‘Morning, Sarah,’ said Edward, ‘you’re looking very smart today.’ Sarah was wearing a dark skirt, a cream blouse and a dark blue jacket that had a slightly masculine look about it.
‘Thank you, Edward,’ Sarah replied, thinking suddenly of the two of them wrapped round the lamp-post the evening before.
‘I’ve got some splendid news, Sarah,’ said Edward, admiring the way the red hair curled down those pale cheeks. ‘Lord Powerscourt has asked us round to Manchester Square any time next weekend. He was going to invite us to their place in the country but Lady Lucy thought that might not suit the twins.’
‘And where is the Powerscourt place in the country?’
‘It is, in the good lord’s words, in the splendidly unfashionable county of Northamptonshire. It’s near Oundle. They’ve got a cricket pitch and a tennis court, though it’s a bit early for that. It’s frightfully old, Sarah. Powerscourt thinks men went out from it to fight at Crecy and Agincourt.’
‘My goodness,’ said Sarah, not quite sure how far back in the past those two battles were. It was the kind of thing Edward always knew.
‘And there’s a ghost, Sarah. Mr Ghost, not Mrs Ghost or Miss Ghost. A real clanking-about-in-the-middle-of-the-night-ghost. But look, I’ve got to go and look up those wills for Lord Powerscourt. I’m not due in court at all today.’
‘Wills, what wills, Edward? What does Lord Powerscourt want with wills?’
Edward lowered his voice. ‘It’s the benchers’ wills, Sarah. He thinks there’s a very faint chance they might be connected with the murders. I’ll see you later.’
With that Edward clattered off down the stairs. Less than five minutes later Sarah heard an unfamiliar pair of boots tramping up towards her attic fastness. Big man, she thought, quite heavy. That stair near the top only squeaks if you’re over fifteen stone. There was a grunt as if the climb up the stairs had taken its toll. Then the door was opened and her visitor was beside her, towering above Sarah at her station by the typewriter.
‘Miss Henderson,’ said Barton Somerville, ‘forgive me for calling on you like this. I was looking for the young man they call Edward. They said I might find him up here.’
Sarah wondered what was going on. Never before had the Treasurer of the Inn been to see her. Nor could she see what he might want with such a humble person as Edward. He might be all the world to her, she knew, but he was a very junior member of these chambers let alone the Inn.
‘Edward’s not here, sir,’ she said.
‘I can see that,’ said Barton Somerville testily. ‘Do you know where he is, by any chance?’
‘I think he’s gone to look up some benchers’ wills for Lord Powerscourt, sir.’
‘Benchers’ wills?’ Somerville suddenly sounded quite extraordinarily angry. ‘Working for Powerscourt now, is he? Not for the chambers that pay his wages. We’ll see about that, young lady.’
‘I’m sure he would have cleared it with Mr Kirk, sir. Edward’s always very scrupulous about things like that.’
Barton Somerville snorted. He slammed the door and departed noisily down the stairs. Edward had not told Sarah not to mention where he was going or anything like that. She hoped she hadn’t got Edward into trouble. And, once more, as she looked out at the innocent lawns of New Court, a frock-coated porter pushing a mighty pile of documents down the path that led to the law courts, Sarah felt very frightened. And it would be hours before Edward came back.
Two days later Powerscourt was waiting for a visitor in the first-floor drawing room in Manchester Square. Catherine Cavendish was due in ten minutes’ time. And he had written to ask for an appointment with Dr Cavendish at his Harley Street consulting rooms for the following day.
Lady Lucy found him pacing up and down the room. She was smiling broadly.
‘Francis, my love, you’ll like this!’ she said happily.
‘What news, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt.
‘It’s Catherine Cavendish, Francis. She was born Catherine Chadwick. She was a chorus girl. At the Alhambra and the Duke of York’s and the Gentleman’s Relish. They say she was the senior dancer at the Alhambra, a sort of Head Prefect.’
Powerscourt tried to get his brain around what would be entailed in being the Head Girl of a chorus line and failed. ‘God bless my soul, Lucy, I didn’t know you had any relations in what one might call the saucier part of the West End.’
Lady Lucy laughed. ‘I don’t, Francis. I mean I don’t have any relations in that world. Mrs Trumper Smith told me.’
Powerscourt’s face registered complete ignorance, if not astonishment, at the mention of Mrs Trumper Smith.
‘You know Mrs T, Francis. That’s what everyone calls her, behind her back at any rate. She lives three doors down from here. Her son is in the same class at school as Thomas. The husband’s a doctor, quite a fashionable one, I think, with a practice in Harley Street or Wimpole Street. He knows the Cavendishes, says the chorus girl is quite delightful.’
‘Did the woman say what was wrong with Dr Cavendish, the one who’s meant to be leaving this world quite shortly?’
‘She did not, Francis.’
There was a ring at the front door bell. A tall, dark-haired woman in a long grey dress was shown in and took her seat in front of the fire. Powerscourt noted that she was very slim, with a tiny waist and a very beautiful face. The eyes, even in the sad circumstances in which Mrs Cavendish presumably found herself, were grey and slightly cheeky and her lips looked as if they wanted nothing better than to be kissed. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the rather vulgar assessment of female beauty carried out by some of his more disreputable fellow officers stationed at Simla, summer residence of the British Raj in India. It was known as the ships test and was based on Marlowe’s famous line about Helen of Troy: ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ The great beauties of Simla were awarded ships by the hundred according to the male estimates of their beauty. Powerscourt thought he remembered one gorgeous creature reaching the dizzy heights of seventy hundred and fifty. That record stood all through that summer, up to and including the Viceroy’s Ball. Mrs Cavendish, Powerscourt felt, would have been most eager to play the game. Her score would certainly have approached the record, perhaps even bettered it. An entire chorus line, led by Catherine Cavendish in person, he reckoned, would muster a combined score of many thousands.
‘Mrs Cavendish,’ he began, ‘how kind of you to call.’ The eyes, which he had originally thought to be cheeky, had turned cautious as Mrs Cavendish took a lightning appraisal of the room and its furnishings.
‘Nice place you’ve got here, Lord Powerscourt,’ she replied.
‘I’m afraid I want to ask you some questions about Mr Dauntsey, Mrs Cavendish.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you’d asked me here to talk about the political situation in the Balkans.’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘How long ago did you meet him, Mrs Cavendish?’
‘Mr Dauntsey? I met him about nine weeks ago. It was in my husband’s waiting room. He was running very late that day, like the doctors often do, and Alex, Mr Dauntsey I mean, was the last patient waiting to go in. I was there waiting for Dr C to come out as we were already late for a reception. We just got talking, the way you do.’
Mrs Cavendish looked rather defiant as she said this.
‘And things just went on from there, Mrs Cavendish, regular meetings, that sort of thing?’
‘I think he was the most charming man I’ve ever met, Lord Powerscourt. He used to buy me lunch, lovely lunches, they were, and always with lovely wines. He had a wonderful nose for a wine and a great love for the names, Chateau La Tour Blanche, that’s a Sauterne, Lord Powerscourt, Chateau Fleur Cardinale, Chambolle Mussigny, Les Amoureuses, Chassagne Montrachet.’
Powerscourt was very impressed that she did not pronounce either of the two t’s in Montrachet. Johnny Fitzgerald had been heard describing people who did as little better than Philistines. Powerscourt found himself wondering if Johnny Fitzgerald might replace the late Alex Dauntsey in Mrs Cavendish’s affections with their shared love of fine vintages. But however hard he tried he couldn’t see Mrs Cavendish in enormous boots, wrapped up to the chin, waiting before dawn for a flight of rare birds over the Suffolk marshes.