Death Called to the Bar

by David Dickinson

  ‘Enjoy your trip,’ said the old gentleman, handing Edward his tickets and his change. He had a grandson the same age. He hoped his grandson would find a girl as pretty as Sarah. ‘Platform Four,’ he called after them, ‘first on the left!’

  They managed to find a compartment to themselves. Sarah put her basket on the luggage rack and Edward showed her the guidebook to Oxford he had bought at the station bookstall.

  ‘What’s in the basket, Sarah?’ asked Edward, full powers of speech now restored.

  ‘Well,’ said Sarah rather doubtfully, ‘I hope it’s going to be all right. There’s ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches and tomato sandwiches and apples and some hard cheese and a bottle of lemonade.’

  ‘That’s a feast,’ said Edward happily and returned to his perusal of the guidebook. Sarah was remembering her evening session with her mother two evenings before when she had told her mama about Edward.

  ‘Who are his parents, Sarah? What are his family like?’

  Sarah had confessed that she had no idea about Edward’s family at all. She didn’t even know where he lived.

  ‘Really, Sarah, you do have to be careful, especially these days. What does he look like, this Edward person?’

  Sarah had described him as just under six feet tall, very slim, with brown eyes and curly hair. And then she had made her big mistake although, looking back on it later, she saw that it would have been worse if Edward came round to her house and had trouble speaking to her mother without her knowing about his difficulties.

  ‘He has trouble speaking sometimes, mama,’ she had said defensively, ‘but he’s usually fine with me.’

  ‘What do you mean, he has trouble speaking, Sarah? Is he some sort of defective person? Are you going to Oxford with a deaf mute?’

  ‘No, he’s not deaf, mama. He can hear perfectly well. I’m sure he’ll get over it.’

  ‘If it’s lasted this long, it’ll probably go on for ever. He may go to his grave with his mouth open and no sounds coming out. How does he manage in court?’

  ‘He doesn’t speak in court, mama.’

  ‘What do you mean, he doesn’t speak in court? You’re not going to win any cases if the judge and jury don’t know what you want to say, are you?’

  ‘I’m sure he will, in time, mama.’

  ‘How does he earn his living if he can’t speak and he can’t appear in court? What’s he doing in a barristers’ chambers in the first place, I should like to know. Does he sweep the floors? Put the cat out?’

  ‘He’s a deviller, mama, you know, one of those people who prepares the cases for the barristers.’

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me what a deviller is, thank you, Sarah, I’ve known about them for a long time. But do you get paid? Or does Edward just get what the lawyers feel like giving him? Is he a sort of charity case, really?’

  ‘No, he is not a charity case, mama. He charges by the hour, like the barristers charge their clients. Some people make a career of it, they never appear in court at all. Edward is one of the best devillers in London, mama. He’s doing the work for the Puncknowle fraud case.’

  Sarah thought this might have an effect.

  ‘Is he indeed?’ said her mother thoughtfully. ‘But you can’t become attached to a person who doesn’t speak most of the time. It’s like being one of those actors who never have any lines but just carry spears around in Shakespeare. You can’t be serious about him.’

  ‘I’m not serious, mama, Edward is just a friend.’

  Her mother muttered something under her breath.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better bring him round here so I can have a look at him.’

  ‘Yes, mama, I’ll ask him when we’re in Oxford.’

  ‘Why’s he taking you to Oxford anyway? Is there some sort of silent zone up there where the dons and the undergraduates aren’t allowed to speak?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, mama.’

  ‘Will he be able to speak to me, Sarah? Or will he just sit there, this Edward of yours, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish? I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mrs Wiggins next time I speak to her, I really don’t.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Sarah, trying to be diplomatic, ‘that he’ll be absolutely fine as long as you’re not fierce with him.’

  ‘Fierce, Sarah? Did you say fierce? I wouldn’t know how to be fierce for a moment. You’ve never known me to be fierce, have you?’

  ‘Well,’ said Sarah, smiling at her mother, ‘maybe stern would do it.’

  Her mother snorted and there the matter was laid to rest. And now it was Saturday morning, the sun was shining, their train had just reached Oxford station and Edward was reaching her picnic basket down from the luggage rack. They had decided to go straight to the river and inspect Oxford later. At this time of year Edward was almost certain it would rain at some point in the day. Their route took them into George Street and then right into Cornmarket. At the junction, they stared to their right at the buildings of Balliol, Trinity and St John’s, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel on their left. On their way down St Aldate’s they peeped into Pembroke College. Christ Church on the other side of the road looked too grand for words.

  ‘It’s virtually the same as an Inn of Court!’ exclaimed Sarah as they came out of Pembroke. ‘They’ve even got people’s names on the staircases just like Queen’s Inn. Do you know which is the older, Edward?’

  Edward looked up a section of his guidebook. ‘Pembroke is older than Queen’s,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t know if the oldest Inn in London is older than the oldest Oxford college, which is, according to this guide, University College, founded in 1249. So it’s over six hundred and fifty years old, Sarah.’

  Sarah thought the boat keeper at Folly Bridge was probably about that age. He seemed to have only two front teeth left and he sat hunched over the desk in his little boat house like an elf or a gnome from a different world.

  ‘Rowing boat or punt?’ he croaked. ‘If you haven’t punted before then I would definitely recommend a rowing boat.’

  ‘Punt, please,’ said Edward firmly. Sarah looked closely at him as Methuselah’s assistant, a mere youngster in his middle seventies with almost all his teeth, led them down a little wooden jetty that led into the river. He installed Sarah and the picnic basket on the cushions in the middle of the boat and Edward took up his position at the end. With a loud grunt the old man shoved the boat well out into the stream.

  A punt is a long thin rectangular vessel with a faint resemblance to a Venetian gondola except the Venetian vessels have tapered ends. At one end of the punt is a covered platform well able to accommodate a man or woman standing up. In Cambridge the punter stands on this platform. The opposite end has a rising series of slats. This is known as the Oxford end. The centre of the boat is equipped with comfortable cushions and is, traditionally, the place for picnics and romance. The means of propulsion is a very long wooden pole with metal spikes at the end which grip the gravel at the bottom of the stream. When the pole is dropped in straight, the punter then pulls on it so the boat proceeds along the river. When the pole has gone from being vertical to an angle of forty-five degrees or so behind the boat, the punter pulls it out and starts again.

  Edward was muttering to himself as he stood on the platform at the end of the boat. Stand at right angles to the boat, he was telling himself. Flick the pole up, don’t pass it up hand over hand. Let it drop straight down into the river. Don’t hand it down into the water, just let it fall. Bend your knees as you pull on the pole. Twist it when you bring it up in case of mud down below. He carried out a couple of decent strokes and steered the punt with the pole until it was proceeding happily along the right-hand side of the river.

  ‘Are you saying your prayers up there, Edward? I didn’t know you knew how to punt.’

  ‘I’m trying to remember the instructions of the man who taught me, Sarah,’ said Edward, flicking the pole up through his left hand.

  ‘Who was th
at?’

  ‘Oddly enough, it was Mr Dauntsey,’ said Edward. ‘We had to go to Cambridge one day last summer and he taught me how to punt then. He was a Cambridge man, Mr Dauntsey, Trinity, I think. It took me half an hour to go from Magdalene to St John’s, which is less than a hundred yards, ten minutes to get from John’s to Clare, which is a couple of hundred yards, and by the time we passed King’s I was getting the hang of it. Mr Dauntsey had very firm views about punting – he said you could never take any work out on the river or it would bring bad luck and you had to be graceful while you were doing it.’

  ‘Well, you’re looking pretty graceful to me, Edward,’ said Sarah with a smile.

  ‘He showed me some of the tricks people get up to on the unwary.’ Edward was grinning happily to himself now. ‘There are a lot of bridges along the back of the Cam, Sarah, and a person standing on them is about the same height as the pole of the punt at the top of its throw. Innocent tourists were often caught like this. A couple of people on the bridge would grab hold of the pole. The punt, of course, keeps moving. The man holding the pole has to let go or else he falls in. Most people fall in to great glee among the spectators. Then there’s another misfortune that sometimes causes confusion. The pole gets stuck in the mud at the bottom. Again the boat keeps moving. Sometimes, Mr Dauntsey told me, you can see people clinging on to the pole in clear water while the punt carries on.’

  Further up the river, by the other bank, they could see a party of two punts, travelling in tandem, with about a dozen people on board. The noise and waving of bottles indicated they had started drinking at an early hour. Edward thought he could hear shouting and see fingers pointing.

  ‘What are those people saying, Sarah?’ asked Edward, bending his knees in the approved manner to send their punt skimming along the water. Sarah turned round, and looked slightly alarmed as she faced Edward again.

  ‘I think they’re saying “Wrong end!”’ she said. ‘Then’, she looked rather apprehensive at this point, ‘I think they’re saying “Throw him in!”’

  ‘Are they indeed,’ said Edward and his eyes began measuring distances between their two punts and his. ‘I’m punting from the Cambridge end, Sarah. In Oxford, for some unknown reason, they do it from the other end.’

  They could hear the shouts again now. Sarah’s original version was undoubtedly correct. Bottles were being waved in the air. And a ragged cheer broke out every time the punters pressed their craft forward.

  Edward, Sarah thought, was not looking at all alarmed. Indeed he seemed to be coaxing extra speed out of the boat, shooting the pole up through his hands and then dropping it down in one continuous movement. Sarah also saw that he was making experimental movements with the pole as if it were a rudder, trying to see how fast he could alter course. Enthusiastic the Oxford-enders might have been, but they were not very good punters. Their boats were travelling quite slowly, much more slowly than Edward and Sarah’s vessel.

  When the punts were less than a hundred yards apart, Edward changed direction. He shot across the river at an angle of about sixty degrees into clear water.

  ‘Wrong end! Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The taunts continued.

  At first Sarah had not understood what Edward was trying to do. There was a look of fierce concentration about him. Then she saw that they would intercept the Oxford-enders quite soon unless Edward could stop or alter course. And she didn’t see how he could alter course in time at this speed. There was, she thought, going to be a most almighty collision.

  ‘Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The jeers went on, but then began to fall silent. For the Oxford men could see this other boat, many hundredweight of it, coming at them like some ancient vessel from Salamis or Actium. They were going to be stove in amidships. Then Edward made a minor adjustment with his pole as rudder. A terrible silence fell over the Oxford craft as they saw their fate hurtling towards them. The two punters, suddenly realizing that they might receive the full force of the other boat, jumped desperately into the water on the far side of their punts. Then Edward dropped his pole to the bottom and heaved ferociously, not on a line parallel with the boat as he had been doing before, but towards himself as hard as he could pull. Just when a crash seemed inevitable, the Cambridge boat turned sharply to the right, at a distance of only a few feet from the other punts, and then shot ahead of them. Edward turned round and shouted, ‘Wrong end, anybody?’ There was a round of applause from the spectators watching from the bank. Even the vanquished Oxford boats joined in.

  ‘Well done, Edward, that was tremendous,’ said Sarah, clapping furiously. ‘The Philistines have been routed.’

  ‘I just think,’ said Edward, panting slightly from his exertions, ‘that I’ll put some distance between us in case those fellows turn around and come after us. I don’t think they will, and we’re faster than they are in any case, but I’d feel happier all the same.’

  Sarah gazed at her young man with new respect. Edward the Silent had turned into Edward the Conqueror.

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ said Powerscourt, who was still trying to decide if Jeremiah Puncknowle was friend or foe, ‘I have to go to these solicitors in the next few days about this missing Maxfield person. The one Dauntsey left twenty thousand pounds to in his will.’ Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy and Johnny about the missing Maxfield before. ‘The police haven’t found any trace of him, nothing at all. Chief Inspector Beecham thinks he’s probably dead. But they’ve checked the records at Somerset House, and there’s no record of him there either. He seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone abroad,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Do you think Alex Dauntsey gave him the money to buy him out of trouble?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Just as easy to say he was paying off a blackmailer.’

  ‘What happens if he’s locked up?’ said Johnny Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘Debtors’ prison, lunatic asylum, that sort of place. Have the police checked those out?’

  ‘They have, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt with a sigh, ‘but what happens if he’s joined up to a different form of institution altogether? Suppose some earlier Maxfield has died and left our Maxfield his title. He’s not Maxfield any more, he’s Lord Kilkenny or something like that. Our Maxfield has now vanished clean away.’

  ‘Wouldn’t somebody remember?’ asked Lady Lucy.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Powerscourt with a grin. ‘I look forward to seeing the Chief Inspector’s face when I ask him to check this one out. He may be very intelligent, our Jack Beecham, but like all policemen he’s taken a very heavy dose of loyalty to all the institutions of the state he’s called to protect.’

  9

  Twenty minutes later Edward and Sarah had escaped from the buildings of Oxford altogether. They had passed Magdalen with its tower and its deer park, the punt still flying along at a rapid pace as Edward made sure that the Oxford-enders weren’t following them. Now a kind of open country with rather damp-looking fields and suspicious cows was around them. Edward steered the punt carefully into the shade of a weeping willow on the bank and clambered forward to sit opposite Sarah in the main section of the boat.

  ‘Are you hungry, Edward?’ asked Sarah, checking that her picnic basket was still there, feeling quite important as the person in charge of the catering.

  ‘Starving,’ said Edward happily and he proceeded to devour seven sandwiches in rapid succession, favouring the ham and the tomato over the egg. Sarah, not used to living with young males, was astonished at the amount he put away. When the demolition of the sandwiches had slowed down, she decided to ask her questions. It was so peaceful out here, nobody could mind being asked a few questions about themselves.

  ‘Edward,’ she began hesitantly.

  ‘Sarah,’ said Edward, polishing an apple on the sleeve of his shirt.

  ‘Can I ask you a great favour?’ the girl went on.

  ‘You ask whatever you like, Sarah,’ replied Edward, inspecting his freshly polished apple as if it were a diamond
of some sort.

  ‘It’s just I promised when I said we were coming to Oxford today.’

  Edward suspected at once that this must have something to do with Sarah’s mother. He waited. Sarah was looking rather helplessly into the water. It was clear here and you could see right to the bottom.

  ‘Will you come and meet my mother, Edward? She’s very keen to meet you.’

  Edward began eating his apple. ‘If you want me to come and meet your mother, of course I will. What sort of person is your mother?’

  Sarah wondered if she could buy time by not explaining the likely turn of events to Edward. But she thought that wouldn’t be fair.

  ‘She’s curious, my mother, Edward, very curious. And I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but she’s quite ill. The doctors think she may have only a couple of years to live. And she’s in quite a lot of pain. As if,’ a bitter note crept into Sarah’s voice at this point, ‘it wasn’t bad enough my father having that stroke and dying two years ago. Two years and four months today.’

  Edward wondered if he should put an arm round her for comfort.

  ‘My poor Sarah,’ he said, laying off his demolition of the apple for the moment, ‘I thought from what you said that your mother wasn’t very well, but I didn’t know about your father. I’m so sorry. Were you close to him?’

  Sarah managed a little smile. ‘I was the last child, Edward, I was a girl, I was quick when I was little, very quick. I adored him. And I knew he adored me. I suspect, although he would never have said so, that I was his favourite.’

  ‘What did he die of? He can’t have been very old.’

  ‘He had a stroke and never recovered. The doctors couldn’t do anything about it. He’d been a teacher in the primary school up the road for years and years. It was so sweet, the teachers were so fond of him that they brought the older children to his funeral. All these lovely little children singing those sad hymns, it was so moving.’

  Sarah suddenly realized that far from teasing out of Edward the facts of his parentage, she had merely given him her own. But she felt she hadn’t given him proper warning of his likely reception.