Death at the Jesus Hospital (14 page)

‘Valuable work you’ve been doing, Johnny, valuable work.’ Powerscourt grinned at his friend. ‘I suspect they
have all been sworn to silence, the old men. The one thing Sir Peregrine can’t have is publicity. His whole scheme might collapse once it got into the papers.’

Johnny stared silently at a couple of slices of ham. ‘I don’t think it’ll be any good asking them about it in the Rose and Crown,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll have to try them one at a time. The man Wood, Number Twelve, maybe that’s who I’ll start with. He’s got a pretty suspicious mind.’

‘One other thing, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Oh yes?’ said his friend. ‘What is it now?’

‘Could you tell Inspector Fletcher about the codicil and all that? I’ve got to go back to London.’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll do that,’ said Johnny. ‘Don’t mind about me. Here I am abandoned on the island like that bloody woman from Crete whose name I can never remember. There was her bloody lover on his bloody boat, just visible from the shore, hull down on the horizon.’

‘Never mind, Johnny. At least the abandoned Ariadne was in the company of Bacchus, the god of wine. They tell me there’s some pretty good stuff in the cellars here. It’s said to come from the Elysian Fields themselves.’

Powerscourt found Inspector Miles Devereux in the council chamber of the Silkworkers Hall, a beautiful room where the inner circle of the company held their meetings.

‘If you’ve got to have a bloody office,’ Devereux drawled, ‘you may as well have it in a place like this.’ He waved a hand at the tall windows looking out over the Thames and a number of full-length Silkworker prime wardens lining the walls.

‘Look at this rogues’ gallery,’ he said, pointing at the paintings. ‘They look as though oysters wouldn’t melt in their mouths. I bet you they were as slippery as eels, mind you, lying about where the silk had come from, the
precise
location on the Silk Road, just like today, probably.’
Devereux scrabbled about in the papers in front of him and pulled out a couple of sheets.

‘I’m thinking of staying here,’ he said, ‘making this my permanent office. As long as we haven’t solved the case, that’ll be fine. Once we have been successful, a grateful company might leave me here as a thank you for services rendered. If you get bored you can always go downstairs and jump in the Thames or wait for some assassin to come and slit your throat.’

Powerscourt smiled. He thought boredom might be a permanent problem in the life and times of Miles Devereux.

‘Sorry for the waffle,’ Devereux said, sitting up straight in his chair. ‘This is an account of what happened at the grand dinner the other day. I don’t think there’s anything unusual except for the amount of Haut Brion they seem to have got through. I’ve checked with the company manciple and he assured me it was nineteen bottles of the stuff, most of them drunk by only five or six people. My papa would have approved of the Haut Brion, though never in those quantities.’

Powerscourt glanced through the paper. There was little of interest there. He told the Inspector about the Silkworkers codicil and its implications.

Devereux whistled and began pacing about the room. ‘This is like something out of a penny dreadful,’ he said. ‘And Sir Rufus Walcott was the leader of the opposition inside the company? Fascinating.’

Eventually Miles Devereux sat down on the edge of his desk and voiced a concern that had been in Powerscourt’s mind since the previous evening. ‘I say, Lord Powerscourt. This could be the motive for all the murders. Suppose there was opposition to the changes at the Jesus Hospital as well as in the livery company itself. Suppose there was more opposition at Allison’s School up there in Norfolk. Three places where the supporters of Sir Peregrine or indeed Sir Peregrine himself might have had a motive for murder.
Maybe they said they were going to make it public, or write to
The Times
or their MP or something like that. There is one further possible consequence.’ He stopped suddenly and stared at Powerscourt. ‘This might mean that the strange marks on the bodies are a diversion, that they were stamped on the victims to draw attention away from the true motive, greed or preservation of your own position, whatever you might want to call it. Sir Peregrine had in his possession whatever strange instrument caused the marks. Either he or his accomplices then stamped it on the victims, hoping we would all be sidetracked away from the real murderer. Which, in a way, we have been.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Powerscourt, nodding at the young man. He had been surprised that Johnny Fitzgerald hadn’t reached the same conclusion an hour so earlier. Maybe the Elysian cellars had befuddled his wits.

‘However,’ said Miles Devereux, ‘this, as my superior officer would say, is speculation, little better than
guesswork.
Guesswork, he says about three times a week, never won a conviction at the Bailey. Is it time to interview Sir Peregrine yet, do you think?’

‘I think it’s too soon. I must be off in a moment. I have to tell our friends in Fakenham about the latest developments. Before we talk to Sir Peregrine I think we need to talk to the experts about that codicil. I don’t think we should rely on my brother-in-law’s view of the thing, even if he has talked to the man who thinks it’s a fake. I’m going to ask him to send you the names of the principal experts who thought it was genuine. I’ll call on the man from Cambridge on my way back from Norfolk. I’m not sure we’ll end up any the wiser, but we’ve got to do it.’

‘I say, what fun,’ said Inspector Miles Devereux, rising from his chair and dancing a little jig in front of a
sixteenth-century
prime warden dressed from head to toe in black. ‘I wouldn’t dare say it to my fellow policemen, Lord
Powerscourt, but I can say it you. Black Death! Ancient codicils! Murder most foul! What fun! What tremendous fun!’

Inspector Albert Fletcher, the officer in charge of the
investigation
into the death in the Jesus Hospital, was a worried man. Even the news of the Silkworkers codicil did little to cheer him up. He could see that there was at last a motive, a clear motive, but the thought of fourteenth-century
documents
and clever modern forgers filled him with gloom. He had so far failed to solve his first murder case. He was not living up to his promise, the bright future so many had predicted for him. Nothing he had tried so far seemed to have yielded very much. He summoned his sergeant and gave more instructions.

‘I know we’ve asked house to house for anything strange or any strange persons seen on the morning of the murder,’ Inspector Fletcher began. ‘I think I got the times wrong. And the ring around the hospital was probably too small. I want you to get all the men you can find and begin
house-to-house
inquiries in a five-mile radius of the hospital. And ask about the two days before the incident as well as the morning of death, could you? Some visiting murderer could have hidden himself away down there in those boathouses. Look sharp about it now.’

The sergeant always knew when his master was in a bad mood. It was pointless to raise any objections. He saluted smartly and left the room as fast as he could. Inspectors, he said to himself, bloody inspectors. Surely they could
remember
their own trials and tribulations when they were mere sergeants. Begging for uniformed men from their superiors to take part in what the superiors would regard as
ridiculous
fancies was one of the most difficult things in a
sergeant’s
life. And the keeper of these good men and true, one Superintendent Maurice Trotter, had a very pretty daughter
who sang in the sergeant’s church choir. He was thinking of striking up a conversation with her the next time they met.

Johnny Fitzgerald was entertaining Number Twelve to lunch in the Elysian Fields. The members of the hospital had been to the funeral of Abel Meredith the day before. The medical men had finally given up hope of finding anybody who could identify the strange marks on the chest and delivered the body up for burial. The old men had enjoyed the service, singing the hymns with gusto, some of them even managing to kneel down for the prayers, the stern words about the body of Abel Meredith being committed to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, cheering and reassuring to the old men who were still alive.

The dining room in the Elysian Fields was only half full and Johnny had secured a table next to the tall windows looking out over the river. Henry Wood, Number Twelve, wearing his official uniform of blue coat with white
buttons
and tricorne hat, was pleased to be asked to such a luxurious establishment but slightly suspicious of Johnny’s motives. He was the man who had worked in the fish trade before coming to the hospital. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Johnny. Maybe, Number Twelve thought, he was a pike with those teeth. Sometimes he wondered if he mightn’t actually be a shark.

His host was charming, urging more hock with the fish course, and ordering an expensive bottle of Beaune with the veal. They chatted amiably enough over the first course with Johnny encouraging Henry Wood, Number Twelve, to tell him more about what went on in the hospital. Over the apple pie, seeing that the subject seemed unlikely to come up of its own accord, Johnny made his move.

‘What are you all going to do about the Silkworkers ballot and those plans to sell off the assets?’ he inquired.

‘How do you know about that?’ replied Number Twelve.

‘I’ve a cousin who belongs to the livery,’ Johnny lied cheerfully, ‘not that he’s ever been near a silkworm in his life. He said there was a lot of argument going on.’

‘Well, that’s certainly true with us.’ Number Twelve looked round him as if he thought he might be under
surveillance
of some kind. He took a large gulp of Beaune and Johnny knew he was hooked. ‘Fact is,’ Number Twelve went on, ‘we’ve all been sworn to secrecy. We’re not meant to breathe a word about it to anybody.’

In his long experience of human nature working with Powerscourt, Johnny knew that there is nothing some
people
sworn to secrecy like better than telling somebody else about it at the earliest possible opportunity.

‘Were you all united in your opinions then, up there at the hospital?’

Number Twelve laughed a sarcastic laugh. ‘We were not. Absolutely not. I’ve never known the men so divided as they were about this vote. People came to blows once or twice.’

‘Really?’ said Johnny.

‘It was that bad.’ Number Twelve, Henry Wood, finished his glass and looked expectantly at the Beaune. Johnny topped him up and ordered another bottle.

‘So where does opinion stand now?’

‘I’m not quite sure, actually. To begin with, nearly
everybody
seemed to be in favour of selling up. Warden Monk was particularly keen on the plan. I’ve often wondered,’ Number Twelve leant forward at this point and whispered, ‘if he wasn’t in the pay of that horrible man Sir Peregrine Fishborne!’

‘Seriously?’ said Johnny.

‘Very seriously. That man is capable of anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be the murderer.’

‘You said informed opinion was initially for selling up. Did some people change their minds?’

‘Well,’ said Number Twelve, admiring the colour of the
wine in its splendid bottle, ‘the opposition were very clever. They said they could see all the attractions, money in our pockets from our share of the sale of the assets, that sort of thing. But, they said, there was no guarantee about what was going to happen to the Jesus Hospital later on. If the Silkworkers effectively ceased to exist, even though some people said it would come back again when the war was over, who was going to look after us in the meantime? Who was going to pay all the bills? They said, the opposition, that our situation would become untenable. The Prime Warden and his cronies could kick us out and sell the hospital off to the highest bidder and turn it into houses or flats. We would become notorious, they said, decrepit old men walking the streets of Marlow and Maidenhead with begging bowls in our hands and nowhere to rest our weary heads at night.’

‘That must have put the fear of God into some of the men,’ said Johnny. ‘But tell me, what of your own position? Which side were you on?’

Johnny thought he knew the answer to that. He did.

‘I was with the opposition, myself. Any change in the position of something as marginal as an almshouse must be risky. People probably wouldn’t pay for them to be built if they didn’t feel they had to. The founder, the original Gresham back in sixteen whatever it was, must have thought it would improve his chances of getting into heaven. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered. I wouldn’t think Sir Peregrine and his friends think they might be going to hell. They wouldn’t behave like this if they did.’

‘And who was the leader of the opposition, as it were, the main voice against Sir Peregrine?’

‘Well, it was Number Twenty, actually. He was very
persuasive
when he was alive, Abel Meredith.’

And now he’s dead, Johnny said to himself. He opposed the changes and now he’s dead, just like that other one, up there in the Silkworkers Hall.

Powerscourt felt like a naughty schoolboy waiting for an unpleasant interview with the headmaster. He was indeed in the outer office of the headmaster of Allison’s School, but the naughty boys, three of them, he was told, were in the inner sanctum, facing the wrath of the authorities for drinking two bottles of prohibited wine behind the cricket pavilion. The headmaster, however, was affable as Powerscourt was ushered in and the miscreants sent back to their classrooms.

‘Lord Powerscourt, how good to see you. And Lady Powerscourt is at her station, I trust?’

The Powerscourts had arrived in Fakenham the evening before and were comfortably settled in the Crown Hotel a few minutes’ walk from the school.

‘I hope so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘She was certainly going in the right direction when I last saw her. Do you have any
further
news, Headmaster? Are the boys still refusing to talk?’

‘I’m afraid they are,’ replied the headmaster. ‘Let’s hope they change their minds soon.’

‘There is one development on which I’d like to hear your opinion,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It concerns the constitution, if that’s not too grand a word, of the Silkworkers Company. We did talk about it when I was here before, but
without
mentioning one key legal fact. As I understand it, Sir Peregrine Fishborne, in his role as Prime Warden of the
Company, wants to sell off the assets and distribute the proceeds among the members, with a view to reacquiring the assets at a later, unspecified, stage. He claims, so I’m told, that the justification for this course of action is an ancient codicil, only recently discovered, which gives him the right to do this in times of great peril, like a possible war with Germany. That, I think, is the key legal fact we did not discuss at our earlier meeting, Headmaster. I wonder what you feel about this, as head of a school which has been in the care of the Silkworkers for centuries?’

‘I have to tell you, Lord Powerscourt, that we at Allison’s were divided about the plan. We still are. Some people thought it most unwise. According to the bursar, who was, if you like, the leader of the opposition, it could endanger the future of the school.’

‘So Roderick Gill was the leading man in the hostile party?’

‘He certainly was. He thought it most imprudent, an attempt by the authorities in the livery company to enrich themselves at the expense of future generations. Pure greed, he called it.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Were there a lot of votes here in the school?’

‘Twelve. Myself and my deputy, the bursar and the other nine votes were spread out among the senior members of staff. Allison’s has always had a dozen votes, it goes back for years and years.’

‘Did they all oppose the plan?’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Powerscourt, I feel my obligations to the Silkworkers don’t allow me to answer that. I was in breach of covenant when we had our earlier discussion. I would prefer not to do that again.’

‘Do you know if Sir Peregrine and his friends were aware of some opposition here? Was there any attempt to change your minds?’

‘It’s curious you should ask that,’ said the headmaster, gathering his gown behind his back and strolling over to the
window. ‘We were still waiting for Roderick’s final report on the affair. But I know he wrote to Sir Peregrine as a matter of politeness to let him know his views. The school, after all, is an important part of the role and responsibilities of the livery company. Gill told him, as I understand it, that he did not see how the Silkworkers’ duties to the school could be fulfilled if its assets were all sold off and distributed among the members. I think he actually asked if Sir Peregrine
proposed
to sell the school off as if it were a house on Lombard Street. But he was polite. He invited the Prime Warden to come and talk to us whenever he felt able to. He said it might help clear the air.’

‘How long ago was this, Headmaster?’

‘Five days ago. It was the first day of the snow. I met Gill on his way into town to post the letter in person, slipping and falling over as he went.’

Mrs Hamilton’s first class that day was with the Lower Sixth. She told the boys she was a temporary replacement for their normal French oral teacher who had a bad attack of influenza. She expected to be with them for a week, maybe more. Then she took the register in French and made a note by each name to remind herself who they were. Fettiplace Jones, red hair. Johnston, prominent nose. Jackson, curly brown hair. Kingham, very tall. She announced that she was going to speak French to them all the time. And she
proposed
that they should read together, each boy taking it in turns to read a page. She had brought the book with her and said they were going to start with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, the opening story in
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
translated
into French the year before. Mrs Hamilton had tracked it down to a small bookshop in Bloomsbury specializing in French literature and translations the day before.

Ellis opened the bowling. ‘
Pour Sherlock Holmes
,’ he said examining every word very carefully as if it were a bomb
and might go off at any moment, ‘
elle est toujours La Femme
.’ He staggered on to the end of the page and passed the book to his neighbour. As with most Englishmen, Mrs Hamilton reckoned, they probably understood about three quarters of it and could guess the rest, but she doubted if they could book themselves a hotel room in Brittany, let alone order supper.

Jackson was adequate, Smythe quite fluent if rather slow, which he was. David Lewis, the mimic, had a perfect accent and impeccable diction. His passage told how Dr Watson, returning home from a case via Baker Street, sees Holmes at the window of 221b and goes up to speak to him. Lewis told her, in almost perfect French, that he had been twice to France on holidays and had picked up his accent listening to the French middle-class discussing the food in hotel dining rooms.

The story moved on through the lesson with the King of Bohemia revealing his true identity and the mysterious Irene Adler making her presence felt. But it was not the woman in the story who fascinated the boys, it was the woman teaching them, here in their own classroom. Women at Allison’s made the beds, they cleaned the floors, they
prepared
most of the food and looked after the washing. What they had never done until this moment was teach, and look glamorous at the same time. Mrs Hamilton had wondered beforehand if she would remind most of them of their
mothers.
They were so starved of female company and so full of teenage energy that they saw her in quite a different light.

For Lady Lucy, of course, masquerading here in her earlier name of Hamilton, the object of the detective story was quite simple. After a couple of days, maybe even before the end of ‘
Une Scandale en Bohème
’, she could turn the conversation to murders generally. Had any of the boys been unfortunate enough to come across a murder? What, they had only recently had one right here in the school?
Vraiment? Mon Dieu! Quel horreur
! Maybe they would tell her something then, something they had not told the police or their teachers.

‘
Alors, le papier ici
,’ West Minor at the end was not one of
the fluent ones, ‘
est fabrique en Bohème! Et le monsieur qui a ecrit le petit mot, il est Allemand
…’

Mrs Hamilton was quite pleased by her first lesson. David Lewis, the finest mimic in the school, couldn’t take his eyes off her. After school, he decided, his imagination working overtime, he would follow her home and find out where she lived.

Inspector Miles Devereux thought he would have liked to go to university. His two eldest brothers had managed it before the money ran out, one to the sedate quarters of Selwyn College, Cambridge, the other to more romantic pastures, Worcester College, Oxford, with its lake and its fifteenth-century monks’ cottages. As he made his way up Gower Street towards University College he wondered what it would be like to be a student right in the heart of London. William Burke had sent him the name of a Professor Wilson Claypole, an expert in the period around the Black Death, who had been one of the academics vouching for the authenticity of the Silkworkers codicil.

The Inspector expected some aged figure, dry as dust and dull as ditchwater, who would soon lose him in the intricacies of fourteenth-century script and idiosyncrasies of expression. Claypole, in fact, turned out to be only a few years older than he was. He wore a very smart suit and a Garrick Club tie. With his polished boots and expensive haircut he looked more like a society solicitor or a successful barrister than an academic.

‘Come in, come in,’ he said and waved Devereux to a chair. ‘Welcome to University College. We don’t have the ivy climbing up the walls and the ancient port maturing in the college cellars like they do at Oxford and Cambridge, but we like to think we’re more modern here, more in tune with the latest thinking and the latest scholarship. Now then, I haven’t got much time. I’ve got to be at the House of
Lords in forty-five minutes. That codicil you’ve come to talk to me about, I perfectly understand why you’ve come. You can’t take somebody else’s word for it being genuine, you’ve got to come to the horse’s mouth. Which in this case, as it happens, is me! I am the horse!’ Professor Claypole snorted heartily at his quip.

‘I’m not an academic like yourself,’ said Devereux.

‘No indeed,’ said Claypole and laughed again.

‘But I would like to know how you’re sure it’s the real thing.’

‘Good question, Inspector. Let me try an example from your own field. When you charge a man with murder, are you always one hundred per cent sure he did it? Would you still arrest him if you were eighty-five per cent sure? Seventy-five per cent sure? You don’t have to reply to that question, by the way, I’m not sure I’d really like to know the answer. But with the codicil, of course, you can’t be
absolutely
certain either. Not with a thing that old. It’s not
possible.
There’s a man called Galt at St Andrews up there by the sea in Scotland who’s done a lot of work on
fourteenth-century
documents and their use of language. He’s certain it’s real. The thought behind the codicil, that emergency measures may be needed in the aftermath of the Black Death, that’s absolutely typical of the time. I’ve always thought it is impossible to overestimate the influence of the Black Death, your friends and family decimated, divine punishment arriving for your sins, never sure if you’re not going to wake up with nausea, vomiting, lumps all over your body. That, for me, was the most convincing aspect of the thing, the fact that the author, who was probably a lawyer of some sort, was so frightened by what had happened, so unsure of what the future might hold, that he thought his livery company should be prepared, should be ready to take whatever steps might be needed in the face of a second catastrophe, of God abandoning his people to their fate all over again, the last days coming to Threadneedle Street and London Wall. If
you believed in God, and as far as we know most of them did, the Black Death must have seemed the Great Betrayal.’

‘Am I right in saying that the main opposition to your view comes from our friend in Cambridge?’ Devereux had heard about academics being rude about each other. This was the first time he had seen or heard it at close quarters.

‘Well, you could say our friend in Cambridge is the only opposition. I suspect he hasn’t even read Galt’s work, for a start. They’re quite restricted in their attitude to scholarship up there in the Fens. If it wasn’t invented in Cambridge, it doesn’t really exist. Tait’s main argument concerns who might benefit from it. That doesn’t carry as clear a message for me as the textual analysis of the wording. I think the benefit question is more or less irrelevant. Man’s barking up the wrong tree.’

Inspector Devereux had one last card to play. He wasn’t hopeful about it. ‘Tell me, Professor, and remember you are speaking to an ignorant outsider here, what are the financial arrangements in matters like this? Do you get paid for the consultations and so on?’

Claypole laughed again. ‘Of course we do, Inspector, of course we do. I never thought I’d be advising a rising police Inspector about the ways of the world but here we are!’

‘How much?’ said Devereux, and there was something about his tone that made the professor wonder if he had underestimated the man from Scotland Yard.

‘Well, we fixed the fee up beforehand, before I’d done any work.’

‘How much?’ said Devereux, suspecting suddenly that there might be a gold seam lurking here.

‘Five hundred
guineas
for me, if you must know. I charge rather like a Harley Street doctor. And one thousand guineas for the College Development Fund. That’ll be most
useful.
And I’d be most grateful if you wouldn’t bandy those figures about, Inspector. I’ve got my reputation to think of.’

‘Of course,’ said Devereux. ‘I’m most grateful for your time and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your
appointment at the House of Lords. I’m afraid we
policemen
do not have the resources to pay for information. A very good day to you, sir.’

As he made his way back to his office, Inspector Miles Devereux wondered what a good barrister would make of the figures. Who benefits indeed, he said to himself. He resolved to send a telegram as soon as he reached his office. He felt Powerscourt would be very interested in the five hundred guineas.

The sun was shining in Cambridge as Powerscourt made his way to Trinity College and the rooms of Selwyn Augustus Tait. Sunshine in February was not what he remembered from his time here, usually cold, damp, strands of fog
swirling
round you as you made your way up King’s Parade. Tait had rooms next to the chapel in Trinity Great Court, the largest quadrangle in either Oxford or Cambridge.

‘Damn it, man, no point being indoors in the sunshine at this time of year. Let’s go for a walk. We can talk as we go and have some coffee on the way.’