Death in a Scarlet Coat (28 page)

Lady Lucy was back with the old ladies. None of them were any better. Mary and Maggie told Lady Lucy she was lucky so far. None of her patients had died while she was on watch. Today she had brought some drawing books and coloured pencils for the children. Her popularity with the youngest inhabitants of the village rose further yet.

It was hard to tell if the old lady she was with now was alive or dead. She lay on her side, perfectly still. Lady Lucy felt a great wave of sadness when she saw the holes in the old lady’s nightdress. It would be bad enough to be stretched out in bed in a nightdress with holes, but to die in one would be too much. She wondered if she could contrive some means of smuggling new nightdresses into the village without being accused of charity or condescension. For the moment she couldn’t see a way of doing it. Perhaps Francis would know.

The day after the discoveries at the windmill Lady Lucy’s husband took himself to London. He had secured an appointment at pathologist Nat Carey’s hospital. After he learnt the news, the doctor drew a series of doodles on his notepad. Powerscourt saw that they were windmills.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That must be how he was killed. How stupid of us not to think of it, with windmills dotted about all over that coast. There’s just one thing, though.’

‘What is that, sir?’

‘Well,’ said the great pathologist, ‘this is more your
province
than mine actually. It’s miles away from my expertise. But suppose you really wanted to kill this man. Suppose you really hated him. Would it be enough to watch him being beaten up by the sails of a windmill?’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Powerscourt, thinking back to the terrible storm, the marks on the sails, the waves and the spray crashing on to the pier at the little bay. He thought too about the marks on the body in the morgue.

‘There was a strange-looking instrument, like a spade or a fork, in the basement. Maybe the murderer had a bash at the face every now and then. In between the blows from the sails of the windmill.’

‘Two possible means of death are usually very convincing for a jury,’ said Nat Carey, preparing to shuffle off to his lecture room and his medical students. ‘I’ve never been able to work out why.’

Powerscourt paid a brief visit to his home where the twins were cross with him for coming on the train. ‘Why couldn’t you come in the Ghost, Papa?’ they kept saying. ‘Then we could have taken Rupert for a ride.’

The twins had recently acquired a new friend, exactly their age, who lived on the opposite side of Markham Square and refused to believe that anybody owned a motor car called a Silver Ghost. He paid a brief visit to his old friend, former Prime Minister Rosebery, and asked for assistance in case things turned nasty in Lincolnshire. But the principal reason for his visit to the capital was lunch, lunch with his barrister friend Charles Augustus Pugh. Powerscourt wanted to check whether certain kinds of evidence were admissible in murder trials. He thought he knew the answer but he needed to be certain. Pugh, happily devouring an enormous plate of Escoffier’s finest scallops washed down by a bottle of Rully Premier Cru at the Savoy Hotel, ascertained the facts in the case and left Powerscourt in no doubt at all about the matter.

The night before the meeting Powerscourt held a long conference in the Candlesby Arms with Inspector Blunden, who brought news of the various inquiries Powerscourt had requested. Blunden was resigned about the views of Charles Augustus Pugh.

‘I thought that’s what he would say, my lord,’ he said, staring moodily at his beer. ‘I thought that’s what any defence lawyer would probably say. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? By the way, my lord,’ he changed course suddenly, ‘I suppose you want the last part of the operation to start tomorrow?’

‘Yes please,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Reveille at six o’clock. Knock on the doors at six thirty.’

Johnny Fitzgerald, who always knew all that his friend knew about any particular case, had decided to make the acquaintance of the gentlemen of the press who had advised Powerscourt earlier in his investigation. He met Rufus Kershaw, chief reporter of the
Horncastle Standard,
in the bar of the Admiral Rodney Hotel. Kershaw had some interesting gossip to report. There was a rumour circulating, believed to have originated at the golf club, that the Chief Constable was thinking of having Powerscourt removed from the case, if not actually arrested. Was there any truth in this asked young Rufus, over his second pint of Lincolnshire Poacher best bitter. Absolutely not, said Johnny. No truth in it whatsoever. Have another pint. However, if Rufus were to turn up at Candlesby Hall at about five o’clock on the following afternoon, there might be some developments to report. Kershaw did say that his editor, James Roper, thought the Chief Constable was not fit for his job and was more than happy to print anything that might show him in a bad light.

Of the three, it was Lady Lucy who made the greatest
contribution
to the cause in those fallow days before the meeting. She had continued her nursing duties. Two nights before the Candlesby assembly she was asked to sit with a younger woman she had not met before. Her new patient was asleep
when Lady Lucy walked into the bedroom. She had nursed two of her children back to health and then seen her sister die from the influenza three nights before. When she woke up, Sarah Carter, who must have been very blonde and very beautiful in her youth, told Lady Lucy, in between bouts of delirium, that she was sure she was going to die. The
disease
had come for her, she said, God was calling her home to join her sister, though she doubted if the trumpets would sound for her on the other side. Nothing Lady Lucy said could persuade Sarah Carter otherwise. Shortly after nine o’clock she fell into a troubled sleep. Lady Lucy thought about the poor woman and all the other poor women in the village, their lives blighted by poverty and disease, their futures little more than a continuation of the present, their only hope that in the new world opening up
outside
their village their children who survived the squalor might be able to build a better life. Not that Candlesby village would equip them for very much, she reflected sadly. Shortly after half past ten Sarah Carter woke up, looking troubled. Lady Lucy wiped her face and held her hand.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Sarah Carter said suddenly. ‘I’d like somebody sensible to know it before I go. She never did anything wrong, whatever people might think. I’d like you to hear about it.’

‘If you think it would make you feel better, I’d be
honoured
to hear it.’

Sarah Carter paused for a moment and looked closely at Lady Lucy. She seemed reassured by what she saw and by Lady Lucy’s steady gaze.

‘It’s about my daughter,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘She’s called Lucy too, Lucy Carter.’

The Silver Ghost took them the short distance from the hotel to the house. The normal calling cards were in evidence as
Powerscourt, escorted by Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald, made his way into the saloon at Candlesby Hall, the
multicoloured
pillars with the stains, the missing antlers, the great dark marks on the walls like the work of some malignant tumour, the stuffed animals in their glass cases. Somebody had put a table with two chairs at one end of the room with a couple of rows of other chairs arranged in random rather than uniform fashion in front of them. It was going to be like a lecture at university, Powerscourt decided, where the outgoing undergraduates hadn’t bothered to put the seating back where they found it. Inspector Blunden was seated on the left-hand side of the table, a police notepad in front of him filling up with ornate copperplate squiggles. Powerscourt was pleased to see that he too had been
honoured
with a police notebook of the same type and a police pen. Maybe he could bring a couple home for the twins.

The rows in front of them were filling up. In the front, fiddling with his monocle, was the Chief Constable, flanked by a rather sinister-looking Chief Inspector who Blunden whispered was called Skeggs. Powerscourt wasn’t sure how those two had got there. Beside them sat Henry, now Lord Candlesby, and his brother Edward. This was their house after all. Behind them sat Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald, with Constable Andrew Merrick beside them. Charles Dymoke, wearing an elegant grey suit, was
lounging
against the fireplace, looking like some aristocratic ancestor posing for his portrait.

The Inspector handed Powerscourt a letter.

‘Arrived this morning, my lord,’ he whispered. ‘I think it might interest you.’

‘Dear Inspector Blunden,’ Powerscourt read. ‘I gather you have been looking for me. On the evening of the murder I was with a lady in Lincoln who is not my wife. Her father had just died and left her a lot of money. I only went back to the cottage to collect my stuff. I was in such a state when you called I said the first thing that came into my head. I did
not kill Lord Candlesby. I was miles away. Yours faithfully, Oliver Bell.’

‘Gives a whole new meaning to feeling uplifted by the cathedral in Lincoln, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The Salvation Army and the later works of Tolstoy seem to have lost out to the more profitable activities of Mammon.’

The Inspector smiled and took a wary look at the
audience
. Then he rose to his feet and stared hard at Constable Merrick, who was chattering away with Johnny Fitzgerald about football teams. ‘My lords, Chief Constable, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began as silence fell over the room, ‘thank you for attending this rather unorthodox gathering. Thank you to the family also for allowing us to make use of this room.’ Powerscourt’s eye was drawn to a strip of wallpaper that had become detached from its place on the top of the wall and was now snaking about fifteen feet down in a dramatic bid to reach the ground. ‘I think it would be fair to say,’ Blunden went on, glancing at his
companion
on his left, ‘that the bulk of the work in this case has been done by members of the Lincolnshire constabulary.’ There was a vigorous nod from the Chief Constable and his villainous-looking Chief Inspector in the front row. ‘The intellectual firepower in the case has come from our own force, of course, but especially from Lord Powerscourt and his companions.’ Inspector Blunden had never entirely recovered from the news that Powerscourt had played rugby as a centre. ‘So I think it is fitting’, the Inspector
concluded
, ‘that he should summarize the position as we see it today.’

Powerscourt rose slowly to his feet. He had some notes in his pocket but he decided to leave them where they were. He had been thinking about what he was going to say in the train up and down from London.

‘Thank you, Inspector. And could I take this opportunity of thanking you and all your colleagues for being such valiant companions in arms in this difficult case.’

There was a loud ‘Hear, hear’ from the Chief Constable and a handclap or two from his sinister companion. ‘I was originally asked to look into this case’, Powerscourt went on, ‘by the late Dr Miller on his deathbed, and by a member of the family here in this house. Our purpose today is in the nature of a report to the members of the Candlesby family so they can learn what happened to their father and their brother. Nothing can take away their grief, but something, some news, might stop the endless uncertainty and worry.’

There was a muffled grunt from Johnny Fitzgerald who thought his friend was laying it on a bit thick. Lady Lucy kicked him sharply on the ankle.

‘I do not bring any certainty about what I am about to tell you today. I do not believe for a moment that my theories, shared and shaped as they are by the good Inspector on my right, would stand up to the more forensic examination of a courtroom. Let me begin with the day of the meeting of the hunt and the discovery of the body of the
previous
Earl. And let me apologize to those in the family if I appear to be speaking harshly of other family members. The truth may sometimes be unpalatable to our nearest and dearest.’

Powerscourt suddenly noticed Johnny Fitzgerald making a sign at him that dated back to their army days and meant ‘Get on with it, troops becoming restless.’

‘I don’t think anybody will deny that the Candlesbys are a strange family. They are the ones who only communicated with their sons and daughters by letter, even though they lived in the same house. They are the ones who cut off their children and banished them for not standing up or for smoking when the father entered the room, never mind the one who collected Caravaggios on the Grand Tour and tried to reproduce them in an upstairs room in this house, using local people as models for some of the bloodiest scenes in the New Testament. I have been in that room. I
do not think I would ever go in it again. It showed a total contempt by the then Lord Candlesby for his fellow men, whom he obviously treated as mere possessions to be used at will. I would draw your attention to the fact that there are virtually no women servants in this house and that those who are here, with no disrespect to them, are well over fifty years old.’

Charles Dymoke had produced a small cigar and was blowing smoke rings all round the fireplace. Constable Merrick was leaning forward to help his concentration.

‘The key to the events of the night of the storm and the morning of the hunt meeting is a girl.’ A ripple of
astonishment
ran round the room. Many of those present had never heard of a girl in the case until today.

‘I am going to call her Helen for today, in memory of Helen of Troy with her intoxicating beauty. Our Helen lives in Candlesby village with her parents and her brothers and sisters. She is eighteen years old and extremely beautiful, more than beautiful enough for men to lust after her. I do not know if Lord Candlesby had ordered up young women from the village before, as if he were ordering extra loaves from the bakery. I think he probably had.’ Lady Lucy was making a face at him now. ‘I feel sure that he regarded the women of the village, married or single, young or middle-aged, as his property to be taken when he wanted. You can imagine how the request would have been put. If the victim did not agree, the parent would lose their position, the family would be thrown out of their home, their relations would be hounded. This behaviour explains why there were no women under the age of fifty working in this house. Nobody was prepared to take the risk.’