Inspector Devereux had one last card to play. He wasn’t hopeful about it. ‘Tell me, Professor, and remember you are speaking to an ignorant outsider here, what are the financial arrangements in matters like this? Do you get paid for the consultations and so on?’
Claypole laughed again. ‘Of course we do, Inspector, of course we do. I never thought I’d be advising a rising police Inspector about the ways of the world but here we are!’
‘How much?’ said Devereux, and there was something about his tone that made the professor wonder if he had underestimated the man from Scotland Yard.
‘Well, we fixed the fee up beforehand, before I’d done any work.’
‘How much?’ said Devereux, suspecting suddenly that there might be a gold seam lurking here.
‘Five hundred guineas for me, if you must know. I charge rather like a Harley Street doctor. And one thousand guineas for the College Development Fund. That’ll be most useful. And I’d be most grateful if you wouldn’t bandy those figures about, Inspector. I’ve got my reputation to think of.’
‘Of course,’ said Devereux. ‘I’m most grateful for your time and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your appointment at the House of Lords. I’m afraid we policemen do not have the resources to pay for information. A very good day to you, sir.’
As he made his way back to his office, Inspector Miles Devereux wondered what a good barrister would make of the figures. Who benefits indeed, he said to himself. He resolved to send a telegram as soon as he reached his office. He felt Powerscourt would be very interested in the five hundred guineas.
The sun was shining in Cambridge as Powerscourt made his way to Trinity College and the rooms of Selwyn Augustus Tait. Sunshine in February was not what he remembered from his time here, usually cold, damp, strands of fog swirling round you as you made your way up King’s Parade. Tait had rooms next to the chapel in Trinity Great Court, the largest quadrangle in either Oxford or Cambridge.
‘Damn it, man, no point being indoors in the sunshine at this time of year. Let’s go for a walk. We can talk as we go and have some coffee on the way.’
Tait led the way past the Master’s Lodge, which Powerscourt even in his undergraduate days had thought was far too imposing to be called a mere lodge, as if it were a hunting or shooting outpost, past the Hall into New Court and over the Garret Hostel Lane Bridge. He was wearing a three-piece suit with a cream shirt but he was not one of those men who fit comfortably into their clothes. Selwyn Augustus Tait was not a virtual scarecrow like the Allison’s teacher Peabody, but he gave the impression that none of his clothes fitted him properly.
‘Bloody codicil,’ said Tait. ‘Sorry you’ve had to flog all the way out here for me to tell you it’s a fake. Well, it is. There are many strange things about academics, odd dress, eccentric mannerisms, terrible shoes. Historians are probably the worst. What you have to remember about medieval historians, Powerscourt, is that there are precious few documents, hardly any original pieces of evidence. It’s not as bad as ancient history, mind you. If you set your mind to it, you could probably read all the original sources for most of classical Greek history in less than a fortnight.’
Powerscourt smiled. He had been reading history here all those years ago, enveloped in the embrace of the colleges and the beauty of the river where they were now facing the Back Lawn of King’s where the famous chapel was flanked by the classical elegance of the Gibbs Building.
‘So what happens to all these medieval historians when a new piece of evidence, or what seems to be a new piece of evidence, turns up?’ Tait was rubbing his hands together as he walked. ‘They go wild with excitement. Judgement goes out of the window. There are just two questions you have to ask yourself. One, is there anything else like it in the surviving stuff we do have? These livery companies were a form of self-defence in a way, but they will all have known what the others were doing. If one company was incorporating a get-out clause from their constitution, then the likelihood is that some of the others would too. But nobody did. I’m not saying that’s conclusive, mind you, but it’s significant.’
Tait stopped to look at the herd of cows who lived in these fields on the far side of the river from the colleges.
‘Just like the cows,’ he said with a laugh, ‘medieval historians, chewing a cud that’s six hundred years old all day. The other thing is much more important. Who benefits? The Prime Warden benefits. All his chums in the inner council or whatever it’s called, benefit. The ordinary members are thrown a few scraps. It’s a fraud, quite a clever fraud, but a fraud nonetheless.’
‘Who do you think did it, the fraud, I mean?’
They had now reached the cafe in the Silver Street basin, lined with bedraggled punts waiting for the summer, and were taking coffee at a corner table looking out over the water.
‘Hard to tell,’ Tait replied. ‘Not too difficult to find some academic who’d cook the whole thing up for money. Maybe they found somebody in Europe nobody here has ever heard of. I’m sure some of the dons back in Trinity haven’t left the college in years. Nobody might have heard of the fellow.’
A totally new thought suddenly struck Powerscourt. ‘Can I ask you another question, Professor? I’ve only just thought of it and it may be complete nonsense.’
‘Of course,’ said Tait, ‘fire ahead.’
‘One thing that’s always puzzled me is why the bar is set so high, if you like. Why did eighty per cent of the Silkworkers have to approve of the changes before they could be carried out? Why not fifty per cent or even sixty?’
‘Good point,’ said Tait. ‘Those livery companies were always keen to carry the membership along with them, unanimity in face of the foe, that sort of thing.’
‘But surely,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the eighty per cent is still very high. Let’s just try standing the whole thing on its head, if I may. Suppose it is genuine. And suppose that the point of the codicil is not to enable the authorities to sell everything off and make loads of money, but the opposite. The bar is set so high to make the thing virtually impossible. Nobody would ever get eighty per cent of the votes. The codicil, on this theory, becomes not the means of enriching the Prime Warden and his friends, but the opposite. It’s designed to make it impossible. The assets will remain locked together. Nobody will ever get a large enough majority to steal them.’
Tait paused and inspected the ducks circling round the punts in the Silver Street basin. Powerscourt thought he could almost see Tait’s brain working, little grey cells marching at top speed across his cranium, cerebral lights flashing at each other like the dials on the bridge of a ship.
‘My God, that’s smart, Powerscourt. Very smart. Wish I’d thought of it myself. But your theory, elegant though it is, depends on the codicil being genuine. I still believe it to be fake. I’ll think about it, mind you, and let you know if I change my mind.’
‘One last thing,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Can I ask you about money?’
‘Do you mean, did the Silkworkers offer me a fee for my opinion? Well, yes, they did. But I didn’t take it. It didn’t seem right when I was saying the whole thing was rubbish.’
‘Might I ask how much they were offering?’
‘You may indeed. They were offering twenty guineas which was quite generous for such a job. Why are you so interested in the money side of things if I may ask?’
‘Of course you may. Did you know that a man called Claypole, Wilson Claypole, also gave advice on the codicil?’
‘That man from University College? How much was he paid?’