‘And what was the second thing, Andrew?’ Powerscourt thought he already knew the answer.
‘This is the other thing, my lord, sir. Oliver Bell, sir. He’s disappeared. The cottage is locked up. Nobody knows where he’s gone.’
‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Blunden was collecting his pencil and his notebook. ‘I’ve got to get back to the station to organize a lookout for Bell. Use your judgement about Jack Hayward, my lord – I want to keep him here but I don’t think he should go back to the village just yet. Bell may have got clean away by now. Just when you think you are making progress, some other damned thing comes along and knocks you down. Come along, young Merrick, you have done well.’
Powerscourt took Jack Hayward for a walk in the woods. He thought the senior groom might feel happier out of doors.
‘Forgive me if I ask you a rather personal question, Mr Hayward,’ Powerscourt began. ‘You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. Who do you think killed the old Lord Candlesby?’
‘I’m happy to answer that question, my lord. My first thought was that it was the eldest son, Richard. But now he’s gone too. So that can’t be right. I have to say I don’t know any more. And you, my lord, do you know?’
Powerscourt shook his head. ‘I wish I did,’ he said, ‘then I could get back to London and see my children.’
‘Have you decided what you and the Inspector would like me to do, my lord?’
‘Yes, we have. It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. The Inspector doesn’t want you to leave Candlesby. He doesn’t want you to go back to Ireland or go anywhere else just yet either. Quite soon he’s going to want to take a statement from you, a more formal version of what we talked about just now. So I think you should stay on here in the hotel for the moment. You won’t have to pay. We would ask you to be quiet in case the murderer hears you are back and decides to kill you or kill somebody else to protect his identity. You’re going to be a key witness if this thing ever comes to trial, you see. Are you happy with that, Mr Hayward?’
‘Please call me Jack, everybody else does. Yes, I’m happy with that.’
‘Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell us? Any advice?’
Jack Hayward paused and kicked a large branch off the path into the undergrowth. ‘There’s just one thing, my lord. It only came to me this morning. I was thinking about the actual murder and those terrible wounds to one side of the face. Everybody thinks in these cases of there being only one murderer. But suppose there were two, or more likely, three or four. Two men hold him and the other two take turns to bash the side of his face with a spade or something like that. Then they change over and repeat the performance.’ He paused again. ‘It’s only a thought, Lord Powerscourt; it could be total rubbish.’
‘It’s clever,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I have thought of it before now. Mind you, the pathologist said the wounds might not have been caused by a spade, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe the reason I haven’t done anything about it so far is the thought that finding four or five murderers would be four or five times as difficult as finding one.’
‘One last thing, Lord Powerscourt. I came back here because of Walter Savage. Is he still locked up in the jail? Can I go and see him? And what was he locked up for anyway? He’s perfectly harmless.’
‘It was the Inspector who locked up Walter Savage,’ said Powerscourt disloyally. ‘He thought he was withholding evidence about the night of the murder. Inspector Blunden felt a day or two in the cells might help his memory. But I think it’s all been cleared up now. Walter should be out of jail later today.’
‘Really?’ said Jack Hayward, staring hard at Powerscourt. ‘How very interesting. How convenient for Walter to come out today.’
Powerscourt said nothing.
Political London, Tory London, Conservative London, Anti-Lloyd George London was in ferment. The peers in the House of Lords had defied the will of the Liberal majority in the House of Commons, elected by millions of British citizens, and thrown out the Liberal Budget by a huge margin. Everybody knew there was a natural Conservative superiority in numbers in the Lords, but this majority was huge, over two hundred and fifty. It was a landslide. It was a triumph for the anti-Lloyd George faction in the Upper House, who had brought down to the vote peers who had never been there before, peers who hadn’t attended since the time of the Boer War, peers who spent their time in peaceful enjoyment of what remained of their estates, peers who hated London and who hated politics but had been persuaded for a final turn-out to save their inheritance and enable their class to save the nation from itself.
The celebrations were being held in Wigmore House, situated between Grosvenor Square and Park Lane, the home of one of the leading rebels, Lord Wigmore, known to his friends as Wiggers, or, more simply, Wigs. It was a couple of days after the vote and a lot of thought had gone into the festivities.
Sandy Temple and his Selina had been given an invitation by Lord Winterton of Winterton Staithe, the man Sandy had talked politics with at the weekend house party in Norfolk. The two had met by chance in the lobby of the House of Lords and Winterton had whipped an invitation out of his pocket.
‘You’d better come to this,’ he told Sandy. ‘Celebratory party. May be closer to an orgy. Wiggers is always keen to lower the tone. Probably ought to be a wake.’
Now they were standing outside the front door at a quarter past eleven at night, Sandy in full evening dress, Selina in her most fashionable evening gown. Both felt rather nervous. A wall of sound, cheers, shouting, bands playing, champagne corks popping, poured out of the great house. They were greeted by a huge butler who must have been well over six foot six. Floating round, champagne bottles in hand, were more very tall servants, footmen in livery of black and green, all over six feet. The entrance hall was high with a black and white marble floor, the walls adorned with Wigmores past, sitting proudly on enormous horses outside enormous houses. Sandy was to learn later that when Lord Wigmore left the army he took the largest sergeant majors, sergeants and privates he could find with him to man the barricades in different uniform in the various Wigmore properties across Britain. Taking a glass of champagne each, Selina and Sandy advanced into a huge central saloon, feeling and looking rather like the babes in the wood. A fountain in the centre of the vast room was sending bubbly liquid high into the air. Various young ladies who seemed to be drunk already were lying on the side of the fountain lapping up its contents.
‘So clever of Wiggers to get his champagne fountain working,’ one young fop observed to his friend. ‘They say it hasn’t worked since the party the family threw at the time of the Great Exhibition.’
‘Means you don’t have to worry about refills,’ said his friend, plunging his glass in the fountain and refilling it with champagne. ‘Such a bore having to look for those waiters with a bottle, don’t you think?’
‘The stuff in the bottles is meant to be better, Pol Roger or something like that. Can’t remember the name of this fountain stuff but a cousin told me it’s what they serve in the Lyons Corner House.’
The two young men drifted off, arm in arm. Sandy, who was as interested in the architecture as he was in the guests, observed that there was a series of huge rooms opening off this central atrium, dining room, drawing room, study, Old Masters room. They were hailed by Lord Winterton.
‘Good to see you both,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve been to a party like this one in my life. It’s victory but I think underneath most people know it’s a hollow victory, maybe even a Pyrrhic victory when you think you’ve won but you’ve actually lost. It won’t last. At some point the Commons will come looking for revenge. But for now, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’
An enormous cheer went up from what might have been the drawing room. ‘Some damn fool lord in there’, said Winterton, ‘stands on a table every now and then and calls on the company to drink Lloyd George’s health. Never fails to get them going. Chap just moves round from room to room.’