Death in a Scarlet Coat

by David Dickinson

  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.’

  Powerscourt took a last look at the inside of the windmill. ‘I think we should be on our way. I must tell Inspector Blunden at once and one of us has to phone the pathologist. He said we were to ring if we thought we had found what killed him.’

  Two hours later, dripping water all over the police station floor, he reported the news to Inspector Blunden, who led a small party off to the windmill.

  ‘Sadie, she’s called, that windmill,’ the Inspector said to Powerscourt as he left. ‘Who’d have thought a Sadie could do a thing like that.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Powerscourt said just before the police party departed, ‘I nearly forgot. I think the time has come. You remember what we talked about the other day, the inquiries to be made? Can you set them all in train? All except the last one?’

  ‘I certainly can, my lord. A lot of them I’ll do myself when we get back. Maybe we can have the case all sewn up before the Chief Constable comes back in two days’ time.’

  Five minutes after that Powerscourt was in the bath and Johnny Fitzgerald became the first customer of the day in George Drake’s hotel bar. ‘Just something to keep the pneumonia at bay,’ he said to the barman. ‘You could get yourself killed in a bloody great storm like that.’

  Lady Lucy was on nursing duty once more in Candlesby village. Johnny Fitzgerald was still ensconced in the hotel bar. Powerscourt lay back on his bed, swathed in three of the hotel’s softest towels, and contemplated the next few days. Now, at last, he said to himself, we know how Lord Candlesby was killed. We know how but we don’t know who. Well, maybe we do. Every time we think we make an advance, finding Jack Hayward and hearing his story, now discovering how Candlesby met his death, there’s still another question over the next hill. Who killed him? Powerscourt thought he might know the answer but he couldn’t prove it. He didn’t think he would ever be able to prove it. There were other questions to settle. When and where and how should he and Inspector Blunden reveal their findings? He didn’t want to talk of death and windmill sails and garrotting in the hotel and there wasn’t a room that was suitable in Inspector Blunden’s police station. He wondered suddenly where Sherlock Holmes would have announced his discoveries in this case to an astonished world. Then he had it. The truth of The Man with the One-Sided Face would be revealed in the saloon at Candlesby Hall with the paint peeling off the shutters and the deformed animals in their glass containers. Charles could organize it. Two days from now, he thought. Maybe three. He went off to arrange a meeting with the pathologist Dr Carey on a crackling line to Bart’s Hospital.

  Lady Lucy was back with the old ladies. None of them were a
ny better. Mary and Maggie told Lady Lucy she was lucky so far. None of her patients had died while she was on watch. Today she had brought some drawing books and coloured pencils for the children. Her popularity with the youngest inhabitants of the village rose further yet.

  It was hard to tell if the old lady she was with now was alive or dead. She lay on her side, perfectly still. Lady Lucy felt a great wave of sadness when she saw the holes in the old lady’s nightdress. It would be bad enough to be stretched out in bed in a nightdress with holes, but to die in one would be too much. She wondered if she could contrive some means of smuggling new nightdresses into the village without being accused of charity or condescension. For the moment she couldn’t see a way of doing it. Perhaps Francis would know.

  The day after the discoveries at the windmill Lady Lucy’s husband took himself to London. He had secured an appointment at pathologist Nat Carey’s hospital. After he learnt the news, the doctor drew a series of doodles on his notepad. Powerscourt saw that they were windmills.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That must be how he was killed. How stupid of us not to think of it, with windmills dotted about all over that coast. There’s just one thing, though.’

  ‘What is that, sir?’

  ‘Well,’ said the great pathologist, ‘this is more your province than mine actually. It’s miles away from my expertise. But suppose you really wanted to kill this man. Suppose you really hated him. Would it be enough to watch him being beaten up by the sails of a windmill?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Powerscourt, thinking back to the terrible storm, the marks on the sails, the waves and the spray crashing on to the pier at the little bay. He thought too about the marks on the body in the morgue.

  ‘There was a strange-looking instrument, like a spade or a fork, in the basement. Maybe the murderer had a bash at the face every now and then. In between the blows from the sails of the windmill.’

  ‘Two possible means of death are usually very convincing for a jury,’ said Nat Carey, preparing to shuffle off to his lecture room and his medical students. ‘I’ve never been able to work out why.’

  Powerscourt paid a brief visit to his home where the twins were cross with him for coming on the train. ‘Why couldn’t you come in the Ghost, Papa?’ they kept saying. ‘Then we could have taken Rupert for a ride.’

  The twins had recently acquired a new friend, exactly their age, who lived on the opposite side of Markham Square and refused to believe that anybody owned a motor car called a Silver Ghost. He paid a brief visit to his old friend, former Prime Minister Rosebery, and asked for assistance in case things turned nasty in Lincolnshire. But the principal reason for his visit to the capital was lunch, lunch with his barrister friend Charles Augustus Pugh. Powerscourt wanted to check whether certain kinds of evidence were admissible in murder trials. He thought he knew the answer but he needed to be certain. Pugh, happily devouring an enormous plate of Escoffier’s finest scallops washed down by a bottle of Rully Premier Cru at the Savoy Hotel, ascertained the facts in the case and left Powerscourt in no doubt at all about the matter.

  The night before the meeting Powerscourt held a long conference in the Candlesby Arms with Inspector Blunden, who brought news of the various inquiries Powerscourt had requested. Blunden was resigned about the views of Charles Augustus Pugh.

  ‘I thought that’s what he would say, my lord,’ he said, staring moodily at his beer. ‘I thought that’s what any defence lawyer would probably say. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? By the way, my lord,’ he changed course suddenly, ‘I suppose you want the last part of the operation to start tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Reveille at six o’clock. Knock on the doors at six thirty.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald, who always knew all that his friend knew about any particular case, had decided to make the acquaintance of the gentlemen of the press who had advised Powerscourt earlier in his investigation. He met Rufus Kershaw, chief reporter of the Horncastle Standard, in the bar of the Admiral Rodney Hotel. Kershaw had some interesting gossip to report. There was a rumour circulating, believed to have originated at the golf club, that the Chief Constable was thinking of having Powerscourt removed from the case, if not actually arrested. Was there any truth in this asked young Rufus, over his second pint of Lincolnshire Poacher best bitter. Absolutely not, said Johnny. No truth in it whatsoever. Have another pint. However, if Rufus were to turn up at Candlesby Hall at about five o’clock on the following afternoon, there might be some developments to report. Kershaw did say that his editor, James Roper, thought the Chief Constable was not fit for his job and was more than happy to print anything that might show him in a bad light.

  Of the three, it was Lady Lucy who made the greatest contribution to the cause in those fallow days before the meeting. She had continued her nursing duties. Two nights before the Candlesby assembly she was asked to sit with a younger woman she had not met before. Her new patient was asleep when Lady Lucy walked into the bedroom. She had nursed two of her children back to health and then seen her sister die from the influenza three nights before. When she woke up, Sarah Carter, who must have been very blonde and very beautiful in her youth, told Lady Lucy, in between bouts of delirium, that she was sure she was going to die. The disease had come for her, she said, God was calling her home to join her sister, though she doubted if the trumpets would sound for her on the other side. Nothing Lady Lucy said could persuade Sarah Carter otherwise. Shortly after nine o’clock she fell into a troubled sleep. Lady Lucy thought about the poor woman and all the other poor women in the village, their lives blighted by poverty and disease, their futures little more than a continuation of the present, their only hope that in the new world opening up outside their village their children who survived the squalor might be able to build a better life. Not that Candlesby village would equip them for very much, she reflected sadly. Shortly after half past ten Sarah Carter woke up, looking troubled. Lady Lucy wiped her face and held her hand.

  ‘Can I tell you something?’ Sarah Carter said suddenly. ‘I’d like somebody sensible to know it before I go. She never did anything wrong, whatever people might think. I’d like you to hear about it.’

  ‘If you think it would make you feel better, I’d be honoured to hear it.’

  Sarah Carter paused for a moment and looked closely at Lady Lucy. She seemed reassured by what she saw and by Lady Lucy’s steady gaze.

  ‘It’s about my daughter,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘She’s called Lucy too, Lucy Carter.’

  The Silver Ghost took them the short distance from the hotel to the house. The normal calling cards were in evidence as Powerscourt, escorted by Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald, made his way into the saloon at Candlesby Hall, the multicoloured pillars with the stains, the missing antlers, the great dark marks on the walls like the work of some malignant tumour, the stuffed animals in their glass cases. Somebody had put a table with two chairs at one end of the room with a couple of rows of other chairs arranged in random rather than uniform fashion in front of them. It was going to be like a lecture at university, Powerscourt decided, where the outgoing undergraduates hadn’t bothered to put the seating back where they found it. Inspector Blunden was seated on the left-hand side of the table, a police notepad in front of him filling up with ornate copperplate squiggles. Powerscourt was pleased to see that he too had been honoured with a police notebook of the same type and a police pen. Maybe he could bring a couple home for the twins.

  The rows in front of them were filling up. In the front, fiddling with his monocle, was the Chief Constable, flanked by a rather sinister-looking Chief Inspector who Blunden whispered was called Skeggs. Powerscourt wasn’t sure how those two had got there. Beside them sat Henry, now Lord Candlesby, and his brother Edward. This was their house after all. Behind them sat Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald, with Constable Andrew Merrick beside them. Charles Dymoke, wearing an elegant grey suit, was lounging against the fireplace, looking like some aristoc
ratic ancestor posing for his portrait.

  The Inspector handed Powerscourt a letter.

  ‘Arrived this morning, my lord,’ he whispered. ‘I think it might interest you.’

  ‘Dear Inspector Blunden,’ Powerscourt read. ‘I gather you have been looking for me. On the evening of the murder I was with a lady in Lincoln who is not my wife. Her father had just died and left her a lot of money. I only went back to the cottage to collect my stuff. I was in such a state when you called I said the first thing that came into my head. I did not kill Lord Candlesby. I was miles away. Yours faithfully, Oliver Bell.’

  ‘Gives a whole new meaning to feeling uplifted by the cathedral in Lincoln, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The Salvation Army and the later works of Tolstoy seem to have lost out to the more profitable activities of Mammon.’

  The Inspector smiled and took a wary look at the audience. Then he rose to his feet and stared hard at Constable Merrick, who was chattering away with Johnny Fitzgerald about football teams. ‘My lords, Chief Constable, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began as silence fell over the room, ‘thank you for attending this rather unorthodox gathering. Thank you to the family also for allowing us to make use of this room.’ Powerscourt’s eye was drawn to a strip of wallpaper that had become detached from its place on the top of the wall and was now snaking about fifteen feet down in a dramatic bid to reach the ground. ‘I think it would be fair to say,’ Blunden went on, glancing at his companion on his left, ‘that the bulk of the work in this case has been done by members of the Lincolnshire constabulary.’ There was a vigorous nod from the Chief Constable and his villainous-looking Chief Inspector in the front row. ‘The intellectual firepower in the case has come from our own force, of course, but especially from Lord Powerscourt and his companions.’ Inspector Blunden had never entirely recovered from the news that Powerscourt had played rugby as a centre. ‘So I think it is fitting’, the Inspector concluded, ‘that he should summarize the position as we see it today.’