‘I could go on, Mr Treasurer, with more examples. I have dozens of them here in my papers. All tell the same story. The rich are robbing the poor. Money intended to relieve suffering, to enable poor young men to acquire an education here, has been taken from them and given to old men already wealthy beyond the dreams of most Londoners. They have no voice, the sick barristers fallen on hard times, the young men from the East End who have been denied their proper place by old men’s greed. Your greed, Mr Treasurer. Your actions, in fraudulently changing the bequests of generous people who died long ago, are a disgrace to your Inn and to your profession. No wonder the cartoonists so often portray the lawyers of London as greedy fellows only interested in enormous meals and enormous retainers and even more enormous refreshers. I can only make a rough estimate about the amount of money diverted. You, of course, as Treasurer are liable to re-election by your fellow benchers every five years. Maybe you embarked on your criminal career over twenty years ago when you first came up for re-election. A little bribe to the electors never went amiss. The only problem is that they expect a slightly larger bribe next time. Well, you were certainly able to provide it. My calculation, based on the Bank of England figures and some of your own accounts, is that each bencher, who received virtually nothing for being a bencher twenty-five years ago, now enjoys an annual income of between ten and fifteen thousand pounds. Each. For doing precisely nothing. The position is exactly like some of those late eighteenth-century sinecures that paid out thousands and thousands of pounds for doing nothing that so enraged William Pitt the Younger. The value of the principal required to produce such figures is around twenty million pounds, a sum well within the range of the stolen bequests we know of when adjusted to today’s values.’
Powerscourt paused again. The Chief Inspector was still scribbling. Somerville looked as though he would like to vault over the desk and hit him.
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ the Treasurer sneered. ‘A third rate Irish peer and a jumped-up constable from Clerkenwell?’ He banged his fist on the desk. Powerscourt looked at him, unmoved by the insult, and untouched by the threat of violence.
‘No, Mr Treasurer,’ he went on, ‘that is certainly not all we’ve got. We’ve got, you’ll be delighted to hear, a whole lot more. That last part of my report dealt with finance. It’s now time to go back to murder, to the murders of Alexander Dauntsey and Woodford Stewart. Stewart had been elected a bencher some two months before Dauntsey. The two men were very close. They had prosecuted in some of the great financial cases of their times. Dauntsey was one of the few barristers of any Inn who was rated by the sharper minds in the City of London. With his demise they lengthened the odds against a conviction in the Puncknowle fraud trial. So Dauntsey knew about money. It is my belief that he discovered what had been going on in the accounts of Queen’s Inn. There are reports of his saying to his wife that he was worried about the accounts, and looking at some figures with a junior member here and saying things weren’t right. Shortly before his death Dauntsey had a meeting with the previous Financial Steward in Fulham and asked about bursaries for poor students. He was obviously on the right track. He asked for a meeting with you just days before he died. He brought Woodford Stewart with him. I believe that on that occasion he threatened to go public with the frauds that had been going on. Whatever his weaknesses, lack of courage wasn’t one of them. Your blustering and banging of your fists wouldn’t have had any impact on Alex Dauntsey. So you killed him. Woodford Stewart was not at the feast. You killed him several days later, probably hiding the body in your private rooms above this one and taking him to Temple Church in the middle of the night. We have heard, Mr Treasurer, about the First, Second, Third and Fourth Suspects. You are the Fifth Suspect. And, I put it to you in conclusion, Mr Treasurer, the other four are innocent. You are guilty.’
Barton Somerville snarled at them. He stopped writing and pointed his pen at them as if it were a spear he could hurl into their hearts.
‘What a load of nonsense!’ he spat. ‘You can’t possibly prove any of it. I’ve never seen such incompetence in a criminal investigation in my life! You!’ He turned and glowered at Chief Inspector Beecham. ‘I shall report your disgraceful conduct to the Home Secretary!’
‘You tried the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police last time,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘and that didn’t work. I don’t suppose you’ll have any better luck this time.’ He and Powerscourt had agreed on a policy of initial politeness but that if Somerville turned nasty, they would turn nasty back.
‘And you, Powerscourt, you’re a disgrace to your class. I shall make sure it’s known in society that you’re nothing better than a fraud and a charlatan, a man who brings ridiculous charges with no evidence at all.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt smiled his broadest smile at Somervillle, certain that this would enrage him even further, ‘we can prove lots and lots of things. Figures don’t lie. Your own records don’t lie. Wills don’t lie. Only senior barristers, who ought to know better, lie and they’ve been lying for years.’
‘How dare you?’ shouted Somerville, banging his fist so hard on the table that he must have nearly dislocated his wrist. ‘That’s slander, a bloody slander. I’ll take you to court for that!’
‘I fear, Mr Treasurer,’ said Powerscourt at his silkiest, ‘that you’re much more likely to be appearing in court conducting your own defence than you are to be prosecuting me. And there’s another development you ought to know about.’ He looked across at Beecham. ‘Ought to know about’ was another signal. ‘I took the liberty of speaking to Maxwell Kirk this morning. He is, as you know, a bencher, and the head of the chambers where Alex Dauntsey worked. I showed him the figures. Only the figures, we did not talk about the murders but I could see he had his suspicions. Not for nothing is Kirk now prosecuting Jeremiah Puncknowle. He was appalled by what has been happening. He is going to call an extraordinary general meeting of all the members of this Inn tomorrow afternoon. He is going to tell them what you have been doing for the last twenty years. He had no idea that the extra income he received from being a bencher had arrived with a trail of deception and criminality behind it. I believe he is going to put forward a motion calling on you to resign before you are forcibly removed from your office and stripped of your powers. By the time he has finished, you won’t have a single friend left in this Inn.’
‘He can’t do this! You can’t do this! I shall forbid the meeting! He can’t call it without my approval! You’ll pay for this, Powerscourt, mark my words, you’ll pay for it. Kirk is a traitor! He can’t have this meeting!’
‘I’m afraid he can and he will, Mr Treasurer.’ It was only the second time Detective Chief Inspector Beecham had spoken in the entire meeting. He had risen to his feet. ‘You see, Mr Treasurer, tomorrow afternoon you won’t be here.’ He went to the door and beckoned in a sergeant and a constable who had been waiting in the outer office. ‘Barton Obadiah Somerville, I am arresting you in connection with the murders of Alexander Dauntsey and Woodford Stewart. I must warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Take him away.’
Powerscourt saw that all the files in the gorgon’s office had been removed. That must have been the noises they heard in the early stages of the interview. Somerville was still screaming, ‘You’ll pay for this, Powerscourt!’ as they led him down the stairs and out the back door. The gorgon herself seemed to have disappeared too, Powerscourt saw, fled to a different lair.
‘You take care, my lord,’ said Beecham to Powerscourt as they parted on the bottom of the staircase. ‘I don’t think it’s over yet. And well done, my lord, you were tremendous in there.’
‘I just hope I made him cross,’ said Powerscourt with a grin. ‘The prospect of being voted out in disgrace is going to prey on his mind.’
As the cab bearing Somerville to the cells drew away, Powerscourt heard a final scream. All he could catch was ‘. . . pay for this’.
Ther
e were still a number of Chief Inspector Beecham’s men working in and around Queen’s Inn, but none of them noticed that Lord Francis Powerscourt was not alone on the journey back to his home. A stocky man with a dark beard slipped out of an alleyway just the far side of the porter’s lodge and followed him all the way. The man kept to a distance of about a hundred yards and every now and then he patted his pocket as if to reassure himself he had not left some important object at home.
16
Powerscourt walked slowly back to Manchester Square. He was still marvelling at the vicious hatred Somerville had directed his way. All of the vitriol seemed to be targeted at him. Chief Inspector Beecham, object of so much venom at the beginning of the investigation, had escaped scot free.
Perhaps a painting or two will calm my brain, he said to himself as he passed the Wallace Collection, more or less opposite his own house in Manchester Square. It was a quarter to five and there was still an hour and a quarter before the Head Porter closed up for the night, his great bunch of keys jangling on his belt as he patrolled right round the building checking that everything was in order. Powerscourt slipped into the Housekeeper’s Room and stared idly at an extraordinary painting by Paul Delaroche showing the State Barge of Cardinal Richelieu on the Rhone. A couple of aristocrats who had conspired to overthrow the mighty Cardinal were being towed in a boat behind, guarded by soldiers with halberds. Richelieu himself was dying at this point but he was still towing his enemies to Lyon for their execution. His barge was luxuriously furnished with red silk drapes and a rich oriental carpet trailed in the water by its side. Delaroche was interested in the reflections in the water, the almost Eastern luxury of his Cardinal. Powerscourt still had lawyers running through his mind, the living and the dead ones he had dealt with earlier that afternoon. He wondered briefly if Richelieu would have been a successful lawyer, Master of the Rolls perhaps, or a hanging judge. He stared briefly at the sister painting on the left which showed Richelieu’s successor Cardinal Mazarin literally on his deathbed, playing cards with his friends and surrounded by intriguing courtiers.
For Powerscourt there was something too rich, too decadent about these men of God flaunting their earthly power. It was time to move on. These two Delaroches were in the Housekeeper’s Room to the left of the main entrance. And on this particular day Powerscourt had his timings wrong. The Collection was going to close at five, not six. The Head Porter had already completed his circuit of the first floor, ushering the last visitors out of the building. And because Powerscourt was on one side of the building, he was not seen by the Head Porter as he began his Royal Progress on the other side, moving the pilgrims on, seeing to the doors and windows. By the time he did reach the Housekeeper’s Room Powerscourt had moved off up the stairs towards his favourite landscape in the Great Gallery, vacated by the Head Porter some ten minutes before. Just as he arrived in front of Rubens’ The Rainbow Landscape he heard a dull thud coming from downstairs. He checked his watch. It was exactly five o’clock. The Collection must have closed an hour earlier than usual today. He set forth for the front door, fingering the gun in his pocket. Ever since he heard the warnings from the underworld as relayed to Johnny Fitzgerald about threats to his life, he had carried it in his pocket every day. Lady Lucy checked with him every time he left the house. By the time he reached the ground floor he thought that he must be the only person left in the building, certainly the only one inside by mistake. At the front door he realized that no amount of manpower was going to let him out. The locks were huge, dark and forbidding in the shadows by the door. Powerscourt remembered that the nightwatchman came early in the evening, seven or eight o’clock. He would have a couple of hours to enjoy the paintings entirely on his own.
He stopped halfway up the stairs. He thought he heard a noise. Somebody with heavy boots was walking along the Great Gallery. And from the pattern of the steps he thought they were coming in his direction. Powerscourt didn’t wait for formal introductions. Something told him that this might be enemy action. His right hand felt once more for the gun in his pocket. Suddenly he remembered being locked in the cathedral with the dead of centuries in his last case in the West Country, when a huge pile of lethal masonry had been poured down, missing him by inches. He tiptoed down the stairs as fast as he could and made his way into the armoury section on the ground floor. Early evening light was falling on the great wood and glass cases that lined the walls, illuminating enormous spears, or ancient sets of body armour. There was a huge collection of weapons of death in here, long lances for horsemen to carry and run through their enemies, heavy pikes for foot soldiers to decapitate their foes, long swords and short swords, swords with pommels and swords without, swords for stabbing people, swords for cutting them in two, straight swords, curved swords, daggers, cuirasses, kris, armour from many centuries. In one of the rooms there was, he remembered, a horse clad in armour, ridden by a man in armour, a general perhaps, his visor slightly open so he could catch a proper sight of the opposition.
Powerscourt listened carefully. He could hear nothing. He suddenly realized that on either the ground or the first floors you could go right round the building in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. There was no wall or staircase that would force a man to retrace his steps and go back the way he had come. Here, in this beautiful set of rooms, he was going to play hide and seek round the galleries. The prize might be life or death. Powerscourt thought there was a staircase in the room next to the last of the armoury collections which had once been the Victorian smoking room. He thought he could hear those footsteps again, coming from the upper floors. The noise would continue for about half a minute or so and then stop. Was the man on the floor above waiting for him to appear? Was he looking for a hiding place, inside some great curtain perhaps, where only the barrel of his gun would need to come out of hiding and shoot his enemy in the heart? Very gingerly Powerscourt tiptoed up the stairs into a room full of Dutch landscapes. There was one painting of a ferry boat very early in the morning where the light glittered beautifully on the water and the daily commerce of the Dutch ebbed and flowed across the river. There was that sound again. His opponent certainly wasn’t concerned about making a noise. Powerscourt wondered suddenly about Somerville’s terrible threats and hoped he had not escaped from the police station to come here and take his revenge in the middle of the masterpieces of Europe and the armour of the East.
If he went round the building anti-clockwise he would be in the Great Gallery, where most of the finest paintings were hung, almost at once. If he went in the other direction he would go right round the first floor before he reached it from the other end. He decided on the long route and glided off through another roomful of Dutch paintings. Dimly on the walls he could just make out a loaf of bread being brought into a house, the interior of a church, a woman making lace, a girl reading a love letter. Any dark paintings, some of the most celebrated Rembrandts, would soon be almost invisible as the daylight began to fade. He checked his watch. A long time to go before the arrival of the nightwatchman. Then it was past the Canalettos, the blue-green water and the blue cloud-speckled skies and the public buildings of Venice rendered immortal under the artist’s brush. Powerscourt paused again. The footsteps were still marching up and down in the Great Gallery, almost as if the man was on sentry duty. Perhaps he knew that Powerscourt was bound to arrive there sooner or later. All he had to do was to wait for his prey. He glanced quickly at the Canaletto by his side. For no reason at all he suddenly remembered recently seeing a painting of Eton College done by Canaletto during his years in London. Even that most English of buildings under Canaletto’s hand looked as if it really belonged in Venice, somewhere behind San Zaccaria in the sestiere of San Marco, or floating improbably on its very own island like San Giorgio Maggiore. He pressed hard up against the wall by the door and made a rapid inspection of the landing. It was empty.
Powerscourt crossed the landing at a run, bent almost double. He was now trespassing in the improbable world
of Boucher, naked gods floating in the skies without visible means of support, pagan heroes living out the myths of ancient Greece in a naked innocence charged with considerable erotic force. Still he could hear the footsteps, slightly closer now. He wished he had the same means of upward propulsion as Boucher’s characters and could float right through the ceiling and the roof and alight in Number 8 Manchester Square. Then a room full of Greuzes, rather sickly portraits of young girls’ faces that looked as if they were designed to appeal to women and middle-aged and elderly men rather than to the young of either sex. He listened for the footsteps again. They seemed to have stopped. He stood absolutely still for two minutes to see if they started again. They did not.
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