‘He was paid,’ Powerscourt paused for a moment for effect, ‘the princely sum of five hundred guineas with a thousand going to the College Development Fund.’
Selwyn Augustus Tait laughed. ‘That’s it, Powerscourt. You need look no further. You’ve found your forger. Why, for five hundred guineas I might have forged the bloody thing myself!’
Inspector Albert Fletcher would have had little time for theorizing academics in London or Cambridge or anywhere else. In his hand he had what he believed was the most important piece of evidence discovered so far in this case. His house-to-house search of the wider environs of Marlow had produced one piece of real value, discovered by Constable Jack Perkins. Initially, an informant who lived close to the Elysian Fields Hotel reported a very large black car going down the road to the hotel late in the evening before the murder. Further investigations with the night porter revealed to Perkins that the car and its occupants were regular visitors. Sir Peregrine Fishbone had been in the hotel that evening. He had a meeting with a person or persons unknown. His chauffeur had been waiting in the car.
‘Sergeant!’ he yelled. ‘Come quickly, man! We’ve got to go to the Elysian Fields!’
Sergeant Donaldson thought his master had gone mad. Were they going to heaven on a wet afternoon in February?
‘It’s that big hotel down by the river, the one where the rich people go. Sir Peregrine bloody Fishborne was there the night before the murder!’
Ten minutes later the two policemen had dismounted from their bicycles and were waiting for the hotel manager to join them.
‘My name is Sebastian Briggs, gentlemen.’ A dapper young man of about thirty years in a very smart suit with an MCC tie escorted them into his office. ‘I am the manager here. To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?’
Inspector Fletcher explained that they were investigating a murder at the Jesus Hospital.
‘I do not see what the Jesus Hospital has to do with us,’ said Briggs. ‘It is not part of this establishment.’
‘The hospital, as you probably know, is run by the Silkworkers, a livery company in the City of London. The Prime Warden, Sir Peregrine Fishborne, is the officer responsible for looking after the almshouse. We have reason to believe that he was in this hotel late in the evening on the day before the unfortunate silkman was killed. And that he had a meeting here that evening with somebody.’
The hotel manager’s reply took a lot of the wind out of the Inspector’s sails.
‘What of it?’ he said. ‘Sir Peregrine is a director of the company that owns the Elysian Fields. The Silkworkers have invested heavily in this establishment. Sir Peregrine has a permanent set of rooms here, the Baron Haussmann Suite on the first floor, at his disposal. He is a regular visitor.’
Fragments of French history from school floated through Sergeant Donaldson’s mind. Was there a Sun King Suite upstairs? A Danton Room where you could get murdered in the bath?
‘Nobody saw Sir Peregrine leave,’ said Inspector Fletcher, feeling he was being cheated of his prey.
‘Come, come.’ Briggs sensed that the initiative in this conversation had now passed to him. ‘What if nobody saw him leave? This is a free country. We run a hotel here, not a police station. You’re not suggesting that Sir Peregrine committed the murder, are you?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ Fletcher stuck to his guns, ‘just trying to establish the facts. Will any of your staff have known he was here that night?’
‘The night porter will have known what was going on during his watch. But that particular night porter is not on duty at present. He will be here in a couple of hours’ time.’
‘When he appears,’ said Inspector Fletcher, ‘could you ask him to come down to the police station as soon as he arrives? Tell him it’s very urgent. Good day to you, Mr Briggs. You haven’t heard the end of this, not by a long chalk.’
‘Do you think it’s a woman, sir?’ asked Sergeant Donaldson as the two men made their way back to the police station.
‘Woman? What woman?’ snapped the Inspector. ‘We haven’t got a bloody woman in this case. Not yet at any rate.’
‘Sorry, sir, I meant the room permanently available to Sir Peregrine back there at the hotel. Do you think he takes a woman there? Maybe women plural?’
‘God knows,’ said the Inspector. Try as they might, neither of the two policemen could imagine Sir Peregrine engaging in amorous dalliance in hotel rooms by the Thames.
The back bedrooms in the great house by the sea did not have the grand views of those at the front, the waters of the harbour, the sea off to your right, the yacht Morning Glory riding peacefully at her moorings. The back bedrooms looked out over what might once have been a rock garden as the ground rose steeply up the cliff. The man with the great black beard took out two pairs of sharp scissors he had purchased some weeks before. He had only reached the house that afternoon after lying low for some days now, out of sight and out of contact with any human beings at all.
Blackbeard stared at his reflection in the mirror. He would have rather liked being a pirate, he thought, all those raunchy wenches and the stolen rum. Very gingerly he began his work with the larger pair of scissors. Snip. A large chunk of beard fell to the floor. Snip. He worked his way down the cheek and up from the neck until he reached his mouth. Snip. He looked at himself again, one side of his face a straggly mass of his remaining hair, the other a rich and curly black. Snip. He disposed of most of the moustache and the hair beneath his mouth. Snip. He worked his way up the remaining cheek and the right-hand side of his neck. Piles of black hair were lying across his lap and down on the floor, as if some latter-day black sheep had come in to be sheared. Snip. The man repeated the process with the smaller, even sharper pair of scissors. Now at last the shaving soap and the razor. When he had finished, the man in the mirror inspected himself closely. He doubted if anybody he had met in the last two months would have recognized him. He smiled at his alter ego in the mirror.
That evening more policemen joined their brothers in London on duty outside the buildings owned or run by the Silkworkers Company. Constable Mick George of the Surrey force stood guard on the Earl of Northampton’s almshouses in Camberley. Sergeant Jacob King stood at ease all night long outside the Philip Trevelyan Hospital for the Working Poor in Guildford. Constable John Lawley watched over the old men of the St Peter and Paul Almshouse in Woking. The Chief Constable of Surrey wasn’t taking any chances, not with three victims already dead and warnings from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
10
Lord Francis Powerscourt was entertaining a brace of police inspectors in his drawing room in Markham Square. Rhys the butler had just finished serving coffee. Neither of his guests asked Powerscourt where his wife was. Draped across a chaise longue by the window, Inspector Miles Devereux of the Metropolitan Police looked as if he might have been born in this house and into this social circle. Inspector Fletcher of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary was less at home, sitting nervously by the edge of the fire, twirling his hat in his hands. Both had reported their latest developments to Powerscourt, Fletcher the astonishing discovery of Sir Peregrine in the vicinity of the hospital late in the evening the day before the first murder, Devereux his equally surprising encounter with the history man from University College London who was paid such a large number of guineas for his advice on the codicil.
‘Let’s think about Sir Peregrine first, shall we?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Inspector Fletcher, have you any theories about what was going on?’
The Inspector gave his cap another twirl. He paused for a moment or two before he spoke. ‘I do, my lord, I certainly do. The first theory — we have to consider it, however unlikely it sounds — is that he really was at the hotel on business. He is a director, after all. His normal activities in the City kept him occupied all day so he had to drive over in the evening. My second theory is that he was there on Jesus Hospital business. Maybe he had come to see Warden Monk to discuss the votes in the Silkworkers ballot. Fishborne may have been trying to devise a way to persuade all those who would have voted against his plans while Abel Meredith was still alive to change their minds. Maybe Monk was telling Sir Peregrine how much money he would have to spend to buy the votes.’ Inspector Fletcher looked round for approval.