David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

Powerscourt looked him in the eye. ‘I will not,’ he said firmly.

‘Skeggs!’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Prepare to make an arrest! I repeat, Powerscourt, for the last time, will you give to us the name of the girl you called Helen?’

Events intervened before Powerscourt had time to reply. There was a noise of heavy boots on the floorboards outside. A boy of fifteen or so burst into the room. His eyes were bloodshot and seemed to be staring right out of their sockets. His hair was wild. Tiny flecks of foam hovered at the corners of his mouth. He had a gun in his hand and was waving it about as if to shoot somebody at any moment. James Dymoke had come to join his brothers in the family conclave.

‘I’ve locked them both up, my guards, my jailers,’ he announced to the company. Charles was advancing across the room towards his brother. Henry and Edward looked frightened. Powerscourt realized that something and somebody completely unpredictable had entered the room. The irrational, maybe even the mad was standing less than ten feet away from him with a gun in his hand.

‘And I’ve got the keys of my room.’ James giggled and patted his jacket pocket. ‘I gather you’ve been discussing who killed my father and my brother,’ he carried on, the flecks of foam growing larger as he spoke. ‘Didn’t think to ask me. Pity, that. You’ve got it wrong. All wrong.’

At this point he pointed the gun at his eldest living brother. ‘You killed my father. You killed Richard too. You think I haven’t heard you talking to yourself when you thought nobody was listening, about what you’d do when you were Earl? All the pretty ladies you were going to have? All the nice food you were going to eat every day? Well, you’re not going to be able to have those thoughts any more. Not where you’re going. Not now.’ He fired at Henry. The bullet passed peacefully beyond Henry’s left side and ended up safely embedded in a stuffed peacock on the far side of the fireplace. James ran out of the room and hurtled down the stairs towards the lower floors. Charles, closely followed by Powerscourt, Johnny Fitzgerald and Constable Merrick, raced off in pursuit. They could hear the footsteps clattering down into the basement.

‘He’s going to the tunnels!’ shouted Charles. ‘He always loved those as a child.’

Powerscourt put a hand on Constable Merrick’s shoulder. The boy was just eighteen. This was no place for one so young, with a mother and father at home and a madman with a pistol up in front. ‘Constable!’ said Powerscourt. ‘Can you please go back and report to Inspector Blunden. Suggest to him that he puts a guard on the exits from this and any other tunnels it might lead to. Tell him – and this is most important – that nobody is to fire at the young man or threaten him in any way! Go now!’

Constable Merrick shot off. They were in the tunnel now, a red-brick construction that twisted its way under the house, scarcely higher than a man and with room abreast for just a couple of people at a time. James’ boots could be heard clearly further ahead. Drips of cold water fell from the ceiling. In the short corridors that opened off the main passage tens of tiny rats’ eyes peered in amazement at their visitors. Johnny Fitzgerald had snatched a torch from a shelf in the ante-room. Enormous shadows of a monstrous Powerscourt and an elongated Charles Dymoke were etched on the walls until Johnny turned it down.

‘Where does this go, Charles?’ Powerscourt spoke as quietly as he could but his voice must have carried even so. The shot echoed down the tunnel and back again, bouncing off the walls and fading to an echo. Nobody knew where the bullet went. Powerscourt thought this was a very dangerous place to be. A bullet could ricochet off the walls for a long time, killing or wounding anybody who got in the way. Charles drew his hands into a fork and pointed further up the tunnel. To the right he pretended to be a horse, making hoof noises with his feet. The stables. To the left he whispered ‘Garden’ as quietly as he could. However hard they tried they were still making a lot of noise as they went, boots and shoes sounding loud as they hit the brick floor of the tunnel. An enormous ante-chamber appeared to the left. Charles took a long swig of an imaginary bottle. The cellars. Johnny Fitzgerald smiled. There was more water on the bottom now, a tiny rivulet flowing back towards the sculleries and the pantries beside the kitchen. James must have stopped to take a better shot. The bullet stuck this time in a gap between the bricks and did no damage. Three bullets gone. Powerscourt was counting, as he had counted the yards towards the spot where the old Earl’s body had been dumped. Charles made the tunnel sign again. It sounded as though James was running now. The noise grew distant.

‘He’ll be going to the garden and the lake,’ whispered Charles. ‘He used to hide down here pretending to be a Christian in the catacombs hiding from the Romans until a few years ago.’

Powerscourt decided not to point out that the said Christian had almost certainly been caught and thrown to the lions in the Colosseum.

They were at the junction now, the passage to the stables going uphill, the one to the garden sloping slightly down, as if towards the lake. Charles led them to the left. ‘Do you think he wants to kill us?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Or is he just trying to get away from anyone coming after him?’

‘I don’t think he knows what he is doing,’ said Charles. ‘His mind’s gone. Poor boy.’

As if in confirmation there was a loud shout from further along. ‘Will you please go away?’ The voice was almost sobbing. ‘Please! Why can’t you leave me alone?’ A despairing fourth bullet was despatched down the tunnel but it got lost somewhere in the bends. This tunnel had slightly more water on the bottom. They were sloshing along now, water seeping over the sides of their shoes. On the walls bright green slime had taken over from the handsome red bricks nearer the house. Like the rest of the bloody place, Powerscourt thought, nobody’s bothered to maintain it in living memory.

Charles was pressing on. There was a bad smell now, coming from further up. ‘Way out’s near the compost heap,’ Charles whispered. ‘Nobody’s managed to move it since the tunnel was built.’ Extreme stress, Powerscourt suddenly realized, must be the best cure for stammerers ever invented. Maybe they could organize courses for the sufferers down here in the Candlesby tunnels, the stutterers pursued by mad people with pistols. Charles could lead the way.

Johnny Fitzgerald was waving his torch forward in confident arcs. ‘I think he’s gone, Francis; I think he’s out of the tunnel now.’ He turned the torch behind him for a moment. Ahead there was a very small pinprick of light. The smell was growing worse. A couple of rats, refugees from the compost perhaps, shot past them back down the tunnel. In the far distance they heard another shot, muffled by the earth and the bricks. ‘Damn and blast!’ said Powerscourt. ‘I hoped nobody was going to threaten him. It’ll only make him more dangerous.’ Five shots gone, Powerscourt said to himself. One left.

‘Let’s run,’ said Charles suddenly. ‘I’m sure he won’t be waiting to pick us off as we come out of the tunnel.’ Three pairs of pounding boots echoed back towards the stables and the cook’s private cupboards. The tunnel was lower here. Johnny Fitzgerald swore violently as he failed to duck enough and scraped his head on the roof. Charles was muttering to himself as he ran. Powerscourt thought he was saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. They shot out of the tunnel as if they had been fired from a cannon. No hostile bullets greeted them.

A group of people were lined up behind the tunnel entrance. The Chief Constable was in the front. ‘My God,’ muttered Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘the old fool thinks he’s back in command. God help us all.’ Behind the Chief Constable stood Skeggs, looking, Powerscourt thought, like a faithful hound waiting to pick up the dead birds, with Inspector Blunden and Constable Merrick stationed behind them. The reserves, expecting fresh orders. The two brothers seemed to be still in the house, awaiting developments. Between them and the lake James Dymoke was walking slowly towards the water. He seemed to be reciting poetry at the top of his voice, not concerned about the group of men behind him, many with pistols. He stopped once to pick up a piece of wood about the size of a walking stick and twirled it in the air.