The coroner led the way downstairs to the vault. Some of the flagstones here were wet with damp. Powerscourt suddenly realized that in one sense they were fortunate. Sliding the coffin out of its niche down here would be much easier than digging it up from an ordinary grave in a cemetery on a night like this: the need to construct some sort of awning so nobody could see what was happening, the spades clogged with wet earth, the strain of pulling the coffin out of the ground, the constant rain and the howling of the wind.
Barnabas Thorpe whipped another ancient key from his ring and unlocked the iron grille that had enclosed Candlesby’s coffin. The policemen pulled it out while Thorpe locked the gate once more. Then the undertaker supervised the transport out to the cart, the policemen and the undertaker himself acting as pallbearers.
Dr Carey looked at his prey with an appreciative eye, anxious to get on with his work. As the cart moved off the coroner came to say goodbye to Powerscourt and the Inspector. He shook them both by the hand.
‘There, gentlemen, we have managed to secure what you wanted. I hope Carey’s results will be to your liking. I am going to announce the day for the inquest when he has finished his investigations tomorrow. I don’t like to call it beforehand in case any body parts have to be sent away for tests. A very good morning to you.’
Inspector Blunden led the way to the hospital morgue the following morning. He had, as he pointed out ruefully to Powerscourt, been there far too many times before. There was the normal smell of hospital disinfectant. A couple of orderlies were cleaning the floor. They were taken to a small room to one side. A body was lying on a slab with a white sheet over its face but there was nobody else in the room. Dr Carey appeared after a moment or two, a large notebook in his left hand and an expensive-looking fountain pen in the other.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said cheerfully, placing notebook and pen on a small table in the corner. ‘This one didn’t take very long, hardly any time at all. Come, let me show you. You’re not squeamish about dead bodies, are you? I have to warn you that this one is absolutely disgusting.’
Both men said they thought they would be able to cope. ‘Here goes,’ said Dr Carey, and pulled the sheet slowly back to about the level of the shoulder. It was one of the most revolting corpses Powerscourt had ever seen, and the battlefields of India and South Africa had been strewn with bodies hideously mutilated by the weapons of modern warfare. One side of Candlesby’s face had not been touched at all. The other had been battered, hit, smashed, thumped, over and over and over and over again. The skin had been reduced to pulp. The bones had been beaten into strange and grotesque shapes. The nose had virtually disappeared. There was dried blood everywhere, caked in lumps on his shoulder, lining his body as far as they could see. There was a sickly smell of dried blood and death and the faint overlay of the hospital anaesthetic.
‘You won’t be surprised to hear that this poor man did not die of natural causes. I have to say I am at a loss to say exactly how he did die. I mean, after a fairly limited spell of this battering his heart gave up so the actual cause of death was heart failure. As for the time of death, it is difficult if not impossible to estimate so long after the event, but I would hazard sometime between ten in the evening and four o’clock the following morning. So I can certainly answer the coroner’s question, Was this death by natural causes? No, it was not. You gentlemen have lots of experience looking at dead bodies. Have you ever seen anything like this before? This brutal battering on one side of the face only?’
Neither man had seen anything like it. ‘Would he have been upright perhaps?’ Powerscout suggested. ‘Lashed to a pillar so his assailant or assailants could attack him with a spade or something like that?’
‘That’s good, Powerscourt. He was tied up to something. His hands and ankles have marks on them as though he had indeed been secured on to pillar or post or some such.’
‘You don’t suppose our murderer has a rather bizarre way of killing people?’ Inspector Blunden was rather hesitant. ‘I mean, suppose he gets his man tied up so he can’t move. Then he picks up his spade or his shovel or whatever it is. He gives one good whack to the man’s face. If he’s right-handed maybe it’s easier to batter him on one side only rather than go round to the other side where the blows may not be so effective.’
‘That’s clever, Inspector. It may even be right.’ Nathaniel Carey was nodding at Blunden. ‘But there is something else I have to tell you. Whatever killed him might not have been a spade or a shovel or anything like that though I could be wrong. I have no idea what killed him.’
‘Do you think you will be able to work it out – what killed him, I mean?’
Dr Carey looked at the corpse again. ‘I’m not sure. I have preserved various sections of tissue which might tell us if certain other objects might have killed him. Beyond that, I can do nothing.’
‘The way I look at it is this, Dr Carey, my lord,’ Inspector Blunden said. ‘We wanted to know if the man died of natural causes. We now know he didn’t. He was murdered in a particularly horrible way. But now it’s murder we can make progress in our investigation. We can question every single person in that house down to the mice in the skirting boards. We can search every room in the place. We can break into Jack Hayward’s house if we have to and see if there are any clues in there as to where he’s gone. I believe we have to wait until after the murder verdict is revealed at the inquest but that won’t be long. We can begin our inquiries at last. The waiting’s over.’
11
Johnny Fitzgerald didn’t know much about The Turf. He could have told you that Charles the Second had a lot to do with establishing Newmarket as a centre for horse racing. He vaguely remembered somebody telling him about the great merits of Newmarket sausages. But when deciding on the best strategy for finding out if Jack Hayward and his family were here or not, he fell back on the tactics that had served him well in the past. He found the grandest public house and hotel in the place and inquired within for the name of a well-respected trainer.
‘Do you have horses you want to place here, is that what you’re about?’ said the landlord in a quiet spell between orders.
‘I’m looking for somebody, that’s what I’m doing. Man who used to work here years ago. Now, if you could tell me the trainer who would most likely know about who’s here and who’s not, I would be most grateful.’
The landlord thought for a minute or two. ‘Bamford,’ he said, ‘Dick Bamford. He knows most of what goes on round here. Apple Tree Farm is where you’ll find him, on the Cambridge road.’
Just one string of horses passed Johnny on his way to the farm. They were picking their way along the road as if they were used to better surfaces and wider horizons.
Dick Bamford was slightly suspicious at first about Johnny’s mission. He had explained that he was working with one of England’s leading investigators and the Lincolnshire police. But when Bamford learned that it involved a case of what looked like murder, and that Jack Hayward had disappeared very shortly after the discovery of the body, he grew more suspicious still.
‘You’re not suggesting that Jack killed this Candlesby person, that he ran away before he was arrested, are you?’
‘No, I’m not, Mr Bamford,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t explain about the dead man straight away. I promise you, nobody thinks Jack Hayward killed anybody. We just think he left in such a hurry because he knew too much. Maybe he knew enough to put the new Lord Candlesby in the dock. You see, only three people saw the body. Jack was one. The doctor was another. The son was the third. The doctor is dead and Jack has disappeared. There’s only one person left around who has seen the corpse and knows what he died of and he says he never looked at the body at all. That’s the new Earl, the eldest son. They may have taken the corpse out of its mausoleum by now and a pathologist may have answered some of these questions, I don’t know. But can you see why we want to talk to Jack? It may be enough that we talk to him where he is at present so he won’t have to go back to Candlesby if he doesn’t want to. But unless I know where he is I can’t even speak to him.’