‘The policeman’s name, I think you said, was Inspector Cooper. You don’t know where I could find him?’
‘He told us he could be found at Fakenham, but that he moved about a lot. Let me tell you something about Inspector Cooper, Lord Powerscourt. This is only female intuition, if you like. I have no evidence for it whatsoever. Willoughby told me some horrid barrister would rip me to shreds if I ever said it in a court of law.’
Mrs Nash paused once more, collecting her thoughts. Powerscourt waited.
‘I don’t believe he thought Cosmo did it, the murder, I mean. He came back here a couple of times after the wedding and I overheard him once telling his sergeant that they’d never persuade the boss that Cosmo hadn’t done it. “Cosmo’s going to hang,” he said, “for something he didn’t do.” Those were his exact words.’
‘How very interesting,’ said Powerscourt, fascinated to hear of dissent in the ranks of the constabulary. ‘That’s very helpful. Thank you so much for everything, Mrs Nash. If there is anything else you remember, please let me know. I’m so grateful for your help this morning.’
Georgina Nash watched him go. She knew there was something she should have told him, something that had been niggling at the edge of her brain for days. When it came back she would send a telegram to Markham Square.
Alfred Davis was a very worried man. Ever since he became general manager of Colville and Sons five years before, he had been worried. And this morning, as he leaned over the balcony on the first floor of the Colville Headquarters, north of Oxford Street, and watched his clerks settle down for another day’s work, he was even more worried than usual. The clerks’ days, he told himself, were often difficult. Alfred had, after all, begun his life with Colvilles as one of them. The accounts might not balance at the end of the day. Some minor arithmetical slip could plunge some mighty calculation involving port revenue into a spin from which it might never recover. But when these clerks put on their coats and hats at the end of the day and went home, they left their troubles at their desks. Alfred’s often pursued him into the night. As he lay beside his wife of twenty-eight years, her best nightcap wrapped tightly round her head, his worries would rise up from the dark and pursue him through the night hours. Continuity of supply, that was always a problem. If the Madeira ran out, there simply wouldn’t be any more customers for it. Reliable shipping. Almost daily in the newspapers Alfred read stories of strikes and lockouts and industrial disputes running through the world’s shipping lines like some contagious disease. Fraudsters and con men. Alfred had been in the business too long not be aware of the dangers of some plausible rogue turning up with an offer of Bordeaux or sherry at unrepeatable prices. Rarely did the samples match up to the deliveries once the contract had been signed. What tasted clean and fruity in the trial bottles had turned into sour vinegar by the time the deliveries rolled into the Colvilles’ warehouses.
And now, as he turned from the balcony and walked back the few paces to his office, there were new worries. Opinion at Colvilles’ Headquarters was divided on the likely impact on business of the murder of one senior member of the family and the arrest of another on the charge of murdering his brother. The younger, jollier employees thought the publicity would be good for trade. One of these cheerful souls had even heard a man in a public house the day before ordering two glasses of murderer’s claret and being served immediately without a question being asked. But the older members of the firm were pessimistic. They reasoned that people associated a glass of champagne or Madeira or sherry with fellowship and good cheer, with companionship and shared pleasure. The drinking public, they maintained, did not wish to be reminded of murder every time they opened a bottle of something.
And what Alfred realized, far more acutely than his fellows, was that the strange events at the Colville Nash wedding had ripped the heart out of the firm’s management. Old Walter, still the chairman, had virtually lost his senses, Alfred had heard, and had now taken to his bed. Certainly he hadn’t been seen north of Oxford Street since the disaster. Nathaniel hadn’t had anything to do with the firm for years. Randolph Colville could issue no instructions from beyond the grave and Cosmo, confined to Pentonville, could do no better. The younger Colvilles had neither the experience nor the training to make a valuable contribution to the business yet. So who was left? Who would have to carry the burden in the heat of the day? There was only one candidate, Alfred Davis told himself. He looked sadly into the mirror on his wall and found the lucky man.
Powerscourt found Inspector Cooper in Fakenham and took him for tea in the town’s best hotel. The Inspector was working on a more orthodox case now, a burglary and break-in at one of Norfolk’s finest Georgian houses. There was, he told Powerscourt, little chance of finding either the villains or the stolen goods, which he believed had disappeared into the welcoming embrace of London’s antique dealers the day after the crime. The Inspector had never met a private investigator before. He had, he told his new acquaintance, followed one or two of his earlier cases, particularly the one in the West Country cathedral which had featured heavily in the local press. But he was not prepared for Powerscourt’s opening question.
‘I gather, Inspector, that you don’t think Cosmo Colville killed his brother.’
The Inspector blushed. ‘What gave you that idea?’ he stammered after a second or two.
‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. I can’t, as the newspapermen are so fond of telling us, I can’t reveal my sources. But it’s true, isn’t it?’
Albert Cooper thought about what might happen to him if his superiors in the force thought he was giving comfort and indeed assistance to the other side. He thought about his mother and his sisters, dependent on his salary. He thought of his girl, Charlotte, so pretty and so quick when they took their walks together on Sunday afternoons. He thought of the proposal of marriage he was hoping to make on Christmas Eve. Could he throw all that away? For one thing stood out about the young man. It came from his mother and the teachers at his school who had liked him so much. He was a good boy, a regular attender at church on Sundays. Every fibre in his being wanted to tell the truth. He had never expected to be put to the test here over English breakfast tea and scones in the front room of the George Hotel.
Powerscourt waited. He watched the various emotions flicker over the Inspector’s face. ‘Let me try another question. I have the seating plan from Brympton Hall showing where everybody was to sit down at the wedding feast. I believe you have one or two more diagrams, seating or standing diagrams showing where people were in the garden and just before the shot was fired. Let me put it another way, if I may. Is it your opinion that Cosmo didn’t kill his brother, or do you know it? Do you have some hard evidence to his guilt or innocence?’
Only two days before, after Cosmo had been charged, the young man had taken out his plans once again, not the one indicating where everybody sat down, but the two before, one showing where the guests had been in the garden, and the other showing where they were just before the shot was fired. Taken together they were, he thought, the finest work of detection he had managed since he joined the force. He had looked at them again rather sadly and put them back in his drawer. He looked up at Powerscourt now with a look of appeal in his eyes.
‘It’s opinion, it’s a hunch,’ he said quietly. Surely he couldn’t get into trouble for saying that. Chief Inspector Weir might tell him off but he wouldn’t fire him for saying such a thing.