Death Called to the Bar

by David Dickinson

  ‘Surely to God there must have been some place the prison authorities could have put him?’

  ‘I’m sure there was,’ said Burke cheerfully. His fingers were still arching up towards his fireplace. ‘But they had hit on a masterstroke, Puncknowle’s people. They had discovered, or one of the doctors giving evidence on his behalf had discovered – large sums changing hands, no doubt – that the judge suffered from precisely the same heart condition that Puncknowle was supposed to have. So the judge could imagine only too well what his reaction would have been to a bout of solitary. It would have killed him for sure. So he gave the fellow bail.’

  Powerscourt laughed. William Burke looked quite pleased with himself. He sent an enormous puff from his cigar directly into his chimney.

  ‘And the frauds, William? How did they work?’

  Once again Burke paused. This time he looked carefully at his ledgers as if checking they had not been infected by the Puncknowle virus of financial irregularity. He knew his brother-in-law was perfectly capable of grasping financial facts, unlike, to his enormous and eternal regret, his wife and his three sons.

  ‘Very simple really, to begin with, I suppose. Most fraudsters should stick to their original trick. It’s when they become too elaborate that the house falls down.’

  ‘So where,’ asked Powerscourt, ‘did he start, this Jeremiah Puncknowle?’

  ‘He started in the West Country, Francis. I don’t know if you were aware of it but there’s a whole host of tiny dissenting religious communities down there, Muggletonians, Shelmerstonians, Babbacombians, Yalbertonians, hundreds and hundreds of them, all only too happy to knock you down if you disagree with their version of the Book of Revelations or the precise order of the reawakening of the saints on Judgement Day.’

  ‘Did they think that God had some sort of enormous batting order for Peter and Paul and Sebastian and all the rest of the saints when they’d be called to the wicket for the first innings of the new world?’ As a small boy Powerscourt had always been worried about how Sebastian would be able to rise from the dead when his turn came with all those arrows in him. Surely, he had thought, Sebastian might get up, but he would just as surely fall down again.

  ‘I’m not acquainted with the finer points of Muggletonian theology, Francis, but the point, for our purposes, was this. The man Puncknowle set up a building society aimed at these religious brethren. It was very successful. The idea of helping their fellow men even if you disagreed violently with their religion appealed to these West Country characters. The society was a success. It was straight. It is still going to this day, the only honest business ever founded by Jeremiah Puncknowle. It did give him one important idea. Some of the pastors helped set up the building society, they sat on its board, they advertised its products.’

  ‘So did he move in for wholesale corruption of the clergy?’ Powerscourt asked with a grin.

  ‘Not quite,’ said William Burke, ‘but they say that he was surprised by two things in his West Country venture. One was how useful the clergy could be if they were on your side. And the other is as old as the hills in terms of money but people are always forgetting it. If you’re floating public companies you can aim for a lot of money from fairly few people or institutions or a small amount of money from a great many people. Puncknowle chose the latter. He toured the country promoting his schemes. They say he followed the routes of Wesley himself, the founder of Methodism. He employed dissenting ministers as a clerical collar sales force and paid them generous commissions. And he raised money in millions for his building societies. Their prospectuses were a wonderful combination of piety and greed. There was the noble purpose of helping those of lowly means to save safely, so that eventually they could purchase their own dwellings, humble maybe, but no less glorious in the sight of the Lord. There were the donations to charity and good works – precise figures never specified – but that section was usually penned by some leading dissenter. Once they even got an evangelical Church of England dean to write it but they say he got into trouble with his bishop. And then there were the earthly rewards, never oversold, normally placed quite discreetly in the prospectuses, but eight per cent is eight per cent if you’re a railwayman or a Rothschild. I don’t think you or I would have wanted to invest, Francis. My own broker swore he’d have been able to sell a bucketload of the shares to the late Queen, Victoria well amused by the piety and the good works and the eight per cent to pay for her grandchildren’s extravagance.’

  ‘So what went wrong, Edward? Our Jeremiah must have had millions rolling in.’

  ‘It’s the normal story,’ said William Burke. ‘Caveat emptor, as the poet said. Let the buyer beware. Only trouble was most of these investors didn’t know much about caveating and even less about the traps awaiting the emptors. If you can get two and a half per cent interest on government stock anybody who comes along offering you eight per cent is virtually certain to be a crook. But these poor little dissenters didn’t know anything about that. Their pastors could go on about the difference between the gospels of Matthew and Luke for hours at a time but they had no knowledge at all of interest rate differentials. And while the Bible is full of crooks and shysters all over the shop, the pastors wouldn’t recognize one if he walked up to them and shook them by the hand. Which, of course, is precisely what Jeremiah Puncknowle did. One of his critics in later years claimed that Puncknowle had shaken hands with over three thousand men of the cloth. The building societies did their stuff, houses got built, all that sort of thing, but they were never going to produce eight per cent return. So there was another company floated, the subscribers to the second unwittingly paying out the dividends of the first. And a third, whose investors paid out the dividends of the second. It became like one of those card tricks where the conman has the cards spinning faster and faster. Soon there was nearly a football team of these companies. Then they moved into banking and property and building, the whole golden wheel spinning faster and faster. Then the people at the top got too greedy. They began selling properties between one company and another and then selling them on to a third so they could make off with the notional profits that appeared in the accounts. That’s what brought them down – property companies with too many debts and virtually no assets. Whole house of cards had taken about twelve years to set up. It fell down in three days flat.’

  Powerscourt had often urged his brother-in-law to take up his pen and write short and amusing sketches of financial behaviour for the magazines. He was sure they would be very successful and make his brother-in-law even richer than he already was. But William Burke always declined.

  ‘Tell me, William, was there ever any hint of violence about our friend Puncknowle? Any whispers about people being beaten up or disappearing?’

  ‘You’re wondering about those two lawyers, of course. I don’t think there was. I’ve never heard of any such thing but I can’t be sure. Tell you what, I’ll speak to a couple of fellows tomorrow and let you know. On the face of it, it’s highly improbable, nothing more likely to put those kind of investors off than the chairman’s thugs beating people up. It would be very different if we were talking about South African diamond shares ten or fifteen years ago, but we’re not.’

  ‘I’m much obliged to you for the information,’ said Powerscourt as he prepared to take his leave.

  ‘I’ve only one other titbit for you about that trial, Francis,’ said William Burke, inspecting the last few inches of his cigar rather sadly. ‘ I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the people in the City don’t have a very high opinion of the people from the Temples and the Inns when it comes to big fraud cases. The money men think the lawyers can’t read balance sheets, finance may be something other people may want to dirty their hands with but it’s way beneath counsel with their wigs and their gowns and their seventeenth-century libraries. But that chap Dauntsey rated very highly with the men of Mammon. The odds against a conviction went up dramatically when he toppled forward into his borscht. I don�
�t know how this other fellow is rated but I suspect the odds will get longer still. Would you like me to take a flutter on your behalf, Francis? Just a little flutter, five or ten pounds?’

  Powerscourt laughed. ‘I don’t think I could do that, William. I don’t think it would be ethical to bet against my current employers, however unpleasant they may be.’

  Try as she might, Sarah Henderson could not see how she could disguise from her mother her unease at what was happening in Queen’s Inn. For she was more concerned, much more concerned than she had told Edward, about the events of the afternoon. She felt sure Mr Stewart was dead. You just had to look at the policemen, or at Lord Powerscourt, to realize that. And now, here she was, clearing away the tea things, her mother about to start the evening interrogation across the fire. Sarah wondered about a headache and going to bed early, but that would only postpone matters. She wished she could have stayed with Edward all evening and not had to come home to her sick mother.

  ‘I think I’d like a cup of hot chocolate, Sarah dear, when you’re through in there.’

  ‘Any cake, mama?’ said Sarah, playing for time. There were still a couple of slices left of the Victoria sponge baked in honour of Mr Dauntsey’s funeral.

  ‘No thank you, dear, the chocolate will do me fine. I only bought it today in the grocer’s. Mrs Wiggins was in there, telling me for the third time how well that son of hers was doing in the Metropolitan Railway. I was able to tell her you’d been to Mr Dauntsey’s funeral in a first class carriage and had conversed on the way with the Head of Chambers. She left quite soon after that, Mrs Wiggins.’

  Even in the confined quarters of the little kitchen Sarah could appreciate the glory in her mother’s victory, the forces of darkness or the Metropolitan Railway in the person of Mrs Wiggins routed and forced to flee from the field.

  Sarah knew she was looking anxious as she went to sit on the opposite side of the fire. She wondered if she could tell her mother about Edward as a means of avoiding telling her about Mr Stewart, though quite what she would actually say about Edward she had no idea. Her mother had, she felt, been fairly unmoved about the death of Alexander Dauntsey, even though she, Sarah, had been so very upset.

  ‘Something went wrong at chambers today, dear, didn’t it?’ Mrs Henderson took a preliminary sip of her chocolate. ‘I can tell.’ Privately Mrs Henderson suspected that Sarah was not very accomplished as a shorthand typist. As a child she had been clumsy, awkward with her hands, often dropping things. Her mother could not imagine how she would be able to keep up to the exacting standards of an Inn of Court. In fact, she could not have been more wrong: the twenty-year-old Sarah was a very different character from the child Sarah and knew very well how highly her work was valued.

  ‘It’s Mr Stewart, Mr Woodford Stewart, mama. He’s disappeared.’

  In spite of all the months of conversations about the Inn the name of Stewart had not yet been entered into Mrs Henderson’s filing system.

  ‘Mr Stewart? Is he one of the porters?’

  ‘No, mama, he’s a KC in a different chambers from mine. He is or was a great friend of Mr Dauntsey. They were going to work together on that big fraud case I’ve been telling you about.’

  ‘Mr Bunkerpole? I read about him today in the paper.’

  ‘Puncknowle, mama, pronounced Punnel, like funnel on a ship.’

  ‘I don’t need lessons in pronunciation from my own daughter, thank you very much, Sarah.’ Mrs Henderson paused to take a large mouthful of her chocolate. ‘So what do they think has happened to this Mr Stewart? Has he run off with somebody?’ Mrs Henderson’s paper and her magazines contained regular features about wicked men running off with people who were not their wives and causing great unhappiness. Less than a year ago she had given Sarah a long lecture on the Dangers of Being Run Away With by Wicked Men which Sarah had completely ignored.

  ‘There’s no sign of any running away, mother. That’s all nonsense. People think he may have been murdered, like Mr Dauntsey.’

  The minute she said it, Sarah regretted it. She was only trying to take out a pathetic revenge for the pronunciation remark, this over her mother who was ill and in pain all the time and might not be around much longer. Surely now her mother would be worried.

  ‘He might well have run away with somebody, Sarah. People like that always take very good care to keep it secret. That’s probably why nobody knows where he is. He’ll turn up sooner or later, maybe travelling in the South of France under a false name, mark my words.’

  For some reason that Sarah had never understood, the wicked runners away always seemed to end up in her mother’s version in the South of France. The place seemed to carry spectacular undertones of villainy, a Mediterranean equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah, in her mind. But she doubted it would have much appeal for Mr Woodford Stewart, whose holidays, she had overheard somebody telling one of the policemen that very afternoon, were usually spent in the Highlands where he could pursue his twin delights of walking the hills and playing golf. But she knew how difficult it would be to shake her mother’s belief in the running away theory. She tried.

  ‘I don’t think any of the policemen or Lord Powerscourt think he’s run away, mother. They think he’s disappeared or he’s dead.’

  ‘This Lord Burrscourt, Sarah. Is he a friend of the Punchbowl man?’

  Sarah was gripped by a moment of panic and a moment of total recall. She was back in the doctor’s surgery with Dr Carr, old and white-haired now, the man who had looked after her father so well in his last, fatal illness. Dr Carr was talking to Sarah and her mother, his voice weary now after forty years of dealing with the sickness of London’s poor, a dead look in his eyes. He had almost finished describing the likely course of her mother’s illness, when he told them that in a few cases, not many at all in his experience, the mind began to deteriorate, not into senile decay as the doctors called it, but the memory began to fail, particularly about what had happened very recently. Sarah looked closely at her mother before she spoke. The last drop of chocolate was being drained with great enjoyment. She prayed that her mother was tired today, maybe the pain had dulled her wits.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, mama, is the man the benchers brought in to investigate Mr Dauntsey’s death. I shouldn’t think he knows Mr Puncknowle at all. Edward says that Lord Powerscourt once solved a murder mystery for the Royal Family.’

  ‘What sort of age is this Lord Powerscourt?’

  Sarah smiled at the transparency of her mother’s behaviour. ‘He’s in his early forties, I think. His wife’s just had twins. Edward and I saw them last Saturday. They’re very sweet – the twins, I mean.’

  ‘Your father’s sister had twins long ago. Bad lot, both of them. Your father used to say how unfair it was. One bad one might just be bad luck, but two bad, it was terrible. Nearly killed the parents.’

  Sarah wanted to ask what form this wickedness had taken. Had they, perhaps, ended up in the been-run-away with category? But there was a tightened look about her mother’s lips which hinted that the topic was now closed. Suddenly Sarah decided to float her idea of a treat to her mother. She felt so sorry for her, so frail, growing less and less able to cope all the time.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, mama, about a treat for you when the weather gets better.’

  ‘A treat, my dear? I don’t think people get treats at my time of life and in my condition.’

  ‘Listen carefully, mama. It would involve putting you in a wheelchair some of the time, but we could say you’d twisted your ankle. People wouldn’t have to think you weren’t very mobile. Anyway we’d get you down to Queen’s Inn and we could wheel you round the courts and you could meet lots of these barristers we’ve talked about so often. With any luck we could get you invited to lunch in the Hall, as a guest of one of the barristers. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’

  Mrs Henderson looked rather frightened all of a sudden. Sarah suddenly remembered that they had hardly had time to talk about the disappearance of Mr St
ewart so at least her mother wouldn’t worry about that.

  ‘I’ll have to think about that, Sarah. It’s very kind of you to suggest it, very kind indeed. I’m not sure I feel strong enough for it now, let alone in a couple of months’ time. And I’ve got nothing to wear.’

  ‘Just think about it, mama, you don’t have to decide now.’

  Later that night, after Sarah had helped her mother up the stairs and into bed, she decided that she needed some assistance in the planning of this escapade. Tomorrow, she decided, she would talk to Edward.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt had evolved a new routine all of his own in his new house in Manchester Square. After breakfast he would go and see the twins, sometimes talking to them or reciting poetry if they seemed to be awake, and then he would cross to the Wallace Collection for a ten-minute visit. Usually he would go and look at some of the paintings in the Great Gallery on the first floor where the Gainsboroughs and the Van Dycks held sway, but today he was looking at the hardware of death on the ground floor. Just round the corner, on this very floor, he thought, there were some exquisite pieces of craftsmanship, a French musical clock that could play thirteen different tunes including a Gallic equivalent of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, an astronomical clock, again from France, where you could find the time in hours, minutes and seconds, solar time as on a sundial in hours and minutes, the sign of the zodiac, the day, the date of the week, the time at any place in the northern hemisphere, the age of the moon and its current phase, and the position of the sun in the sky or the moon if it was night. But here, right in front of Powerscourt, resting innocently inside their glass cases, lay a couple of daggers from India and a tulwar, previously owned by the Tipu Sultan, which could have ripped a man’s innards out or cut his throat so that he would die inside a minute, pausing only to reflect, as the light faded fast from his eyes, on the exquisite carvings on the sword blade and the diamonds and gold inset into the pommel. Upstairs Watteau’s musicians danced out their private version of a pastoral heaven. Downstairs lurked long swords from Germany with very sharp edges, thin rapiers from Italy intended to cut and thrust their way into their victims, a curved Sikh sword that could cut a person in two, an Arabian shamshir with a walrus ivory grip which would leave terrible wounds. Above, Gainsborough’s Perdita, one-time mistress of the Prince Regent, gazed enigmatically down the Long Gallery. Down below stood suits of armour, rich men’s attempts to counter the stabs and the slashes and the thrusts, armour for men, armour even for horses, armour that grew so heavy that most warriors discarded it, armour designed to replicate the fashions of the day so that the Elizabethan Lord Buckhurst, in his armour with its peascod doublet with a point at the waist and an extravagantly puffed trunk hose reaching from waist to middle thigh, could probably have clanked into court at Greenwich or Westminster without anybody paying much attention. Upstairs gods danced across the sky and various versions of heaven, mythical and Christian and metaphorical, were on display. Down here – Powerscourt looked suspiciously at a deadly Italian falchion, a broad sword tapered to a vicious point at the end – was a stockpile of weapons that could send a man to heaven or hell in less than ten seconds.