‘Somerville had explained some of it, but brother Tompkins didn’t remember it very well. And, by this time, on my own timetable, I’d only six minutes left before he was due to pop off. Brother Tompkins was probably thinking his time was nearly up too. He kept looking at his watch. I’ve thought about it since and this is what I think Tompkins meant. Somerville was forced to invite Lord Powerscourt in to investigate the murders by the other benchers. But I think he was also the man who opposed appointing Lord Powerscourt at that first meeting. I imagine he felt he might be caught out. But what really rattled him was when no suspects were hauled off to jail. He thought Newton would be arrested. Then he thought somebody else must be picked up. When they weren’t he felt he must have been rumbled so the man who was about to expose him had to go.’
‘So what’s going to happen to this Tompkins person?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Will he have to stand trial? And that horrible Somerville, will he be put in the dock as well?’
‘When Tompkins is recovered, he will have to stand trial,’ replied the Chief Inspector. ‘Mr Somerville, well, he may be on trial somewhere else, but he won’t be attending any trials down here. This is the other piece of information I am sure your husband would wish to know. We had to let Somerville out on the most enormous bail after twenty-four hours. You will recall that Maxwell Kirk, the barrister at the head of Dauntsey’s chambers, was going to address a meeting of protest of all the barristers in Queen’s Inn. Somerville tried to prevent it but failed. The barristers were incandescent with rage at what had been happening about the money. Edward said I was to mention this point in particular, Lady Powerscourt. He said your husband would have enjoyed it hugely. They decide, these lawyers, to pass a vote of no confidence in Somerville. Just one sentence was all they needed. According to Edward, a roomful of monkeys with typewriters would have produced it quicker. It took them fifty-five minutes to agree the wording and even then there were six different caveats on the final version. So the Petition of Right, as one wag called it, is sent off to Somerville. It must have been terrible for him, total public humiliation at the hands of his peers. At any rate, when the servant goes into his rooms yesterday morning, there was Somerville slumped at his desk. The vote of censure was in front of him. The pistol was by his side. He’d blown his brains out.’
There was a brief silence. ‘There are just two other things I’m sure your husband would like to know, Lady Powerscourt. The man Porchester Newton has turned up again. He came back about three o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the shooting. Said he’d been fishing in South Wales. We asked the local police to check it out and it was all true. And John Bassett, the old Financial Steward – it’s been confirmed that he died of natural causes.’
‘I’m sure my husband will be most interested to hear all this news, Chief Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, upset far more than she could have imagined by this new death. ‘And now perhaps you would like to come and see him and talk to him before you have to leave. The doctor is very keen people should talk to him.’
On this day too, other visitors began to arrive. There were relations, always too sombre in their appearance and too gloomy in their assessments. ‘They look,’ Johnny Fitzgerald observed sourly to Lady Lucy, ‘as if they’ve decided he’s dead already and are trying to work out what to wear for the funeral.’ But some of them had been involved in earlier Powerscourt investigations. Patrick Butler, the young editor of the local newspaper in the cathedral city of Compton in the West Country, called late in the afternoon. He had been very closely involved in the Powerscourt investigation into the mysterious deaths in the cathedral the year before. He gave Lady Lucy an enormous kiss and a huge bunch of flowers. She took him straight in to see her husband and told him the details of the shooting. Compton Saviour Shot in Legal Feud was the headline that flashed through his newspaper brain. Patrick Butler thought in headlines just as farmers think of the seasons and the weather. He always had. The young Patrick sensed that beneath the surface optimism, the good cheer and the impeccable manners reserved for visitors in this politest of households, despair was probably not very far away.
‘I saw him, Lady Lucy,’ he began with a smile, ‘the morning after those bastards tried to kill him with all that falling masonry in the cathedral. Do you remember? Of course you do. Well, he looks to me very like he did then. He pulled round on that occasion and I’m sure he will this time.’
He stopped talking suddenly. Lady Lucy remembered that this was a fairly rare occurrence and waited for what was coming next. They were sitting side by side by the edge of Powerscourt’s bed. Patrick Butler reached out to take her hand.
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Lady Powerscourt, with your permission.’ A whole front page of his paper, the Grafton Mercury, was flashing through his brain as fast as the paper would come off the presses. A long article on Powerscourt’s role in the salvation of Compton the previous year. A brief description of his present difficulties. A prayer for his recovery from the Dean, maybe even the Bishop. ‘We’ll give the whole front page of the next edition of the Grafton Mercury over to Lord Powerscourt! An account of his role as the Saviour of Compton. A brief summary of his current predicament. And a prayer from the Dean or the Bishop! I’m great pals now with the new Dean, Lady Powerscourt. He says I’m the only person in the city of Compton who can tell him the whole truth about what went on before. Tell you what, even better, I’ll get the Dean to organize a service of prayer for Lord Powerscourt’s recovery. The whole of Compton will turn up and pray he gets better. That’s bound to help!’
Lady Lucy remembered Patrick’s wife’s description of him as being rather like a puppy. He hadn’t changed.
‘That would be very kind, Patrick,’ she said, smiling at her editor. ‘Francis and I were very fond of Compton. But tell me, how is Anne and what brings you to London at this time?’
Patrick Butler blushed. ‘Anne is well, Lady Powerscourt. She is expecting our first child in August.’ He made a close inspection of the nearer twin at this point as if intent on getting some practice in child care early on. ‘And I,’ he was going rather red at this point, ‘I have been asked to London for an interview about a position on The Times. I should know in three or four days if I have been accepted.’
‘That’s wonderful news, Patrick,’ said Lady Lucy, feeling, as she often did with Patrick, like an elderly aunt with her favourite nephew. ‘It would be splendid to have you and Anne in London.’
‘I must flee, Lady Powerscourt,’ said Patrick, pulling a reporter’s notebook from his pocket, ‘or I shall miss my train. Please give my very best love and wishes to your husband. I shall write part of the front page on the train!’ He took a last sad look at Powerscourt as he left the room. Patrick Butler had tried his best to be cheerful, to keep up the spirits of the little band on the second floor of 8 Manchester Square. But anybody watching him set off up Marylebone High Street towards Baker Street station would have seen that his eyes were filled with tears.
On the next day Dr Tony came early in the morning. He went through the usual routines with his patient and had a long conference with the nurse on duty. Then he went downstairs to talk to Lady Lucy.
‘What news, Dr Tony?’ she asked him with a smile.
‘Some of the time, Lady Powerscourt, we doctors swing between very different emotions. At eleven we may have to tell some unfortunate person that there is no hope, their time is almost gone. At twelve we may be in the fortunate position of having to tell some other luckier soul that the treatment has worked, that they are cured and may well live for another thirty years.’ He watched Lady Lucy’s face swing between hope and despair as he spoke. The lights were going on and off in her eyes. Perhaps that was a mistake, he said to himself, and hurried on.