Death in a Scarlet Coat

6

The drive and the gate lodges were well behind them when Powerscourt began to tell the Inspector the reason for his reticence with the inhabitants of Candlesby Hall.

‘I think there were two reasons, Inspector, for not showing our full hand at this stage. The first has to do with Dr Miller. I wouldn’t put it past them to send out another bullying expedition to make him change his mind. I wouldn’t want to put him through that again. He was shaking, literally shaking, when he told me what had happened about the death certificate. And the second reason is more diffuse. Assuming the doctor was telling the truth, and Charles Dymoke confirms some of it, we now know that they are all lying about what went on after Richard met Jack Hayward and they turned off the road into the stables. They don’t know that I have talked to Dr Miller and if I had divulged any of that information about the three of them bullying the doctor, they would know immediately where it came from. There was only one other person present, apart from them, after all. So we know they lied about who talked to the doctor; we know from Charles that they have been lying about the manner of the old man’s death. We don’t know who looked at the body. So, I think we have a slight advantage from withholding the fact that I talked to the doctor, though what we do with it for the moment I’m not altogether sure. I do wish we knew what killed the old man; it must have been something pretty unusual.’

A brief message was passed to Inspector Blunden when they arrived back at the police station. His face fell as he read it.

‘This is sad news, indeed, my lord,’ he told Powerscourt. ‘Dr Miller passed away this morning. Peaceful, they say it was, whatever that means.’

‘I’ll call at the house this afternoon,’ said Powerscourt. ‘He was brave at the end to tell us what really happened up at the Hall.’

‘I’m under instruction to report back to the Chief Constable on our return, my lord. Thank God he’s not here full time. He spends most of his working life making things impossible for the people up at headquarters in Lincoln. What should I tell him about the exhumation order? Do we try for it now or do we hold our fire? I think we have to get a coroner on side first.’

‘I’m going to have to read up about exhumations,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If my memory serves me, the family of the person to be exhumed have to give their agreement. That could be tricky. You could say, Inspector, that we’re reviewing our position at this stage. That should impress the Chief Constable, reviewing our position. Military people like him usually get mental images of troops being inspected on parade grounds, line after line of redcoats stretching to the far reaches of the drill square; you know what I mean.’

The Inspector smiled. ‘I’ll plant that thought, my lord, and we’ll see what answer comes back.’

Powerscourt resolved to contact Lady Lucy as soon as he could. He thought he might try an encircling movement on the Chief Constable. He was pensive as he walked over to Dr Miller’s house. Originally, he thought, there were three people who had seen the dead man’s face, three people who knew how he had died. Now one of them was dead. Another wouldn’t tell him the truth. And the third had disappeared off the face of the earth. Then he realized something else. He thought it possible, but not likely, that Richard, now the Earl of Candlesby, had killed his father. It just seemed an incredibly roundabout way of doing it – though that, of course, could have been planned to throw people off the scent. But if he hadn’t, then there was another person or persons who must have seen his face and his injuries before he died. The murderer or murderers. And Powerscourt had no idea at all who they might be or why they had killed him.

He was still wondering about what had happened to Candlesby’s face when he reached the doctor’s house. Mrs Baines opened the door.

‘Oh, it’s you, Lord Powerscourt. I expect you’ve heard the news.’

‘I have indeed, Mrs Baines. I’ve come to pay my respects.’

‘There’s only a son left of his family now, and he’s in Montana or one of those places in Australia. Or is it America? Five children the doctor had at one point, but four of them died. Doesn’t seem fair, does it, four of them being taken.’

‘Montana’s in America, Mrs Baines. Full of cowboys with big hats. Could I ask you a question about the doctor’s last hours?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did he have any visitors in the period after I left him?’

‘Funny you should say that, Lord Powerscourt; he did as a matter of fact. A gentleman called on him yesterday evening but the doctor wasn’t able to say anything sensible. I told the gentleman to come back in the morning but he said he could only manage the afternoon as he had business to attend to first thing.’

‘Did he leave his name, or a card or anything like that?’

‘No, he didn’t, but I’d know him anywhere. He had a great shock of red hair.’

When she looked back on it after Powerscourt had gone she felt sure from the look on his face that he had known perfectly well who the mysterious visitor was. But like the visitor himself, he hadn’t chosen to tell her.

Shortly after eleven o’clock the next morning a cab from the station deposited a visitor at Candlesby Hall. The newcomer took a quick glance at the front of the building and whistled softly to himself as if he had just worked out how much it would cost to repair. He was shown into the saloon where the new Earl was waiting to meet him. Another quick glance round the room seemed to add even greater sums to those already required outside.

‘Sowerby, my lord, Mark Sowerby, partner in Hopkins Pettigrew amp; Green, solicitors of Bedford Square, at your service.’

‘Sit down, do, Mr Sowerby. How kind of you to come so promptly. My father did a lot of business with your firm, I believe.’

‘That is indeed the case, my lord, and how fortunate we were to secure his custom.’

Mark Sowerby had that indefinable look about him that says people come from London. Maybe it was the sharpness of his clothes, on the fringes rather than at the centre of fashion. Maybe it was the eyes, forever darting from one place to the next as if greater business or greater beauty was just around the corner. Maybe it was the restlessness, the shifting about as though anxious to be aboard the next train back to the capital. He had small rather mean eyes and a sharp nose.

‘I told you in my letter, Mr Sowerby, about my father’s death and the fact that we have had a Detective Inspector round here with a private investigator in tow.’

‘You did indeed, my lord. Would you have a name for the investigating gentleman?’

‘Powerscourt, Mr Sowerby, Lord Francis Powerscourt.’

Sowerby let out another of his low whistles. ‘He’s got a very fine reputation, my lord, that Powerscourt. I wonder if we could pay him to go away.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean, Mr Sowerby. Pay him to go away?’

‘Sometimes, my lord,’ Sowerby was now leaning forward in his best man-of-the-world manner, ‘we find that if they are paid by us more than they have been promised by the other party, they drop the case. After the payment has been made, of course.’

Richard stared sadly at one of the holes in his carpet. ‘I’m not sure that would work,’ he said. ‘I’ll think about it.’ He didn’t like to tell the lawyer from London that he would find it difficult to lay his hands on sums large enough to change an investigator’s mind.

‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves, my lord,’ Sowerby was rubbing his hands together now, ‘as often happens when lawyer and client strike up an immediate rapport. Now then,’ he pulled a dark blue notebook from his breast pocket, ‘why don’t you tell me exactly what happened at the time of your father’s death. It helps if we can begin with the truth. Then you can tell me what you told the police. Don’t worry if they’re not the same, my lord. That’s usually why people call us in.’

Richard told him the truth first of all. He realized that he had given so many different accounts of what happened that morning that he wasn’t sure what the truth was any more. Sowerby wrote it all down. Then Richard filled him in on what he had said to the police and to Powerscourt. He didn’t mention what had happened to his father’s face. He did tell him that the groom Jack Hayward who had brought the body up the road to the Hall had disappeared.

Sowerby stopped writing with a flourish of his pen, which he returned ostentatiously to his pocket.

‘Good! Excellent, I’d say! Couple of points, my lord. Did the police and the investigating man ask if you had killed your father?’

Richard shook his head.

‘Right, my lord.’ Sowerby sounded like a man on home ground now, one who had handled many similar cases in his time. ‘One or two things occur to me. The first has to do with your brothers. Something in the way you told their story makes me think you don’t trust them very much. So, keep them away from the police at all costs. The second has to do with the man Hayward. Did you have anything to do with his disappearance, my lord? Don’t worry, I shan’t be upset and I’m certainly not going to the police.’

Richard remained silent.

‘I’ll take that for a yes, my lord. Never fear. Let me just say that if he is coming back, I think it’s probably best if the date of return is a long time away. And I think you should check with us before you bring Hayward back again. Then there’s the death certificate, which you said was false. Do you know if that doctor – Miller, did you say his name was? – told anybody else about what he saw?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t suppose that the Powerscourt person might have got to him in the meantime, my lord?’

‘I don’t think it’s likely. Anyway, the doctor died yesterday morning. He was very old. He can’t cause any more trouble where he’s gone.’

‘No, indeed, my lord. Thank goodness for that!’

Sowerby took a brief inspection of his tattered surroundings once more. He wondered if his client had killed the doctor as he believed he had killed his father.

‘There’s just one thing I should mention, my lord. It shouldn’t happen, but it’s as well to be prepared.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If Hayward spills the beans, or if Dr Miller did speak to somebody before he died, there’ll be calls for an inquest and probably an exhumation; that’s when they dig up the body and get a pathologist to examine it.’ He noted the horror on Richard’s face and couldn’t work out whether it was caused by the unpleasantness of the exhumation or what it might reveal.

‘I don’t think we want to dig up the body, my lord, do we?’ Richard shook his head. ‘We’ve got people back in the office in Bedford Square who have stopped more exhumations and post-mortems than I’ve had fish suppers. All members of the family are supposed to agree for a start. That should stop proceedings once and for all. But if you hear anything about a pending exhumation, let us know at once. At once, I say. It could be crucial.’

‘One question, Mr Sowerby, if I may. Do I have to speak to the police when they come, or can I simply refuse to talk to them?’

‘For the present, my lord, I think you should see them.’ Sowerby thought his client was worried about incriminating himself. ‘If they really come at you time after time, trying to find inconsistencies in your story, then you can accuse them of harassment. And, of course, don’t forget that you can call on me or one of my colleagues to come and sit in on the interviews. Won’t do the police any harm to have to wait until we get here.’

As Sowerby was driven away he was observed from the stables by Charles, who had overheard the introductions up at the Hall. ‘B-b-bloody lawyer,’ he said softly to the nearest horse. ‘I’ll have to tell Lord P-p-powerscourt all about him.’

‘So how is the Palace of Westminster these days?’ Lady Lucy was entertaining her cousin’s daughter Selina and her young man Sandy, who worked for The Times, to tea in Markham Square.

‘I think it manages to rub along all right, Lady Powerscourt,’ said the young man, sipping politely at his Earl Grey. ‘It’s never completely quiet, mind you, or else there would be nothing for me and my colleagues to write about.’

‘I took Sandy shopping this morning, Aunt Lucy,’ said Selina. ‘I advised him on a couple of shirts.’

Lady Lucy was not at all sure of the propriety in polite society about young ladies advising young gentlemen on the purchase of clothes. At least it had been shirts. It could have been worse, much worse. Indeed, Lady Lucy, so relaxed with her own children, found the whole business of being an aunt rather difficult. She felt that she asked far too many questions about where the girl had been and with whom she had been consorting, but some of the young men hanging around the great London art galleries thought that rules were there to be broken and that manners only existed to be flouted.

Sandy looked rather embarrassed about the shirt-buying expedition. Not for the first time Lady Lucy wondered if Selina wasn’t too forward, too pushy. She thought Sandy seemed to be quite a shy young man and might prefer a quieter sort of girl. She had mentioned this thought to her husband, who told her not to be ridiculous, that Sandy was perfectly capable of looking after his own interests and wouldn’t continue his liaison with Selina if he didn’t want to.

‘I tell you something that will interest your husband as well as yourself, Lady Powerscourt.’ She rather approved the addition of ‘as well as yourself’ to the sentence. It showed Sandy thought pretty fast.

‘And what might that be?’ she said, smiling.

‘You remember the Earl who died up there in Lincolnshire the other day? The one whose death is being investigated by your husband?’

‘The Earl of Candlesby,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘and what a strange way to go. Do you have any special information you’d like to pass on to my husband?’

‘I think it’s more interesting to me than it will be to him,’ said Sandy, ‘but let me tell you about it anyway. The old Earl, the dead one, he never set foot in the House of Lords in his life. There are backwoodsmen and backwoodsmen in that place if you follow me. Sometimes the Whips can drag some of them kicking and screaming down to the Palace of Westminster to vote in an important division. But the real backwoodsmen won’t even do that. It’s a mark of shame to them ever to go to London to vote at all. So they sit in their remote castles and their leaking houses until they die. My information concerns the new Earl, whose name is Richard.’

‘And what does this Richard propose to do?’ asked Selina, feeling that she had been left out of the conversation for too long.

‘He’s going to take his seat in the House of Lords as soon as he is allowed. And then he’s going to join the fight against Lloyd George and his Budget. I’ve bored everybody rigid with my stories about the battle between the government and the House of Lords about this Budget, but the Conservatives in the Lords are delighted to have a new recruit and one who isn’t too old. Youth is always at a premium in the House of Lords. You know, people who can stand up unaided, walk without sticks, eat with their own teeth, that sort of thing.’

‘How do you know this, Sandy?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘It’s quite simple really. People sometimes think reporters are far smarter than they really are. I wrote to him, and he wrote back. That’s all. He sounded very excited about joining the House of Lords.’

‘You make it sound as if he was joining the Garrick Club or the Carlton or one of those places,’ said Selina.

‘I’m not sure there’s that much difference, really – institutional smell of cooking and carbolic and floor polish, awful school food all round,’ said Sandy. ‘The House of Lords is very similar to the Garrick or the Carlton. Lots of old boys asleep in the library after lunch. Terrible hunting prints all over the walls.’

Lady Lucy was about to reply when the conversation was interrupted by a slight coughing noise at the door. It was Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, recently promoted to chauffeur in the Silver Ghost. Rhys always coughed before entering a room.

‘Telegram, my lady,’ he said, in a voice that might have been announcing the death of the sovereign.

‘Need your help,’ she read. ‘Not often I ask this. Maybe first time. Could be record.’ Do get on with it, Francis, she said to herself with a smile. ‘Do you have any relations in south Lincolnshire? Preferably grand ones who know Earls etc. When found, please come to Candlesby Arms. New cook. Better food. Bring Ghost. Bring JF. Bring Rhys. Love, Francis.’

Translating this, Lucy realized the main thing her husband wanted, apart from herself and the car and Johnny Fitzgerald, was a way into county society in the area round Candlesby. Her relations, and distant bells were already ringing in her mind about a second cousin married to a baronet who lived in a manor house near Great Steeping, would not have to provide entertainment or any of the delights of society. Wittingly or unwittingly, their job would be to provide Lucy and her husband with murder suspects.

Inspector Blunden reported to Powerscourt the following morning that there was still no decision from the Chief Constable about applying for an exhumation. ‘This is so typical of the man, my lord,’ the Inspector reported. ‘He’ll have been sidetracked by some other crime somewhere else. I’ve heard there was a great robbery at the Bishop’s Palace up in Lincoln in the past few days. He’s probably showing himself off up there, getting in the way of the investigating officers, poking his way around in the private rooms and throwing his weight around with the Dean and Chapter. What I don’t understand, my lord, is how he ever managed to win a battle. He couldn’t have kept his concentration for long enough. He’d have wanted to bring the cavalry back before they’d even reached the front.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘You will remember, I’m sure, Inspector, the story of Nelson raising the telescope to his blind eye at the battle of Copenhagen so he couldn’t read the signal that told him to end the fighting. He went on, as you know, to win the engagement. Battles are mostly won in spite of, rather than because of, the orders of the commanders. I seem to recall that the Chief Constable only fought one battle and he only won that because the natives ran away before a shot was fired.’

‘To listen to him,’ said the Inspector sourly, ‘you’d think he’d been successful at Blenheim and Talavera and Gettysburg and one or two more. Only a day or so to go before the King invites him to have a triumph through the streets of London.’

‘Are you going to hold off making inquiries until there is some definite news about the exhumation?’

‘Yes and no, my lord. I’m not going to make any inquiries into a possible murder. But I am going to make inquiries into the disappearing Jack Hayward and his family. If we could find that man and talk to him properly we’d be a long way to solving the mystery, if you ask me.’

‘Good luck in your inquiries, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m just going on a fishing expedition to Horncastle. To see the editor and chief reporter of the Horncastle Standard. Maybe they can provide us with a couple of murder suspects.’

Powerscourt’s first impression of James Roper, the editor of the Horncastle Standard, was that he had one of the longest beards he had ever seen. It was black and very thick and seemed to be an even more massive structure than the one sported by the earlier Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. He looked to be in his middle forties with bloodshot eyes and a right hand almost permanently wrapped round a tumbler full of a pale brown liquid which Powerscourt presumed to be brandy.

‘Care to join me?’ he boomed, shaking Powerscourt vigorously by the hand. ‘Medicinal, you know. Doctor man recommends brandy in small but regular doses. Never asked me when I start, mind you. He might think’ – Roper checked a large clock on the wall – ‘that ten to twelve is a little soon into the gallops. Never mind. Let me introduce young Rufus here, our chief reporter, Rufus Kershaw.’

Rufus was certainly young. Powerscourt didn’t think this slip of a lad could be more than twenty-five, his slim features, lack of a beard and clear brown eyes a mighty contrast to his superior.

‘Please don’t look at me like that, Lord Powerscourt,’ the young man said with a smile. ‘I am nearly twenty-six years old, you know. And I have been a reporter on this paper for the past nine years. That’s a very long time, nine years. And it’s amazing how much more people will tell me because they think they’re only talking to a boy.’

‘Now then, my lord,’ Roper was refilling his glass with great care from an enormous decanter, ‘may I ask what is the purpose of your visit here?’

‘It is very simple,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but could I ask first of all that our conversation is off the record for now? It may be that the position will change over time – we shall see. Let me explain what brings me to Lincolnshire. I have been asked to look into the death of the last Lord Candlesby. Sorry to sound obstructive but are you gentlemen happy to be off the record for the present?’

There was a short glance and a quick nod between the newspapermen.

‘We have a story about that affair ready to appear in our next edition tomorrow,’ said Roper. ‘Young Rufus here had better tell you about it; he wrote the story after all. And assume that we are all off the record.’

‘I had heard you were here, my lord,’ said Rufus. ‘I bumped into one of Inspector Blunden’s men on the way to interview one of the hunt officials. I think they told me more than they told him, mind you, seeing I’ve talked to most of them a couple of times or more in the past few years.’

Powerscourt felt his card was being marked, very delicately, but marked all the same. He smiled at the young man.

‘Did you draw any conclusions from your interviews, Mr Kershaw? Anything firm? Anything meaningful?’

‘My very first boss, my lord, was forever asking if certain stories would make “a meaningful piece”,’ the young man said. ‘It makes me smile to this day to think of the phrase.’ He paused for a moment and whipped a notebook out of his pocket. ‘I think it’s all very clear, this story, up to a certain point. There’s the hunt milling around the front of Candlesby Hall. There are the servants handing round the stirrup cup, little conversations full of hope for the new hunting season. The Master is late but the Master is often late. It is cold and the breath of horses and hunters is making vapour trails in the air.’

Powerscourt wondered if the last phrase would get past the sub-editor’s pen.

‘So far, so good. Then the picture grows dimmer. There is a horse, led by the chief groom, Jack Hayward, with a body across it. The body is covered with a couple of blankets. Quite soon, I don’t yet know how soon, everybody gathers that the corpse is that of the Master of the Hunt and Earl of Candlesby. The death party turn off into the stables. Beyond that nothing is clear. The doctor is summoned. Jack Hayward and his family disappear the next day or the day after. Various outsiders begin to appear: yourself, my lord, the Chief Constable, a shady legal gentleman from a firm of solicitors in Bedford Square. The cabbie who drove him from the station to the Hall told me that, my lord. Man gave the cabbie his card in case he ever needed the best legal advice. Silly man! Most of the local cabbies go to Campbell Moreton amp; Marsh in the High Street here. Cheaper than Bedford Square, I’m sure.’

‘Does your article come to any conclusions, Mr Kershaw?’ Powerscourt observed out of the corner of his eye that a giant’s refill was being poured very carefully into the editor’s glass.

‘Please call me Rufus,’ said the young man. ‘I feel very old if you call me Mr Kershaw. No, I most certainly did not come to any conclusions for the simple reason that I didn’t have any. I still don’t have any. Do you, my lord? Have any conclusions, I mean?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Powerscourt. ‘May I ask you, were you aware that Dr Miller, the doctor in attendance on the dead man, is also dead? Mind you, he was very old.’

‘Do you think there was anything suspicious about his demise?’ So far the editor’s brain seemed untouched by his brandy intake.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but let me try to move our conversation in a slightly different direction, if I may. I have been asked to investigate the death of the late Lord Candlesby. The person who asked me is certain it was murder. Therefore, I ask myself, is there anything in the man’s past that could have led to his death? So I come to ask you gentlemen for your advice and counsel.’

Rufus Kershaw wrote something very suddenly in his book. The editor lifted his gaze from his decanter to Powerscourt’s face.

‘Now I see, Lord Powerscourt, now I see what you have come for. Well, I’m sure we can give you a few clues. Rufus, could you begin with the most recent story that might be relevant?’

‘Yes, sir. I presume you are referring to the suicide of Lady Flavia Melville last summer. This, my lord, was a most frustrating story. You may think it is difficult to find out the truth about the body that joins the hunt. Well, it was even more difficult with this one. There is, I think, one rule that used to hold but no longer does. Its day may have passed already, I don’t know. Certainly I don’t think it’ll last another ten years. And this rule is that servants don’t talk. They may talk to the police in confidence but they won’t appear in court in case they lose their job or their house or their farm or all three together. In the Lady Melville case they must have said something but who it was or to whom it was said we still don’t know. I have to tell you, my lord, that I am trying my hand at fictional short stories. I have had two published so far in The Strand Magazine and I hope for further success in the future. But I firmly believe that my account of the Lady Melville affair still owes more to fiction than to fact.’

‘Bestir yourself with the bloody story, Rufus,’ growled his editor. ‘Some of us have to go to press later on.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the young man. He paused for a moment or two before he resumed. ‘Not far from here, between Candlesby Hall and the coast at Skegness, lies the estate of Sir Arthur Melville, Baronet, with a fine Elizabethan manor house and many thousands of acres. Last summer he would have been fifty-seven years old. They say, how shall I put it, my lord, that he was never at the top of the class, Sir Arthur. He spent many years in the military before rising to the rank of captain, but beyond that, he never progressed. Anyway, back to this fairy story mansion of his. Last Easter he brought a bride home at last, a widow in her early thirties called Mrs Flavia von Humboldt, previously married to a German philosophy professor in Tubingen who dropped down dead in the university library next to the complete works of Aristotle. History does not recall what kind of existence she led in the confines of her German university – Kant and Nietzsche for lunch perhaps and Hobbes and Locke for supper – but it cannot have been proper preparation for life in Lincolnshire. She grew bored. Her eyes began to stray. Perhaps the fifty-seven-year-old was equally ill equipped for married life on England’s east coast. After all, the hill station and the club and the punkah wallah do not translate happily to Lincolnshire. Anyway Flavia began a passionate affair with Lord Candlesby. They did not seem to care who knew. Discretion went out of the window along with common sense. The husband did not know. He thought they were riding together or inspecting horses when they were, in fact, engaged on other, rather more private recreations. All through the summer it went on, and into the autumn.

‘They forgot one thing, the lovers, or they ignored it, and it probably did for them in the end. Because of her married name, von Humboldt, the locals thought she was German. Well might she tell all and sundry that she was christened Flavia Witherspoon in Margate, they didn’t believe her. People on this side of the country, my lord, are even more hostile to the Germans than they would be in Cornwall or the south-west.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Closer, that’s why. I mean the Germans are closer. They could reach Skegness a damn sight quicker than they could invade Weston Super Mare. Anyway, the precise timetable gets a bit vague at this point but the sequence of events seems to go as follows. One day somebody sends Flavia copies of half the love letters she’s ever written to John, Lord Candlesby. The next day they send him copies of half the letters he’s sent to her. People say she was distraught and that Lord Candlesby told her to keep calm. Nothing happened in the letter-sending department on the third day. But on the fourth day the somebody, presumably the same somebody, probably a servant, sends all the love letters, all hers to him, all his to her, to Sir Arthur. They were timed to coincide with breakfast. It was said Sir Arthur swept a whole sideboard of dishes on to the floor in one single movement – kidneys, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding, fried bread, kedgeree, kippers, all felled by a baronet’s fury. When she tried to apologize he told her that he was going to ruin her reputation by dragging her through the divorce courts. Even an Indian untouchable, he shouted at her, wouldn’t go near her when he’d finished with her. Then he shouted some more insults after her – no better than a Whitechapel whore, Jack the Ripper too good for her, that sort of stuff. Sometime that afternoon she took an overdose of her husband’s sleeping pills. She knew where they were. Then she walked into the sea. Her body was washed up weeks later near Hunstanton. Poor Sir Arthur! Married, cuckolded and widowed inside a year. People say that he blames Lord Candlesby for everything, leading his wife astray, disgracing her till she had to commit suicide. Sometimes, it is reported, but I have no means of knowing if it’s true, he can be heard late at night in his cups, shouting from his balustrade that he’ll kill that Candlesby one of these days, you see if he doesn’t.’

‘What a terrible story,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Is he still drinking a lot, poor man?’

‘He is, I believe,’ said James Roper, senior representative present of the drinking fraternity, ‘but you can certainly see why Sir Arthur might want to kill the Earl. Now then, young Rufus, do you want to tell the duel story, or shall I?’

‘Duels?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I thought they’d gone out years ago with Canning and Castlereagh in the 1820s.’

‘Nothing ever goes out, as you put it, up here in Lincolnshire. This is the land time forgot. You know about la France Profonde, Lord Powerscourt? This is l’Angleterre Profonde, up here with the winds and the sand and the cold fury of the North Sea. Let me tell the duel story; it’ll be a lot shorter than the first one.’