Death Called to the Bar

by David Dickinson

  ‘He was drinking Châteauneuf-du-Pape,’ Elizabeth Dauntsey had gone pale, ‘the stuff they were going to have later at the feast.’ Only Alex Dauntsey never got that far, Powerscourt said to himself, the strychnine got to him first. The poison concealed, perhaps, behind the strong taste of the red wine.

  ‘And did you put a drop of poison in his drink when you were there, Mrs Dauntsey?’

  There was a slight pause, whether through guilt or insult Powerscourt could not decide.

  ‘I did not.’ He couldn’t decide if she was telling the truth. He thought she probably was.

  Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to walk to the window. A jury, he thought, could well convict on what he had heard this afternoon. The rain had stopped. Spring sunshine was beginning to dry the park out. The deer had abandoned their hiding places and were gambolling about on the grass.

  ‘I have to ask you this question, Mrs Dauntsey. I seem to need a sentence of permanent apology virtually every time I speak in this house. What were you all going to do if the woman became pregnant?’ Don’t even think of asking the really nasty question today, he said to himself – what happens if it’s a girl. ‘To put it at its crudest, did you think he was going to divorce you?’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth Dauntsey firmly, ‘I don’t believe he was. Alex said the woman’s husband wasn’t going to live very long.’

  ‘Was the man ill? Did he have some terminal illness?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lord Powerscourt, Alex didn’t say.’

  Christ in heaven, Powerscourt said to himself. Maybe other murders were contemplated, Alexander Dauntsey and his mistress plotting to push an old man down the stairs or shove him under the wheels of a train.

  ‘Did Alex have a time scale, Mrs Dauntsey? Did he think the doctor would have departed in six months, nine months maybe?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Let’s play make believe, Mrs Dauntsey. Not quite a fairy story, more of a let’s suppose. Would you be agreeable to that?’

  ‘Of course, Lord Powerscourt. I’m only trying to help you.’

  ‘I know you are. Now then, let’s suppose that in a couple of months’ time the young woman becomes pregnant. The husband dies, conveniently, well before the child is due. Then she gives birth, let us say to a son. How, if Alex is still married to you, would he get his hands on the child? The two of them can hardly come and live here. Perhaps the young woman would be happy to give up the child for Alex to bring up here with you. It’s all frightfully complicated.’

  Elizabeth Dauntsey looked at the ring on her wedding finger. ‘Alex said he would work something out, that we had to take one step at a time. He was always an impulsive sort of thinker.’

  Powerscourt wondered if it was time for him to go. Mrs Dauntsey was looking tired and drawn all of a sudden, as if these confessions had taken their toll.

  She looked at him suddenly, ‘It doesn’t matter now, Lord Powerscourt, it doesn’t matter at all. Alex is dead. Nothing is going to bring him back.’

  Powerscourt took her hand. It felt cold, even though she had been close to the fire. ‘I will do whatever I can to help you, Mrs Dauntsey. I may have to come back to see you again in a few days. But before I go – forgive me for causing yet more embarrassment but it is important. The name of the young woman with whom your husband was going to spend some time would be most useful to me, if you would be so kind. And the professional address of her husband.’

  For the first time since Powerscourt had known her, Elizabeth Dauntsey blushed. ‘It might be easier all round,’ said Powerscourt, sensing her discomfiture, ‘if you wrote them down, the names and addresses, I mean.’

  Elizabeth Dauntsey crossed to a small writing table by the window. Powerscourt did not read her piece of paper at once but waited until he was in the train back to London. Rivers Cavendish, he read, 24 Harley Street, W1. A fashionable address. Mrs Catherine Cavendish, 36 Tite Street, Chelsea, SW3. He didn’t think it likely, however you looked at it, that Catherine Cavendish was the killer. Excitement and romance were meant to be on the menu as far as she was concerned. But Dr Rivers Cavendish, a man being cuckolded in the last months of his life? At the speed the criminal justice system worked, he would probably have been able to kill Dauntsey and pass away several months later without even being brought to trial. And there was something else. Doctors, Powerscourt said to himself, know all about poison.

  Sarah Henderson was thinking about Edward. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning in Queen’s Inn but she had been thinking about him for some time already. Sarah spent quite a lot of her waking day thinking about Edward. She had discovered that her fingers could shoot out and turn her shorthand into sheets of typewritten paper on her keyboard while her mind was elsewhere. She wondered when, or maybe if, Edward was going to ask her to marry him. Only the previous evening, encased in the fog, they had spent a passionate forty-five minutes wrapped round a lamp-post together on the Embankment. She had felt then that he might pop the question. After all, ‘Will you marry me?’ didn’t have any of those awkward b’s or p’s or s’s that sometimes gave Edward so much trouble. She wondered if she should suggest that they needed to have a talk about things. But Sarah wasn’t sure about this plan of action. Men, according to an old school friend who had been observing two elder brothers at home for years and who had nearly been engaged to half a dozen young men, were always happy to go for walks, to take you to the theatre, to make love to you, but if you suggested serious talks or discussing things like relationships, their eyes would glaze over and suddenly they would have urgent engagements elsewhere. It wasn’t their fault really, her friend had explained, it was just the way they were made, rather like they enjoyed watching cricket or playing football. But then there was so much to discuss. If, just supposing, if they were married, where would they live? Ever since she was a small child Sarah had believed that one of the main, if not the principal, reasons for getting married was that she could move furniture about all over her own house whenever the fancy took her. But now, in the real world, there were difficulties. She couldn’t leave her mother, but it wouldn’t be fair to Edward to ask him to start married life with a sick mother-in-law who took you to her own updated version of the Inquisition about the law courts every time you crossed her threshold. And then there was Edward’s future to consider. After his triumph in the Puncknowle case was he going to take up the speaking side of the law, or was he content to go on devilling for ever? Sarah had not detected any eagerness on Edward’s part for a change of direction in his career. And then she heard his footstep on the stairs. Edward appeared to have a telepathic knowledge of when her room mate had gone out to deliver some work or to take dictation elsewhere.

  ‘Morning, Sarah,’ said Edward, ‘you’re looking very smart today.’ Sarah was wearing a dark skirt, a cream blouse and a dark blue jacket that had a slightly masculine look about it.

  ‘Thank you, Edward,’ Sarah replied, thinking suddenly of the two of them wrapped round the lamp-post the evening before.

  ‘I’ve got some splendid news, Sarah,’ said Edward, admiring the way the red hair curled down those pale cheeks. ‘Lord Powerscourt has asked us round to Manchester Square any time next weekend. He was going to invite us to their place in the country but Lady Lucy thought that might not suit the twins.’

  ‘And where is the Powerscourt place in the country?’

  ‘It is, in the good lord’s words, in the splendidly unfashionable county of Northamptonshire. It’s near Oundle. They’ve got a cricket pitch and a tennis court, though it’s a bit early for that. It’s frightfully old, Sarah. Powerscourt thinks men went out from it to fight at Crécy and Agincourt.’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Sarah, not quite sure how far back in the past those two battles were. It was the kind of thing Edward always knew.

  ‘And there’s a ghost, Sarah. Mr Ghost, not Mrs Ghost or Miss Ghost. A real clanking-about-in-the-middle-of-the-night-ghost. But look, I’ve got to go and look up those
wills for Lord Powerscourt. I’m not due in court at all today.’

  ‘Wills, what wills, Edward? What does Lord Powerscourt want with wills?’

  Edward lowered his voice. ‘It’s the benchers’ wills, Sarah. He thinks there’s a very faint chance they might be connected with the murders. I’ll see you later.’

  With that Edward clattered off down the stairs. Less than five minutes later Sarah heard an unfamiliar pair of boots tramping up towards her attic fastness. Big man, she thought, quite heavy. That stair near the top only squeaks if you’re over fifteen stone. There was a grunt as if the climb up the stairs had taken its toll. Then the door was opened and her visitor was beside her, towering above Sarah at her station by the typewriter.

  ‘Miss Henderson,’ said Barton Somerville, ‘forgive me for calling on you like this. I was looking for the young man they call Edward. They said I might find him up here.’

  Sarah wondered what was going on. Never before had the Treasurer of the Inn been to see her. Nor could she see what he might want with such a humble person as Edward. He might be all the world to her, she knew, but he was a very junior member of these chambers let alone the Inn.

  ‘Edward’s not here, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Barton Somerville testily. ‘Do you know where he is, by any chance?’

  ‘I think he’s gone to look up some benchers’ wills for Lord Powerscourt, sir.’

  ‘Benchers’ wills?’ Somerville suddenly sounded quite extraordinarily angry. ‘Working for Powerscourt now, is he? Not for the chambers that pay his wages. We’ll see about that, young lady.’

  ‘I’m sure he would have cleared it with Mr Kirk, sir. Edward’s always very scrupulous about things like that.’

  Barton Somerville snorted. He slammed the door and departed noisily down the stairs. Edward had not told Sarah not to mention where he was going or anything like that. She hoped she hadn’t got Edward into trouble. And, once more, as she looked out at the innocent lawns of New Court, a frock-coated porter pushing a mighty pile of documents down the path that led to the law courts, Sarah felt very frightened. And it would be hours before Edward came back.

  Two days later Powerscourt was waiting for a visitor in the first-floor drawing room in Manchester Square. Catherine Cavendish was due in ten minutes’ time. And he had written to ask for an appointment with Dr Cavendish at his Harley Street consulting rooms for the following day.

  Lady Lucy found him pacing up and down the room. She was smiling broadly.

  ‘Francis, my love, you’ll like this!’ she said happily.

  ‘What news, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘It’s Catherine Cavendish, Francis. She was born Catherine Chadwick. She was a chorus girl. At the Alhambra and the Duke of York’s and the Gentleman’s Relish. They say she was the senior dancer at the Alhambra, a sort of Head Prefect.’

  Powerscourt tried to get his brain around what would be entailed in being the Head Girl of a chorus line and failed. ‘God bless my soul, Lucy, I didn’t know you had any relations in what one might call the saucier part of the West End.’

  Lady Lucy laughed. ‘I don’t, Francis. I mean I don’t have any relations in that world. Mrs Trumper Smith told me.’

  Powerscourt’s face registered complete ignorance, if not astonishment, at the mention of Mrs Trumper Smith.

  ‘You know Mrs T, Francis. That’s what everyone calls her, behind her back at any rate. She lives three doors down from here. Her son is in the same class at school as Thomas. The husband’s a doctor, quite a fashionable one, I think, with a practice in Harley Street or Wimpole Street. He knows the Cavendishes, says the chorus girl is quite delightful.’

  ‘Did the woman say what was wrong with Dr Cavendish, the one who’s meant to be leaving this world quite shortly?’

  ‘She did not, Francis.’

  There was a ring at the front door bell. A tall, dark-haired woman in a long grey dress was shown in and took her seat in front of the fire. Powerscourt noted that she was very slim, with a tiny waist and a very beautiful face. The eyes, even in the sad circumstances in which Mrs Cavendish presumably found herself, were grey and slightly cheeky and her lips looked as if they wanted nothing better than to be kissed. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the rather vulgar assessment of female beauty carried out by some of his more disreputable fellow officers stationed at Simla, summer residence of the British Raj in India. It was known as the ships test and was based on Marlowe’s famous line about Helen of Troy: ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ The great beauties of Simla were awarded ships by the hundred according to the male estimates of their beauty. Powerscourt thought he remembered one gorgeous creature reaching the dizzy heights of seventy hundred and fifty. That record stood all through that summer, up to and including the Viceroy’s Ball. Mrs Cavendish, Powerscourt felt, would have been most eager to play the game. Her score would certainly have approached the record, perhaps even bettered it. An entire chorus line, led by Catherine Cavendish in person, he reckoned, would muster a combined score of many thousands.

  ‘Mrs Cavendish,’ he began, ‘how kind of you to call.’ The eyes, which he had originally thought to be cheeky, had turned cautious as Mrs Cavendish took a lightning appraisal of the room and its furnishings.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Lord Powerscourt,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m afraid I want to ask you some questions about Mr Dauntsey, Mrs Cavendish.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you’d asked me here to talk about the political situation in the Balkans.’

  Powerscourt smiled. ‘How long ago did you meet him, Mrs Cavendish?’

  ‘Mr Dauntsey? I met him about nine weeks ago. It was in my husband’s waiting room. He was running very late that day, like the doctors often do, and Alex, Mr Dauntsey I mean, was the last patient waiting to go in. I was there waiting for Dr C to come out as we were already late for a reception. We just got talking, the way you do.’

  Mrs Cavendish looked rather defiant as she said this.

  ‘And things just went on from there, Mrs Cavendish, regular meetings, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I think he was the most charming man I’ve ever met, Lord Powerscourt. He used to buy me lunch, lovely lunches, they were, and always with lovely wines. He had a wonderful nose for a wine and a great love for the names, Château La Tour Blanche, that’s a Sauterne, Lord Powerscourt, Château Fleur Cardinale, Chambolle Mussigny, Les Amoureuses, Chassagne Montrachet.’

  Powerscourt was very impressed that she did not pronounce either of the two t’s in Montrachet. Johnny Fitzgerald had been heard describing people who did as little better than Philistines. Powerscourt found himself wondering if Johnny Fitzgerald might replace the late Alex Dauntsey in Mrs Cavendish’s affections with their shared love of fine vintages. But however hard he tried he couldn’t see Mrs Cavendish in enormous boots, wrapped up to the chin, waiting before dawn for a flight of rare birds over the Suffolk marshes.

  Lunch in expensive restaurants with expensive wine lists was one thing, Powerscourt said to himself, weekends away in riverside hotels something rather different.

  ‘Would I be right in saying, Mrs Cavendish, that on the weekend of the feast, you and Mr Dauntsey were planning to go away together?’

  Catherine Cavendish looked down at the Powerscourt carpet. ‘I’m going to be frank with you, Lord Powerscourt, and I’ll thank you to keep what I’m going to say to yourself.’ She paused for a moment. ‘There’s people out there,’ she made a vague nod towards the window as if referring to the population of Manchester Square and the wider purlieus of Marylebone, ‘who will say that I married Dr C for his money. Well, that’s as maybe. He’s always been very kind to me. I have no complaints. But there’s more to marriage than kindness, Lord Powerscourt, as I’m sure you know. Any girl who heard the sob stories of the sad husbands who used to buy time to talk with the chorus girls could tell you that. Think of wha
t it says in the Good Book. Man and woman created he them, Lord Powerscourt, man and woman. I’ve always said there was more going on in that Garden of Eden than eating apples, if you follow me. Dr C, well, poor soul, he wasn’t up to any of that man and woman created he them business, not up to it at all, I can tell you. It’s because of his illness – he’s not got very long to live, you know. Alex was, if you follow me, Lord Powerscourt. So, yes, I was going away with him. We were going to a flat that belonged to a friend of his after that feast and going off to Moulsford the next day. That’s on the Thames up towards Oxford. I was really looking forward it. You can miss things for too long, know what I mean, Lord P?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, wondering how to reach the more delicate ground yet. ‘Did you talk about children at all, Mrs Cavendish?’

  ‘What about them, Lord P? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you do,’ said Powerscourt, remembering suddenly that nobody had called him Lord P since the lady who came to make his bed at Cambridge. ‘Let me be blunt, Mrs Cavendish, did you discuss what might happen if you became pregnant?’

  Catherine Cavendish tossed her head back and roared with laughter. ‘Is there anything you don’t want to know, Lord P? You’re the curiousest man I’ve ever met. Quite what any of this has to do with Alex ended up crocked in a bowl of beetroot I don’t know. Yes, we did talk about children once. I said I couldn’t stand the little buggers, pardon my French, Lord P, but they’ve always seemed to me to be an unimaginable amount of work for very little return. It’s as if the whole chorus line dances its heart out for one man in the audience and he doesn’t even bother to clap. Alex told me he’d been trying to have children with his wife for years and failed so he thought he couldn’t have any anyway. Not that that would have got in the way of the man and woman created he them business, I can tell you that for nothing, Lord P.’

  ‘Forgive me for sounding curious, Mrs Cavendish, did Mr Dauntsey ever ask you what you would do if you became pregnant?’