. It was now ten past and they had no tickets. Edward wondered if he should try to buy them without Sarah but knew that if all else failed and she was there she could take over. Then she was beside him, wearing a dark blue skirt and a lemon blouse. She had a raffish little hat on which she had borrowed from a friend down the street. ‘Makes you look a bit special, this hat,’ her friend had said, ‘that should cheer Edward up.’ She had a basket on her arm with lunch hidden beneath a pale green cloth. One look at Edward’s face told Sarah that there was anxiety about something related to speech, probably the tickets. There was no queue in front of the old gentleman. Edward advanced slowly. He opened his mouth. The words wouldn’t come out.

‘Take your time, sonny,’ the old man said, ‘there’s no rush.’

Edward tried again. Still no words came out. He began to wonder about the piece of paper in his pocket. The old man smiled. Then Edward felt a soft touch on his hand. It was, he thought, one of the nicest touches his hand had ever had. He opened his mouth once more.

‘Two day returns to Oxford on the special offer,’ he said, all in one go.

‘Enjoy your trip,’ said the old gentleman, handing Edward his tickets and his change. He had a grandson the same age. He hoped his grandson would find a girl as pretty as Sarah. ‘Platform Four,’ he called after them, ‘first on the left!’

They managed to find a compartment to themselves. Sarah put her basket on the luggage rack and Edward showed her the guidebook to Oxford he had bought at the station bookstall.

‘What’s in the basket, Sarah?’ asked Edward, full powers of speech now restored.

‘Well,’ said Sarah rather doubtfully, ‘I hope it’s going to be all right. There’s ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches and tomato sandwiches and apples and some hard cheese and a bottle of lemonade.’

‘That’s a feast,’ said Edward happily and returned to his perusal of the guidebook. Sarah was remembering her evening session with her mother two evenings before when she had told her mama about Edward.

‘Who are his parents, Sarah? What are his family like?’

Sarah had confessed that she had no idea about Edward’s family at all. She didn’t even know where he lived.

‘Really, Sarah, you do have to be careful, especially these days. What does he look like, this Edward person?’

Sarah had described him as just under six feet tall, very slim, with brown eyes and curly hair. And then she had made her big mistake although, looking back on it later, she saw that it would have been worse if Edward came round to her house and had trouble speaking to her mother without her knowing about his difficulties.

‘He has trouble speaking sometimes, mama,’ she had said defensively, ‘but he’s usually fine with me.’

‘What do you mean, he has trouble speaking, Sarah? Is he some sort of defective person? Are you going to Oxford with a deaf mute?’

‘No, he’s not deaf, mama. He can hear perfectly well. I’m sure he’ll get over it.’

‘If it’s lasted this long, it’ll probably go on for ever. He may go to his grave with his mouth open and no sounds coming out. How does he manage in court?’

‘He doesn’t speak in court, mama.’

‘What do you mean, he doesn’t speak in court? You’re not going to win any cases if the judge and jury don’t know what you want to say, are you?’

‘I’m sure he will, in time, mama.’

‘How does he earn his living if he can’t speak and he can’t appear in court? What’s he doing in a barristers’ chambers in the first place, I should like to know. Does he sweep the floors? Put the cat out?’

‘He’s a deviller, mama, you know, one of those people who prepares the cases for the barristers.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me what a deviller is, thank you, Sarah, I’ve known about them for a long time. But do you get paid? Or does Edward just get what the lawyers feel like giving him? Is he a sort of charity case, really?’

‘No, he is not a charity case, mama. He charges by the hour, like the barristers charge their clients. Some people make a career of it, they never appear in court at all. Edward is one of the best devillers in London, mama. He’s doing the work for the Puncknowle fraud case.’

Sarah thought this might have an effect.

‘Is he indeed?’ said her mother thoughtfully. ‘But you can’t become attached to a person who doesn’t speak most of the time. It’s like being one of those actors who never have any lines but just carry spears around in Shakespeare. You can’t be serious about him.’

‘I’m not serious, mama, Edward is just a friend.’

Her mother muttered something under her breath.

‘Perhaps you’d better bring him round here so I can have a look at him.’

‘Yes, mama, I’ll ask him when we’re in Oxford.’

‘Why’s he taking you to Oxford anyway? Is there some sort of silent zone up there where the dons and the undergraduates aren’t allowed to speak?’

‘Not as far as I know, mama.’

‘Will he be able to speak to me, Sarah? Or will he just sit there, this Edward of yours, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish? I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mrs Wiggins next time I speak to her, I really don’t.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Sarah, trying to be diplomatic, ‘that he’ll be absolutely fine as long as you’re not fierce with him.’

‘Fierce, Sarah? Did you say fierce? I wouldn’t know how to be fierce for a moment. You’ve never known me to be fierce, have you?’

‘Well,’ said Sarah, smiling at her mother, ‘maybe stern would do it.’

Her mother snorted and there the matter was laid to rest. And now it was Saturday morning, the sun was shining, their train had just reached Oxford station and Edward was reaching her picnic basket down from the luggage rack. They had decided to go straight to the river and inspect Oxford later. At this time of year Edward was almost certain it would rain at some point in the day. Their route took them into George Street and then right into Cornmarket. At the junction, they stared to their right at the buildings of Balliol, Trinity and St John’s, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel on their left. On their way down St Aldate’s they peeped into Pembroke College. Christ Church on the other side of the road looked too grand for words.

‘It’s virtually the same as an Inn of Court!’ exclaimed Sarah as they came out of Pembroke. ‘They’ve even got people’s names on the staircases just like Queen’s Inn. Do you know which is the older, Edward?’

Edward looked up a section of his guidebook. ‘Pembroke is older than Queen’s,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t know if the oldest Inn in London is older than the oldest Oxford college, which is, according to this guide, University College, founded in 1249. So it’s over six hundred and fifty years old, Sarah.’

Sarah thought the boat keeper at Folly Bridge was probably about that age. He seemed to have only two front teeth left and he sat hunched over the desk in his little boat house like an elf or a gnome from a different world.

‘Rowing boat or punt?’ he croaked. ‘If you haven’t punted before then I would definitely recommend a rowing boat.’

‘Punt, please,’ said Edward firmly. Sarah looked closely at him as Methuselah’s assistant, a mere youngster in his middle seventies with almost all his teeth, led them down a little wooden jetty that led into the river. He installed Sarah and the picnic basket on the cushions in the middle of the boat and Edward took up his position at the end. With a loud grunt the old man shoved the boat well out into the stream.

A punt is a long thin rectangular vessel with a faint resemblance to a Venetian gondola except the Venetian vessels have tapered ends. At one end of the punt is a covered platform well able to accommodate a man or woman standing up. In Cambridge the punter stands on this platform. The opposite end has a rising series of slats. This is known as the Oxford end. The centre of the boat is equipped with comfortable cushions and is, traditionally, the place for picnics and romance. The means of propulsion is a very long wooden pole with metal spikes at the end which grip the gravel at the bottom of the stream. When the pole is dropped in straight, the punter then pulls on it so the boat proceeds along the river. When the pole has gone from being vertical to an angle of forty-five degrees or so behind the boat, the punter pulls it out and starts again.

Edward was muttering to himself as he stood on the platform at the end of the boat. Stand at right angles to the boat, he was telling himself. Flick the pole up, don’t pass it up hand over hand. Let it drop straight down into the river. Don’t hand it down into the water, just let it fall. Bend your knees as you pull on the pole. Twist it when you bring it up in case of mud down below. He carried out a couple of decent strokes and steered the punt with the pole until it was proceeding happily along the right-hand side of the river.

‘Are you saying your prayers up there, Edward? I didn’t know you knew how to punt.’

‘I’m trying to remember the instructions of the man who taught me, Sarah,’ said Edward, flicking the pole up through his left hand.

‘Who was that?’

‘Oddly enough, it was Mr Dauntsey,’ said Edward. ‘We had to go to Cambridge one day last summer and he taught me how to punt then. He was a Cambridge man, Mr Dauntsey, Trinity, I think. It took me half an hour to go from Magdalene to St John’s, which is less than a hundred yards, ten minutes to get from John’s to Clare, which is a couple of hundred yards, and by the time we passed King’s I was getting the hang of it. Mr Dauntsey had very firm views about punting – he said you could never take any work out on the river or it would bring bad luck and you had to be graceful while you were doing it.’

‘Well, you’re looking pretty graceful to me, Edward,’ said Sarah with a smile.

‘He showed me some of the tricks people get up to on the unwary.’ Edward was grinning happily to himself now. ‘There are a lot of bridges along the back of the Cam, Sarah, and a person standing on them is about the same height as the pole of the punt at the top of its throw. Innocent tourists were often caught like this. A couple of people on the bridge would grab hold of the pole. The punt, of course, keeps moving. The man holding the pole has to let go or else he falls in. Most people fall in to great glee among the spectators. Then there’s another misfortune that sometimes causes confusion. The pole gets stuck in the mud at the bottom. Again the boat keeps moving. Sometimes, Mr Dauntsey told me, you can see people clinging on to the pole in clear water while the punt carries on.’

Further up the river, by the other bank, they could see a party of two punts, travelling in tandem, with about a dozen people on board. The noise and waving of bottles indicated they had started drinking at an early hour. Edward thought he could hear shouting and see fingers pointing.

‘What are those people saying, Sarah?’ asked Edward, bending his knees in the approved manner to send their punt skimming along the water. Sarah turned round, and looked slightly alarmed as she faced Edward again.

‘I think they’re saying “Wrong end!”’ she said. ‘Then’, she looked rather apprehensive at this point, ‘I think they’re saying “Throw him in!”’

‘Are they indeed,’ said Edward and his eyes began measuring distances between their two punts and his. ‘I’m punting from the Cambridge end, Sarah. In Oxford, for some unknown reason, they do it from the other end.’

They could hear the shouts again now. Sarah’s original version was undoubtedly correct. Bottles were being waved in the air. And a ragged cheer broke out every time the punters pressed their craft forward.

Edward, Sarah thought, was not looking at all alarmed. Indeed he seemed to be coaxing extra speed out of the boat, shooting the pole up through his hands and then dropping it down in one continuous movement. Sarah also saw that he was making experimental movements with the pole as if it were a rudder, trying to see how fast he could alter course. Enthusiastic the Oxford-enders might have been, but they were not very good punters. Their boats were travelling quite slowly, much more slowly than Edward and Sarah’s vessel.

When the punts were less than a hundred yards apart, Edward changed direction. He shot across the river at an angle of about sixty degrees into clear water.

‘Wrong end! Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The taunts continued.

At first Sarah had not understood what Edward was trying to do. There was a look of fierce concentration about him. Then she saw that they would intercept the Oxford-enders quite soon unless Edward could stop or alter course. And she didn’t see how he could alter course in time at this speed. There was, she thought, going to be a most almighty collision.

‘Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The jeers went on, but then began to fall silent. For the Oxford men could see this other boat, many hundredweight of it, coming at them like some ancient vessel from Salamis or Actium. They were going to be stove in amidships. Then Edward made a minor adjustment with his pole as rudder. A terrible silence fell over the Oxford craft as they saw their fate hurtling towards them. The two punters, suddenly realizing that they might receive the full force of the other boat, jumped desperately into the water on the far side of their punts. Then Edward dropped his pole to the bottom and heaved ferociously, not on a line parallel with the boat as he had been doing before, but towards himself as hard as he could pull. Just when a crash seemed inevitable, the Cambridge boat turned sharply to the right, at a distance of only a few feet from the other punts, and then shot ahead of them. Edward turned round and shouted, ‘Wrong end, anybody?’ There was a round of applause from the spectators watching from the bank. Even the vanquished Oxford boats joined in.

‘Well done, Edward, that was tremendous,’ said Sarah, clapping furiously. ‘The Philistines have been routed.’

‘I just think,’ said Edward, panting slightly from his exertions, ‘that I’ll put some distance between us in case those fellows turn around and come after us. I don’t think they will, and we’re faster than they are in any case, but I’d feel happier all the same.’

Sarah gazed at her young man with new respect. Edward the Silent had turned into Edward the Conqueror.

‘And there’s another thing,’ said Powerscourt, who was still trying to decide if Jeremiah Puncknowle was friend or foe, ‘I have to go to these solicitors in the next few days about this missing Maxfield person. The one Dauntsey left twenty thousand pounds to in his will.’ Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy and Johnny about the missing Maxfield before. ‘The police haven’t found any trace of him, nothing at all. Chief Inspector Beecham thinks he’s probably dead. But they’ve checked the records at Somerset House, and there’s no record of him there either. He seems to have disappeared.’

‘Perhaps he’s gone abroad,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Do you think Alex Dauntsey gave him the money to buy him out of trouble?’

‘God knows,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Just as easy to say he was paying off a blackmailer.’

‘What happens if he’s locked up?’ said Johnny Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘Debtors’ prison, lunatic asylum, that sort of place. Have the police checked those out?’

‘They have, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt with a sigh, ‘but what happens if he’s joined up to a different form of institution altogether? Suppose some earlier Maxfield has died and left our Maxfield his title. He’s not Maxfield any more, he’s Lord Kilkenny or something like that. Our Maxfield has now vanished clean away.’

‘Wouldn’t somebody remember?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Powerscourt with a grin. ‘I look forward to seeing the Chief Inspector’s face when I ask him to check this one out. He may be very intelligent, our Jack Beecham, but like all policemen he’s taken a very heavy dose of loyalty to all the institutions of the state he’s called to protect.’