‘I’m just coming to that,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think you should go and see this solicitor, Mr Brendan Hooper, of Hooper Hardie and Slope, 146 Whitechapel High Street. You see, Howard came out of Pentonville ten days ago.’
‘Pentonville,’ Johnny Fitzgerald muttered to himself, ‘White-chapel, where the Ripper plied his ghastly trade. Why do I get all the best locations?’
‘According to what Hooper told Dauntsey’s clerk, Howard was even angrier on coming out than when he went in. Hooper’s had to move house for the time being. He’s under police protection. Dauntsey, of course, isn’t here at all. Dauntsey’s dead.’
3
Over the next two days Powerscourt went through an intensive course in the professional life of Alexander Dauntsey. He made appointments to see everybody in his chambers and one or two more besides. He became a familiar figure to the porters as he flitted in and out of Queen’s Inn, shuffling the new information in his mind. From the Head of Chambers, a charming bencher called Maxwell Kirk, he learnt principally about Dauntsey as a member of chambers. ‘You’ve been in the Army, Lord Powerscourt, I can tell from the way you walk. Well, you know how some fellows fit very naturally into the military life, and some don’t. They never seem to get the hang of it at all. Killed first in battle, the ones that don’t fit in, I noticed. Nobody else prepared to put themselves out for them. Well, Dauntsey was one of those who fitted in. He belonged here as if he’d been born to it. I invited him to join us here seven years ago and I’ve never regretted it for a second.’
‘What was he like as a lawyer?’ Powerscourt asked, suspecting that he would not be told the whole truth. There was a slight pause as if Kirk wasn’t sure how much to give away.
‘I’m going to use a rather strange analogy, if I may, Lord Powerscourt. When I was at school I was very keen on cricket, still am when I can find the time. We had a chap there in the year above me called Morrison. On his day you would have said he was bound to play for England. He had beautiful style – a cover drive direct from heaven – he could cope with any kind of bowling, he could bat on any kind of wicket. People said he was bound to take the field for England later on. Only thing was, he was erratic, poor chap. Some days he could hardly hit the ball and certainly couldn’t score any runs. It was strange, very strange. Dauntsey was a bit like that.
Brilliant some of the time, absolutely brilliant, solicitors queuing up to instruct him, triumphs in court. Next day listless, just about able to get the words out, hopeless. Instructing solicitors tearing their hair out. Clerk to chambers in despair. It didn’t happen very often, mind you, maybe once in ten or twelve outings before the judges, but significant none the less.’
‘Did this mean that his income went down?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Fewer people prepared to employ him?’
‘I suppose it did,’ said Maxwell Kirk slowly, staring out of his window as if Dauntsey’s ghost might be hovering above the Thames. ‘I suppose he never made as much money as he could have done. But some of the solicitors were very loyal. They kept coming back.’
‘Was it possible,’ said Powerscourt, suspecting that Kirk would not know enough about Dauntsey’s private life to answer his question, ‘to work out why he lost his talent, as it were? Did it happen when he was depressed? Had he been drinking too much beforehand, anything like that?’
‘You’re not the first person to wonder about that. Our clerk here, the chap before the present one, used to make a note of Dauntsey’s moods every day. And, of course, he had records of Dauntsey’s cases and when he had his off days. Our clerk had his very own system of notation. C was cheerful. H was happy. VH was very happy. N was neutral, meant he couldn’t decide one way or the other. S was sad, B was black and VB was very black. He kept this going for a whole year. Then on New Year’s Eve, so he told me, God knows what his family must have made of this, he tried to match up the two lots of information. He could find absolutely no correlation between the two. He could be very black for three days in a row but very brilliant in court. He could be very happy first thing in the morning and completely tongue-tied at the Old Bailey in the afternoon. It was extraordinary.’
‘Did he,’ Powerscourt always kept this question till the end, ‘have any problems with money or women?’
‘If he did,’ Kirk replied, ‘he wouldn’t be telling me, unless he was in desperate trouble. I don’t believe he was in any money trouble. That place he had in Kent cost a lot to keep up, but in a good year he was making a very fine living here. As for the women, I simply don’t know. I should have said that he was a man who lived his life in tight little compartments, if you know what I mean. Right hand barely aware what the left hand was doing. He could have been involved with women – I think they found him attractive – but as to facts I haven’t a clue.’
As he wandered down the stairs Powerscourt wondered if Kirk would have told him anything about Dauntsey’s affairs with women if he had known about them. ‘Actually, Lord Powerscourt, he was a most frightful womanizer, he went through them at the rate of one every three months. . .’ No, he couldn’t imagine Kirk saying that. In fact Powerscourt couldn’t think of anyone he had talked to so far who would have told him if Dauntsey was having affairs. They closed ranks, these lawyers, and only told the world what they felt the world should hear. Truth was rationed in the lawyers’ chambers; it was potentially too dangerous to be let loose.
Of the great battle with Porchester Newton, however, he was told a great deal. The benchers in Queen’s Inn were elected, he learned, and at the last vacancy a month or so before Dauntsey’s death there had been a fierce struggle between the two men. The benchers, in effect, were the governing body of the Inn. Like the other Inns of Court Queen’s demanded a substantial payment from new benchers. But unlike the others Queen’s also demanded that every bencher remember the Inn in his will, though the precise percentage of the total estate was not known. This double collection made the little Inn one of the richest places in London, with almost all the money earmarked for scholarships and bursaries for students from humble backgrounds. The largest Inns of Court had forty or even fifty benchers on their books. Queen’s had only eight. And Powerscourt heard whispers even on his first day about the bitter fight that had preceded Dauntsey’s election as bencher. These affairs, he was told, are not conducted like Parliamentary contests. There are no slates of candidates, no formal speeches. But aspirant benchers give sherry parties so they can shake the hands of voters they might not have met. Discreet dinner parties are held to win over the waverers. Supporters of the rival candidates whisper about the deficiencies of their opponents into the ears of all those who will listen, and there are many who will listen. Right up to the end it seemed as though Dauntsey’s great rival Porchester Newton was going to win. Nobody was prepared to say what rumour Dauntsey’s people had spread in the last twenty-four hours before the voting, but it worked. The ballot was secret but it was widely known that Dauntsey had a comfortable victory. Newton had not spoken to him since. Newton, Powerscourt realized, would make a formidable enemy. He was the opposite of Dauntsey in almost every way. Dauntsey had a soaring imagination which enabled him on occasion to see motives that were apparent to nobody else. Newton was a solid performer, plodding through his cases with little sparkle. Dauntsey was quick, mercurial. Newton was slow, stolid, some even ventured that he was stupid. Powerscourt’s only doubt about Newton as a possible murderer was the murder weapon. Certainly there was motive. Some of the insults traded during the vicious election campaign would have produced a duel in Temple Gardens in years gone by. Powerscourt wasn’t sure he could see Newton as a poisoner until he heard that he had worked in India in his youth. You could learn enough about poisons there, as Powerscourt well knew, to last you a lifetime.