‘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 would 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.’
‘Are the people who work on the railway all from round here? Or are there some who come up and down the line from Boston and so on to work here?’
‘I think most of them are local. There’s always been a tradition in Candlesby village of local men working on the railway but nobody there has seen anything at all – or else they weren’t at work on the day in question. I had people over there yesterday afternoon.’
‘So much of this investigation hinges round information we haven’t got. How was the first Earl killed? Why was he killed? If we knew the answer to that question we might also know who killed his son. Do not despair, Inspector, we’ll get there in the end.’
‘Do you think there will be more murders, my lord? A third or even a fourth? Should we put a guard round Candlesby Hall in case sons three and four might be the next victims?’
‘Do you know, Inspector, I don’t think we should do that just yet. But I do think you should warn them, even the youngest, not to go out unless they have to and then to be vigilant at all times.’
Inspector Blunden began to cheer up at the thought of action. ‘I’ll go over there straight away and put them on their guard. At least then I shall feel I’ve done something useful today.’
Powerscourt wasn’t sure whether keeping the third Candlesby son alive would add greatly to the general happiness but he kept his reservations to himself.
‘Excellent, my friend,’ he said. ‘I am going to interview one of the chief suspects, well, one of the chief suspects according to the ladies of Lady Lucy’s lunches. The man whose wife was having an affair with the old Lord Candlesby and ended up walking into the sea, Sir Arthur Melville. And before that I’m going to take Lady Lucy to the seaside for a walk along the beach.’
Lady Lucy Powerscourt was staring at a letter that had just arrived. The notepaper looked as though it had been torn from a child’s school exercise book. There was no envelope. The missive had been folded in two with her name, slightly misspelt, on one side. Inquiries at the hotel’s main desk could not reveal how it had come, whether by a person on foot or a person on a bike or a person in a motor car. It seemed to have arrived at the Candlesby Arms under its own steam.
‘Dear Lady Powwerscurt,’ she read it again, ‘you are all barking up the rong tree about who killed Richard, Lord Candlesby. It was not one of these outside peeple. It was his own fambly. Believe Me. From One Who Knows.’
Lady Lucy was not sure if the letter came from a crank or a madman or someone who really knew what was going on. Long experience of her husband’s affairs had taught her that the most unlikely explanation was often the correct one.
‘What do you think, Francis?’ she said to her husband as he joined her after his time with the Inspector. Lady Lucy thought Francis looked preoccupied. But then he often looked preoccupied in the middle of an investigation.
‘She could be right, you know,’ he said after a quick perusal of the letter.
‘How do you know it’s from a woman, Francis?’
‘Well, I don’t know that for a fact. It just seems more likely that it comes from a woman. Look at the handwriting for a start. I can’t see a man signing himself off as One Who Knows. The thing may be disguised to look as if it comes from somebody who’s not very well educated when in fact they can read and write as well as we can.’ He turned and stared out of the window as if his mind was elsewhere. ‘Come, Lucy, it’s time for our walk by the sea.’
Ten minutes later they were in the Silver Ghost and heading for Skegness. Powerscourt was driving. Rhys had been left behind for the day. Overhead the sky was a brilliant blue. The seagulls circled ceaselessly overhead squawking their unintelligible messages to each other. About a mile from Skegness Powerscourt parked the car. A small track ran down to the beach. Lady Lucy watched her husband patting anxiously at his jacket pocket as if checking something was still there. She felt certain it was bad news.