Even through the dust and the grime the power of the artist illuminated this room at the top of Candlesby Hall. For the poor and the peasants of early seventeenth-century Italy, they must have seemed more wondrous than the modern cinema pictures. These were in colour rather than black and white with an intensity the camera did not possess.
But what of the other pictures, the ones on the opposite side of the alcove? Powerscourt moved some of the real Caravaggios to rest against the wall behind the easel. Out they came, the others, two or three at a time. When he inspected them, he was amazed. This, he thought, was the most unusual thing he had seen since the start of his investigation. These paintings were as grimy as the others. Dust and dark lines defaced the surface of the pictures as it did the ones by the window. But the subject matter was the same. These were copies, very imperfect copies, of the Caravaggios behind the easels. Here again was the boy with the basket of fruit, Bacchus with a crown on his head, the flayings, the decapitations, the crucifixions, the whole bloody agony from Gethsemane to Golgotha. But they were copies with a difference. This boy with a fruit basket did not come from the streets of Naples. He looked as though he might have come from the farms of Candlesby. There was something terribly English about his face.
As he rattled through the paintings, Powerscourt saw a host of people who must have been locals, summoned to this room to pose for their master. Rubbing lightly with his handkerchief and blowing at the corner of one painting, Powerscourt found a sort of signature. ‘Candlesby’, the writing said in the bottom right-hand corner, ‘after Caravaggio’.
Inspector Blunden was not a happy man. He was on his way to interview Oliver Bell near Old Bolingbroke Castle west of Candlesby. Bell’s father had been shot in a duel by the late Lord Candlesby many years before, and Bell had served in the British Army as an expert marksman. He was, the Inspector thought, far too obvious a suspect but his Chief Constable had been making suggestions so here he was.
Blunden had always had a feeling about murder inquiries. Some of them, he felt, you just knew were going to turn out well. It was only a question of waiting for the key facts to fall into place or a witness to come forward with the vital piece of evidence. The Candlesby murders were not like that. There was his interfering Chief Constable for a start. Then there were those posh people up at Candlesby Hall. Blunden would never have admitted it but he felt uncomfortable with these aristocrats. Part of him really believed that they were superior to him and his like. Another part of him told him that this was nonsense. Nevertheless, he found interviewing them difficult. With most of the population of Lincolnshire Blunden could have told you who was lying and who was telling the truth and been right almost all the time. This detection compass deserted him completely in Candlesby Hall.
Then there was Powerscourt. Inspector Blunden was very fond of Powerscourt and was glad he was on board. But he did find him difficult on occasion. Blunden’s brain ticked over like on old grandfather clock. Steady. Reliable. Unchanging. The time on its face was always right. Powerscourt’s brain on the other hand, the Inspector felt, was not like that at all. It was mercurial, it darted about, it jumped around. Inspector Blunden doubted if a Powerscourt clock would ever tell the right time. It would look very pretty as some clocks did, but as a timekeeper it would be all over the place. In some ways Powerscourt reminded him of a boy he had known at school. He was no good at the steady subjects, Albert Parker, but he was entranced by history and the romance of old buildings and battles and glory long ago. ‘Show him a castle,’ the history master had once said, ‘and there’ll be a princess locked up in the tower and a sword stuck in a rock that only the once and future King can pull out. Overdeveloped historical imagination, that’s what it is.’ Inspector Blunden knew in his bones that Powerscourt would have one brilliant flash of intuition – the Inspector preferred to call it guesswork – and the case would be over.
There was only one consoling thought in the Inspector’s heart that morning and she was called Emily and she was three years old, Emily Blunden. She would sit in her father’s lap and demand his total attention before serenading him with ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, over and over again. The Inspector had impressed upon his wife the need to widen the repertoire, but, so far, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ was all they were going to get.
The little garden outside Oliver Bell’s cottage was very tidy. Oliver Bell opened the door in a pair of dark blue trousers and an enormous sweater as if he was about to embark on a long sea voyage. He had a neat black beard and curly hair turning silver at the sides. He looked, Blunden thought, like a self-contained sort of person, one who does not need all that much of the company of his fellow men.
‘Good morning, Inspector,’ said Bell. ‘I’ve been expecting you for some time now.’
The Inspector wondered if he had been derelict in the performance of his duty and would be sacked on his return to the police station.
‘I’m sure you can understand my position, Mr Bell.’ The Inspector had squeezed into a chair that was much too small for him. ‘Your father killed in a duel when you were small, your coming back here a year or so ago, revenge always a very clear motive for murder and you a military man too.’
‘I can fully see why you might regard me as a suspect, Inspector. In your job I would have done exactly the same. But I have to tell you that I have changed. I am no longer a soldier. I am a pacifist now, a Christian of sorts, a believer in the late writings of Leo Tolstoy and politicians like Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. I am going to London to work for the Salvation Army when you are finished with me. I did not care to leave until I had spoken with you in case you thought I was guilty and was running away.’
‘Can you tell me where you were on the night of the great storm when Lord Candlesby was murdered, Mr Bell?’
‘I can indeed, Inspector. I was here apart from an hour spent with my nearest neighbour, a retired clergyman who thought his roof was about to collapse. I was with him for fifty or sixty minutes. I’m sure he would confirm that.’
‘Very well, Mr Bell, once I have confirmed that you will be free to leave. Just one other thing. Could I ask you couple of questions if I may?’
‘That’s what you people do,’ Bell replied, with a smile.
‘What made you change your mind? About the military, I mean. You had a very distinguished career in the army after all.’
Oliver Bell stared blankly at the Inspector as if he had travelled to some faraway veldt or a distant hill station in Rajasthan.
‘I killed too many people,’ he said finally. ‘Sorry if that sounds gruesome. I must have killed hundreds and hundreds of people in my time in the army. Most of the time you never see them, your victims I mean. Near the end I did see three people I’d shot that very morning. One had been shot in the chest and his blood was everywhere. One had been shot in the belly and his guts were hanging out over his stomach like something in a butcher’s shop. The third had been hit in the forehead and his brains were all over the others. Flies and other insects were all buzzing around for the feast. Man reduced to a treat for the smallest and least significant of God’s creatures. I only killed two people after that. Most of the time I aimed too high or too wide.’