quite fun, really, especially when you get a tasty one like this case here. But all this stuff here,’ he waved a languid hand at the strange collection of objects on the table, ‘contents of Sir Rufus’s pockets, pretty dull, I’d say, wouldn’t you? Why are we always so keen to have a look at these things? I’ve never known. It’s not as though the murderer is going to pop his calling card into a waistcoat pocket, is it?’
Powerscourt smiled. Behind the slightly dreamy exterior he suspected Devereux had a sharp brain. He looked young to have risen to Detective Inspector. In one pile on the table in Cannon Row police station were the items he dismissed, a collection of keys, coins, currency notes, a wallet, a letter from his bank telling him he had two hundred and sixty-three pounds in his account, two tickets for the opera from three days before, a large unopened white handkerchief and a receipt from Simpsons in the Strand.
‘Do you know, Powerscourt, they always put me on to these kinds of cases now. Rich people’s murders, all that sort of stuff. Here am I, longing for some tasty gang violence in the East End and I end up yet again with death from Debrett’s. It’s really not fair. What do you think of this other lot?’ He pointed to a rather larger heap of miscellaneous rubbish. ‘This lot is the stuff found all over the Silkworkers Hall that day by the good Mrs Robinson, cleaning lady and occasional waitress. She kept it especially for us.’ A long pianist’s finger stirred up the random bits of paper. Powerscourt thought cigarette packets or cigarette stubs, tickets or parts of tickets seemed to be the most frequent objects in this display, bus tickets, underground tickets, train tickets.
‘One section about football results from last week’s Times,’ said Devereux, stirring the mixture slowly, as if it were a sauce. ‘Our man may have been a Tottenham fan as they won five nil. Two empty beer bottles from Messrs Young’s and Company of Wandsworth, a couple of unpaid bills, one return ticket from Hastings and one from somewhere ending in “be”, two brown leaves and a menu from last night’s dinner. They seem to have done themselves pretty well, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt? Any of these bits and pieces ring a bell with you?’
‘Nothing unusual that I can see, nothing unusual at all.’
‘Well, we’ll keep them safe for now. Let me tell you what I have set in train so far,’ said the Inspector. ‘My men are calling on all those who attended the dinner last night. By this evening we should have a reasonable picture of what went on. The chef and the waiters should be here in an hour or so. I have an appointment this afternoon with a senior doctor at Barts round the corner. I am going to ask him about the strange marks on the body, or bodies I should say after what you told me earlier. I do have a theory about the marks though I’m sure it’s probably wrong.’
‘What is that?’
‘I just wonder if they weren’t all suffering from some strange disease that produces that pattern. A number of those tropical diseases can bring on some very unusual symptoms, people changing colour, or marks appearing all over their skin, that sort of thing.’
‘It’s certainly possible,’ said Powerscourt tactfully. ‘Perhaps the medical gentlemen will be able to help.’ Privately he was less certain. The only thing all three corpses had in common, as far as he knew, apart from the strange marks, was membership or connection with the Silkworkers Company.
‘I should like to be present when you talk to the chef and the waiters, if I may,’ he continued, ‘and I, too, have an appointment this afternoon, though with a man of finance rather than medicine.’
Powerscourt told the Inspector about his inquiries with William Burke about the livery company and the suspicion that something untoward might be going on.
Inspector Grime of the Norfolk Constabulary was not, by nature, a cheerful man. That was not his way. On this day he was, once more, not cheerful. But he would have said that affairs were moving in a not wholly unsatisfactory fashion in the case of the bursar. Grime had now finished his interviews with the pupils of Allison’s School. No more would he have to stare at those maps in the geography classroom and the countries of the world ready to spin for him in their globes at the touch of a finger. He suspected that the headmaster would have some other form of torture ready for him to do with the boys. No woman had fallen for Inspector Grime’s particular temperament since the death of his wife some years before. There was no Mrs Grime at home waiting for him at the end of the day with pots of tea and warm scones. There had been no little Grimes to delight a parent’s life. As a result he eyed small boys, even larger boys, with the same suspicion he brought to the rest of the human race, the same lack of charity. It was, he had said to himself often enough, precisely that lack of charity that had brought him success in the business of detection and solving crimes. If you thought all the witnesses were lying and potential criminals, you were bound to be proved right some of the time.
The particular development that was lightening his burdens this afternoon was to do with the postman, or rather the one who had pretended to be a postman. He had arranged with the postal authorities and the headmaster for a real postman, dressed in the proper uniform, to visit the school the following morning at exactly the same time as the visit on the day of the murder. This mailman would retrace the steps of his criminal predecessor in every particular, ending up with a phoney delivery in the bursar’s room. Only the headmaster knew about the plan. If word got out, Grime believed, the fevered imaginations of the younger children might get the better of them. Morning prayers would start the day’s work at Allison’s School shortly after the visit. The headmaster would ask if anybody remembered anything about the day of the murder and the visit of the postman. He, Inspector Grime, would have to attend the assembly, which he would have avoided at all costs under normal circumstances. The combination of boys and prayers and singing would have been too much for him. But on this occasion the prize might be great, another opening into the strange death of Roderick Gill.
There was another reason for the Inspector’s mood. He had never been as excited as Powerscourt about the strange marks on the dead man’s chest. Fancy stuff, he thought, but it might have nothing to do with the murder. Gill’s affair with Mrs Hilda Mitchell, the Inspector felt sure, was a more promising field of inquiry than livery companies and unusual anatomical details. And that very morning he had received intelligence from York where Mr Mitchell was believed to be carrying out restoration work on the minster, as he had on an earlier occasion two years before. A local sergeant had called on the dean for confirmation of his presence. Jude Mitchell, master stonemason, the policeman was told, had indeed been employed at the minster for work on the statues in the crossing. But he had completed his part of the restoration a week ago and left. He was due to return in a week’s time to begin a programme of repair in the chapter house. The landlady in his rooms confirmed his departure and his date of return. Nobody knew where Jude Mitchell, cuckolded husband of Roderick Gill’s mistress, Hilda, had gone. But he had left the place where he was supposed to be three days before the murder.
Warden Monk had made a mistake. He knew it the minute he stopped talking. He did not know how damaging it might be. The old men were still restless, suspicious that one of their number might be a murderer, upset over the delay in the funeral arrangements, troubled by the visits of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary. Monk, resplendent today in a brand-new green cravat, had been having a conversation after lunch in the hall with Henry Wood, Number Twelve, about the dead man before the silkmen went off for their afternoon rest.
‘I don’t suppose, Warden, that we know if Number Twenty had any money to leave?’
Monk knew from long experience that wills, along with the weather and the looks and other physical attributes of the barmaid in the Rose and Crown were among the most popular subjects of conversation in the Jesus Hospital.
‘He left a lot more than you might think,’ Monk replied.
‘How much?’ said Number Twelve.
‘Well, if you thought of a figure round about two thousand pounds, you wouldn’t be far out.’ Monk always liked showing off about his knowledge of the hospital and its inmates.
‘And where did the money go?’
‘Half went to a brother to Canada.’
‘And the rest?’
‘Let me just say that the rest ended up nearer to home.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t feel I can reveal any more at this stage,’ said Monk, turning a pale shade of pink in the face. ‘Poor man’s not even in his grave yet.’
Henry Wood, Number Twelve, popular with his colleagues in the Jesus Hospital, had worked for most of his life in the fish business. He had long ago decided that human beings were much more slippery than the fish he traded in. A private game of his was to decide what kinds of fish other inmates resembled. Bill Smith, Number Four, known as Smithy, was a trout, John Watkins, Number Fifteen, was a lemon sole, Josiah Collins, Number Seventeen, was a perch. From the very first day he had met Monk, Number Twelve had him down as an eel.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly, staring at the changing colours in Monk’s face. ‘He’s left the money to
