Death at the Jesus Hospital (22 page)

An elderly sergeant came into the Inspector’s office. ‘Forgive the interruption, Lord Powerscourt, Inspector, this has just come back from Melton Constable. A local man who has been away for a fortnight visiting his sick mother says he saw Sir Peregrine’s car, or one very like it, in Melton Constable outside Sir Peregrine’s house on the day of the murder, sir. He says he’s seen the car before with Sir Peregrine in it, so he’s fairly sure he’s right.’

‘God in heaven, Sergeant, this is dramatic news.’ Inspector Grime was pounding his fist into his other hand as he strode up and down his office. ‘This could change everything. Tell them over in Melton Constable to bring the man in and hold him till I get over there. Do you want to come with me, Powerscourt?’

‘Thank you for the invitation, Inspector. I think I am going to call on somebody else. If you think about Sir Peregrine’s activities, a lot of them have been concerned with the votes in this affair of the Silkworkers. I wonder if he popped up here to have a word with the bursar. And I doubt very much if he would have seen the bursar on his own. I’m going to call on the headmaster, Inspector, if that’s all right with you.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ Inspector Grime replied. ‘I say, Powerscourt, do you think Sir Peregrine brought that girl with him, Francesca, wasn’t that her name? I’ve never met a masseuse before.’

The headmaster was in a meeting about the cost of repairing the cricket pavilion when Powerscourt arrived.

‘My dear Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, ushering him to a chair, ‘how good to see you again. And let me say how valuable the work your wife is doing for us is. The boys are progressing in leaps and bounds. We shall be devastated when she has to leave on Friday. Now then, does your
presence
among us signal that the crime has been solved, that we can offer our congratulations?’

‘Would that it did,’ said Powerscourt ruefully. ‘Believe me, Headmaster, I wish we could have found the answer by now. Life must have been very difficult for you all up here with this hanging over the school.’

‘I rather think we have got used to it, though getting used to murder can’t be good for any of us. Is there anything particular you wish to speak to me about today?’

‘There is, Headmaster. It is rather a delicate matter, I fear.
One of the important players throughout this inquiry, in all three locations, is Sir Peregrine Fishborne, Prime Warden of the Silkworkers Company.’

‘We know Sir Peregrine here. He is on the board of
governors
. I think we could say we know him quite well.’

‘Indeed so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It has just been reported that Sir Peregrine’s car, with, presumably, Sir Peregrine himself inside it, was seen at Melton Constable on the day of the murder.’

‘What of it? The man has a house there, for God’s sake.’

Powerscourt thought that the headmaster’s usual
urbanity
might be giving way to tetchiness.

‘A great deal of Sir Peregrine’s time in those days was spent in canvassing for votes for his reorganization of the Silkworkers.’

‘So?’ said the headmaster.

‘I just wondered if he came here to talk to you and your bursar about how you were going to cast your votes, that’s all.’

There was a pause. The headmaster fiddled with his gold pen. Powerscourt looked out of the window, the playing fields stretching far into the distance, a phalanx of tennis courts closer to home. A buzzard was hovering over the playing fields, searching for prey.

‘I can’t lie to you, Lord Powerscourt. Yes, he did come here. Yes, we met with the bursar. I would have told you before but he asked us to keep it a secret, Sir Peregrine, I mean. I don’t think it has anything to do with the murder, I’m absolutely sure of it. Let me tell you what the meeting was about.’ The headmaster put down his pen. He brushed his hair back over his forehead.

‘What you have to understand, Lord Powerscourt, is how much these schools cost to run. There are the staff to pay. The fabric of the buildings is in almost permanent need of repair. The grounds are another drain on resources. Just before you came in I was given an estimate for repairing the
cricket pavilion that, at present, we cannot afford. There was a suggestion that the Silkworkers Company might like to re-endow the school to enable us to carry out repairs and to embark on a new building programme which would open a new chapter in the long history of Allison’s.’

‘Might I ask who made this suggestion, Headmaster?’

‘You may. It was my suggestion.’

‘And was the quid pro quo that the votes of the school would go Sir Peregrine’s way?’ Don’t mention blackmail, Powerscourt said to himself, don’t even think about it.

‘It was,’ said the headmaster.

‘Sir Peregrine must have been pretty desperate for votes if he was prepared to spend all that money on rebuilding and so on. I suppose it wasn’t his money, mind you, not his
personal
fortune. And what did your bursar think of all this?’

‘That was part of the problem, Lord Powerscourt. That was why Sir Peregrine came all this way to see us. Roderick was opposed to the scheme, to all of it. He said that if the Silkworkers Company effectively dissolved itself, there would be no guarantees of any Silkworker money coming to the school ever again. He was unmoved by all the talk of new buildings. He used to describe them as being promises made with fool’s gold. We should stay the way we are, he would say. It’s much safer. Sir Peregrine tried his hardest but Roderick wouldn’t budge. Sir Peregrine got rather cross, actually.’

‘I’m afraid I have to ask you this, Headmaster. Which way did you and your colleagues vote in the end?’

‘We voted for Sir Peregrine, all of us, all of our votes. I sent the paperwork off this morning. We voted for change, a change that will do much to restore the fortunes of the school.’

‘So you voted against the advice of your bursar, Headmaster?’

‘It was the first time I had ever disagreed with Roderick on a question of finance, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘But Mr Gill, the bursar, was actually dead by the time the rest of you cast your votes, was he not? He couldn’t have a vote where he’d gone, could he?’

‘That is correct.’

‘Thank you for telling me all of this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Is there anything you would wish to add?’

‘I don’t think so. I will give the matter some thought. I wouldn’t like to feel you had not been kept in the picture a second time. I can find you at the Crown, I presume?’

As Powerscourt strolled back towards the police station he felt that another name had been added to the list of suspects. There were the two sons of Mrs Maud Lewis, lying about their chess game. There was Sir Peregrine Fishborne and his chauffeur who drove him everywhere, there might be shadowy members of the British or German secret
service
, there might be unknown opponents of Sir Peregrine’s schemes, and now another late entrant in the Fakenham stakes, the headmaster himself, keen to remove the last opposition to his grand schemes of expansion and glory.

Inspector Grime was astonished when Powerscourt told him the details of his conversation with the headmaster of Allison’s School.

‘I thought I was doing well, my lord, with this new
witness
confirming that Sir Peregrine’s great black car has been seen in Melton Constable. But the headmaster, that’s virtually blackmail. You build me a new school, I’ll give you my votes. Pity the bursar didn’t stay around to hold his ground.’

‘I think we have to include him on the list of suspects, the headmaster I mean, but I don’t think he’d have carried out the murder. He had far too much to lose. Did you say you were coming to London tomorrow, Inspector, for further conversations with the Lewis sons? I could give you a lift, if you like. I hope to have a summit meeting with all three of you Inspectors at my house late tomorrow afternoon if that sounds convenient for you?’

‘Thank you, my lord. That would be most helpful. I have been wondering about whether to interview the Lewis boys in a police station or in their homes. Would you have any advice?’

‘Talk to them in their homes, that would be my
suggestion
. That way, they won’t suspect anything. Call them into the police station and they’ll think they’re on their way to the Old Bailey.’

‘I’ll give that further thought, if I may, my lord. Tomorrow morning we have the last of the colonial gentlemen
coming
in to the school to see if anybody remembers their accents.’

The amount of noise generated by some hundred and fifty boys trying to make their way up or down the principal corridor of Allison’s School was deafening. Inspector Grime, sheltering in a side corridor, thought a hundred and fifty policemen, even wearing their best boots, would not be able to equal it. Odd snatches of homework questions floated past him on the morning rush.

‘Who was prime minister after Peel, for heaven’s sake?’

‘
Alea jacta est.
What’s the
alea
? Do you know?’

‘Who was Elizabeth the First’s spymaster?’

Then he saw him. Today’s colonial was a burly man with black curly hair who looked as though he might be a prop forward in rugby. He elbowed his way past a number of boys, including David Lewis, saying sorry as he went. For the boys, bumps and collisions en route to the first lessons of the day were nothing new. It was just part of the daily routine. They had been warned beforehand that another stranger would be in their midst this morning. One or two of the naughtier ones made it their business to crash into their visitor, but his bulk ensured that they came off worst.

‘Well,’ said Inspector Grime to David Lewis when the visitor had passed through the corridor into the Inspector’s temporary quarters in the Officers’ Training Corps room, ‘what did you think?’

‘I’ll tell you that in a moment, sir. Could the gentleman read something for me so I could be sure?’

‘Of course,’ said Inspector Grime. The visitor began to read in a clear voice from the current school prospectus. When he reached the section about the high quality of the meals provided, David Lewis held up his hand.

‘That’s enough, sir,’ he said. ‘What a pack of lies about the school food, mind you.’

‘Do you recognize the accent, David?’

‘I do, sir. That is the accent of the man who bumped into me as I was walking along the corridor on the day of the murder, sir.’

‘Do you know where the accent comes from, David?’ asked Inspector Grime.

‘Well, sir, we know from the previous riders and runners that he wasn’t Canadian or Australian or New Zealander. So he must have been South African. Is that right?’ He addressed his question to the visitor.

‘Yes, I am South African,’ said the prop forward.

‘God help us all,’ said Inspector Grime, and he wished for a moment that he had paid more attention to the maps on the walls of the geography classroom where he had interviewed the boys. Even those bloody globes would have helped, he said to himself, if I’d taken any notice of them. Where exactly was South Africa? And how far away was it?

Lady Lucy thought you would not have known that the three men all belonged to the same profession. A two-day exercise for the OTC involving all the boys in Allison’s meant there was a break from Sherlock Holmes in French in Fakenham. She had wondered in her time up there if Holmes would have liked Fakenham. On the whole, she thought, probably not. Irregular supplies of cocaine would not be acceptable. She welcomed the Inspectors to the Powerscourt family home in Markham Square. The twins, Christopher and Juliet, peeped down at the visitors from the landing on the top floor. They had been mightily impressed to learn that there would be no fewer than three police Inspectors in their house. Their behaviour had taken a brief turn for the better but, as Powerscourt remarked to Lady Lucy, he did not expect it to last.

Inspector Fletcher looked out of place. He was wearing his best uniform, buttons polished, boots gleaming, but he still hopped uncertainly from place to place until Powerscourt suggested he sit down on the sofa next to the fire. Inspector Miles Devereux looked relaxed in an old tweed suit and had parked himself in an armchair by the bookcase. Inspector Grime was wearing an old and rather shiny suit but he looked at home in the first-floor drawing room with the paintings of Lady Lucy’s ancestors on the walls. Powerscourt himself was leaning on the mantelpiece, with a drawing of the strange mark on the dead men’s chests in his hand.

‘Thank you all so much for coming,’ he began. ‘I thought it would be helpful if we all heard how everybody else is
coming
along. Perhaps you’d like to start, Inspector Fletcher?’

Fletcher had made notes in the train on what he was going to say. ‘I think it fair to say, my lord, that the picture at the Jesus Hospital is far from clear. We know that somebody broke in during the night, or hid himself away the evening before, and murdered Abel Meredith. Or he was killed by one of the other inmates. One of the old men heard noises but did not see anything. So far we have not received any reports of strangers being seen in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. We know that Warden Monk was operating a racket of some sort with the old people’s wills, but that does not seem to be an adequate motive for murder.’ Inspector Fletcher paused and looked round at his little audience. Lady Lucy gave him a smile of encouragement.

‘We know from you, my lord, that the dead man, Abel Meredith, may have been used as a courier by the secret service to travel to Germany to bring back information, and our own inquiries in Marlow tell of at least one trip to Hamburg which may have involved him acting as a
messenger
. I have to say that we have no idea if he was taking messages or instructions from England to Germany or vice versa or both. It is possible that his intelligence activities led to his death, though I cannot see how at the moment. We
know, largely thanks to the activities of Johnny Fitzgerald, that there has been a lot of anxiety about the changes
proposed
to the constitution of the Silkworkers by Sir Peregrine Fishborne. We know that Sir Peregrine was staying at the hotel on the island in the Thames, the Elysian Fields, on the night before the murder. We know that he was accompanied by a masseuse called Frankie who was a regular visitor to his suite at the hotel.’

There was a snort or two from the other Inspectors at this moment. Lady Lucy looked demurely ahead.

‘We do not know much for certain about what time he left in the morning, though the girl says he was usually away by seven o’clock. There is always the possibility that some internal feud between Meredith and another resident of the hospital led to his death, though I have to tell you that there are doubts about whether any of the old boys would have the strength to work the knife with sufficient force to cause death in the manner inflicted. And I would remind you that the knife used in the Jesus Hospital may also have foreign connections. One of the doctors thought the wound was caused by a weapon called a kris, commonly found in places like Ceylon and Thailand. Inquiries continue into the past life of Abel Meredith and the other residents. My colleague and I have had one interview with Sir Peregrine in his office. It was the only time in my professional career, my lord, where the suspect has ordered tea for himself but not for his visitors.’

Inspector Miles Devereux was next into the lists. He spoke as if he were describing an afternoon in the hunting field.

‘I would have to agree with my colleague that the picture concerning the murder in the Silkworkers Hall is not clear either. One of the interesting things about the victim is that there is a long spell missing from his career as described in
Who’s Who
. The subjects, you will recall, make out their own entries. Fifteen years of his early adult life are simply not accounted for, and so far all attempts to fill in the blanks have failed. I, too, have had dealings with Sir Peregrine’s
people. Twice now I have been to interview the Silkworkers Secretary about the ballot in the livery company. On both occasions the Secretary was accompanied by a rather disagreeable lawyer who tried to make my life as
difficult
as possible. They have told me one important fact. Sir Peregrine is going to win the ballot. Not all the votes have arrived yet, but most of them have and they believe that he already has enough support to carry the day by the required majority. His principal opponent in the company was, of course, the dead man. Sir Rufus was bitterly opposed to the plans. So, in two of the locations we have opposition to Sir Peregrine which might have been enough to derail his scheme. I expect we will hear the same story from Norfolk.’

Inspector Grime had been making notes as his colleagues spoke. Now he shut his notebook and put it in his breast pocket. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘in some ways we have more information about the killer in Allison’s School than we do for the other places. But I should tell you first of all that Allison’s School, with its twelve votes, also voted in favour of Sir Peregrine’s plan. We know that the murderer came to Fakenham the evening before on the train. He could have come from more or less anywhere. We do not know where he spent the night. One suggestion is that he passed it in one of the outbuildings of the school, such as the cricket pavilion, which were not usually locked. We know that he entered the school disguised as a postman early the
following
morning. I think he must have brought the postman’s uniform with him. The murderer entered the main school corridor at a time when it was full of boys and bumped into some of them. One of those boys claims he spoke with a South African accent. After the murder, our suspect
disappears
. And there may have been a personal link with our friend Sir Peregrine as well. His car was seen at his house at Melton Constable on the day before the murder. He attended a meeting with the headmaster and the bursar at the school the evening before the killing. Once again, the
subject was the Silkworkers’ vote. The bursar was opposed to any changes to the statutes. Once he was out of the way, the headmaster voted for the changes in exchange for some new buildings. I am grateful to you, Lord Powerscourt, for that last piece of information.’ Inspector Grime paused for a moment and wiped his glasses. His sergeant always maintained that the more suspects he had in his sights, the more cheerful he became.

‘Up in Norfolk, my lord, we have not one suspect, Sir Peregrine, but two, or possibly three. Let me explain. We have heard of the masseuse called Frankie plying her trade at the Elysian Fields. We have no masseuses but we have a victim with two mistresses. One, Mrs Hilda Mitchell, is married to a stonemason who went away before the murder and has not been seen since. He is definitely a suspect. His wife, like the other lady, was collected up by the deceased, Roderick Gill, at church functions. He was known in cynical circles as the Groper in the Vestry. It seems you weren’t safe at innocuous events like the Harvest Festival and the Christmas carol service. Mistress number two, Maud Lewis, is a widow with considerable property left by her late
husband.
She was going to marry Gill and leave her money to him. She has two sons, both in their twenties, both of whom regard Gill as a bounty hunter of the worst sort. When I interviewed the two of them separately at their homes recently their alibis stood up well until it came to a chess game they had supposedly played the evening before the murder. Both of them have different accounts of who won. To sum up, you could say we have a surfeit of suspects, the cuckolded stonemason, Sir Peregrine, one of the two sons of Mrs Lewis. I don’t know which one I’d back in the Fakenham murder stakes myself.’

‘Well done, Inspector, well done everyone,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Can I ask you all the same
question
? Do you think Sir Peregrine is the murderer? Inspector Fletcher?’

‘My answer has to be that I just don’t know, my lord. There are perfectly innocent explanations for his
appearances
at the various murder sites. Well, not entirely innocent if you include Frankie the masseuse at the hotel. He had to be at the Silkworkers Hall for the dinner – he is Prime Warden of the Company, after all. And it sounds as though he had to go to Norfolk to try to persuade the bursar of Allison’s School to change his mind. He can’t have been sure about the votes, Sir Peregrine. It sounds as if his proposal could have gone either way. But there’s nothing to link him directly with the actual murders.’

‘Everything you say is true,’ said Miles Devereux, still with his languid air, ‘except there is one fact we should never forget about Sir Peregrine Fishborne. He stands to make an enormous amount of money if his scheme is approved. He will become one of the richest men in England. People say he has been stacking the livery company with his supporters for years. He may have spent a decade dreaming up this plan. If it succeeds, he need never work again. He could employ a whole netball team of masseuses if he wanted.

‘Sir Peregrine was certainly in the vicinity of the places where all three murders were committed,’ Inspector Devereux went on, ‘and I think we should remember one crucial piece of information about him. The old men at the Jesus Hospital were going to vote against the scheme. Now, with Meredith out of the way and the bribes in place, they voted in favour. Sir Rufus Walcott at the Silkworkers Hall was the leader of the opposition to his plans. Heaven knows how many of Sir Rufus’s supporters have been bribed or changed their minds, we simply don’t know, but he was not around to vote against. And at the school, more bribery. I suggest that without the murders Sir Peregrine might well have lost the vote. With the murders, he has won the day.’