And still, Powerscourt thought, irritated now by his inability to solve the mystery, there was Maxfield. Or rather, there wasn’t Maxfield. Surely a man couldn’t just vanish off the face of the earth and defy the efforts of the police, solicitors, private inquiry agents to find him. One of his junior officers, Jack Beecham had told Powerscourt with a grin, had thought of the House of Lords solution very early on. It had been checked. Maxfield wasn’t there. The police had now extended their search to all the mental hospitals and asylums in the North of England, to all persons recruited in the last three years into the armed forces, the Merchant Navy and the coastguard. Johnny Fitzgerald had put forward the theory that Maxfield had joined the French Foreign Legion and would never be seen again.
Powerscourt was walking up and down his drawing room now, wrestling with the problem. Something from his very first meeting with Matthew Plunkett was floating elusively at the edge of his brain. It was something to do with a name. No, it wasn’t a name, it was a nickname. Plunkett’s uncle answered to the name of Killer Plunkett, that was it. No doubt, in the same way that his own close friends referred to him as Francis, this Plunkett was hailed and greeted as Killer. Did Maxfield have such a name? A name, or rather a nickname, he must have had for so many years that most of his close friends would not have known or had forgotten he was called Maxfield at all? How did that help to find him?
Powerscourt sat down at the little desk by the window where he sometimes wrote his letters. There were two things he felt sure of about Maxfield, even though his mind told him they were completely irrational. One was that he had to do with cricket. The second was that he had been in serious financial trouble, that Dauntsey’s money was to bale a friend out of debt, gambling debts perhaps. Even on the Stock Market, he did not think Maxfield could have lost that much money. Perhaps he would check with William Burke. He began writing a series of letters to different parts of the organizations already visited by Plunkett Marlowe and Plunkett. They had written to the bursar of Dauntsey’s old school, to the admissions tutor of his Cambridge college, to the adjutant of his regiment in the Army and so on. They had merely inquired about a past member called F.L. Maxfield. Powerscourt wrote to the senior groundsman at the same places, asking after a boy or a young man who had been known throughout his time with them by his nickname. Powerscourt had to admit that he had no idea what the nickname might be, but that the person’s real name was F.L. Maxfield. He added that this person was a keen cricketer and had possibly played in the same team as one Alexander Dauntsey. Only at the end of the letter did he mention that Dauntsey had been murdered. He stopped when he had reached five and was about to address his envelopes when he thought of one last shot. He wrote a final letter and popped it in its envelope. It was addressed to the Head Groundsman, Calne, Maidstone, Kent.
It was odd, Sarah Henderson reflected to herself, how the presence of a man changed the atmosphere so considerably. She supposed you would have to count her Edward, as she now mentally referred to him, Edward himself not yet informed of the change of ownership, as a man, though she usually thought of him with his gangling frame and innocent face as a boy. But here he was, sitting in front of the fire in her home at Acton, with her mother on one side and herself on the other. Everything about this evening had been totally unexpected. Sarah had told her mother days before all she had learnt from Edward, about his train crash, about his speech difficulties, about living with his grandparents. She was resigned to a long inquisition. None came. She thought her mother would be her normal crabby self, ever ready with a sharp interjection or a put-down. None came. It was as if Edward brought a change of personality to her mother. And that, in turn, made Sarah feel irritated. Why she should feel irritated because her mother was going out of her way to be pleasant to her young man she did not know. Deep down, she suspected, she might feel – not jealous, that would be too strong, peeved perhaps that somebody else was trying to captivate her Edward. Her mother had developed a deep interest in the forthcoming Puncknowle trial.
‘Remind me, Edward,’ she said, smiling kindly at the young man, ‘when exactly is it coming to court? I know you’ve told me, but I’ve forgotten. My memory isn’t what it was.’
Playing for the sympathy vote, Sarah said to herself.
‘It starts on Thursday, Mrs Henderson,’ said Edward.
‘And how wicked has Mr Puncknowle been? Is he as wicked as the Ripper or that terrible fraudster Jabez Balfour, Edward?’
She’s getting bloodthirsty in her old age, Sarah thought. Suddenly she wondered if she herself was going to end up like this. She rather hoped not.
‘Well, he’s pretty wicked,’ said Edward cheerfully, ‘but he didn’t actually kill anybody, as far as we know. He’s not been charged with murder or anything like that. But he’s defrauded a great many people, Mrs Henderson, that’s pretty wicked.’
Edward was showing admirable patience, Sarah thought, seeing he had answered all these points at least once before.
‘Just tell me again how he defrauded them, Edward. I don’t think I quite got the hang of it first time round even though you explained it so beautifully.’
Poor Edward, Sarah thought, having to explain everything three times and then once more for luck.
Edward picked up a teaspoon, one of a number lying on the tea trolley. He winked at Sarah when he was out of the line of sight of her mother. That made her feel better.
‘Think of this as Company Number One, Mrs Henderson. Mr Puncknowle asks people to invest, or buy shares in a great company called the Freedom Building Society. Lots of people buy them. But Mr Puncknowle and his friends are greedy. They take lots of the money for themselves rather than using it to help people buy houses. The promise made to the people when they bought the shares was that they would get a dividend, a share of the profits, twice a year. But after all the money he’s stolen, Mr Puncknowle doesn’t have any money left. So he launches another company, Company Number Two.’ Edward picked up another teaspoon. This time he blew Sarah a kiss. ‘More people subscribe or buy shares. That new money goes to pay the dividends of the old company. And so on,’ said Edward, realizing that Companies Four, Five and Six in the Puncknowle house of cards might be too many for Mrs Henderson to grasp. And there weren’t enough teaspoons.
‘How beautifully you explain it, Edward,’ said Mrs Henderson.
Flatterer, thought Sarah. Even Edward may be susceptible to flattery.
‘So he really is quite wicked,’ said Mrs Henderson, who seemed to get some special satisfaction out of the word wicked. ‘How long will he be sent to jail for?’
‘He has to be found guilty first,’ said Edward with a smile.
He doesn’t have to smile at her every time he speaks, Sarah thought to herself, maybe the stuttering would have been better. Then she told herself off. That, she said, was bad. Edward talking properly is a great advance. If he goes on like this he’ll be perfectly normal in another six months.
‘And will you be in court, Edward? Will you have a ringside seat?’
‘Some of the time, I will, Mrs Henderson. I won’t have to say anything, though. I’ll only be there to give advice to our barristers.’
It was Mrs Henderson’s parting shot that was the most astonishing of all. As Sarah was helping her upstairs to bed, she turned in the doorway and said, ‘I want you to remember, Edward, that you have two very good friends in this house. I hope you will feel free to come and see us as often as you can.’ And with that mother and daughter began the slow ascent of the stairs. Sarah hoped it wouldn’t put Edward off, the prospect of further lengthy interrogations every time he came to Acton. Edward was wondering if he could find the courage to kiss Sarah when she came back downstairs.
Lord Francis Powerscourt did not give the impression of having been unduly alarmed by Johnny Fitzgerald’s report that there might be a contract on his life. He had, after all, been in danger for much of his adult life, with the Army in India, as Head of Intelligence in the Boer War, in the pursuit and apprehension of various murderers. But this time he did take it seriously. Ever since that day he had revived a practice he had followed religiously in India. There, usually at the end of each day, he had written down his findings for the past twenty-four hours, where he believed the enemy to be, what strength they had, what reinforcements they might expect. In this way, if he was killed, his successor would not be denied the benefit of his knowledge. The Daily Will was how Johnny Fitzgerald used to describe it. Now, in this time of civilian danger, he had first put down a description of the murders and brief records of all his interviews during the case. He entered too his suspicions, the lines of inquiry he wished to pursue over the next few days. He would have entered the name of the murderer if he felt sure of it.
That task completed, and a letter despatched to the Financial Steward Bassett, saying he proposed to call on him the following afternoon, he went to join Lady Lucy in the drawing room in Manchester Square. She was seated at the piano, playing, very softly, ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’. Powerscourt loved to hear her play. She began to stop but he waved her on. He wondered if she was going to sing when Johnny Fitzgerald walked in, clutching a fistful of sheets of paper covered in drawings. Lady Lucy turned round and greeted the two of them. ‘Don’t stop, Lucy, please,’ said Johnny.
‘If Music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that surfeiting
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall.
It came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets . . .’
Johnny had been making melodramatic gestures as he spoke. Lady Lucy smiled at him. Powerscourt had turned pale.
‘Just confirm this for me, if you would, Johnny. Those are the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night?’
‘They are indeed,’ Fitzgerald replied cheerfully. ‘Shouldn’t I know that as I played your man Orsino at school. My housemaster thought I should have been Sir Toby Belch and the headmaster said I should I have been Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who’s even more of a drunken layabout than Sir Toby. Quite why I should have been identified with the fruits of the god Bacchus at such an early stage I have no idea. The man who did the drama thought I should be Orsino so that’s who I played. But look here, Francis, I’ve brought an early draft of The Birds of London.’
Normally this would have been the focus of intense study and excitement, but Powerscourt seemed to have no interest in birds or anything other than his own thoughts. He was pacing up and down his drawing room like Nelson on his quarterdeck, muttering to himself from time to time, shaking his head, pausing to look out of the window into Manchester Square.
At last he stood still by the fireplace. Even then Lady Lucy could tell his mind was still far away. She waited. Johnny looked at his bird drawings. He had known his friend in this sort of mood before, once prowling outside their tent for a full hour and a half one winter’s night in India before returning inside to prophesy, correctly as it turned out, that the attack would come from the east, not from the south where everyone expected it.
‘Lucy, Johnny,’ he said at last, his hand stroking the top of the mantelpiece, ‘I’m sorry about that. I’ve had a most extraordinary idea I’d like to try out on you.’
There was a pause while he collected his thoughts. Outside they could hear a couple of cabs rattling round the square and heading north into Marylebone High Street.
‘Let me give you, for your consideration,’ Powerscourt began, ‘a series of apparently unconnected facts.’
He’s going to start numbering points soon, Lady Lucy thought, the index finger of the right hand slamming into the closed fingers of the left.
‘Fact Number One,’ Powerscourt went on, quite unaware that his wife had perfectly foretold his current actions, ‘is that there was seen hanging around the Temple Church before the service, but not attending it, a well-bred and very attractive young woman who gave her name as Eve Adams, living in Eden Street. There is no Eden Street where she said it was and the name is obviously false.
‘Fact Number Two is that on the day of Dauntsey’s murder, a mysterious visitor was seen in Queen’s Inn, including one sighting near his chambers. It is perfectly possible that the mysterious visitor actually went in to see the man and came out again without being seen. He was seen again, leaving the Inn by a porter. The visitor did not speak.
‘Fact Number Three, a couple of the porters saw, or thought they saw before they realized they were mistaken, the mysterious visitor again today at the memorial service. The reason they thought they were mistaken was that they saw Mrs Dauntsey’s back and when they realized the person was female, not male as on the day of the murder, they repented of their ways.
‘Fact Number Four. Early in January this year there was staged at the Middle Temple Hall a three hundredth anniversary production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was first put on in the same hall on the same date in 1602. Among the audience, on her own admission, were Mr and Mrs Dauntsey. Twelfth Night has, as its main character, a girl called Viola disguised as a boy called Cesario. To add to the confusion she, or he, had a twin brother. In Shakespeare’s time when no women were allowed on the stage at all, the gender complications with boys who were cast as girls pretending to be boys must have been even more severe.’
Powerscourt paused. ‘Do you see it? Surely you must see it,’ he said. Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald both shook their heads.
‘It’s only a supposition. It could be completely wrong. But suppose we have read the Dauntsey marriage completely wrong. We know – well, we don’t know, we suspect that she cannot have his children or children bearing the Dauntsey blood in some admixture or other. Dauntsey decides to leave her. And the person of his choice is none other than the Eve Adams who cannot resist sniffing round the church where her late lover is to have his memorial service. But Mrs Dauntsey knew what was happening and determined to stop it. She decides to take revenge. Remembering the Viola/Cesario person from Twelfth Night she dresses in man’s clothes, goes to Queen’s Inn, pops into her husband’s room and poisons him.’
‘Good God,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘What about Woodford Stewart?’ asked Johnny.
‘Easy. He saw her leaving the Inn so he cannot be left alive. A couple of weeks later she comes back, probably with that giant butler of hers, and shoots Stewart. You can’t tell me that somebody who lives in that world of Calne doesn’t know how to shoot. She leaves the giant butler to dispose of the body. By that time she’s back safely in her own drawing room.’
‘Do you believe it, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Do you think it’s true? If it is, you’ve solved the murder.’
‘Different question, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘How are you going to find out if it’s true or not?’
‘That’s easy, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tomorrow morning I’m going to send her a telegram. In three days’ time I shall arrive at Calne for tea. Then I shall discover the answer.’
‘I shouldn’t eat anything while you’re there, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘not even the best chocolate cake. And I should watch your back all the way there and the way home.’
Petley Road was a terrace of respectable Victorian houses in Fulham not far from the river and its great warehouses. Schoolteachers, rising bank clerks, those sort of respectable citizens, Powerscourt reckoned, would be the inhabitants here. Mr John Bassett’s house was Number 15 and Mr Bassett himself opened the door. He was a small man, with ears that seemed to be pointed, and he sported a well-trimmed goatee beard that gave him the appearance of a troll or other resident of some forbidding German forest. His living room, Powerscourt saw, as he was ushered to the most comfortable chair, was full of painted panoramas of some of the world’s remotest places, the Sahara desert, the Arctic or the Antarctic, Powerscourt wasn’t sure which, a view of the back of Mount Everest, the vast steppes of Siberia.
‘Are you a traveller, Mr Bassett?’ Powerscourt asked. He wondered if the whole house was full of these kind of pictures, if you might have to cross the Gobi desert in the bathroom or traverse the sands of Arabia before you could go to sleep.
‘I wish I had been,’ said the little man. ‘I have a constitution fitted to the counting house, not to great liners and the rough conveyance of the wagon train or even to arduous treks on foot. But I like to contemplate these great spaces, as you see. Now, how can I be of assistance to you, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I presume, Mr Bassett, that you have heard about the terrible murders in Queen’s Inn?’
John Bassett nodded sadly.
‘I have been asked to investigate these murders and I understand that Mr Dauntsey came to see you shortly before he died. Is that so?’
The little man remained silent. Powerscourt wondered briefly if he had been sworn to complete secrecy by his employers. That hardly seemed necessary – why would they want to silence a man who knew all the details of the Inn’s plate and how many spoons went missing in an average year?
‘I must make a confession, Lord Powerscourt. And please forgive me. It is my age. I shall be seventy-seven next birthday if the Lord spares me that long. Sometimes, I must tell you, I rather wish he would call me home before that. But my memory comes and goes. I do not remember Mr Dauntsey’s visit. All I can remember is that he asked a question I could not answer and I had to check with the bencher who looks after the money at the Inn.’
‘Can you remember the question, Mr Bassett?’ Powerscourt asked gently, wondering if this visit had been a complete waste of time. ‘Anything at all?’
The little man’s face brightened. ‘I’ve got it, I think. It wasn’t anything important, just something about bursaries for poor students.’
Powerscourt felt rather disappointed. He wished suddenly that he had finished off the business of reading the rest of the wills. Edward had volunteered to do it for him, saying that it would be good experience for his legal work. He felt he could not in all decency just stand up and leave now, it would look so rude to leave the man to his remote corners of the globe in less than five minutes.
‘Can you tell me, Mr Bassett, exactly what the nature of your work at the Inn entailed?’
John Bassett smiled. ‘Seeing as I started there nearly fifty years ago, my lord, and the work didn’t change very much, I can do that right proper. Memory’s all right going back to the Crimean War. Once up to them Boers it gets a bit hazy.’
He fidgeted about in his chair as if settling himself for some great speech.
‘Money goes in, money goes out,’ he said as if he had just discovered an eleventh commandment, ‘that’s the secret. Money comes in, that’s money for chambers, cheaper if the gentlemen pay a year at a time, money for food, money for wine. Money goes out, wages for the servants, payments for the food and wine, payments for benchers, payments for the gardeners, payments for painters and decorators. If the in and the out are more less the same, you’re fine. If the in is more than the out, even better. Only if the out is a lot more than the in are you in trouble. And I can truthfully say that the out was more than the in only once in my time, my lord, and that was when we had to repaint everything unexpectedly for a visit from Queen Victoria.’
‘That’s very clear, Mr Bassett,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and could you tell me what your relationship was with the bencher who looked after the overall financial picture? I believe he’s called the Surveyor.’
‘That he is, sir. Just two of them I knew in my time. Mr James Knighton, he was the first, sir, and now Mr Obadiah Colebrook, why, he’s even older than me, sir, he’s eighty if he’s a day. Funny how they don’t retire at Queen’s like they do in them other Inns, but ours not to reason why. I got on fine with both of them, sir, better with Mr Colebrook, I think, definitely better.’
Mr Bassett leaned forward and began speaking in a confidential voice, as if he was betraying the state secrets of Queen’s Inn. ‘Fact is, my lord, that Mr Knighton, he was a Quaker or one of those strange sects that don’t believe in washing or whatever it is, and he didn’t touch a drop. Completely teetotal. Mr Colebrook, sir, he was the wine steward as well for part of the time, and he used to invite me to sample the latest stuff the Inn was thinking of buying. “If you like it, Bassett,” he used to say, “then the ordinary barristers will like it too.” I was never sure whether that was a compliment or not, sir.’
‘I’m sure it was a great compliment to your palate, Mr Bassett. One of the best assets a man can have, a fine palate. Now tell me, did Mr Colebrook control a lot of money you never saw? Money from investments, that sort of thing?’
‘There was two kinds of accounts, my lord. Both operated on the same principle, money comes in, money goes out. I was Ordinary Accounts, if you follow me, my lord. Mr Colebrook was Special Accounts. I didn’t have anything to do with them, sir, nothing at all.’
‘You never even managed a peep at them, Mr Bassett? People can get curious sometimes.’
‘That was not my place, nor my position,’ said the little man indignantly, as if his integrity was being impugned, which perhaps it was. ‘I would never have done such a thing.’
‘My apologies, Mr Bassett, I never meant to suggest that you might be party to some underhand action,’ said Powerscourt. Suddenly he remembered some of the bequests he had noted in his basement. ‘Did you have anything to do with bequests for poor scholars like the ones Mr Dauntsey mentioned?’
‘That would be Mr Colebrook’s line of business, sir.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘And finally, Mr Bassett, was there anything you can remember about the finances of Queen’s Inn that might lead to murder, anything at all?’
John Bassett was very quick to answer. ‘Nothing, sir, on my honour, nothing at all.’
The following afternoon Edward had promised Powerscourt a treat. For it would be the second day of the Puncknowle trial before Mr Justice Webster in a Court of the Queen’s Bench. Maxwell Kirk, head of the Dauntsey chambers, leading for the prosecution, with Edward acting as his junior for this day, was expected to begin his cross-examination of Jeremiah Puncknowle, the first day and a half having being taken up with the opening statements. Early in the morning the queues stretched out from the Royal Courts of Justice way down the Strand, almost as far as Waterloo Bridge, as the British public waited for the chance to see Puncknowle in the dock. He had, after all, cheated so many of them out of their savings. So deep had he penetrated into the lives of the working classes of Britain that four members of the jury empanelled to try him obtained exemption from service on the grounds that they had financial interests in one or other of his companies.
Edward, Powerscourt thought, was looking even younger than usual in his wing collar and ill-fitting wig, as he brought Powerscourt past the afternoon crowds and into the court. He parked him with the instructing solicitors one row behind the gladiatorial seats occupied by Kirk and himself, facing the jury with the judge on their right.
Kirk began in solemn fashion. He had outlined the nature of the prosecution’s case the day before. Now he intended to run the general headlines past Puncknowle at the beginning of the cross-examination to try to establish fixed points of suspicion in the minds of the jury. Edward was partly responsible for this strategy. He and Kirk both believed that the technical aspects of accounting practice and revaluation of assets, so crucial to their case, might pass right over the heads of the jury. Better, they had decided, to keep making the more intelligible points over and over again.
Maxwell Kirk was not an emotional barrister. Not for him the histrionics, the dramatic gestures of a thespian advocate like the great Marshall Hall. But after a quarter of an hour it seemed as though something was beginning to go seriously wrong. His voice grew lower. He began to shake slightly. He was sweating profusely. The defence barristers were exchanging notes with their solicitors, Charles Augustus Pugh, shining out as the best-dressed man in the court, if not in London, with an Italian suit in light grey of exquisite cut, and a pale blue silk shirt. Edward turned round and looked in desperation at Powerscourt. The spectators in the public gallery began to mutter to themselves. Was the man drunk? Was he having a stroke or a heart attack before their very eyes? With a loud bang of his gavel Mr Justice Webster brought the uncertainty to an end.
‘Silence!’ he said, looking sternly at the public gallery. ‘This court is adjourned for fifteen minutes. If Mr Kirk is unable to carry on, his junior will continue in his place.’
With that the judge swept away to his room. Two porters helped Maxwell Kirk out of the court into a waiting room at the side. One of them left to find a doctor. The spectators did not want to leave in case they lost their places and had to go to the back of the queue. The prosecution team were looking up something in a battered law book. Edward had turned deathly pale. This was his worst nightmare come true. He was busy talking to the clerk when Powerscourt summoned one of the runners who were lurking around the courts ready to take urgent messages.
‘Do you know Mr Kirk’s chambers in Queen’s Inn?’ The young man nodded. ‘Run as fast as you can to the top floor. Find a stenographer called Sarah Henderson. Tell her Edward has to speak in court. She must come at once. My name is Powerscourt.’ The young man sped off. Powerscourt heard the clerk talking to Edward and the senior solicitor. ‘Until we know precisely what has happened to Mr Kirk, Mr Edward has to carry on. We simply cannot ask for an adjournment. It would not be granted. Barristers present in court for one side or the other are supposed to be able to continue if their colleague falls ill or breaks down. If Mr Edward does not continue, then the case will fall by default. Puncknowle will walk free. He cannot be tried on the same charge twice. All of these villains may be free men before the end of the day. And Kirk’s chambers will never receive a brief from the Treasury Solicitor again.’
Powerscourt felt that encouragement would work better than threats. At that moment, Edward looked, if anything, more ill than the unfortunate Kirk had done just before the adjournment. Powerscourt checked his watch. There were six minutes to go.
‘Edward,’ he said, holding the young man firmly by the elbow, ‘you wrote most of those questions for Mr Kirk, didn’t you?’
‘I wrote all of them,’ said Edward miserably.
‘Well, all you have to do is to say them yourself. You can do it. Think of all the people willing you to success, all the people in your chambers, your grandparents, Lady Lucy and Thomas and Olivia and the twins, they all know you can do it. Think of Sarah – she’s on her way. Think of Sarah’s mother, wanting you to do well.’
‘I’ve never spoken in court before, Lord Powerscourt, never.’
‘Remember this, Edward. There was a time when Napoleon fought his first battle, there was a time when W.G. Grace played his first innings, there was a time when Casanova made his first conquest. Sarah and I will be silently cheering you on when it starts, Edward. You’ll be fine, absolutely fine.’
This oration brought some colour back to Edward’s cheeks. Powerscourt saw he was digging his nails into the palm of his left hand. There was a rustle in court to announce the return of Mr Justice Webster. Edward took a drink of water and picked up his notes. To his right Powerscourt sensed a hint of perfume and the swish of a skirt as Sarah squeezed in beside him. She coughed discreetly and beamed a smile of intense, passionate devotion into the well of the court. Powerscourt thought that statues of the dead cast in bronze or marble might come back to life for such a smile. Edward turned round and smiled back. Sarah was so nervous she seized Powerscourt’s hand and held it as if they were going down together in a sinking ship.
One person had been able to enjoy the confusion and wonder how to turn it to his advantage. Jeremiah Puncknowle, still standing in the dock, felt glad that the sombre and serious figure of Maxwell Kirk had been removed from the scene. He patted his ample stomach and rolled his bright little eyes as he contemplated the callow youth being sent out to question him. How young the fellow seemed! How innocent! How helpless! Jeremiah felt rather like the wolf who has not eaten for some days when he finds a herd of succulent sheep. Powerscourt remembered that Puncknowle had reneged on his promise in Paradise. He had never been in touch about a possible threat to Powerscourt from any of his co-defendants in this case.
Mr Justice Webster glowered at the whisperers at the back of his court. ‘The case for the prosecution will resume. Mr Hastings!’
So that was Edward’s surname, Powerscourt thought. Hastings, a perfectly respectable name. He wondered if Sarah knew. For a terrible moment he thought Edward was not going to stand up. He seemed to be rooted to his chair. Very slowly, like a tree falling in reverse, he attained the upright position and turned to face the jury. Powerscourt wondered if Edward had dreamt of this moment, a great ordeal in court which would cure him of his stammer for ever. There was a long and terrible pause before he spoke. The judge was staring at him. Puncknowle was smiling at him as if welcoming him into armed combat in some dreadful arena from long ago. The earnest gentlemen of the jury were mesmerized. The clerk had his head in his hands. Powerscourt closed his eyes.
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Edward began, slightly hesitant, but fluent, ‘you were hearing before the adjournment about the strange accounting practices of the defendant’s companies. Mr P-P-Puncknowle.’ He turned to face the dock, struggling through the p’s but reaching the other side.
‘Objection, my lord,’ said Sir Isaac Redhead. ‘This youngster has neither the years nor the qualifications to continue this important trial which could result in my client being falsely incarcerated for the rest of his days. The defence submits that the case be dismissed now.’
‘Mr Hastings?’ said the judge.
‘I have been published, my lord, as a practising barrister of my Inn as Sir Isaac has of his. I do not believe age has anything to do with it. Mr Edmund F-F-F-Flanagan, my lord, conducted a defence in a murder case at the Old B-Bailey, my lord, in the year 1838, I believe, and he was only twenty-one.’
‘Objection overruled. Mr Hastings.’
‘Mr P-P-Puncknowle,’ Edward began, ‘I would like to draw your attention to various documents relating to the first of your p-p-public companies.’ There was a rustle as judge, jury and defendant riffled through their papers for the relevant piece. Sarah Henderson wished the letter P could be erased from the English alphabet. Something told Powerscourt that things might be all right if Edward could get through the next ten minutes and into his rhythm.
‘P-P-Page three, line seven, sir.’ Edward appeared to have decided to avoid using the Puncknowle surname altogether. ‘The figure for commission for the disposal of these shares is some thirteen thousand p-p-pounds.’ Edward turned his absurdly young-looking face round to address the jury. ‘The normal figure for commission in the City for such a figure would be between two and three thousand p-pounds. Why, sir,’ he turned back to face Jeremiah Puncknowle, ‘was the figure so large?’
Puncknowle smiled avuncularly at Edward. ‘I believe you must have been six or seven years old when that company was floated, young man. No doubt your expertize in its figures began at a very early age. The figure was such, sonny, because nobody had tried to sell shares to this class of person before and the intermediaries had to be well rewarded. I don’t suppose they were teaching you any financial lessons at school at the time. You were probably still learning to read.’
There was a low muttering from the public gallery. Powerscourt heard Sarah muttering ‘Disgraceful’ to herself several times. Her hand was still locked in his own. But Edward didn’t seem very concerned.
‘We shall have to take your word for it, sir, that these monies went to the intermediaries, not to line the pockets of yourself and your colleagues. I come now to an entry on the next page. Halfway down under the heading Property there is an entry of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds credit.’ He turned again. ‘I would remind you, gentlemen of the jury, that it is this holding which puts the company into profit and enables it to pay its enormous dividend. Perhaps you could tell the court, sir, what and where these various properties were?’
Jeremiah looked flustered. ‘I cannot remember, sonny,’ he said finally, ‘any more than you can remember what toys you had at the same time when you were seven years old.’
‘I would suggest you try again, Mr P-Puncknowle,’ said Edward in a calm yet firm voice. ‘After all, you have had six or seven years yourself to prepare your defence against these charges.’
There was laughter from the public gallery and a low cheer from Edward’s supporters’ club, the clerk looking as though the horse lately at the back of the field, once in danger of falling down completely, was now moving cleanly through the other runners and might even be first to the winning post. There was a lowish rumble that might or might not be a throat being cleared from the judge.
This time there was no answer from Puncknowle. Not bad, Powerscourt thought to himself, reducing a figure of this stature to silence at Edward’s age. Perhaps they were witnessing a historic moment that would be talked about in hushed tones for years to come, like Shakespeare’s first play or Gladstone’s maiden speech.
‘I put it to you, Mr P-Puncknowle, that it is much better for you to have forgotten the details of those properties. And since you have no recollection of them, I will tell the members of the jury what was going on.’ Edward looked down at his notes once more and faced the jury. ‘What we have here,’ he went on, ‘is essentially a conjuring trick. The p-p-property concerned was a group of hotels in London which were initially p-purchased by another of Mr P-Puncknowle’s companies, the Barnsley Development Corporation, for forty thousand pounds. Then they were sold on to another company owned by Mr Puncknowle for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. I should add that no substantial improvements were made to the hotels between the two purchases. Nor were there any improvements made before the final sale to the Puncknowle Property Company for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. We have been unable to find any traces of payment. The whole exercise was designed to increase the apparent assets of the Puncknowle company to the point where it could appear solvent. Without this sum, which existed only on paper, the company would have been bankrupt.’
Mr Puncknowle was on the verge of losing his temper. ‘Stuff and nonsense, sonny! Stuff and nonsense! Fairy stories, that’s what he’s telling you, members of the jury, he’s still of an age when fairy stories are all he can understand.’
Edward had had enough. ‘I would remind you, Mr Puncknowle,’ – the age difference between the two must have been nearly forty years – ‘of the conventions concerning the behaviour of defendants and witnesses towards the barristers appearing before them in court. Any more insults from you and I shall have to ask the judge to arraign you for contempt.’
There was a smattering of applause from the public gallery. Mr Justice Webster glowered fiercely at the spectators and the noise fell away. Jeremiah Puncknowle looked down at his boots. A smile flickered across the normally sphinx-like features of Sir Isaac Redhead. Charles Augustus Pugh slapped his thigh. Sarah squeezed Powerscourt’s hand even tighter. Edward looked at his watch. He was extraordinarily tired.
‘If I could make a suggestion, my lord,’ Edward was addressing Mr Justice Webster directly now, ‘the next area of cross-examination has to do with the dividend payments, my lord, a complicated matter, needing considerable exposition. It could take well over an hour. I have no doubt that the jury are perfectly capable of holding half of the matter in their heads overnight, but I would feel I had performed my service to the Crown with more clarity if we could handle the question all together.’
He’s saying the jury are too stupid to take it in two halves, Powerscourt said to himself. He felt the pressure of Sarah’s hand beginning to abate.
‘Sir Isaac, do you have a problem with this suggestion?’ said the judge.
‘No, my lord, we are in agreement with it.’
And so Mr Justice Webster ended Edward’s first day in court as a speaking barrister. Both Sir Isaac and Charles Augustus Pugh congratulated him on his debut. Edward watched in a daze as the spectators and the barristers and the instructing solicitors left the court. Powerscourt hastened off to Queen’s Inn to a meeting with Detective Chief Inspector Beecham. Eventually only Edward and Sarah were left.
‘Edward,’ said Sarah, ‘I am so proud of you. You were wonderful.’
Edward’s reply was to hold her very tight and kiss her passionately on the lips. He had had enough of words for one afternoon.
In the middle of the embrace Edward heard a door opening. The judge had forgotten some of his papers. Edward and Sarah disengaged themselves as fast as they could. Edward looked anxiously at Mr Justice Webster. He seemed to be staring at Sarah with some interest. Was there some terrible penalty, Edward wondered, for being caught kissing your beloved right under the judge’s chair in a Court of the Queen’s Bench?
‘Objection, my lord?’ Edward asked in a quizzical voice.
The judge smiled at the two of them. It was, though they did not know it, the smile of a grandfather looking at his favourite granddaughter, rather than the smile of a High Court judge.
‘Objection overruled, Edward. Carry on.’
The judge shuffled off back to his quarters. As the door closed behind him they heard the faint echo of a judicial chuckle echoing down the corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice.