David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

‘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.

‘No, no,’ Candlesby replied, eager to move on, ‘that was only a figure of speech.’

‘Yours or Jack Hayward’s? Figure of speech, I mean.’

‘I – I don’t know. I don’t think it matters now, does it?’

‘So here you were, you and Jack Hayward, just the two of you in the stables. Did he take the blankets off? Off your father’s face, so you could see what had happened to him?’

‘I asked him not to. I didn’t want to look. I’m rather squeamish about that sort of thing, actually.’

‘Did he tell you how he came to be walking the horse with the corpse? Did he say if he found it by accident, or did somebody come to his house in the night or send him a note?’

‘He didn’t tell me. Maybe he was being respectful of my feelings so he didn’t want to say.’

Powerscourt thought this account of the meeting in the stables one of the more improbable accounts he had heard in a lifetime of listening to improbable accounts.