powerful threat, Johnny. Most of us don’t have anywhere else to go. That’s why we ended up in the Jesus Hospital in the first place.’
‘And nobody knows any more about what they were arguing about?’
‘No. You know what it’s like in these places, Johnny. If anybody heard any more detail, every single person in the hospital would have known all about it before you could brew a cup of tea.’
When Johnny had seen his guest off the premises after a large helping of apple pie and a glass of calvados, he took a taxi to Maidenhead police station. He thought Inspector Fletcher would be keen to hear his news.
Powerscourt left the knobkerries with the doctor at the Maidenhead Hospital who had examined Abel Meredith, with a request that he telephone Powerscourt as soon as he had reached a decision. There was something at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite retrieve, something he thought was important. He tried to remember which of the three murders it concerned. Not the Jesus Hospital, he felt sure. Not the murder in the Silkworkers Hall. It had to be something to do with Roderick Gill up at Fakenham. But what? With the boys running up and down the corridor? With Blackbeard himself, sidling into Gill’s office and killing him? With Gill’s papers in their box files lined up by the wall? Hold on a minute. It certainly had to do with Gill and with Gill’s maths teacher friend whose name he could not for the moment remember, but who had told him as they patrolled the school grounds that Gill had been frightened of something in the days before he died. The teacher had never discovered what had frightened him, but the merry widow, who regularly entertained her friend from the church, might know. Powerscourt grabbed his coat and fled into Markham Square, looking for a taxi to take him to Liverpool Street Station and north to Fakenham.
‘Did you say your name was Lord Francis Powerscourt? And that you are an investigator with our policemen?’ Mrs Maud Lewis was inspecting her visitor from London as if he might just have landed in an extraterrestrial vehicle on the edge of her garden.
‘I did, Mrs Lewis.’
‘And are you really a lord? I mean Lord isn’t just some unusual Christian name your parents gave you when you were born?’
‘I’m a real lord, I’m afraid, Mrs Lewis. But I’m what’s called an Irish peer because the family estates were there. I don’t have the right to sit in the House of Lords. Just as well probably, with all the trouble up there at the moment.’
‘Goodness me, how very exciting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a lord, even one who couldn’t sit in the House of Lords, in my humble abode before! And we never had anybody like that in the house when we lived near Birmingham. I don’t think they do lords in Birmingham. Lord Powerscourt, should I call you Lord Powerscourt or Powerscourt or just Lord?’
‘Lord Powerscourt would be fine, Mrs Lewis, don’t worry about it.’ By this stage they had reached the drawing room, with a fire and a couple of dogs asleep on the hearth. Mrs Lewis showed Powerscourt into a chair on the left of the fire.
‘That’s where dear Roderick used to sit, in that very chair. He never sat anywhere else. Such a lot of trouble everybody seems to be having trying to find the murderer.’ Mrs Lewis produced a deep blue handkerchief and began to dab at her eyes. Powerscourt began to fear for the worst.
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs Lewis.’
‘About the chair where dear Roderick used to sit?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Powerscourt, ‘more about his state of mind in the weeks leading up to his death.’
‘Forgive me for interrupting, Lord Powerscourt, but I normally partake of a little refreshment at this time of day. Sherry, sweet sherry, naturally. Could I interest you in a glass?’
Powerscourt wondered suddenly if she and the late Roderick Gill spent their evenings taking refreshment of one sort or another.
‘That’s very kind, but no thanks.’
Mrs Lewis made her way to a drinks cabinet by the window and came back clutching what looked to Powerscourt to be one of the largest sherry glasses he had ever seen. She settled back into her chair and beamed at her visitor.
‘Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, for the interruption. Horace — he was my first — used to say I was incapable of sitting still for any length of time. Forgive me. You were saying about Roderick?’
‘I was wondering about his state of mind in the weeks before his death, actually, Mrs Lewis. Whether he was upset or depressed, that sort of thing.’
‘That’s a very good question, Lord Powerscourt. He was, I’m not sure if I would call it depressed, he was certainly upset. A woman can usually tell these things, particularly with their loved ones. I thought it had something to do with the church accounts actually, he’d been worried about those in the past. But it wasn’t, it was something even more serious.’
‘What was it, Mrs Lewis? Did he tell you?’
‘Well, at first I thought it had to do with that other woman he used to consort with, the one married to the stonemason who’s disappeared. I saw her looking at my Roderick in church one Sunday and it was so brazen you couldn’t believe it. You could not believe it. She was practically lying down on the ground in front of him. But it wasn’t that, or I don’t think it was that.’
Powerscourt thought Mrs Lewis must have some pretty good intelligence sources if she knew all about the other woman. He was beginning to see what Horace, her first, meant when he said that she was incapable of sitting still. It wasn’t so much a physical sitting still, but a mental one.
‘So what was it, Mrs Lewis?’
There was an uncharacteristic pause. For a second Powerscourt wondered if the woman might be ill.
‘I’m trying to remember exactly what Roderick said, Lord Powerscourt. I think there was a letter that caused the problem. It came from so long ago, he told me, that he had virtually forgotten about it. And that was all he said. He tried to keep up his spirits. He talked of going away for a while but he wasn’t definite. I could never work out if I was included in his plans for going away and so on but I never got an answer, not a satisfactory one anyway. It was all very strange.’
‘Did he show you the letter? Were you able to read it?’
Mrs Lewis shook her head sadly. ‘I never saw it.’ Powerscourt wondered about the collection of files and written material all over Roderick Gill’s office at the school. He hoped they had not been disturbed. He wondered about the papers that had been burnt.
‘Do you keep a diary at all, Mrs Lewis? I wonder if that might jog your memory.’
‘How very clever of you, Lord Powerscourt. I do have a diary. I’ll just go and fetch it from the morning room.’
Powerscourt wondered how to proceed in the affair of the diary. Should he ask if he could take it away, as an important piece of evidence to be returned later? Or should he ask her to read the relevant excerpts?
They were pink, the diaries, two of them, each with a great bow on the front. ‘Here we are, Lord Powerscourt. I thought you should have last year’s as well. How nice to think that one’s diaries are an important piece of evidence in a murder trial! You will let me have them back, won’t you? Will you change your mind about that glass of sweet sherry now?’
Powerscourt arranged with the headmaster’s office that he could come to inspect Gill’s papers first thing the following morning. He arranged to see Inspector Grime in an hour. He proposed to fill in the time with an inspection of the pink diaries and their contents in his hotel room. He decided his life would not be the poorer if he omitted all the entries before the entry of Roderick Gill.
Sunday, 19th September. Went to church this morning. First visit to morning service in Fakenham! Was welcomed afterwards by a most charming man called Roderick Gill, bursar at the school. He was most attentive! Also met vicar, nondescript little man who preached a dreary sermon, and his mouse of a wife.
Sunday, 3rd October, church, matins. Talked again to Mr Gill who is taking a most Christian interest in my settling down in Fakenham. Has asked me to meet him in the church for another chat on Wednesday afternoon. He has to do things with the money for the vicar. How kind, seeing he does all that already for the school!
Powerscourt wondered what the secret of Roderick Gill’s success with women might be. He suspected he flattered them, he made them feel better about themselves so they thought better of him.
Wednesday, 6th October, called on Mr Gill at the church. He bought me tea and a slice of cake at that cafe by the square! My new neighbours invited me to tea. Quite pleasant, except we finished at six thirty and not a drop of
