drink was offered! Maybe they’re too poor. House poky, so-called dining room so small you couldn’t swing a cat. I should be ashamed to be offering hospitality in such a place. Maybe they’re too poor for that too! Oh dear, hope I’m not being uncharitable to my new neighbours!
Sunday, 24th October, met that nice Mr Gill at church again. Vicar’s wife has excelled herself this morning, wearing a pink creation with frills that was most unsuitable. Have asked Mr Gill to dinner a week on Thursday! He says he’ll come!
He’s off the mark now, Powerscourt said to himself. I wonder if she knows what she’s getting herself into. He skimmed some more dates and found an interesting entry.
Thursday, 4th November, Roderick came to supper! He brought me a bottle of wine and some perfume from Norwich! I hope he thinks I made it worth his while!!!
There were a number of further entries about his visits with triple exclamation marks. And in one case, four.
Saturday, 25th December, 1909, what joy! What happiness! That this should happen to me! Dear Roderick has asked me to be his wife! After the midnight carol service yesterday! And I have said Yes!!!!
Powerscourt flicked on to the days before Gill’s death in the diary.
Friday, 14th Jan. Dear Roderick has not been himself today. He has been withdrawn and rather uncommunicative. Naturally I tried my best to fill in the gaps in the conversation. He will not say what the trouble is. I hope he is not sickening for something.
Sunday, 16th Jan. For the third day running, dear Roderick has not been himself. He tried to laugh everything off but I can tell he is not himself. The boys came and were most unpleasant about Roderick, saying he was just a bounty hunter and other horrid things. I shall leave my money where I want to. They’ve got plenty of it anyway.
Monday, 17th Jan. Boys gone back to London. Dear Roderick still not well. Jumpy, staring out into the garden as if he thinks there’s somebody hiding there. He’s talking of going away for a while and it’s not clear whether I am to be a member of the party or not. Don’t suppose he’s been canoodling with that stonemason woman again. Or has he? Said hello to the vicar in the town this morning. He’s got a hole in his trousers, right where his knees are meant to be.
Friday, 21st January. At last managed to get sense out of Roderick. It’s something from his past, he says, something so long ago that he can hardly remember it. He won’t tell me what it is. But he says there might be some unpleasantness, that’s why he might go away on his own. He doesn’t want me to be upset, he says. I think that’s very gallant of him, to save me from unpleasantness. Had another cup of tea with the neighbours this afternoon. They can’t even serve proper tea over there, their stuff tasted like warmed-up soap.
Some unpleasantness, Powerscourt thought, I’ll say there was some unpleasantness, enough unpleasantness to kill him. Not long to go now.
Sunday, 23rd January. To church for matins. Roderick very jumpy on the way, peering round corners as if he were some sort of hunting dog. Vicar preached a sermon on the text of it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And he said the definition of rich was any person who had so much money they didn’t have to work! Idlers and wastrels, he called them, the wretched vicar. That means me! Denounced from the pulpit of my own church to which I give generously out of the kindness of my heart! I shall write a stiff letter to the vicar when I have calmed down.
Monday, 24th January. Poor Roderick still very worried. The headmaster’s wife, he says, has called him in to see if she can offer any help. That means the headmaster must be worried about him too. He says the wife is a very superior sort of person. Well, she may seem like that to him, Vera Staunton. The vicar’s wife told me of the times when her family hadn’t two pennies to rub together and lived in a one-bedroom railwayman’s cottage by the side of the train tracks. Roderick has to go to a late meeting at the school. He is very worried when he comes back, not so much about himself now but about the future of the school. He says there is a plot by some wicked man from London to take away all the money that comes from the Silkworkers. Roderick is in despair.
25th Jan. Some wicked person has killed Roderick at the school this morning. I cannot write any more.
Powerscourt put down the second volume of diaries, most of whose pages were still awaiting further entries. He felt he would be intruding on private grief if he read any more. Just before he went to meet Inspector Grime he asked the hotel reception if they could put him through to his home telephone number. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler-cum-chauffeur, greeted him in his normal telephone manner, that of one welcoming a colleague back from the dead, and put Lady Lucy on the line.
‘Francis,’ she said, ‘how good to talk to you. Listen, there’s been a development. The doctor in Maidenhead called about half an hour ago. He’s going to get a second opinion tomorrow, but he’s virtually certain that a knobkerrie, similar to the ones you sent him, was the weapon used to make those marks on the dead men’s chests.’
‘Did he really, Lucy? Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. That’s very interesting, very interesting indeed.’
18
Powerscourt felt cheerful as he sat down for an early evening drink with Inspector Grime. He hadn’t found the actual murder weapon but he knew now what had caused the marks on the dead men’s chests. He could suggest that there might be some sort of a link between a battle in Africa thirty-one years previously and the deaths of three people in southern England, all members of the Silkworkers Company. He would have been the first to admit that he had, at present, no clue at all about the possible links between the battle, the knobkerrie and the livery company but there were many avenues left to explore.
Inspector Grime listened to Powerscourt’s ideas with little enthusiasm. He had never put much faith in the theory that the marks were the key to the investigation. Now he felt they were all going to be dragged down an alleyway with little hope of success. He didn’t mention any of his misgivings but Powerscourt felt them emerging from Grime’s body language and general suspicions like a hand signal.
‘I suppose we’ll have to go through all those papers again, the ones in his room and his office.’ Grime sounded even more melancholy than usual this evening.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I could do it on my own, you know, if you’ve got better things to do.’
‘That’s kind of you, my lord, but the fact is that the investigation up here is stalled. We still haven’t found the stonemason, but he’s due to report back to York Minster any day now.’
‘What happened about the two Lewis boys and their lies about the chess match?’
This time, Powerscourt thought, Inspector Grime definitely cheered up. ‘It was only when I threatened to tell their mother what was going on that I got the truth out of them. I said I was going to inform Mrs Lewis that her sons had been arrested in a homosexual brothel. You remember Sir Peregrine and his masseuse in that hotel on the Thames? Well, it seems that something similar was going on in Montague Lewis’s house. They were entertaining a former servant girl of theirs called Nellie and her friend Matilda. They eventually admitted that the discussions were horizontal rather than vertical, if you follow me. The girls confirmed it, though they refused to say if they had been paid which makes me suspect that they probably were. But we couldn’t hold on to them for that. The stonemason is hot favourite now, unless, of course, we find out more about this letter that frightened the bursar.’
That night Powerscourt had a strange dream. He was alone, in military uniform, in some vast open country he did not recognize. From his time with Military Intelligence he thought it might be South Africa. About a hundred yards behind him were a group of about fifty native warriors. They were dressed for combat wearing only their loincloths. Their bodies glistened in the sunlight. In one hand, he saw, they were carrying assegais, the deadly spears they used to stab their opponents to death at close quarters. They were singing some terrible battle cry which throbbed and throbbed until you felt it might be about to enter your bloodstream. Every now and then one of the warriors would raise his spear and utter some blood-curdling war cry. Powerscourt’s companions seemed to have melted away. Perhaps they had already been picked off and were lying on the harsh ground waiting for the vultures. He had two loaded pistols in his jacket, each with six rounds. He doubted if he would be able to find the time to reload once they were upon him. He would be surrounded, stabbed to death in a country a long way from home. When the war cries sounded again, closer this time, much closer, he woke up.
‘Why don’t I take his sitting room, if you take the office?’ Inspector Grime seemed to be in a better frame of
