‘Did you expect to get married after you left the army, Sir Arthur?’
‘Well, that’s the rum thing, if you follow me. There was I, not very bright as I say, getting on in years, set in my ways, not much of a clue what to do with women, then along comes Flavia, previously married to some university chappie, bursting with brains, Flavia, I mean, and she marries me. Well, I mean to say. I don’t think I understood very much about women before we were married. I understand even less now. What did she see in that Candlesby person? Did she like him because he was such a cad? I just don’t understand.’
‘I don’t think we will gain very much by going down that road, Sir Arthur,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tell me, when it was all over, how did you feel about Candlesby? You could have been excused for feeling bitter towards him, if not more.’
‘I suppose you mean did I hate him enough to kill him? I did hate him enough to kill him. But I rather fell into the bottle, if you’ll forgive me for saying such a thing. I hit the bloody bottle in rather a big way, actually, starting after breakfast and continuing until lights out. There is one problem with all that. If you’ve got through a bottle and a half of claret before lunchtime, you’re not going to be in a very fit state to go off and kill people. You’d fall off your horse for a start. I think I may have sat by the edge of the fountain and told the world how I was going to be avenged on him. I do have one thing to report though. I always managed to get upstairs last thing at night. No servants ever had to help me to bed. Army code was very strict about that sort of thing. Bad form for an officer to get too tight to walk. Bad for discipline; the men would lose all respect.’
Lady Lucy waved a hand in the general direction of the desk. ‘Forgive me, Sir Arthur, but are you laying off the drink today because we’re here?’
‘Not so, Lady Powerscourt, not so! I haven’t had a drink now for thirty-three days and fourteen hours precisely.’ Sir Arthur checked his watch as if it had been designed to show the length of his sobriety.
‘That’s very impressive,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But it does lead me to one important difference between drunk and sober. You said before you were not well enough to ride a horse in your drinking days. Now in the time of sobriety you would be perfectly capable of riding over to Candlesby Hall in the middle of the night and killing the Earl. Is that not so?’
Sir Arthur laughed. ‘Good try, Powerscourt. But I didn’t ride over there. I didn’t kill the Earl. You see, I have almost stopped thinking about the Earl, especially now he’s dead. He doesn’t matter any more. In any case I hope to be away from here fairly soon.’
‘Are you planning to leave your beautiful house, Sir Arthur?’ said Lady Lucy.
‘I am, I am.’ Sir Arthur suddenly sounded like a small child with a birthday present. He pulled a large box file from a drawer and began pulling out piles of newspaper cuttings, hotel brochures, travel books, pages pulled out of newspapers. ‘Look at this lot! The American who bought my library offered to buy the house as well. He said he planned to transport it brick by brick and chimney by chimney to some place called West Egg on Long Island Sound, wherever that is. Offered me heaps and heaps of money. Maybe I should have said yes, but I thought the house should stay here. I’ve thought about Paris, I’ve thought about the Riviera, I’ve thought about Sicily. Must be bloody hot in Sicily in the summer, I should think. Always been fond of the heat. But in the end I decided against all of them.’
‘Why?’ said the Powerscourts, almost in unison.
‘Comes back to what I was saying before, you see. The only subject worse than sums for me at school was foreign languages. French, Latin, Greek, that sort of thing. Completely foreign to me, they were, what? My papa sent me to Paris for a month when I was eighteen to learn the bloody language. I might as well have been turned deaf and dumb. Couldn’t even order a beer in a cafe at the end of it. Just about managed to secure the services of a porter at the station to help with my luggage when I went home. Even then, I had to use sign language. So I thought I’d better stay here.’
‘Have you decided where you want to go, Sir Arthur?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘Cornwall. A house close to the water. Gulls squawking. Walks on the cliff. Royal Navy sailing past every now and then. Reassuring fellows in those circumstances, the navy. Friendly natives who speak English. I’m going down in ten days’ time to have a look, as a matter of fact.’
‘We wish you the best of luck,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘And thank you so much for your time,’ said her husband.
Sir Arthur must have had some invisible means of communicating with his staff because the butler appeared at the door to show them out. They left him pulling on a pair of spectacles and opening a large envelope which said ‘Polperro’ in very large letters on the front.
‘Well, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy as the Silver Ghost whispered its way back to the Candlesby Arms, ‘what do you think? Was Sir Arthur telling the truth?’
‘I think he probably was,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but you have to be very careful with these people who claim to have no brains.’
‘What do you mean, my love?’
‘Well,’ said her husband, ‘I knew lots of people like him at school. The teachers told them they were stupid, they told themselves they were stupid and forgot all about it. Plenty of sport for them, dead fish, dead stags, dead grouse, dead woodcock – you didn’t need a great deal in the way of brains to do all that. Fifteen years later you discover that these people have all made fortunes in the City of London, rich as Croesus some of them. Must take a different kind of brain to do that. Zero marks for French and nought in mathematics doesn’t seem to matter.’
‘So do you think Sir Arthur could have done it?’
Powerscourt paused to hoot at a carriage in front which was perched right in the middle of the road and travelling at about five miles an hour. The driver waved happily as they passed.
‘I don’t think Sir Arthur could have done it, Lucy. And I’ll tell you why. One of the many mysteries we can’t answer about this case is just how the old Earl was killed. Blow after blow with some blunt instrument to one side of the face requires a certain amount of imagination. I don’t think Sir Arthur would be capable of it.’
‘Who would?’
‘That, my love, is what we have yet to find out.’
15
Clueless in Cashel. Chaos in Cashel. Cashiered in Cashel. Johnny Fitzgerald was angry with himself for his failure to find Jack Hayward and his family. He had good reasons for thinking they might have come here to Cashel as it was where Mrs Hayward was born and her family, the O’Gradys, were still here at the stables that bore their name. Johnny cursed himself for being so obvious about seeking precise directions to their establishment. He had asked in the main pub in the town centre and again in the first farmhouse he came to on the Ballydoyle road. When he finally reached the O’Grady stables and farmhouse, it was as if they had been expecting him. The woman, who he presumed was Kathleen Hayward’s mother, was extremely polite. No, the Haywards were not here. Whatever could have given him that idea? It was years since they had been here and they certainly weren’t here now. Hadn’t he heard they were in England now? Was she protesting too much? Johnny could see that the farmhouse was large, three storeys tall, and that there were various outhouses and cottages dotted along the drive. If you wanted to hide a family of four, this was where you could do it.
‘Never mind, Mrs O’Grady,’ he said. ‘I’ll be getting out of your way now.’
‘So who was it that told you they were here? You couldn’t have come all this way without somebody telling you they were here, could you?’
These were dangerous waters. ‘I should have told you at the beginning, Mrs O’Grady, I’m down here looking at some land between here and Kilkenny. I met a man in the pub there who said he’d heard that Jack Hayward, a man thought to be a genius with horses, was over staying with his in-laws. That’s why I came looking for him. I wanted to ask if some land I’m thinking of buying would be good for training horses.’