‘How kind of you to give up your time to see me this morning. I’m sure all you old gentlemen are still shocked by the events of yesterday.’
Number Nineteen did not feel it necessary to tell the policeman that his next fixed appointment was the weekly game of shove ha’penny at eight o’clock in the evening at the Rose and Crown in five days’ time.
‘It’s all very upsetting,’ he said, and gave a pause the policeman would have been proud of, ‘most unexpected.’
‘Now then.’ Inspector Fletcher opened his notebook and wrote Number Nineteen in large letters at the top of a clean page. ‘I have to write things down too, you see. Otherwise I forget them. They go clean out of my mind.’ The Inspector managed a little smile at this point. ‘What I would like you to do is just tell me in your own words everything you did yesterday morning, from the time you woke up until the body was found.’
Number Nineteen looked alarmed, as if this was an awful lot to remember in one go.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘I must have woken up some time around seven, half past maybe. I don’t have a watch, you see, so I take my bearings from the light and the people moving around outside. I got dressed as usual. Thursday is my day for a clean shirt so I put that on. I’d polished my shoes the night before, I don’t know why, I usually do them after breakfast. Then I went downstairs and out into the court. Most of the men were talking over by the hall. Number Fifteen, he’s not been right in the head for weeks now, that Number Fifteen, he was crying like a baby. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies in my time in the army so I wasn’t that bothered. Shocked, mind you, shocked that such a thing should happen in a place like this.’
By this stage in his career Inspector Fletcher had mastered the art of looking at his interviewee and writing his notes at the same time.
‘That all sounds very normal, Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘Can you remember anything unusual?’
This was the moment Number Nineteen had been dreading. This had been the subject of his discussion with Number Eleven and the unfortunate invocation of the dead Mabel. What was he to do? He waited for so long before he spoke that the Inspector knew his man had heard something in the night. It would have been too dark to see anything at the time of the murder. The Inspector thought there was only one thing it could have been but he might be wrong. He leant forward in his chair.
‘There was something,’ he said very gently, ‘something in the night, wasn’t there? I wonder if it was something you heard.’
‘I won’t get into any trouble, will I?’ The old man looked very frightened now.
‘No, no, there won’t be any trouble. Not unless you killed him and I don’t think you did that!’
They both managed a laugh of sorts. Gallows humour, said the Inspector to himself, making a mental note to tell his wife about it that evening.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ For a brief moment the Inspector thought James Osborne, Number Nineteen, was going to confess all. ‘For not having a watch, you see. I can’t tell you what time it was. When I heard the noises, I mean.’
He had said it now. It hadn’t been that bad. He began to feel a little better after the start of his confession.
‘Can you be any more specific about the time? Was it nearer the dawn than the middle of the night?’
Number Nineteen paused for thought. ‘Forgive me for bringing in personal details, Inspector, but I usually have to go to the bathroom two or three times during the night. The last time, I think would be about six o’clock. I’d only been twice when I heard the noises. Four o’clock? Something like that? Is that helpful?’
‘Very helpful,’ said the Inspector, wondering what a brutal QC at the Old Bailey, would make of this strange method of timekeeping. ‘And now perhaps you could tell me what you heard.’
‘I heard somebody coming down the stairs,’ Number Nineteen began. ‘And there was a bump as if he was bringing something heavy down with him. It wasn’t very loud. The walls here are pretty thick so you don’t hear very much from next door.’
‘Did you look out of the window? To see where the person went, I mean?’
‘Well, I did take a little peep out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything much. It was too dark.’ Number Nineteen leant back in his chair and sighed, as if he had just come through a long ordeal.
‘And that was all? There wasn’t anything else?’ Inspector Fletcher thought his man had said all he was going to say, but he had to be sure.
‘That’s all I can remember.’
The Inspector felt that the information was useful but hardly sensational. Somebody in the little community was likely to have been aware of something, the man who lived next door more likely to have heard it than most. What was interesting, as he said to his sergeant that evening over a pint at the Marquis of Granby near the Maidenhead police station, was that the unorthodox timekeeping of James Osborne, Number Nineteen, placed the murder somewhere between four and six in the morning, which was exactly the same as Dr Ragg’s conclusion, who had at his disposal all the latest scientific expertise.
Lord Francis Powerscourt received his commission and his instructions in the morning post. He had a head of unruly black hair and a pair of blue eyes inspected the world with detachment and irony. He thought that Sir Peregrine did not waste much time on pleasantries. There was no mention of whether he would wish to take the case or not. There was no thank you for helping out at the end. He was told in no uncertain terms that the doctor was a milksop, the Warden a crook and the policeman one of the most useless specimens ever to put on a uniform. Lady Lucy was intrigued by the idea of the almshouse. She had heard of them, of course, but she had never actually seen inside one. Would Francis be able to arrange that? she wondered aloud, passing him another slice of toast. Her husband muttered darkly about such places maybe having it written in the rules and regulations that women were not allowed on the premises, being too likely to provoke excess excitement in the old gentlemen and thus be harmful to their health. Lady Lucy was tall and slim with blonde hair and a pretty little nose. Her eyes were a deep blue, deeper than her husband’s, and quite disconcerting when they were wide open.
Powerscourt thought about his children as he drove off down to Marlow in his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, freshly polished by Rhys the butler and chauffeur. Lady Lucy’s son by her first marriage, Robert, was now in the Royal Navy, believed at that moment to be on manoeuvres in the Pacific. Thomas, eldest son of Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, with his mother’s mouth and his mother’s eyes, was seventeen years old with a flair for languages and mathematics. The boy attended Westminster School and was virtually fluent in German, Russian and French. Powerscourt felt Thomas could have picked up Hottentot at record speed if required. Olivia, the eldest daughter, was at St Paul’s School for Girls, eager to be an art historian and continually dragging one or both of her parents to exhibitions of people they had never heard of in obscure parts of London. On one occasion Olivia had persuaded her parents to take her to Paris where the entire city seemed to Powerscourt to be filled with blotches of paint on canvas masquerading as modern masterpieces. The twins, eight years old, were tormenting the teachers at a nearby school. Powerscourt was certain that a successful career in international crime awaited them if all else failed.
But it was Thomas he worried about. He had told Lady Lucy of his deepest concerns two days before, and she had confessed that her fears were exactly the same. Powerscourt was fairly sure there was going to be a war with Germany. This wasn’t unusual — some of the newspapers had been prophesying such a conflict for years. And, unlike some commentators who predicted a quick war, Powerscourt felt it would be long. And very bloody, with a great many deaths. Maybe it would be like the American Civil War all those years ago. All the young men would want to go and fight for their country. Many of those would go and die for the cause. Including one Thomas Powerscourt who could be called up if there was a war that started as early as next year. What were they to do? For the moment neither of his parents had any idea.