Death Called to the Bar (37 page)

Powerscourt listened carefully. He could hear nothing. He suddenly realized that on either the ground or the first floors you could go right round the building in a clockwise or anti-clockwise
direction. There was no wall or staircase that would force a man to retrace his steps and go back the way he had come. Here, in this beautiful set of rooms, he was going to play hide and seek round
the galleries. The prize might be life or death. Powerscourt thought there was a staircase in the room next to the last of the armoury collections which had once been the Victorian smoking room. He
thought he could hear those footsteps again, coming from the upper floors. The noise would continue for about half a minute or so and then stop. Was the man on the floor above waiting for him to
appear? Was he looking for a hiding place, inside some great curtain perhaps, where only the barrel of his gun would need to come out of hiding and shoot his enemy in the heart? Very gingerly
Powerscourt tiptoed up the stairs into a room full of Dutch landscapes. There was one painting of a ferry boat very early in the morning where the light glittered beautifully on the water and the
daily commerce of the Dutch ebbed and flowed across the river. There was that sound again. His opponent certainly wasn’t concerned about making a noise. Powerscourt wondered suddenly about
Somerville’s terrible threats and hoped he had not escaped from the police station to come here and take his revenge in the middle of the masterpieces of Europe and the armour of the
East.

If he went round the building anti-clockwise he would be in the Great Gallery, where most of the finest paintings were hung, almost at once. If he went in the other direction he would go right
round the first floor before he reached it from the other end. He decided on the long route and glided off through another roomful of Dutch paintings. Dimly on the walls he could just make out a
loaf of bread being brought into a house, the interior of a church, a woman making lace, a girl reading a love letter. Any dark paintings, some of the most celebrated Rembrandts, would soon be
almost invisible as the daylight began to fade. He checked his watch. A long time to go before the arrival of the nightwatchman. Then it was past the Canalettos, the blue-green water and the blue
cloud-speckled skies and the public buildings of Venice rendered immortal under the artist’s brush. Powerscourt paused again. The footsteps were still marching up and down in the Great
Gallery, almost as if the man was on sentry duty. Perhaps he knew that Powerscourt was bound to arrive there sooner or later. All he had to do was to wait for his prey. He glanced quickly at the
Canaletto by his side. For no reason at all he suddenly remembered recently seeing a painting of Eton College done by Canaletto during his years in London. Even that most English of buildings under
Canaletto’s hand looked as if it really belonged in Venice, somewhere behind San Zaccaria in the sestiere of San Marco, or floating improbably on its very own island like San Giorgio
Maggiore. He pressed hard up against the wall by the door and made a rapid inspection of the landing. It was empty.

Powerscourt crossed the landing at a run, bent almost double. He was now trespassing in the improbable world of Boucher, naked gods floating in the skies without visible means of support, pagan
heroes living out the myths of ancient Greece in a naked innocence charged with considerable erotic force. Still he could hear the footsteps, slightly closer now. He wished he had the same means of
upward propulsion as Boucher’s characters and could float right through the ceiling and the roof and alight in Number 8 Manchester Square. Then a room full of Greuzes, rather sickly portraits
of young girls’ faces that looked as if they were designed to appeal to women and middle-aged and elderly men rather than to the young of either sex. He listened for the footsteps again. They
seemed to have stopped. He stood absolutely still for two minutes to see if they started again. They did not.

Powerscourt was now in a kind of magic kingdom, the creations of Antoine Watteau making music and love in the open air in some enchanted
fête champêtre
. He remembered reading
somewhere that with Watteau, as with Mozart, one could learn that sincerity in art does not have to be uncouth and that perfection of form need not imply poverty of content. Then there was
Fragonard, a painter of such sensuous indulgence, such glorious decadence that the French Revolution might have been created in order to abolish him. Why, Powerscourt said to himself, did his brain
wander off into artistic thoughts when death might be just a corridor away? He listened again. Still no noise.

When he reached the Great Gallery that ran right across one side of the house he lay down on the floor. He inched his way forward until his head just poked round the corner. At least I’m a
smaller target this way, he said to himself. Nothing stirred. On the walls the Van Dycks and the Rembrandts, the Hals and the Gainsboroughs kept to their frames. Powerscourt watched the far door
with great care. Maybe his opponent was hiding behind there, biding his time before an exploratory shot down the room. Suddenly Powerscourt wondered if the man might not have taken his boots off
and crept round to take him from the rear. He looked behind. Only Watteau on guard there, though Powerscourt doubted if those effete-looking lovers and musicians would have been much good in a
fight. He wondered what to do. Charge straight down the Great Gallery? Wait? Go back he way he had come? To his left an austere Spanish lady with a fan and a rosary, painted by Velasquez, was
taking the register of his sins. Still there was silence at the far end. Suddenly Powerscourt decided to take the initiative. He rose to his feet, took his pistol in his right hand and ran as fast
as he could down the gallery. Fifteen feet from the end he fired two shots just past the door. Then he kicked the door as hard as he could and peered round. There was nobody there. Only some Dutch
peasants, too preoccupied with their own world to have any time for his, lounged about on the walls. Powerscourt stood still and locked the Great Gallery door behind him. He was worried about being
outflanked to his rear. So where was the man? Had he given up and gone home? Had the nightwatchman arrived? Powerscourt rather doubted it. He feared he had somehow lost the initiative, that his
enemy had the upper hand. Even the views of gloomy Dutch churches, peopled with sombre worshippers dressed in black, would not be enough to save him now. There were only two players left in the
Wallace Collection game of hide and seek, and death might be the prize for the loser.

Carefully, cautiously, he made his way along the East Galleries. Powerscourt was concentrating so hard on his opponent’s whereabouts that he scarcely looked at the paintings at all. He had
his gun ready to fire in his right hand. He feared that if he left it in his pocket he might be wounded before he had time to reach it. Maybe his last stand was to be on the landing above the
ornamental staircase that led to the ground floor. Maybe he needed some armour. He checked his watch again. If the nightwatchman came at seven he would be here in less than fifteen minutes. You
could, he realized, go round and round the Wallace Collection just as easily as you could go round and round the mulberry bush.

As he rushed out – slow progress affording the enemy too much time and too much target – he saw his opponent at last halfway down the stairs, but facing upwards. He too had his
pistol in his right hand. Both men fired at almost exactly the same time. Powerscourt’s bullet caught the man at the top of the stomach. He turned round and fell down the stairs, rolling
slowly down until he came to rest under an ornate fireplace in the hall. A trail of blood followed him down the steps. Powerscourt was hit in the chest and collapsed on the floor, knocking his head
against the marble floor with a mighty crack. Neither man made a sound.

Albert Forrest, nightwatchman to the Wallace Collection, liked to reach work a little early. That way he could feel he was ahead of his timetable. He wouldn’t be rushed.
He was at an age now, Albert, when he liked to take things at his own pace and in his own time. So it was about five minutes to seven when he opened the great door that led into the Wallace
Collection from Manchester Square. The blood had continued to flow from the man by the fireplace. It had now spread all over the floor. Albert Forrest took one look and hurried to his tiny office
at the back of the Armouries. He did something he had wanted to do ever since they had installed the thing just before the house was opened to the public in 1900. He pulled the alarm. Then he
pulled it again. The noise, meant to warn of fire or flood, of Armageddon or the Second Coming, sounded as if it might wake the dead. Even as Albert was making his way back to the front door
– that fellow looked pretty dead to Albert, no point in hurrying – Johnny Fitzgerald was coming down the stairs of Number 8 Manchester Square four at a time. He exchanged alarmed looks
with Lady Lucy, who was already concerned that Francis had not come home, and rushed across the square. A small crowd was beginning to form outside the front door. The hotel behind seemed to be
emptying all its guests out on to the street. Drinkers from the pub across the road were peering in through the doors, glasses in hand. Johnny took one look at the villain in the hall and shot up
the stairs, pausing only to apprehend his pistol.

Johnny sprinted to his friend and knelt by his side. Powerscourt was unconscious and he seemed to Johnny to have a most unhealthy colour. Johnny ripped off his own shirt, the finest silk that
Jermyn Street could provide, and did what he could to staunch the flow of blood. He put his jacket over Powerscourt to keep him warm and dashed off to Number 8. Lady Lucy was pacing nervously up
and down the hall.

‘Lady Lucy,’ Johnny Fitzgerald panted, ‘Francis has been shot. It looks bad. He’s at the top of the staircase on the first floor. Can you get Rhys and the footman to
improvise a stretcher? I’m going to get a doctor, man we both knew in South Africa, lives round the corner. He’s wonderful with wounded people. Don’t move Francis, for God’s
sake, don’t move him at all till I get back with the doctor.’

Lady Lucy felt numb, icy cold on receipt of the news. He had come through so much, her Francis, so many campaigns, so many battles, so many dangerous investigations. Now she might lose him. She
could not believe it. She refused to believe it. She tried, briefly, to imagine a future without Francis and she knew she could not bear it. Even with all these children, she thought, she would
find it intolerable. She pulled her coat tight around her and waited for the doctor.

Johnny Fitzgerald set off at full speed across Manchester Square, over Marylebone High Street and a hundred yards or so up Marylebone Lane before turning left into Bulstrode Street. In his
mind’s eye he saw not the great hulk of the side of the Wallace Collection or the fashionable hotel opposite, or the shadowy buildings with the lights being lit in their windows. He saw his
greatest friend bleeding to death, surrounded not by his friends but by the Old Masters of centuries long past. Even Francis, he thought, with his great love of art, wouldn’t want to go like
that. Number 16 had the nameplate. Dr Anthony Fraser, it said, universally known during his time in the Army as Dr Tony.

The scene on the landing now resembled one of those melancholy religious paintings showing Christ being taken down from the Cross that might have lined its walls. A bloodied
Powerscourt lying unconscious on the ground. Lady Lucy, representing the weeping women, not actually weeping but gazing at her husband and praying with all her strength for his safe recovery. Rhys
the butler and Jones the footman, hovering with the stretcher, might have been Roman soldiers perhaps, come for a last look at the one they had called the King of the Jews.

Dr Fraser knelt down by the side of his new patient. He felt Powerscourt’s pulse and grimaced slightly. Then he stood up.

‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Fraser, usually known as Dr Tony. I knew Lord Powerscourt in South Africa. You must be his wife,’ he bowed to Lady Lucy, ‘and you must be
his staff. We must get your husband on to the stretcher you have managed to bring. Your house is across the square? That will be best for now. I have sent for some nurses.’

They manoeuvred Powerscourt on to the stretcher and the four men took him, rather like a coffin going to its last resting place, Lady Lucy felt, to the big bedroom on the second floor of Number
8 Manchester Square. There was now a fire in the grate. The sheets on the bed had been changed. Extra chairs had been brought in for those on attendant and nursing duty. The doctor examined
Powerscourt very closely.

‘There is an exit wound here on his back – the bullet must have gone straight through him. And it has narrowly avoided both his heart and his lungs. I shall wait for the nurses
before we clean it all up and put on the dressings. In the meantime I will give your husband an injection against the pain.’

Dr Fraser sat with Powerscourt for over an hour, Lady Lucy on the other side of the bed. The doctor, Lady Lucy observed, was a short slim man in his middle thirties whose hair was beginning to
recede. He had a prominent nose and very bright eyes. When the nurses arrived, she left them to it and went to order some tea in the drawing room.

‘Lady Powerscourt,’ the doctor began about a quarter of an hour later, ‘we have done what we can to clean the wound. We could have done more but there is always a slight danger
to the patient in carrying out over-vigorous measures at this stage. I shall be going back to keep watch for a little while longer when I have finished my tea.’

Lady Lucy looked at him with pleading eyes. Already, she felt reassured by his presence. ‘What is your judgement, doctor? Will Francis…’ she paused for a moment to fight back
the tears, ‘pull through?’

‘Your husband has received a most serious wound, Lady Powerscourt,’ said the doctor. ‘I would not hide that from you for a second. I have seen far too many people with similar
wounds to his in South Africa. In the case of your husband it’s simple. We must keep the wound clean. In time we can give some assistance for it to heal. The room where he lies must be kept
clean. No infection can be allowed to get anywhere near him. But he has also sustained a serious blow to the head. I have no idea when he will wake up from his coma, Lady Powerscourt. So much
depends on the will, his will to live. If he despairs, he will die. I have seen men die from wounds that are less serious than his and I have seen men recover from wounds that were
worse.’