Two foxes were standing very still on the upper terrace of Orlando Blane’s ruined garden. They were so still that Orlando wondered if they might be statues. Then, very slowly and with a total disdain for their surroundings, they trotted down the terraces until they came to rest right underneath the windows of the Long Gallery. Perhaps the rats send them messages, Orlando thought to himself, secret despatches in animal language under the ground to the foxes’ den. Come along! Nobody here! Rich pickings for all!
Orlando looked at his easel. It had a large blank canvas waiting for him. The ground had been carefully filled in on the Friday before. His head was still hurting from a weekend of drinking that ended with him being carried to bed at three o’clock on Sunday morning. He had lost all his money, had been his first thought on waking. He groaned slightly as he remembered that he had only lost the contents of three matchboxes, playing cards with his jailers.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was waiting for him. So was the wife of Lewis B. Black, American millionaire, with the feathers in her hat. Orlando tried a preliminary drawing of the hat on his sketchpad. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly. Damn, he said to himself. If that doesn’t improve I won’t achieve much at all today. He looked up at the quotation, pinned on his wall behind the empty canvas. It was the great Italian historian Vasari, on his friend Michelangelo:
He also copied drawings of the old masters so perfectly that his copies could not be distinguished from the originals, since he smoked and tinted the paper to give it an appearance of age. He was often able to keep the originals and return his copies in their stead.
Orlando smiled. He walked very fast up and down the Long Gallery three times. He checked his hand. It was better now. Very slowly an elaborate hat, composed almost entirely of feathers, began to appear on his pad.
The offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell were on the basement and the ground floor of an old house just off the Strand. Legal country, Powerscourt noted, as clerks old and young, bearded and clean-shaven, erect and stooping, hurried to their destinations, bundles of files and legal documents clutched tightly in their hands. People’s lives are crossing the road here every day, he thought, wills, marriage settlements, fathers trying to disinherit unruly sons, new companies being born, old ones laid to rest, all wrapped round with lawyers’ string.
He asked to see the senior partner. A nervous young man, fresh from university perhaps, showed him into the office of Mr George Brigstock. Mr Brigstock looked exactly what a family solicitor ought to look like, Powerscourt felt. He was about fifty, in a rather old-fashioned suit, his grey hair receding up his temples.
‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt. How can we be of assistance?’ said Brigstock.
He thinks I’ve come to make my will, Powerscourt thought. Complicated estate perhaps, complicated dispositions, enough to keep the solicitors busy for at least a year and a half.
‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘I haven’t come here on legal business. I’ve come to talk to you about your senior partner, Mr Horace Aloysius Buckley. I am an investigator, Mr Brigstock, and . . .’ Powerscourt paused slightly to let the effect of what he was about to say sink in, ‘I am currently investigating two cases of murder. I have reasons to believe that he may be able to help me in my inquiries.’
Mr George Brigstock did not flinch at all at the mention of murder. ‘Mr Buckley is out of town at present,’ he said. ‘I am sure he will return shortly.’
‘But that’s just the point, Mr Buckley.’ Powerscourt was leaning forward now. ‘You say you are sure he will return shortly. But you don’t know when, do you? He could walk in right now, or he could not walk in for the next three months. Is that not so?’
Brigstock did not reply.
‘Mr Brigstock, I am most anxious to speak to Mr Buckley. I have reason to believe that the police may issue a warrant for his arrest very soon.’
‘On what charge?’ said the solicitor.
‘Murder,’ said Powerscourt. ‘In the course of my work I do a lot of business with the police. I am shortly on my way to Oxford to see the Chief Inspector in charge of the inquiry into the second murder, a young man called Thomas Jenkins. The circumstantial evidence against your colleague is strong. As yet there is no direct proof. But the longer Mr Buckley remains away, the more suspicious the police will become. If the man has nothing to hide, they will say to themselves, why does he not come forward? So, Mr Brigstock, have you any idea where he might be? Mr Buckley has not been home for a considerable period, owing to difficult domestic circumstances. He was in Oxford the day of the murder. He could have been there at the time the deed was committed. Where is he now?’
‘I do not know,’ said Brigstock sadly. ‘Let me ask you a question, Lord Powerscourt. Do you believe he is responsible for these terrible murders?’
Powerscourt wondered if the lawyer saw a tide of scandal sweeping over Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell as the senior partner was arrested for murder. A soldier or a seaman committing murder in drink or passion only rated a few lines in the newspapers. Doctors or solicitors or, even better, bishops charged with murder had the newspapermen in a frenzy of speculation and the reading public thirsty for more. Maybe the clients would disappear, maybe the whole firm would go under, a lifetime’s careful work lost in a day of headlines.
Powerscourt was quick to reply. ‘No, I do not believe he is guilty,’ he said. ‘I am not sure why I think that, but I do. Tell me, Mr Brigstock, when people are in great strain they sometimes have a place of refuge they go to, maybe somewhere they knew as a child, a place where they can sort out their lives, or let time show them what to do. Did Mr Buckley have such a place?’
George Brigstock shook his head. ‘Not that I know of,’ he said.
Powerscourt pressed on. ‘He didn’t have a family place in the country, did he? A place of his own? Or brothers or sisters he could have gone to stay with?’
‘There was only one brother, and he is in Australia. Melbourne, I believe.’
‘Mr Buckley was under considerable strain, I am sure,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if his mission was a waste of time. ‘Did he have any hobby or pastime he always wanted to indulge? I have heard of people who want to ride to hounds with every hunt in England, or visit every railway station in Britain. Did he have something like that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Brigstock. He looked closely at the files on his desk. ‘There is just one thing, now I come to think about it. He mentioned it to me once, maybe twice in the last fifteen years. But I do not see how it could possibly help you, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘What is it, man?’ asked Powerscourt, growing impatient.
‘Well, I’m sure it can’t be what you want. But he did say that one day, when he had the time, he was going to attend Evensong in every cathedral in England.’
‘What? All of them?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘All of them,’ said Brigstock, ‘from Canterbury to Ripon, from Exeter to Durham.’
‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I suppose there are worse things a man could do. One thing before I go, Mr Brigstock. Do you by any chance have a photograph of Mr Buckley anywhere in your offices?’
The young man was despatched on a mission to the basement and returned with a small dusty photograph. It showed Horace Aloysius Buckley in cricket flannels and a white sweater, bat in his hand. He was scowling at the camera.
‘It was taken at a lawyers’ cricket match a couple of summers ago,’ said George Brigstock. ‘He’d just been given out to a dodgy bit of umpiring. I’m afraid Buckley doesn’t look like that most of the time. He had a splendid collection of very conservative suits.’
However eccentric you were, Powerscourt reflected, as he stared at the man in the photograph, the grey hair, the small moustache, the angry eyes, you wouldn’t be attending Evensong in your cricket flannels. Some people went on pub crawls, Powerscourt thought. Maybe Horace Aloysius Buckley is now on a cathedral crawl, his anxious spirit eased every afternoon by the singing of the choir, the slow processions up the nave, the regular beat of the collects and the hymns. It would explain why he was in Oxford. Christ Church had a cathedral, he remembered. But where on earth had he gone now on his pilgrimage? Gloucester? Hereford? Lichfield? It was almost as difficult as finding the bloody forger, he said to himself as he left the offices of Buckley, Brigstock and Brightwell, the nervous young man escorting him right on to the street outside. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.