Death Called to the Bar (17 page)

‘It’ll make my fortune, I’m certain of it,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, waving his papers vigorously at his friends. ‘I’m astonished nobody’s thought of it
before.’

‘What’s the plan, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Please forgive me, Lady Lucy, if I repeat some of what I told you just now.’ Johnny took an appreciative gulp of his Sancerre. ‘It all started the other morning, Francis. I
woke up very early and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I went for a walk. I don’t know if you’ve been to Kensington Gardens at five o’clock in the morning, but the noise is
fantastic. It’s the birds.’

Johnny doesn’t need to catch trains to obscure railway stations in the countryside any more, Powerscourt thought to himself. He can just take a stroll in the middle of London.

‘Some of them are singing,’ Johnny went on, ‘some of them are squawking, some of them are belting out bits out of forgotten operas, some of them seem to know some special hymns
of their own, some are just saying this is my pitch, why don’t you bugger off, you other birds, some are screaming and some are twittering, some are chirping away to themselves and some seem
to be saying “Pink, pink.” All this within two hundred yards of the Round Pond.’

Johnny paused and looked down at his papers. The old Johnny, Lady Lucy found herself thinking, would have taken another quaff of his wine at this point, a suitable moment for refreshment, but
no. This Johnny carried on without a drop passing his lips.

‘Only thing is, Francis,’ Johnny went on, ‘I didn’t have a clue who these bloody birds were. In the dark, I mean. Couldn’t bloody well see. They could have been the
black-browed albatross or the short-toed eagle for all I damned well knew. So I went to this Natural History Museum place in South Kensington – fascinating place, full of stuffed birds and
things, you should take the big children there, they’d love it – and they sent me to an old chap who lives out Acton way, who knows the sound of almost every bloody bird in England.
Used to be a sailor and he’s nearly blind, but I took him out to Hyde Park yesterday at five fifteen in the morning and this is what we’ve produced.’ He waved his papers at them
enthusiastically. Powerscourt saw that they were full of rough descriptions of birds followed by rather precise descriptions of their sounds.

‘I’ve got great plans, Francis.’ At last Johnny Fitzgerald yielded to temptation and took a considerable pull of his wine. He eyed the bottle carefully as if trying to gauge
how many glasses there were left in it. Powerscourt wondered if he would, unusually, restrict himself to a single bottle.

‘Do you remember that little chap we had working with us in Indian Intelligence, Francis? Fellow by the name of Cooper, Charlie Cooper, who did all the maps and could draw you a snake or a
vulture right down to the last nail in its talon? Well, he works for a publisher now, illustrating books and magazines, and he’s said he’ll do all the birds for me, so you see them in
their proper habitat, not just stuffed in a glass cage with no branches to cling on to. It’s going to be a book describing all these different creatures and the sounds they make. Lady Lucy,
what do you think of that?’

Lady Lucy smiled. She was pleased Johnny had found something other than the vintages of France to occupy his spare time, but she doubted if he would meet many eligible females on his dawn patrol
up and down Rotten Row in the hours before daybreak. ‘I think that’s tremendous, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Maybe you could put it in the newspapers in sections first, like the
novelists used to do.’

‘Serialize it?’ said Johnny. ‘That would be good, we could all get paid twice. Mind you there’s me, and there’s the sailor man and there’s Charlie Cooper, all
of us to get paid. Still, we can try. I give you a toast, doesn’t matter if it’s drunk in Sancerre or Darjeeling, let us drink to
The Birds of London
.’

‘
The Birds of London
,’ Francis and Lucy chorused in unison. There was a faint moan from the far end of the table. A twin was stirring in its sleep. They all fell silent for a
moment.

‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think that’s a tremendous scheme. But I hope it isn’t going to drag you away from detection completely. I would be lost without you.
And I have something I want you to do.’

‘Rest assured, my friend,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald with a grin, ‘that I shall not desert you in your investigations. The birds may have to wait, the birds on occasion may have
flown, but the solving of the crime will take priority.’

With that he finished his glass, refilled it, and looked expectantly at Powerscourt, who was looking for something in his trouser pocket.

‘You know about the first murder in Queen’s Inn, Johnny, the man Dauntsey.’

‘The fellow who fell into his soup?’

‘Precisely so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There’s been a second murder, another barrister in Queen’s called Stewart. The two of them were going to prosecute that fraudster
Jeremiah Puncknowle. Just days before the case is due to start, they’re both in their graves. Convenient for Mr Puncknowle, very convenient. William Burke didn’t think our Jeremiah
would go in for violence, not good for the Low Church image, but he sent me this note today.’

Powerscourt handed Burke’s message over to Johnny Fitzgerald.

Johnny handed the note back to his friend. ‘So you would like me to exchange a blackbird for a Bradstock, Francis? I presume you want to know if he or any of his colleagues, who may, of
course, not be on trial for fraud, have been knocking off barristers down there in the Strand. You don’t have any idea where he lives, our blackbeard friend, do you?’

Powerscourt pulled another piece of paper from his breast pocket. ‘Very short note from William an hour or so ago. Big mansion in Belgrave Square, he says, Number 25. Place full of
Bradstock’s thugs.’

Johnny Fitzgerald took an absent-minded sip of his Sancerre. ‘Think I’ll approach this in a roundabout sort of way, Francis. Don’t fancy knocking on the front door and asking
if anybody here murdered a couple of barristers recently. Might not be good for the prospects of
The Birds of London
, if you follow me. I’ll try to see if there’s any gossip in
the criminal circles, there usually is if a job that size has been pulled off.’

‘There’s more news, Francis.’ Lady Lucy had been sitting quietly through the male conversation, waiting for her moment. She was looking very serious. With the late afternoon
sun shining on her hair Powerscourt thought she looked very beautiful. He was so proud of her.

‘You remember you asked me to make some discreet inquiries about the Dauntseys?’ she went on, totally unaware of her husband’s reflections about hair and late afternoon
sun.

‘Of course, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, wondering what sort of reply she had received.

‘Well, it’s only a whisper,’ she went on. ‘Maybe a whisper is too strong. My informant said it was like a very distant bell you can just hear ringing a long way
off.’

‘And what was the rumour, Lucy?’

‘It had to do with Dauntsey’s brother. The elder one. The rumour said that Mrs Dauntsey had been very close to him, that they had gone on holiday together or short weekends away
quite a lot.’

‘How long ago was this meant to be?’ asked Powerscourt, running a hand through his hair.

‘Two years ago, something like that.’

‘And who was your informant?’

‘A second cousin who lives quite close to Calne and has dined there many times. I would regard her as a reliable witness.’

‘So,’ Powerscourt was whispering as if he didn’t want his thoughts to reach the purer minds of the twins. ‘Think of it. Here you are, Alexander Dauntsey and your
beautiful wife. You have been trying to have children for years and have failed. For Alexander, one of the cores of his being is his house. His people have lived in it for centuries. His
descendants must carry on that tradition. But he cannot have any descendants. Or perhaps his wife cannot have any. They simply do not know. Let’s suppose they are going to try this route
first. Dauntsey makes the suggestion to his wife. My brother instead of me. I can imagine her, oddly enough, agreeing to it out of her love for him. He suggests it to his brother, less difficult
with such a beautiful woman. But still no children. The adulterous experiment failed. I wonder what happened next. Was the brother married?’

Powerscourt had a sudden vision of a vengeful wife, realizing that the blame lay with the husband rather than the wife, organizing a mysterious visitor to Queen’s Inn, a poison phial
concealed about his person.

‘He wasn’t married, the brother. But there’s one thing,’ Lady Lucy was looking at Johnny’s pieces of papers as she spoke, ‘that makes me think it might be
true.’

‘What’s that, Lucy?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘The elder brother,’ she too spoke very quietly, ‘he’s gone away. They think he’s gone to some remote part of Canada, but nobody knows for certain where he is. They
think he may be in Manitoba.’

‘That’s where the Dauntsey lawyers think he is, Lucy. Manitoba.’

‘Do you want me to see if I can find him, Francis?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Canada. Wine has to be imported but the birds are said to be
wonderful.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘Not yet, Johnny. We’ve got enough to do here for now. Lucy, do you have further inquiries you can make, the younger brother perhaps, or any male cousins who
might have taken part in the same experiment, if there was one?’

‘I discovered some new relations only yesterday, Francis, I’m sorry to say. But they too live not far from Calne.’

Johnny Fitzgerald was gathering up his papers. ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ he said, looking up at his friends. ‘After
The Birds of London
I wondered about
The
Birds of East Anglia
,
The Birds of the West
,
The Birds of Wales
, that sort of thing. But there’s not many people living in those places. It was thinking of Canada and their
French connections that did it. Not only a bird book, but a wine book as well. Two for the price of one.
The Birds of Bordeaux
, Lucy.
The Birds of Burgundy
, Francis. We could probably
do some of them by describing the birds that live in the actual vineyards that produce the Meursault or the Gevrey Chambertin. Wouldn’t that be grand?’

They both laughed. ‘Excellent, Johnny,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘You’ll be famous in France as well, maybe.’

Johnny Fitzgerald looked serious all of a sudden. ‘Tell me, Francis,’ he said, ‘what are you going to be doing in the next few days in case any of these fraudsters and
murderers want to kill you too and I need to tell them your whereabouts?’

Powerscourt suspected Johnny had a different motive for his question. After their last adventure at a West Country cathedral and a vicious attempt on Powerscourt’s life, Lucy had taken
great care, unobtrusive care, of course, to make sure Johnny was never far away from her Francis.

‘I have two journeys in mind, Johnny, for you to tell your assassin friends about. I shall be going to Calne to renew my acquaintance with Mrs Dauntsey, although how I turn the
conversation to where I want it to go, I have no idea. Of mutual embarrassment there could be no end. But before that I am going to visit one of the most extraordinary houses in Britain. It is in
England, but it is French, it has telephones and a telegraph, it has furniture that used to belong to Marie Antoinette, it has more Sèvres porcelain than anywhere else in England.’

‘Where on earth is this domestic heaven?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘It is in the Chiltern Hills, my love. It was designed to the wish or the whim of a man who was then thought to be the richest man in Britain. Typically he called his vast pile simply
Paradise. The man is Jeremiah Puncknowle and the house is his fantasy and his folly.’

Johnny and Lucy left the Powerscourt dining room, chattering happily about
The Birds of London.
Powerscourt himself wandered slowly to the top of the table and looked down at the sleeping
twins. One had a tiny fist resting on a pink cheek. The other was virtually invisible beneath the covers. He began whispering to them. You would have to have been very close indeed to realize that
he was telling them the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

I have just entered the gates of Paradise, Powerscourt said to himself as his cab rattled past a couple of mock Tudor gateways that marked the entrance to Jeremiah
Puncknowle’s estate. My appointment, confirmed yesterday, is for eleven o’clock.

They were up in the hills, nearly as high as the Chilterns reached, just past the little town of Wendover. The cabbie, a cheerful young man in his early twenties, had offered to point out some
of the interesting features of the Puncknowle establishment as they went along. His commentary and directions usually led to very generous tips.

‘Prepare to look left after the next bend, sir,’ he called out, stooping down to adjust a piece of harness. Up till this point the road ran between tall trees of birch and oak, then
suddenly Powerscourt saw a great rectangle of green, with a small square in the middle enclosed by thick posts with rope between them. And at the far end a large building in red brick, with wide
windows looking out over the grass and balconies for spectators to view the action. Even as they went by, Powerscourt saw a couple of men painting the doors. Two flags were flying from the
flagpole, the Union Jack and a strange white flag with a couple of rampant lions. He knew he had seen the building before. He remembered the last time he had been there, with William Burke and a
colleague of his from the City. For this was a perfect reproduction of the pavilion at Lord’s Cricket Ground, home to the County of Middlesex and the headquarters of the Marylebone Cricket
Club, the most famous of its kind in the world. As far as Powerscourt could tell, it was a perfect replica.