Death Called to the Bar (33 page)

‘Does that mean, William, that after this Mr Flanagan has done his sums, as it were, we will have just one figure for the value of all these bequests? One hundred thousand pounds, let us
say, in today’s money?’

‘Exactly, Lucy. Only I suspect it may be a lot more than one hundred thousand pounds.’

‘And your other piece of information, William?’

Powerscourt was to tell Johnny Fitzgerald afterwards that William Burke went very conspiratorial at this point. He looked around in a rather shifty fashion. He leant forward in his chair. He
lowered his voice till it was almost a whisper.

‘Keep it very quiet,’ he muttered. ‘Bank accounts. Bank statements. I happen to know the fellow who looks after the accounts of Queen’s Inn.’ Burke looked around
him again as if spies might be lurking underneath the sofa or behind the curtains. ‘Fact is, the fellow wants to transfer to our bank. Transfer himself, I mean, not some money. I let it be
known, in a delicate fashion, that his application might be put to advantage if I could, accidentally as it were, have a look at those statements. That should happen tomorrow morning.’

Burke sat back in his chair and breathed deeply as if he’d run a race or just come out from confession.

‘You old devil, William. I am most grateful.’

‘It’s not as bad as it seems,’ Burke said finally. ‘The chap was going to get the job anyway.’

There was a mild knock on the door and coughing noises on the far side of it. That could only mean one thing. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy looked at each other and smiled. Rhys had come with a
message. He had. Rhys always coughed. He did. ‘I’m very sorry to interrupt, my lord, my lady, Mr Burke, there’s a message from one of Chief Inspector Beecham’s young
constables.’

The ones Lady Lucy referred to as the crèche, Powerscourt recalled.

‘The Chief Inspector thought you would want to know, my lord. He’ll be calling in the morning. It’s Mr Newton, my lord, Mr Porchester Newton. He’s disappeared.’

Edward was relieved to find that his stutter had not returned the following morning. He had an anxious moment about the p of Temple station when he bought his ticket but all
seemed to be well. He did, however, feel extremely nervous about the whole operation. What would happen if something went wrong? What if they were caught? Then he remembered something Powerscourt
had told him on the way down the stairs the previous evening. ‘The thing to remember about any hazardous operation, Edward,’ he had said, ‘is that everybody feels nervous and a bit wobbly beforehand. No matter how many times a soldier has been in battle, they still feel anxious before it starts.’ Well,
this was Edward’s first engagement and he didn’t want to let his general down.

The authorities of Queen’s Inn seemed to have moved Chief Inspector Beecham and his men around the place as if he was a piece of old furniture waiting for the rag and
bone men. First they had operated from an office very close to the rooms of the late Alexander Dauntsey. The surrounding barristers had complained about the volume of their conversations and the
noise of their boots on the stairs. They were then transferred to some empty offices at the top of one of the buildings in Fountain Court. Again, the people who lived underneath complained about
the noise. Now the detectives were occupying a former classroom that had seen better days, but was hidden away behind the room with the boilers for the heating so that the policemen themselves were
complaining about the racket and had to shout to each other when standing virtually on top of one another.

‘Good morning, my lord,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘I’m sorry the news about Newton reached you so late last night but I thought you would like to know.’

‘I am most grateful to you, Chief Inspector. Do you have any more information about his disappearance? Any leads?’

‘We know now that the last time he disappeared he went to stay with a younger sister in Kent. There he went for walks, played with the children, acted out the role of favourite uncle to
perfection. But he hasn’t gone there this time, not so far.’

Powerscourt remembered his last interview with Porchester Newton, the point blank refusal to answer questions, the veins throbbing in his forehead, those huge hands moving forward into what
might have been an attack and strangle position.

‘Do you suppose that he had come to learn about your inquiries, that one of them might have really alarmed him? Sorry, Chief Inspector, I’m not expressing myself very well.’
Powerscourt found it hard to think and talk in this noisy inferno. ‘Is it possible that you were pursuing a line of inquiry which would have revealed to Newton that you now knew him to be the
murderer? And that, therefore, he had to disappear?’

‘Well, we might have been,’ said Beecham morosely, ‘but if we were, it was an accident.’

Edward and Sarah had finalized the details of the theft the night before. Sarah had agreed that the typewriter should be successful in drawing the gorgon from her lair, as
Edward put it. As it happened, Sarah had in her attic a number of box files that had come from the gorgon’s cave, and had labels attached to them in the handwriting of the gorgon herself.
Sarah was confident that with a bit of practice she could do a passable imitation of the handwriting to be found on the boxes with the account files.

The first stage of Operation Theft, as Edward liked to call it, was due to take place shortly before nine thirty. Maxwell Kirk, head of the chambers where Edward and Sarah worked, had agreed
surprisingly easily to ask for a visit from Barton Somerville on being told that the scheme was really Powerscourt’s and might have a minor role to play in the murder investigation. A porter
was sent with the request from New Court across to Fountain Court where the Treasurer’s rooms were. Edward watched him go, a middle-aged porter with the steady walk of one who had travelled
this route many times before. Sarah’s room mate was away for the morning so Sarah was contemplating the ruin of her typewriter with some satisfaction. The ribbon had got stuck somewhere in
the bowels of the machine, bits of it were wrapped firmly round various keys and would, Sarah thought, take some time to sort out.

Nine forty came and the beginning of the exodus of barristers towards their day in court. There were always a few who departed earlier than they needed to, anxious perhaps to arrange their
papers properly before judge and jury. The great mass would go about nine forty-five and it was this throng that Edward hoped Somerville would join. As he watched anxiously at his window, Edward
saw the clock move on with agonizing slowness. Ten to ten, five to ten. Maybe Somerville wasn’t coming. Maybe he had simply refused as the request threatened his dignity. He was, after all, a
man who asked his colleagues to address him as Treasurer. Five past ten. Edward began to feel like a soldier all geared up for battle, bayonet at the ready, who is told by his commanding officer
that the battle has been postponed until another day. He wondered if he should go upstairs and tell Sarah. Then he might miss the arrival of Somerville. Sarah, in the attic floor, leaning out of
the window, probably had the best view of the lot.

‘It’s always seemed to me to be perfectly possible that Porchester Newton was the murderer,’ said Powerscourt, ‘though I am somewhat confused about the
motive. Was it a continuation of the feud that carried on right up to the benchers’ election? Was it fury that he would not now enjoy the fruits of being a bencher? Did he know more than we
do about how rewarding those fruits might be?’

‘It’s a great pity we never found out what the row was about,’ said Beecham. ‘Not one of them would speak to us about it and not one of them would speak to you, Lord
Powerscourt.’

‘I think I have the better of you there,’ said Powerscourt, suddenly animated, ‘and I apologize most sincerely for not telling you beforehand. It slipped my mind. I got the
information by handing over a considerable sum to the Head Porter. It’s amazing how notes can make people talk. Now then, the main bone of contention in the feud was as follows.’

It was ten past ten before the tall, silver-haired figure of Barton Somerville could be seen, marching slowly across his court towards Maxwell Kirk’s chambers. Edward
watched him come in, just beneath his window. Half an hour was the figure he had given Kirk for the length of time required for the meeting. Sarah was to wait one minute before setting out for the
gorgon’s lair. Even watching from behind, Edward could tell she was upset. She seemed to have wrenched her hair into a condition of confusion rather than the well-planned order it normally
displayed. She was running, if not at full speed, then at a steady pace.

‘Miss McKenna,’ Sarah panted, ‘I’m so pleased you’re here. It’s my typewriter, it’s broken, the ribbon, I can’t fix it and I’ve got this
work for Mr Kirk that has to be handed in and I don’t know what to do. Will you please come and help me?’

The gorgon inspected Sarah carefully. Her hair was indeed a mousy colour and she was wearing a suit that Sarah did not believe could ever have been fashionable, in a colour once memorably
described by Edward as Repugnant Brown.

‘Take it more slowly, Sarah. Your typewriter is not functioning?’

Sarah nodded.

‘The ribbon is malfunctioning?’

‘It’s come off,’ Sarah said, ‘it’s wrapped round some other part and I can’t undo it. I’m sure you could sort it out for me, Miss McKenna, it would only
take you a minute or two.’

By now, in the master plan, the gorgon should have been out of her lair and halfway down the stairs. Edward was rooted to his window. Barton Somerville had been in with Kirk for over ten
minutes. It was four minutes since Sarah had set off for the gorgon’s cave. The operation was not going according to plan.

‘Did you say you had some work that has to be completed for Mr Kirk?’

Sarah nodded. ‘Why don’t you borrow another machine?’ Miss McKenna suggested brightly. ‘We could get one of the porters to bring it up for you.’

This possibility hadn’t featured in Sarah’s conversations with Edward at all, but she rose to the occasion magnificently.

‘I thought of that but it wouldn’t do, Miss McKenna. Mr Kirk has a special machine which produces slightly bigger type on the page. I think his eyes must be going. It’s the
only one of its kind in Queen’s. And,’ here Sarah looked at her watch and groaned, ‘it’s meant to be handed over by lunchtime and I’ve got pages and pages to do.
I’ll get sacked if I don’t finish it. It’s for that big fraud trial, you see. Please, Miss McKenna, won’t you come and help me. You’re the only person in the Inn who
can save me now! Please! We must be quick!’

‘Well,’ said the gorgon, ‘it’s most unusual for myself and the Treasurer to be out of the office at the same time but it can’t be helped.’

Sarah half dragged her out of the office and down the stairs, the gorgon pausing only to close the door. Nineteen minutes had elapsed since Barton Somerville entered the Kirk chambers. Twenty
had passed before Sarah and Miss McKenna were sighted approaching Sarah’s rooms. Twenty-two had elapsed before they had clattered up the stairs and Edward reckoned they were fully engaged
with the errant typewriter ribbon. After twenty-three minutes Edward, with three black box files under his arm, set out across the path leading to Fountain Court. He wanted to run but he knew he
couldn’t. Walking across the court like this was perfectly normal. Running, unless a man was extremely late for court, was most unusual.

‘I think the reason the barristers refused to speak to us, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘is that they were ashamed of themselves. Even the Head Porter,
not a man famous for criticizing his lords and masters, said that their language was often worse than that of Billingsgate Fish Market and the behaviour bad enough to have some of them up in front
of the justices for breaches of the peace.’

‘I suppose,’ said Beecham, ‘that if you make a living by being prepared to insult people in a courtroom occasionally, you won’t find it too hard when it comes to events
back in your own chambers.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The contest appeared to be going along with little advantage to one side or the other until about ten days before polling day. You must
remember, Chief Inspector, that the porters were most intimately involved in the event. They were following the gentlemen’s bets on the outcome very closely and they themselves had a variety
of wagers at different odds with the unofficial bookmaker, covering bets, bets on the size of the majority, bets on the total number of votes that would be cast, that sort of thing. Anyway, as I
say, with ten days to go Newton and his people decide it’s time to take the gloves off. They start putting it about that the barristers should not be electing a bencher who would only be able
to serve from Monday to Wednesday. This was a clear reference to Dauntsey’s nervous depressions, his days off, as it were, the inexplicable occasions when his great talent seemed to desert
him.’

‘That was a pretty filthy tactic,’ said Chief Inspector Beecham. ‘Did it work? Surely the barristers knew all that already?’

‘It seemed to work for about a week,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Whether it took Dauntsey’s people that long to do their research, or whether they thought Newton’s tactics
might backfire, I don’t know. But they certainly fought back in kind. Newton wasn’t a gentleman, they said. His father kept two grocery shops in Wolverhampton. His grandmother had been
a junior parlourmaid. They produced a rather vicious but very effective cartoon, apparently. Across the top was the legend “Our New Bencher” with many exclamation marks beside it.
Underneath were two drawings, one showing a younger but very recognizable Newton counting out the change in the grocery shop, and the other showing him helping an elderly lady, presumably his
grandmother, to fold the ironing in some great airing room. A hundred years ago or less, people fought duels for stuff like this.’

‘Have you thought, Lord Powerscourt, that it may be that the people here still haven’t stopped fighting duels for this kind of smear?’

‘I see what you mean, Sarah,’ said the gorgon, inspecting the loops of typewriter ribbon festooned across the top of the machine. She tugged, lightly at first, then
harder and harder until the veins on her neck began to stand out. ‘Do you have any scissors? And a spare ribbon, I’m sure you must have one or two of those.’