Death Called to the Bar lfp-5

by David Dickinson

  ‘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 chambe
rs 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 i
nvestigate 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.’