‘Did he indeed?’ said Powerscourt, realizing that another name had to be added to his list of suspects. ‘But, of course, he didn’t leave a copy of the letter which would have had an address on it, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Matthew Plunkett replied. ‘That would have made life far too easy for everybody. Mind you, to be fair to Mr Dauntsey, I don’t think he was the kind of man who would have wanted to cause trouble after he had gone. Not like some I could mention.’
Matthew Plunkett sounded as if he had many lifetimes’ experience of obstreperous corpses and troublemaking cadavers.
‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think I can be of some assistance in your quest, Mr Plunkett. Dauntsey’s death is the subject of a police investigation. This Maxfield person is obviously suspect. Therefore, we can ask the police to look for him too. They have enormous resources at their disposal. If anybody in Britain can find him, they can.’
Matthew Plunkett smiled. ‘I cannot tell you, Lord Powerscourt, how pleased I am to hear that. Will you please come and report any progress to us here? And I’m so glad we are no longer alone in our search. Surely we should know who and where he is within a week or two.’
Making his way down the stairs, past a couple of stags that looked as though they might be enjoying their last day on earth, Powerscourt wasn’t so sure.
7
Robert Woodford Stewart went missing on Wednesday afternoon. They didn’t find his body until the Monday morning. It was discovered under a pile of masonry rubble, covered with a black tarpaulin, at the side of the Temple Church, the chapel and spiritual home of the Inner and Middle Temples, next to Queen’s Inn. Restoration work was being carried out in the nave, and when another wheelbarrow of rubble was carried out to the pile outside the church, Stewart’s body was found at the top of it.
‘Shot,’ said Chief Inspector Beecham to Powerscourt later that morning. ‘Shot twice in the chest. First one enough to kill him, I would have thought. Maybe the murderer wanted to make sure.’
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea yet as to when he was killed, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Not yet, my lord. We should know later in the day.’
There was a knock on the door of Dauntsey’s old room where Powerscourt had established a temporary command post and a porter brought an envelope addressed to him.
‘Damn,’ said Powerscourt, reading the note very quickly. ‘I’ve got to go and see that bloody man Somerville. I notice you’re not included in the invitation, Chief Inspector. Does that mean that he doesn’t know you’re here, or that he doesn’t want to see you?’
Beecham laughed. ‘He doesn’t want to see me ever again. He tried to get me moved off the case, you know. Letters to the Commissioner. One or two of the people here who are judges, they all made representations.’
‘What did the Commissioner say?’ said Powerscourt, curious to see how Somerville had been beaten off.
‘He said that he had no intention of telling the judiciary which judges should preside over their various trials and he would be obliged if they would leave him the same freedom in appointing detectives to murder cases.’
‘One thing before I go, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Was Stewart a big man, heavy, difficult to lift, would you say?’
‘No, he was slight, fairly easy to pick up and carry about the place if you’ll forgive my language. There’s just one thing that worries me about these murders, Lord Powerscourt.’
Powerscourt stayed where he was. Somerville could wait. ‘What’s that?’
‘Well . . .’ The Chief Inspector spoke slowly, as if he wasn’t sure of his facts. ‘Murder Number One, poison in the beetroot. Murder Number Two, shot through the chest. If it was the same man, why did he not use the same technique? Most murderers do. And there’s a theory, although I’m not sure I believe it, that poison is likely to be a woman’s choice of murder weapon, and guns a man’s.’
‘You don’t think, Chief Inspector,’ Powerscourt was on his feet now and heading for the door, ‘that there are two separate killers at work here?’
‘I just don’t know. Do you think it’s one killer or two?’
‘One,’ said Powerscourt with more certainty than he actually possessed. ‘The chances of two killers operating in one small community like this must be very very small. I should be most surprised if there were two murderers at work here.’
Barton Somerville was not at his enormous desk when Powerscourt arrived in his chambers on the first floor of Fountain Court. Powerscourt had been delighted to hear that his practice at the Bar was not doing well, that his self-importance and pomposity now annoyed some of the judges so much that the instructing solicitors were deserting him, fearful that their clients would lose their cases because of their barrister’s bombast.
‘Morning, Powerscourt.’ He dragged himself away from his tall window with the perfect sashes and withdrew to the fortified position that was his desk. ‘What do you have to report?’
Powerscourt felt he had been summoned to his housemaster in a dispute over late arrival of homework, previous negotiations over its delivery having broken down.
‘Before I bring you up to date, may I inquire if you have heard about Mr Stewart?’
‘Woodford Stewart or Lawrence Stewart? We have two. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that in the time you’ve been here.’
‘Mr Woodford Stewart. He’s been shot dead. His body was found by the Temple Church this morning. We won’t know any more, time of death and so on, until the doctors have had a look at him.’
Barton Somerville stared at Powerscourt for what seemed over a minute. ‘I hold you personally responsible for this latest death, Powerscourt. If you’d been doing your job properly, the murderer would have been unmasked by now and locked up. As it is, he’s still wandering around picking off his victims. And might I remind you, in this Inn and particularly in these rooms, you call me Treasurer. Now, what do you have to report?’
Powerscourt stared at the ceiling. He had an intense dislike of telling his clients anything at all while an investigation was in progress. So often his final conclusions were the direct opposite of what he had suspected at the beginning. And Somerville was certainly a suspect, though why the Treasurer of an Inn like Queen’s should want to go about killing off his own members Powerscourt, for the moment, could not imagine. But if Dauntsey had not been poisoned at the feast, that left only two locations where the crime could have been committed, either in his own chambers, or at the drinks party before the feast, given here in this very room by none other than Somerville himself.
‘I don’t think it would be helpful for me to say anything at this stage,’ he said finally.
‘I beg your pardon?’ boomed Somerville, his face growing red with fury. ‘Do you dare refuse to tell me what you have found out so far, I who brought you into this matter in the first place! It is monstrous!’
‘I don’t think it is monstrous, actually,’ said Powerscourt as reasonably as he could, and more determined than ever not to give anything away. ‘You see, in my experience, whatever people like myself think at this stage of the investigation is usually wrong. As things develop, our opinion changes.’
‘I presume,’ Somerville interrupted him quickly, possibly thinking he was back in court, ‘that by things developing, you mean more members of my Inn being killed off by your incompetence.’
Powerscourt shrugged his shoulders, well aware that a policy of total calm would infuriate the Treasurer even more. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you at this stage. When I have something definite to report I shall let you know.’ Powerscourt suddenly felt rather sorry for the pompous and unpleasant Somerville. If his practice was drying up, so must be his income. And if his income was drying up, the expenses of his position, which Powerscourt suspected must be considerable, must be growing harder to bear. And now these two murders, which would almost certainly be the permanent mark of his period in office. Somerville’s Treasurership, people would say in years to come, wasn’t that when those dreadful murders happened?