David Dickinson: Death in a Scarlet Coat

Powerscourt looked around the church once more. The Lord Lieutenant of the County with his sword was in the front row beside the Bishop in his purple. The local MP was here. People said his wife was very fond of music. The citizens of Candlesby and the surrounding villages were out in force. This church is England, Powerscourt said to himself. England’s dead of centuries past are buried here. The buildings have survived the change of rule from a crimson cardinal and a choleric Henry the Eighth to a queen who burnt heretics at the stake and later kings who cared not for religion at all. Candlesby has lived through Civil War and Restoration and the loss of the American colonies. The church bells above me, Powerscourt thought, will have rung for the defeat of the Armada and the victories of Malplaquet and Trafalgar. The latest casualties of Britannia’s wars have just had their own memorial built, to those who died in the Boer War. There are other Englands, of course, he said to himself, the daily throng marching across London Bridge to work in the city of London, the workers toiling in some huge factory in Manchester or Bolton, the crowds at one of the great race meetings, the Derby or the Oaks, the sailors on some modern warship of the Royal Navy, patrolling the cold dark waters of the North Sea to keep their country safe. There were so many Englands, he thought. Suddenly he realized that he had lost his place in his score and that he was going to have to sing again quite soon. The vicar sent him a secret smile as if to say it’s all right to dream dreams every now and then.

The audience had fallen very still. The Hallelujah Chorus was upon them, an aria as glorious for those who sing it as for those who hear it. ‘Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’

It was Easter time when I sang this before in Ireland, Powerscourt remembered, and the daffodils were all out round the edge of the lawns and that soft light of Ireland made everything look magical, as if the dream of that great house between the mountains and the sea would last for ever.

‘The Kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.’

Some of the audience had closed their eyes. The boys and the men, Powerscourt noticed, had their eyes firmly fixed on a small group of very pretty girls, deployed by the vicar in the front row of the choir. One middle-aged lady, dressed entirely in black, in the fourth row of the congregation was weeping uncontrollably, tears rolling down on to the stone floor. Maybe the last time she had been to the Messiah had been with a loved one, a lost husband perhaps, a dead child.

‘And he shall reign for ever and ever, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.’

The vicar was a vigorous sort of conductor, not one of those minimal ones who make the smallest possible movement to attract the attention of choir or orchestra. His arms moved in great arcs, as if he were sending semaphore messages to the back row. Way above him a couple of gargoyles, merchants or masons perhaps at the time the church was built, stared down at the proceedings, their mouths wide open for evermore.

‘For ever and ever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hall-e-lujah.’

Powerscourt had always wondered why the Hallelujah Chorus wasn’t the last aria in the Messiah . But it was Lady Lucy’s turn now to sing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’, which she did with the same conviction she had brought to it in that French abbey a year before.

Then it was all over and everybody made their way back to Mr Drake’s hotel for refreshments. Powerscourt found himself talking to an elderly medical man who told him proudly that he had attended on the death of the Earl of Candlesby that very morning. The doctor was fascinated to hear that Powerscourt was an investigator with a long track record in solving murders and mysteries. He insisted, Dr Miller, on writing down Powerscourt’s address very carefully in his little black book.

Up at Candlesby Hall the candles were still lit in the dining room. It was harder to see the cracks in the walls in the dark. It was very late. Only Henry and Edward were left – the others had all retired for the night. One decanter of port stood in front of them; another was waiting in the wings. Their eldest brother Richard had left a bell on the table for them to ring if they became incapable of making their way up the stairs on their own and needed help to get to bed.

‘Can you guess what I would like to know more than anything?’ There was a pause while Edward hunted the thought down in his brain. ‘What killed the old bugger. Can’t have been anything normal. Not the way they all carried on. Not gunshot. Not sword or spear. Not blunt object. What the hell was it?’

Henry stared intently at his brother and poured himself another glass of port. They were using extra large glasses this evening.

‘Tha’s a good question,’ he said, slurring his words slightly. ‘Very good question.’ He too paused until his mind stopped spinning and came to rest on a new theory.

‘Not human at all,’ Edward managed. ‘What killed him, I mean. Wild thing. Animal. Mystery beast. Hiding in the forest since Hereward the Wake or whatever his name was. Lethal bite. Huge claws.’

‘That’s good. Oh yes, that’s good. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Picture the scene. Papa on foot. Lincolnshire monster feels peckish. Long time since breakfast. Leans forward to seize Papa.’ As Henry leant forward in the manner of the monster he found he couldn’t stop. He collapsed face forward into the table. Edward rang the bell

3

The next day the Silver Ghost was restored to health and the Powerscourts continued on their way. Mr Drake of the Candlesby Arms insisted that they could stay at his hotel for the rest of their lives for nothing. The vicar gave them God’s blessing and promised to send advance notice of the next recital. He had, he told them confidentially, already ordered the sheet music for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. They caught a brief glimpse on their way north of the Candlesby mausoleum, a tall, circular neoclassical building perched on a little hill that looked rather like a lighthouse, illuminating the journeys of the dead on their voyage to another world.

Two days after that, their mission to witness the christening of one of Lady Lucy’s relations’ newborn baby in Lincoln Cathedral complete, they were heading back to London. Their family in Markham Square had recently received a temporary addition, in the person of the daughter of one of Lady Lucy’s sisters from Scotland. Selina Hamilton was twenty years old with bright blue eyes, curly blonde hair and a figure that could have advertised clothes in the women’s magazines. She had cut a swathe through the young men of Melrose and Hawick and the neighbouring villages in the Scottish Borders. They might have fallen for her, but she did not fall for them. A world where the height of fame was an appearance for Scotland on the rugby pitch, the summit of ambition for the local young men, was not enough for her. There might have been thirty players on the field but Selina’s heart did not miss a beat for any of them. Her father was a respectable solicitor and her mother had brought up Selina and her sisters. They were good people, her parents, pillars of the local community, devoted patrons of local charities for the poor and destitute. But Selina wanted a broader stage. She felt she needed wider horizons than the Rugby Club dances and the Mothers’ Union. Glory and glitter and glamour were in her mind, evenings spent at fashionable soirees where the wealthy young men would fall for her beauty, weekends spent in unimaginable luxury at the country houses of England.

Selina had, in theory, come south to improve her mind at the great art galleries of London. She had already enlisted for an evening class in art appreciation at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lady Lucy suspected that the real reason for her sojourn in the south was a young man called Sandy Temple she had met at an exhibition in Edinburgh. He worked for The Times in Parliament, Selina’s young man, writing reports of the day’s debates and occasional comment pieces on recent political developments. Selina dreamt that his proximity to the great world of politics and power would, in due course, reap a rich harvest of invitations.