the second half of the last century. With us, it started with the wounded returning from the Crimea and it continued from there. Most of our work was with help for the injured or with the widows whose husbands had been killed on active service for Queen and country. I’ve checked all those names you sent me and couldn’t find anything at all that goes back to eighteen seventy-nine. We have records for all three of the deceased but their involvement seems to have begun at a much later date.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt, feeling as if a fish had just escaped from his clutches and was swimming happily away from his line.
‘There is one thing that might interest you, my lord. I don’t know if it’s any use, it probably isn’t. Sir Rufus was a regular visitor to South Africa in his later years. He was involved with a big investment trust that did a lot of business over there. He used to go once every couple of years. I think he went to Australia and Canada too, if that helps.’
Powerscourt wondered if the arrival of Sir Rufus and a couple of articles in the local newspaper might have reawakened a thirst for revenge.
‘That is most useful, Secretary. Thank you very much. If anything else occurs to you, please get in touch.’
Lady Lucy was drinking tea when Powerscourt returned to Markham Square. She had been feeling rather left out of things since her spell as temporary French teacher at Allison’s School. Her husband dropped into his chair by the fire.
‘Any luck with the Silkworkers, Francis? ‘
‘Well, yes and no,’ said Powerscourt, running a hand through his hair, as he told her what the Secretary had discovered.
‘I’ve been thinking about this case, Francis, and I’ve got a theory, well, theory might be too grand, a guess, a piece of speculation.’
‘Fire ahead, Lucy, fire ahead. Your guesses are usually more useful than other people’s theories.’
‘Have you read a novel called The Four Feathers by a man called Mason, Francis? It came out seven or eight years ago, I think.’
Powerscourt confessed that as yet he had not read the book.
‘It’s about four British officers about to go off to an African war. One of them, Harry Feversham, changes his mind at the last minute and decides not to go. He’s got a perfectly valid reason, he just doesn’t tell anybody what it is. The other three think he’s a coward and each one sends Harry a white feather as a symbol of Harry’s lack of courage. His fiancee also sends him a white feather so he’s now up to four. Eventually he decides he has to redeem himself, so he goes off to Africa where he performs various heroic deeds and gradually has the feathers cancelled. And in the final scene he gets the girl back too.’ Lady Lucy sat back and looked expectantly at her husband. ‘Don’t you see, Francis, this could be like the Four Feathers in reverse?’
Powerscourt still looked confused.
‘Let’s look at it this way, Francis. These four young men, well, they were young then, the three dead ones and the murderer, are all part of the same unit in South Africa. You can tell from the letter that they’ve had some motto going between them — the letter talked about one for all and all for one, like those dreary musketeers. But when the battle starts, everything falls apart. Three of the men don’t send the fourth a white feather, they leave him for dead on the battlefield. It took Harry Feversham a long time, not thirtyone years admittedly, to work his way back. Our mystery man takes rather longer to have his revenge. Maybe he falls in love. That would stop you thinking of revenge for a while, even for a man, I would have thought. Then, years later, something, maybe one of those visits from Sir Rufus, brings him back to thoughts of revenge.’
‘I say, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘do you suppose Sir Rufus mentioned that he belonged to the Silkworkers Company when he was in South Africa? If he did, our man from the the Revenger’s Tragedy might have thought that all three men, very close at the time of the battle, belonged to it too. His principal problem, how to find his victims, would have been solved.’
‘Well, you know what you have to do, Francis.’
‘Sorry, Lucy, I don’t understand.’
‘It’s simple, surely. All you have to do is to ring the Silkworkers Secretary again and ask him to check back over the last six months to see whether anybody has been making inquiries about Sir Rufus or Abel Meredith or the dead bursar Gill. If you are really lucky, we might get a name and an address.’
‘Great God, Lucy! Well done, well done indeed. I’ll go and call him now. I think I’ll say that the approach may have been oblique, somebody searching for a long lost friend, that sort of thing. I don’t think an intelligent murderer is going to leave his real personal details behind at this stage.’
Powerscourt shot down the stairs to the little study with the telephone. ‘We’ll have to wait a while,’ he said on his return. ‘The Secretary’s assistant looks after the correspondence and it may take an hour or so. The Secretary is going to check every letter to see if it mentions one or more of the three men. He’s quite excited about the whole thing, Lucy, he says it’s better than writing out the monthly newsletter to all Silkworkers which was his task for the day.’
Inspector Grime was, for once, a happy man. He had sent to York to have the errant stonemason, Jude Mitchell, brought back to face justice in Fakenham. Mitchell’s wife was believed to have had or be having an affair with the murdered bursar Roderick Gill. Mitchell himself had disappeared for well over a week between two different assignments working at York Minster. Now he was waiting for the Inspector in the most unpleasant cell in the building. No police cells are ever going to win prizes for design and beauty, but the one holding Jude Mitchell had only a slit for a window and a smell nobody had ever been able to identify or remove. The police officers tended to conduct their interviews in short spells before escaping for a reviving burst of fresh air.
‘Now then, Mitchell, you could start by telling us where you’ve been all this time. Your wife has been worried sick.’
‘Is that what she told you? Lying bitch! She wouldn’t have minded if I’d dropped down dead or fallen off a big ladder at the minster. More time for her to misbehave herself all over the town.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, Mitchell. Where have you been all this time?’
‘I told that rude colleague of yours up in York where I’ve been. He’s had plenty of time now to check out what I told him. I was with my sister. She lives a mile or so to the north of York. I was with her all the time.’
‘So why did your wife not tell us about your sister?’
‘There’s nothing that woman would like more than to have me locked up and hanged for a murder I didn’t commit. Surely even you can see that, Inspector.’
‘I don’t want any lip from you or you’ll never get out of here at all. Even if you were up there near York you could still have given yourself a little holiday and come back down here to murder Roderick Gill.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you, I didn’t do it.’
‘You can stay here as long as you like. I just hope you’ll see sense and tell us how you did it next time I come back for a little friendly conversation.’ Inspector Grime stormed out of the cell.
Rhys the butler picked up the phone before Powerscourt could reach it. Powerscourt thought Rhys liked saying, ‘The Powerscourt Residence,’ into the machine.
‘Powerscourt?’ said the Secretary to the Silkworkers Company. ‘I have some interesting news for you. I think you’re going to like it.’
20
‘Please put me out of my misery,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Very well, what we have is a letter, dated about three months ago from a firm of solicitors in South Africa called Rutherford, Rutherford and Botha. It’s quite short. This is what it says. “Dear Sir, we are acting for the estate of a recently deceased businessman. In his will the gentleman left considerable sums of money to two colleagues who had served with him in the British Army some years ago. We are anxious to trace these two people, an Abel Meredith and a Roderick Gill. Both should be over fifty years old. We have reason to believe that the men may be members of, or have links with, the Honourable Company of Silkworkers. Thanking you in advance for your co- operation, Yours sincerely, Thomas Rutherford.”’
