Free Death Called to the Bar by David Dickinson Page A

person shortly after six o’clock. Described as of average height, slim, with light brown hair, late twenties or early thirties. Smiled, but did not
speak to our witnesses, sir.’
    ‘Who the devil do you think it was, Powerscourt?’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Not normal for total strangers to be wandering about an Inn of Court that time of day, is
it?’
    ‘A murderer?’ said Powerscourt quietly. ‘A murderer of average height with light brown hair, come to drop something into Dauntsey’s tea or his gin or his sherry if he had
started to drink at this time? I don’t suppose there are any reports of him entering Dauntsey’s room, sergeant?’
    ‘No, sir, there aren’t. There’s nothing between Edward leaving and Scott, the man in the chambers above, seeing him set off for Barton Somerville’s rooms a couple of
minutes after six.’
    The sergeant had been scrabbling around in the papers left on the table. ‘I hadn’t connected this person with the mysterious visitor, sir, but here we go. The porter at the gate
reported somebody leaving the Inn at about ten past six. If you weren’t a very quick walker, that’s about the time it would take you to get to the lodge from Dauntsey’s rooms,
sir. The porter said goodnight and the man nodded but didn’t speak, sir. Wonder why he never opened his mouth, sir?’
    ‘Foreigner perhaps?’ murmured the Chief Inspector. ‘Strong regional accent?’
    ‘Sore throat?’ said Powerscourt flippantly. ‘Dumb visitor? Both pretty unlikely.’
    ‘You don’t suppose, sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘that the visitor might have had something to do with the feast? Something to do with the catering arrangements?’
    ‘If he had,’ said the Chief Inspector firmly, sounding as though he had a pretty poor view of this particular theory, ‘he’d have gone to the kitchens or the Hall, not to
a barrister’s room.’
    ‘Client of Dauntsey’s? Any mention by the clerk of our mysterious visitor?’
    ‘No, sir, there isn’t,’ said the sergeant.
    They continued the distribution of the papers, an enormous pile in the seven to eight section when the guests at the feast turned into witnesses to a murder.
    ‘There we are, sir,’ said the Chief Inspector at half past eleven. ‘Sergeant Gibson will type up an hour-by-hour version for us all. I’ll make sure you get a copy first
thing in the morning.’
    Powerscourt had ordered coffee and biscuits as a reward for finishing the job.
    ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that is an excellent morning’s work. But there is one area where I know I have not been able to talk to the relevant people, and that is the
steward and his waiters who served the food and drink. The steward has been ill, I understand, and without him there is little point in speaking to the waiters, half of whom, I think, were brought
in from outside.’
    ‘That is correct, Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘but the steward will be back in the next few days. Would you like to join us when we speak to him?’
    ‘Very much so,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I would venture a further suggestion. We need to talk to the steward and the waiters in the Hall itself. We need to put them back in
exactly the roles they had at the feast. There is a catering committee here in the Inn and I spoke to its senior member yesterday about the way things are handled at the feast. And,’
Powerscourt paused for a sip of his coffee, ‘from what he told me, it would have been extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to poison Mr Dauntsey at the feast.’
    Powerscourt strode up and down the table, putting the chairs back in position and signalling to the sergeant to move the timetable documents somewhere else. From a large press to the side, he
brought out a pair of glasses and a couple of soup bowls.
    ‘Let us pretend, gentlemen, that my dining room is the Hall of Queen’s Inn. This dining table,’ Powerscourt pointed dramatically to his right, ‘is the High