The following morning Sir Fitzroy Robinson Buller, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, sent another memorandum to his master. He reminded the minister about his earlier message about the three murders and hoped the Home Secretary would soon be in a position to deliver an authoritative judgement. In the meantime he described the measures taken around the various properties belonging to the Silkworkers. If the government were pressed in parliament or in the newspapers about what they were doing in these cases, the Home Secretary could now point out that all necessary steps were being taken to safeguard the public.
8
There were two telegrams for Powerscourt the morning after the police watch began. One was from Johnny Fitzgerald with the latest news from Marlow and the old gentlemen’s wills. The other came from Inspector Grime, and Powerscourt could feel the disappointment and the frustration behind the words about the total lack of information from the boys of Allison’s.
‘Damn it, Lucy,’ he said, stretching out on the sofa in front of the fire, ‘I feel like some military commander miles and miles from the front who has to communicate with his generals by runner or by telegram. Don’t think Napoleon had to go in for this sort of thing. By the time I have taken one lot of information on board, another lot comes in from elsewhere which changes the picture altogether. I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it, my love,’ said Lady Lucy, used to these moments of doubt in the course of her husband’s investigations. ‘I do think the news about Sir Peregrine and the Silkworkers is fascinating, Francis. Do you think he just wants to make off with the money?’
‘I know he’s been using the argument about the Germans all over the place. The headmaster man up in Norfolk told me about that one. I’ve been investigating things for so long now, Lucy, I always think the worst of everybody. So in my opinion the whole case may be about Sir Peregrine getting his hands on the money.’
There was a discreet cough at the door. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, always coughed to announce his arrival when he had to make an unexpected appearance.
‘Telephone, my lord.’ Rhys usually sounded as if he had just come from or was just about to go to a funeral. ‘From Norfolk, my lord. The headmaster of Allison’s, my lord.’
Powerscourt shot down the stairs to the room looking out over the square that he used as a study. It was gloomy outside, the rain rattling against the windows in Markham Square.
‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘how nice to hear from you. How are things up there in Norfolk?’
‘My apologies for ringing you at home, Lord Powerscourt. I need some advice.’
‘Fire ahead,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully.
‘Yesterday morning we had a real postman retrace the steps of the murderer up the long corridor in the school. At the same time as the earlier visit, of course. I appealed to the boys at assembly, very soon after the visit, to report anything they had seen on the day of the death to Inspector Grime. I told them he would be in the OTC room all day.’
‘And?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘That’s just it,’ replied the headmaster. ‘There is no and. Nobody came forward. The Inspector waited all day and nothing happened. He was very cross by the time he left, I can tell you.’
‘Do you think the boys knew something but didn’t want to tell? Or that they hadn’t seen anything at all?’
‘Damn it, Lord Powerscourt, about fifty or sixty boys must have seen the phoney postman that morning. If they were properly awake — and many may not have been — they must have realized that this was not the normal time for the man with the mail to arrive. And I suspect that they may have taken against the policeman. He can be a bit surly at times, Inspector Grime.’
‘Could you or your colleagues talk to the boys individually? Would that work?’
‘I don’t think they would talk to us either. They’ll have decided en masse not to talk to the policeman. They’re bright enough to see that if they talk to the staff it’s virtually the same as talking to Grime. The information will go straight to the police.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt.
‘I’m acutely conscious that the boys in my charge appear at the moment to be obstructing the police in their inquiries. That can’t be right. What do I do if Grime turns nasty and takes one or two of my pupils down to the police station?’
Powerscourt could see the serried ranks of parents lining up outside the headmaster’s study in the headmaster’s mind. He could hear the voices in the headmaster’s head.
‘I’m not going to stand for this, my son hauled off to the local police station!’
‘I’m taking my two boys home immediately, and they won’t be coming back!’
‘I’ve known our member of parliament for many years now. You’ll be hearing from him very soon!’
‘My sympathies, Headmaster,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you’re in a very difficult situation, and it’s not of your making.’
‘I’ve had three members of staff laid low by the influenza today. We’re going to have to rework the entire timetable.’
Something in what the headmaster said set off a train of thought in Powerscourt’s brain. It couldn’t work, could it? It would be too difficult to arrange, surely. Or would it? To hell with it, why not? There was nothing to lose.
‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘a thought has just struck me which might, just might, help us out of some of our difficulties. It is rather a long shot and I don’t want to tell you about it until I have had time to think it through. Could I call you back inside the hour?’
‘Of course,’ said the headmaster. ‘I will wait by the telephone.’
Powerscourt shot back up the stairs to tell Lady Lucy the news. Then he put a proposition to her.
‘You can’t be serious, Francis.’
‘I am, my love, I am.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘it’s very unusual. I don’t think such a thing is happening anywhere else.’
‘I’m sure it is. This is nineteen ten after all, not eighteen hundred and forty.’
‘In a way,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I suppose it might be rather fun. I’m sure I could do it. Yes, Francis, yes, why not? I shall fulfil my duties in my earlier name of Mrs Hamilton.’
Powerscourt ran back down the stairs. ‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’
The headmaster listened carefully to Powerscourt’s proposals. Then he laughed. ‘Splendid idea!’ he boomed down the phone as if he were addressing the parents on Speech Day. ‘I propose we put it into action on Monday, the day after tomorrow. A week’s service for a start, more if required.’
Thomas Monk, Warden of the Jesus Hospital in Marlow, was awake very early the next morning. Monk was a worried man. Eight of the old gentlemen had arrived in his office the day before and demanded their wills back. Monk had watched out of his window, fingering his pale blue cravat, as the octet marched in line out of the hospital and down the road to the solicitor’s offices. Monk still had three of their wills in his possession. He suspected that the owners of those wills had forgotten where they had put them. Any one of those old men could arrive at any time and demand their last will and testament. But that was not the full extent of his problems. Only one of the three wills he still had contained any money, and its owner, in Monk’s judgement, was not going to be around for very much longer. Experience at the hospital had left Monk a good judge of how long its members had left to go — if he could have taken odds on the life expectancy of the different inhabitants of the Jesus Hospital with the local bookkeeper in Maidenhead, he would certainly have done so.