Death at the Jesus Hospital (12 page)

‘So Sir Peregrine is proposing that they sell up. Fifty per cent to the Prime Warden sounds a pretty good deal to me, William. And what’s to stop any of them taking all their share for themselves and never giving any back to the
company
when the peril or pestilence has ended?’

‘What suspicious minds you people have,’ said Burke, shaking his head sadly, ‘but as it happens, you’re more or less right. Three months ago, I think, Sir Peregrine proposed this vast sell-off of all their assets. He’s been canvassing for votes ever since. They’ve got a rather unusual membership, the Silkworkers. Most of the livery companies don’t want to have too many members on board – you don’t want to be paying for elaborate feasts for five hundred or more. But the Silkworkers have an ordinance that says only Silkworkers can be admitted to their almshouses. Rather than go to the bother of changing their statutes, they simply enlist
everybody
who isn’t a Silkworker already into the company when they are taken in at places like your Jesus Hospital.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ Powerscourt was leaning forward, ‘that all the old boys in the Jesus Hospital in Marlow are members of the Ancient Mistery of Silkworkers? That they all have a vote, for God’s sake?’

‘They do.’

‘You’re not telling me that all the pupils at Allison’s up in Norfolk are members with votes too?’

‘They’re too young,’ said Burke, ‘but I bet many of the masters are members. I’m virtually certain that the late bursar must have belonged.’

Powerscourt rose to his feet and began pacing up and down the room, as he did so often in his own drawing room in Markham Square. Walking the quarterdeck was how Lady Lucy referred to it.

‘I think you said earlier, William, that one of your experts had doubts about the authenticity of the codicil?’

Burke laughed. ‘Yes, and a most entertaining fellow he is too. Professor of History at Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity, said by his contemporaries to be the brightest interpreter of the past since Thomas Babington Macaulay. Name of Tait, Selwyn Augustus Tait. He’s thought to be unable to write a word of his books until he’s taken a pint of claret on board. He read the codicil, the original version, in this room, in that very chair, Francis, where you’re sitting now.’

Powerscourt stared at his chair as if a scrap of historical wisdom might have been deposited on it by his
distinguished
predecessor. ‘What did he say?’

‘In actual fact, he read it twice. Then he said, “Mr Burke, I would not hold you to any figure, but tell me, what are the Silkworkers worth? Approximately. To the nearest million.”’

‘What answer did you give, William?’

‘I said five or six million, maybe more.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘He laughed. Then he asked if we had any decent claret about the place. “When my wits have been sharpened by a glass or two,” he said, “I shall give you my verdict.” Then
he went out to stare at the view from that window behind you, the one where you can see St Paul’s.’

‘I presume the claret arrived in due course?’

‘It did, an excellent vintage it was too. When Tait had consumed two glasses, at a pretty rapid pace, it must be said, he laughed again and poured himself a refill. “It’s a fake,” he said, “that codicil. I’m almost certain it’s a fake.” And he laughed a third time.’

‘Like Saint Peter with the cock crowing perhaps. Did he explain why he thought that?’ asked Powerscourt,
fascinated
by the account of the claret-drinking historian, a cross between Johnny Fitzgerald and Edward Gibbon.

‘He did. Of course he did. For a start he said that people like the Silkworkers always looked after their archives very carefully. He had examined a couple of the livery
companies
’ records in the course of his researches and found them extremely well annotated. He doubted if anything could have been found recently which would have been in existence for six hundred years without discovery. By this time, Francis, most of the original bottle had gone and I felt obliged to order another. The professor’s main objection was cynical. You always have to ask this question in these circumstances, he claimed.
Cui bono
? Who benefits? Who stands to gain from it? It was a good question for Cassius and Cicero, he said, and an even better one now, for the Silkworkers. Sir Peregrine and his colleagues could make fortunes, possibly millions for Sir Peregrine alone. He was sure the thing was a clever forgery, designed to provide an avenue through which the funds of the Silkworkers could be diverted into the pockets of their officers. Then he took another long pull of his claret and said good afternoon and left to catch his train.’

‘Was he weaving on his way out? Steering an uncertain course for the door perhaps?’

‘He was not, Francis. Selwyn Augustus Tait seemed as sober as you and I. Maybe there’s something in the air up
there in the Fens with all that mist and those winds from the Urals.’

‘Do we know if there is a timetable for this vote? By God, it’ll be more exciting than a by-election. The fate of these vast sums of money in the hands of a group of people many of whom have never seen a bolt of silk in their lives. A date, William, a date?’

‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ Burke replied. ‘Something tells me it is the middle of February, end of February perhaps? I’ll check for you.’

Burke fell silent for a moment. The great
seventeenth-century
French clock that had once graced the hunting lodge of Rambouillet ticked away the seconds of the late afternoon on the Burke mantelpiece. ‘I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, Francis, but I blame democracy and the popular papers for so many of our troubles, I really do.’

‘Whatever do you mean, William?’ Powerscourt had never heard his brother-in-law as political or as
philosophical
as this before.

‘With democracy as we know it now, with all these extra voters on the rolls, politics is governed by the whims of the uneducated and the ignorant. The popular papers,
especially
the
Daily Mail
– God, how I hate the
Daily Mail
– have been exaggerating or inventing the threat from the Germans for years now. You can scarcely open a newspaper but there are these ludicrous scare stories in there. If the country were run by intelligent people like men of business, we could sort out the German problem in a weekend. “You would like a bit more of Africa,” we could say. “Well, have another bit. Have this bit here and that bit over there, while you’re about it, we’ve got far too much of it already.” So the German men of business would say, “That is very kind, now what would you like in return? Would you like us to stop building our dreadnoughts up there in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven? Would you like us to halt the arms race at a point where you always have four or five big ships more than we do so you and your
people don’t feel threatened? Very good. We shall do it.” I’m sure it wouldn’t even take a weekend. But can you imagine what the newspapers would say back here? “Asquith gives Empire to Germans!” “British Empire handed over to the Hun!” The mass of the population who read the
Mail
and not
The Times
or the
Morning Post
would be up in arms. The government would fall within weeks. They would be pariahs, excluded from polite society, maybe even banned from their clubs, who knows.’ Burke sighed. ‘It’s all too late now, Francis, far too late. People talk about
currencies
being devalued so they lose their purchasing power and their value. Good government has been devalued by extending the franchise in this country but nobody could stop it.’

Powerscourt thought a diversion was needed. ‘William,’ he began, ‘I think it must be sitting in this chair where that other fellow sat. Have you any decent claret in the house?’

Burke laughed. ‘I’ll order some now, Francis. We could have the same wine as the professor had.’

Burke stopped halfway across the room and stared at his brother-in-law. ‘My God, Francis, how stupid of me. I’ve forgotten to tell you one of the most important facts of all about recent events at the Silkworkers.’

‘What was that?’

‘How could I be so foolish! There was a lot of opposition to Sir Peregrine and his friends in the Silkworkers. Can you guess who the leader of the opposition was?’

‘I have no idea, William.’

‘I’ll tell you who it was,’ said Burke. ‘It was the man recently found dead at the top of the steps leading down to the river in Silkworkers Hall with the strange mark on his chest. Sir Rufus Walcott, he was the leader of the opposition.’

One hundred and twenty miles away Detective Inspector Grime of the Norfolk Constabulary was a very angry man.
He had been waiting all day for one of the boys of Allison’s School to come and speak to him about the visit of the phoney postman on the day of the murder of the school bursar Roderick Gill. That morning a real postman had retraced what they thought must have been the steps of the killer. The headmaster had addressed the pupils at the end of morning assembly before lessons began.

‘Good morning, boys,’ he had said, sweeping his black gown behind him as he spoke. ‘I know that you will all be as anxious as I am to clear up the recent murder in our midst. This morning I appeal for your help. Less than an hour ago the postal authorities and the police repeated the journey through our school of the murderer who came
disguised
as a postman. If this second visit by a real postman sparked any memories in your minds of that earlier, fatal trip, perhaps you would be so kind as to speak to Inspector Grime on my left here. He will be in the Officers’ Training Corps office for the rest of the day. Please see him if there is anything you remember, anything at all.’

The boys filed out and headed for their classrooms. Many of them stared rather insolently at the policeman as they passed him on their way out. Inspector Grime had made few friends among the schoolboy population of Allison’s. He had spoken to them all by now. His bored manner did not impress. With one or two of them he had been
downright
rude. As the pupils settled into their desks to begin their day’s work, the word began to be passed round. It was started by a rather intelligent young man in the Fifth Form who proclaimed to all and sundry that he wanted to be an anarchist when he grew up. ‘Don’t speak to the policeman. Pass it on,’ he wrote and tore the page out of his notebook. He handed it to his neighbour. Inside ten minutes every boy in the room had read it. When the pupils changed classes at the end of the first lesson, those in on the secret told the colleagues they passed in the corridor. The would-be anarchist’s note was still travelling by the time of morning
break at eleven. Within five minutes of that starting, every single boy in the school had received the message. The policy of non-cooperation with the civil authorities had been established in a little over two hours.

Inspector Grime sat in his temporary office surrounded by literature about the Officers’ Training Corps and a
succession
of military photographs on the wall. Boy soldiers from Allison’s marching past the front of the building. Boy soldiers at camp in some dreary part of Norfolk near the sea. Boy soldiers standing steady on parade beneath the Union flag. The headmaster had assured him that the witnesses would probably come during morning break. They did not. The headmaster then revised his opinion and informed Inspector Grime that the boys would come to him during the lunch hour. They did not. After lessons closed for the day the headmaster felt sure that this was the time for the boys to come forward. He asked his deputy if he had heard anything on the school grapevine about the boys’ attitude to the police Inspector. The deputy had no intelligence to offer. By now the headmaster was seriously worried. Were the boys in his care obstructing the course of justice? He found it impossible to believe that they had not noticed anything that morning. He wondered if there might be another way of getting them to talk.

Detective Inspector Grime was livid. He had read through all his notes on the case so far. He had learnt from one of the OTC handbooks how to dismantle and clean a rifle. He had read about making progress in open country and through difficult terrain, which was certainly where he felt he was now. Worse was to come. His sergeant arrived shortly before five o’clock to tell him of a message from the Dean of York, who had promised to make further inquiries about the whereabouts of one Jude Mitchell, cuckolded husband of the mistress of the dead man. The dean and his people had toiled all day for many days and caught nothing. Mitchell was nowhere to be found. They had cast their nets as far
afield as Beverley to the east and Lichfield to the south and Ripon to the north, all minster or cathedral cities where a mason like Mitchell might have been able to take on
temporary
work. He was nowhere to be found.

‘Damn it, Sergeant,’ said Grime to his subordinate, ‘where the hell is the wretched man? You can’t just disappear like this. Not nowadays.’ The sergeant resisted the
temptation
to say that Mitchell appeared to have done precisely that. ‘Give me a moment, will you?’ the Inspector went on. ‘You can take this back and send it off. I’d better send a telegram with the latest news, or rather lack of it, to Lord Francis bloody Powerscourt. Damn the man and his fancy theories!’

Had Inspector Grime been a more sympathetic officer, one that boys might be happy to speak to about what they had seen, he would have heard some things that were not all that important to his investigation. But some sensible boys would have told him that the man was of average height. Others would have told him that the man seemed to be in his middle thirties. Others again would have told of a thick black beard. But one boy had information that would have made the Inspector and Powerscourt very interested indeed. This was a boy called Lewis, David Lewis, who was in his first year in the Sixth Form. Lewis was the best mimic in the school. He could impersonate his headmaster, his housemaster and the chaplain perfectly. When his friends persuaded him, he would deliver wickedly accurate
sermons
from the chaplain late at night, standing at the end of his bed in the dormitory with his dressing gown acting as cassock. On another famous occasion in Allison’s legend he had rung the headmaster, purporting to be his housemaster, about some detentions which were subsequently cancelled and caused a rift between the two schoolmasters which had not been healed to this day.