Death Called to the Bar Read Online Free PDF

left before the
removals men came to take them to their temporary home in Manchester Square. As they took their breakfast Lady Lucy looked like a general on the eve of a great engagement. Powerscourt was turning
an envelope over and over in his hand. It was a very expensive envelope, the stationery equivalent of one of Charles Augustus Pugh’s shirts. He wasn’t going to open it yet. He had told
Lady Lucy about Pugh’s visit and his news the night before.
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Francis,’ she said, irritated perhaps that while she was being so decisive about the move, the man of the house couldn’t even make up his mind whether
to open an envelope or not, ‘there isn’t a bomb in there. It’s not going to explode.’
    ‘Sorry, Lucy, sorry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s just that I know what’s inside.’ With a grimace rather like somebody plunging into a cold bath, he opened his
envelope and peered sadly at its contents. ‘Pretty pompous,’ he said and handed it over to his wife.
    ‘“Dear Lord Powerscourt,”’ Lady Lucy read it aloud, ‘“I write as the Treasurer of Queen’s Inn. On 28th February at an Inn feast, Mr Alexander Dauntsey
KC, one of our benchers, dropped dead. The post-mortem produced evidence that he had been murdered. I am not satisfied with the personnel, the methods or the attitude of the officers of the
Metropolitan Police assigned to investigate this matter. I have written to the Commissioner to convey my most serious reservations. I understand that you are one of the most distinguished private
investigators in London and I am writing to ask if you would be able to come and discuss the necessary measures with us. If so, I would be grateful if you could call on me at my chambers at noon
today.”’
    Lady Lucy put the letter back in its envelope. ‘I don’t think he’s very taken with the police, Francis, what do you think?’
    ‘No, he’s not. What am I to do, Lucy? I don’t want to take this on. I don’t like the sound of all these lawyers. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time, with the
move and everything.’
    Privately Lucy thought it couldn’t have come at a better time. She was certain she would sort out the move much more quickly and efficiently without Francis hanging around and getting in
the way. She thought the case came from providence but she wasn’t going to say so.
    ‘You know my views, Francis.’ However bad the circumstances, however dangerous the situation, Lady Lucy Powerscourt had never suggested that Francis and Johnny Fitzgerald should
abandon an investigation. ‘Somebody has killed Mr Dauntsey. That person may kill more people unless you go and find them. Don’t worry about the move.’ She leant over and covered
his hand with her smaller one. ‘We’ll manage somehow.’
    The mood was subdued in the Dauntsey chambers after his death. The young men stopped skylarking on the stairs and having paper fights in the library. The seniors looked grave
and conversed with each other in hushed tones about the particular kind of poison that had disposed of their colleague. At the very top of the chambers there was one person who mourned him
particularly. Sarah Henderson was their stenographer, secretary and mascot. She was twenty years old, tall and slim with a shock of red hair and bright green eyes. She repulsed all the advances of
the Queen’s males of whatever age with the same apologetic tone, as if she was greatly flattered to be invited to the theatre, the opera, lunch, dinner, the ballet, but her mind was on other
things. The one crucial fact installed in her and all her fellow students at the secretarial college she had attended in Finsbury was that emotional entanglements with people at work were to be
avoided like the plague. Nothing, not even bad spelling or mistakes in dictation or arriving at work improperly dressed, was likely to cause such complication or such unhappiness. The lecturer who
had warned them of these