Death in a Scarlet Coat

by David Dickinson

  His brothers ate an enormous breakfast in the dining room. He, Richard, was too nervous to eat. If things went wrong today, there could be a great deal of trouble. He had taken the precaution the afternoon before of writing to his father’s lawyers in London requesting a visit. ‘Bunch of crooks really,’ – he remembered his father’s verdict on Hopkins Pettigrew & Green, HP & G for short – ‘lawyers are meant to interpret law for the authorities; HP & G see their job as protecting the individual from the authorities and the law. No matter what crimes you commit – child snatching, robbery, fraud, embezzlement, the normal weaknesses of the aristocracy – they’ll see it as their job to get you off. Probably do the same for murder, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Between half past eight and half past nine Richard put Edward and Henry through their paces. He stopped well before the visit of the policeman and the investigator in case his pupils became so over-rehearsed that they sounded like automata. He arranged a space for the meeting in the saloon and opened a couple of windows so that anybody walking outside, or sitting on a bench, might just be able to hear what was being said on the floor above. If they cared to listen, of course.

  Detective Inspector Blunden had secured a small carriage from the police pool to take himself and Powerscourt to Candlesby Hall.

  ‘I have bad news, my lord,’ were his first words after the morning pleasantries were over. Powerscourt raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

  ‘You will remember we talked about a man, or the man, who brought the horse and the corpse up to the Hall on the day of the death?’

  ‘I do, of course,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘My contacts in the hunt told me yesterday that the man was called Jack Hayward, senior groom to the household, widely respected by all for his tact and his knowledge of horses.’

  ‘And?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘It’s just this, my lord. Jack Hayward has vanished off the face of the earth. Nobody can remember seeing him after that day when he brought his dead master up to his house on the back of his horse.’

  ‘What sort of age was the fellow?’ asked Powerscourt, wondering suddenly if he had another murder on his hands. ‘Did he have a wife, children, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I was told he was about forty, my lord. His wife wasn’t local, though they say she was one of the prettiest women in the village,’ replied the Inspector, ‘and there were or there are two children, a boy of eight and a girl of six. All gone.’

  ‘Has anybody been inside the house?’ Powerscourt was feeling seriously alarmed now. ‘I mean, are things left so that it looks as if the Haywards are coming back? Or has everything been removed?’

  ‘Nobody knows, my lord. The house is well locked up and nobody’s thought to break down the door. What do you think happened?’

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, cursing himself yet again for his ability to reduce any given problem into a series of numbered points, ‘possibility number one is they have all been murdered. I would have thought it more likely, mind you, that the killer would only dispose of Mr Hayward and leave the wife and children alone. Possibility number two is that Hayward, aware of the tricky position he was in, finding or being sent for to collect the dead body of his master, bringing it up the road, observing, perhaps, the bullying of the doctor, decided for all their sakes to clear off and take his family with him. Maybe he wanted to keep out of trouble. Maybe they have fled to some of his relations or to some of hers. The third possibility, and perhaps the most likely one, is that somebody has bribed them or bullied them into going away until all this blows over. And I suspect there is only one candidate for that and we both know who it is.’

  ‘The new Earl,’ said the Inspector. ‘Look, my lord, in a minute or two we should be able to see the house. I feel sure that we must be on the route Jack Hayward took with the horse the day of the murder. There’s a fork in the road back there where one branch leads off towards the coast. The other one goes back to the main entrance a couple of miles behind us on the Spalding Road.’

  As their carriage took them up the mild incline Powerscourt saw the house sliding into view. Chimneys and a flagpole first, then a top storey, a middle storey, then one slightly raised above ground level and presumably basement quarters for the servants and the staff below. Everywhere the stone was discoloured, cracked in places, the grass in the grounds around the side of the house unkempt and unmown. Roses that once trailed round two sides of the house had gone wild, looping over and round and under each other in a glorious chaos of disorder.

  They could see the great circle of grass in front of the house now, the gates in the centre of the railings, the two pavilions connected to the main body of the house by walls with niches where the horses of the hunt had stood and pawed the ground such a short time ago.

  ‘If you look over to the left, my lord,’ the Inspector had not been here before but was recreating events from the information he had been given, ‘that must be the stable block where Jack Hayward took the horse with the corpse. The point where he turned off must be very close to where we are now.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Powerscourt, staring intently at the house where a face had just been withdrawn from a window on the first floor.

  ‘Could I make one suggestion about these interviews?’

  ‘Please do,’ replied the Inspector.

  ‘I propose we interview them one at a time, rather than all in a body. And I suggest that you take the lead in all the interviews and ask what you want. I’ll just chip in when you’ve finished. I think that should make it more formal.’

  ‘Just as you say, my lord. I’ll be happy to go along with that.’

  Detective Inspector Blunden jumped out of the carriage, closely followed by Powerscourt, and he pulled vigorously on the doorbell of Candlesby Hall.

  Mrs Baines had scarcely left her post by the doctor’s bedside all through the evening. One visitor had called to see him quite late but he had departed in rather a cross mood, saying that he couldn’t get any sense out of the doctor at all and would come back the following afternoon. In vain did Mrs Baines suggest that the morning was the best, if not the only time the doctor might be lucid. The visitor had other appointments in the morning.

  The doctor drifted off to sleep, shortly after eleven o’clock. He might, in Mrs Baines’ limited knowledge, be in a coma; she couldn’t be sure. What she did know was that there was very little anybody could do for Theodore Miller in his present state. She could make him comfortable and keep him warm and clean until the end. And she didn’t think the end was very far off now. She resolved to ring the other doctor, as the older citizens always referred to the upstart newcomer Dr Campbell, at seven o’clock in the morning.

  She had lost count of the number of these vigils she had kept now, Bertha Baines, vigils with members of her own family, four of whom she had watched over into the next world, vigils with people who had employed her, she now realized, so they would not leave this world alone, terrible vigils with sick children whose parents had asked her to help out and found they were too busy with their other children or too exhausted to keep watch on their little ones as they slipped away, vigils with friends and neighbours who sent for Bertha because she was known to be good at that sort of thing.

  She supposed watching over people as they died had become as much a part of her now as her other work as a nurse or a housekeeper. Just before midnight she went upstairs to sit with the doctor, fortified by an enormous pot of tea clad in three separate tea cosies, and a plate of biscuits. The doctor was always fond of a biscuit when he was well. Mrs Baines looked at him carefully as she began her vigil. She wiped the beads of sweat from his brow. He seemed comfortable with his blankets and his pillows. His breathing was regular but shallow. His hands wandered about over the bedclothes every now and then and Bertha seized one and held it in her own. The doctor looked content. How often had she looked in on these scenes. How often had she thought the patient was secure in their hold on life only for them to slip a
way a moment later. Truly, she had thought on many occasions with the terminally ill, it must be as hard to die sometimes as it is to stay alive.

  Shortly before three o’clock in the morning, when her reservoir of tea was almost exhausted, she thought Dr Miller had stopped breathing, he seemed so still. Leaning forward she realized that his breath, though fainter than before, was still going. Just before dawn she plumped up his pillows once more, mopped his brow, tiptoed downstairs and came back with her Book of Common Prayer. She had checked years before with the vicar, who assured her it was perfectly all right to read the Lord’s Prayer and the Catechism and the Collect of the Day aloud to her patients. ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name …’ She held one of the doctor’s hands as she spoke the prayer. There was a very slight rustling in the bed as if Dr Miller might be on the verge of waking up, but it came to nothing.

  ‘Fulfil now, o Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be most expedient for them: granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth and in the world to come life everlasting.’

  Looking at him, the deathly pallor, the deep wrinkles on his face and on the backs of his hands, Mrs Baines thought the doctor was much closer to life everlasting than he was to knowledge of God’s truth.

  At seven she tiptoed downstairs to telephone Dr Campbell. He said he would be over straight away. They always come quicker for their own, Mrs Baines said to herself crossly, remembering a nine-hour wait by the bedside of a dying child before the doctor appeared and then the child going before he had time to open his bag.

  The doctor took Dr Miller’s pulse and checked his breathing and all the other futile things doctors do by the bedsides of those they know are passing away. Their performance becomes a ritual to give comfort to the living rather than the dying.

  ‘It could be any time, Mrs Baines,’ he said finally, ‘or he could linger on till tomorrow. I don’t think he will wake again but I could be wrong. You have nothing to reproach yourself with – you have looked after him very well. Don’t worry, Mrs Baines, I’ll see myself out. Your place is here, I feel. Not long to go now.’

  At half past ten the breathing became very shallow. Just after eleven Dr Miller breathed his last. Mrs Baines made sure he was gone and then she cried. She always cried when they left her. Then she went downstairs to send for all the people she had to involve now: the police and the undertakers and the solicitor. She made some more tea. She knew that Dr Miller had written a very short note to the lawyer early yesterday evening. She remembered suddenly the visitor from the evening before who wanted to call in the afternoon. Strange, Mrs Baines said to herself, he seemed a well-spoken man, the doctor’s visitor, but he never left his name.

  Detective Inspector Blunden firmly but politely rebuffed all Lord Candlesby’s proposals after they had been escorted into the saloon on the first floor. The three eldest brothers were waiting there. On the way up Powerscourt’s eye had fallen on a ceramic pig with only three legs and a stag on the walls whose left eye had fallen out. He was astonished at the general air of chaos the Candlesbys seemed to live in.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt and I’, Blunden said, ‘are looking into possible irregularities concerning the death of the previous Earl.’

  Very sorry, but no, it would not be convenient to interview all three brothers together even if that might be quicker. Afraid it would not suit to question the two younger brothers Henry and Edward at the same time. Very much regret, but it would not be possible to interview the new Lord Candlesby first, before his brothers.

  ‘Dammit, Constable, or whatever you’re called,’ Richard was beginning to lose his temper, ‘this is not satisfactory. This is my house and I make the rules round here.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ replied Blunden firmly, ‘but I represent the law. I ask the questions round here and I talk to people in the order I want.’

  ‘And my colleague here’, said Powerscourt in his most emollient voice, ‘is a Detective Inspector, not a constable. Just thought we should get our facts straight.’

  ‘Now then,’ said Blunden, ‘could we talk to Lord Henry first of all, if we could?’

  The second brother shuffled over and draped himself across a chair by the window. The other two had disappeared.

  ‘Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to us,’ said Blunden pleasantly. ‘Could I ask you to cast your mind back to the morning of the hunt? Friday October the eighth, I believe it was.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Henry.

  ‘Can you recall’, asked Blunden, observing with amazement that Powerscourt was busily writing notes of the interview in a large notebook, ‘at what point or at what time you realized that a body on a horse was coming towards the house?’

  ‘I don’t know about the time,’ said Henry doubtfully. ‘I do know the stirrup cup was almost finished. Pity that, it was a cold morning.’ He laughed nervously.

  ‘Let me repeat the question. Can you remember when exactly you realized that a horse with something draped across it was coming up the road towards the house?’

  ‘I think it must have been when Richard – my brother – went down to meet Jack Hayward. He is the chief groom and he had brought the horse with the body. Richard diverted the horse towards the stables. Everybody else went home. My brother Edward and I went back to the house. It was only later that Richard told us Papa was the dead man on the back of the horse.’

  ‘So you never went to the stables at all?’

  ‘Not that day, no. Richard wouldn’t let anybody in there. Not till the next day.’

  ‘I see,’ said Inspector Blunden. ‘Did you meet the doctor at all that day?’

  ‘Which doctor?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Dr Miller.’ Blunden was preparing to pull out soon. It was Powerscourt who had heard the evidence that disproved this theory.

  ‘No, I didn’t see Dr Miller at all that day. I didn’t even know he’d been to the house.’

  ‘Did you,’ Inspector Blunden was on his last question, ‘forgive me for asking this, did you take a last look at your father, a sort of farewell, if you like, before they took him away?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ and for once Henry was telling the truth. ‘I never saw him again and that’s a fact.’

  Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to put the questions. A sneeze from the ground level outside carried in through one of the open windows. Powerscourt looked at the window carefully.

  ‘Lord Henry,’ he began, one aristocrat talking to another, ‘have you or other members of the family seen Jack Hayward since the day of the hunt when he brought the horse up the hill?’

  ‘No, why should we see him? He’s only a servant. He doesn’t come up here.’

  ‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Were you aware that Inspector Blunden’s people report that Jack Hayward has disappeared? Vanished off the face of the earth, or off the face of Candlesby at any rate.’

  ‘No,’ replied Henry, beginning to sound rather irritated at this level of interest in a mere servant.

  ‘Fine. Do you by any chance know how Jack Hayward came to be leading a horse with your father’s corpse on it? Do you know where he met them? Perhaps he told your eldest brother, who passed the news on to the rest of the family?’

  ‘No,’ was all the change Powerscourt got out of Henry on this one.

  ‘One last question, Henry, and then you’re free to go. Do you know what your father died of? It must have been something pretty unusual for him to be laid across his horse, with his face and upper body all covered up, don’t you think?’

  Henry had no trouble with that one. ‘He died of natural causes,’ he said. ‘The doctor told us. It’s on the death certificate. So it must be true.’

  Powerscourt nodded to the Inspector, who thanked the young man and led him from the room. He was about to speak when Powerscourt put his finger to his lips and pointed to the open windows. Inspector Blunden grinned and nodded. He went into the next room to bring in Lord Edward Dymoke. As the interview progressed,
Powerscourt realized that anybody reading his notebook might think he was in danger of losing his wits. He was writing the first interview all over again, almost word for word.

  Edward used exactly the same phrase about Jack Hayward as his brother: ‘only a servant’. And the same words about the death by natural causes: ‘The doctor told us. It’s on the death certificate. So it must be true.’ Only somebody who thought other people might suspect or even know that the statement was false would say that it must be true. Powerscourt wished he had checked his watch as they came in and left the room. They should both have been there for exactly the same time, right down to the second.

  ‘Richard now, and then we’re nearly through,’ said Inspector Blunden as Edward departed.

  ‘Could I kick off this time?’ asked Powerscourt. He pointed to the open windows once more. ‘I’m going to start somewhere different,’ he whispered.

  ‘Lord Candlesby,’ he began once Richard was seated opposite him, ‘I want to begin if I may with the moment you met Jack Hayward and the horse with your father on the back on the main drive in front of your house. What did Jack Hayward say to you?’

  Lord Candlesby looked taken aback for a moment. ‘What did he say to me?’ he asked.

  Powerscourt said nothing. The Inspector was writing in his notebook.

  ‘I think he said something like my father was dead and we should take him to the stables. That’s it. That’s what he said. I remember now.’

  ‘Did he give any reason for taking him to the stables?’

  Richard paused again. ‘I think he said we wouldn’t want the whole hunt looking at my father as if he were a slaughtered bullock.’

  ‘Did your father look like a slaughtered bullock once the blankets were removed?’ asked Powerscourt, wondering if they had accidentally discovered exactly what the dead man looked like.