Death at the Jesus Hospital Read online

  The boys filed out and headed for their classrooms. Many of them stared rather insolently at the policeman as they passed him on their way out. Inspector Grime had made few friends among the schoolboy population of Allison’s. He had spoken to them all by now. His bored manner did not impress. With one or two of them he had been downright rude. As the pupils settled into their desks to begin their day’s work, the word began to be passed round. It was started by a rather intelligent young man in the Fifth Form who proclaimed to all and sundry that he wanted to be an anarchist when he grew up. ‘Don’t speak to the policeman. Pass it on,’ he wrote and tore the page out of his notebook. He handed it to his neighbour. Inside ten minutes every boy in the room had read it. When the pupils changed classes at the end of the first lesson, those in on the secret told the colleagues they passed in the corridor. The would-be anarchist’s note was still travelling by the time of morning break at eleven. Within five minutes of that starting, every single boy in the school had received the message. The policy of non-cooperation with the civil authorities had been established in a little over two hours.

  Inspector Grime sat in his temporary office surrounded by literature about the Officers’ Training Corps and a succession of military photographs on the wall. Boy soldiers from Allison’s marching past the front of the building. Boy soldiers at camp in some dreary part of Norfolk near the sea. Boy soldiers standing steady on parade beneath the Union flag. The headmaster had assured him that the witnesses would probably come during morning break. They did not. The headmaster then revised his opinion and informed Inspector Grime that the boys would come to him during the lunch hour. They did not. After lessons closed for the day the headmaster felt sure that this was the time for the boys to come forward. He asked his deputy if he had heard anything on the school grapevine about the boys’ attitude to the police Inspector. The deputy had no intelligence to offer. By now the headmaster was seriously worried. Were the boys in his care obstructing the course of justice? He found it impossible to believe that they had not noticed anything that morning. He wondered if there might be another way of getting them to talk.

  Detective Inspector Grime was livid. He had read through all his notes on the case so far. He had learnt from one of the OTC handbooks how to dismantle and clean a rifle. He had read about making progress in open country and through difficult terrain, which was certainly where he felt he was now. Worse was to come. His sergeant arrived shortly before five o’clock to tell him of a message from the Dean of York, who had promised to make further inquiries about the whereabouts of one Jude Mitchell, cuckolded husband of the mistress of the dead man. The dean and his people had toiled all day for many days and caught nothing. Mitchell was nowhere to be found. They had cast their nets as far afield as Beverley to the east and Lichfield to the south and Ripon to the north, all minster or cathedral cities where a mason like Mitchell might have been able to take on temporary work. He was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Damn it, Sergeant,’ said Grime to his subordinate, ‘where the hell is the wretched man? You can’t just disappear like this. Not nowadays.’ The sergeant resisted the temptation to say that Mitchell appeared to have done precisely that. ‘Give me a moment, will you?’ the Inspector went on. ‘You can take this back and send it off. I’d better send a telegram with the latest news, or rather lack of it, to Lord Francis bloody Powerscourt. Damn the man and his fancy theories!’

  Had Inspector Grime been a more sympathetic officer, one that boys might be happy to speak to about what they had seen, he would have heard some things that were not all that important to his investigation. But some sensible boys would have told him that the man was of average height. Others would have told him that the man seemed to be in his middle thirties. Others again would have told of a thick black beard. But one boy had information that would have made the Inspector and Powerscourt very interested indeed. This was a boy called Lewis, David Lewis, who was in his first year in the Sixth Form. Lewis was the best mimic in the school. He could impersonate his headmaster, his housemaster and the chaplain perfectly. When his friends persuaded him, he would deliver wickedly accurate sermons from the chaplain late at night, standing at the end of his bed in the dormitory with his dressing gown acting as cassock. On another famous occasion in Allison’s legend he had rung the headmaster, purporting to be his housemaster, about some detentions which were subsequently cancelled and caused a rift between the two schoolmasters which had not been healed to this day.

  The phoney postman had bumped into Lewis on the morning of his murder run and had apologized. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he had said and continued on his way. Lewis probably had the most acute ear in the school. The accent, he declared to his friends, was not English, the man was a foreigner. He was not American either, said David Lewis, having spent six months in Washington three years before. Quite where the phoney postman did come from he could not be sure.

  That night the overtaxed men of the Metropolitan Police had another burden added to their load. Word, their sergeants and inspectors informed them, had come from the very top. They were to be on guard all night at various properties and almshouses belonging to the Silkworkers Company. The danger, they were told, could come from the inside with the inmates trying to kill each other or from the outside with unknown villains come to murder the residents. Two constables stood in the doorways of grand houses in the City owned by the Silkworkers.

  PC James Jones, five years off retirement, spent the night inside and outside the Hospice of the Holy Trinity in Blackheath. He told his wife of long standing he thought it had to do with German spy rings operating in the City of London. PC Albert Smith, who had been married for eight days, was on patrol at the Hospice of St Michael in Richmond. He said to his new wife as he left that he might be away all night, but that he would be at home all day the next day and he didn’t expect to be that tired. PC John Walsh, on duty at the Jesus Hospital in Haringey, made himself conspicuous by pacing noisily up and down the little quadrangle. He believed that a gang of thieves were intent on stealing the hospice’s magnificent collection of silver which they left carelessly on display in a cabinet with no lock. That at any rate was the view of his sergeant who had made representations about the silver in the past but to no avail. And PC Walter Buchan, at six feet five inches the tallest officer among them, kept vigil over the old men in the Almshouse of St John the Divine in Clerkenwell. He had told his wife before he set off that the world had gone stark raving mad.

  The following morning Sir Fitzroy Robinson Buller, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, sent another memorandum to his master. He reminded the minister about his earlier message about the three murders and hoped the Home Secretary would soon be in a position to deliver an authoritative judgement. In the meantime he described the measures taken around the various properties belonging to the Silkworkers. If the government were pressed in parliament or in the newspapers about what they were doing in these cases, the Home Secretary could now point out that all necessary steps were being taken to safeguard the public.

  8

  There were two telegrams for Powerscourt the morning after the police watch began. One was from Johnny Fitzgerald with the latest news from Marlow and the old gentlemen’s wills. The other came from Inspector Grime, and Powerscourt could feel the disappointment and the frustration behind the words about the total lack of information from the boys of Allison’s.

  ‘Damn it, Lucy,’ he said, stretching out on the sofa in front of the fire, ‘I feel like some military commander miles and miles from the front who has to communicate with his generals by runner or by telegram. Don’t think Napoleon had to go in for this sort of thing. By the time I have taken one lot of information on board, another lot comes in from elsewhere which changes the picture altogether. I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it, my love,’ said Lady Lucy, used to these moments of doubt in the course of her husband’s investigations. ‘I do think the news a
bout Sir Peregrine and the Silkworkers is fascinating, Francis. Do you think he just wants to make off with the money?’

  ‘I know he’s been using the argument about the Germans all over the place. The headmaster man up in Norfolk told me about that one. I’ve been investigating things for so long now, Lucy, I always think the worst of everybody. So in my opinion the whole case may be about Sir Peregrine getting his hands on the money.’

  There was a discreet cough at the door. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, always coughed to announce his arrival when he had to make an unexpected appearance.

  ‘Telephone, my lord.’ Rhys usually sounded as if he had just come from or was just about to go to a funeral. ‘From Norfolk, my lord. The headmaster of Allison’s, my lord.’

  Powerscourt shot down the stairs to the room looking out over the square that he used as a study. It was gloomy outside, the rain rattling against the windows in Markham Square.

  ‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘how nice to hear from you. How are things up there in Norfolk?’

  ‘My apologies for ringing you at home, Lord Powerscourt. I need some advice.’

  ‘Fire ahead,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully.

  ‘Yesterday morning we had a real postman retrace the steps of the murderer up the long corridor in the school. At the same time as the earlier visit, of course. I appealed to the boys at assembly, very soon after the visit, to report anything they had seen on the day of the death to Inspector Grime. I told them he would be in the OTC room all day.’

  ‘And?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘That’s just it,’ replied the headmaster. ‘There is no and. Nobody came forward. The Inspector waited all day and nothing happened. He was very cross by the time he left, I can tell you.’

  ‘Do you think the boys knew something but didn’t want to tell? Or that they hadn’t seen anything at all?’

  ‘Damn it, Lord Powerscourt, about fifty or sixty boys must have seen the phoney postman that morning. If they were properly awake – and many may not have been – they must have realized that this was not the normal time for the man with the mail to arrive. And I suspect that they may have taken against the policeman. He can be a bit surly at times, Inspector Grime.’

  ‘Could you or your colleagues talk to the boys individually? Would that work?’

  ‘I don’t think they would talk to us either. They’ll have decided en masse not to talk to the policeman. They’re bright enough to see that if they talk to the staff it’s virtually the same as talking to Grime. The information will go straight to the police.’

  ‘I see,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘I’m acutely conscious that the boys in my charge appear at the moment to be obstructing the police in their inquiries. That can’t be right. What do I do if Grime turns nasty and takes one or two of my pupils down to the police station?’

  Powerscourt could see the serried ranks of parents lining up outside the headmaster’s study in the headmaster’s mind. He could hear the voices in the headmaster’s head.

  ‘I’m not going to stand for this, my son hauled off to the local police station!’

  ‘I’m taking my two boys home immediately, and they won’t be coming back!’

  ‘I’ve known our member of parliament for many years now. You’ll be hearing from him very soon!’

  ‘My sympathies, Headmaster,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you’re in a very difficult situation, and it’s not of your making.’

  ‘I’ve had three members of staff laid low by the influenza today. We’re going to have to rework the entire timetable.’

  Something in what the headmaster said set off a train of thought in Powerscourt’s brain. It couldn’t work, could it? It would be too difficult to arrange, surely. Or would it? To hell with it, why not? There was nothing to lose.

  ‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘a thought has just struck me which might, just might, help us out of some of our difficulties. It is rather a long shot and I don’t want to tell you about it until I have had time to think it through. Could I call you back inside the hour?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the headmaster. ‘I will wait by the telephone.’

  Powerscourt shot back up the stairs to tell Lady Lucy the news. Then he put a proposition to her.

  ‘You can’t be serious, Francis.’

  ‘I am, my love, I am.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘it’s very unusual. I don’t think such a thing is happening anywhere else.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. This is nineteen ten after all, not eighteen hundred and forty.’

  ‘In a way,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I suppose it might be rather fun. I’m sure I could do it. Yes, Francis, yes, why not? I shall fulfil my duties in my earlier name of Mrs Hamilton.’

  Powerscourt ran back down the stairs. ‘Headmaster,’ he said, ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’

  The headmaster listened carefully to Powerscourt’s proposals. Then he laughed. ‘Splendid idea!’ he boomed down the phone as if he were addressing the parents on Speech Day. ‘I propose we put it into action on Monday, the day after tomorrow. A week’s service for a start, more if required.’

  Thomas Monk, Warden of the Jesus Hospital in Marlow, was awake very early the next morning. Monk was a worried man. Eight of the old gentlemen had arrived in his office the day before and demanded their wills back. Monk had watched out of his window, fingering his pale blue cravat, as the octet marched in line out of the hospital and down the road to the solicitor’s offices. Monk still had three of their wills in his possession. He suspected that the owners of those wills had forgotten where they had put them. Any one of those old men could arrive at any time and demand their last will and testament. But that was not the full extent of his problems. Only one of the three wills he still had contained any money, and its owner, in Monk’s judgement, was not going to be around for very much longer. Experience at the hospital had left Monk a good judge of how long its members had left to go – if he could have taken odds on the life expectancy of the different inhabitants of the Jesus Hospital with the local bookkeeper in Maidenhead, he would certainly have done so.

  The Warden’s principal concern had to do with the will of Number Twenty, Abel Meredith. This was the one with slightly over two thousand pounds, originally going to Meredith’s brother in Canada. His conversation with Henry Wood, Number Twelve, in which he had implied that half the money went to Canada, the rest to him, had led to Andrew Snow, Number Eighteen, remembering an earlier conversation with Meredith, in which he, Number Eighteen, was told all the money was going to the brother in Canada. And that had led directly to the old men requesting their wills back. All of them had voiced their concerns about Meredith’s will and where his legacy was going. He had said nothing, but he knew he had to do something. Otherwise the old men, led by that slippery Number Twelve, might complain to the Silkworkers Company in London.

  The inmates of the Jesus Hospital eased the pains of their days at the Rose and Crown, famed for its barmaid and the smoke. Monk had never visited the place, feeling it would be beneath him to be seen drinking in the same place as the residents of the almshouse. Five minutes’ walk in the opposite direction was the Duke of Clarence, a place that was pretending not be a pub at all, but some sort of superior watering hole for people coming for boat rides on the Thames or going for lunch or dinner at the expensive hotel on the island up the road. Even the public bar in the Duke of Clarence looked as though it might contain a couple of stockbrokers from the City. It was here, the previous evening, over two pints of mild and bitter, that Monk formulated his plan for the next morning.

  Breakfast was nearly over in the Jesus Hospital. The tomato ketchup and the HP sauce had been sprayed over pairs of sausages and a helping of fried bread this morning, accompanied by what the old men thought were two rather mean rashers of bacon. As the meal came to an end and the last cups of tea were passed round, the Warden came in and knocked on the table nearest the door for quiet.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ he said. ‘Silkmen, f
orgive me for interrupting your breakfast, but I felt I had to speak to you on a matter of some urgency.’ Monk was speaking quite slowly and very loudly for the benefit of his audience. ‘Yesterday a number of you came to see and asked, very properly, if you could have your wills back. I agreed, as I should, to these requests. But some of you also voiced concerns about the will of our late colleague Abel Meredith, Number Twenty. Maybe I am wrong here but I felt that there was an implication that I might have tampered with this will in some way. Nothing could be further from the truth.’

  Monk paused at this point and gazed round the old men. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a couple of pieces of paper. ‘This is Abel Meredith’s will. I am going to hand it round so you can all read it. Whatever you might have thought, you will see that all the money goes to his brother in Canada.’ With that, Monk handed the documents to Jack Miller, Number Three, and sat down. This was indeed the original will. This was part of the plan Monk had concocted in the Duke of Clarence the evening before. Monk thanked God he had kept the earlier version hidden inside his special floorboard.

  It took some time for the papers to be passed round the company. Spectacles had to be found. Meredith’s writing was not of the clearest and often needed decoding by a neighbour. The strain of reading through such a paper, surrounded by your fellows in the hospital, made some of the silkmen so nervous they had to stop for a rest in the middle of it. Those who had read it fidgeted uneasily in their chairs, keen to escape into the quadrangle outside for a good gossip about its contents. After nearly an hour they were finished. Number Three, Jack Miller, gave the will back to Monk.

  ‘Thank you very much for your time, gentlemen,’ he said and walked out of the dining room. As he strode back to his office he smiled as he thought of the second part of the plan concocted on his mild and bitter in the Duke of Clarence. This was going to be his revenge on the Jesus Hospital. The original would go back into its floorboard. The will he would send to the London solicitors, however, would be the one he had forged some time earlier, the one that left half the money to the brother and the other half to him. Monk knew how long the legal niceties could take. Correspondence to and fro from Saskatchewan might add a couple of months to the timescale, particularly if the Canadian lawyers, like so many in England, were partners in the well-known firm of Slow and Bideawhile. It might be a year or more before the thing was settled. And by then some of the old men would have forgotten. And the others would be dead.