‘Well, I don’t know if he’s a genius or not,’ said Mrs O’Grady. ‘All I do know is that he’s definitely not here.’
Johnny Fitzgerald suddenly wondered if women were better liars than men. He decided that they probably were, but he couldn’t hang around to inspect all the stables and the farmhouse. It was time to go.
‘Thank you very much for your time, Mrs O’Grady. I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance.’
She watched him go, Mrs O’Grady, arms folded across her ample bosom, a look of defiance on her face. Johnny could almost feel her gaze boring into his back. He turned and waved at the bottom of the drive. Mrs O’Grady didn’t wave back.
As he walked down the road, he decided that he would have to withdraw his forces. Retreat had never appealed very much to Johnny when he was in the army but he felt he had little choice here. He needed to lose himself in some larger place than Kilkenny or Cashel. He would write to his old commanding officer and ask for his advice.
Two days later Powerscourt was walking by the sea again. He was feeling more and more frustrated at his lack of progress. There were, he had decided long ago, two places that were crucial to his inquiry. The first was the servants’ hall in the house itself. He felt sure that they all knew more than they were telling him, that a terrible secret was hidden away somewhere behind their eyes. At least they talked to him. In Candlesby village it was as if the entire population had taken the Mafia oath of omerta. They had all retired behind walls of silence. The hotel manager, Mr Drake, had told him that there was some terrible influenza sweeping through the village and that the first victims had already been buried.
Behind him and behind the beach there stood a lone windmill, an elegant building, the six great sails inactive this afternoon. Far away on the sand a small black dot was advancing quite fast towards him. Powerscourt thought it was probably a bicycle. He was trying to think of a device that would bring Jack Hayward home to Candlesby. Always at the back of his mind now was the thought of the War Office and the authorities. What on earth did they want him to do this time? On the last occasion there had been information leaking out of one of the dreadnought shipyards. They were so secretive, these secret policemen, that they were reluctant to divulge the name of the yard. And when they did, all they gave him was a name, no information on who the suspects might be. Nearly three thousand people were involved in building the giant battleship. Just as Powerscourt thought he had identified the man responsible he himself was captured by German agents and held prisoner for over a week in a disused coal mine.
When he looked behind him, he saw that the bicycle had almost closed the gap. Furthermore he could now see who was riding it. He stopped and waited for the young man to arrive.
‘Lord Powerscourt, sir!’ Andrew Merrick panted, scarcely able to speak. Powerscourt thought he looked like a fish that had just been landed, panting its life away on the river bank. ‘It’s the jackets, my lord, they’ve been found, my lord, sir.’
‘Jackets? What jackets?’
‘The jackets of the two men who killed the Earl in the train, my lord.’
‘Hold on a moment, Andrew. Let’s take one thing at a time. How do you know that they are the jackets of the people on the train?’
‘Well, we don’t, not really, my lord. But the Inspector says you are to come at once, my lord, sir. Inspector Blunden wants some advice, so he does, sir.’
Half an hour later Powerscourt was back at the police station. Two GNR jackets were draped across a couple of chairs on one side of Blunden’s office. Andrew Merrick stared at Powerscourt with a sort of ‘I told you so’ expression.
‘Where did you find them, Inspector?’
‘It wasn’t our people that found them, my lord. It was the local doctor, visiting the house of Sir Arthur Melville. He saw the side of one of them poking out from around the ornamental fountain. It would appear the unfortunate baronet may have reverted to the bottle, my lord. The doctor thought Sir Arthur might have been taking his clothes off in a fit of inebriation.’
‘Did this happen today, Inspector?’
‘No, my lord, it was early yesterday evening. The doctor dropped the jackets in on his way home.’
‘Did he see Sir Arthur? In person, I mean. Did he speak to him?’
‘No, my lord. He only spoke to the butler. There was nobody else about as far as he could see. The butler reported that the clothes must have been dumped in the middle of the previous night. Nobody saw or heard anything unusual.’
‘They never do,’ said Powerscourt, looking at his watch. It was nearly ten past five. Most drunks, in his experience, began their innings around lunchtime and carried on till close of play. Sir Arthur might still be just about compos mentis, even though he had talked of beginning to drink after breakfast.
‘One thing, my lord.’ Inspector Blunden looked at Powerscourt with a pleading air. ‘I’m sure you’ve thought about this. Is there any test or anything you know of that might establish whether these are the actual clothes the murderers wore, or are they just two uniforms that happened to have found their way to Sir Arthur Melville’s fountain?’
‘I have thought about it, Inspector, and the answer is no. Of course they might be the clothes we are looking for, but they might not be. I presume there isn’t any message in the pockets or anything saying “We are the killers’ jackets”, or anything like that?’
‘I rather thought that’s what you would say, my lord,’ said the Inspector sadly. ‘No, there is not.’
Sir Arthur Melville reminded Powerscourt of a previous commanding officer who had fallen into the bottle for a week or so after failing to win promotion. After seven days he returned to normal as if nothing had happened. Only here it was the other way round.
‘Afternoon, maybe good evening by now,’ he said, as Powerscourt was shown into the same library looking out over the garden that he had been in before, but this time Sir Arthur had a half-full glass of neat scotch by his right hand.
‘Met you before, haven’t I? Powerscourt, Powerscroft, that what your name is? Powerscribe?’
‘Powerscourt, court, that’s me.’
‘Didn’t you have a wife with you before, pretty wife, nice eyes?’
‘I did,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I do.’
‘Well, you’re a lucky man, with a nice wife. Very lucky.’
Powerscourt thought the man was more drunk than he seemed. The eyes were red. The hands were steady but they always shook the day after, not on the evening of the whisky bottle.
Sir Arthur stopped suddenly. Something had put him off his stroke but Powerscourt had no idea what it was. A tear formed in his left eye and rolled slowly down his cheek.
‘Wife,’ he said sadly, ‘wife, pretty wife. Used to have one of those. Not any more.’
Powerscourt thought he spoke about the pretty wife as he might have talked about a favourite hunter.
Now the drink seemed to be taking over. ‘Anniver,’ he began. He seemed to be having trouble with the words. ‘Anniverse, anniversey, anniversary. Wife. Today, a year ago.’ The tears were rolling down his cheeks now. ‘This day last year she took some of my pills and walked out into the sea. Never came back.’
He paused again and looked imploringly at Powerscourt as if he might have the power to bring her back to life. Powerscourt wondered if Sir Authur had got the date of the anniversary right. He looked incapable of remembering anything in his present state.
‘Hstaton, no, that’s not right.’ He paused to search what was still working in his brain. ‘Hunstanton.’ The tears were turning into a flood now. ‘That’s where they found her. Found what was left of her, I mean. Bloody fish. Bloody salt water. Bloody engine on the coastguard’s boat cutting half her leg off.’ Sir Arthur stopped to take a Goliath-sized gulp of his scotch. Powerscourt saw with astonishment that the glass was no longer half full. There was nothing left. ‘It’s no better, you know. Year later. Whole damned year later. No better, no better at all.’ He paused and concentrated hard on refilling his glass, almost to the top this time. ‘Time the great healer, people tell you; what a load of rubbish. Wounds will heal – I remember some bloody padre telling me that after the funeral. Wounds don’t heal. They get worse. They suppurate. They rot your insides away. Do you know that, Powerscliff?’