‘Sergeant!’ he yelled. ‘Come quickly, man! We’ve got to go to the Elysian Fields!’
Sergeant Donaldson thought his master had gone mad. Were they going to heaven on a wet afternoon in February?
‘It’s that big hotel down by the river, the one where the rich people go. Sir Peregrine bloody Fishborne was there the night before the murder!’
Ten minutes later the two policemen had dismounted from their bicycles and were waiting for the hotel manager to join them.
‘My name is Sebastian Briggs, gentlemen.’ A dapper young man of about thirty years in a very smart suit with an MCC tie escorted them into his office. ‘I am the manager here. To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?’
Inspector Fletcher explained that they were investigating a murder at the Jesus Hospital.
‘I do not see what the Jesus Hospital has to do with us,’ said Briggs. ‘It is not part of this establishment.’
‘The hospital, as you probably know, is run by the Silkworkers, a livery company in the City of London. The Prime Warden, Sir Peregrine Fishborne, is the officer responsible for looking after the almshouse. We have reason to believe that he was in this hotel late in the evening on the day before the unfortunate silkman was killed. And that he had a meeting here that evening with somebody.’
The hotel manager’s reply took a lot of the wind out of the Inspector’s sails.
‘What of it?’ he said. ‘Sir Peregrine is a director of the company that owns the Elysian Fields. The Silkworkers have invested heavily in this establishment. Sir Peregrine has a permanent set of rooms here, the Baron Haussmann Suite on the first floor, at his disposal. He is a regular visitor.’
Fragments of French history from school floated through Sergeant Donaldson’s mind. Was there a Sun King Suite upstairs? A Danton Room where you could get murdered in the bath?
‘Nobody saw Sir Peregrine leave,’ said Inspector Fletcher, feeling he was being cheated of his prey.
‘Come, come.’ Briggs sensed that the initiative in this conversation had now passed to him. ‘What if nobody saw him leave? This is a free country. We run a hotel here, not a police station. You’re not suggesting that Sir Peregrine committed the murder, are you?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ Fletcher stuck to his guns, ‘just trying to establish the facts. Will any of your staff have known he was here that night?’
‘The night porter will have known what was going on during his watch. But that particular night porter is not on duty at present. He will be here in a couple of hours’ time.’
‘When he appears,’ said Inspector Fletcher, ‘could you ask him to come down to the police station as soon as he arrives? Tell him it’s very urgent. Good day to you, Mr Briggs. You haven’t heard the end of this, not by a long chalk.’
‘Do you think it’s a woman, sir?’ asked Sergeant Donaldson as the two men made their way back to the police station.
‘Woman? What woman?’ snapped the Inspector. ‘We haven’t got a bloody woman in this case. Not yet at any rate.’
‘Sorry, sir, I meant the room permanently available to Sir Peregrine back there at the hotel. Do you think he takes a woman there? Maybe women plural?’
‘God knows,’ said the Inspector. Try as they might, neither of the two policemen could imagine Sir Peregrine engaging in amorous dalliance in hotel rooms by the Thames.
The back bedrooms in the great house by the sea did not have the grand views of those at the front, the waters of the harbour, the sea off to your right, the yacht Morning Glory riding peacefully at her moorings. The back bedrooms looked out over what might once have been a rock garden as the ground rose steeply up the cliff. The man with the great black beard took out two pairs of sharp scissors he had purchased some weeks before. He had only reached the house that afternoon after lying low for some days now, out of sight and out of contact with any human beings at all.
Blackbeard stared at his reflection in the mirror. He would have rather liked being a pirate, he thought, all those raunchy wenches and the stolen rum. Very gingerly he began his work with the larger pair of scissors. Snip. A large chunk of beard fell to the floor. Snip. He worked his way down the cheek and up from the neck until he reached his mouth. Snip. He looked at himself again, one side of his face a straggly mass of his remaining hair, the other a rich and curly black. Snip. He disposed of most of the moustache and the hair beneath his mouth. Snip. He worked his way up the remaining cheek and the right-hand side of his neck. Piles of black hair were lying across his lap and down on the floor, as if some latter-day black sheep had come in to be sheared. Snip. The man repeated the process with the smaller, even sharper pair of scissors. Now at last the shaving soap and the razor. When he had finished, the man in the mirror inspected himself closely. He doubted if anybody he had met in the last two months would have recognized him. He smiled at his alter ego in the mirror.
That evening more policemen joined their brothers in London on duty outside the buildings owned or run by the Silkworkers Company. Constable Mick George of the Surrey force stood guard on the Earl of Northampton’s almshouses in Camberley. Sergeant Jacob King stood at ease all night long outside the Philip Trevelyan Hospital for the Working Poor in Guildford. Constable John Lawley watched over the old men of the St Peter and Paul Almshouse in Woking. The Chief Constable of Surrey wasn’t taking any chances, not with three victims already dead and warnings from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
10
Lord Francis Powerscourt was entertaining a brace of police inspectors in his drawing room in Markham Square. Rhys the butler had just finished serving coffee. Neither of his guests asked Powerscourt where his wife was. Draped across a chaise longue by the window, Inspector Miles Devereux of the Metropolitan Police looked as if he might have been born in this house and into this social circle. Inspector Fletcher of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary was less at home, sitting nervously by the edge of the fire, twirling his hat in his hands. Both had reported their latest developments to Powerscourt, Fletcher the astonishing discovery of Sir Peregrine in the vicinity of the hospital late in the evening the day before the first murder, Devereux his equally surprising encounter with the history man from University College London who was paid such a large number of guineas for his advice on the codicil.
‘Let’s think about Sir Peregrine first, shall we?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Inspector Fletcher, have you any theories about what was going on?’
The Inspector gave his cap another twirl. He paused for a moment or two before he spoke. ‘I do, my lord, I certainly do. The first theory – we have to consider it, however unlikely it sounds – is that he really was at the hotel on business. He is a director, after all. His normal activities in the City kept him occupied all day so he had to drive over in the evening. My second theory is that he was there on Jesus Hospital business. Maybe he had come to see Warden Monk to discuss the votes in the Silkworkers ballot. Fishborne may have been trying to devise a way to persuade all those who would have voted against his plans while Abel Meredith was still alive to change their minds. Maybe Monk was telling Sir Peregrine how much money he would have to spend to buy the votes.’ Inspector Fletcher looked round for approval.
‘I like that theory,’ said Inspector Devereux, ‘but I still find the whole thing pretty incredible. Late in the evening, Sir Peregrine, travelling by night in case anybody recognizes him perhaps, a meeting with person or persons unknown at that time of night, nobody seeing him leave. In my book there’s one likely explanation for this behaviour. If it barks, it’s a dog. If it mews, it’s a cat. If it’s an elderly rich man charging round in the middle of the night to a hotel where he has a permanent suite, it’s a woman. Suppose the mysterious man was actually female? And suppose the meeting took place, not in some private room downstairs but between the sheets in some vast bed in the Baron Haussmann Suite upstairs? What do you say, my lord?’
Powerscourt laughed. ‘It’s certainly possible. I don’t think
we could rule it out. But it’s a pretty odd coincidence. Inspector Fletcher, you are the only one of us who has actually met this potential Casanova by the Thames. Do you think it likely? Possible?’
‘I tell you this, my lord, when my sergeant and I were talking on our way back from the hotel, neither of us even considered it. Later on we did, and we thought it impossible. He’s not a nice man, my lord, that Sir Peregrine. I’m not an expert on what makes women tick, far from it, but it’s hard to see any female jumping into bed with Sir Peregrine.’
‘Forgive me,’ Miles Devereux stretched and moved to a sitting rather than a recumbent position on his chaise longue, ‘isn’t that the point? The women are dealing in a currency other than love. They’re dealing in money, possibly in gold. Maybe Sir Peregrine brought a high-class tart with him in the car, or his secretary perhaps. I’m sure there may be some form of crime involved, procurement, prostitution, God knows what all going on, but this isn’t relevant to the murder. Or is it?’
Powerscourt took another sip of his coffee. ‘It’s very unlikely that it is relevant, but it might be. I don’t think we should dismiss it altogether. If nothing else it might be a useful lever against Sir Peregrine. Now then, somebody has to talk to the wretched man, ask him what he was doing down there in Marlow late at night. Maybe we should talk to the chauffeur too. What do you say, Inspector Fletcher?’
Inspector Fletcher turned a bright shade of pink. ‘I’m happy to do that, my lord. The thing is’ – he paused and gathered his courage – ‘I don’t think he thought very highly of me when we met before. In fact he complained about me to my Chief Constable. I know he did.’
‘I think that’s commendable, your telling us that,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I really do. But don’t you see, we can turn that to our advantage. If I go and see him, it’ll put him on his guard. Same with Devereux here. But if it’s you, he won’t bother to put up his defences at all if he has a low opinion of you already. Much better from our point of view.’
Inspector Fletcher managed a small smile. ‘Right, my lord, I shall go and call on him tomorrow and see what he has to say for himself. I’ll take my sergeant for protection and moral support.’
‘Good man,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now then, what do you think of this codicil business, gentlemen?’
‘Before we do that, my lord, I’ve just thought of something.’ Inspector Devereux looked excited all of a sudden. ‘Why don’t we just arrest Sir Peregrine now? He was on site at the Silkworkers Hall the night of the murder there. We only have his word for it that he left when he did. He was in the vicinity hours before the first murder. In both cases he had a very powerful motive for killing his victims, they stood between him and a fortune. I’m sure any jury would look kindly on such a prosecution, my lord.’
‘Maybe they would,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I have wondered myself if we shouldn’t arrest him. But I don’t think our case is strong enough. We have a possible motive, we have proximity to the deed itself, but we don’t have any hard evidence. Not yet at any rate. And if we picked him up now, London’s finest solicitors would be on our backs straight away. London’s finest barristers would be on parade at the Old Bailey. For the time being, I think we should consider the codicil. Inspector Fletcher, you have not been exposed in person to the academics who are arguing about the thing. What is your view of the matter?’
‘We don’t have much to do with codicils and livery companies down in Marlow, my lord,’ Fletcher began, and inspected his boots for a moment. ‘What strikes me as curious is the discrepancy in the payments. Twenty guineas for the man in Cambridge, five hundred for the man in London. That sounds pretty damned fishy, even in Buckinghamshire.’
‘Your man in Cambridge, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Devereux, ‘he said that the London fellow must be the forger with that sort of payment. Why on earth did Claypole tell me that in the first place? He didn’t have to, he didn’t have to say a word about it. “My financial affairs are private,” that sort of thing.’
‘Vanity?’ said Powerscourt. ‘He seems to have been pretty keen to tell you he had to be in the House of Lords very soon. Very clever people can get superiority complexes, they think they’re above everybody else. I’m very certain of one thing though. It makes a great hole in any possible defence for Sir Peregrine in court.’
‘How?’ said the two Inspectors, more or less in unison.
‘Suppose you are the counsel for the prosecution, gentlemen. You line up a little collection of these academics who gave their views on the codicil. Up comes Professor Number One, he does his stuff. “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Professor Number Two, “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Up comes Professor Number Three. “How much were you paid?” “Twenty guineas.” Now it’s Professor Wilson Claypole’s turn in the witness box. “How much were you paid?” “Five hundred guineas” “Five hundred guineas? Would you just like to repeat that figure, Professor Claypole, so the gentlemen of the jury can be in no doubt of it?” “Five hundred guineas.” With a skilful barrister the jury would be left in little doubt that Claypole was the forger.’
‘And once we know that Claypole was the forger,’ Miles Devereux was now walking up and down the room, ‘the whole codicil sideshow disappears. Sir Peregrine’s plans collapse like a pack of cards. The man’s a crook.’
‘He may be a crook,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer.’
The headmaster of Allison’s School was a worried man. Even now, many days after the murder, no boy had come forward with any details of the fake postman who had arrived in the school to strangle its bursar. The boys had been invited to speak to Inspector Grime after the second visit. None had done so. The headmaster had tried speaking, in confidence, to the boys he considered most influential with their schoolfellows. Nothing had happened. He had enlisted the help of the local bishop, the Bishop of Norwich. That mighty churchman had preached an eloquent sermon on the theme of render unto Cesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s from St Matthew’s Gospel. He spoke of the obligations on Christians to pay their taxes, to support the civil authorities, to be law-abiding citizens. The headmaster thought at the time that short of telling the boys to tell what they had seen on either of those days, the bishop had done all he could to persuade some boys, impressed by the weighty presence of a prince of the Church among them, to tell what they knew. The bishop’s message fell on stony ground. Now the headmaster’s last hope lay in the slender figure of Lady Lucy Powerscourt, pretending to be Mrs Hamilton, the French language teacher. The headmaster had little hope in that direction.
That evening Inspector Grime, at Powerscourt’s suggestion, was taking dinner with Lady Lucy at the Crown Hotel in Fakenham. The Inspector was wearing his best suit for the occasion. But he, like the headmaster, was in despair. He was not making any progress, he told her sadly. His principal suspect, Jude the stonemason, seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. The boys of Allison’s School would tell him nothing. His Chief Constable was making ominous noises, threatening, so Grime had heard on the grapevine, to take him off the case altogether. When Lady Lucy moved the conversation on to Inspector Grime himself, a sad picture emerged. His wife had died some years before. There had been no children. He had his aged mother living with him and her memory had gone, she was liable to wander off into the fields or on to the main road if she was not watched twenty-four hours a day. The Inspector paid a woman to look after the old lady when he was at work. At weekends he did it himself. It was, he said, running his fingers through the remains of his dark hair, getting him down. Lady Lucy listened with a sympathetic ear and congratulated the Inspector on caring for his mother. Apart from expressions of sympathy, she felt there was little she could do. To tell Inspector Grime about her one tiny glimmer of good news would, she thought, give him false hope and, perhaps, false optimism. The boy who had followed her to the hotel might be sufficiently besotted to tell her some
thing important. But she would certainly tell Francis when he came the following day. The tiny glimmer would come, if it was going to come, the following afternoon shortly after four o’clock.
Inspector Fletcher checked once more the polish on his boots. He fiddled yet again with his tie. He and Sergeant Donaldson were in the reception of Sir Peregrine’s vast headquarters in the City of London. Teams of secretaries and stenographers and dark-coated financiers hurried in and out of the building with an air of great purpose. Sergeant Donaldson thought to himself that he much preferred the quiet backwater of Maidenhead where the police knew most of the people and life passed by at a much slower pace. Here everything moved so quickly.
Earlier that day the policemen had received a valuable piece of ammunition for their interview with Sir Peregrine. Warden Monk had replied to their messages and presented himself at the police station. Yes, he admitted readily enough, he had been seeing Sir Peregrine at the hotel, late the other evening. He had met him there before at that time. It was, he said belligerently, a free country, wasn’t it? A man could go where he wanted and talk with whomever he wanted, couldn’t he? As far as he, Thomas Monk, was aware, there weren’t any laws against any of that, were there? Not yet at any rate. He and Sir Peregrine had been discussing Jesus Hospital business. No, he did not want to tell the officers exactly what had been discussed. That was private. Both Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant were sure that Monk was hiding something, but they could not tell what it was. Inspector Fletcher felt sure that news of the interview would reach Sir Peregrine long before he and Sergeant Donaldson crossed the portals of his domain. Not for the first time he cursed the invention of the telegraph.
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