Death in a Scarlet Coat Page 19

  Powerscourt was wondering if the two men had been killed because they were Candlesbys or because of some other more personal reason. He wondered if this was some long-forgotten curse or family skeleton risen from the rich land of Lincolnshire to harass the family. Two of the other brothers were there, Edward and Charles. The unfortunate James, last seen being rescued from the waters of the lake by his brother, had remained in his rooms ever since. The servants said that he sat or rather crouched by the fire wrapped in an enormous dressing gown and talked to himself.

  ‘Isn’t it odd, my lord,’ Charles Candlesby was walking back down the hill with Powerscourt, ‘how you can find you don’t really like your relations? I never felt sad for my father though I thought I should. And I feel nothing at all for my brother. Am I a really b-bad p-p-person?’

  Powerscourt smiled. ‘I don’t think so. You’d be surprised how many people feel the same way as you do about their relations. It’s just that people don’t really like to talk about it.’

  ‘Is that so? The only one of my b-b-brothers I really love is James and he’s still not very well.’

  ‘Did Richard have any enemies, Charles? Anybody who might have disliked him enough to kill him?’

  ‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘most of the servants disliked him. He was so rude to them. His p-p-problem was that he never went to school. He was b-b-brought up here. The tutors could never control him. So he got more and more arrogant. Candlesbys rule the world.’

  Powerscourt doubted if a home education necessarily qualified you for death in a special train. He was haunted every day in this case by the memories of the two human heads, the first with one side of his face battered to pulp by some unknown instrument, the other with that dark purple weal round the neck and eyes that stared out of the head.

  ‘Then there are the villagers,’ Charles went on. ‘They weren’t fond of my b-brother at all. When he was b-b-bored Richard used to go down there and swagger round a bit. You remember, Lord P-p-powerscourt, I said I would ask around down there about the night my father was killed? Well, nobody would speak to me at all. They all clammed up. Do you think that’s strange?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Look here, young Charles, I have a question for you. The room with the Caravaggios that your ancestor brought back from the Grand Tour, is it still there?’

  ‘It is. I’ve always been too frightened to go in to see it, gory b-b-bodies and sweaty Neapolitan locals hanging Christ on the cross. Legend says the p-p-place is haunted. Ghosts are said to come out of the walls, day and night.’

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s strange, possibly the strangest thing in this very strange house. Wasn’t the man who collected the paintings and then locked them away known as the Wicked Earl?’

  ‘He was,’ said Charles. ‘Somebody told me when I was small that he was the wickedest Earl of the lot. Just think how wicked he must have b-b-been!’

  Selina Hamilton and Sandy Temple were taking a morning walk in the grounds of Woodlands, the house in Norfolk where they were spending the weekend. Sandy had discovered that love could be as exciting as politics and Selina was now a devotee of the country house practice of leaving lists of the sleeping arrangements pinned up on a noticeboard outside the dining room.

  The company was diverse. There was an American financier called Wright whose main claim to fame was that he had just equipped a house in Surrey with thirty-two bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, a private theatre, three lakes and, most wondrous of all, an underwater billiard room enclosed in glass so you could actually watch the fish swimming in the lake as you prepared to make your stroke. The American financier never tired of telling whoever would listen about his house and his underwater room, the only aquatic site, he would say, pulling on an enormous cigar, apart from a transatlantic liner, where you could watch the waters as you potted your red.

  There was a man who owned a chain of grocery shops who had been elevated to the House of Lords by the previous King. Sandy Temple felt sure money must have changed hands to lubricate this transaction, the King having too little of it and the shopkeeper too much.

  There was a strange tall thin man called Burroughs who hardly ever spoke but who was believed to be the finest shot in England. There was Sir Arthur Cholmondley Smith, whose young and pretty wife was rumoured to have been first spotted by her current husband upon the music hall stage. There was Lord Winterton of Winterton Staithe, widely believed to be Norfolk’s richest man, a proposition he did not argue with.

  And there was a rich widow, Mrs Kennedy Miller, whose husband had made a large fortune manufacturing women’s underclothing, a task he took so seriously that it killed him. His former wife was known to be in pursuit of a new husband with a more agreeable occupation and a milder temperament. Selina thought she was too obvious in expressing interest in the local unattached males her hostess might care to invite to dinner.

  ‘Honestly, Sandy,’ she had said, ‘she may as well hang up a sign on her front saying “Available” like those boys with the sandwich boards you see in Oxford Street. I think it’s just vulgar!’

  Over in the woods to their left there was a sudden rattle of gunfire, as a shooting party from the house tried their luck with the local birds.

  ‘You don’t mind missing the shooting, Sandy, do you?’

  ‘I loathe shooting, Selina, as you well know.’

  ‘Have you had any luck yet with asking these lords how they are going to vote on the Budget?’

  Sandy laughed. ‘One down, one to go. I engaged our grocer lord in conversation yesterday evening.’

  ‘Lord Hudder of Huddersfield?’ asked Selina. ‘That was quick work.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say the conversation went all that well. Not to begin with, at any rate. Even now, after all his success, there’s something about Lord Hudder that makes you think you’re in a grocer’s shop. It’s as if he’s wearing his apron all the time. He’s imprinted the manner of the man behind the counter on his personality. You think he’s going to ask if you want the bacon thickly sliced or the ham cut thin. Anyway, I asked Lord Hudder straight out how he was going to vote. He looked at me as if he thought I was insane. “What a ridiculous question,” he said. “I always vote the same way. Approve the annual accounts and the other recommendations of the board. No need to say any more. Can’t have the ordinary bloody shareholders saying anything, can we? Always complaining about the price of bananas in the shops or some ridiculous thing.”’

  ‘“No, sir, that wasn’t what I meant at all,” I carried on.’ Another, longer, salvo rang out from deeper into the trees. A lone woodcock, possibly sole survivor of the carnage, flew overhead, aiming for a place of greater safety further south. “It’s the Budget, Lord Hodder, the vote on the Budget.”

  ‘Our new noble Lord grew quite cross about now, Selina. “Don’t be ridiculous, young man. Don’t vote on the bloody Budget. Not in any of my companies. People will be asking for democracy next, for Christ’s sake. Budget’s a matter for the board, always has been.” I’m terribly sorry, my lord, I said, I haven’t made myself clear. I was interested in how you intend to vote in the House of Lords about approving Lloyd George’s Budget or not.’

  ‘“Lloyd George’s Budget? House of Lords? Why didn’t you say so? Tell you the truth,” Lord Hudder poured himself another enormous glass of port at this point, Selina, “I’m not quite sure exactly where the House of Lords is. Is it inside Buckingham Palace? Bloody place is big enough, for God’s sake. You see, I got a letter from somebody or other telling me I’d been made a peer of the realm and what did I want to be called. I wrote back and said I’d like to be called Lord Hudder of Huddersfield and the wife can be Lady Hudder – she does like a title, our Mildred. But since then, nothing. It’s like somebody tells you you’ve been left a heap of shares in a relative’s will and then forgets to invite you to the annual general meeting. Is this vote a bit like a company annual general meeting? Confirm the board of directors in place? Increas
e the dividend? That sort of thing?” At this point, Selina, I felt I should give up. But the noble lord wasn’t giving up.’

  ‘“I think I’ve got it,” he says, downing the rest of his port. “Is this Budget thing the government’s annual general meeting about the money, the taxes and all that sort of stuff?” I pointed out that there were various increases in taxation, taxes on development land, increases in death duties to pay for more dreadnoughts and welfare payments like old age pensions. “Sounds jolly good to me,” Lord Hudder said cheerfully, the port beginning to take effect perhaps. “I like dreadnoughts. Kill lots of Germans. Death duties damned good thing too. No point in leaving your children lots of money. They’ll only spend it, not earn it. Much better for them to have to make their own living. You just let me know when the vote is and where this House of Lords is and I’ll go down there and support this Lloyd George fellow. Vote to keep him and the other directors in place. That’ll be a good day’s work.”’

  ‘The Conservatives won’t be pleased if he does that,’ said Selina. ‘Why make a rich businessman a peer if he votes with the other side?’

  ‘I just wonder if he’ll do it,’ said Sandy, staring upwards at another clump of refugee birds fleeing the scene, ‘vote with Asquith and Lloyd George. He won’t be a popular boy, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Sandy,’ said Selina, grabbing him by the hand, ‘I’m sure they will all have gone out for the shooting and the servants will have finished cleaning the rooms by now. Why don’t we just take a little trip back to the house?’

  14

  The slaughter in the woods came to an end shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon. The American financier called Wright had failed to hit a single bird, morning or afternoon. His fellow guns felt he was more of a danger to them than he was to the wildlife. But he kept his good humour throughout the debacle, reminding whoever would listen that he was never allowed near the baseball field in his native country as he couldn’t hit the ball. The tall thin man called Burroughs, however, shot an unbelievable number of birds. He never missed. He never spoke either. Of the two the shooting party preferred the man who shot none to the man who shot so many.

  Shortly after tea Sandy Temple found himself seated next to the other peer of the realm at the house party. Lord Winterton of Winterton Staithe was as different from Lord Hudder as it was possible to be. Lord Hudder was recently ennobled. Lord Winterton’s title had been in his family for five hundred years. Lord Hudder made his money from his chain of grocery shops. Lord Winterton had many thousands of acres in Norfolk and extensive property in Norwich and in London’s West End. Lord Hudder had yet to speak in the House of Lords. Winterton had made his maiden speech nearly twenty years before on the early death of his father.

  He looked about forty years old. Sandy thought you could see him, with that blond hair and the deep blue eyes and the arrogance of aristocracy, immortalized in uniforms of scarlet and black on the walls of the long galleries of the great houses of England, painted full-length by Lawrence or Reynolds, surrounded on all sides by his ancestors.

  Sandy Temple decided to take the plunge. After a conversation with Winterton he could refer to ‘peers I have spoken to recently’ in his articles for The Times if he so wished. ‘Excuse me, Lord Winterton, would you mind if I asked you a question?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the peer, scarcely moving from his newspaper. ‘Fire ahead.’

  ‘My question is this,’ said Sandy, ‘how do you intend to vote when Lloyd George’s Budget comes up in the Lords?’

  ‘Do you have a personal interest in the matter, young man?’

  ‘My name is Sandy Temple, sir. I work for The Times, in the parliamentary and political department, covering the work of both houses.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Mr Temple. I do believe I may have read some of your stuff in the past couple of years. How nice to have somebody to talk politics with in this place. The rest of them are all obsessed with killing as many birds as possible.’

  ‘And the Budget, Lord Winterton?’

  ‘Ah, the Budget! This is one of the most difficult decisions I have had to take since first sitting on those red benches. I think I shall have to vote against my principles, not something I care to do very often. Perhaps I’d better explain, young man. I am a Conservative. I like to think of myself as a proper Conservative. I don’t like change. I don’t like reform unless it is absolutely necessary. I believe very strongly in preserving the great institutions of this country, the monarchy, the ancient constitution, the Church of England, the aristocracy, the armed forces and so on. I am more than wary when Conservative politicians start talking about the condition of England question or Tory democracy. Those are not Conservative movements. Conservative politicians should aim to do less, not more. The condition of England is a question for the people of England rather than the politicians. Tory democracy is a contradiction in terms. Lord Salisbury, may God rest his soul, was the only politician in my lifetime to believe that his job in politics and as Prime Minister was to conserve, to keep things as they were, to steer clear of change.’ Lord Winterton stopped suddenly. ‘I say,’ he said, looking closely at Sandy, ‘I’m not running away with myself, am I? You can follow what I’m saying?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Sandy. ‘Please carry on.’

  ‘I have long thought that some day there would be a battle between the Lords and Commons. Power is slowly seeping away from the Lords; power is growing ever stronger in the Commons. Who’s more important? If you look back at the Prime Ministers we have had over the past couple of hundred years more of them have come from the Lords than the Commons. But I think the sweep of history is with the Commons, not the Lords. I think they are probably tomorrow, if you follow me. I and people like me are yesterday. Sooner or later women will probably have the vote and all adult males will be enfranchised. The long slow tide that began sweeping through the constitution with the Great Reform Bill hasn’t finished yet. That’s why I’m going to support the government over the Budget.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Lord Winterton. Forgive me. You say you are a Conservative and you obviously are. But you’re also going to support a bill that increases taxes and death duties. It’ll probably cost you a great deal of money. I don’t see how it adds up.’

  ‘I can’t have made myself clear, Mr Temple. My plan is, in a way, a delaying action. If you think that you are going to lose in the end, you want to end up holding on to as much power as you can. You don’t want your opponents taking it away from you. If we behave ourselves, as it were, and let the Budget go through, there won’t be a battle. Not this time. It’ll come later. But all our powers will remain intact. If we throw the Budget out, there’ll be an almighty row which we shall probably lose in the end. Then we have to take our punishment, which would certainly involve a lessening or even a removal of many of the powers traditionally vested in the House of Lords. Better live to fight another day than end up with heaps of dead lying all over the battlefield. Do you follow me, Mr Temple?’

  ‘Perfectly, Lord Winterton, but I should be most interested to know how many of your colleagues agree with you.’

  Winterton laughed. ‘That’s a good question, young man. You will recall that the Conservative Party has been called many things, including the stupid party. I have been a great disappointment to my own family on this score. I let the side down by taking a double first in history from Christ Church when an undistinguished third was what was expected. Conservatives are suspicious of clever people. I have tried to explain my views to a number of my colleagues. It was hopeless. I might as well have been talking about Schopenhauer and German metaphysics. They simply didn’t understand; their eyes glazed over. It was a total waste of time.’

  ‘So which way do you think the vote will go? Will they let it through or throw it out?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question this time, Mr Temple. What do you think will happen? You have been observing the Lords for some time, after all.’

  ‘I wou
ld love to be able to answer your question, sir, but I cannot. The Times always emphasizes that we are not to have or to publish opinions of our own, only to report those of others.’

  ‘I suppose I have to respect that,’ said Lord Winterton. ‘I am fairly certain about what they will do, myself. You will remember, I’m sure, that one of the characters in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd loses all his sheep when they fall over a cliff. If you think of my colleagues in the Upper House as being those sheep, you will not go far wrong. Already they are egging each other on to throw the Budget out. They are massing in the field by the cliff and making sheeplike noises. When the vote finally comes they will run at full speed to the edge of the cliff and fall over. Not for nothing did that fellow call them the stupid party!’

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was conferring with Inspector Blunden in his office. A great heap of unsorted papers lay sprawled across his desk. The policeman looked as if he was fighting a losing battle.

  ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, my lord,’ he said. ‘All those interviews over the past few days with all those people who were at the railway station and all we have, as I said before, are two witnesses who thought they saw two people in GNR uniform crossing the bridge to the far side of the special train, where they may or may not have garrotted the Earl. We know somebody must have got into that compartment but we can’t be sure it was those two. That’s all. No other witnesses to the mysterious pair. None of the staff on board the train noticed anything. They’ve all been questioned three times now. Nobody else reporting anything suspicious. No sight of the uniforms. Just this paper.’ He waved at the pile in front of him. ‘I’ve never known anything like it. It’s as if the entire population have gone dumb.’