Powerscourt’s brain was reeling now. He didn’t know what to believe. At best, you could assume that the old Earl had rented various locals to model for his imitations of the Caravaggios he had bought on the Grand Tour. But there were other, darker possibilities. The models might have been abused or beaten up or scourged or had their heads cut off. People of all sorts had told him that the Candlesbys were eccentric, that they beat their children, that they refused to speak to their sons and daughters and communicated only by letter, that children could be thrown out for not standing up when their father came into the room. This older Candlesby was undoubtedly of that tradition. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the butler and indeed Charles Candlesby himself refusing to come into the Caravaggio chamber. What did these Candlesbys think their fellow men were for? They were to be exploited, robbed, used, whatever the masters wanted. For the masters owned the servants and the tenants and the farm labourers as they might own a cart or a horse or a field or a house. They were just one more possession to be used at will.
God knows what rumours had circulated in times gone by. Maybe a William had gone up to the house to model for a holy painting and never returned. An Albert came back with the most terrible weals on his back, so weak and in so much pain he could hardly speak. A Peter said he had been hung upside down on a cross and left for hours. As he bundled the pictures and the props back into the cupboards a terrible thought struck Powerscourt. Maybe these weren’t stories or myths of the Candlesby past. Maybe they were all true.
17
Powerscourt’s brain was reeling as he rushed down the three flights of stairs from the top floor of Candlesby Hall. Some flying creature, possibly a bat, brushed his face as he sped past. Other demons rattled through his brain as he tried to make sense of the awful sights up there, looking out over the lake and the Candlesby fields. He managed to leave the house without having to speak to a single living soul and walked at top speed round the edges of the park. The deer watched him from afar, their lives largely peaceful, their great trusting eyes untroubled by the ghosts of flagellation and martyrdom from long ago. When he reached the hotel he found Lady Lucy sitting by the window in their room, staring sadly out at the bare trees and the flat landscape.
‘Oh, Francis!’ She rushed into his arms. ‘Thank God you’ve come. It’s very sad down there in the village. I don’t know if they’re going to come through.’
‘Are all of them ill?’ asked Powerscourt. He had already resolved not to tell Lady Lucy about the terrible things in the Caravaggio room.
‘Well, not all of them. I should say about a quarter of the able-bodied men, slightly less for the women, thank God. It’s the children and the old people who are worst affected. I feel for them all, you know, Francis. Not that I’d ever say anything, there’s too much to do with the watching by the bedsides and stroking their foreheads or wiping their faces and trying to speak comforting things to them. You’d think you wouldn’t feel so bad with the old ladies. They’ve had their time in a way, they’ve got married and brought up their children and done whatever women do in a village like that. Some of them seem ready to go, you know. But others are fighting for life. Even when they’re tossing and turning in their rickety beds you can still catch a look that says, I’m not going to go yet, not if I can help it.
‘The worst thing with the children is that they don’t know what’s happening to them. Oh, they’ll listen to the stories we tell them and manage a little smile from time to time. But for a lot of the day they just look hurt and confused. They’ve never been ill in their lives so far, not seriously ill I mean, and it’s terrible for them. Why can’t they get out of bed and cause trouble as they usually do? Why can’t they go out and run about in the fields? Why are they stuck in these beds, the sweat pouring off their bodies and the coughs racking their little chests? Nobody told them these were the rules.’
‘I’m sure you are a great comfort to them, Lucy. I must leave you for a few minutes. I have a naughty plan to bring Jack Hayward back. I must bring Blunden on board and then we can send a telegram.’
Lady Lucy watched him go. She knew that she would continue with her nursing in Candlesby village until the influenza had passed. She didn’t tell her husband about the ravings of the elderly ladies.
Powerscourt found Inspector Blunden in cheerful mood, making copperplate doodles at his desk.
‘I’m feeling more cheerful about the case, my lord. God knows why. There’s no reason for it, but I just feel we’re going to win through.’
‘Let me try to enlist your support in a stratagem that would bring Jack Hayward back. I don’t think you’ll like it one little bit, but think of the prize, the man who brought the corpse back, the man who saw the battered face, the man who left the scene at record speed.’
‘Tell me the plan then,’ said the Inspector.
‘You will remember me telling you how close Jack Hayward was to Walter Savage. They were close for twenty years. Hayward asked Savage to pray for him when he was leaving.’
Suddenly the Inspector rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. His face broke out into a rather wicked grin. ‘I think I’ve got it, my lord! It’s certainly devious, extremely devious, but I’m sure it would work. We arrest Savage and lock him up on some trumped-up charge. Then we send a telegram to your friend Johnny Fitzgerald announcing that Savage is in prison. Hayward hurries home to save his friend. How’s that?’
‘Spot on, Inspector, spot on.’
‘Right,’ said Blunden. ‘I’m on my way to Candlesby Hall to pick up Savage. He should be locked up within the hour. You can send the telegram now if you like, my lord.’
Johnny Fitzgerald was growing weary of the bars and public houses of Limerick. He had spent many hours in their smoke-filled snugs, listening to the stories of the old men and the complaints of the farmers, all of them blessed with an unquenchable thirst for Guinness and the more powerful draughts of John Jameson.
So it was a relief early one evening when the hotel manager gave Johnny a telegram. He handed it over with the air of one who is certain that it contains bad news for the recipient, imminent arrest perhaps, or instant deportation to the colonies. Johnny read it in his room. Powerscourt, he saw, had not spared himself in the words department. Not for him the normal compression, the minimum of letters employed in the expensive business of the despatch of telegrams. Johnny remembered a military bookkeeper in India, the Skinflint of Darjeeling as he was known, telling Powerscourt that he didn’t have to send out messages as if he were writing the principal leading article in The Times.
‘Candlesby, twenty-sixth of November,’ he read. ‘Dear Johnny.’ God in heaven, Fitzgerald said to himself, who the hell ever put the date and Dear Johnny in a telegram? ‘I bring news from the front. Inspector Blunden has arrested the steward of Candlesby, Walter Savage, in connection with the murder of the two Earls. He is at present in Spalding jail. Savage has repeatedly expressed the wish that Jack Hayward was there to help him in his hour of need. You will know what to do. Lucy sends her love. Hope to see you soon in these wretched flatlands by the sea. Francis.’