Death Called to the Bar (38 page)

‘What can we do, Dr Tony? Everybody in this house wants Francis alive.’ The thought of the twins with no father struck Lady Lucy yet again and she had to turn away for a moment.

‘I believe there is a great deal you can do, Lady Powerscourt, believe me. Many of my colleagues would have taken your husband to hospital. I thought of that and rejected it. If he had
gone to hospital he would have been placed in a ward full of people as seriously injured as he is, or worse. Death would call every day if not every hour and constantly reduce the numbers. Here
your husband is surrounded by love and his loved ones. I think we should keep him quiet tomorrow and the next day but after that your children should go and talk to him, whether he is awake or not.
Maybe they could read to him. Other people could read to him, talk to him. The more activity, the better I believe it will be for your husband. If all is quiet people could think they have gone to
that eternal silence before their time is due.’

‘So there is hope, doctor?’ Lady Lucy was looking at him very closely.

‘Oh yes, Lady Powerscourt. Of course there’s hope. Let us not forget that. Let us never forget that. There is always hope.’

Lady Lucy felt a small, but definite, onset not of hope but of resolve, of determination. Maybe it was courage. She thought of her love for Francis, she thought of all her ancestors who had
marched and sailed and fought and died for their country across the centuries. Maybe some small portion of their bravery would come to help her in her ordeal. If she was not brave, she knew,
Francis would surely die.

Those first two days seemed to most of the inhabitants of 8 Manchester Square to be like a dream. Thomas and Olivia refused to believe their father was seriously ill until Lady
Lucy took them in to see him. Thomas turned white and stared at his father for a very long time. Olivia rushed off to her room to pray for her Papa’s recovery. Dr Tony came at regular
intervals. The nurses changed over every eight hours, keeping endless watch over their patient, making him comfortable, washing his face, taking his pulse, entering their findings into a large
black notebook. Lady Lucy kept vigil when she could. She had made a private arrangement with Johnny that one of them should be awake when the other was asleep and vice versa. The staff tiptoed
about, popping in every now and then to look at Powerscourt. The flowers began arriving late the first morning. William Burke sent an enormous bunch. Lady Lucy thought how amused Francis would have
been as the bouquets began arriving from her relations, dozens and dozens of them, enough to open a bloody flower shop, she could hear him saying. Soon a whole wall in the Powerscourt bedroom was
lined with flowers. Only the twins were immune to the change of lifestyle, Lady Lucy convinced that it would take the Second Coming to make the slightest dent in Nurse Mary Muriel’s
routine.

On the third day the atmosphere in the sick room was very different. Gone was the silence that had held the sick bay in its grip, broken only by the whispered conclaves between the nurses and Dr
Tony. For a good section of the morning the twins were now placed on chairs close to the bed in their Moses baskets. Occasional wails punctuated the morning conversations between Dr Tony and the
nurses. They took great interest in the twins, the nurses, peering into their faces and talking a great variety of nonsense to them. Thomas came in his most grown-up mode and read to Powerscourt
from the sports section of the newspapers. Olivia tried to make up stories of her own for him. As these were largely based on stories her father had invented for her, it was, as Lady Lucy said,
rather like hearing the brain of Francis come back in the voice of Olivia. When they got tired of stories, the children would talk to him, saying whatever came into their heads usually, and the
nurses found that even more captivating than looking into the faces of the twins.

Just before lunch Detective Chief Inspector Beecham arrived. He had felt he would be intruding if he called on the Powerscourt household. Only after he had met Edward and Sarah in front of
Queen’s Inn and learned that they were going to call at 8 Manchester Square very soon, did he change his mind.

‘Lady Powerscourt, Johnny Fitzgerald, how is Lord Powerscourt? Is he making good progress?’

Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy looked at each other.

‘He’s not getting any better, Chief Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘but he’s not getting any worse.’

‘I would like to see him and pay my respects, before I leave, if I may, Lady Powerscourt. This has been truly terrible for you all. I do have some fresh intelligence which fills in some of
the final details of the case your husband so ably solved, Lady Powerscourt. But I would not want to keep you from your duties here.’

Lady Lucy smiled. ‘It sounds to me, Chief Inspector, as though Francis would want to hear your news at some point quite soon after he recovers consciousness.’ Beecham thought he
could hear a repressed ‘if’ in that last sentence.

‘I shall be brief,’ he said. ‘Let me begin with the villain who shot your husband.’

‘The fellow at the bottom of the stairs?’ asked Johnny.

‘The same, Johnny. Lord Powerscourt is an excellent shot but his bullet landed a couple of inches too low. Had it been a fraction higher, the bullet would have killed him. It nearly did
for him, the rogue is still in hospital. But he is alive.’

‘Has he spoken?’ said Johnny. ‘Has he told you what was going on, Chief Inspector?’

‘He certainly has. I regret to say I tricked him into making a confession he might not have made otherwise.’

‘How was that?’ asked Johnny.

‘I didn’t get to see him until early this morning. The man was unconscious in the Marylebone Hospital round the corner from here. The Hippocratic oath is a wonderful thing but I
don’t think you receive the fastest treatment in the world if you’re brought in as an attempted murderer. Anyway, I told him he had half an hour left to live and that he should speak up
at once. It wasn’t true, of course, but he wasn’t to know that. It seems he had a very religious education from his mother when he was little. He began muttering bits of prayers and
hymns at me. I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I told him St Peter would be pleased with him if he told the truth before his departure from this vale of tears. So he did, or I think he
did.’

The Chief Inspector pulled a notebook out of his pocket and checked a couple of entries halfway through.

‘It seems Somerville defended him some years ago on a charge of grievous bodily harm. Tompkins, Dennis Tompkins, that’s the fellow’s name, admitted the other man had been
beaten almost to a pulp. Sentence likely to be ten years minimum, probably more. But Somerville gets him off, Tompkins is pathetically grateful, says he would do anything for Somerville as a
result. Three weeks ago he gets a note from Somerville asking Tompkins to meet him in the gardens of Hampton Court. Bloody enormous grounds they are, as you know, my lady, you could plot anything
in there without anybody being the wiser. Anyway, Somerville gives him an envelope with five hundred pounds in Treasury notes. Says there’s another five hundred when the job’s done. The
job is to kill Lord Powerscourt, description and address to be supplied. Somerville told Tompkins Lord Powerscourt was coming to see him at the Inn three days ago. He followed him from there to the
Wallace Collection. Tompkins said it was pure chance they both got locked in there together. He had no idea what the building was, he was only planning to see where Powerscourt lived and make his
attempt later.’

‘That would explain the funny looks and the whispers I was getting about Francis when I went to check out the underworld,’ said Johnny. ‘Did he say why Somerville wanted
Francis dead?’

‘Somerville had explained some of it, but brother Tompkins didn’t remember it very well. And, by this time, on my own timetable, I’d only six minutes left before he was due to
pop off. Brother Tompkins was probably thinking his time was nearly up too. He kept looking at his watch. I’ve thought about it since and this is what I think Tompkins meant. Somerville was
forced to invite Lord Powerscourt in to investigate the murders by the other benchers. But I think he was also the man who opposed appointing Lord Powerscourt at that first meeting. I imagine he
felt he might be caught out. But what really rattled him was when no suspects were hauled off to jail. He thought Newton would be arrested. Then he thought somebody else must be picked up. When
they weren’t he felt he must have been rumbled so the man who was about to expose him had to go.’

‘So what’s going to happen to this Tompkins person?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Will he have to stand trial? And that horrible Somerville, will he be put in the dock as
well?’

‘When Tompkins is recovered, he will have to stand trial,’ replied the Chief Inspector. ‘Mr Somerville, well, he may be on trial somewhere else, but he won’t be attending
any trials down here. This is the other piece of information I am sure your husband would wish to know. We had to let Somerville out on the most enormous bail after twenty-four hours. You will
recall that Maxwell Kirk, the barrister at the head of Dauntsey’s chambers, was going to address a meeting of protest of all the barristers in Queen’s Inn. Somerville tried to prevent
it but failed. The barristers were incandescent with rage at what had been happening about the money. Edward said I was to mention this point in particular, Lady Powerscourt. He said your husband
would have enjoyed it hugely. They decide, these lawyers, to pass a vote of no confidence in Somerville. Just one sentence was all they needed. According to Edward, a roomful of monkeys with
typewriters would have produced it quicker. It took them fifty-five minutes to agree the wording and even then there were six different caveats on the final version. So the Petition of Right, as
one wag called it, is sent off to Somerville. It must have been terrible for him, total public humiliation at the hands of his peers. At any rate, when the servant goes into his rooms yesterday
morning, there was Somerville slumped at his desk. The vote of censure was in front of him. The pistol was by his side. He’d blown his brains out.’

There was a brief silence. ‘There are just two other things I’m sure your husband would like to know, Lady Powerscourt. The man Porchester Newton has turned up again. He came back
about three o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the shooting. Said he’d been fishing in South Wales. We asked the local police to check it out and it was all true. And John Bassett,
the old Financial Steward – it’s been confirmed that he died of natural causes.’

‘I’m sure my husband will be most interested to hear all this news, Chief Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, upset far more than she could have imagined by this new death. ‘And
now perhaps you would like to come and see him and talk to him before you have to leave. The doctor is very keen people should talk to him.’

On this day too, other visitors began to arrive. There were relations, always too sombre in their appearance and too gloomy in their assessments. ‘They look,’
Johnny Fitzgerald observed sourly to Lady Lucy, ‘as if they’ve decided he’s dead already and are trying to work out what to wear for the funeral.’ But some of them had been
involved in earlier Powerscourt investigations. Patrick Butler, the young editor of the local newspaper in the cathedral city of Compton in the West Country, called late in the afternoon. He had
been very closely involved in the Powerscourt investigation into the mysterious deaths in the cathedral the year before. He gave Lady Lucy an enormous kiss and a huge bunch of flowers. She took him
straight in to see her husband and told him the details of the shooting. Compton Saviour Shot in Legal Feud was the headline that flashed through his newspaper brain. Patrick Butler thought in
headlines just as farmers think of the seasons and the weather. He always had. The young Patrick sensed that beneath the surface optimism, the good cheer and the impeccable manners reserved for
visitors in this politest of households, despair was probably not very far away.

‘I saw him, Lady Lucy,’ he began with a smile, ‘the morning after those bastards tried to kill him with all that falling masonry in the cathedral. Do you remember? Of course
you do. Well, he looks to me very like he did then. He pulled round on that occasion and I’m sure he will this time.’

He stopped talking suddenly. Lady Lucy remembered that this was a fairly rare occurrence and waited for what was coming next. They were sitting side by side by the edge of Powerscourt’s
bed. Patrick Butler reached out to take her hand.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Lady Powerscourt, with your permission.’ A whole front page of his paper, the
Grafton Mercury
, was flashing through his brain as fast
as the paper would come off the presses. A long article on Powerscourt’s role in the salvation of Compton the previous year. A brief description of his present difficulties. A prayer for his
recovery from the Dean, maybe even the Bishop. ‘We’ll give the whole front page of the next edition of the
Grafton Mercury
over to Lord Powerscourt! An account of his role as the
Saviour of Compton. A brief summary of his current predicament. And a prayer from the Dean or the Bishop! I’m great pals now with the new Dean, Lady Powerscourt. He says I’m the only
person in the city of Compton who can tell him the whole truth about what went on before. Tell you what, even better, I’ll get the Dean to organize a service of prayer for Lord
Powerscourt’s recovery. The whole of Compton will turn up and pray he gets better. That’s bound to help!’

Lady Lucy remembered Patrick’s wife’s description of him as being rather like a puppy. He hadn’t changed.

‘That would be very kind, Patrick,’ she said, smiling at her editor. ‘Francis and I were very fond of Compton. But tell me, how is Anne and what brings you to London at this
time?’

Patrick Butler blushed. ‘Anne is well, Lady Powerscourt. She is expecting our first child in August.’ He made a close inspection of the nearer twin at this point as if intent on
getting some practice in child care early on. ‘And I,’ he was going rather red at this point, ‘I have been asked to London for an interview about a position on
The Times
. I
should know in three or four days if I have been accepted.’