‘Why don’t I take his sitting room, if you take the office?’ Inspector Grime seemed to be in a better frame of mind the next morning, as they walked up the drive to the school.
‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I looked at those files in his rooms before, but I might have missed something.’ They were entering the long corridor where the fake postman had made his way to Roderick Gill’s small office. Powerscourt was struck again by the noise. Lady Lucy had mentioned it too, at its worst, she said, when all the pupils were moving about at the same time. Twenty or thirty, she said, would be bearable but once it gets over a hundred it’s impossible.
The headmaster strode into view and the boys parted in front of him like the waters of the Red Sea. ‘Morning, gentlemen, I wish you luck in your quest today.’ Quest, thought Powerscourt. Bloody man must think we’re looking for the Holy Grail.
Powerscourt thought that he might have got the better of the deal. He remembered Gill’s room as being packed with papers, including that strange gap where a couple of decades seemed to have disappeared. But when he applied himself to Gill’s office after the head porter opened it up for him, he realized that things were no better here. You can’t jump about on these sorts of paper chases, he told himself. Even if some stupendous attack of boredom threatens to overwhelm you, you cannot abandon your post and jump ahead to another file further down the line. One step at a time. The files here were in the bottom two shelves of Gill’s desk, and lined up on a long shelf behind it. He began with the bottom drawer. It was concerned entirely with catering. Powerscourt remembered that one of the junior boys had complained about the bursar because he had sacked the previous head cook who at least provided edible food, unlike his successor who was, the boy claimed, trying to poison them all.
When he got the hang of Gill’s filing system, Powerscourt could see why the man before had been fired. Considerable sums of money had been abstracted from the funds provided for the catering and had simply disappeared. It was impossible to prove theft from the figures, but the assumption was unavoidable. The next drawer dealt with the ancillary staff, the porters, the cleaners, the ladies who made the beds, the gardeners. Powerscourt thought these people were all paid less than they would be in London. The first four files on the wall all dealt with the teaching staff, recruitment, contracts and pensions, records of their annual meetings with the headmaster. One whole file dealt with the recruitment of the present head. Reading through the way the process was handled, Powerscourt thought that the Silkworkers held the key to the appointment. Then there were six files dealing with the pupils, going back for a period of some ten years. Powerscourt read them all in case there was some earlier pupil who had left with a grudge against Roderick Gill, but he found nothing. After a break outside the main entrance, he returned to the remaining paperwork, all of which had to do with the Silkworkers. Gill had done a great deal of research, with accounts of the foundation and constitution of the livery company. He remembered that Gill was working on a report about the proposed changes to the constitution of the Silkworkers Company but he did not find it here. The last contained detailed accounts of the working of the sick bay and the appointment of matrons. He realized that he had thought he would find a letter somewhere in here. Grime, virtually certain they were on a wild goose chase, had probably found nothing in Gill’s room either or he would have come to tell him. Damn, damn, damn, Powerscourt thought to himself, where is the bloody letter? Where has it gone? Was there a letter at all? There had to be a letter, he told himself, or else a visit to make Gill so jumpy. And of those two, a letter was much more likely. He made his way round to the headmaster’s office to see if there was a copy of Gill’s report on the possible changes to the constitution of the Silkworkers Company. There was not.
Inspector Grime, he discovered, had also found nothing. The investigation appeared to be stuck. Just before eleven o’clock, he made his way round to Mrs Lewis’s house to return the diaries. He had already copied the relevant passages into his notebook. He found her dressed from head to toe in black.
‘Good day to you, Lord Powerscourt,’ she trilled. ‘How can I be of assistance to you this morning?’
‘I’ve brought your diaries back,’ said Powerscourt. As a final throw of the dice he asked one last question, with little hope of success. ‘Did Mr Gill leave any papers here, a file or anything like that?’
She looked at him slowly. Then she turned pale. ‘My goodness, my mind must be going. I’ve completely forgotten about it. Yes, he did. Roderick said that if anything happened to him I was to give it to the headmaster. Aren’t I hopeless, forgetting all about it!’
‘Could I have a look? I could drop it down to the head’s office when I’ve seen what it says.’
Powerscourt was ushered into the chair by the fire once more. Mrs Lewis returned with a slim grey folder. Powerscourt looked through the pages. This was the long-awaited report on the Silkworkers, eight pages of closely reasoned argument, all of it hostile to the proposed changes. Hiding behind the last page was a letter, two pages long. There was no address and no date at the top.
Dear Gill,
I expect you and your colleagues have forgotten all about me. It is now thirty-one years since your treachery, since you left me at the mercy of those black bastards underneath that mountain nobody could pronounce and still fewer people could spell. Do you remember? Before the battle we swore that, whatever happened, we would look after each other, that we would be all for one and one for all. Some bloody chance. You left me to die and ran away to save your own skins. It would have been perfectly possible to have carried me from the field or put me on the back of a horse. But no. You hadn’t time for that. I was stabbed twice more after you ran away, once right next to the eye. Only three other dead men falling on top of me saved me from the disembowelling and the vultures. The Zulus couldn’t have believed anybody was left alive at the bottom of the heap.
Damn you to hell for what you did. I have thought of those events every day for the last thirty-one years. You may see me again or you may not. But you can be sure of one thing. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.
There was no name and no signature at the bottom. A letter possibly sent by a madman who didn’t say where he was or who he was, but who promised revenge. Powerscourt was inclined to believe every word of it. He took his leave of Mrs Lewis. The file containing the report he delivered to the headmaster’s office. The letter he put in his pocket.
‘You’ll find the Records Office in that big building on the right, looking rather like a barn, sir.’ Johnny Fitzgerald had been dispatched to Brecon to inspect the records of the 1st and 24th Regiments of Foot, part of which had been involved in the disaster at Isandlwana. Here, Powerscourt had assured him, he should find records of those who lived and those who perished in the battle. He wasn’t surprised to see the building, set apart from the main block, like an isolation ward in a fever hospital. Real military men, and Johnny knew all about them from his years in the Intelligence Corps with Powerscourt in India and South Africa, didn’t think records had anything to do with soldiering, not real soldiering. It was women’s work, but if you had to find men to do it, then you could be sure, Johnny reminded himself, that the unfit, the undesirable and the useless would be despatched to serve there, sad captains who couldn’t control their men, privates who couldn’t shoot straight or couldn’t shoot at all, corporals with drink problems.
Johnny saw a long series of shelves laden with files. He mentioned the request he had telephoned about yesterday, that he wished to inspect the records of the men who had fought at Isandlwana from the 1st and 24th Regiment of Foot.
‘Never heard of the First or the Twenty-fourth Regiment of Foot,’ said the surly-looking corporal who seemed to be the keeper of the records. ‘This is the South Wales Borderers here. You’ve come to the wrong place.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Johnny, smiling at the repulsive little man. ‘It is you who are mistaken. The First and the T
wenty-fourth, previously known as the Warwickshires, were amalgamated into the South Wales Borderers by some fool in the War Office about thirty years ago. Now, I rang up yesterday to ask somebody to look out those files for me. Has that been done?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you, we have no feet here, with or without numbers. Just Borderers.’
‘God in heaven, man,’ Johnny’s voice had turned very cold, ‘how many times do I have to tell you that they’re the same thing?’
‘What’s going on here?’ A fat old captain was advancing slowly towards them, clutching a glass of what Johnny thought looked like malt whisky. ‘Who’s shouting at my men? Who the devil are you?’
‘Fitzgerald, Captain, formerly Major Fitzgerald, over ten years in the Intelligence Corps with Lord Francis Powerscourt, India and South Africa.’
‘I see.’ The little man sounded slightly more amenable now. ‘And what is your business here, may I ask?’
‘You may indeed, Captain,’ Johnny had decided to call the man Captain as often as he could. ‘I am here on the suggestion of General Smith Dorrien, GOC Aldershot, to look at the records showing who died and who survived at the battle of Isandlwana. The general, as you know, was one of the few who lived to tell the tale. I telephoned yesterday, asking for the relevant papers to be prepared. Your colleague the corporal seems not to have understood that, Captain.’
‘Wait here, please.’ The captain drained his glass and took the corporal off into the interior of the building. Johnny thought you could go mad in one of these places, surrounded by the records of the fallen like some Egyptian priest with the Book of the Dead. He wondered how different the atmosphere would be in the Officers’ Mess. He checked that he had his pocket book with him containing all the names Powerscourt thought he might find in one list or the other. After fifteen minutes the fat captain reappeared.
‘My apologies, Mr Fitzgerald, there has been a misunderstanding here. We have the documents for you in the study area. Please come this way.’
The corporal resumed his position at the entrance. Johnny and the captain made their way down passages lined with innumerable files to a small area with a couple of tables and a fire. Johnny wondered if this was where the captain came to enjoy his solitary whiskies. He sat down.
‘This thicker folder obviously lists those who perished at the battle,’ the captain said. ‘The smaller one lists the names of the survivors. I should tell you that the lists were compiled based on the last rolls taken before the battle. The authorities knew who had survived. They could only assume that all the rest were dead.’
‘And how long before the battle were the last rolls compiled?’
The captain looked down at a black notebook. ‘The rolls were taken in October, four months before Isandlwana.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Johnny. ‘So the records might not have been totally accurate about the people who died. In the gap between the rolls in October and the battle in January, some men may have left, others, not recorded here, may have arrived. Is that right?’
The captain smiled. ‘You are absolutely correct. That is the position.’
The names had been handwritten. They were in alphabetical order. As he worked his way down the pages – Abbot, Acland, Addison F., Addison W. – Johnny thought that most of these men would still be alive if they hadn’t signed up for the colours. He wondered about their parents and how they would have been told the news. He expected these sad battle rolls would have been published in the relevant local newspapers, worthy of notice today, forgotten tomorrow. He knew there was an impressive memorial to the men who had fought in the Zulu wars in Brecon Cathedral, close to the barracks. Davis, Davidson, Davies, Denby, the names rolled on. When he reached the halfway point at the letter L, he paused and took a stroll up the corridor. Outside he could hear the regimental band playing ‘Men of Harlech’ rather badly. The captain waved at him, glass in hand, from a distant piece of shelving. When he reached the end, he checked through the names he had brought with him and the notes he had made to make sure he had not missed anything or made a mistake. He flipped through the list of survivors, and wrote them all down on Powerscourt’s instructions. The captain reappeared.
‘Tell me, Captain, if you can, allowing for the time difference between October and January, how accurate do you think these records are?’
The captain stared at Johnny as if nobody had ever asked him such a question before. ‘I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that. Nobody ever went round the battlefield writing down the names of the dead. Basically, as I understand it, though the military historians would never admit it, if you didn’t show up at the regimental HQ after the battle, they would list you as dead.’
‘And which do you think is more likely, Captain, that you could have been listed as dead when you were alive or listed as alive when you were dead?’
The captain took a large draught from his glass. ‘I could be wrong, but I think it is more likely that you could be listed as dead when you were actually live.’
‘Thank you,’ said Johnny, grateful that the man had in the end proved a helpful guide. ‘Let me buy you a drink, Captain. But could you lend me a phone first of all? I have to relay an urgent message to London.’
The three police Inspectors gathered in Powerscourt’s house in Markham Square at half six in the evening. Inspector Grime had read the letter on the way down to London and returned it to Powerscourt without saying a word. The other two Inspectors went through it as soon as they sat down.
‘Well, gentlemen, you could say that this letter, taken with what we now know of the knobkerries from the medical men, shows a possibility at least that this battle long ago may hold the key to the murders. What do you think, gentlemen?’
‘I have never held out much hope for the marks on the victims’ chests being a significant clue, I’m afraid,’ said Inspector Grime, confirming himself in the role Powerscourt thought he would play at this and any other significant meetings, that of Doubting Thomas.
‘I’m not sure at all,’ said Inspector Fletcher after a long pause. ‘There could be a connection with this battle but it’s all so long ago and so far away. It’s very distant, if you know what I mean, while the murders are right in front of us.’
Two against so far, Powerscourt said to himself.
‘I’m not sure I agree with my two colleagues on this one.’ Inspector Devereux was stretched out on a sofa, smoking a small cigar. ‘I think this new information about the weapons and the letter is very promising. I could well feel like murdering some people who abandoned me to the mercy of the Zulus on the battlefield, if that’s what happened. But the letter does make a chap rather cross. There’s no date on it. There’s no address. There’s no signature. I presume there’s no sign of the envelope. Did the author send it from England or from somewhere else? And if it is somewhere, where? And going back to the knobkerries and the battle, why should somebody wait all those years to take revenge? Surely if you thought about the betrayal every day, as he said he did, you wouldn’t wait this long, would you?’
‘I think,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that there are a number of things we could do. We should return to the people who knew the victims, even Mrs Lewis, I’m afraid, and ask if they ever mentioned the battle and what happened there. And there’s one other thing we should do. Let us suppose that the man who wrote the letter lives somewhere else, say in South Africa. How does he know how to find the addresses of his victims? In fact all he would need to do would be to ask the Silkworkers if they knew the addresses for Meredith, Walcott and Gill, but how would he know about the Silkworkers?’
‘I can look after that, my lord,’ said Miles Devereux. ‘I was involved in a case last year that involved a number of private detective agencies. They owe me a favour. I’m sure I’ll be able to find out if anybody has been inquiring about our three friends.’
There was an apologetic cough and Rhys the butler sidled into the room. ‘I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, my lor
d, but Johnny Fitzgerald is on the telephone for you, my lord. He says it’s very urgent.’
Powerscourt made his apologies to the Inspectors and hurried down a flight of stairs to the room he called his study.
‘Johnny?’ he said. ‘How is Wales?’
‘Wales is wet, Francis, and the beer is very poor. I’ve had better in the Hindu Kush. Do you have a piece of paper handy? You may want to write this bit down. It’s quite surprising, really.’
‘I’m ready, Johnny.’
‘Fine. Here goes. Two of the names you gave me, two of the victims in fact, are mentioned in the records, Private Abel Meredith and Corporal Roderick Gill, both of the Twenty-fourth Foot.’
‘I presume they’re in the survivors’ column, Johnny?’
‘There you’d be wrong, Francis. According to the records of the South Wales Borderers into whom the Twenty-fourth Foot were drafted some years ago, Private Meredith and Corporal Gill were indeed at the happy event. But they’re not listed in the survivors’ column, Francis. They may have been murdered earlier this year, but according to the army rolls they’ve both been dead for thirty-one years.’
19
There was general astonishment when Powerscourt brought the news back to his drawing room. Even Inspector Grime, for so long the Doubting Thomas of the party, seemed interested.
Death at the Jesus Hospital Page 28
