Death at the Jesus Hospital (18 page)

‘Basically,’ said Johnny, ‘it means that you ask them to guarantee that there will be enough money to keep the hospital going in the future.’

Old heads began to nod in agreement at this moment. The barmaid announced in her sweetest voice that the Rose and Crown was closing for the night. The old men shuffled slowly back to the hospital. Johnny made his way back to the Elysian Fields. A taxi passed him as he neared the front door. Johnny had a brief glimpse of an enormous black
car discreetly parked under the trees. A very pretty young woman got out of the cab and fiddled with her gloves. As she entered the reception area, Johnny caught a hint of very expensive perfume. ‘The usual keys, madam?’ the night porter behind the desk said. ‘The Baron Haussmann Suite?’

Johnny was astonished. Sir Peregrine had indeed come once more to the Elysian Fields but not to plan more bribes for the old men of the Jesus Hospital. Johnny looked at the girl’s back as she disappeared up the stairs. She seemed to be very pretty indeed. Johnny didn’t think she had come all this way at this time to discuss share options or exchange rates. I’ll be damned, Johnny said to himself. The old devil. Lucky bugger.

Inspector Grime’s sergeant, a young man called Peter Morris, had nurtured hopes of becoming a draughtsman or an artist before being claimed by the more mundane appeal of the police force. This was his first murder inquiry. But he liked to keep his hand in when he could. He had constructed for his Inspector a great chart which stood proudly on one wall of Grime’s office. It was a timeline, with the days before and after the murder marked in different colours. Black, in harmony with his beard, marked the suspect’s movements. Blackbeard, as all the policemen referred to him now, first appeared in the chart on the day before the murder. He had arrived in the town at seven o’clock in the evening on a train from King’s Lynn. The policemen noted glumly that he had arrived in the dark. Then he seemed to disappear. No bar or hotel or bed and breakfast establishment remembered such a man. The black entry appeared again the following morning, entering the school and killing its bursar early in the morning. Then he vanished once more.

The Inspector and his sergeant were having a conference by the chart the morning after Sir Peregrine’s night visitor arrived at the Elysian Fields. ‘Right,’ said Inspector Grime,
‘we’ve had seventy replies so far and this is all that stands up. Is that right, Sergeant?’

‘I’m afraid it is, sir. I think some members of the public are too ready to offer help. We’ve had reports of all sorts of men with black beards but most of them were the wrong age or the wrong height. Some more reports should come in today, sir.’

Inspector Grime snorted. He had had such high hopes when the original description was provided by the
sixth-former
David Lewis. Now it seemed to be turning to dust in his hands. ‘Where did the bugger sleep, for God’s sake? Are there any empty houses or cottages he could have used? He can’t have disappeared between seven in the evening one day and eight o’clock in the morning the day after, can he?’

‘I’ve got people checking on all the empty dwellings, sir, to see if any of them might have been occupied. I don’t have the answers yet. Could I make a suggestion, sir?’

‘If you must,’ said Grime whose reluctance to listen to subordinates made him unpopular with his men.

‘I tried this the other day, sir, on my way home. If you skip over the fence at the side of the school football fields you could be in Allison’s School grounds without anybody knowing you were there. There are all kinds of outbuildings there, cricket pavilions, football changing rooms, a couple of barns, a great shed full of mowing machines and things. I checked with the school, sir, and they say they don’t bother to lock them at night. Blackbeard could have spent the night in there. There’s running water in some of them so he could have washed and things like that. It’s possible, sir.’

Inspector Grime snorted once again. ‘That’s as maybe. But how did the bugger get away? Nobody saw him getting on to a train out of Fakenham the next morning. I doubt very much if he would have wanted to hang around just after he’d killed the bursar. And he must have dumped the
postman
’s uniform somewhere along the way.’

‘He could have dumped the uniform anywhere as he was getting away,’ said the sergeant.

‘So how do you suggest he got away then?’ The Inspector repeated his question. ‘Did he have supernatural powers, do you suppose?’

Inspector Grime’s sarcasm was as unpopular as his dislike of suggestions. Sergeant Morris just carried on.

‘He could have walked, sir.’

‘Walked? Where could the man have walked to, for God’s sake?’

‘Norwich, sir, perhaps.’ The sergeant noticed that his Inspector was turning red and reaching in his pockets for his pipe, usually a bad sign. ‘I know it’s a long way but you’d be much less visible there with all those people in the railway station. He could have gone anywhere from Norwich, sir, as you well know.’

‘Would you like to take over the entire investigation, Sergeant? Use your vast experience in murder cases to solve the mystery of the vanishing Blackbeard?’

‘Certainly not, sir, but could I just make one last
suggestion
and then I’ll keep quiet. I’ve got the highest respect for your position and your experience, sir, as you know.’ Sergeant Morris was well aware that the Inspector had to write a report on his conduct in the next ten days. More or less continuous helpings of humble pie were
usually
required at this point. Sergeant Morris thought yet again about requesting a transfer to a different part of the county.

‘Let’s hear it, if I must.’

‘Well, sir, I’m sure you must have thought of this already. You’ve got so much more experience than me. But
suppose
this Blackbeard is our man. He travels up here from we know not where, could be anywhere in the country. That suggests to me that the motive, the reasons behind Gill’s death, may have nothing to do with the school, or the Silkworkers or his affair with the married woman and the
disappearing stonemason husband. The motive might lie elsewhere.’

Inspector Grime blew out an enormous mouthful of smoke. The tobacco was relaxing him.

‘That’s perfectly possible,’ he said. ‘It’s equally possible that Blackbeard was a hired killer. You can pick up people like that in London very cheaply these days, a hitman who’ll kill somebody for a couple of hundred pounds. The real murderer could still be local, but he could be a man who has decided to hire Blackbeard to hide his own identity.’

‘Do you believe that, sir?’

‘Do you know, Sergeant, I’m not sure what I believe any more.’

Inspector Miles Devereux had removed his feet from the desk and hooted with laughter when Johnny Fitzgerald telephoned with the news about overnight visitors at the Elysian Fields. He asked Johnny to see if the visitor was coming back to London by train. If so, once Johnny told Devereux the time of the train, she could be intercepted at the London end. Inspector Devereux looked forward to questioning her.

But his main concern that morning was with the two principal characters in his section of the investigation, Sir Peregrine Fishborne who was very much alive and Sir Rufus Walcott who was very much dead. He had decided two days before that he needed more information about them, about their past, about anything that happened some time before that might give rise to sudden death years later. Two of his brightest men had been given the task of finding as much as they could about the life stories of the dead man and the one who had succeeded him as Prime Warden of the Silkworkers Company.

‘It’s all very conventional,’ said David Lawrence, the constable assigned to Sir Peregrine. ‘I started in
Who’s 
Who
, that’s not much use really, a whole lot stuff about his progress through the livery company. I talked to a couple of reporters who write about the City, sir, and they said his life only got interesting with this row about the Silkworkers and the codicil. He’s well connected, Sir Peregrine, one cousin on the board of one of the big banks, another runs a shipping company, a third is a big noise in Lloyd’s the insurers. You could, one of these reporters said, coast along quite happily in the slipstream of those relations if you kept your nose clean and played your cards right. Sir Peregrine’s chairman of a middling sized insurance company, plenty of money, but not as much as the other members of the family. The other reporter thought this was what started him off on the codicil and the selling off of the assets. He has to keep up with Cousin Rupert at the bank and Cousin Jeremy at the shipping and Cousin Nigel in Lloyd’s.’

‘Would Sir Peregrine become richer than the others if he sold off the assets?’ asked Devereux, thinking perhaps of his own family where the brothers proliferated but the assets had long since disappeared.

‘Richer, probably,’ said Constable Lawrence, ‘but I didn’t ask that question, so that’s a guess.’

‘And what of Sir Rufus?’ Inspector Devereux was
hoping
for better things from his second sleuth, Constable Conrad.

‘He’s pretty conventional too,’ said Conrad who was, at twenty-two years of age, the youngest member of Devereux’s team. ‘There is one curious thing about him, sir, and that’s his entry in
Who’s Who
.’

‘What on earth has happened to his entry in
Who’s Who?
’

‘There’s this gap, sir. St Paul’s School, Christ Church, Oxford, then a gap until he’s thirty-five years old. At that point he turns up on the board of the Town and Capital Insurance Company and never looks back. My informants said he was a whizz with figures, sir, calculate the likely profit on any takeover in a second or two once he knew the
share price and the sales figures and the state of the balance sheet.’

‘Have you been able to trace anything at all in the missing years?’

‘Not a thing, sir.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Devereux, ‘I never heard the like.’

‘As I said, sir,’ Constable Conrad pressed on, ‘once word got out about his ability with figures, he was on boards all over the place. And, to be fair to him, most of his companies prospered.’

‘Are there any links between the two of them? Apart from service with the Silkworkers?’

‘There’s a Norfolk connection, sir.’ Constable Lawrence had returned to the fray. ‘We only realized it when we were comparing notes just before we came to see you. Sir Peregrine has a house in Norfolk, near Melton Constable. Big place, peacocks on the lawn, lots of gardeners.’

‘And my man, Sir Rufus, he’s got a great pile just outside Aylsham. I don’t know about peacocks but they say the garden is by Capability Brown. The places can’t be more than ten to fifteen miles apart.’

The telephone rang. Inspector Devereux’s face broke into a wicked grin. ‘No sign of her at all, you say? Disappeared? Not gone off in the boot of the big car? Never mind. Keep me posted, Johnny. Happy watching.’

Inspector Devereux told his men about the late-night visitor to Sir Peregrine’s suite at the Elysian Fields, and that she seemed to have disappeared. Johnny Fitzgerald could find no trace of her this morning.

‘Only one thing for it, sir.’ said Constable Lawrence
cheerfully
, ‘you need a permanent vigil at that hotel. Apprehend the young lady once she appears. Have a serious talk with her, then bring her in for questioning.’

‘Quite right, sir.’ Constable Conrad was keen to join the hunt. ‘With that kind of watching operation, you need
twenty-four-hour cover, sir. A man on watch every hour of the day, sir. I’m sure the two of us could handle it.’

The Inspector laughed. ‘Get away, the pair of you. If there’s any handling of this young lady to be done, then it must be carried out by the senior officer on the case. That’s me. I shall, of course, let you know how I get on.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking from the railway station to the Jesus Hospital in Marlow. A light rain was falling. He suspected that two if not three of his Inspectors felt sure that Sir Peregrine was the murderer, and were close to arresting him. Earlier that day he had sent a wire to Inspector Grime, asking him if there were any reports that Sir Peregrine had been at his house in Norfolk at the time of the bursar’s murder, or if the huge black car had been seen near the school at that time. Powerscourt was not convinced that Sir Peregrine was the killer. In his mind he always came back to the strange marks on the dead men’s chests, surely not only a link between the murders but a shout of defiance, a taunt to anybody investigating them.

As he approached the building, he stopped suddenly and drew back to the side of the road. Fifty yards from the front door Warden Monk was having a conversation with a man Powerscourt had not seen in this case before. Indeed it was a couple of years since they had last met. Monk seemed to be nervous, rubbing his hands together over and over again. The man had been Powerscourt’s contact point when he had worked for the government a few years before. His name was Colonel James Arbuthnot and he was a senior officer in the British Secret Service.

Powerscourt saw Monk turn on his heel and head back towards the front gate of the hospital. Colonel Arbuthnot was coming his way. He was small, about five feet eight inches tall, with a handlebar moustache and a Roman nose. He fiddled constantly with a white rose in his buttonhole, as if he was on his way to a wedding. Powerscourt stepped out of the shadows into the middle of the road.

‘Good morning, Colonel,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and what brings you to Marlow today?’

Arbuthnot looked at him carefully. ‘Ah, Powerscourt,’ he replied. ‘I’d heard you were involved in this matter.’

What on earth, Powerscourt said to himself, was a senior British intelligence officer doing at the Jesus Hospital? It didn’t make sense.

‘I am indeed,’ he replied, ‘and what, pray, has the death in the almshouse got to do with you or with your department?’

‘I don’t feel obliged to answer any of your questions, Powerscourt. This is a matter of state security. You, of all people, know the rules.’

Powerscourt remembered that these people made Trappist monks seem talkative.

‘For God’s sake,’ he went on, ‘was Abel Meredith one of yours? I find that scarcely possible.’

‘In the world of intelligence, Powerscourt, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to London.’

‘I will not excuse you, Colonel, until you have told me something of your business here.’

Arbuthnot gazed up and down the little road as if he
suspected
German agents might be lurking behind the trees. He twisted the rose in his buttonhole once more. ‘This is all very difficult,’ he said finally. ‘Under the terms of the paper you signed those years ago you are still committed to serving the interests of the department whenever you are called to do so. It will be much more convenient for me if I can learn whatever you have discovered from your lips rather than having to make repeated trips to this bloody backwater. Are you happy to do that for your country?’

‘I am, but only on condition that you tell me what the department’s interests are with the late Meredith.’

Arbuthnot paused again. A lone horseman galloped slowly down the road. When he had passed out of sight, the colonel spoke again. ‘We do not like having to conclude bargains with people who are, in effect, our own agents. But I will make you an exception in this case. If you tell me what you know about the death of this wretched man, I will tell you something of our interest in him.’

Was this a genuine offer? Would Arbuthnot take on board all he knew and give him nothing in return? How much did he know already? For all Powerscourt knew, he could have been in touch with one or more of the inspectors on the case already.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘The first thing to say is that I have, for the present, no idea at all who killed him. There is one thing you should know. Meredith’s body had a strange series of marks on his chest. The same marks were found on the bodies of two other men, murdered in the days after the death in Marlow, both connected with the Silkworkers Company. One was a former Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, whose body was found by the water at
the Silkworkers Hall near Tower Bridge. The other was the bursar of Allison’s School at Fakenham in Norfolk which has always had very close links with the Silkworkers. The existence of the strange marks is known only to those at the very heart of the inquiry. It has not been made public.’

‘Do you believe that the marks hold the key to the
mystery
, or mysteries?’

‘I do not know, Colonel. There is a plan, organized by the current Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, to sell off the company’s assets and distribute them among the members. This plan has proved contentious. There are disagreements about the provenance of some ancient documents which would seem to give sanction to the sale of the assets. The members here, like the members at the school, were mainly opposed to the sell-off. The chief opponent, the figurehead of the opposition, was the body found by the Tower, Sir Rufus Walcott. Apart from that, we have little to go on. So far we know very little about the past lives of the men in the Jesus Hospital. Maybe you could enlighten me on that.’

‘You have been very frank, Powerscourt. Thank you for that.’ The colonel took another furtive look up and down the road. Secrecy, Powerscourt thought, their own secrecy will be their undoing. ‘Let me try to give you such
information
as may be useful to you. The department, shall I say, has always had an interest in the Silkworkers. They are able to travel to and from Europe freely, ostensibly to meet with other guilds and similar ludicrous organizations. It’s bizarre, the extent to which the middle classes of Europe like dressing up in uniforms and livery from the distant past.’

‘You mean they are messengers? Picking up reports from agents? Dropping off requests for more information?’

‘You may think what you will,’ Arbuthnot smiled a glacial smile, ‘it is not for me to comment.’

‘Was Meredith a messenger for you? How long had be been working for you then?’

‘That is a difficult question to answer. I am now going to
tell you the most sensitive part of our position, in return for your earlier and future help. If you agree to the future, that is?’

Powerscourt felt he had little choice. ‘I do,’ he said. Visions of endless future meetings, held like this one, on the nation’s side roads or in derelict buildings in the capital flashed across his mind.

‘Meredith was originally employed by us as a courier. We now suspect the Germans may have turned him, through bribery or brute force, to work for them. But we are not sure.’

‘Heavens above, man, are you saying he turned into a double agent? Do you think the Germans might have killed him? God in heaven.’

‘You may think what you will. I have told you the relevant points. It is not for me to comment any further. We shall meet again.’

Colonel Arbuthnot adjusted the rose in his
buttonhole
once again and set off towards the railway station. Powerscourt watched him go.

Lady Lucy was taking tea once again with David Lewis, her agent inside the schoolboy population of Allison’s. She was now in her second week as French conversation mistress, the permanent holder of the position ostensibly still down with flu. The boy was nervous, rocking slowly to and fro in his chair.

‘Look here, Mrs Hamilton, I’ve been thinking about things and there’s something I’ve just got to say …’

His words tailed off. Lady Lucy didn’t like the sound of this one little bit.

‘More tea, David? What do you think of this chocolate cake? The staff here recommend it highly.’

Reluctantly the boy tried out a large piece of cake.

‘Now then,’ Lady Lucy went on brightly, ‘have you
anything
further to report from the classrooms and the corridors
of Allison’s? Your last piece of information was most useful. I was asking then if you could find out anything about the late bursar, Roderick Gill.’

David Lewis spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of cake. ‘Yes, I have, but you have to understand the rules about the Sixth Form.’

‘I see,’ said Lady Lucy.

‘Once you are over eighteen you are allowed to go and have a pint of beer in the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays, not on the other days. If you come back drunk or anything like that, the privilege is withdrawn from everybody in the school. It works pretty well on the whole.’

‘But you’re not eighteen yet, David, are you?’

‘No, I’m not. I’m seventeen and a half, actually. But the older chaps bring back some gossip about what they’ve seen in the town, if any of the masters are getting drunk, any new motor cars to be seen.’

The boy paused to brush some chocolate crumbs off his trousers.

‘There are three pubs in Fakenham itself, and one, the Farmers’ Arms, a little way out on the Cromer Road. It used to be a pub, now it’s been turned into a smart hotel but they still have a bar where people who wouldn’t be seen dead in an ordinary pub can go and have a drink. Here in the town, there’s the Crown where we are now. Some of the masters use it, so the boys don’t come here very much. It might be a touch embarrassing all round. There’s the Green Man which is a dump and the Royal Oak which is said to be haunted but has the cheapest beer. That’s the school favourite.’

‘More tea?’ said Lady Lucy.

‘Thank you,’ said David Lewis, and continued his story. ‘For some reason, two of the chaps got fed up with the Royal Oak and went to the Farmers’ Arms instead. Every time they went there the bursar was in the place with a woman.’

‘What sort of woman?’ asked Lady Lucy, trying to
remember the details of the stonemason’s wife. ‘Was she young? Pretty?’

‘Well, Longford and Fairfax said she must have been very good looking when she was young.’

Male cruelty begins very young, thought Lady Lucy. ‘Age?’

‘Well, they thought she must have been fairly old, well over forty. The thing is they were behaving as if they were
twenty-one
, all over each other. Longford said it was rather vulgar, not the way proper people that age ought to behave. And she looked like she had plenty of money. They used to leave together and she had a car waiting outside with a chauffeur.’

Whatever else she might have had, Lady Lucy said to
herself
, the stonemason’s wife did not have a car and a driver.

‘I don’t suppose your friends managed to catch a name for the lady?’

‘Only a Christian name, I’m afraid. Maud, that’s what the bursar called her, Maud.’

Lady Lucy thought that with the name of the pub and the man and the Christian name of the woman, it should not be too difficult to find a name and an address. ‘Well done, David, that’s very useful. I’m so proud of you!’

‘Do you think she might have killed him?’ David Lewis was beginning to enjoy the many possibilities of detective work. ‘Now I think about it, mind you, she’s not likely to have dressed up as a man with a great black beard and walked up the school corridor first thing in the morning. Did she go to London to hire a killer to do it for her?’

‘I don’t think we should assume that just because she was seen having a drink with Mr Gill that she had anything to do with his death. It sounds from what your people said that they were friends, not enemies.’

‘Hmm,’ said the boy, in that tone of voice people adopt when they don’t believe a word of what they’ve just been told. ‘I must go to my piano lesson in a minute, Mrs Hamilton. Is there anything you’d like me to make inquiries about?’

Lady Lucy poured herself a final cup of tea. ‘Well, there is, but I don’t know how you’d set about finding the answer. We’d like to know what Mr Gill was doing before he came to the school. Maybe somebody at Allison’s who was already in post when he arrived would know.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said David and rose to leave.

‘Do you like playing the piano? Are you good at it? Any favourite composers?’

The boy stopped by the door. ‘The piano? It’s the best thing for me at the school next to cricket. I just love Mozart, Mrs Hamilton. It makes me think I’m in some elegant
building
where all the rooms and everything are perfectly
proportioned
. The windows are open and there’s a garden outside, drenched in sunshine. Mind you, I like Tchaikovsky too.’

‘I shouldn’t think you’re in a Georgian jewel of a house then, David.’

The boy laughed. ‘No, it’s dark and there’s a storm outside. I’m striding out over the moors with that chap Heathcliff, tortured by unspeakable thoughts.’

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were taking coffee with Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant in the garden room of the Elysian Fields Hotel. They were the only people in the room. A constable had been placed on watch near the front door to check the entrances and the exits. Powerscourt told his colleagues about his encounter with the secret service man earlier that day.

Inspector Fletcher was astonished. ‘I find it impossible to believe that intelligence work has been going on at the Jesus Hospital. It’s such an unlikely place for it.’

‘Maybe that’s the point,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It works because it’s so improbable. What do you think we should do, Francis?’

‘My man,’ Powerscourt had been careful not to mention Arbuthnot’s name, ‘didn’t say if there is any connection
with the other two murders. Maybe the intelligence
people
used the Silkworkers indiscriminately, wherever they were to be found, I just don’t know. Did Meredith join the hospital of his own free will? Or did the secret service place him there for reasons of their own? It would be a good place to hide people, if you think about it. Known largely by your number not your name, hardly ever out of the building apart from expeditions to the Rose and Crown. All strangers immediately visible and probably suspect. If you were looking for somebody, you wouldn’t necessarily think of an almshouse, or, put it the other way round, if you didn’t want to be found, what better place to hide than an almshouse? Damn it,’ he looked round at his companions, ‘there are too many questions and not enough answers. The first thing we need to do, and this, I feel, is going to fall on your shoulders, Inspector, is to find out as much as we can about Abel Meredith’s past life. Where he was born, how he earned his daily bread, wives, children, criminal
convictions
, spells in prison, you know, the works.’

‘Fine,’ said the Inspector. ‘We’ve done this before.’

‘Not like this, I think you’ll find. I don’t think my friend has stopped yet. There’s more to come.’

‘How did you know, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’m like our friend the Inspector, I’ve been here before too.’

‘I don’t understand, my lord.’ Inspector Fletcher was looking confused. ‘What else do you want me to do?’

‘I’m afraid I think we need the past lives of more than Abel Meredith, Inspector.’

‘Which ones?’

‘All of them in the hospital.’

‘Great God!’

The man they called Eye Patch was looking out to sea in the daytime just as he did in the night. As then, he kept well
back from the windows. The sun was shining this morning, dancing over the water, lighting up the pretty buildings on the seafront. Eye Patch was pleased. Most of his mission had been successfully accomplished. There was only one task left for him to perform, and he could do that once they had a really dark night. He found he was no in hurry now. At the start, with nothing accomplished, he had been
unusually
nervous. Now he was so near the end he felt calm. He had grown very attached to the little town, not that he had met any of the inhabitants. The closest he came to contact with them was when the locals came to the door to deliver supplies of food and drink. Very soon, maybe in a couple of days, he could close his operation down and go home. He thought he would go through a city where you could buy women by the hour or the afternoon, so much quicker than the boring rituals of flirtation and conquest. Eye Patch smiled and stared out at the water.