‘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.
15
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 usu
ally 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.’
‘Well put, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is a compelling argument. Well done indeed.’
‘I know there has been one unfortunate encounter,’ Miles Devereux went on, ‘the meeting with tea for one, but I think we should pick him up again, Sir Peregrine, I mean. Leave him to rot in the cells for a couple of hours this time. Hold up his solicitor when he arrives. I don’t think he’d ever confess, Sir Peregrine, but he might incriminate himself.’
‘I think we should investigate that chauffeur of his,’ said Inspector Fletcher. ‘The man goes everywhere with him. What happens if he has a dual role for Sir Peregrine? Driver by day, murderer by night? I’ll put one of my men on it when I get back to the station.’
‘Good idea,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There are a number of lines of inquiry still proceeding in all three cases. I do think the most important thing we have to decide this afternoon is what to do with Sir Peregrine. What about you, Inspector Grime? What are your views on the Prime Warden of the Silkworkers? Do you think we should bring him into the police station for questioning?’
‘I’m honestly not sure,’ said Inspector Grime. ‘There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence against him – as my colleague said
, the bloody man was on the scene of all three murders. But he had a reason for being there on all three occasions. We don’t have anything that links him specifically to the dead. The motive, of course, is very strong, but I wonder if we shouldn’t wait for something more concrete. As things stand we might just have a fruitless conversation with the lawyers, causing confusion all round.’
It was Inspector Devereux who brought up the most difficult point. ‘I recall, my lord, that you used to believe that the strange marks on the bodies were the key to the whole affair. Could I ask if you still believe that?’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I realize I may be in a minority of one here, but yes, I still do believe that. However unpopular that makes me in present company. I have always thought that the murderer, undoubtedly an arrogant murderer, was sending some kind of message with those marks that only the recipients would understand. So far, of course, nobody has been able to identify the stigmata at all. But I haven’t given up hope.’
‘I believe I have mentioned it to you before, my lord,’ Miles Devereux had raised himself from a recumbent to a sitting position, ‘but do you not think it possible that Sir Peregrine, or some other possible murderer, has merely used this device to throw us off the scent?’
‘I think it’s possible, but not likely.’
‘I think we should let Sir Peregrine stew in his own juice for a few days longer,’ said Inspector Fletcher. ‘Our investigations into the chauffeur may come up with something. I might speak to that masseuse Frankie again and see if she has anything more to tell us.’
‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think we agree that we should leave Sir Peregrine a little longer.’
‘I’m with you there. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my lord,’ Inspector Grime was checking the ornate clock on the mantelpiece, ‘I have to go and interview one of the Lewis sons. I’m going to call unannounced at six o’clock. My sergeant will be knocking on the door of his brother at exactly the same time so they can’t concoct some more lies about chess matches.’
Death at the Jesus Hospital Page 23
