David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

‘Who was that bloke in Shakespeare who wandered round in a bloody great storm, Francis?’

‘You’re showing a distressing lack of respect, Johnny. I presume you’re referring to King Lear.’

‘That’s the fellow. Lear. King Lear, they called him.’ An enormous gust of wind stopped Johnny in his tracks. ‘And didn’t he have some other chap with him? Some sort of funny man?’

‘I think’, Powerscourt shouted into the gale, ‘that your English teacher has a lot to answer for. Lear’s companion was the Fool.’

‘Told you he was a funny man,’ yelled Johnny triumphantly. ‘They were on a heath somewhere, weren’t they? Hampstead Heath probably – that’d be a good place for a King. Something tells me, Francis, that your man Lear was mad. Left his wits in his daughter’s house. Ranted on all over Hampstead Heath in the storm with the Fool telling jokes.’

‘Something like that,’ shouted Powerscourt, reluctant to be drawn into detailed exegesis of Shakespeare’s tragedies in the midst of a typhoon. But Johnny’s memories seemed to be flooding back.

‘There was another daft old bugger, wasn’t there, Francis, in that play? Not on Hampstead Heath with the mad King, I think. Worcester, Foster, Bicester he was called, something like that.’

‘Gloucester,’ shouted Powerscourt, ‘Duke of Gloucester, Johnny.’

‘Gloucester. That’s my boy,’ bellowed Johnny happily, bending over to empty the rain from the brim of his hat. ‘He was really mad, I think. Didn’t his enemies pull his eyes out?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Just what I told you, Francis. What a pair they must have been, one old and mad and chuntering on about his lost kingdom; the other one blind as a bat and ranting on about whatever he ranted on about. It’s a wonder they weren’t both locked up in an asylum, it really is. Do you know what my English master used to say about that play, Francis?’

‘No idea, Johnny, no idea at all.’

‘He used to say that it was all topsy-turvy. The Fool was wise, Lear could only understand when he was mad, Gloucester could only see when he was blind. Something like that.’

Powerscourt was leaning forward now, listening. ‘Listen, Johnny, can you hear another noise, not the wind, not the sea, something else, some kind of whirring noise?’

‘Did the fellows in the play hear that too, I wonder, wandering round Hampstead Heath in the pouring rain?’ Johnny too leant forward into the wind. ‘I can hear something, Francis. It must be just over this little hill.’

They remained silent, bent again into the gale, the rain biting into their faces. The storm seemed reluctant to let them reach the peak of the hill. It howled and screeched around them with redoubled force. The rain was now coming straight at them, striking their faces with such force that it stung. Then they could see over the top. At first the landscape looked no different. Then Johnny saw it.

‘My God, Francis, look at that. Some fool’s forgotten to lock it up.’ Three or four hundred yards in front and to their right was a windmill. The sails were free and were hurtling round and round at an incredible speed. Powerscourt felt slightly sick. He started to run. ‘Come, Johnny, best foot forward. I think this is the end of the road.’

A few minutes later they were underneath the sails of the windmill. It was a pretty building with larger windows than usual. But it was the sails that fascinated Powerscourt and Fitzgerald. They made a racketing clacketing hacketing sort of noise as they hurtled round, almost as loud as the wind. They were about eight feet off the ground at their lowest point. Powerscourt thought of that battered face in the morgue, one side of it shattered into small bloody pieces. He thought of the pathologist Nathaniel Carey saying that the victim’s heart would have given out after a certain amount of this punishment. For the first and only time in this investigation he felt sorry for Lord Candlesby. Whatever his failings, and God knew there were plenty of those, he did not deserve to die like this. He noticed that four out of the six sails were intact. On the other two the bar at the bottom was broken, the canvas of the sail escaping into a mad dance as if the rigging on a sailing boat had broken free of the mast.

‘What in God’s name happened to these two, Francis? Do you think this was how he was killed? Tied on to something to bring his face level with the sails? Left here to die and then carried off in the blankets?’

‘I do think that, Johnny. I’ve thought it ever since we saw the windmill. The broken sails must have struck him on the forehead and split. Maybe the others struck him lower down the face, on the cheekbone perhaps.’

‘Do you suppose the killer lured him here once the storm started? Or was the rendezvous fixed before they knew there was going to be a bloody typhoon like this one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I suspect the rendezvous was always going to be the windmill. When the storm came the killer had the macabre thought to lash him on to something and let the sails kill him. Did you notice these sails, Johnny? They’re held together with wooden spars as if they were on a ship. Imagine those crashing into you at this sort of speed. It would have been terrible.’

Another gust of wind sent the sails whirring round even faster, the canvas on the broken ones flapping around like sheets on the devil’s washing line.

‘I wonder how they secured him,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, getting down on his hands and knees to examine the ground. There was a shout after a few minutes. ‘Look here, Francis, there are four holes in the ground here as if a table or something was put on the grass. Maybe they fixed my lord Candlesby on to a chair lashed to the table.’

‘We need some mechanically minded person, Johnny. I’m sure Inspector Blunden will be able to get hold of the right man. God, what an awful way to die, pounded to death by the sails of a windmill in the storm.’

Johnny Fitzgerald continued to scrabble about on the ground. Powerscourt walked round the windmill twice. So beautiful an object, he said to himself, to be the instrument of such a terrible death. He peered in at the windows but could make little sense of what he saw.

‘Johnny,’ he called, ‘could you get us inside?’

Johnny Fitzgerald marched up to the door. He pulled a large collection of keys from one of his pockets. ‘Don’t want to break the door down unless we have to,’ he said cheerfully. Halfway into his collection of keys they were in. They were in a dark room full of machinery. The next floor was devoted to more machinery and a collection of strange wooden tools that looked like a cross between a spade and a fork. Powerscourt suspected that somewhere in there was the device that could stop the sails. The next floor, some way off the ground was domestic. There was a sofa, a couple of chairs and a table, all of good quality. The floor above contained a double bed with fresh pillows and sheets but no blankets. Powerscourt suspected the bed must have been made or assembled on site. He couldn’t imagine how anybody could have got it up the narrow stairs. But up here, almost above the sails, you could see the sea – now glowering and grey far out, great crashing breakers further in – and imagine that you were in your own private world. Powerscourt shuddered and hurried downstairs.

‘I was going to ask if you could stop the sails, Johnny, but I think we should leave them so the police can get the full horror.’

‘Three or four of those sails have dark marks on them,’ said Johnny, ‘and two of the wooden struts are broken, as we know.’

‘I wonder how long he was left tied up, his face being smashed by the sails. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’