Death in a Scarlet Coat

by David Dickinson

  ‘What did you all think of this new arrangement? Were you happy with it?’

  Barnabas Thorpe smiled. ‘Well, my lord, it works both ways, as one of the footmen put it. They might not be too pleased at seeing us moving around through the house, but we didn’t like looking at them any more than they liked looking at us. So it was all square if you like.’

  ‘What of your last employer, the Earl who’s just died? How did he rate in the eccentricity scale?’

  Barnabas Thorpe paused. ‘I don’t like to say too much about him, my lord. Loyalty to one’s employers may be going out of fashion these days and I have no reason to keep quiet, none at all. But I still feel uncomfortable talking to you about him; I feel as though I’m letting him down even though he’s not here any more. What can I say? He was cruel to his children, he would damage any friendships he might have had, he was terrible about money. I don’t know how deeply he’d fallen into debt but in recent years we’ve had a parade of bank managers, insurance men, mortgage company men all trooping through the door.’

  ‘Could I ask you, Mr Thorpe, where the bank managers came from? Was it Louth? Or Lincoln?’

  ‘You could do a lot worse than talk to them, my lord. They’re not north of here, they’re south, in Boston. Lambert is the name of the manager person, Sebastian Lambert.’

  ‘Could I just ask you one last question, Mr Thorpe? You’ve been most co-operative, and I’m very grateful to you. Can you think of any person who might want to kill your late master? Or any reason somebody might have for killing him?’

  ‘The boys,’ Barnabas Thorpe said sadly, ‘the three eldest boys. The fourth one with the stutter isn’t like any of the others and the last one, poor soul, he isn’t right in the head.’

  ‘Have you ever seen James be violent? Fall into a rage where he might do anything?’ Powerscourt suddenly wondered if James had lost his temper completely and managed to beat his father around the face over and over again. Madmen, he remembered, sometimes discovered reserves of strength they didn’t know they had. Perhaps James had killed his father and the others had covered up for him. Perhaps they had all killed him, taking it in turns to shatter the side of his face with whatever instrument of darkness they had used. Stop it, he said to himself, you’re getting carried away.

  ‘Well, I have seen him violent, as a matter of fact, but only once. And the violence was against himself, not against another person.’

  ‘I am so grateful to you for your time, Mr Thorpe,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If anything else occurs to you, please get in touch. I shall be around the Hall quite a bit, I expect.’

  Twenty minutes later he was reunited with the Inspector, who was carrying two medium-sized parcels. ‘One of these is for you, my lord, and the other one is for me. Candlesby fruit cake, baked to an ancient recipe of 1763 from this house, composed of ingredients largely grown on the estate. Very good they are too. I was given a trial run of one of them along with a cup of tea. Did you discover anything of interest, my lord?’

  ‘The butler was more forthcoming about the Earls of long ago than he was about the dead one from the other day. Traces of family loyalty still survive in spite of all the dreadful behaviour. He did say he thought the three eldest boys were the most likely to have done it.’

  ‘Did he indeed? Well, the women, apart from detailed information about the meals the late Earl and his family ate, had very little to say. Maybe they had cut out all the gossip because of me. I’ve investigated two crimes in grand houses now, my lord, and the one thing you can guarantee, in my experience, is that the servants know absolutely everything that is going on. They know about illicit sexual behaviour because they make the beds. They know what the mistress of the house is thinking because she often tells them when they’re brushing her hair. They know what’s preoccupying the gentlemen because they’re in attendance at the shoot as beaters or what have you and the grooms hear the tittle-tattle when the horses come back to the stables from the hunt or a ride. What the under footman knows at eleven o’clock, the parlourmaids know by lunchtime. What the butler knows by three o’clock is transmitted on at tea in the servants’ hall. But here the networks seem to have broken down. The housekeeper and the cook haven’t been here as long as the butler, my lord, and the one memorable thing they told me was about the menus. They’ve been the same since Victoria’s first Jubilee, apparently. Never changed since.’

  ‘And?’ said Powerscourt, eager for more.

  ‘Sorry, my lord, I don’t even need to look at my notes. Candlesby beef on Sunday, Candlesby lamb on Monday, Candlesby chicken on Tuesday, pork from the butcher on Wednesday, Candlesby venison on Thursday, Candlesby duck on Friday and fish from the fishmonger on Saturday.’

  ‘No pigs on the estate here?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘No pigs, my lord.’

  ‘Are we talking lunch or dinner here, Inspector?’

  ‘This is dinner, my lord.’

  ‘What happens at lunchtime? I presume the system is so well set that it still goes on until somebody decides to change it.’

  ‘Lunchtime was cold meat with vegetables, or pies. I believe most of the meat from the evening would be turned into its own pie: venison pie, chicken pie and so on. The late Earl was particularly partial to venison pie, apparently.’

  ‘What a dreadful routine.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to recommend it to Mrs Blunden, my lord. She’s a great believer in salads, the wife.’

  ‘No sustenance in salads, that’s what my father used to say. Never mind. Have you noticed something odd about the servants here, Inspector?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve had the time to do that yet, my lord. There’s a lot to think about round here.’

  ‘The curious thing about the servants at Candlesby Hall is that there aren’t any. Not in the conventional sense anyway. No parlourmaids, no ladies’ maids, no kitchen maids, no laundry maids, all of whom would be young and lively and frequent bait for resident younger sons, no young footmen, no young coachmen, no trainee gardeners. The minimum age of the staff here is about fifty years. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Sandy Temple, friend of Lady Lucy’s sister’s daughter Selina, was sitting in the armchair by the side of the fire normally occupied by Lord Francis Powerscourt. He felt slightly guilty, Sandy, until he remembered Lady Lucy telling him and Selina that they were to treat the house as if it were their own and she hoped they would enjoy their brief spell together. Sandy usually came home in time for tea and went back to his own quarters after supper. But now was not a time for frivolity. Sandy had been asked for a political judgement by his immediate superior at The Times and he was determined to succeed.

  On his lap was a large black book with ruled pages. On the floor beside his chair were a series of smaller notebooks that might have fitted in a pocket. These were the shorthand books he kept of the debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In the black book was the voting record of the Lords on all the bills that had been sent up to them from the Commons in the present Parliament. Sandy was making a list of all those peers who had opposed government bills. Those who had voted against the Asquith government twice got two stars against their name and so on. The number of rebels grew longer with the passage of time. Soon there were some peers with five stars against their name, joined by other new recruits with only one.

  ‘Sandy, my love! How nice to see you! I’ve had such a tiresome afternoon at the V&A! I’ve ordered tea.’

  ‘Bear with me a moment, Selina. I’ve got to finish this off today.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Selina, keen to be involved in the great work of journalism.

  There was a silence while Sandy added yet more names to his list. This is how it will be, Selina thought suddenly, when we’re married, if we’re married. Some husbands spend their time deep in the form book or the cricket scores. Mine will be ensconced in the parliamentary reports in the newspapers. Sandy knelt down and picked up one of his shorthand notebooks.


  ‘I’m trying to work out, Selina, the likely size of the majority if the House of Lords throw out Lloyd George’s Budget.’

  Selina had listened to enough conversations on the subject of Lloyd’s Budget to realize that this was very important. If pressed, she would have said that she thought this Budget had something to do with the poor and with big ships with a funny name but she wasn’t quite sure; politics had never really interested her very much.

  ‘I thought people said the Lords wouldn’t dare throw it out,’ she said, wondering how long this rather tiresome diversion was going to go on.

  ‘Selina, please,’ said Sandy, in an irritated voice, ‘I’ve got to add up four columns of figures in a moment. Could I ask you to keep quiet until I’ve done that? Please?’

  Selina felt tempted to ask how long this was going to take but thought better of it. She watched as Sandy’s pen flew up and down the columns on his page. Even he was surprised by his figures. If you added together all those peers who had voted against one or more of the government’s bills when they reached the House of Lords, you would have not just a majority, but a landslide.

  ‘That’s it, Selina. I was fairly sure before I started. They’ve got a huge majority against the Budget, if they want to use it, the Conservative leadership in the Lords. It’ll be political dynamite. God knows who it might blow up, maybe the government, maybe the Lords. It could even backfire.’

  Tea appeared at that moment and Selina busied herself with the role of hostess. ‘What are you going to do with the figures, Sandy?’ she asked.

  ‘These figures here about the potential size of the majority? I have to take them to my boss at The Times. I don’t know what he’s going to do with them. I’ve just got time to drink this cup of tea.’

  ‘I haven’t told you, Sandy, we’ve been invited to stay in Norfolk for the weekend. In a rather grand house too. I think Lady Walpole’s a friend of my mother’s; that’s where the invitation comes from.’

  Selina was wishing she could lure Sandy over to sit beside her on the sofa. It would be much more cosy but she didn’t want to be interrupted by someone coming back for the tea things.

  ‘Will she be one of those hostesses who puts up lists of where everybody is sleeping?’ said Sandy. ‘A chap told me about all that the other day.’

  ‘I don’t think it would apply to us, anyway. You’ll be in the bachelors’ wing, I expect, and I may get a room on my own somewhere. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  Sandy brushed a crumb or two off his jacket and started out for Westminster. He was just on the far side of the door when Selina called to him.

  ‘I’ve just thought of something, my love. She probably has a couple of peers who come for the weekend. Think about it. You’ll be able to ask them in person how they’re going to vote.’

  12

  It was going to be a great day at Candlesby Hall. Today was the day Richard, the new Earl, was to be installed and to take his seat in the House of Lords in London. His robes were ready for collection at a traditional tailor’s tucked away in the side streets of Westminster. His two supporters, both diehard opponents of Lloyd George’s Budget, were ready to welcome him in and see him through the ceremonial. He would be joining, one of the supporters had assured him, not just one of the most historic and most ancient chambers of its kind in the world, but the ranks of those who were not prepared to abandon their ancient freedoms to the whims of a tainted majority and who intended to oppose the dictatorship of the Liberal proletariat by voting against Lloyd George’s Budget.

  His brothers Henry and Edward were going to travel down with Richard and observe the ceremony from the gallery. And because this was such an important day Richard had decreed that they should travel in a special train, with accommodation reserved for them and for them alone. There was a dining car, a luxury lounge car and a private carriage for Richard, who wished to be left alone on this journey to contemplate his responsibilities and think about what he would say to his fellow peers. He had realized that he didn’t have to give his maiden speech on the day he was introduced, but he thought he had better consider it anyway. This train had been booked a week or two earlier when the date of the ceremony became known. It was waiting for them at Boston station at ten to eleven in the morning, getting ready to depart at eleven o’clock sharp, as the horse-drawn carriage with the three brothers rode up to the station. Two guards in their uniform of dark jackets and the green cord waistcoats of the Great Northern Railway escorted the new Lord Candlesby to his special coach.

  ‘Just to remind you all,’ the new Lord Candlesby said at the top of his voice to all those within earshot, ‘I am not to be disturbed. It is a very great responsibility for a man to take his seat in the House of Lords.’

  As he watched his brother strut his way into the private carriage Edward Dymoke decided that he now sympathized with the more radical brethren who thought the House of Lords and the hereditary peers who made up its numbers should all be abolished.

  The two brothers settled themselves in the luxury lounge with some of the newspapers and magazines provided. At exactly eleven o’clock the Great Northern Railway’s fastest engine took them out of Boston and south towards Spalding and Peterborough before arriving in London.

  Only when they reached King’s Cross did anybody realize that something was wrong. Certainly the station staff back in Boston had been perfectly happy to let the train go. When they reached London and Richard did not appear, the brothers could not get into his carriage from the passageway along the train. The door appeared to have been locked or fixed in some way from the inside. The blinds on the platform side had been pulled down so it was impossible to see inside. It took two stout porters all their strength to gain entrance through the corridor, virtually breaking down the door. They saw that the new Earl had indeed made the journey south. But round his neck was a great red weal and his head had fallen on to one side. Lord Candlesby’s Inauguration Day had been turned into his Death Day. He had been garrotted, and the killer and his deadly wire were nowhere to be seen.

  The local police Inspector discovered quickly that this was a second murder, likely to be linked to the previous one up in Lincolnshire. He took it on himself to send the train back to Boston immediately with a couple of constables to guard the corpse on its journey home. He sent a wire immediately to Detective Inspector Blunden to alert the authorities and organize a post-mortem.

  Half an hour after the train returned Powerscourt joined the Inspector at the station. The remaining Dymokes had been despatched to the Hall with a warning that the police would come to question them in the morning. The gruesome corpse, the second Lord Candlesby defiled in death, had gone to the local hospital to await the post-mortem.

  ‘This is a terrible business, my lord,’ Blunden said. ‘I’ve sealed the station off, nobody is allowed in or out, though the killer must have been away hours ago.’

  ‘He was garrotted, you said, Inspector – I presume there wasn’t any room in the compartment to beat him over the head with some horrible instrument.’

  ‘No, my lord. I’m sure you agree with me that the two murders must be linked in some way but I’m damned if I can see what it is. Ah, I think this must be the stationmaster come back to his post.’

  ‘Masters, Geoffrey Masters,’ the man said, shaking them both by the hand in turn. ‘What a terrible thing this is, gentlemen. I’ve never heard of a murder in any station where I’ve worked, never. Please come to my office; we would be more comfortable there.

  ‘As of this moment, my lord, Detective Inspector, you probably know more about what happened than I do. We have ordered every man who works here to be brought back to the station for questioning. I presume you would like to conduct as many interviews as you can tonight, if possible. My office here is at your service, and the waiting room has been cleared for more of your officers to conduct their interviews. I have reserved a temporary office for myself in the Railway Arms opposite.’

  ‘That’s ver
y generous of you, Mr Masters,’ said Inspector Blunden. ‘What do you want to do, my lord? I’d be more than happy if you wanted to join me in these interviews.’

  Powerscourt declined. He felt that the station staff might be more comfortable talking to one of their own rather than a man with a title and a Silver Ghost. He felt sure that many of Blunden’s policemen would know some of the station staff from the local football club or the school or the church.

  ‘I’m going to have a look at the carriage where the murder took place,’ he said. ‘Do you know, Mr Masters, if the special train stopped anywhere on the way? Something tells me it will have gone through Spalding and Peterborough, but I don’t know if it actually came to a halt anywhere on en route.’

  The stationmaster riffled through some papers on his desk and scratched his ear. ‘It didn’t stop, my lord, Inspector. It was booked to go straight through to King’s Cross.’ Masters began stuffing bundles of paper into his bag. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get out of your way. You know where to find me.’

  The Detective Inspector had prepared a list of questions for the officials of the Great Northern Railway.

  What time did you reach the station in the morning?

  Did you see anything suspicious, or any suspicious person, when you arrived or later on in the morning?

  Did you see how many guards escorted the party on to the train?

  Did one person or two accompany Lord Candlesby to his special carriage?

  Did you see anybody leave the train before it set off?

  Could somebody have entered the train from the far side without being seen?

  Were there any staff of the Great Northern you had not seen before, the crew of the special train perhaps?