‘Great God, Secretary, that’s astonishing news. Do you have a copy of your reply?’
‘I have it in front of me, my lord. It acknowledges receipt of the letter and gives the addresses as the Jesus Hospital in Marlow and Allison’s School in Norfolk. There was no further correspondence.’
‘And I presume that there is no indication as to the name of the businessman, if he ever existed?’
‘None at all. You could try the firm on the telegraph and see if they are willing to say anything.’
‘Is there,’ said Powerscourt, ‘any indication of where they were based, this firm of solicitors?’
‘Sorry, I should have mentioned that, my lord. There is an address in Johannesburg on the notepaper, though that may not exist any more than the dead businessman.’
‘I’ll see what we can do,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘though I don’t hold out much hope. Thank you so much, Mr Secretary.’
He bumped into Inspector Devereux on his way back upstairs, being escorted to the drawing room by Rhys. There was general excitement when Powerscourt told him and Lady Lucy the good tidings from the Silkworkers Hall. And that was not all. ‘I too have news,’ said the Inspector. ‘I have been on a sort of Cook’s Tour of London’s private investigators. Few, I regret to have to tell you, inhabit districts as superior as Markham Square in Chelsea. They all have one well-appointed room, fire in the grate, hunting prints on the walls, that sort of thing, to talk to their clients. The rooms behind, where they do most of their work, are much more squalid. I’d been to about to six or seven, many of them grouped around Lincoln’s Inn Fields for some reason I cannot fathom, and had no success at all. But as I moved east I struck a small piece of gold. In one of those little alleys off Fleet Street there is a one-man outfit — most of the others have half a dozen staff or more — called Joshua Wingfield Wallace and he had a tale to tell. Four or five weeks ago Wallace received a letter with no address and no signature but containing a ten-pound note and asking for maps and directions and general information about two particular places. Our Joshua was a bit suspicious about the lack of name and address, but ten pounds is ten pounds so he did what he was asked. You’ll never guess where the two places were.’
‘Jesus Hospital,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘Allison’s School,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Top of the class, both of you,’ said the Inspector.
‘Where did he send the information?’ Powerscourt was walking up and down the room now. ‘Did somebody come and collect it?’
‘Our friend was far too canny for that, my lord. The reply was to be sent to await the arrival of a Mr Smith at the Paddington Hotel round the corner from Paddington Station. The man who was on duty at the hotel reception that day is not due to clock in again until five o’clock this evening when I have arranged to go and talk to him.’
‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt, ‘excellent.’ He was now walking up and down the room so fast that Lady Lucy worried he might be about to crash into a wall.
‘Passenger lists,’ he said suddenly.
‘Passenger lists?’ said Inspector Devereux, looking at Powerscourt in that concerned way people have when their friends or relations are falling ill or going mad.
‘Passenger lists? Are you feeling unwell, Francis?’
‘Passenger lists,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I repeat, passenger lists.’
He strode down the drawing room and settled on the edge of the sofa by the fire. ‘Consider what we have just learnt, Lucy, Inspector. I don’t mean our friend the oneman band near Fleet Street, I mean the letter found by the Silkworkers. We have one faint indication from the school that points to South Africa. Now we have this letter, real or not, from a firm of solicitors, real or not, supposed to come from Johannesburg. It seems to me quite likely that even if all the other information is false, the point of origin may be the real one. So Mystery Man sends out his initial inquiries from his home town. But he has to get here. And the only way to get here, unless you can find yourself a spaceship, is by boat. Mystery Man must have boarded a liner in Durban to come here. I think Durban is the nearest big port to Johannesburg but I could be wrong. But his name will be on the passenger list of the liner that brought him here.’
‘You are quite right, my lord,’ said the Inspector, ‘or he could have boarded the ship in Cape Town. I became rather an expert in these sailing lines when I was a boy, I’m afraid. I had about eight toy ships I used to play with in the bath. Union Castle Line, my lord, formed by a merger of two companies in nineteen hundred.’ The Inspector closed his eyes for a moment as if some great feat of memory was upon him.
‘She probably sailed on this route,’ he said, frowning in concentration. ‘Southampton, Madeira, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, St Helena, occasional, Ascension occasional, Las Palmas, occasional, Southampton. There was a round-Africa service you could take if the other ships were full, but it took longer. The route I’ve just mentioned took over a fortnight from Cape Town to Southampton, longer from Durban.’
Powerscourt was reminded of Leith, Lord Rosebery’s train-obsessed butler, who was a walking timetable for the great railway routes of Europe. It looked as though the Inspector was his maritime equivalent.
‘Whatever the route,’ Devereux said, looking slightly embarrassed as if he’d shown too much of himself, ‘they will have passenger lists, as you said, my lord. Whether they’re kept in Southampton or in London I’m not sure.’
‘Do you know, Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘exactly what information these lists contain?’
‘I’m afraid I do,’ Devereux replied. ‘The lists contain the passenger’s name, the port where he or she boarded the ship, the class they are travelling in, and the amount they paid for the ticket.’
‘Do they, by any chance,’ said Powerscourt, ‘contain the address in England the passengers are going to?’
‘They do not, my lord. But I suspect we might not necessarily believe any information Mystery Man entered on that score.’
‘I think,’ said Lady Lucy, smiling at Inspector Devereux, ‘that you are going to be able to answer every single question we can think of about passenger lists. Do you know how often the great liners travel from South Africa to London and how many people they have on board?’
Inspector Devereux groaned. ‘I should have spent my time more usefully when I was a boy, Lady Lucy. Think of all the things I could have memorized, kings of France, presidents of the United States, all the known elements in the periodic table. I think I said before that the journey takes a little over a fortnight, so there will be two passenger lists every month. On average’ — Devereux was adding up the passenger numbers of the different ships but he wasn’t going to tell his audience that — ‘I should say that there are about two hundred in first class, another two hundred in second, and about a hundred in third.’
‘So,’ said Powerscourt, ‘given that the first murder took place on January the twenty-second, the anniversary of Isandlwana, we should go back to the beginning of December. I doubt if our Mystery Man would have arrived a day or two before his first killing. I think he would have given himself time to settle down. So there could be three sailings on which he could have travelled from South Africa, giving us about six hundred first-class passengers and another six hundred in second class. I think we can omit third class for now.’
‘But there won’t be six hundred names for us to wonder about, surely,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Some of the passengers will have boarded the ship at places other than Cape Town or Durban, some may have got off at Madeira if the ship stops there and not all the ships will be full at this time of year. Then there’s the fact that the Mystery Man or MM will be over forty-five if not over fifty. We can rule out anybody younger than that because they couldn’t have been at the battle.’
‘There might be another avenue we could explore,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Suppose we end up with eight or nine possible murderers from Durban — my knowledge of these liners is non-existent but I can remember a little of the geography from my time there in South Africa. It’s a long journey from Johannesburg to Durban but it’s about twice as long to Cape Town. I think you’d be on the train for two or three days. But our Mystery Man must have bought his ticket somewhere. Maybe the Union Castle have an office or an agent in place in Johannesburg or maybe he will have got it from a big travel agent. Could we hire somebody to look into that for us, Inspector?’
‘I don’t think we’d have to hire anybody, my lord. I’ll set the wheels in motion when I get back to the station. South Africa is only one hour ahead in the winter. We have reciprocal arrangements with their police on major investigations. They will go and make the inquiries for us — they will, in any case, be better acquainted with the means of buying tickets on their home turf and so forth.’
‘Just think, Lucy, think, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, rubbing his hands together, ‘we might actually get a name at the end of this process. For so long I have wanted a name. Now at last we might be able to get one.’
