David Dickinson: Death in a Scarlet Coat

Even the short-sighted could make it out now, a horse with what looked like a body thrown across it, wrapped in blankets, accompanied by a middle-aged man twirling his cap in his free hand, advancing towards the neighing horses of the Candlesby Hunt and their apprehensive riders. The very sharp-sighted thought they could see the corner of a scarlet coat poking out underneath the blanket. The men and women of the hunt were mesmerized by the drama unfolding before them. It was as if they had been rendered incapable of movement. The only noise was the barking and howling of the hounds. When they were a hundred yards or so from the railings, man and horse stopped. The man gestured to Lord Bourne to come forward.

‘I’m terribly sorry, my lord, but that is your father wrapped up on that horse.’ Jack Hayward was senior groom at Candlesby, the man who held sway over the horses and their kingdom, one of the few people the Master was never rude to, admired as much for his horsemanship as for his common sense. He was speaking very quietly, almost whispering. ‘Don’t look at him now, for God’s sake, not in front of these people. It’s a terrible sight. I think you should send them all away, my lord, and then you could look at him in peace. I’ll take him over to the stables and then I’ll go and fetch the old doctor if he’s still with us.’

Richard nodded. How strange it felt, he thought. For so many years he had waited and hoped and dreamt about becoming an Earl, Lord Candlesby, master of Candlesby Hall and all its acres. A month after his thirtieth birthday he had come into his inheritance. Now the moment was here it was nothing like he had ever imagined. ‘Today’s hunting is cancelled,’ he said in a harsh voice when he was back where the hunt could hear him. ‘Please return to your homes. You will be informed about the next meet as soon as possible.’

Perhaps, he said to himself, as the hunt trotted off, I should have told them the truth. Then they would have something real to gossip about, rather than the fruits of their imaginations. For the Master of the Candlesby Hunt had come at last, not mounted on his horse, but wrapped across it in blankets like some vagrant found dead by the roadside.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had fallen in love. This was not the aching, all-consuming love of youth, or even the love to the last that parents have for their children. His wife Lady Lucy was a partner in his passion, and his children had to be restrained from showing their feelings when they encountered the object of his affections. For Powerscourt this was a love he had never known before. Some men fall in love with horse racing or hunting or cricket or fly fishing. He had fallen in love with a Ghost.

More precisely a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, first produced by Mr Royce the year before and sold to him by Mr Rolls for a king’s ransom, a ransom his brother-in-law and chief financial adviser Mr Burke told him he could afford after some successful share dealing in America. The Ghost could seat four or five people comfortably. It had a great shiny silver bonnet and a cream body with red leather upholstery and a hood you could take off in the summer. A mighty horn warned passers-by of your arrival and two powerful headlights illuminated the Ghost’s passage in the dark. Its top speed, a fact which so delighted the Powerscourt twins, Christopher and Juliet, that they had to be told the figure every time they climbed into the back seat, was sixty-five miles per hour. Why, the Ghost was as fast as a train! As it happened, Powerscourt’s great friend Johnny Fitzgerald had bought the twins a new book the previous Christmas called The Wind in the Willows , about a group of animals who live by the side of a river and a toad who develops an unhappy obsession with motor cars. Sometimes, when they were in the back seat, Christopher and Juliet Powerscourt would serenade their father with the toad’s battle cry of ‘Poop-Poop!’ Johnny Fitzgerald never tired of reading them the final chapter, which contained a great battle between the four animals and their enemies the Wild Wooders, marauding bands of stoats and ferrets and weasels.

So here he was, Lucy at his side, bowling happily along the road that led past Candlesby towards the cathedral city of Lincoln. Neither Rat nor Toad nor Badger could have helped Powerscourt at this moment. He was not driving particularly fast, he seldom did, but as the car went over a humpbacked bridge he was not ready for the sharp left-hand turn on the far side and the front of the car sank slowly into the ditch, making a nasty mechanical noise as it went. Lady Lucy, he discovered, was unhurt. They decided to walk to the nearest town or village, which Powerscourt thought couldn’t be very far away.

At Candlesby Hall three sons of the dead man, a corner of his bloodied scarlet coat still visible, blankets draped across his face, set about the doctor. The last Earl was still in the stables where his body had been taken. The medical man, Dr Miller, had just arrived. He was well past retirement age and had a frail appearance now, like one of his elderly patients. There were only wisps remaining of what had been a fine head of white hair. His teeth were not what they had once been either, leading him to tell his housekeeper that he was particularly fond of dishes like soup and scrambled eggs. His eyes were the worst affected by the ravages of time, but a pair of thick glasses left him still capable of reading.

The three sons crowded round the doctor. Richard, the eldest, had a great shock of red hair like the hair that could be inspected on the portraits of his ancestors inside the house; Henry, the second son, was extremely tall and thin; Edward was short and tubby. Charles, the fourth son, was believed to be in London and had been summoned home. James, the youngest, was in his rooms, not invited out for this melancholy interview. Richard had refused to allow any of his brothers to take a last glance at their father.

‘I’m the head of the family now, I’ll have you know, and I forbid you to look at him. I absolutely forbid it.’ Richard did not trust Henry or Edward not to let something out in their cups or in the taverns of Spilsby close by.

‘Now then, Dr Miller,’ he began, ‘I should like to remind you of the amount you owe this family. I’m referring, of course, to things more valuable than money, debts of obligation, favours that have to be repaid.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said his brothers, advancing still closer towards the doctor. They might not see eye to eye with Richard about very much, but on questions of family honour they hunted like a pack of hounds.

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said the doctor, shaking his head sadly. ‘What is it you want me to do?’

‘That’s better,’ said Richard grimly, ‘that’s more like it. I want you to say on the death certificate that my father died of natural causes. It was a heart attack or a stroke that killed him, whichever you think will be the most convincing.’

‘But that wouldn’t be the truth,’ said the doctor in a puzzled tone. ‘You, Richard, saw the body and the condition it was in. You’re asking me to lie about the death of one of my patients.’

Richard nodded to his brothers. They moved closer to the doctor, Henry bending down a great distance to pick up a pitchfork lying on the ground.

‘What about that wrong diagnosis you gave on the butler here a couple of years back? The medicine you prescribed bloody nearly killed him.’

‘You’re asking me to break the doctor’s oath of loyalty to his profession. I’ve kept the Hippocratic oath for nearly fifty years and I’m not going to break it now.’

‘Damn your Hippocratic oath!’ Richard was growing angry, his face turning the same colour as his hair. ‘You’re just a bloody hypocrite. They say in the village that three women down there have died in childbirth in the past two years who should be alive today. All because of your incompetence! What’s a death certificate compared with that? My father was dead long before you got to him. This time you weren’t personally responsible for someone’s death, even if they were only a peasant woman down the road.’