Death at the Jesus Hospital (21 page)

The constable and the Inspector made their way back to the station.

‘Do you know, sir, I’m not feeling too good,’ said the constable.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Inspector Fletcher. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

‘It’s my back, sir. I seem to have twisted something. I think I need a massage.’

Inspector Grime of the Norfolk Constabulary hated London. He had hated it ever since his father took him there as a treat when he was seven years old. Master Grime had been
accidentally
separated from his father in a huge shop in Oxford Street and it had taken four very frightening hours before they were reunited. He disliked the noise, the clamour of streets too full of cars and carriages and carts and humans. He disliked the crowds rushing around on missions he did not understand. He disliked Londoners. He thought they were slick, superficial, devious and would rob you of your last farthing if they had a chance.

Now, stuck in a cab at eleven o’clock in the
morning
between Liverpool Street Station and Noel Road in Islington, home of William Lewis, son of the merry widow in Fakenham, he cursed the traffic that was making him late for his interview, arranged by telephone the afternoon before. Damn London, said the Inspector. At least I’ll be out of here this evening after I’ve seen the other Lewis up in Highgate.

William Lewis ushered him into an upstairs drawing room that looked out on to a garden and the Regent’s Park Canal. ‘You’ve come a long way to see me, Inspector, it must be important. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Thank you, but no,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you personal questions, but this is a murder inquiry.
I wonder if you could tell me about how your mother coped after your father died. In a general way, if you see what I mean.’

‘Have you met my mother, Inspector?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t had that pleasure yet, Mr Lewis. My sergeant went to talk to her and reported back.’

‘Pity, that,’ said William Lewis. ‘Things might have been easier if you had. Let me try to answer your question, Inspector. My mother is a creature of fancy. My father once referred to her as being blessed with an iron whim. She gets ideas into her head. And unlike a lot of women who are content to leave the idea where it is, she acts on them. Not all the time, just most of the time. My brother and I – he’s the elder, by the way – tried to persuade her to stay where she was after our father passed away. The house was more than adequate for her needs. I’m not saying she had a lot of friends, but she knew a lot of people round there. But no, that wouldn’t do. Sell the house, move to Fakenham – why Fakenham, for God’s sake? She was going slightly mad.’

‘When you refer to her going slightly mad, sir, what do you mean? Was she behaving out of character?’

‘I think you could say she was behaving entirely in
character
, that was the trouble. Who in their right mind would want to get involved with an ageing bounty hunter who stalked his victims over the flower rotas and the Harvest Festival at the local church?’

‘I hope you won’t mind my asking, sir, but did you meet Mr Gill the bursar? What did you think of him?’

William Lewis snorted. ‘He was awful. Creepy, sucking up to my mother all the time, calling her darling and my love and all that sort of stuff. You could tell a mile off that he was only interested in the money.’

‘So what did you and your brother do about it?’

‘We tried, Inspector, we tried. God knows we tried to talk some sense into her. What did she think she was doing, marrying this useless specimen of humanity? And if she did
have to marry him, why did she have to leave him all her money? What would Father have thought of it?’

Inspector Grime had a sudden vision of Horace Lewis, obsessed with the sale of his undergarments, supposedly up a ladder in the stockroom with a very pretty girl beside him.

‘We can get the exact figures from the solicitors, Mr Lewis, but I wonder if you could tell us exactly how much money we’re talking about here. In the shares and the property?’

William Lewis looked out of the window. A barge was making slow passage towards the long tunnel at the top end of Noel Road. ‘You may find this hard to believe, Inspector, but I don’t know. Truly I don’t. I could never keep up with the numbers at school. My brother Montague looks after all that. I know I have enough to live comfortably off the shares.’

‘Could I ask you to tell me how you felt about Mr Gill, sir? Did you dislike him? Did you hate him?’

William Lewis wasn’t going to own up to hatred. ‘Dislike would do it, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Extreme dislike, maybe.’

‘Did you kill Roderick Gill, Mr Lewis?’

‘I did not.’

‘Could you tell me where you were on the afternoon and evening of January twenty-second?’

‘Of course. In the afternoon I went for a walk, as I
usually
do, Inspector. I spent the evening with my brother. We played chess.’

‘Who won?’

‘I did, Inspector. It was quite a long game. In the end I captured his queen with a fork and that was the end of my brother. On the chessboard, I mean.’

Forty minutes later Inspector Grime was in the small library at 14 North Road, Highgate, home of the
mathematically
minded Montague Lewis, elder son of Mrs Maud Lewis of Fakenham. The conversation followed remarkably similar lines to the earlier interview in Noel Road. Montague
Lewis, like his brother, thought his mother had gone slightly mad. He could see no reason why she wanted to marry this wretched bounty hunter. The Inspector noted that they used exactly the same word to describe Roderick Gill. It could have been collusion before he arrived, or it could have been the way they had talked about him for months.

‘How would you describe your feelings towards Roderick Gill, sir? Dislike? Loathing? Hatred?’

‘I don’t think I’d go as far as that, Inspector,’ said Montague Lewis. ‘I despised him, that’s the best way to put it, I think. I despised him for creeping round my mother the way he did, I despised him for insisting they get married as soon as possible.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘I did not.’

‘Could you tell me your whereabouts on the afternoon and evening of January the twenty-second?’

‘Of course, Inspector. I spent the afternoon at the London Library. The staff there will confirm that. I spent the evening at my brother’s house.’

‘And what were you doing at your brother’s house, sir?’

‘Sorry, we were playing chess, Inspector.’

‘Who won?’

Montague Lewis looked cross all of a sudden.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘I usually beat William at chess.’

Inspector Grime didn’t know what to make of it. For now he said his farewells. He wondered how much collusion there had been between the brothers, all wasted by a silly mistake, not agreeing a common line on the chess match. Both of them must have been lying, he thought. Heaven knew what they had been doing that evening but one lie was not enough to convict anybody of murder.

As he made his way towards his train, Inspector Grime cursed London with greater fury than ever. Somewhere on his travels around the capital, probably in this very station where he now stood, swearing loudly, his pocket had been
picked. The Artful Dodger had his wallet and the train ticket to take him home to Fakenham.

The old men of the Jesus Hospital were in rebellious mood in the days after they talked about their lives and their jobs to Inspector Fletcher and his sergeant. Even a new dress for the barmaid in the Rose and Crown had been unable to staunch their anger. The fit among them agreed to hold a meeting in the pub at seven o’clock in the evening. Three of their number were confined to bed on doctor’s orders. Two could see little point in wasting their money in the pub. Another two were teetotal and had never tasted a drop of alcohol in their lives. Their companions never tired of
pointing
out that this appeared to have done little to improve their health. On the contrary, these two were considered by the experts as the most likely to join the late Abel Meredith in the Jesus Hospital section of the graveyard. The rest made their way at varying speeds to the Rose and Crown where they were welcomed by the barmaid, pulling pints as fast as she could go.

They discussed various means of registering their protest. Hunger strikes were considered until those still in
possession
of normal appetites realized they might be having pap forced down their throats for days, if not weeks. Eventually they decided on a march, in their best coats and hats, to the Maidenhead police station to hand in a letter of protest about their treatment. Even then, taking note of the frail condition of many of the silkmen, they resolved to travel most of the way by bus.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was staring moodily at the fire in his drawing room on a Sunday afternoon in Markham Square.

‘I wish I’d never taken on this case, Lucy. I’ve never had
one that spanned three different locations before. I can’t seem to get a grip on it.’

‘Do you still think they’re all the work of one man? And that the mysterious mark on the dead men’s chests is the key to the whole thing?’

‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘I do think that, Lucy, yes I do. I doubt if any of the three Inspectors believe me any more on that point, mind you. Inspector Grime is very excited about the sons of that Mrs Lewis who Roderick Gill was going to marry. It seems they both lied to him about where they were on the evening before the murder. He’s writing to all the theatrical costumiers he can find to see if any of them hired a big black beard at that time.’

‘Are you going to come to Fakenham with me tonight? I’ve got to be teaching again in the morning. This is my last week.’

‘I shall come up with you this evening, Lucy, and return the next day or so. Your work up there in the school has been invaluable, my love. Who knows, maybe you’ll turn up even more information. I’m going to have a meeting with all three of those policemen here early next week. The Three Inspectors, it could be a pub, Lucy, coppers lurking everywhere to make sure there’s no drunk and disorderly behaviour.’

‘You’re not going to forget next weekend, are you, Francis?’

‘What’s happening next weekend?’

Lady Lucy pointed at an embossed card on the
mantelpiece
above the fire. ‘Why, it’s Queen Charlotte’s Ball, Francis. I’m so looking forward to it.’

Powerscourt made a face.

‘Now, now, Francis, you always complain about these things but you enjoy them once you’re actually there. I remember distinctly you saying in the taxi home the last
time we went to a ball, years ago now it must have been, how much you enjoyed the dancing.’

Inspector Miles Devereux thought there was only about a week to go before the results of the Silkworkers’ vote were declared. The only thread he could see between all three murders was this strange election in the Silkworkers Company. As he made his way towards the Secretary’s quarters on the first floor, he wondered if he would find a lawyer there, as he had on his previous visit.

Anthony Buckeridge of Buckeridge, Johnston and Forsyte was indeed in attendance. He managed what might have been a smile at the policeman as he walked in.

‘Good morning, Colonel, Mr Buckeridge,’ said Devereux. ‘I was wondering if the votes were all in, if the result is known now, that sort of thing.’

‘Things are proceeding according to plan,’ said Colonel Horrocks, the Secretary to the Silkworkers. ‘There are still six working days to go before the ballot is closed.’

‘But do you know how many votes have been cast and in which direction?’ Devereux persisted.

‘We do,’ the colonel replied. Devereux thought the men were much more relaxed than they had been on the previous occasion.

‘I think you’ll find that your interest in this matter will close very soon,’ said Buckeridge.

‘I don’t follow you,’ said the Inspector. ‘You sound to me as if you know who has won already.’

The two men looked at each other. ‘It would be premature to declare that we already know the result,’ said Horrocks. ‘However, we would be failing in our duty to act as
responsible
citizens and give all the assistance we ought to the officers of the law if we did not say that it is virtually certain that Sir Peregrine’s proposals, for which he has campaigned so hard and so long, are likely to prevail.’

Damn it, Devereux said to himself, the old bastard has won. The only question is, did he commit murder to get his way? ‘You’re sure of that, Colonel? Sir Peregrine is going to get the eighty per cent he needs?’

Horrocks placed a set of papers in front of him. ‘There is still a possibility that the no campaigners could triumph. But the voting patterns that we have seen from everywhere else would have to go into reverse on the final votes. It looks most improbable.’

Inspector Devereux was thinking of the bribes offered to the old men of the Jesus Hospital. ‘Have the old men of Marlow voted yet? Have their papers come in?’

‘I’m afraid that the details of individual votes are not available to the public, even to the police,’ said Buckeridge, reverting to pompous mode. ‘Nobody asks you, Inspector, how you voted in the last general election and I hope that in this country they never will.’

‘I see,’ said Devereux. ‘It’s just that it would save a certain amount of police work and public expense if we knew if the almshouse had voted or not. You would be doing us a favour.’

Once more the two men exchanged glances. ‘Oh, very well, I don’t think it can do any harm. The silkmen of the Jesus Hospital have cast their votes. It may interest you to know that they voted in favour of Sir Peregrine’s proposals. Every single one of them. As yet we have no figures from Allison’s School.’

Bribery, Inspector Devereux said to himself, bribery could get you everywhere. He realized suddenly that it was too soon to ask the other important question. If the votes of Allison’s School were also in favour, had those two
institutions
pushed Sir Peregrine’s proposals over the eighty per cent threshold? In other words, if they had voted the other way, would the plans have been defeated?

Powerscourt found Inspector Grime active on many fronts. He was still pursuing Blackbeard round the railway stations
of northern Norfolk. He had launched additional
inquiries
, asking if either of the two Lewis brothers, age, height, general characteristics, had been seen in the Fakenham area at the time of the murder. He was awaiting replies from
theatrical
costumiers in Norwich, Cambridge and London as to whether they, or anybody else they knew, had hired out a black beard at any time in the last six weeks, and if they had a name and address for the customer. He had been in touch with the high commissioners and senior representatives of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, asking them to send him a man of their country who could speak with a pronounced accent. The man would need to be in his thirties. Inspector Grime explained that they would be assisting in a murder inquiry at a leading public school in Norfolk. Two of their number, the New Zealander and the Canadian, had already reported for duty. Grime arranged for them to be wearing postal uniform and to walk up the same corridor as the murderer on the day of Roderick Gill’s death. They were to bump into David Lewis and apologize as their predecessor had done before, using exactly the same words. After that they were to bump into other boys and apologize in case that brought forgotten memories to the surface. Neither of the two colonials on duty so far had brought any response from the pupils. The Inspector had taken the New Zealander and the Canadian into his OTC office afterwards to talk to David Lewis but the boy had been definite that theirs was not the accent he had heard on the fateful day.