Death Called to the Bar (15 page)

‘I don’t think any of the policemen or Lord Powerscourt think he’s run away, mother. They think he’s disappeared or he’s dead.’

‘This Lord Burrscourt, Sarah. Is he a friend of the Punchbowl man?’

Sarah was gripped by a moment of panic and a moment of total recall. She was back in the doctor’s surgery with Dr Carr, old and white-haired now, the man who had looked after her father so
well in his last, fatal illness. Dr Carr was talking to Sarah and her mother, his voice weary now after forty years of dealing with the sickness of London’s poor, a dead look in his eyes. He
had almost finished describing the likely course of her mother’s illness, when he told them that in a few cases, not many at all in his experience, the mind began to deteriorate, not into
senile decay as the doctors called it, but the memory began to fail, particularly about what had happened very recently. Sarah looked closely at her mother before she spoke. The last drop of
chocolate was being drained with great enjoyment. She prayed that her mother was tired today, maybe the pain had dulled her wits.

‘Lord Powerscourt, mama, is the man the benchers brought in to investigate Mr Dauntsey’s death. I shouldn’t think he knows Mr Puncknowle at all. Edward says that Lord
Powerscourt once solved a murder mystery for the Royal Family.’

‘What sort of age is this Lord Powerscourt?’

Sarah smiled at the transparency of her mother’s behaviour. ‘He’s in his early forties, I think. His wife’s just had twins. Edward and I saw them last Saturday.
They’re very sweet – the twins, I mean.’

‘Your father’s sister had twins long ago. Bad lot, both of them. Your father used to say how unfair it was. One bad one might just be bad luck, but two bad, it was terrible. Nearly
killed the parents.’

Sarah wanted to ask what form this wickedness had taken. Had they, perhaps, ended up in the been-run-away with category? But there was a tightened look about her mother’s lips which hinted
that the topic was now closed. Suddenly Sarah decided to float her idea of a treat to her mother. She felt so sorry for her, so frail, growing less and less able to cope all the time.

‘I’ve been thinking, mama, about a treat for you when the weather gets better.’

‘A treat, my dear? I don’t think people get treats at my time of life and in my condition.’

‘Listen carefully, mama. It would involve putting you in a wheelchair some of the time, but we could say you’d twisted your ankle. People wouldn’t have to think you
weren’t very mobile. Anyway we’d get you down to Queen’s Inn and we could wheel you round the courts and you could meet lots of these barristers we’ve talked about so often.
With any luck we could get you invited to lunch in the Hall, as a guest of one of the barristers. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’

Mrs Henderson looked rather frightened all of a sudden. Sarah suddenly remembered that they had hardly had time to talk about the disappearance of Mr Stewart so at least her mother
wouldn’t worry about that.

‘I’ll have to think about that, Sarah. It’s very kind of you to suggest it, very kind indeed. I’m not sure I feel strong enough for it now, let alone in a couple of
months’ time. And I’ve got nothing to wear.’

‘Just think about it, mama, you don’t have to decide now.’

Later that night, after Sarah had helped her mother up the stairs and into bed, she decided that she needed some assistance in the planning of this escapade. Tomorrow, she decided, she would
talk to Edward.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had evolved a new routine all of his own in his new house in Manchester Square. After breakfast he would go and see the twins, sometimes talking to
them or reciting poetry if they seemed to be awake, and then he would cross to the Wallace Collection for a ten-minute visit. Usually he would go and look at some of the paintings in the Great
Gallery on the first floor where the Gainsboroughs and the Van Dycks held sway, but today he was looking at the hardware of death on the ground floor. Just round the corner, on this very floor, he
thought, there were some exquisite pieces of craftsmanship, a French musical clock that could play thirteen different tunes including a Gallic equivalent of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, an
astronomical clock, again from France, where you could find the time in hours, minutes and seconds, solar time as on a sundial in hours and minutes, the sign of the zodiac, the day, the date of the
week, the time at any place in the northern hemisphere, the age of the moon and its current phase, and the position of the sun in the sky or the moon if it was night. But here, right in front of
Powerscourt, resting innocently inside their glass cases, lay a couple of daggers from India and a tulwar, previously owned by the Tipu Sultan, which could have ripped a man’s innards out or
cut his throat so that he would die inside a minute, pausing only to reflect, as the light faded fast from his eyes, on the exquisite carvings on the sword blade and the diamonds and gold inset
into the pommel. Upstairs Watteau’s musicians danced out their private version of a pastoral heaven. Downstairs lurked long swords from Germany with very sharp edges, thin rapiers from Italy
intended to cut and thrust their way into their victims, a curved Sikh sword that could cut a person in two, an Arabian shamshir with a walrus ivory grip which would leave terrible wounds. Above,
Gainsborough’s Perdita, one-time mistress of the Prince Regent, gazed enigmatically down the Long Gallery. Down below stood suits of armour, rich men’s attempts to counter the stabs and
the slashes and the thrusts, armour for men, armour even for horses, armour that grew so heavy that most warriors discarded it, armour designed to replicate the fashions of the day so that the
Elizabethan Lord Buckhurst, in his armour with its peascod doublet with a point at the waist and an extravagantly puffed trunk hose reaching from waist to middle thigh, could probably have clanked
into court at Greenwich or Westminster without anybody paying much attention. Upstairs gods danced across the sky and various versions of heaven, mythical and Christian and metaphorical, were on
display. Down here – Powerscourt looked suspiciously at a deadly Italian falchion, a broad sword tapered to a vicious point at the end – was a stockpile of weapons that could send a man
to heaven or hell in less than ten seconds.

He wondered, as he made his way out towards Bedford Square and Queen’s Inn, what had happened to Woodford Stewart. Had he too been poisoned? Or had the murderer turned to an easier and
older means of death, a mighty blow from a steel sword, a thrust through the throat with a scimitar, a fatal stab with a dagger or kris?

The reception area for Plunkett Marlowe and Plunkett was pretty standard stuff, Powerscourt thought, as he surveyed the comfortable but fading chairs, the anonymous carpet, the
prints of hunting and other rural pursuits on the walls. It was as though heaven for the solicitor breed was to be found somewhere in the hunting territory of Hampshire or Gloucestershire. The
barristers, he thought, would prefer something more confrontational, perhaps some secret county with cock fighting and bear baiting. But Mr Plunkett, the younger Mr Plunkett as he had been referred
to by the receptionist, was certainly a surprise. He was young for a start, very young. Powerscourt thought he could not have been out of university very long. He wondered, indeed, if the young man
had started shaving yet as his cheeks were as smooth as silk. He positively bounded across the room to greet Powerscourt warmly.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome. Matthew Plunkett. What an honour to meet you in person! Come with me!’

With that the young man led his visitor at breakneck speed up two flights of stairs, along a corridor, past a small library and into Mr Plunkett the younger’s spacious office, decorated
with prints of London. At least this one wants to stay where he is, Powerscourt said to himself, rather than escape to the Elysian Fields of horn and fox.

‘Now then, please take a seat across my desk, Lord Powerscourt, and we can get down to business.’

Powerscourt thought this was the youngest solicitor he had ever seen . Normally they were middle-aged or elderly citizens. Perhaps the younger ones were sent away to practise elsewhere until
they came of age, hidden away in the attics until sometime beyond their fortieth birthdays.

‘Mrs Dauntsey has given me full discretion in what I tell you about the will,’ he said cheerfully, smiling at Powerscourt. ‘In some ways it’s a simple document, but it
does have one fascinating oddity.’ He collected a group of papers together on his desk but Powerscourt noticed that he did not refer to them once as he gave his description of
Dauntsey’s last will and testament.

‘The estate itself, the house, the land, the paintings and so on are all covered by the family trust. I believe that this document was started at about the same time Moses was found among
the bulrushes in Egypt. It covers every possible eventuality and it stipulates, quite simply, that in this case of an owner dying with no children, the estate should pass to the eldest brother, if
there is one, in this case Nicholas Dauntsey, currently thought to be resident in Manitoba and expected back to claim his little kingdom in the next month or so.’

Matthew Plunkett paused to inspect a tattered seagull that had taken up temporary residence on his window sill.

‘Mrs Dauntsey, of course, is well provided for, with accommodation inside the house if that should suit, or in one of the decent houses on the fringes of the estate. There is ample
financial provision, as we lawyers like to say. There are a number of small bequests to staff or local institutions like the cricket club. And then we come to the mystery bequest.’

Matthew Plunkett was enjoying this. He leaned forward and addressed Powerscourt directly.

‘After the ten pounds here, and the five pounds there, Lord Powerscourt, we have the spectacular sum of twenty thousand pounds left to one F.L. Maxfield. Maxfield the mystery man we call
him here now, my lord.’

‘You can’t find him?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Correct. Now you know as well as I do that solicitors have to spend a lot of time tracing people in cases like this. Plunkett Marlowe and Plunkett is also a founder member of a specialist
firm devoted to finding persons like this Maxfield. We can’t find him. They can’t find him. We’ve tried Mr Dauntsey’s old school, his Cambridge college, his regiment in the
Army, every single chambers he’s ever served in. We can’t find a birth certificate but they do get mislaid sometimes, or he might have been born abroad. We can’t, you won’t
be surprised to hear, find any evidence of marriage or even death which would make our lives easier.’

‘Are you sure it’s a man? Might this be a Miss Maxfield or a Mrs Maxfield, an old flame from days gone by?’

‘We’ve talked about that a lot, Lord Powerscourt. My view is this. Mr Dauntsey was a lawyer, trained to be precise in his use of language. If the Maxfield was a woman, he would have
put Miss or Mrs in the document, I’m sure of it.’

Busloads of Maxfields, Maxfields old, Maxfields young, Maxfields rich, Maxfields poor, floated past Powerscourt’s brain and disappeared.

‘When did he make this will, Mr Plunkett? Was it the first one or an updated version of a will that had existed before? And did he make it here, with one of you gentlemen
present?’

‘My goodness me, Lord Powerscourt, you do ask a lot of questions. To take them in order, he made the will three years ago and we think he wrote it in his chambers. It was the latest in a
series of wills the trustees encouraged him to make ever since his twenty-first birthday. That, I fear, is rather the kind of thing the trustees go in for.’

Powerscourt smiled. The young man was not completely indoctrinated with the solicitor’s mindset, or not yet at any rate.

‘He’d been in to talk to my uncle, the one they call Killer Plunkett, the day before he wrote this will. This latest one, dated 1899, was the first appearance of the wretched
Maxfield.’

Powerscourt wondered what this perfectly law-abiding Plunkett had done to earn the nickname Killer. ‘So whoever Maxfield is or was,’ he said, ‘his association with Dauntsey
must have been complete, so to speak, three years ago. I mean, whatever the reason for giving him the money, it was all there then. Do you know, Mr Plunkett, if Dauntsey told his beneficiary about
his plans? Did Maxfield, not to put too fine a point on it, know that he would get twenty thousand pounds if Dauntsey fell into his borscht?’

‘I’m afraid he did,’ Matthew Plunkett grimaced slightly, ‘or rather he said he was going to. He told Killer he was going to write to Maxfield and give him the good
news.’

‘Did he indeed?’ said Powerscourt, realizing that another name had to be added to his list of suspects. ‘But, of course, he didn’t leave a copy of the letter which would
have had an address on it, did he?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Matthew Plunkett replied. ‘That would have made life far too easy for everybody. Mind you, to be fair to Mr Dauntsey, I don’t think he was the kind
of man who would have wanted to cause trouble after he had gone. Not like some I could mention.’

Matthew Plunkett sounded as if he had many lifetimes’ experience of obstreperous corpses and troublemaking cadavers.

‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think I can be of some assistance in your quest, Mr Plunkett. Dauntsey’s death is the subject of a police investigation. This Maxfield
person is obviously suspect. Therefore, we can ask the police to look for him too. They have enormous resources at their disposal. If anybody in Britain can find him, they can.’

Matthew Plunkett smiled. ‘I cannot tell you, Lord Powerscourt, how pleased I am to hear that. Will you please come and report any progress to us here? And I’m so glad we are no
longer alone in our search. Surely we should know who and where he is within a week or two.’

Making his way down the stairs, past a couple of stags that looked as though they might be enjoying their last day on earth, Powerscourt wasn’t so sure.

Robert Woodford Stewart went missing on Wednesday afternoon. They didn’t find his body until the Monday morning. It was discovered under a pile of masonry rubble, covered
with a black tarpaulin, at the side of the Temple Church, the chapel and spiritual home of the Inner and Middle Temples, next to Queen’s Inn. Restoration work was being carried out in the
nave, and when another wheelbarrow of rubble was carried out to the pile outside the church, Stewart’s body was found at the top of it.