David Dickinson: Death in a Scarlet Coat

Sandy was a son of the vicarage. His father, William Temple, had an adequate living in Chalfont St Giles, or rather it would have been adequate if he had not fathered so many children. Sandy had eleven sisters and one brother. Such money as could be saved with so many to feed and clothe had gone on his education at Winchester and Oxford. Mindful of his family responsibilities like a dutiful son, he sent regular subventions from his salary back to his mother in the country. Sandy was obsessed with politics. He always had been. His first lessons had come studying the debasement of Athenian democracy during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and the fights to the death that disfigured and destroyed the last days of the Roman Republic. When he said his prayers, which he usually managed a couple of times a week, he always remembered to thank God for giving him such a perfect job. For political obsessives, working in the Parliamentary and Political Department of The Times was to work in your very own corner of paradise. He didn’t think Selina realized just how important his position was.

Sandy had been invited to tea twice in Markham Square, and on neither occasion had the hostess managed to be present in person. Family emergencies had detained Lady Lucy elsewhere. Now, as the Silver Ghost ate up the miles and her husband could not escape to his study or his club, Lady Lucy seized her moment.

‘Francis,’ she said, in that tone of voice that indicates an important topic is about to be broached.

‘Yes, my love,’ said Powerscourt, wondering what was coming.

‘You know that young man Selina is friendly with, Sandy is he called, the one who works for The Times ?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, I’ve been wondering, you see – I’ve only met him for a minute or two as I had to go out when he called. What did you think of him? You must have spent much more time with him than I have.’

Powerscourt could see it all now. This was in the nature of a scouting mission, a preliminary report to be posted to Selina’s mother about the young man, later despatches to follow at regular intervals rather like the publication of the Court Circular in The Times.

‘Well, Lucy,’ he began, deciding that he wasn’t going to make life too easy for her as he rather liked the young man, ‘what do you want to know?’

‘Come along, you know precisely what I want to know. What’s he like, this Sandy? Can he handle himself in society? Does he know how to behave or he is one of these aesthetes with very strange clothes and even stranger manners you see sometimes these days?’

‘You know what he looks like: six feet tall, light brown hair, blue eyes, dresses rather older than his years but that may be because he works in the Palace of Westminster. Manages to eat with knife and fork and spoon like the rest of us. Educated, I believe, at Winchester and Merton College, Oxford, where he claims to have spent more time on the river than in the library but still managed to collect a first class honours degree in Greats. Maybe it’s all that time on the river, but it’s hard to imagine him getting overexcited about anything. He seems languid, but I suspect he could move pretty fast if he had to.’

‘You’re talking as if you’re writing his obituary, Francis. What’s he really like?’

Powerscourt pulled out to overtake a couple of cyclists. He felt his defences were being worn down.

‘He’s fascinated by politics, my love, the way other people are by form on the turf or the football scores. Sandy can tell you who’s up and who’s down across the main political parties the way other people could report on the batsmen in form by reading the cricket reports. He’s obsessed by Lloyd George’s Budget at the moment. He’s got some rather unusual views on the matter.’

‘Is he some sort of revolutionary person? I don’t think Selina’s family would approve of that.’

‘He’s not a revolutionary man, Lucy. I’m not quite sure what his politics are, to be precise. You remember this Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George proposing higher taxes on the rich to pay for more battleships and old age pensions for the poor? It’s become a real bone of contention, with the rich in the House of Lords saying their way of life is being destroyed and that they’ll fight to the death to stop the Budget becoming law. One day when Sandy was talking about it in Markham Square he began to quote great chunks from a speech Lloyd George had made months before in Limehouse in the East End, about the rights of the poor. Sandy said it was one of the finest speeches he’d ever heard.’

‘Is he a supporter of Lloyd George, then? He’s not exactly one of us, is he? Lloyd George, I mean.’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Powerscourt, changing into top gear as a long straight section of road opened up in front of them, ‘but I don’t think Sandy is a supporter of any of them. He just likes watching the sport. I do know he thinks Lloyd George is the future, not necessarily Lloyd George in person, but people like him. He believes they’ll have to go on widening the franchise until everybody adult has the vote so men of the people rather than aristocrats and people in the upper classes can become Prime Minister. Oh, and he thinks the landowning classes are finished, done for. It all comes down to Rhys the butler in the end.’

‘Our Rhys the butler, Francis?’

‘Our Rhys the butler.’

‘What about Rhys the butler? This isn’t some sort of parlour game, is it?’

‘No, I’m deadly serious, Lucy. There is a question, mind you. Should Rhys the butler have the vote?’

‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I suppose I think he should have the vote. So should I, mind you.’

They both laughed.

‘Another thing Sandy’s very keen on is the decline of the landed interest. Possession of broad acres now in England brings very narrow returns financially or politically. The link between land – I think he’s quite original on this point – and political power is gone and will never return. Or so Sandy says.’

‘Do you think we’re doomed, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy with a smile. ‘Bound to disappear under the rising proletarian tide and the onward march of the militant suffragettes?’

‘I don’t think we’re doomed, Lucy. Not for a moment. There will always be one or two survivors left, clinging to the wreckage and complaining that things aren’t what they used to be.’

Three days later, shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon, the vicar and the choir led the way out of the Church of St Nicholas in the Candlesby estate towards the bridge over the lake to the mausoleum where Arthur George Harold John Nathaniel Dymoke was to rest for evermore. At the very front of the little procession was the curate from the neighbouring parish, carrying a cross. Then came the vicar and the choir. Behind the choir came four black horses with black plumes pulling the coffin, then the family, then the friends and neighbours with the senior servants bringing up the rear. It was a family tradition that the body of a dead Earl was brought to the church for the funeral service from the Hall on a roundabout route that went through Candlesby village, past Candlesby school and on into St Nicholas. The tradition said that the shops would close, wreaths would line the route, and the villagers stand in respectful silence, caps or bonnets in hand, as the hearse passed by. The schoolchildren would congregate in a great block by their gates and watch the coffin on its journey. On this day the village seemed to be empty. No villagers were lining the streets, no wreaths were propped up on windows, no children were waiting to stare at the last Lord Candlesby who had controlled their family fortunes for so long. The servants were the only people walking behind the coffin on this part of the route and they resolved not to tell their new master that the coffin of the old one had passed through a deserted village. They dreaded to think what form of terrible revenge he might exact.