Death in a Scarlet Coat

18

‘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.’

‘It’s clever,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I have thought of it before now. Mind you, the pathologist said the wounds might not have been caused by a spade, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe the reason I haven’t done anything about it so far is the thought that finding four or five murderers would be four or five times as difficult as finding one.’

‘One last thing, Lord Powerscourt. I came back here because of Walter Savage. Is he still locked up in the jail? Can I go and see him? And what was he locked up for anyway? He’s perfectly harmless.’

‘It was the Inspector who locked up Walter Savage,’ said Powerscourt disloyally. ‘He thought he was withholding evidence about the night of the murder. Inspector Blunden felt a day or two in the cells might help his memory. But I think it’s all been cleared up now. Walter should be out of jail later today.’

‘Really?’ said Jack Hayward, staring hard at Powerscourt. ‘How very interesting. How convenient for Walter to come out today.’

Powerscourt said nothing.

Political London, Tory London, Conservative London, Anti-Lloyd George London was in ferment. The peers in the House of Lords had defied the will of the Liberal majority in the House of Commons, elected by millions of British citizens, and thrown out the Liberal Budget by a huge margin. Everybody knew there was a natural Conservative superiority in numbers in the Lords, but this majority was huge, over two hundred and fifty. It was a landslide. It was a triumph for the anti-Lloyd George faction in the Upper House, who had brought down to the vote peers who had never been there before, peers who hadn’t attended since the time of the Boer War, peers who spent their time in peaceful enjoyment of what remained of their estates, peers who hated London and who hated politics but had been persuaded for a final turn-out to save their inheritance and enable their class to save the nation from itself.

The celebrations were being held in Wigmore House, situated between Grosvenor Square and Park Lane, the home of one of the leading rebels, Lord Wigmore, known to his friends as Wiggers, or, more simply, Wigs. It was a couple of days after the vote and a lot of thought had gone into the festivities.

Sandy Temple and his Selina had been given an invitation by Lord Winterton of Winterton Staithe, the man Sandy had talked politics with at the weekend house party in Norfolk. The two had met by chance in the lobby of the House of Lords and Winterton had whipped an invitation out of his pocket.

‘You’d better come to this,’ he told Sandy. ‘Celebratory party. May be closer to an orgy. Wiggers is always keen to lower the tone. Probably ought to be a wake.’

Now they were standing outside the front door at a quarter past eleven at night, Sandy in full evening dress, Selina in her most fashionable evening gown. Both felt rather nervous. A wall of sound, cheers, shouting, bands playing, champagne corks popping, poured out of the great house. They were greeted by a huge butler who must have been well over six foot six. Floating round, champagne bottles in hand, were more very tall servants, footmen in livery of black and green, all over six feet. The entrance hall was high with a black and white marble floor, the walls adorned with Wigmores past, sitting proudly on enormous horses outside enormous houses. Sandy was to learn later that when Lord Wigmore left the army he took the largest sergeant majors, sergeants and privates he could find with him to man the barricades in different uniform in the various Wigmore properties across Britain. Taking a glass of champagne each, Selina and Sandy advanced into a huge central saloon, feeling and looking rather like the babes in the wood. A fountain in the centre of the vast room was sending bubbly liquid high into the air. Various young ladies who seemed to be drunk already were lying on the side of the fountain lapping up its contents.

‘So clever of Wiggers to get his champagne fountain working,’ one young fop observed to his friend. ‘They say it hasn’t worked since the party the family threw at the time of the Great Exhibition.’

‘Means you don’t have to worry about refills,’ said his friend, plunging his glass in the fountain and refilling it with champagne. ‘Such a bore having to look for those waiters with a bottle, don’t you think?’

‘The stuff in the bottles is meant to be better, Pol Roger or something like that. Can’t remember the name of this fountain stuff but a cousin told me it’s what they serve in the Lyons Corner House.’

The two young men drifted off, arm in arm. Sandy, who was as interested in the architecture as he was in the guests, observed that there was a series of huge rooms opening off this central atrium, dining room, drawing room, study, Old Masters room. They were hailed by Lord Winterton.

‘Good to see you both,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve been to a party like this one in my life. It’s victory but I think underneath most people know it’s a hollow victory, maybe even a Pyrrhic victory when you think you’ve won but you’ve actually lost. It won’t last. At some point the Commons will come looking for revenge. But for now, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’

An enormous cheer went up from what might have been the drawing room. ‘Some damn fool lord in there’, said Winterton, ‘stands on a table every now and then and calls on the company to drink Lloyd George’s health. Never fails to get them going. Chap just moves round from room to room.’

On the top floor a detachment of Parisian whores were plying their trade energetically in the servants’ bedrooms. They had been imported specially from Paris for the occasion and reckoned they would make more money in this one night than they had in the previous two years. The queue stretched down the stairs. Cheers would ring out every time a young man, usually fastening the buttons on his military uniform, made his way down the stairs and cleared a path for the next candidate.

Lord Winterton led Sandy and Selina down to the bottom end of the great saloon. A huge marquee turned into a ballroom had been erected running from the end of the house down into the garden with artificial grass replacing the wet lawns en route to the high wall at the end. Winterton pointed out the shooting range way over to the left. ‘Wigmore’s changed the look of the targets for this evening. No more of those boring circles in different colours tonight. Now you can shoot at the face of Lloyd George on the left and Asquith on the right. Our host has had to replace them twice already they tell me, the targets shot to pieces.’

They had reached the lake now. Two imitation Venetian gondolas with closed compartments amidships were drifting slowly across the water towards the island in the centre. The noises coming out of one of them showed that they were fulfilling the same function they did on the waters of the basin of St Mark.

Behind the island was an enormous bonfire. ‘Two o’clock,’ said Winterton, ‘Wiggers is going to make a speech. I wonder if we should try the dancing in the meantime.’ London’s finest band was working its way through the waltzes of Strauss. Wigmore had apparently given orders that he wanted only waltzes on this night. The musicians were playing them faster and faster. A couple of handsome aristocrats took Selina off to the dance floor. Sandy thought the dancers were more abandoned than he had ever seen at a great party like this. Deep down, really deep down, perhaps they know, he thought. Tonight we dance. This morning we dance. At dawn we dance. Tomorrow our downfall begins.

Shortly before two a strange cart began to make its way towards the bonfire. There seemed to be some objects in the bottom but it was hard to make out what they were. The cart, Lord Winterton observed to nobody in particular, looked exactly like a tumbril, the conveyance used to transport the French aristocrats to the guillotine in the days of the Revolution and the Terror.

The band played on. The people inside the gondolas showed no sign of coming out. The traffic up in the servants’ quarters showed no sign of abating. But everybody else began to assemble round the bonfire, some holding bottles of champagne. To the left and right of the revellers the other great houses of Grosvenor Square and Park Lane stood dark and silent in the night. To the front, Hyde Park stretched out across a sleeping London towards Kensington and Notting Hill. The tumbril, pulled by two tall footmen, came to a stop at the side of the bonfire. In front of it two more footmen carried a large table and a set of steps. The crowd back at the dance floor began to open out like the waters of the Red Sea. A dark-haired aristocrat, dressed in the robes of a hereditary peer of the House of Lords, was making his way towards the bonfire.

‘Go for it, Wiggers!’

‘You tell them, Wigs!’

‘Hurrah for Wigmore!’

Lord Richard Peregrine Octavius Wigmore, one of the principal architects of the defeat of the Budget, was moving down his grounds to address his people. Sandy was right in front of the bonfire, standing close to Winterton. Selina was still being whirled round the dance floor by a handsome hussar with a scar on his left cheek, oblivious to bonfires and high politics. One of the footmen held the stairs steady while Wigmore climbed on to his table. You could never tell what a lot of champagne might do to a man, even if he was a lord. Wigmore tottered uncertainly towards the very front of the table. The two footmen appeared by his side as if by magic. Good servants will support their masters at all times and in all places. He banged his foot on the table. Gradually the crowd fell silent.

Wigmore raised his hands to the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘before I say a few words, I think we should give thanks to those who made this evening possible. I hope you will agree with me that our manner of giving thanks fits perfectly with their contributions to this occasion. Let us give thanks for the Welsh wizard’s greatest friend in politics, President of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill!’

Two of the enormous footmen pulled a guy, like those seen on Bonfire Night, out of the tumbril. The face of Churchill, at once babyish and devious, glowered from the top. The footmen held it aloft for a second or two to be inspected by the crowd. Then they hurled it into the bonfire where it flared up immediately. Sandy thought it must have been treated with petrol.

‘Our esteemed Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith!’ In went the incumbent of Number Ten Downing Street, the flames catching hold of the hairs on his head. Once again there were huge cheers from the crowd.

‘Finally, the man we have to thank for this evening and this celebration, our revered Chancellor, David Lloyd George!’

The loudest shouts so far shot up into the night sky of London where the stars were clear and bright. ‘Lloyd George! Burn him, burn him!’ the crowd shouted, waving their fists in the air. This went on for some time. Indeed Sandy thought it could have gone on for ever if Wigmore hadn’t called it off.

‘My friends,’ he went on, ‘I have been reading my history books to find a precedent for what has just happened in our great capital. It took me a long time. Marlborough’s triumphs, Wellington’s many victories over the French, even Nelson at Trafalgar did not seem appropriate to what the Lords did two days ago. I think we have to go back further than that and I think we have to take our greatest playwright with us.’ He paused. Sandy Temple, who had heard him often in the House of Lords, thought he was more eloquent in his own back garden than he had ever been speaking from the red benches.

He spoke very quietly when he resumed.

‘“This day is called the Feast of Crispian.”’ Silence had fallen over the great crowd. Even the revellers in the gondolas held their peace. ‘At Agincourt a small, dispirited English force defeated a larger, better equipped army of Frenchmen. The underdog triumphed as it did today. The people who bore the brunt of the fighting would never forget it.

‘And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition.’

All across the grass, from one end of the garden to the other, the revellers linked arms and swayed slowly in the night air. Wigmore was still speaking softly, resisting the temptations of the battlefield shout.

‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon St Crispin’s day.’

Lord Wigmore looked round his audience, still swaying like flowers in a spring breeze.

‘The band will cease playing at six o’clock. But I propose that we round off our evening in a fitting manner. Love of country, love of England underpinned everything we did today. Let us therefore all sing the National Anthem.’

For some reason the huge crowd took it fairly fast, unlike the funereal pace it was normally sung at. Sandy Temple thought they made it sound like the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’. As the crowd began to drift home he found that Selina was still dancing, her head resting on the shoulder of another young officer. Suddenly Sandy made an important discovery. This, he realized, was the world Selina wanted to live in, the world of London high society, of powerful men and powerful women, of salons and luncheon parties and extravagant dinners where politicians rubbed shoulders with great financiers and newspaper magnates and the new class of millionaires. She wanted to be a chatelaine in these high-flying gatherings. But for him? Sandy knew they were not for him, these evenings. At best he would be a sardonic observer. He would never belong. There could be no point in marrying Selina. They would only make each other unhappy. He took a last look at her waltzing in ecstasy round the floor and walked on through the atrium and out of the front door into the pale light of dawn filling the Mayfair morning. He would write to her this evening. Like Theseus, he had abandoned his Ariadne on the island, dancing the dances of the transported with the god Dionysus himself. All Sandy had to do now was to remember to change the sails.