Death in a Scarlet Coat

by David Dickinson

  ‘I’d have been here hours earlier, my dears, except some b-b-beastly p-p-porter lost my luggage. So tiresome! Tell me about the arrangements, p-pray. Is Father going to be buried in that divine mausoleum on the hill? I do hope the vicar is going to show up in his finest vestments, lots of p-p-purple rather than that drab grey he seems to wear most of the time. I’ve always thought it would be worth dying if one could be laid to rest in the mausoleum.’

  ‘Do shut up, Charles.’ Richard was rather enjoying the role of paterfamilias. ‘We should all go in to dinner. It’ll be the first time all five of us have been together for years. Who knows, maybe it’ll be the last.’

  The St Michael and All Angels choir’s performance of Handel’s Messiah began exactly on time. The vicar was conducting now, and the headmaster of the local school was in charge of the organ. The choir was about sixty strong with a surprising number of young people in the ranks. Powerscourt wondered if the vicar had worked hard at this element of his team so the choir would become known as a promising place to meet members of the opposite sex.

  ‘Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill laid low.’

  ‘And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’

  Tenor and bass, soprano and alto, full choir – all took their turn to drive the music on. Powerscourt, after two solos near the beginning, was not needed to sing on his own for some time.

  ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain …’

  The choir was growing in confidence as the evening progressed. When they reached the chorus, ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,’ it was as if they had forgotten the audience and the organ and the church and the vicar and were communing directly with Georg Friedrich Handel himself.

  Then it was Lady Lucy’s turn.

  ‘There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.’

  Suddenly Powerscourt remembered where he had heard her sing like this before. It had been the previous year, in France, and they had gone to visit an ancient Cistercian abbey south of Bourges called Abbaye de Noirlac. It was a beautiful summer’s day and the site was virtually deserted. The ancient abbey with its enormous nave was completely empty. Lady Lucy, he remembered, had gone to stand where the monks would have stood centuries before. She sang ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’, the same aria that she would sing later this evening near the end of the Messiah. Her voice had filled the huge church. It came out clean and clear and soared around the space, like liquid gold being poured into a phial, or a goblet of perfect Chassagne Montrachet glittering and winking in its glass in the sunshine. Powerscourt had stood perfectly still, tears running down his face, until some fresh visitors arrived and Lady Lucy’s concert came to a sudden end. Her voice had the same clarity tonight.

  Powerscourt looked around the church once more. The Lord Lieutenant of the County with his sword was in the front row beside the Bishop in his purple. The local MP was here. People said his wife was very fond of music. The citizens of Candlesby and the surrounding villages were out in force. This church is England, Powerscourt said to himself. England’s dead of centuries past are buried here. The buildings have survived the change of rule from a crimson cardinal and a choleric Henry the Eighth to a queen who burnt heretics at the stake and later kings who cared not for religion at all. Candlesby has lived through Civil War and Restoration and the loss of the American colonies. The church bells above me, Powerscourt thought, will have rung for the defeat of the Armada and the victories of Malplaquet and Trafalgar. The latest casualties of Britannia’s wars have just had their own memorial built, to those who died in the Boer War. There are other Englands, of course, he said to himself, the daily throng marching across London Bridge to work in the city of London, the workers toiling in some huge factory in Manchester or Bolton, the crowds at one of the great race meetings, the Derby or the Oaks, the sailors on some modern warship of the Royal Navy, patrolling the cold dark waters of the North Sea to keep their country safe. There were so many Englands, he thought. Suddenly he realized that he had lost his place in his score and that he was going to have to sing again quite soon. The vicar sent him a secret smile as if to say it’s all right to dream dreams every now and then.

  The audience had fallen very still. The Hallelujah Chorus was upon them, an aria as glorious for those who sing it as for those who hear it. ‘Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’

  It was Easter time when I sang this before in Ireland, Powerscourt remembered, and the daffodils were all out round the edge of the lawns and that soft light of Ireland made everything look magical, as if the dream of that great house between the mountains and the sea would last for ever.

  ‘The Kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.’

  Some of the audience had closed their eyes. The boys and the men, Powerscourt noticed, had their eyes firmly fixed on a small group of very pretty girls, deployed by the vicar in the front row of the choir. One middle-aged lady, dressed entirely in black, in the fourth row of the congregation was weeping uncontrollably, tears rolling down on to the stone floor. Maybe the last time she had been to the Messiah had been with a loved one, a lost husband perhaps, a dead child.

  ‘And he shall reign for ever and ever, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.’

  The vicar was a vigorous sort of conductor, not one of those minimal ones who make the smallest possible movement to attract the attention of choir or orchestra. His arms moved in great arcs, as if he were sending semaphore messages to the back row. Way above him a couple of gargoyles, merchants or masons perhaps at the time the church was built, stared down at the proceedings, their mouths wide open for evermore.

  ‘For ever and ever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hall-e-lujah.’

  Powerscourt had always wondered why the Hallelujah Chorus wasn’t the last aria in the Messiah. But it was Lady Lucy’s turn now to sing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’, which she did with the same conviction she had brought to it in that French abbey a year before.

  Then it was all over and everybody made their way back to Mr Drake’s hotel for refreshments. Powerscourt found himself talking to an elderly medical man who told him proudly that he had attended on the death of the Earl of Candlesby that very morning. The doctor was fascinated to hear that Powerscourt was an investigator with a long track record in solving murders and mysteries. He insisted, Dr Miller, on writing down Powerscourt’s address very carefully in his little black book.

  Up at Candlesby Hall the candles were still lit in the dining room. It was harder to see the cracks in the walls in the dark. It was very late. Only Henry and Edward were left – the others had all retired for the night. One decanter of port stood in front of them; another was waiting in the wings. Their eldest brother Richard had left a bell on the table for them to ring if they became incapable of making their way up the stairs on their own and needed help to get to bed.

  ‘Can you guess what I would like to know more than anything?’ There was a pause while Edward hunted the thought down in his brain. ‘What killed the old bugger. Can’t have been anything normal. Not the way they all carried on. Not gunshot. Not sword or spear. Not blunt object. What the hell was it?’

  Henry stared intently at his brother and poured himself another glass of port. They were using extra large glasses this evening.

  ‘Tha’s a good question,’ he said, slurring his words slightly. ‘Very good question.’ He too paused until his mind stopped spinning and came to rest on a new theory.

  ‘Not human at all,’ Edward managed. ‘What killed him, I mean. Wild thing. Animal. Mystery beast. Hiding in the forest since Hereward the Wake or whatever his name was. Lethal bite. Huge claws.’

  ‘That’s good. Oh yes, that’s good. Couldn’t
have put it better myself. Picture the scene. Papa on foot. Lincolnshire monster feels peckish. Long time since breakfast. Leans forward to seize Papa.’ As Henry leant forward in the manner of the monster he found he couldn’t stop. He collapsed face forward into the table. Edward rang the bell

  3

  The next day the Silver Ghost was restored to health and the Powerscourts continued on their way. Mr Drake of the Candlesby Arms insisted that they could stay at his hotel for the rest of their lives for nothing. The vicar gave them God’s blessing and promised to send advance notice of the next recital. He had, he told them confidentially, already ordered the sheet music for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. They caught a brief glimpse on their way north of the Candlesby mausoleum, a tall, circular neoclassical building perched on a little hill that looked rather like a lighthouse, illuminating the journeys of the dead on their voyage to another world.

  Two days after that, their mission to witness the christening of one of Lady Lucy’s relations’ newborn baby in Lincoln Cathedral complete, they were heading back to London. Their family in Markham Square had recently received a temporary addition, in the person of the daughter of one of Lady Lucy’s sisters from Scotland. Selina Hamilton was twenty years old with bright blue eyes, curly blonde hair and a figure that could have advertised clothes in the women’s magazines. She had cut a swathe through the young men of Melrose and Hawick and the neighbouring villages in the Scottish Borders. They might have fallen for her, but she did not fall for them. A world where the height of fame was an appearance for Scotland on the rugby pitch, the summit of ambition for the local young men, was not enough for her. There might have been thirty players on the field but Selina’s heart did not miss a beat for any of them. Her father was a respectable solicitor and her mother had brought up Selina and her sisters. They were good people, her parents, pillars of the local community, devoted patrons of local charities for the poor and destitute. But Selina wanted a broader stage. She felt she needed wider horizons than the Rugby Club dances and the Mothers’ Union. Glory and glitter and glamour were in her mind, evenings spent at fashionable soirées where the wealthy young men would fall for her beauty, weekends spent in unimaginable luxury at the country houses of England.

  Selina had, in theory, come south to improve her mind at the great art galleries of London. She had already enlisted for an evening class in art appreciation at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lady Lucy suspected that the real reason for her sojourn in the south was a young man called Sandy Temple she had met at an exhibition in Edinburgh. He worked for The Times in Parliament, Selina’s young man, writing reports of the day’s debates and occasional comment pieces on recent political developments. Selina dreamt that his proximity to the great world of politics and power would, in due course, reap a rich harvest of invitations.

  Sandy was a son of the vicarage. His father, William Temple, had an adequate living in Chalfont St Giles, or rather it would have been adequate if he had not fathered so many children. Sandy had eleven sisters and one brother. Such money as could be saved with so many to feed and clothe had gone on his education at Winchester and Oxford. Mindful of his family responsibilities like a dutiful son, he sent regular subventions from his salary back to his mother in the country. Sandy was obsessed with politics. He always had been. His first lessons had come studying the debasement of Athenian democracy during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and the fights to the death that disfigured and destroyed the last days of the Roman Republic. When he said his prayers, which he usually managed a couple of times a week, he always remembered to thank God for giving him such a perfect job. For political obsessives, working in the Parliamentary and Political Department of The Times was to work in your very own corner of paradise. He didn’t think Selina realized just how important his position was.

  Sandy had been invited to tea twice in Markham Square, and on neither occasion had the hostess managed to be present in person. Family emergencies had detained Lady Lucy elsewhere. Now, as the Silver Ghost ate up the miles and her husband could not escape to his study or his club, Lady Lucy seized her moment.

  ‘Francis,’ she said, in that tone of voice that indicates an important topic is about to be broached.

  ‘Yes, my love,’ said Powerscourt, wondering what was coming.

  ‘You know that young man Selina is friendly with, Sandy is he called, the one who works for The Times?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been wondering, you see – I’ve only met him for a minute or two as I had to go out when he called. What did you think of him? You must have spent much more time with him than I have.’

  Powerscourt could see it all now. This was in the nature of a scouting mission, a preliminary report to be posted to Selina’s mother about the young man, later despatches to follow at regular intervals rather like the publication of the Court Circular in The Times.

  ‘Well, Lucy,’ he began, deciding that he wasn’t going to make life too easy for her as he rather liked the young man, ‘what do you want to know?’

  ‘Come along, you know precisely what I want to know. What’s he like, this Sandy? Can he handle himself in society? Does he know how to behave or he is one of these aesthetes with very strange clothes and even stranger manners you see sometimes these days?’

  ‘You know what he looks like: six feet tall, light brown hair, blue eyes, dresses rather older than his years but that may be because he works in the Palace of Westminster. Manages to eat with knife and fork and spoon like the rest of us. Educated, I believe, at Winchester and Merton College, Oxford, where he claims to have spent more time on the river than in the library but still managed to collect a first class honours degree in Greats. Maybe it’s all that time on the river, but it’s hard to imagine him getting overexcited about anything. He seems languid, but I suspect he could move pretty fast if he had to.’

  ‘You’re talking as if you’re writing his obituary, Francis. What’s he really like?’

  Powerscourt pulled out to overtake a couple of cyclists. He felt his defences were being worn down.

  ‘He’s fascinated by politics, my love, the way other people are by form on the turf or the football scores. Sandy can tell you who’s up and who’s down across the main political parties the way other people could report on the batsmen in form by reading the cricket reports. He’s obsessed by Lloyd George’s Budget at the moment. He’s got some rather unusual views on the matter.’

  ‘Is he some sort of revolutionary person? I don’t think Selina’s family would approve of that.’

  ‘He’s not a revolutionary man, Lucy. I’m not quite sure what his politics are, to be precise. You remember this Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George proposing higher taxes on the rich to pay for more battleships and old age pensions for the poor? It’s become a real bone of contention, with the rich in the House of Lords saying their way of life is being destroyed and that they’ll fight to the death to stop the Budget becoming law. One day when Sandy was talking about it in Markham Square he began to quote great chunks from a speech Lloyd George had made months before in Limehouse in the East End, about the rights of the poor. Sandy said it was one of the finest speeches he’d ever heard.’

  ‘Is he a supporter of Lloyd George, then? He’s not exactly one of us, is he? Lloyd George, I mean.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Powerscourt, changing into top gear as a long straight section of road opened up in front of them, ‘but I don’t think Sandy is a supporter of any of them. He just likes watching the sport. I do know he thinks Lloyd George is the future, not necessarily Lloyd George in person, but people like him. He believes they’ll have to go on widening the franchise until everybody adult has the vote so men of the people rather than aristocrats and people in the upper classes can become Prime Minister. Oh, and he thinks the landowning classes are finished, done for. It all comes down to Rhys the butler in the end.’

  ‘Our Rhys the butler, Francis?’

  ‘Our Rhys the butler.’r />
  ‘What about Rhys the butler? This isn’t some sort of parlour game, is it?’

  ‘No, I’m deadly serious, Lucy. There is a question, mind you. Should Rhys the butler have the vote?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I suppose I think he should have the vote. So should I, mind you.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Another thing Sandy’s very keen on is the decline of the landed interest. Possession of broad acres now in England brings very narrow returns financially or politically. The link between land – I think he’s quite original on this point – and political power is gone and will never return. Or so Sandy says.’

  ‘Do you think we’re doomed, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy with a smile. ‘Bound to disappear under the rising proletarian tide and the onward march of the militant suffragettes?’

  ‘I don’t think we’re doomed, Lucy. Not for a moment. There will always be one or two survivors left, clinging to the wreckage and complaining that things aren’t what they used to be.’

  Three days later, shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon, the vicar and the choir led the way out of the Church of St Nicholas in the Candlesby estate towards the bridge over the lake to the mausoleum where Arthur George Harold John Nathaniel Dymoke was to rest for evermore. At the very front of the little procession was the curate from the neighbouring parish, carrying a cross. Then came the vicar and the choir. Behind the choir came four black horses with black plumes pulling the coffin, then the family, then the friends and neighbours with the senior servants bringing up the rear. It was a family tradition that the body of a dead Earl was brought to the church for the funeral service from the Hall on a roundabout route that went through Candlesby village, past Candlesby school and on into St Nicholas. The tradition said that the shops would close, wreaths would line the route, and the villagers stand in respectful silence, caps or bonnets in hand, as the hearse passed by. The schoolchildren would congregate in a great block by their gates and watch the coffin on its journey. On this day the village seemed to be empty. No villagers were lining the streets, no wreaths were propped up on windows, no children were waiting to stare at the last Lord Candlesby who had controlled their family fortunes for so long. The servants were the only people walking behind the coffin on this part of the route and they resolved not to tell their new master that the coffin of the old one had passed through a deserted village. They dreaded to think what form of terrible revenge he might exact.