He doesn’t have to smile at her every time he speaks, Sarah thought to herself, maybe the stuttering would have been better. Then she told herself off. That, she said, was bad. Edward talking properly is a great advance. If he goes on like this he’ll be perfectly normal in another six months.
‘And will you be in court, Edward? Will you have a ringside seat?’
‘Some of the time, I will, Mrs Henderson. I won’t have to say anything, though. I’ll only be there to give advice to our barristers.’
It was Mrs Henderson’s parting shot that was the most astonishing of all. As Sarah was helping her upstairs to bed, she turned in the doorway and said, ‘I want you to remember, Edward, that you have two very good friends in this house. I hope you will feel free to come and see us as often as you can.’ And with that mother and daughter began the slow ascent of the stairs. Sarah hoped it wouldn’t put Edward off, the prospect of further lengthy interrogations every time he came to Acton. Edward was wondering if he could find the courage to kiss Sarah when she came back downstairs.
Lord Francis Powerscourt did not give the impression of having been unduly alarmed by Johnny Fitzgerald’s report that there might be a contract on his life. He had, after all, been in danger for much of his adult life, with the Army in India, as Head of Intelligence in the Boer War, in the pursuit and apprehension of various murderers. But this time he did take it seriously. Ever since that day he had revived a practice he had followed religiously in India. There, usually at the end of each day, he had written down his findings for the past twenty-four hours, where he believed the enemy to be, what strength they had, what reinforcements they might expect. In this way, if he was killed, his successor would not be denied the benefit of his knowledge. The Daily Will was how Johnny Fitzgerald used to describe it. Now, in this time of civilian danger, he had first put down a description of the murders and brief records of all his interviews during the case. He entered too his suspicions, the lines of inquiry he wished to pursue over the next few days. He would have entered the name of the murderer if he felt sure of it.
That task completed, and a letter despatched to the Financial Steward Bassett, saying he proposed to call on him the following afternoon, he went to join Lady Lucy in the drawing room in Manchester Square. She was seated at the piano, playing, very softly, ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’. Powerscourt loved to hear her play. She began to stop but he waved her on. He wondered if she was going to sing when Johnny Fitzgerald walked in, clutching a fistful of sheets of paper covered in drawings. Lady Lucy turned round and greeted the two of them. ‘Don’t stop, Lucy, please,’ said Johnny.
‘If Music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that surfeiting
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall.
It came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets . . .’
Johnny had been making melodramatic gestures as he spoke. Lady Lucy smiled at him. Powerscourt had turned pale.
‘Just confirm this for me, if you would, Johnny. Those are the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night?’
‘They are indeed,’ Fitzgerald replied cheerfully. ‘Shouldn’t I know that as I played your man Orsino at school. My housemaster thought I should have been Sir Toby Belch and the headmaster said I should I have been Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who’s even more of a drunken layabout than Sir Toby. Quite why I should have been identified with the fruits of the god Bacchus at such an early stage I have no idea. The man who did the drama thought I should be Orsino so that’s who I played. But look here, Francis, I’ve brought an early draft of The Birds of London.’
Normally this would have been the focus of intense study and excitement, but Powerscourt seemed to have no interest in birds or anything other than his own thoughts. He was pacing up and down his drawing room like Nelson on his quarterdeck, muttering to himself from time to time, shaking his head, pausing to look out of the window into Manchester Square.
At last he stood still by the fireplace. Even then Lady Lucy could tell his mind was still far away. She waited. Johnny looked at his bird drawings. He had known his friend in this sort of mood before, once prowling outside their tent for a full hour and a half one winter’s night in India before returning inside to prophesy, correctly as it turned out, that the attack would come from the east, not from the south where everyone expected it.
‘Lucy, Johnny,’ he said at last, his hand stroking the top of the mantelpiece, ‘I’m sorry about that. I’ve had a most extraordinary idea I’d like to try out on you.’
There was a pause while he collected his thoughts. Outside they could hear a couple of cabs rattling round the square and heading north into Marylebone High Street.
‘Let me give you, for your consideration,’ Powerscourt began, ‘a series of apparently unconnected facts.’
He’s going to start numbering points soon, Lady Lucy thought, the index finger of the right hand slamming into the closed fingers of the left.
‘Fact Number One,’ Powerscourt went on, quite unaware that his wife had perfectly foretold his current actions, ‘is that there was seen hanging around the Temple Church before the service, but not attending it, a well-bred and very attractive young woman who gave her name as Eve Adams, living in Eden Street. There is no Eden Street where she said it was and the name is obviously false.
‘Fact Number Two is that on the day of Dauntsey’s murder, a mysterious visitor was seen in Queen’s Inn, including one sighting near his chambers. It is perfectly possible that the mysterious visitor actually went in to see the man and came out again without being seen. He was seen again, leaving the Inn by a porter. The visitor did not speak.
‘Fact Number Three, a couple of the porters saw, or thought they saw before they realized they were mistaken, the mysterious visitor again today at the memorial service. The reason they thought they were mistaken was that they saw Mrs Dauntsey’s back and when they realized the person was female, not male as on the day of the murder, they repented of their ways.
‘Fact Number Four. Early in January this year there was staged at the Middle Temple Hall a three hundredth anniversary production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was first put on in the same hall on the same date in 1602. Among the audience, on her own admission, were Mr and Mrs Dauntsey. Twelfth Night has, as its main character, a girl called Viola disguised as a boy called Cesario. To add to the confusion she, or he, had a twin brother. In Shakespeare’s time when no women were allowed on the stage at all, the gender complications with boys who were cast as girls pretending to be boys must have been even more severe.’
Powerscourt paused. ‘Do you see it? Surely you must see it,’ he said. Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald both shook their heads.
‘It’s only a supposition. It could be completely wrong. But suppose we have read the Dauntsey marriage completely wrong. We know – well, we don’t know, we suspect that she cannot have his children or children bearing the Dauntsey blood in some admixture or other. Dauntsey decides to leave her. And the person of his choice is none other than the Eve Adams who cannot resist sniffing round the church where her late lover is to have his memorial service. But Mrs Dauntsey knew what was happening and determined to stop it. She decides to take revenge. Remembering the Viola/Cesario person from Twelfth Night she dresses in man’s clothes, goes to Queen’s Inn, pops into her husband’s room and poisons him.’
‘Good God,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘What about Woodford Stewart?’ asked Johnny.
‘Easy. He saw her leaving the Inn so he cannot be left alive. A couple of weeks later she comes back, probably with that giant butler of hers, and shoots Stewart. You can’t tell me that somebody who lives in that world of Calne doesn’t know how to shoot. She leaves the giant butler to dispose of the body. By that time she’s back safely in her own drawing room.’