‘How did they get them to the top?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘They had a French architect, and a French landscape designer, so they brought in teams of those Percheron mares, sir. Amazing what they could do.’
Even when you knew what was coming, the vista as you rounded the last corner was astonishing. There was a large area of Italian garden with gravel paths criss-crossing it. The cab, Powerscourt noticed, had slowed almost to walking pace so that visitors could be impressed. And there it was, the Bath stone gleaming in the sunlight, a building that could not have come from anywhere other than France with its mansard roofs, its turrets and pinnacles, its dormers and chimneys and ornamental bits of fantasy dotted all around it. Close your eyes, Powerscourt thought, and you could hear, faint but unmistakable in the clear Chiltern air, the sound of the Marseillaise.
Powerscourt asked the cabbie to wait. A sepulchral butler led him into the East Gallery, lined with Italian paintings and a chimney-piece from a post office in Paris. They went past a sumptuous dining room, virually choking on the richest collection of Sevres tableware Powerscourt had ever seen, and on into a great drawing room looking out over the valley.
Powerscourt’s first impression of Jeremiah Puncknowle was that he was a collection of billiard balls. His head, totally bald, with a very small nose and small eyes and hardly any chin, was the white ball. His centre, again perfectly round with a gold watch chain hanging off a round stomach surrounded by a scarlet waistcoat, was the red ball. He was quite short and even his feet seemed to be trying to become round though that might have been the shoes.
‘Mr Puncknowle,’ said Powerscourt, shaking his host by the hand, ‘thank you so much for agreeing to see me at such short notice, and let me say that I have rarely been so impressed by a house as I am by your magnificent mansion here.’ He bowed stiffly.
‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt, thank you. How very kind of you. Might I inquire as to which part of my house impressed you the most?’
The man likes flattery, Powerscourt thought, and he proceeded to offer it by the bucketful. ‘First of all there is the conception, Mr Puncknowle, the astounding idea of bringing a French chateau to England. So obvious when you think of it, but how daring and original in execution. I have most of my knowledge from a friend but I understand you have here one of the finest collections of French art, tapestry, sculpture, paintings and so on anywhere in the world. How blessed we are, sir, to have such glory in our midst!’ I pray to God, Powerscourt said to himself, that nobody I know hears me spouting this frightful tripe.
Jeremiah Puncknowle had still not had enough flattery. He wanted a sweet course, probably followed by cheese.
‘Did you see my cricket pitch, Lord Powerscourt? What did you think of that?’
‘My dear Mr Puncknowle,’ Powerscourt was rubbing his hands together now, ‘I thought that was genius, pure genius! The idea of reproducing the Lord’s pavilion here, what a wonderful idea! And I fancy your ground is slightly larger than the one at St John’s Wood, would I be correct?’
‘You would indeed be correct, sir. When I can find the time, we’re going to build seating all the way round. There’ll be more room for spectators here than there is down there in London. Then we can arrange some big matches. W.G. Grace has looked at the wicket and pronounced it excellent.’
Powerscourt wondered how much the Doctor had charged for that. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘what excellent news. I look forward to returning here for some great match, Mr Puncknowle.’
Something seemed to have upset the little round man’s equilibrium. He left his armchair and began walking – waddling might have been a more appropriate term, Powerscourt thought – along a narrow strip of carpet close to his windows and the spectacular views.
‘You see before you a man sadly misused by his time, Lord Powerscourt, sadly misused.’ Puncknowle had just passed Powerscourt’s position at the edge of the sofa. ‘I am sure you are aware of the misfortunes that have been heaped upon my poor head, heaped high indeed.’ The little man stretched his arms out as wide as they would go, as if he was about to be raised up on the Cross. ‘My enemies have no idea of business. They are merely consumed with their obsession to bring me down.’ Puncknowle had turned round now and was coming back down the room towards Powerscourt. He was about to pass under a magnificent full-length portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Colonel St Leger, friend and equerry to George the Third. The Colonel was leaning insouciantly on his horse, looking out into the distance, perhaps, Powerscourt thought, to the race that bore his name. ‘Any man of commerce would tell you, Lord Powerscourt, that the affairs of great businesses do not proceed in regular patterns. Trade does not beat regularly like a person’s heart. It is irregular. There are good years. There are bad years. Some years the sun shines upon the figures that mark your fortunes in this unhappy world, other years the figures are plunged into shadow.’
Puncknowle stopped now directly opposite Powerscourt’s position on the sofa. Outside, two peacocks, confident in their residence in one of the most unusual houses in England, were strutting arrogantly towards the garden.
‘But my enemies are wrong, Lord Powerscourt, to say that in the years of the shadow, theft and larceny were taking place, that I, Jeremiah Puncknowle, was robbing the honest citizens who had entrusted their savings to my care. That was not so! That was the trade cycle! Had my enemies not pulled the wool over the eyes of the police, my positions would have been restored, more than restored, when the sun came out again. Which it did, of course,’ Jeremiah Puncknowle had gone quieter now, almost speaking to himself, ‘only I was not here to profit from it, forced to flee the land of my fathers, and barred from trading on the Exchange.’
Powerscourt wondered if he was going to break down. But anger returned to fire his spirits.
‘The police! God help us all, Lord Powerscourt, the police! I am sure,’ he cast a crafty look at Powerscourt as he said this, ‘that you have had a lot to do with them over the years and they may be perfectly satisfactory in your line of business. But in mine? Hopeless, completely hopeless!’ Puncknowle began walking again, his hands now clasped firmly behind his back as he headed off towards a gorgeous Gainsborough of a society beauty. ‘One inspector did not know what the word dividend meant. He thought it had something to do with the Football Pools. One man, more senior yet, thought that if a firm made a loss in any given year, somebody, probably me, must have been stealing the amount of the deficit. And yet another, a Chief Inspector would you believe, a Chief Inspector, thought that double entry bookkeeping meant that you wrote up the notes from those little books they’re so fond of once, and then you wrote them up again! That’s why it was called double entry. Really, Lord Powerscourt, I ask you, what is to be done? I look forward to seeing them in the witness box, I tell you, I really do.’
The little man returned from his forced march and sat down opposite Powerscourt. ‘I’ve got Sir Isaac Redhead as my lead counsel, you know,’ he went on, ‘and I’ve got that young silk Charles Augustus Pugh. They say he’s a fearsome cross-examiner.’
Puncknowle referred to the pair as if they were leading stars in his favourite football team.
‘I know Charles Augustus Pugh, Mr Puncknowle. A tiger in the courtroom!’ Powerscourt had long since ceased being surprised at what he thought of as the moral neutrality of the Bar. Even with the little he knew he did not think he could go into court and defend Jeremiah Puncknowle. The man was too obviously a fraudster. Yet here were two highly respectable barristers, happy to take his shilling. Maybe it was more than a shilling. The lawyers, he had decided, were like the rows of cabs you could see outside the great railway termini, they were just waiting for the next fare to come along. Now seemed as good a time as any to raise his own business in Paradise.
‘It is of lawyers that I wish to speak to you, Mr Puncknowle, to ask your advice, really.’ Powerscourt was at his most emollient.
The white billiard ball bowed slowly to Powerscourt. ‘Please continue, Lor
d Powerscourt. Of course I shall be happy to help.’
‘You know only too well, Mr Puncknowle,’ Powerscourt purred, ‘that you are not alone in your forthcoming trials in the Royal Courts of Justice. There are a number of other characters appearing who do not appear to have any known connection with your companies or indeed with yourself.’ God forgive me, thought Powerscourt. If I were a Catholic I would have to go straight to confession after leaving this house. It was an offence for which his Irish grandmother, now long in her grave, would have told him to go and wash his mouth out with soap at once. But he was relieved to see that there was no eruption from the billiard balls. They seemed to be nodding in agreement. He plunged further in.
‘And people say, Mr Puncknowle, though I have no means of knowing whether this is true or not, that one or two of these gentlemen – and I could be completely wrong here – are none too scrupulous in dealing with their opponents.’ Privately Powerscourt was certain that these men were intimately linked with the Puncknowle activities. He referred to them in his mind as the enablers, the enforcers and the extractors.
‘At present,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘I have been engaged by the benchers of Queen’s Inn to investigate two murders. The first, fairly recently, was a man called Dauntsey, poisoned at a feast. The other, only a few days ago, a man called Woodford Stewart, shot twice in the chest.’
Jeremiah Puncknowle made suitably sympathetic mutterings. Powerscourt could not decide whether his host was a consummate actor or not. For he seemed to be hearing this news for the first time. Powerscourt felt it hard to believe that a man who took such pride in Sir Isaac Redhead and Charles Augustus Pugh would not know of the destruction of their opponents in court.
‘The point is this, sir. These two lawyers were the ones chosen by the Treasury solicitor to prosecute you and your companions. Now they are both dead. The reason for my visit is to ask you to make inquiries, discreet inquiries as only you would know how, as to whether any of your associates, in what we might call an excess of zeal for their own defence, arranged or organized for these two barristers to be put out of the way.’
Powerscourt held his breath. But there was no explosion of fury. Instead, to his astonishment, Jeremiah Puncknowle leant forward and seized his hand.
‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, of course I will make those inquiries for you. I shall start this very day. You can rest assured of my full support, my full support.’ With that he released his hand and sank back in his chair. ‘What wicked times we live in, Lord Powerscourt. I have often said that morality simply disappeared from public life with the death of our late Queen. How can you have proper standards from a sovereign with mistresses, an arbiter of behaviour in public life who consorts with grocers and money brokers?’
Powerscourt desisted from pointing that kings without mistresses were virtually unheard of. He thought he should retreat while the ground under his feet was still firm.
‘Mr Puncknowle, I am so grateful for your assistance. And I look forward to hearing from you in this sad and unhappy affair. Let me say how much I have enjoyed meeting you, and what a wonderful mansion you have built here. It is a masterpiece, sir, a masterpiece.’
Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy afterwards that he thought his host literally swelled with pride at this point. The sepulchral butler glided silently across the carpet to escort Powerscourt to the front door. As his cab rolled back down the hill towards the railway station he reflected that there was always a problem in Paradise. There was a serpent. In this case a rather chubby serpent in the person of Jeremiah Puncknowle. Powerscourt shivered slightly as they clattered their way down the hill. For he felt sure that if Puncknowle wanted people out of the way, be they barrister or investigator, he would not hesitate. The serpent would strike.
‘Two day returns to Oxford on the special offer, please.’ ‘Oxford, special offer, day return for two, please.’ ‘Special offer to Oxford, two for today, please.’ ‘Two day returns, special offer, Oxford, today please.’ Edward had been repeating these formulas and variants on them to himself for nearly two days now. He knew he would have to make his request in a busy ticket office. He imagined a large and tyrannical ticket man, far worse than Barton Somerville and wearing an intimidating uniform, mocking his efforts and laughing at his silence. If he couldn’t get the words out, then the people in the queue behind him would grow angry and start to shout at him. Edward had already written the words out in large letters on a piece of paper which he could send over the counter if speech failed him. It was all too irritating.
The day before, Friday, he had achieved, if not a breakthrough, then something very close to it, in his inspection of the accounts relating to Jeremiah Puncknowle’s companies. He saw that the figure missing from the amount raised in the flotation of the second company was virtually identical, except for a few pence, to the total amount of the dividend paid out to shareholders of the first company. By declaring just the dividend per share, they avoided giving the total amount of dividend paid out to all the shareholders. That way, they disguised the first of the Puncknowle frauds. But once you knew the dividend per share, all you had to do was to multiply that by the total number of shares issued in the first place. Edward expected to find the pattern repeated all the way down the various flotations. But in the gaps in his calculations, when his brain was reeling with the figures and he needed a break, he would walk round and round New Court repeating his mantra about the train tickets to Oxford.
Now it was Saturday morning and Edward was standing close to the epicentre of his fears, the ticket office at Paddington station. He had conducted a brief reconnaissance and discovered that there were four ticket clerks on duty that day. One kindly old man who looked as though he should have retired years ago. One sharp-faced young man who reminded Edward of a bookie’s runner. One middle-aged man with very thick glasses. And finally another middle-aged man who smiled kindly at his clients. Edward was torn between the old gentleman and the smiling one. He looked around for Sarah and checked his watch. The first train on the special offer left at twenty past nine. It was now ten past and they had no tickets. Edward wondered if he should try to buy them without Sarah but knew that if all else failed and she was there she could take over. Then she was beside him, wearing a dark blue skirt and a lemon blouse. She had a raffish little hat on which she had borrowed from a friend down the street. ‘Makes you look a bit special, this hat,’ her friend had said, ‘that should cheer Edward up.’ She had a basket on her arm with lunch hidden beneath a pale green cloth. One look at Edward’s face told Sarah that there was anxiety about something related to speech, probably the tickets. There was no queue in front of the old gentleman. Edward advanced slowly. He opened his mouth. The words wouldn’t come out.
‘Take your time, sonny,’ the old man said, ‘there’s no rush.’
Edward tried again. Still no words came out. He began to wonder about the piece of paper in his pocket. The old man smiled. Then Edward felt a soft touch on his hand. It was, he thought, one of the nicest touches his hand had ever had. He opened his mouth once more.
‘Two day returns to Oxford on the special offer,’ he said, all in one go.
‘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 evenin
g 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?’
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