David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

Powerscourt spent the afternoon and early evening at the doctor’s house. But the doctor was asleep, or in a coma, it was hard to say which, and he confined himself to long conversations with Mrs Baines. As housekeeper, nurse or companion she had served all over Lincolnshire but her particular expertise was with the county families, Candlesbys included. She collected them, male or female, young or old, in their last moments, he quickly realized, as other people might collect moths or butterflies. She told him that reclusiveness seemed to run in the Candlesby family every other generation. One Earl communicated with his children and servants only by letter and another one once spent four and a half months without talking to a single soul. There was yet another who banished his daughter without a penny because she was smoking when he entered the room.

Most of all she told him about the one known to this day in the village as the Wicked Earl. Nobody remembered very much about him any more, or the manner of his wickedness, but Mrs Baines’ grandmother had told her hair-raising stories when she was small.

‘He went off to Italy, this Candlesby, Edward I think he was called, on that Grand Tour where the young men went to Italy and picked up a lot of unpleasant diseases in the big Italian cities. I’m trying to remember the painter he was interested in, Cara something, Carabaldi? No, he was a soldier who liked biscuits, wasn’t he?’

‘Caravaggio?’ Powerscourt suggested in his mildest tones.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mrs Baines triumphantly. ‘Well, they say he wasn’t as expensive as some of the other painters, so our Edward spent a long time in Rome and Naples and other places buying up as many pictures of his as he could. Most of the paintings ordered up were religious but that didn’t bother the Cara man. Apparently he painted those female saints like they’d have their clothes off in half an hour if the price was right. And the other thing with the Cara man, apparently, he liked violence. Heads of John the Baptist or the dead Goliath, he could dash those off for you half a dozen at a time. Judith and Holofernes from the Bible, her with a great curved knife or sword and him with the blood pouring out of his neck, that went down well with our boy. Flagellations, whips and lashes on bare flesh were a speciality of the house.

‘Eventually,’ she went on, ‘the wicked Edward brought them all home, all his treasures and all his Caras. He put the paintings in a great room at the back of the house on the top floor. He had it sealed up so that only he had a key. And then, this is what they say, Lord Powerscourt, he began to copy the paintings. Like the Cara man he could only paint from life, with real models. And so he tried to reproduce the works of the Cara man. As time passed the people in the house got used to these pretty young men coming in to be painted as Cupid or that David who killed Goliath. I’ve been told there were a lot of bloody crucifixion pictures brought back from Rome and Naples as well but nobody knows if Lord Edward ever went in for painting Our Lord on the cross with the nails and the vinegar and the thieves on either side.’

Mrs Baines paused at this point to ask if Powerscourt would like more tea or some of her special fruit cake. He declined.

‘I must check on the doctor in a moment – I can’t stay here all day gossiping to you – but there is one thing you must remember about Edward and his Cara man, whatever he was called. Isn’t it awful, I’ve forgotten the painter’s name already. The room’s still there, the room with the paintings. In his will Edward stipulated that the room should remain locked for ever in his memory, Edward’s that is, not the Cara man, and that he would leave no record of where he had put the key. One theory says it is handed down from one butler to another; we don’t know. Everybody thinks he threw it in the lake but I’m not so sure. I’ll be back in a moment, Lord Powerscourt, but if you have to get away don’t wait for me to come down again.’

Powerscourt made his way back to the hotel, his mind reeling with images of bloodthirsty Caravaggios, the broken flesh, the bleeding neck, the crown of thorns being forced on to a bloodied head, being reproduced by a mad Earl in a vast palace in the wilds of Lincolnshire.

Richard, the new Earl, was up very early the next morning. A weak sun illuminated his inheritance. He checked the homework he had given his two brothers the night before. He stood at the great windows in the saloon, which had once been the main entrance to the house, and watched the deer trotting peacefully along by the lake. Where his right hand rested by the window he noticed that the paint had almost completely faded from the upper part of the shutters. What had once been a cream colour had now been reduced to a smudgy brown.

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 amp; Green, HP amp; G for short – ‘lawyers are meant to interpret law for the authorities; HP amp; 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.’