Death in a Scarlet Coat lfp-10

by David Dickinson

  ‘Settle down, settle down,’ said Johnny, suddenly realizing that he might possess a secret weapon in the calming-down department one floor below in the drawing room. He sat on the corner of Christopher’s bed and eyed them gravely.

  ‘Let us begin,’ he said. Johnny always started like that:

  ‘The Badger drew himself up, took a firm grip of his stick with both paws, glanced round at his comrades, and cried -

  “The hour is come! Follow me!”

  And flung the door open wide.

  My!

  What a squealing and a squeaking and a screeching filled the air!’

  ‘Aaah! Help! Yaroo! Look out! Whoops!’

  In full voice, Johnny reckoned, Christopher and Juliet would have a good chance of bringing down the walls of Jericho.

  After three more pages, with the twins now in uproar, he tiptoed out of the door and shot down the stairs.

  ‘Constable Merrick,’ he said, panting slightly, ‘duty calls. There is a danger of a serious breach of public order one floor up. You are to proceed upstairs at once and sort it out. I recommend most strongly that you wear your helmet!’

  ‘Sir!’ Constable Merrick had performed this sort of duty at home before now. He had younger brothers and sisters himself. By now the impactof his uniform had dissolved completely. He was not the master but a figure of fun in his own house.

  Here in Markham Square, however, he felt, things might be different. He climbed the stairs as noisily as he could, fixing his helmet to his head as he went. Outside the twins’ door he paused and coughed. As he went in he took out a pencil and a notebook and inspected the twins with great severity.

  ‘Now then,’ he began.

  He did not have to say more. Unknown to him, and unknown to Johnny, an enormous policeman with a huge helmet had told the twins off one day in the park recently for digging up the flowers. His helmet had made an indelible impression. Now the twins were underneath the bedclothes, pulling blankets and sheets over themselves as fast as possible before he could make a single note. He stood by the door for a moment, humming to himself. The peace of sleep seemed to be stealing over Christopher and Juliet.

  For weeks afterwards Constable Merrick’s ghost haunted the house. Nurse Mary Muriel would warn her charges that she thought she heard the policeman’s footsteps on the stairs. They would fall into bed immediately. Powerscourt was to say afterwards that Constable Merrick had been able to do what few could perform in their lifetime. He could keep the twins quiet. He had achieved a sort of eternal life up there with the schoolroom and the boxes of dressing-up clothes and the broken toys on the nursery floor of Markham Square.

  20

  Barnabas Thorpe, butler of Candlesby Hall, was a worried man. The general uncertainty about the future, with two members of the family involved in unsolved murders, concerned him. The behaviour of the two eldest surviving brothers, Henry and Edward, concerned him even more. They had discovered another wine merchant who would extend them a line of credit. That very morning carters had been unloading case after case of claret and burgundy, port and Madeira into the cellars. Only Barnabas Thorpe had read the fine print of the agreement, left lying around on a broken table in the saloon. It stipulated an enormous rate of interest if the bill was not paid in full within thirty days. After that wealth beckoned for the wine merchants. Thorpe thought it unlikely that the bill would be paid on time.

  Then there was the poor strange boy, as Thorpe had always referred to James, on the top floor. The boy’s illness was not Thorpe’s province, but reports of his deterioration filtered down through the floors of Candlesby Hall. A medical doctor, expert in the strange ways of the semi-insane, was in attendance now, as well as the nurse. The boy was delirious part of the time, rather like the old ladies of Candlesby, talking of King Arthur and the Lady of Shalott and apparently able to quote lines from Tennyson’s poem at will. Barnabas Thorpe had always regarded any interest in poetry as conclusive proof of the softening of the brain, if not actual insanity itself. Only Charles Candlesby knew the true position about his brother’s health. It was he who had sanctioned the extra expense of hiring the doctor. Only he knew how long the engagement might last.

  Charles Candlesby, indeed, was the only positive person in Barnabas Thorpe’s book at this time. Helping the poor, looking after his brother, he was at once the most unlikely Candlesby, but at the same time the most likeable member of the family. This morning he was polishing off an enormous bowl of porridge at the Powerscourt breakfast table in Mr Drake’s hotel. He was becoming a regular visitor.

  ‘Would you like some more porridge, Charles?’ said Lady Lucy, who always treated him as a favourite son.

  ‘No, no thanks,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll just tuck into a couple of eggs and a few rashers and maybe a tomato. Nothing much.’

  ‘Charles,’ said Powerscourt, finishing off some toast, ‘do you mind if we talk business for a moment?’

  His mouth full of bacon and tomato, Charles managed a vigorous nod of the head by way of reply.

  ‘It’s this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. You know the habits of your family up at the Hall. Why was your father wearing his scarlet coat on the night he died? We have no idea why he put it on. The pathologist thought he died sometime between the hours of ten in the evening and four the following morning. Now, suppose you go out, intending to meet somebody at the earlier time of ten – he must have been going to meet somebody surely, unless he wanted to wander round in the storm which seems unlikely – wouldn’t you expect to come home again after you met them? And you’d have plenty of time to put on your scarlet coat the next morning in time for the hunt. You didn’t have to put it on for the early rendezvous the evening before. Your father was hardly going to meet a fox at that time of day, was he?’

  ‘I’m not sure’, said Charles sadly, pulling a piece of bacon out from between his teeth, ‘that I like where this is going to go. B-but p-p-please continue.’

  ‘Let us look at it from the later date given by the pathologist, four o’clock in the morning. Suppose he left home at three for his rendezvous. Again he is wearing the scarlet coat. Why? He must think he is not coming home before the hunt – that he needs to go out dressed in his hunting gear because he has to be wearing it in the morning. So what was he intending to do all that time? Between, say, ten or eleven the night before and eight o’clock in the morning when he would have to set out back to the Hall?’

  Powerscourt left his question hanging in the air.

  ‘Boat?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Would he have gone somewhere in a boat?’

  ‘Not in that weather,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Every boat in the county will have been tied up at her mooring that night.’

  Charles looked at them sadly. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘there’s only one conclusion. My father was going to meet somebody. He intended to spend the night with them and go b-b-back for the hunt in the morning. That’s why he was wearing the coat. And’, he looked embarrassed now, ‘the somebody was p-p-probably a woman.’

  ‘We don’t need to dwell on this,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but where on earth, in all that empty space, would you meet a woman? Where would you find one? There isn’t a house for miles.’

  ‘Maybe’, said Lady Lucy, ‘he did ride for miles, but inland, to the next village. There’s nothing to say he went straight to where he was collected by Jack Hayward. He needn’t have gone near the sea at all. He could have gone in the opposite direction. His murderers could have brought him back and dumped him where he was found.’

  Powerscourt put his head in his hands and groaned slightly. ‘Here’s another thing. The horse. Jack Hayward went to collect him with a horse, Marlborough, your father’s horse. But your father must have set off on a different horse. What happened to that one? The one Lord Candlesby left his house on?’

  ‘B-b-bolted? Stolen by his killers? Sold by his killers?’ Charles was looking more cheerful all of a sudden.

  ‘The one pers
on who would have known for sure if a horse had disappeared from those stables was Jack Hayward,’ said Powerscourt, spinning a marmalade jar round faster and faster on the tablecloth. ‘And he was shuffled off the scene before he had a chance to check anything at all.’

  ‘You said, Francis,’ Lady Lucy chipped in, ‘that Jack Hayward took the Earl’s horse Marlborough to go to collect the body. Why didn’t the Earl take his own horse out when he went to meet whoever it was?’

  ‘God only knows,’ said Charles. ‘I’m lost, I really am. But b-b-before I forget, Lord P-p-powerscourt, I must tell you what Walter Savage told me when he came out of p-p-prison.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Powerscourt, relieved to have moved off Charles’s father’s amorous activities on the night of his death.

  ‘Walter Savage came to see me yesterday,’ said Charles, ‘and he told me something he hasn’t said before. You have to remember that Walter is old. His b-b-bladder isn’t what it was. He has to get up several times a night. On the night of the murder, he opened the window to see how the storm was doing. He heard a noise coming from Candlesby village. This was about one or two in the morning, but it might have been earlier. He said it sounded like cheering. He went back to bed and thought no more of it.’

  ‘Cheering?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Cheering?’

  ‘That’s what he said. He wasn’t certain, b-b-but it sounded like cheering.’

  Inspector Blunden felt that the people of Lincolnshire were plotting against him, conspiring to leave the county and deprive him of suspects. First Oliver Bell had fled, misleading the constabulary about his alibi on the night of the murder before he left. Now the Lawrences had disappeared. First they had gone to London in great numbers, pursued afterwards by Johnny Fitzgerald and Constable Merrick. Now they had vanished, leaving no information at all at their various houses about where they had gone. And worse was to come. A messenger arrived with a summons. He and Powerscourt were to meet the Chief Constable. Constable Merrick was sent for and ordered to the Candlesby Arms on his bicycle at full speed. He was to bring Powerscourt to the police station with all possible despatch. Inspector Blunden hoped Powerscourt would come in his Silver Ghost.

  He did. Fifteen minutes later, before the constable had reappeared, Powerscourt was conferring with the Inspector in his office. Inspector Blunden was in happier mood this morning. His wife had managed to introduce another nursery rhyme into his daughter’s repertoire. Last night after supper Emily Blunden had sat on her father’s lap and recited ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’, with the emphasis on ‘hill’ for some reason, to her father’s great delight.

  ‘What’s up with the Chief Constable?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Homework not delivered on time? Changing rooms left in a sorry state?’

  ‘God knows,’ said the Inspector. ‘This is all we need at this point to have him sticking his nose in where it isn’t wanted. He once changed the entire direction of a case because his wife thought she knew who the murderer was.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Certainly not. She’d just overheard some people talking in the butcher’s shop.’

  ‘Maybe she’s been to the greengrocer’s this time,’ said Powerscourt happily. ‘I’ve always been suspicious of greengrocers myself. All those enormous vegetables looking as though they might rise up out of their baskets and commit a crime.’

  ‘We’d better go, my lord,’ said Blunden. ‘One thing he can’t stand is people being late.’

  ‘Late on parade,’ said Powerscourt as they made their way up the corridor, ‘one of the most serious offences in the military rule book. Probably more serious than murder, now I come to think about it.’

  The Chief Constable was waiting behind an enormous desk, looking, Powerscourt thought, rather like a wild animal about to spring upon its prey. Two huge watercolours of Simla, summer capital of the British Raj, hung behind his head, one, to Powerscourt’s great delight, showing an enormous number of troops manoeuvring on a vast parade ground.

  ‘Thank you for coming. Good to see you both,’ he said in a tone that hinted he was less than pleased to meet them again. ‘Now then. This murder. These murders.’ He looked down at his papers as if to check that there had indeed been two murders. ‘Bumped into the Home Secretary at my club yesterday. Fellow wanted to know what was going on. One or two backbenchers been making noises, apparently. Questions likely in the House.’ The Chief Constable looked pleased at his apparent mastery of parliamentary procedure. Powerscourt wondered which London club might contain the improbable pairing of the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable.

  ‘He wasn’t complaining, the Home Secretary. Understood these things could take time. He did mention a very recent case in Hampshire where the murderer was arrested and charged within forty-eight hours of the crime.’

  Inspector Blunden was looking resigned, like a hospital patient who knows he is about to receive mouthfuls of a particularly disagreeable medicine. Powerscourt was feeling rather angry.

  ‘So bring me up to date, would you, Blunden. Are you any nearer to finding the murderer?’

  Blunden decided to say as little as possible. ‘I believe we are making progress, Chief Constable. There are a number of leads we are following up. Our most important witness has just been brought back from Ireland. We are still digesting his evidence.’

  ‘Digesting?’ snorted the Chief Constable, ‘This isn’t a gourmet restaurant in Paris, man, it’s a murder case. From what you’ve said so far, Blunden, you have no more idea who committed these murders than the Home Secretary, have you, Blunden?’

  ‘I don’t think that is true, and I don’t think it is fair either,’ said Powerscourt, perfectly willing to meet the Chief Constable at a place of his choosing, weapons to be decided later. ‘This is one of the more difficult cases I have ever been involved in. I believe it will be solved soon because of a line of investigation so secret that I would not tell you about it under any circumstances.’ Lady Lucy had told him late the previous evening about the cryptic clues muttered by the old ladies in their delirium. ‘Indeed, I have not yet told my colleague here about it.’ Powerscourt nodded genially to Inspector Blunden. ‘So you see, Chief Constable, I don’t think the position is as bad as you paint it. Maybe you will have news for the Home Secretary in the near future.’

  ‘What is it?’ barked the Chief Constable, waving his monocle at Powerscourt as if it were a weapon. ‘This secret source? I demand to be told. I am the Chief Constable round here! I have the right to know!’

  Powerscourt thought for a moment. He had no intention of telling the Chief Constable anything. Nor did he necessarily want a fight. Nor did he want to embarrass Inspector Blunden.

  ‘Chief Constable,’ he began, ‘I would like to make use of a military analogy, if I may. I served for a number of years as chief intelligence officer to the forces under the control of General Richardson on the North-West Frontier.’

  The Chief Constable seemed to cheer up slightly at the mention of the military.

  ‘Chukka Richardson?’ he said. ‘Damn fine polo player, Chukka, damn fine.’

  ‘The same,’ replied Powerscourt. ‘On a number of occasions we would be summoned to his quarters, my colleague and I. Either we would propose a scheme to the general, or he would propose a venture to us. Always he would make it very clear what he wanted done. But he never issued a direct order. Nothing was ever put down on paper.’

  Powerscourt looked closely at the Chief Constable to see if any light of understanding, even a glimmer, was visible. He saw nothing that pleased him. Bertram Willoughby-Lewis’ face was as blank as a sheet of fresh notepaper. ‘The general used to say that some damned fool in Whitehall might start asking questions if things were written down. He had a very low opinion of the damn fools in Whitehall, General Richardson. So we would carry out his orders. We never told him any of the details of the operations. He made it clear he never wanted to know. We went about our business. He stayed in his tent. The natives were confounded. Every
body was happy. The gentlemen of Whitehall would not have been happy but they were not there.’

  ‘That’s all very interesting, Powerscourt,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘always fond of a good story myself, but I don’t see what the North-West Frontier has to do with dead Candlesbys here in Lincolnshire. I say again, tell me about your secret source. There’s no time to waste, man. We need to press on.’

  God in heaven, thought Powerscourt. The Chief Constable was remarkably stupid, even for a military man.

  ‘The reason, my dear Chief Constable, why our military operations in India were so successful is that nobody knew about them. Nobody could get in the way.’ Meaning, people like you, he muttered to himself. ‘This secret source is so delicate that anybody interfering with it could destroy it completely. It must be left to work at its own pace and in its own way. I believe it will help us solve the mystery, but not if it is interfered with. It is like a watch that will function perfectly as long as nobody tinkers with the mechanism.’

  ‘Damn it, man, you are insubordinate. I demand to know.’

  ‘And I’, said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘refuse to tell you.’

  ‘I could have you arrested, damn it,’ spluttered the Chief Constable.

  ‘I don’t think you would find that very helpful,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You’d lose all access to the secret source that may solve the mystery.’

  A temporary pause in the confrontation came when a messenger hurried in to remind the Chief Constable that he had to return to Lincoln at once for a grand dinner with the dean and chapter of the cathedral. He picked up his papers and his cane and shuffled to the door.

  ‘Mark my words, Powerscourt, you haven’t heard the end of this.’

  Powerscourt was so incensed with the ridiculous man’s behaviour that he fired straight back. ‘Neither have you!’

  Blunden and Powerscourt did not speak until they were back in the Inspector’s office. ‘My God, my lord, I shouldn’t think anybody’s spoken to him like that in years. And thank you for taking the heat off me, my lord. I am most grateful.’