Walter Savage paused for a moment and shook his head. ‘It’s not as though there weren’t enough debts already, my lord. Cast your mind back to the good times. Let’s say you needed quite a lot of money to improve your house or look after your widowed mother or pay off your gambling debts or maybe, God help us, a mixture of all three. Your income is going up year after year and everybody thinks that will go on for ever. So you think that whatever you borrow now will seem a great deal less in ten years’ time than it does today. But then the wheel turns or the bad fairy smiles on you or whatever happens when fortune changes. Your income does not rise. It falls. The loans do not seem smaller. They seem bigger, much bigger. What is a landowner to do?’
‘More to the point, Mr Savage, what did this family do about it?’
‘Well,’ replied the steward, rubbing his hand along the side of his trousers once more, ‘there were a number of things you could try. You could economize for a start. Cut out all unnecessary expenditure. No more grand balls. No more racehorses. No more expensive trips to Paris or Rome to spice up a jaundiced palate. Just quiet country living. They didn’t do that here, of course. Or you could dispose of enough land to pay off your debts. No man likes to do that, selling your future to pay for your past. They didn’t do that here either. They’ve got the worst of all possible worlds – enormous debts, tens and tens of thousands of pounds, and the debts are getting bigger, not smaller, as they can’t always pay off all the interest. It’s really sad sometimes, my lord. We had a record wheat harvest a couple of years back and the late Earl watched it all being packed up and taken away. “Do you know, Savage,” he said to me, “that huge harvest won’t even pay half the interest on our debts at the blasted bank.” There are more exotic answers, of course. One very indebted landowner over at Barnby in the Willows down Newark way took himself off to the tables at Monte Carlo with money borrowed from his uncle. He told a few close friends it was, quite literally, do or die. Either he was going to make enough money to pay off the debts or he was going to shoot himself just as the casino closed.’
‘And what happened?’ asked Powerscourt, fascinated by the thought of rescue at the roulette table.
‘The man was lucky. He won a fortune, far more than he needed, at baccarat and chemin de fer. Do you know, he’s never gambled a penny since, not with his children or on the Derby or at the races or anywhere. He says, apparently, that he used up a lifetime’s luck in two evenings at the tables.’
‘He could have lost the lot, I suppose,’ said Powerscourt. ‘And then he’d have lost his brains as well. Are there any more conventional methods for easing the debt burden, Mr Savage?’
‘I fear there are only the two proper ones I mentioned before, my lord. Spend less, or sell your way out of trouble. Or you could marry an heiress and her money would take care of everything. There have been those who’ve advertised in America for wives, you know. I remember someone sent us one of these from a newspaper in Kansas years ago, wherever Kansas is. I’ll make you a lady, you pay off my debts, how about it, that sort of thing.’
‘I’ve got a brother-in-law who knows all about money,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think his firm owns a couple of banks actually. He always says that if you are going to borrow from a bank you should borrow an enormous amount.’
‘Why is that, my lord? Doesn’t seem to make sense.’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘his line, my brother-in-law’s, that is, goes something like this. If you owe the bank a little bit of money, they sort of own you. They can sell off your land or your goods if you don’t pay them back. But if you owe them an enormous amount, then you sort of own them. They’ll go bankrupt if you don’t pay back the money, you see, so they’ve got to keep you afloat.’
Walter Savage laughed. ‘I reckon these Candlesbys must own the banks then,’ he said.
‘Can I ask you a question, Mr Savage?’ Powerscourt had grown to like the steward, himself and his father toiling in vain in the service of their masters who refused to take advice.
‘Of course, my lord.’
‘Do you think the late Earl was murdered?’
That hand crept down to be wiped on the trouser leg once more. ‘I do,’ said Savage with scarcely a pause.
Powerscourt waited for him to say some more but he didn’t. ‘What makes you think that, Mr Savage?’
‘What I’m going to say isn’t very rational, my lord. I wasn’t present at the meeting of the hunt or the arrival of the body on the horse and the diversion into the stables. But I’ve been around that house when people have died before. I know what the atmosphere is like. This time it was different. Those brothers weren’t sad, they were anxious, they were worried, they weren’t in mourning at all. And anyway, my lord, think about it. A body wrapped up so nobody can see it, brought back to the house by a faithful servant. How did he come to be dead? Why did nobody see the body apart from the eldest son and the doctor as I’ve been told? He was killed, I’m sure of it.’
‘Let me ask you another question, as you’ve been so helpful answering my first one, Mr Savage. Who could have wanted him dead? Who could have hated him so much they decided to murder him?’
This time Walter Savage did pause. He looked at Powerscourt very carefully, as if he was thinking of buying him at auction like a horse.
‘Well, my lord,’ he said finally, ‘he certainly wasn’t killed for his money. Even in these changing times I’ve never heard of anybody being murdered for his debts.’ Walter Savage paused, as if he wasn’t sure where to go. ‘I’m assuming, my lord,’ he looked at Powerscourt once more, ‘that what I am about to say will be treated in the strictest confidence.’
‘You have my word on that,’ said Powerscourt firmly.
‘You see, my lord, it’s like this, I’m not quite sure how to put it … He was a truly horrible man, the late Earl. There, I’ve said it now. But it’s true. I think he was the worst human being I have ever met and I did spend a year or two before I was married visiting people in prison. The vicar said it might help their immortal souls if they talked to some normal citizens. Well, some of those people in Lincoln prison didn’t seem to belong to the human race at all. The late Earl was horrible to his children, he was horrible to his tenants, he was horrible to his neighbours, he was horrible to any visitors who came his way. Anybody could have had a reason to kill him, anybody at all who came into contact with him.’
Powerscourt thought that the steward certainly wasn’t narrowing the possible range of suspects.
‘Did you know Jack Hayward well, Mr Savage?’
‘I did, my lord. He came to see me the day he went away, about three in the afternoon that would have been.’
Once more Powerscourt waited for more information, but none came.
‘Did he say anything about what had happened on the morning the body came back?’
‘Not really, my lord. He just said it was terrible.’
‘Did he say he was going away?’
‘He did. That’s why he came to see me. He came to say goodbye. We’ve known each other for nearly twenty years, you see.’
‘Did he say where he was going? Did he say if he was coming back?’
‘The answer to both these questions is no, my lord. I’ll tell you what he did say, though. I don’t think he’d mind. He’s the last person on this earth I would want to betray or let down, Jack Hayward. “This has all been absolutely too terrible for words,” he said, staring into the fire in my little living room. “I can’t tell you anything about it, Walter. One day, please God, I will tell you, but not now. Please don’t ask me where I’m going. I can’t tell you that either.” With that he got up and left. When he reached the door, he stopped to say one last word. “Goodbye, Walter, and God bless you. Pray for us all. Pray for us every day as long as you live.” And with that he was gone, my lord. I haven’t seen him since.’