Death in a Scarlet Coat (23 page)

James liked being read to, rather like the sick children in the village being cared for by Lady Lucy Powerscourt. He preferred poems to prose. He liked some of the more
bloodthirsty
passages in the
Iliad
when Hector’s body is dragged around the walls of Troy. Shelley’s ‘I weep for Adonais – he is dead’ was a great favourite. So was Milton’s
Lycidas
and Tennyson’s
In Memoriam
and John Donne’s sonnet about the conquest of Death:

James would clap his hands together on the bedspread and cheer at Byron’s lines about the night before Waterloo:

It was the poetry about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the Lady of the Lake that entranced him most of all. He preferred Sir Thomas Malory’s
Morte
D’Arthur
to the more effusive outpourings of Tennyson. The sword in the stone, the sword being thrown in the lake by Sir Bedevere were like a tonic to him.

Searching for a modern Merlin, Charles sent for the doctor. The medical man pronounced himself defeated by James’ illness. He promised to return with a wiser colleague. When he did, there was then a very long examination of James and a whole host of questions about his mental state. The doctors retired to an empty schoolroom with faded maps on the wall and upturned desks lying about the floor,
surrounded
by the broken globes of a broken world. Eventually they sent for Charles and talked to him for half an hour. They were going back to speak with James in a moment, they said. They had just one question. Should James be told the truth about his condition?

Charles looked round the room, filled with memories of irregular Latin verbs and the details of the Wars of the Roses where early Dymokes had backed the wrong side just as they had in the Civil Wars. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Tell him,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think that would be for the best. Tell him the truth.’

Inspector Blunden was seated at his desk in the police station at nine o’clock in the morning. He was doodling again on a clean page of a large police notebook. A series of Ls rolled out across the page. Along with thirty-seven other little boys and girls the Inspector had been taught to read and write in the village school by Mrs Rickards, a
formidable
woman with unorthodox but highly effective means of imparting knowledge to her charges. The ornate Blunden copperplate was one result of her endeavours. Then he left a space and added a row of Cs a few lines further down he added a number of JHs with a question mark at the end. The Inspector was preparing a rather unusual list of the tasks he had to perform that day. L was for Lawrence and the
odd story from Oliver Bell that he had been seen behaving strangely at the railway station the day of the first murder. The C was for the clergyman who could establish Bell’s alibi. The JH referred to Jack Hayward and the question of whether he had been found.

Constable Andrew Merrick reported for duty, his uniform cleaned and pressed by his mother, the shirt still a little too big in the collar, the trouser legs turned up but only
recognizably
by those who knew abut such matters.

‘Sir!’ said Merrick, looking, Blunden thought, like a puppy waiting for some kind soul to throw it a bone.

‘Now then, young Merrick, I have a job for you this morning.’

‘Sir!’

‘We need to ensure that Oliver Bell’s alibi for the night of the first murder is watertight. You know that cottage where he lived near Old Bolingbroke Castle?’

‘Sir!’

Inspector Blunden wished the young man would stop saying Sir like that but discipline should not be slighted.

‘According to Bell, he went to help a retired clergyman living in a nearby cottage. The man was old and thought his cottage was being damaged in the storm.’

‘Sir!’

‘Find this clergyman and take a statement confirming the story. Or take a different story if Bell’s version is not true.’

‘Sir!’

‘Please stop saying sir like that, Merrick; you’re beginning to sound like one of those machines at the funfairs which speak when you put your money in.’

‘Sir! Sorry, sir. What happens if he’s not there, the
clergyman
, I mean, sir?’

‘Well, you go looking for him, don’t you? The local church, maybe he’s gone to say his prayers. The local shop, maybe he’s gone to buy some groceries. You know the form, Merrick. You’ve been in the force nearly three months now.’

‘Yes, Inspector Blunden.’

The young man turned to go. The Inspector placed a tick beside the letter C in his notebook. He was a kindly man, the Inspector, in spite of an occasionally gruff exterior, and he believed very strongly that he had a duty to bring on the young constables in his charge.

‘And here’s something for you to think about on your way, young man. You remember I told you the crucial bit of Bell’s evidence about the middle Lawrence, Carlton Lawrence, not the old chap, at the railway station? How do we find out that he wasn’t in London or at the theatre in London like his father said? And what was he doing back here?’

Andrew Merrick succeeded with great difficulty in not saying Sir. He managed ‘Yes, Inspector Blunden,’ and fled to the comfort of his official bicycle.

A cheerful ‘Good morning, Constable Merrick’ announced to the policeman that Powerscourt was on his way. A moment later he showed himself in and announced his purpose straight away.

‘My dear Inspector Blunden,’ he began, ‘you find me in good spirits. Banish dull care, let a man’s fancy roam free, that’s what I say. The Ghost awaits without, ready to ferry us to the Candlesby Arms where a vital witness awaits us, Jack Hayward, freshly returned from the land of my fathers.’

‘My lord, this is tremendous news. When did he get here, Jack Hayward, I mean?’

‘Late last night,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I was going to call you but I thought Mrs Blunden and Miss Blunden might not care for a visitation at such an hour. Forgive me, I took it upon myself to put him up in the hotel, Inspector. His own quarters in the village are still locked up and somehow I did not want him to be seen there just yet.’

‘The knowledge of his return might alarm the murderer, you mean,’ said the Inspector, collecting a couple of pens and his smaller notebook.

‘Indeed,’ said Powerscourt, fastening on his driving gloves before the short journey to the hotel. ‘I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure of a ride in my splendid motor car,’ he went on, opening the door for the Inspector. ‘Please be my guest.’

Jack Hayward had been placed in one of the outlying wings of the hotel, away from the main concourse where anybody from the locality might have noticed him. Johnny Fitzgerald, in the unusual role of warder, acted as custodian of Hayward’s health from the next-door room.

Inspector Blunden took charge of the situation. Jack Hayward’s room was large with a window looking out over the garden. There was a little table with four chairs where the three of them sat. Hayward was wearing dark blue trousers, a crisp white shirt and a smart jacket, looking, Powerscourt thought, as if he were going to bid for a couple of horses at the Newmarket sales.

‘Now then, Mr Hayward, I think it’s better if we talk to you here, if you don’t mind. It’s a bit more public down at the police station, or in the more open parts of this hotel. I haven’t told Walter Savage you’re here yet, but I hope you’ll be able to see him this afternoon if things go well. So, if you’re comfortable, let us begin.’

If there was one thing Lady Lucy Powerscourt thought they needed in Candlesby village, it was soap in
various
forms. Soap to clean their front doors, soap to clean their kitchens properly, soap to clean the bedrooms and the bathrooms. Not that she would, for a moment, have accused the women of the village of being slatternly. She knew only too well now how hard they worked, how little spare time there was, if any, how the welfare of their husbands and the children and their own parents was always uppermost in their minds. But a little more cleanliness, she felt, would have been like another moat,
another defensive rampart against the slow siege of the disease.

Some of the children were slightly better this morning. Some were worse. One little boy called Will was thought to be at death’s door. Lady Lucy sat by his bedside and watched as he tossed and turned, his forehead burning, a deep frown on his emaciated face. She mopped his brow and held his hand. It was very hot to the touch. His mother flitted in and said she had to see her own mother across the street. ‘A generation above me, and a generation below me,’ she wailed, ‘both about to go on the same day!’

She added that Will had always been fascinated by the Hall and was very fond of cats before she left for another sickbed.

Lady Lucy looked around the room. There were four other beds in it but none of those children were present. Will had been left alone with the strange lady the children called Liddy Lucy as if Liddy were another Christian name. There were no books in the room, so there could be no favourite stories about cats. She thought for a moment and began a long and complicated tale about a cat who visited Candlesby Hall. The sick boy was only awake part of the time but he would still remember bits of it when he told stories to children of his own.

Eventually one of the waitresses from the Candlesby Arms appeared with fresh vegetable soup for everybody. The little boy managed a few mouthfuls before he fell asleep, whispering to Lady Lucy before he went, ‘Can we have some more story later?’

That afternoon, while Will dozed, she was back with the old ladies. The three she spent time with, in adjacent houses, were all very ill, rambling and muttering as they tossed on their beds. There was no demand for tea. Lady Lucy held their hands and stroked their foreheads and did what she could to make them comfortable. But it was on this occasion that she began to note down, on a clean page in her diary,
the words that came up over and over again. ‘That girl’, ‘all that money’, ‘deserved it, all of it’, ‘never seen so much money’, ‘storm’. Lady Lucy had no idea what the words meant but she thought it might be important. When she had collected more evidence, she said to herself, she would talk to her husband about it.

‘Now then, Mr Hayward, perhaps you could tell us in your own words everything that happened on the day of the old Earl’s murder.’ The Inspector spoke kindly, as if he were talking to a rugby player who had committed a foul by accident.

Jack Hayward looked at the Inspector and at Powerscourt. ‘Of course,’ he began. ‘I have to warn you gentlemen that I have been over and over all this so many times in my mind that I sometimes wonder if I am making parts of it up. Anyway, it started with a knock at my door, a loud knock, very early in the morning.’

‘Would you know what time it was? Just for the record, you understand.’ Inspector Blunden had brought a
brand-new
pencil with him to take notes.

‘I don’t know, I don’t have a watch and we don’t have a clock that works in the house. I would guess that it must have been between five and half past five in the morning. There was a cheap-looking envelope lying by my front door. I say cheap because I’ve seen the expensive ones Walter Savage uses when he sends important letters out from the Hall.

‘It was addressed to me and there was a message inside scribbled on the back of a page torn from a child’s notebook. Here it is, gentlemen.’

Jack Hayward reached onto a pocket and produced his
letter. He looked at his two interrogators, who were
mesmerized
, hearing the best account of the first murder they had heard so far.

‘“Go to the bottom of the main drive,” he read out, “and turn left for four hundred yards or so. Take a horse with you. You will find something you know.”’

‘May I keep that piece of paper for now?’ said the Inspector.

‘Of course, it’s no use to me any more.’

‘Please go on,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Your account is very clear.’

‘You will remember that this was the night of the
terrible
storm,’ Jack Hayward carried on. ‘It was beginning to die down now, but the wind was still very strong. I did wonder at one point if I should wait until the weather had improved but I thought not. If it was important for somebody to ride over to my house at five in the
morning
, then surely I could bestir myself. I went to the stables and took the master’s horse, Marlborough he’s called. I’m sure you will ask me why. I have to tell you I have no idea why I did that. Marlborough was a horse I knew very well. He knew me. He was a very sensible animal, quick and strong. If there was going to be trouble, there could be no better companion. I did wonder if was a horse or a deer or a cow or some other animal that might be in difficulties.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but were you expecting trouble? When you reached your appointed destination, I mean?’

‘I have asked myself that question so many times, Lord Powerscourt. I think some part of my brain must have thought there might be trouble ahead. That’s all I can say.’

‘So,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you set off. Did you see anything on the way?’

‘I did not, my lord; it was hard to see anything at all. It
was tricky work, keeping control of the horse in that wind. Anyway, I reached the bottom of the drive and turned left. After a quarter of a mile or so I saw what I had been sent to find.’

Jack Hayward paused. Neither the Inspector nor Powerscourt spoke. There was a distant smell of roasting chicken seeping out of the hotel kitchens.

‘Lord Candlesby was lying on the ground. His body had been wrapped in a couple of blankets. It was hard to see the face but I had a torch with me and I took a quick look at it. Have either of you gentlemen seen that face? The late Earl’s face?’

‘We both have,’ said Inspector Blunden. ‘We had the body brought out from the family mausoleum. One of England’s most distinguished pathologists is not sure to this day
precisely
how he was killed.’

‘That was very smart of you,’ said Hayward. ‘Well, what more is there to say? I looked around, I listened very
carefully
for a couple of minutes but there was nothing or nobody I could see or hear at this point. It was growing lighter by the minute. Any sensible murderer would have been back home tucked up in bed by now.’

‘You were sure even then it was murder?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Well,’ said Jack Hayward, ‘there couldn’t be any other explanation, could there? Not with wounds like that and one side of his face smashed in like a child’s doll.’

‘So you took him home,’ said the Inspector.

‘Well, this was the most difficult part of it for me. I had the devil of a job to lift the body up on to the back of the horse for a start. The Earl’s horse didn’t like it, you see. They don’t like the smell of human blood, horses. Maybe Marlborough knew it was his master’s blood but I think that is fanciful. Twice I got the body up on the horse’s back only for Marlborough to buck and rear and throw his
master
to the ground. At one point I thought I might be there for hours.’

‘What did you do?’ The Inspector had filled many pages by now.

‘I took a break. I changed the arrangement of the blankets so that one covered his face. I thought the smell might not be so bad that way, if you were a horse, if you see what I mean. I rubbed some earth over the whole of the body, or rather the blankets that covered it. I took the horse for a walk and talked him through what I wanted him to do. I told him three times. Then I tried to put the body over his back again and this time it worked. I walked Marlborough round and round in a circle for about twenty minutes with the Earl across his back, talking to him all the time, and he was fine. Then we set off for Candlesby Hall. I was up close by Marlborough’s head all the way,
whispering
to him. I was terrified, you see, that the horse might bolt right away across the county and then where would we be?’

Jack Hayward paused again.

‘I don’t know how long it took me to walk the horse and the old Earl up to the house from the bottom of the drive. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? I just know it was very slow work.’ He was nearing the end of his tale now, Inspector Blunden and Powerscourt as attentive at the end as they had been at the start.

‘I’d forgotten about the hunt that morning. That was why the master was wearing his scarlet coat, of course. Once I saw them all I grew really alarmed. The horses, not as well trained as my Marlborough, might smell something they didn’t like and head off across the countryside. The ladies might scream if they caught sight of the dead man’s face. So when the Hall was just in sight but still some distance away, I stopped again and tried to rearrange those blankets once more to make sure nothing could be seen. I didn’t know who would take charge of the proceedings. I knew they would all be expecting a live Lord Candlesby to appear at any moment and take charge.’

Jack Hayward stopped and stared at the carpet as if checking his memories.

‘No doubt you will know that we headed for the
stables
as soon as we could. I managed to have a word with Richard, the new Earl and he agreed to the diversion. It was just as well because Marlborough was growing very tense indeed. It was as if he knew something was wrong. Once we reached the stables I got the body off the horse as quick as I could and on to a table. I found another blanket to put over it. I told a stable boy to take Marlborough away and feed him. I expected the younger Candlesbys to ask where I had found their father but that took some time. All they wanted to do was to cover up the fact that he had been murdered. For some reason, that had to be concealed at all costs. They didn’t care about how he was killed or who might have killed him. They didn’t even seem very sorry. They all talked at once, each one swearing at the others until Richard established some sort of order.’

‘Would you describe them as rational or maybe
hysterical
?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Sorry to sound like a doctor, but I’m sure you know what I mean.’

‘I know exactly what you mean, my lord,’ Jack Hayward replied. ‘I think Richard was tending towards the rational, and the other two, Henry and Edward, were very close to being hysterical.’

‘Could I ask just one question at this point?’ The Inspector was chewing hard on the end of his pencil. ‘Were they
surprised
by their father’s death? You’d have expected them to be in shock, not shouting at each other, surely.’

‘Maybe shock can take a number of forms, I don’t know. You’re really asking me if any of them knew this was coming, aren’t you? I have thought about that for a long long time but I can’t give you an answer. I just don’t know.’

‘So the body is on a table. Richard is taking control. Have they decided to send for Dr Miller yet?’ Powerscourt
said, looking past Jack Hayward to the wood behind the garden.

‘Yes, they had. And that was when they got rid of me. I think they had forgotten I was there but they were already discussing how to persuade the doctor to say it was death by natural causes when I was told to go and fetch the
doctor
and notify the undertakers. But Richard made a point of saying he wished to see me at the stables in an hour’s time.’

This was new information. The Inspector whistled softly to himself. Powerscourt ran his hands through his hair.

Jack Hayward was sounding tired by now. He was
speaking
more slowly than he had at the beginning. ‘That meeting was very short. He said he wanted me to go away at once, that very afternoon if possible. He gave me five hundred pounds, that’s over two years’ wages for me. He said he didn’t want to know where I had gone. After three months, he said, I was to send him an address and he would tell me if I could come back or not.’

‘Did he say anything about your wife and your children?’ asked the Inspector.

‘They were to come too. You know the rest. I’m sorry, my mind is spinning after going over all this stuff again. Do you think we could stop now or take a break? I’d really like a cup of tea.’

‘Of course,’ said the Inspector. ‘Why don’t you take some time off and come back in an hour? Sorry we kept you at it for so long.’

‘I’d like you to think about what I should do for the best, gentlemen. Should I go back to Ireland for the time being? Or should I go back to my house in Candlesby village?’

Powerscourt and Inspector Blunden were checking their notes when there was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ said the Inspector.

A very out-of-breath Constable Merrick greeted them. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, my lord,’ he panted, ‘but they told me at the station that you’d be here.’

‘So?’ The Inspector was sounding rather cross.

‘Sir,’ the young man was almost completely out of breath now, ‘it’s important. I wouldn’t have come and interrupted you if it wasn’t important, sir, my lord.’

‘What is it then?’ asked the Inspector, recalling that Merrick might be very young but that he was far from stupid.

‘Two things, sir.’ The young man took two deep breaths suddenly like they had told him to do in his training when imparting information to superior officers under difficult circumstances. ‘You asked me to check out Oliver Bell’s alibi – the retired clergyman in a nearby cottage who was worried about the storm. There is no clergyman, sir, my lord. There is no cottage either. I checked everywhere, in the village, at the school, with the farm worker who does live in a nearby cottage. And I found the present vicar who
happened
to be in the village. He’d never heard of any retired vicar or whatever he was in his parish.’

‘Good God!’ said the Inspector. ‘So Oliver Bell has no alibi at all for the entire evening of the storm and the murder! I wonder why he bothered to tell me such a pack of lies. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t check his story.’

‘And what was the second thing, Andrew?’ Powerscourt thought he already knew the answer.

‘This is the other thing, my lord, sir. Oliver Bell, sir. He’s disappeared. The cottage is locked up. Nobody knows where he’s gone.’

‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Blunden was collecting his pencil and his notebook. ‘I’ve got to get back to the station to organize a lookout for Bell. Use your judgement about Jack Hayward, my lord – I want to keep him here but I don’t think he should go back to the village just yet. Bell may have got clean away by now. Just when you think you are making progress, some other damned thing comes along
and knocks you down. Come along, young Merrick, you have done well.’

Powerscourt took Jack Hayward for a walk in the woods. He thought the senior groom might feel happier out of doors.

‘Forgive me if I ask you a rather personal question, Mr Hayward,’ Powerscourt began. ‘You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. Who do you think killed the old Lord Candlesby?’

‘I’m happy to answer that question, my lord. My first thought was that it was the eldest son, Richard. But now he’s gone too. So that can’t be right. I have to say I don’t know any more. And you, my lord, do you know?’

Powerscourt shook his head. ‘I wish I did,’ he said, ‘then I could get back to London and see my children.’

‘Have you decided what you and the Inspector would like me to do, my lord?’

‘Yes, we have. It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. The Inspector doesn’t want you to leave Candlesby. He doesn’t want you to go back to Ireland or go anywhere else just yet either. Quite soon he’s going to want to take a statement from you, a more formal version of what we talked about just now. So I think you should stay on here in the hotel for the moment. You won’t have to pay. We would ask you to be quiet in case the murderer hears you are back and decides to kill you or kill somebody else to protect his identity. You’re going to be a key witness if this thing ever comes to trial, you see. Are you happy with that, Mr Hayward?’

‘Please call me Jack, everybody else does. Yes, I’m happy with that.’

‘Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell us? Any advice?’

Jack Hayward paused and kicked a large branch off the
path into the undergrowth. ‘There’s just one thing, my lord. It only came to me this morning. I was thinking about the actual murder and those terrible wounds to one side of the face. Everybody thinks in these cases of there being only one murderer. But suppose there were two, or more likely, three or four. Two men hold him and the other two take turns to bash the side of his face with a spade or something like that. Then they change over and repeat the performance.’ He paused again. ‘It’s only a thought, Lord Powerscourt; it could be total rubbish.’