‘The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar . . .’
‘Let me tell you a little story about “Dover Beach”, doctor, if I may,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It concerns a young man reading for the Anglican priesthood at one of those Oxford theological colleges. After a year or two, the young man becomes afflicted by doubt. Did God create man or did man create God? Book of Genesis can’t be true if the geologists are right. Creation story can’t be true if Darwin is right, can one person be man and God, the usual cocktail of doubt. And he is terribly affected by “Dover Beach”. If he can only recite the poem on Dover Beach itself, at the evening time mentioned at the start of the poem, he says to himself, then surely his doubts will be resolved. So, he takes the evening train bound for Maidstone, Ashford, Canterbury, Dover. By Ashford or thereabouts the young man is word perfect on the verses. There he is at last on the beach. He advances to the water’s edge and begins his recital in his most powerful voice. I should say that the wind is coming in fairly hard from the Channel at this point so the Matthew Arnold is being carried back towards the town. By the end he is nearly in tears with the beauty of the words and the idea that this world which seems a land of dreams,
‘Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.’
‘What happened to him, Lord Powerscourt?’ said the doctor eagerly. ‘Did his faith come back?’
‘I’m afraid his faith didn’t come back, doctor. What came instead were two burly members of the Kent Constabulary who were on patrol looking out for smugglers. They heard these, to them very strange, words and couldn’t decide whether the young man was a lunatic or not. They clapped him in the cells for the night – would you believe an explanation like his must have been? – and he was bound over to keep the peace by the magistrate the next morning for a period of thirty days. They say that by the time he got to Maidstone on his return journey, his faith had completely disappeared.’
The doctor smiled. ‘Very fine story, Lord Powerscourt. But no Dover Beach for me. I still believe. I believe I shall see God. I believe I shall be reunited with my dead parents and my dead first wife. Now, how can I help you?’
‘Could I ask where you were on the evening of Friday, the 28th of February?’
‘The evening poor Mr Dauntsey was murdered, you mean? Well, I was here in my consulting rooms until the early evening. I’m sure my secretary could give you the name of the last patient on that day. That would have been about five or half past five. Then I made some notes for an address I had to give at a conference in Oxford the following day. At seven o’clock or thereabouts I took a cab to Paddington station and the train to Oxford. I’m sure Wilfrid Baverstock, the Professor of Medicine who was organizing this conference, will vouch for the time I arrived at his college, Hertford, shortly after nine, I think.’
Powerscourt was doing lightning calculations. If a man walked fast, or if he took a cab and was lucky with the traffic in both directions, he could just about get to Queen’s Inn and leave a little something for Alex Dauntsey and be back in time to set out for Oxford.
‘In the time you were here, Dr Cavendish, between the departure of the last patient and your own departure for Oxford, was there anybody else about or were you completely alone?’
‘Well, there will have been other doctors here in other parts of the building but I didn’t see any of them, if that’s what you mean.’
Powerscourt took a brief look at the books in a small circular bookcase just to the left of the doctor. His heart started racing very fast.
‘I’m afraid I have to ask you about your wife and her relations with the dead man Dauntsey, Dr Cavendish. Could I ask you first of all how you met?’
The little man laughed. ‘It’s an interesting question as to who picked up whom, Lord Powerscourt. I make no apologies for enjoying the music hall shows. Good enough for the King, then it’s good enough for me, that’s what I say. I’d been to see this show she was in at the Alhambra, just called The Gaiety Girls, if my memory’s right, three times. The third time I was fifty yards from the theatre on my way home and Catherine comes up and starts talking to me, bold as brass. Hadn’t she seen me in that box before, once or was it twice? Anyway, things went on from there. I may be a believer in the Almighty and all his works, Lord Powerscourt, but I thought I could still enjoy some feminine company in the last months of my life. My first wife is dead. We didn’t have any children. I didn’t want to leave my money to a collection of medical charities. So there it was. And I told Catherine right from the start that there were certain physical functions relating to marriage that I could not perform because of my illness. I didn’t mind if she found outlets for those with other people, as long as she kept coming back to me until I died.’
Once again Powerscourt wondered if the man was telling the truth. Maybe the human capacity for jealousy disappeared when desire faded. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you could marry somebody much younger and tolerate them sleeping with other men. But he wasn’t sure. And he had noticed a faint flush on the doctor’s face as he gave that account of himself. Maybe it had to do with the sensitive nature of the subject matter. Suddenly Powerscourt remembered Catherine Cavendish telling him that she had met Alex Dauntsey when he was the last patient of the day, in her husband’s waiting room.
‘I think you knew Alex Dauntsey, Dr Cavendish,’ he said. ‘I believe he was a patient of yours.’
‘He was indeed. He had been a patient of mine for some years.’
Powerscourt wondered if length of service would make it more or less likely that you would murder somebody.
‘What did you think of him?’
‘Dauntsey?’ said the doctor reflectively, looking at the Annunciation on his wall as if there might be a message in there for him as well. ‘I liked him very much. He had a certain grace about him, a certain style that you don’t often see in today’s barristers. They’re all too concerned with making money.’
Of all the people whose deaths he had investigated, Powerscourt thought, Dauntsey was the one he would have most liked to meet. He thought of the portrait, now presumably lurking in some basement in Queen’s Inn, and wondered fancifully if he could buy it off them. He was sure Lady Lucy would have liked Dauntsey too, with those good looks and the charm that had bewitched Catherine Cavendish. He would even have been forgiven the love affair with cricket.
‘It’s such a pity he’s gone,’ said Powerscourt. ‘One last question, and forgive me if it is personal once again. Did you and Mrs Cavendish ever talk about what would happen after you had died?’
The doctor thought Powerscourt apologized too much. Bloody man’s nearly strangling himself with good manners, he said to himself. But then he reflected that while he dealt with the reality of death every day, Powerscourt did not.
‘I don’t think we have discussed it, actually,’ said Dr Cavendish. ‘Do you think we should?’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘I think that’s entirely a matter for yourselves,’ he said and rose to take his leave. As he stepped out into the cold air of Harley Street he saw again in his mind’s eye those two volumes on Dr Cavendish’s revolving bookcases. Poisons and Their Treatment was the first one in a brown binding. The Impact of Poison was the other, bound, appropriately enough, Powerscourt felt, in black. There was only room for the surname on the spine, not the full details of the writer and his qualifications which would appear inside. On both books the author was the same. His name was Cavendish.