Death Called to the Bar

by David Dickinson

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.’

  3

  Over the next two days Powerscourt went through an intensive course in the professional life of Alexander Dauntsey. He made appointments to see everybody in his chambers and one or two more besides. He became a familiar figure to the porters as he flitted in and out of Queen’s Inn, shuffling the new information in his mind. From the Head of Chambers, a charming bencher called Maxwell Kirk, he learnt principally about Dauntsey as a member of chambers. ‘You’ve been in the Army, Lord Powerscourt, I can tell from the way you walk. Well, you know how some fellows fit very naturally into the military life, and some don’t. They never seem to get the hang of it at all. Killed first in battle, the ones that don’t fit in, I noticed. Nobody else prepared to put themselves out for them. Well, Dauntsey was one of those who fitted in. He belonged here as if he’d been born to it. I invited him to join us here seven years ago and I’ve never regretted it for a second.’

  ‘What was he like as a lawyer?’ Powerscourt asked, suspecting that he would not be told the whole truth. There was a slight pause as if Kirk wasn’t sure how much to give away.

  ‘I’m going to use a rather strange analogy, if I may, Lord Powerscourt. When I was at school I was very keen on cricket, still am when I can find the time. We had a chap there in the year above me called Morrison. On his day you would have said he was bound to play for England. He had beautiful style – a cover drive direct from heaven – he could cope with any kind of bowling, he could bat on any kind of wicket. People said he was bound to take the field for England later on. Only thing was, he was erratic, poor chap. Some days he could hardly hit the ball and certainly couldn’t score any runs. It was strange, very strange. Dauntsey was a bit like that.

  Brilliant some of the time, absolutely brilliant, solicitors queuing up to instruct him, triumphs in court. Next day listless, just about able to get the words out, hopeless. Instructing solicitors tearing their hair out. Clerk to chambers in despair. It didn’t happen very often, mind you, maybe once in ten or twelve outings before the judges, but significant none the less.’

  ‘Did this mean that his income went down?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Fewer people prepared to employ him?’

  ‘I suppose it did,’ said Maxwell Kirk slowly, staring out of his window as if Dauntsey’s ghost might be hovering above the Thames. ‘I suppose he never made as much money as he could have done. But some of the solicitors were very loyal. They kept coming back.’

  ‘Was it possible,’ said Powerscourt, suspecting that Kirk would not know enough about Dauntsey’s private life to answer his question, ‘to work out why he lost his talent, as it were? Did it happen when he was depressed? Had he been drinking too much beforehand, anything like that?’

  ‘You’re not the first person to wonder about that. Our clerk here, the chap before the present one, used to make a note of Dauntsey’s moods every day. And, of course, he had records of Dauntsey’s cases and when he had his off days. Our clerk had his very own system of notation. C was cheerful. H was happy. VH was very happy. N was neutral, meant he couldn’t decide one way or the other. S was sad, B was black and VB was very black. He kept this going for a whole year. Then on New Year’s Eve, so he told me, God knows what his family must have made of this, he tried to match up the two lots of information. He could find absolutely no correlation between the two. He could be very black for three days in a row but very brilliant in court. He could be very happy first thing in the morning and completely tongue-tied at the Old Bailey in the afternoon. It was extraordinary.’

  ‘Did he,’ Powerscourt always kept this question till the end, ‘have any problems with money or women?’

  ‘If he did,’ Kirk replied, ‘he wouldn’t be telling me, unless he was in desperate trouble. I don’t believe he was in any money trouble. That place he had in Kent cost a lot to keep up, but in a good year he was making a very fine living here. As for the women, I simply don’t know. I should have said that he was a man who lived his life in tight little compartments, if you know what I mean. Rig
ht hand barely aware what the left hand was doing. He could have been involved with women – I think they found him attractive – but as to facts I haven’t a clue.’

  As he wandered down the stairs Powerscourt wondered if Kirk would have told him anything about Dauntsey’s affairs with women if he had known about them. ‘Actually, Lord Powerscourt, he was a most frightful womanizer, he went through them at the rate of one every three months. . .’ No, he couldn’t imagine Kirk saying that. In fact Powerscourt couldn’t think of anyone he had talked to so far who would have told him if Dauntsey was having affairs. They closed ranks, these lawyers, and only told the world what they felt the world should hear. Truth was rationed in the lawyers’ chambers; it was potentially too dangerous to be let loose.

  Of the great battle with Porchester Newton, however, he was told a great deal. The benchers in Queen’s Inn were elected, he learned, and at the last vacancy a month or so before Dauntsey’s death there had been a fierce struggle between the two men. The benchers, in effect, were the governing body of the Inn. Like the other Inns of Court Queen’s demanded a substantial payment from new benchers. But unlike the others Queen’s also demanded that every bencher remember the Inn in his will, though the precise percentage of the total estate was not known. This double collection made the little Inn one of the richest places in London, with almost all the money earmarked for scholarships and bursaries for students from humble backgrounds. The largest Inns of Court had forty or even fifty benchers on their books. Queen’s had only eight. And Powerscourt heard whispers even on his first day about the bitter fight that had preceded Dauntsey’s election as bencher. These affairs, he was told, are not conducted like Parliamentary contests. There are no slates of candidates, no formal speeches. But aspirant benchers give sherry parties so they can shake the hands of voters they might not have met. Discreet dinner parties are held to win over the waverers. Supporters of the rival candidates whisper about the deficiencies of their opponents into the ears of all those who will listen, and there are many who will listen. Right up to the end it seemed as though Dauntsey’s great rival Porchester Newton was going to win. Nobody was prepared to say what rumour Dauntsey’s people had spread in the last twenty-four hours before the voting, but it worked. The ballot was secret but it was widely known that Dauntsey had a comfortable victory. Newton had not spoken to him since. Newton, Powerscourt realized, would make a formidable enemy. He was the opposite of Dauntsey in almost every way. Dauntsey had a soaring imagination which enabled him on occasion to see motives that were apparent to nobody else. Newton was a solid performer, plodding through his cases with little sparkle. Dauntsey was quick, mercurial. Newton was slow, stolid, some even ventured that he was stupid. Powerscourt’s only doubt about Newton as a possible murderer was the murder weapon. Certainly there was motive. Some of the insults traded during the vicious election campaign would have produced a duel in Temple Gardens in years gone by. Powerscourt wasn’t sure he could see Newton as a poisoner until he heard that he had worked in India in his youth. You could learn enough about poisons there, as Powerscourt well knew, to last you a lifetime.