Richard tried, and failed, to remember the tutor’s name. He plucked out a book by a man called Edmund Burke. Dimly, he recalled the tutor prattling on about this fellow. He opened a page at random, looking for a quotation to embellish his first oration in the Palace of Westminster.
‘All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.’
That’s all very well, the new Earl said to himself, but I’m not in favour of compromise and barter at this time. Total, uncompromising, unyielding opposition to Lloyd George’s Budget, that was his policy. No room there for compromise and barter, no sir.
He moved along the shelf. Disraeli, he saw. He recalled his grandfather talking endlessly about Disraeli. Maybe he’d be better than that Burke chap. Then he noticed that Disraeli had written some novels. That put a black mark against him in Richard’s book. Men should not write such things. If they had to be written, surely it was a job for a woman. Far better that they should not be written at all.
‘His temper, naturally morose,’ Richard read, ‘has become licentiously peevish. Crossed in his Cabinet, he insults the House of Lords and plagues the most eminent of his colleagues with the crabbed malice of a maundering witch.’ Richard wasn’t altogether sure what maundering meant, but it was clear that this Disraeli was a good man for invective. The original target of his bile, apparently, was a Lord Aberdeen but Richard wondered if he couldn’t use it against Lloyd George. He wrote Disraeli’s words down in his book.
Gladstone, he spotted next. The grandfather who talked about Disraeli had also talked about Gladstone. Some ancient memory stirred in Richard’s mind. Something told him Gladstone and Disraeli had not been the best of friends.
‘It is upon those who say’, he read, ‘that it is necessary to exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the working classes from the vote to show cause, and I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.’
Richard read it once. Then he read it again. Then he began to get angry. This was worse than bloody Lloyd George. This was like some demented person from the Labour Party who had recently arrived in Parliament. He remembered seeing a photograph in one of the magazines of a disagreeable-looking Socialist with a very vulgar moustache called Ramsay Madconald. This sounded like his sort of thinking. Hold on a minute, though, Richard said to himself. This Gladstone was a Liberal, not some bearded revolutionary from the trade union movement or the rougher parts of Scotland. He read the passage again. Within the pale of the Constitution. Votes for everybody, that’s what the man was saying. Votes for the junior footmen. Votes for the laundrymaids. Votes for the under gardeners. Votes for the parlourmaids. It was monstrous. Richard leaned forward and tried to open a window. It was a long time since it had been opened. At last he succeeded. He seized the Gladstone book in his right hand and hurled it with all his force into the wilderness that had once been a vegetable garden. It landed next to the spot where the cabbages had formerly met the runner beans. Quite soon the greenery swallowed Gladstone up and he returned to the natural state he had left so long ago.
Richard was delighted with the demise of the former Prime Minister. He didn’t think their lordships would approve if he were to hurl some volume of Lloyd George’s speeches across the Chamber. But he began pacing up and down once more. After half an hour he reached the end of his first sentence. He felt rather pleased with himself. He’d got off to a good start.
Johnny Fitzgerald had a secret. He hadn’t told anybody about it, not even his closest friend, Powerscourt. He felt rather embarrassed by the whole thing. The truth was, that unlike all members of the Powerscourt tribe who had travelled in the Silver Ghost, Johnny didn’t like motor cars at all. They made him nervous. When they raced along a stretch of good road at considerable speed he was actually frightened. This, from a man who had fought with conspicuous bravery in all his many battles. When the Ghost whispered its way along the crowded streets of London, Johnny always thought they were going to crash or run over some innocent pedestrian. There was more. There was worse. The very motion of the Ghost made him feel sick. After half an hour of driving he would begin to feel uneasy, queasy, rather like, he thought, the sensation people described when they spoke of seasickness. Johnny had sailed thousands of miles back and forth from England to India and had never once been seasick.
So he had travelled to Lincolnshire by train. But now, as his cab carried him towards the Candlesby Arms, he knew that he would keep his secret as long as he could.
He found Powerscourt and Lady Lucy having an earnest discussion in the private sitting room Drake had prepared for them. They were discussing a visit to a place called Ashby Puerorum.
‘Johnny!’ said Powerscourt, rising to greet his friend. ‘How very good to see you! How very good to have you on board for this case!’
‘Always glad to be of service,’ said Johnny, bowing low to his superior officer. ‘What can I do for the cause?’
Powerscourt told him all the details of the case, the strange brothers, the rotting house, the mystery of the death of the previous Earl.
‘Do you have no idea at all how he died, Francis? Forgive me for saying such a thing, Lady Lucy, but we have seen one or two dead bodies in our time.’
‘No idea at all,’ said Powerscourt sadly. ‘But you will be pleased to hear, Johnny, that I have a special job I would like you to do.’
Johnny Fitzgerald groaned slightly. ‘And what would that be, my friend?’
‘This man Hayward,’ Powerscourt began.
‘The one who escorted the body back on the horse?’
‘The very same, Johnny. Got it in one.’
Suddenly Johnny Fitzgerald knew what was coming. ‘You want me to find him. Is that it?’
Powerscourt nodded. Johnny Fitzgerald rose and began pacing round the room. ‘Why do I always get the really easy jobs, Francis? You know, drinking all night with the porters from the art galleries in Old Bond Street, rescuing Lady Lucy here from drowning in Compton Cathedral, travelling all the way to bloody Beaune in bloody Burgundy only to be sent straight back again on the next train? Life’s too soft with you, Francis, I’ve always thought so.’
Powerscourt waited for the irony to subside. ‘Have you managed to find out anything about the family?’ asked Johnny. ‘Where he came from originally? Where the wife came from?’
‘I hate to heap more problems on your already overburdened shoulders, Johnny, but they’re not exactly helpful in the village over there. They won’t speak to me at all. I was hoping to ask Charles, the son who’s on our side, to make some inquiries. Come to think of it, I have to go and see him about now. He sent me a note this morning.’
As Powerscourt set off for the Hall, Johnny turned to Lady Lucy. ‘I need to do some serious thinking, Lady Lucy,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it strange how suddenly thirst can strike a man. Maybe it’s the flat countryside all around here and the tang of the salt from the sea that does it. Lead me to the bar and the brain can get lubricated into action.’
Charles was waiting for him at the stables where they had met before, talking earnestly to a dark brown horse with soulful eyes. Powerscourt noticed that his stammer virtually disappeared when he was talking to animals. Maybe it was only humans who interrupted his letters.