‘I know what you’re getting at, my lord. There was plenty before him that were odd, like the one who went to Italy and came back with all those paintings that are still locked up in the top room by the back staircase. My first Earl, the old Earl, as I always call him, he was a Richard too, like the present one. The thing about him was that he wasn’t eccentric. In this family, pardon me for saying so, my lord, he was odd because he wasn’t odd, if you follow me. The next one, Edward he was, well, he started all right. It looked as though he would follow in his father’s footsteps. Then some of the family failings began to click in. You could watch it happening: slightly eccentric at the beginning of the decade, very eccentric by the end of it, virtually off his head five years later.’
‘What form did it take, this eccentricity, Mr Thorpe?’
‘Well, there’s a family failing for becoming recluses. Like those hermits who lived on top of pillars, my lord. They stop talking to people. They stop talking to each other. By the end the Edward one was communicating with the staff by letter. God knows how he communicated with the wife and children. And then there was the estate. In earlier times all the area round the house was given over to the deer, a lovely herd there used to be here, and lovely venison on the table too. They were banished. All the area where the deer had been was allowed to go back to nature so the wildlife could flourish. And why was the wildlife allowed to flourish? So it could be caught and stuffed, my lord. At one point we had a taxidermist from Lincoln come to live here for six months a year while he saw to the dead creatures from the estate. Then there were the catalogues from all the taxidermists within a hundred miles offering everything from stuffed llamas to wildebeest. You’ll have seen all these glass cases clogging up the house; we had to throw out a whole lot more after that Edward died. His attention was so given over to all this nonsense that he didn’t look after anything else.’
‘I can see that this must have made life difficult for you all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘How did it affect your day-to-day routines?’
‘Well, my lord, it was often very difficult when you had no contact with the man at all. And then, just before he turned fifty, there was something else. I think he’d read about some house down in Sussex having tunnels running underneath it which meant that the people in the big house would see even less of the servants – the footmen and the housemaids would be moving about underground. So we had to have tunnels too. There’s one that goes from the kitchen area to the stables, and another that goes from the gardens to the area on the right of the house. No more under gardeners bringing flowers to the house across the lawn.’
‘What did you all think of this new arrangement? Were you happy with it?’
Barnabas Thorpe smiled. ‘Well, my lord, it works both ways, as one of the footmen put it. They might not be too pleased at seeing us moving around through the house, but we didn’t like looking at them any more than they liked looking at us. So it was all square if you like.’
‘What of your last employer, the Earl who’s just died? How did he rate in the eccentricity scale?’
Barnabas Thorpe paused. ‘I don’t like to say too much about him, my lord. Loyalty to one’s employers may be going out of fashion these days and I have no reason to keep quiet, none at all. But I still feel uncomfortable talking to you about him; I feel as though I’m letting him down even though he’s not here any more. What can I say? He was cruel to his children, he would damage any friendships he might have had, he was terrible about money. I don’t know how deeply he’d fallen into debt but in recent years we’ve had a parade of bank managers, insurance men, mortgage company men all trooping through the door.’
‘Could I ask you, Mr Thorpe, where the bank managers came from? Was it Louth? Or Lincoln?’
‘You could do a lot worse than talk to them, my lord. They’re not north of here, they’re south, in Boston. Lambert is the name of the manager person, Sebastian Lambert.’
‘Could I just ask you one last question, Mr Thorpe? You’ve been most co-operative, and I’m very grateful to you. Can you think of any person who might want to kill your late master? Or any reason somebody might have for killing him?’
‘The boys,’ Barnabas Thorpe said sadly, ‘the three eldest boys. The fourth one with the stutter isn’t like any of the others and the last one, poor soul, he isn’t right in the head.’
‘Have you ever seen James be violent? Fall into a rage where he might do anything?’ Powerscourt suddenly wondered if James had lost his temper completely and managed to beat his father around the face over and over again. Madmen, he remembered, sometimes discovered reserves of strength they didn’t know they had. Perhaps James had killed his father and the others had covered up for him. Perhaps they had all killed him, taking it in turns to shatter the side of his face with whatever instrument of darkness they had used. Stop it, he said to himself, you’re getting carried away.
‘Well, I have seen him violent, as a matter of fact, but only once. And the violence was against himself, not against another person.’
‘I am so grateful to you for your time, Mr Thorpe,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If anything else occurs to you, please get in touch. I shall be around the Hall quite a bit, I expect.’
Twenty minutes later he was reunited with the Inspector, who was carrying two medium-sized parcels. ‘One of these is for you, my lord, and the other one is for me. Candlesby fruit cake, baked to an ancient recipe of 1763 from this house, composed of ingredients largely grown on the estate. Very good they are too. I was given a trial run of one of them along with a cup of tea. Did you discover anything of interest, my lord?’
‘The butler was more forthcoming about the Earls of long ago than he was about the dead one from the other day. Traces of family loyalty still survive in spite of all the dreadful behaviour. He did say he thought the three eldest boys were the most likely to have done it.’
‘Did he indeed? Well, the women, apart from detailed information about the meals the late Earl and his family ate, had very little to say. Maybe they had cut out all the gossip because of me. I’ve investigated two crimes in grand houses now, my lord, and the one thing you can guarantee, in my experience, is that the servants know absolutely everything that is going on. They know about illicit sexual behaviour because they make the beds. They know what the mistress of the house is thinking because she often tells them when they’re brushing her hair. They know what’s preoccupying the gentlemen because they’re in attendance at the shoot as beaters or what have you and the grooms hear the tittle-tattle when the horses come back to the stables from the hunt or a ride. What the under footman knows at eleven o’clock, the parlourmaids know by lunchtime. What the butler knows by three o’clock is transmitted on at tea in the servants’ hall. But here the networks seem to have broken down. The housekeeper and the cook haven’t been here as long as the butler, my lord, and the one memorable thing they told me was about the menus. They’ve been the same since Victoria’s first Jubilee, apparently. Never changed since.’
‘And?’ said Powerscourt, eager for more.
‘Sorry, my lord, I don’t even need to look at my notes. Candlesby beef on Sunday, Candlesby lamb on Monday, Candlesby chicken on Tuesday, pork from the butcher on Wednesday, Candlesby venison on Thursday, Candlesby duck on Friday and fish from the fishmonger on Saturday.’
‘No pigs on the estate here?’ said Powerscourt.
‘No pigs, my lord.’
‘Are we talking lunch or dinner here, Inspector?’
‘This is dinner, my lord.’
‘What happens at lunchtime? I presume the system is so well set that it still goes on until somebody decides to change it.’
‘Lunchtime was cold meat with vegetables, or pies. I believe most of the meat from the evening would be turned into its own pie: venison pie, chicken pie and so on. The late Earl was particularly partial to venison pie, apparently.’