‘This is a right pickle and no mistake,’ said William, staring unhappily at the bars on the cell window.
‘Do you think we should ask for a lawyer?’ said Montague. ‘Aren’t they bound to let us have one?’
‘As far as I understand it, they are and they aren’t. I mean they will say yes, of course, but then the man will be sent to the wrong police station, or they won’t pass the message on immediately. He’ll get held up.’
‘Did that horrid policeman tell you how long we’re going to be kept here?’
Inspector Grime, on the other side of the wall, grimaced.
‘No, he didn’t,’ William replied. ‘He just said we could be locked up for a long time.’
‘Do you think they have food in a place like this? Or do we just starve?’
‘God knows. I’ve not been in a police cell like this before.’
‘Do you think we should tell them the truth?’ said Montague.
Inspector Grime turned his ear ever closer to the wall.
‘Certainly not,’ said William. ‘Very bad idea. Think of what might happen then.’
‘I think we should try the lawyer,’ said Montague. ‘At least we’d be doing something useful rather than fretting ourselves to death in this bloody cell. Damn the policeman! Damn his sergeant too!’
‘Damn the whole bloody lot of them,’ agreed William.
Inspector Grime decided to leave the Lewis brothers where they were for the time being. The only thing he had gleaned from his sojourn up against the wall was that both of them were lying about their activities on the night before Roderick Gill was murdered. But then, he reflected, he’d known that already.
Aldershot, Powerscourt thought, had that air of impermanence that hangs over garrison towns all over the world. Headquarters of the British Army, it could send thousands of the soldiers based there off to distant wars across the globe. Dick Turpin and Springheeled Jack may have graced the place with their exploits in the past, the Duke of Wellington on his enormous horse and enormous statue might dominate the streets today, but a quarter of the population could disappear in a week or less.
The General Officer Commanding’s office was in an imposing building facing the parade ground. Powerscourt was escorted to the office of General Horace Smith Dorrien by a handsome young lieutenant who looked rather embarrassed as he asked him to wait. They could hear a fist banging on the table next door and a mighty roar of disapproval.
‘What do you mean you missed parade because you didn’t wake up in time?’ Crash! Bang! ‘What does the army give you a bloody servant for if not to make sure you can get out of your bloody bed when the time has come? What do you have to say for yourself, man?’ Crash! Bang! ‘Speak, dammit! Or have you lost your voice as well as your wits?’ Crash!
‘I’m afraid the general does have something of a temper on him,’ whispered the young lieutenant.
‘How long do these turns go on for?’ Powerscourt whispered back, remembering some veteran shouters in his time in the military, who seemed able to go on for an hour or more in a single rant.
‘Hard to say, sir,’ the lieutenant murmured. ‘Form book’s not much use on these occasions.’
‘Have you lost the power of speech? Have you? Well, you’d bloody well better find it! Fast!’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Is that the best you can do, for God’s sake? Look here, Captain Morris, not that you’re likely to be captain much longer if I’ve got anything to do with it, what do people join the army for? What do they want from the army, the King and the Prime Minister and all those damned politicians up at Westminster? I’ll tell you what they want. They want us to protect the country from attack and defeat the King’s enemies. Defeat means fighting, you bloody fool. Fighting, for God’s sake. Why do you think the army has people doing drill until their arms nearly fall off and their feet swell up in their boots? Discipline, that’s what it means. Discipline!’ Crash! Bang! Crash! ‘And why do we need discipline? I’ll tell you why we need discipline, you pathetic wreck of a human being. With discipline, soldiers will do what they’re told however dangerous it may seem. They’ll die where they’re sent if they have to. Those poor unfortunate soldiers under your command know that. Discipline also includes getting out of bed in the morning on the day when your men are on parade.’
Powerscourt and the lieutenant heard a low muffled sound that might have been a man crying. Then there was an almighty crash accompanied by a tinkling sound that lasted a few seconds and then died away.
‘Great God,’ the lieutenant whispered, ‘there goes the telephone. That’s the fourth one this year. Heaven knows how I’ll get another one out of the engineers.’
Even the general seemed taken aback by his assassination of the telephone. There was a brief silence.
‘For God’s sake, stop blubbing, you fool! Nothing gets my goat more than people supposed to be officers of His Majesty blubbing. More lack of discipline. You’re pathetic. Just get out of here, before I throw something at you. Go on, clear out.’
A red-faced captain fled the field of battle. Powerscourt was to learn later that he had resigned his commission that very afternoon and complained to his MP about Smith Dorrien’s behaviour. Nothing was heard of Morris again in the town of Aldershot.
Inside the office, the volcano seemed to have been turned off. The fires of fury had abated. The lieutenant introduced Powerscourt and left the room. General Horace Smith Dorrien was well over six feet tall. He had a long thin face with a small well-trimmed moustache, a prominent nose and pale blue eyes. He wore his uniform with the air of a man who never takes it off.
‘Powerscourt,’ said General Smith Dorrien, ‘Powerscourt. Boer War. Military Intelligence. You did very well, as I recall.’
‘I did have that honour.’
‘Now then, that man at the National Gallery, Holroyd I think he’s called, tells me you’re investigating a series of murders where the victims have mysterious marks left on their chests. He thinks I may be able to help. Is that right?’
Powerscourt told him the story of the three deaths in chronological order, leaving nothing out. He included all the details of Sir Peregrine Fishborne and his plans for the funds of the Silkworkers Company.
‘Fishborne, did you say, Powerscourt? Man who drives around in an enormous motor car as if he’s an American tycoon cruising down Wall Street?’
‘That’s the man.’
‘Good God, we had a son of his through our hands here a couple of years back. Slippery fellow. Never paid for his round in the mess, slightly suspect when dealing at cards, if I remember correctly.’
‘What became of him?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘We managed to pack him off to Ireland, actually. Never a popular posting, Ireland, natives not friendly, always liable to take a pot shot at you when you’re not looking. Come, we digress.’
Powerscourt recalled the ability of the best trained military minds to concentrate totally on the matter in hand and not be diverted into other channels. He produced his drawings of the marks left on the victims’ chests. Smith Dorrien stared at them carefully. Then he produced an eyeglass from the drawer in his desk and gave them some more detailed attention.
‘Good God, Powerscourt, now I see why you were in the National Gallery in the first place. You’d gone to look at that painting I gave them some years back. Isandlwana. What a terrible place. What a terrible battle. It was the first one I ever saw, you know. I presume the people at the National Gallery have been suggesting that those short weapons you can see in my picture, the knobkerries, could have been the cause of these marks. Am I right?’
‘Absolutely, General. I have been thinking on my way here about the various explanations a man might come up with for the presence of such marks.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, the most obvious, I suppose, is that the murderer had one of these knobkerries lying about in his house or in his attic, left him by a parent or an uncle perhaps, picked up maybe at some country house auction, and he put the marks on to throw mud in our eyes, to make us wonder about the marks rather than other aspects of the killing.’
‘I don’t think you really believe that, Powerscourt, do you?’
‘I’m not sure that I do, actually. The thing is that the doctors say the blows with the knobkerrie probably occurred before death, but they can’t be sure. Doctors can be as difficult to pin down as lawyers sometimes. That says to me that the marks are central to the stories of all three killings, that there is a link binding them together.’
‘We are not meant to speculate too much in the military, as you know, Powerscourt, apart from thinking
