‘I turn now to our Second Suspect. This, I fear, takes us into the complicated waters of the Dauntsey marriage. I do not wish to break any confidences but I feel free to say that the difficulties were caused entirely by the inability of the poor couple to have any children of their own. This was a severe trial to them both. Alex Dauntsey felt it particularly keenly for he was the inheritor of one of the great houses of England. Calne may be covered in dust sheets today, its fabulous galleries preserved from decay but not open to visitors, but it has a great history stretching back to Elizabeth and beyond. For Calne not to have his heir was terrible for Dauntsey. And since he was sure his wife Elizabeth could not conceive, he resolved to try for an heir with another woman. He was indeed, intending to spend the night after the feast and the following weekend with the other woman. Mrs Dauntsey appeared to agree with this decision but it became the subject of a ferocious row between the two of them the day before his death. The Chief Inspector’s men, Mr Treasurer, carried out detailed interviews with every member of this Inn who was here for the feast in order to establish, where possible, the times of the movements of the participants. There were a number of reports of a mysterious visitor who came between five and six and was seen leaving shortly after six. Nobody recognized the figure, though one of the porters said later that he originally thought it was Mrs Dauntsey until he realized that was impossible, as the visitor was universally agreed to be male. I am sure, Mr Treasurer, that you attended the three hundredth anniversary performance of Twelfth Night in Middle Temple Hall earlier this year. So did Elizabeth Dauntsey, who will have remembered that one of the principal characters, Viola or Cesario, was a girl pretending to be a boy who would have been played in Shakespeare’s time by a boy pretending to be a girl, pretending to be a boy. We now know that Mrs Dauntsey was the mysterious visitor, disguised as a man. We know she went to her husband’s rooms, according to her account, to apologize for the row and to wish him well for the weekend. She went in disguise, she says, because she feared other members of the Inn would know about the weekend away and would be laughing at her. That is her story. But it is perfectly possible that she was still incensed with her husband and that she came in disguise to the Inn intent, not on reconciliation, but on murder. Her husband, after all, was drinking red wine when she called. It would have been perfectly possible to slip in some poison while her husband went to the bathroom. So she is the Second Suspect.’
Powerscourt paused and looked down at his papers. The Chief Inspector’s pen stopped for a moment. Barton Somerville was fiddling with a biscuit. A pair of seagulls settled briefly on the window sill and moved on.
‘Suspect Number Three,’ he went on, ‘is the young woman Alex Dauntsey was going to spend time with in pursuit of a son and heir. Catherine Cavendish is a lively and attractive woman in her early thirties, a former chorus girl who is married to a doctor much older than herself. The doctor is dying of some unknown illness and is unable to perform some of the more intimate functions of the married state. He has, he says, no objections to his wife partaking of these pleasures, forbidden fruit we might almost say, in some mythical Eden, with another man. That man was Dauntsey.’
Powerscourt paused and took another sip of his tea. Barton Somerville was taking notes too. Powerscourt suspected that he might be subjected to a fearful cross-examination at the end.
‘I have talked at length with the two ladies involved in this delicate transaction and it seems to me that there was a misunderstanding about Dauntsey’s intentions after the first husband had passed on. Mrs Dauntsey was convinced that he would never leave her. Mrs Cavendish, for her part, believed Dauntsey would leave his wife and marry her. If Catherine Cavendish discovered that Dauntsey was taking his pleasure with her, but not, as it were, prepared to pay his bills, then I believe she would have been capable of murdering him. And in a perverse way I think we have to count her husband as Suspect Number Four. For it is one thing to announce that you have no objections to your wife carrying on with another man, quite another when it is about to happen under your very nose and you realize that your objections may be more visceral and more irrational than you had thought. Far from not minding, you suddenly find that you mind very much. And there are two further reasons for placing Dr Cavendish in the suspects’ pound. Here was a man with but a few months left to live. The chances are that he would be dead by normal means before his case could come to court. So he wouldn’t care about the hangman’s noose as others might. And he was an expert on poisons, he had written at least two books on them.’
‘Forgive me for interrupting, Powerscourt.’ Somerville was peering at him over the top of his spectacles, half a biscuit dangling from his left hand. ‘What about Woodford Stewart? You talk as if there was only one murder. There have been two.’
‘I am coming to that, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt continued. ‘There is absolutely nothing in Mr Stewart’s private life that either the Chief Inspector or I could discover which might have led to somebody wanting to kill him. His domestic life was beyond reproach. There is, of course, as there is with Alex Dauntsey, the outside chance of some prisoner whose conviction they secured years ago now achieving release and coming to exact revenge. But I do not think that likely. What killed Woodford Stewart had to do with this Inn and it had to do with his friendship with Dauntsey. It may be that he knew who the poisoner was and had to be silenced. It may be that the reasons that led to Dauntsey’s murder also led to Stewart’s.’
Powerscourt paused again. He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, rather a lot of footsteps. The Chief Inspector looked across at him. Barton Somerville did not react. Maybe his hearing was not what it was.
‘You will know far better than I, Mr Treasurer,’ Powerscourt went on, smiling slightly at Somerville ‘how sometimes in important cases the defending barrister sets out on what seems to be a completely pointless line of argument, apparently having little to do with the case under trial. The prosecuting counsel objects. The judge quizzes the defence. Eventually, though not always, the judge permits the line of questioning because he believes the defence’s assurances that the information is relevant. So it is with me here. Every word I say from now on has, in my judgement and that of my colleague on my left, the greatest relevance to this case, whatever you may think at the time. And, in deference to the surroundings, Mr Treasurer, I am going to call some witnesses. I am sure you will be interested to learn that they are all dead, and, more surprising perhaps, that some of them are here in this very room.’
Powerscourt rose from his chair and walked to the wall farthest away from Somerville’s desk.
‘This is my first witness,’ he said proudly, ‘and what a handsome fellow Sir Thomas Lawrence has made him.’ Powerscourt waved airily at the full-length portrait which showed the sitter in red judicial robes, looking as much a cardinal as a judge, staring crossly at a long piece of paper which could have been a will or some other legal document. Behind him and slightly to the left was a beautiful room with long Georgian windows and a view over the Thames. ‘As you can see, Mr Justice Wallace is a former Treasurer of this Inn, who has presided over this kingdom as Mr Treasurer Somerville does now. He is examining his paper in the very room in which we are now meeting.’
Powerscourt resumed his seat and began to turn over one or two of his papers. ‘The good judge,’ he went on, ‘who came from a respectable family in Dorset, one brother becoming a Cabinet Minister, another an Admiral of the Blue, lived to the ripe old age of eighty-seven. In his will of 1824 he left a lot of money and property to his numerous family.’