Death Called to the Bar (6 page)

‘What was he like as a lawyer?’ Powerscourt asked, suspecting that he would not be told the whole truth. There was a slight pause as if Kirk wasn’t sure how much to give
away.

‘I’m going to use a rather strange analogy, if I may, Lord Powerscourt. When I was at school I was very keen on cricket, still am when I can find the time. We had a chap there in the
year above me called Morrison. On his day you would have said he was bound to play for England. He had beautiful style – a cover drive direct from heaven – he could cope with any kind
of bowling, he could bat on any kind of wicket. People said he was bound to take the field for England later on. Only thing was, he was erratic, poor chap. Some days he could hardly hit the ball
and certainly couldn’t score any runs. It was strange, very strange. Dauntsey was a bit like that.

Brilliant some of the time, absolutely brilliant, solicitors queuing up to instruct him, triumphs in court. Next day listless, just about able to get the words out, hopeless. Instructing
solicitors tearing their hair out. Clerk to chambers in despair. It didn’t happen very often, mind you, maybe once in ten or twelve outings before the judges, but significant none the
less.’

‘Did this mean that his income went down?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Fewer people prepared to employ him?’

‘I suppose it did,’ said Maxwell Kirk slowly, staring out of his window as if Dauntsey’s ghost might be hovering above the Thames. ‘I suppose he never made as much money
as he could have done. But some of the solicitors were very loyal. They kept coming back.’

‘Was it possible,’ said Powerscourt, suspecting that Kirk would not know enough about Dauntsey’s private life to answer his question, ‘to work out why he lost his talent,
as it were? Did it happen when he was depressed? Had he been drinking too much beforehand, anything like that?’

‘You’re not the first person to wonder about that. Our clerk here, the chap before the present one, used to make a note of Dauntsey’s moods every day. And, of course, he had
records of Dauntsey’s cases and when he had his off days. Our clerk had his very own system of notation. C was cheerful. H was happy. VH was very happy. N was neutral, meant he couldn’t
decide one way or the other. S was sad, B was black and VB was very black. He kept this going for a whole year. Then on New Year’s Eve, so he told me, God knows what his family must have made
of this, he tried to match up the two lots of information. He could find absolutely no correlation between the two. He could be very black for three days in a row but very brilliant in court. He
could be very happy first thing in the morning and completely tongue-tied at the Old Bailey in the afternoon. It was extraordinary.’

‘Did he,’ Powerscourt always kept this question till the end, ‘have any problems with money or women?’

‘If he did,’ Kirk replied, ‘he wouldn’t be telling me, unless he was in desperate trouble. I don’t believe he was in any money trouble. That place he had in Kent
cost a lot to keep up, but in a good year he was making a very fine living here. As for the women, I simply don’t know. I should have said that he was a man who lived his life in tight little
compartments, if you know what I mean. Right hand barely aware what the left hand was doing. He could have been involved with women – I think they found him attractive – but as to facts
I haven’t a clue.’

As he wandered down the stairs Powerscourt wondered if Kirk would have told him anything about Dauntsey’s affairs with women if he had known about them. ‘Actually, Lord Powerscourt,
he was a most frightful womanizer, he went through them at the rate of one every three months. . .’ No, he couldn’t imagine Kirk saying that. In fact Powerscourt couldn’t think of
anyone he had talked to so far who would have told him if Dauntsey was having affairs. They closed ranks, these lawyers, and only told the world what they felt the world should hear. Truth was
rationed in the lawyers’ chambers; it was potentially too dangerous to be let loose.

Of the great battle with Porchester Newton, however, he was told a great deal. The benchers in Queen’s Inn were elected, he learned, and at the last vacancy a month or so before
Dauntsey’s death there had been a fierce struggle between the two men. The benchers, in effect, were the governing body of the Inn. Like the other Inns of Court Queen’s demanded a
substantial payment from new benchers. But unlike the others Queen’s also demanded that every bencher remember the Inn in his will, though the precise percentage of the total estate was not
known. This double collection made the little Inn one of the richest places in London, with almost all the money earmarked for scholarships and bursaries for students from humble backgrounds. The
largest Inns of Court had forty or even fifty benchers on their books. Queen’s had only eight. And Powerscourt heard whispers even on his first day about the bitter fight that had preceded
Dauntsey’s election as bencher. These affairs, he was told, are not conducted like Parliamentary contests. There are no slates of candidates, no formal speeches. But aspirant benchers give
sherry parties so they can shake the hands of voters they might not have met. Discreet dinner parties are held to win over the waverers. Supporters of the rival candidates whisper about the
deficiencies of their opponents into the ears of all those who will listen, and there are many who will listen. Right up to the end it seemed as though Dauntsey’s great rival Porchester
Newton was going to win. Nobody was prepared to say what rumour Dauntsey’s people had spread in the last twenty-four hours before the voting, but it worked. The ballot was secret but it was
widely known that Dauntsey had a comfortable victory. Newton had not spoken to him since. Newton, Powerscourt realized, would make a formidable enemy. He was the opposite of Dauntsey in almost
every way. Dauntsey had a soaring imagination which enabled him on occasion to see motives that were apparent to nobody else. Newton was a solid performer, plodding through his cases with little
sparkle. Dauntsey was quick, mercurial. Newton was slow, stolid, some even ventured that he was stupid. Powerscourt’s only doubt about Newton as a possible murderer was the murder weapon.
Certainly there was motive. Some of the insults traded during the vicious election campaign would have produced a duel in Temple Gardens in years gone by. Powerscourt wasn’t sure he could see
Newton as a poisoner until he heard that he had worked in India in his youth. You could learn enough about poisons there, as Powerscourt well knew, to last you a lifetime.

Then there was Edward, the slim silent young man who did most of Dauntsey’s devilling, researching and preparing cases and submissions to the legal authorities. Edward did have a surname,
but nobody except Edward seemed able to remember what it was. Everybody wondered why he had joined the profession of barrister for he had one overwhelming defect for his chosen calling, a defect
that should have told him that, of all professions, this was the last one he should aspire to. Edward watchers, and there were plenty of people fascinated by him, said it was like a man who fainted
at the sight of blood trying to become a surgeon or an atheist signing up for the priesthood, although the cynics pointed out that this might be an ideal quality for a career in the modern Church
of England and that the atheist would probably end up a bishop at the least, if not Archbishop of Canterbury. Edward was painfully, incurably, woefully shy. The porters referred to him behind his
back as Edward the Silent. He could manage to get through whole days without speaking. He could attend case conferences and not say a word. At dinners in Hall he would nod unhappily to his
neighbours. Once, when he had really picked up his courage and asked his neighbour to pass the potatoes, a huge cheer had gone up from the company and Edward had fled the Hall, almost weeping with
embarrassment. But according to the clerk, Dauntsey said that Edward was the finest deviller he had ever come across, that he had a very sophisticated understanding of the workings of the law in
general and of judges in particular. He kept a form book on judges, the clerk told Powerscourt, so he could know how their particular temperaments might be affected by the new cases in front of
them and the demeanour of the barristers arguing them.

Powerscourt planned his assault on Edward’s silence like a military operation. For a start he decided to remove Edward from his normal routine and transport him a mile or so across town to
the drawing room in Manchester Square for afternoon tea. Lady Lucy, fresh and sustained by a triumph over packing cases and disorder, was on parade to inquire about Edward’s family. Olivia
had been pressed into service, instructed to do whatever she could to make the young man feel at home. Even one of the twins was paraded through the drawing room to be admired. It was almost
impossible, even in England, Powerscourt felt, for babies to be put on display without those present feeling they had to pass a comment, whether on their looks or their intelligence or their
resemblance to more senior members of their families. The twin did not speak but Edward did on this occasion, observing that the infant looked very intelligent.

When the tea campaign was complete, Edward having displayed a considerable appetite for muffins, the family departed, leaving Powerscourt and the young man alone. ‘Thank you so much for
coming, Edward. I’d be very grateful if we could have a conversation, in confidence of course, about Mr Dauntsey,’ Powerscourt began. ‘I wonder if you could tell me about his last
case.’

There was a pause. For a second Powerscourt wondered if his entire strategy had failed, if the reasonable amount of speech Edward had managed during tea was now going to be replaced with silence
once again. Then he was relieved. Perhaps Edward had been collecting his thoughts. Maybe the muffins had done their work.

‘Last case, murder, sir. At the Old Bailey. Eight days. Mr Justice Fairfax.’ Powerscourt thought Edward seemed to have a bias against verbs.

‘Mr Dauntsey appearing for the prosecution, sir. Quite rare these last years. More often retained for the defence. Very horrible case, sir. Young woman battered to death on a beach in
Great Yarmouth. Former lover seen in the town on the day of the murder. Former lover had grudge against the victim. Defence admitted the man was in the town but denied that he killed her,
sir.’

Verbs, Powerscourt noted, were beginning to make an appearance.

‘That judge didn’t like Mr Dauntsey for some reason, sir. He had quite a difficult time of it. But he won in the end. Jury out for only twenty minutes. Judge puts his black cap on
and the defendant is probably gone by now, sir.’

‘Was Mr Dauntsey pleased with the verdict, Edward?’

‘Oddly enough, no, he wasn’t, sir. I think he thought the man was innocent. He never said anything to me but something about his manner gave me that impression, sir. I could be
wrong.’

‘What was the defendant’s name, Edward? Can you remember where he came from?’

‘Moorhouse, sir. James Henry Moorhouse, 15 Hornsey Lane, London.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly if Edward knew the shoe and hat size as well.

‘Large family up there in Hornsey Lane, Edward?’

There was a brief pause as if some piece of machinery in Edward’s brain had got stuck. Then it clicked into place.

‘Four elder brothers, two younger sisters, sir.’

‘Thank you. And what about the next case, Edward?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Not another murder, I hope?’

‘No, sir, the next case would have been a huge one, sir. Mr Dauntsey was going to be Number Two for the prosecution, sir, with Mr Stewart, another one of our benchers, leading. They used
to work together a lot in the old days, sir. It’s a fraud trial, sir. You remember that man called Puncknowle, Lord Powerscourt? He started up a whole lot of companies and the public
subscribed by the tens of thousands. Companies paid good dividends, close on ten per cent most years, so more people subscribed. Only problem was the companies lost money and the dividends of the
old ones were paid for by the new investors in the new companies. That’s why Puncknowle had so many companies, sir, he needed the new money to pay the dividends on the old ones.’

‘Didn’t he run away to America, this fellow, and have to be brought home again?’

‘He did, sir,’ said Edward, ‘and this is one of the most complicated cases I’ve ever seen. The opening speeches are going to last all day or even longer, sir.’

‘Tell me, Edward, you must have known Mr Dauntsey as well as anybody in the months before he died, devilling for him in these complicated cases. Was there anything unusual in him? Did
anything change after he became a bencher, for example?’

Edward looked at Powerscourt carefully. Normal speech seemed to have been returned. Powerscourt felt sure Lady Lucy would put the transformation down to feminine company and the ease and
security that came from being in a proper home rather than cooped up with a whole lot of men all the time. Edward took his time before he answered.

‘All the other gentlemen have asked me that, sir. Mr Somerville, Mr Cadogan, Mr Kirk, that police inspector. I didn’t tell them anything at all.’

There was another pause. ‘It was after his election as a bencher, sir. Something changed after that. Not immediately but two, maybe three weeks or so later, I should say, sir. Mr Dauntsey
was very cross about something. I never knew what it was. One afternoon I came into his room when he wasn’t expecting me. I think he assumed I was in the library. He was studying some figures
on a pad in front of him. He looked at me, Mr Dauntsey, sir, almost in despair. “It’s not right, Edward,” he said, “it’s just not right.” He sort of stared at
the wall for a moment or two, sir, and then he put away his pad. He never referred to it again, whatever it was, not to me anyway, sir.’

Powerscourt saw Edward out into the evening air of Manchester Square. Lady Lucy came to say goodbye and to tell Edward he could come to tea whenever he liked, he would be most welcome. As Edward
passed the Wallace Collection on his way home, lights blazing from the upper floors, Powerscourt wished he had asked just one more question. He should have sought information on any extramarital
females in Mr Dauntsey’s life. He felt sure Edward would have had their names and addresses.