‘I was going to ask if you could stop the sails, Johnny, but I think we should leave them so the police can get the full horror.’
‘Three or four of those sails have dark marks on them,’ said Johnny, ‘and two of the wooden struts are broken, as we know.’
‘I wonder how long he was left tied up, his face being smashed by the sails. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’
Powerscourt took a last look at the inside of the windmill. ‘I think we should be on our way. I must tell Inspector Blunden at once and one of us has to phone the pathologist. He said we were to ring if we thought we had found what killed him.’
Two hours later, dripping water all over the police station floor, he reported the news to Inspector Blunden, who led a small party off to the windmill.
‘Sadie, she’s called, that windmill,’ the Inspector said to Powerscourt as he left. ‘Who’d have thought a Sadie could do a thing like that.’
‘Inspector,’ Powerscourt said just before the police party departed, ‘I nearly forgot. I think the time has come. You remember what we talked about the other day, the inquiries to be made? Can you set them all in train? All except the last one?’
‘I certainly can, my lord. A lot of them I’ll do myself when we get back. Maybe we can have the case all sewn up before the Chief Constable comes back in two days’ time.’
Five minutes after that Powerscourt was in the bath and Johnny Fitzgerald became the first customer of the day in George Drake’s hotel bar. ‘Just something to keep the pneumonia at bay,’ he said to the barman. ‘You could get yourself killed in a bloody great storm like that.’
Lady Lucy was on nursing duty once more in Candlesby village. Johnny Fitzgerald was still ensconced in the hotel bar. Powerscourt lay back on his bed, swathed in three of the hotel’s softest towels, and contemplated the next few days. Now, at last, he said to himself, we know how Lord Candlesby was killed. We know how but we don’t know who. Well, maybe we do. Every time we think we make an advance, finding Jack Hayward and hearing his story, now discovering how Candlesby met his death, there’s still another question over the next hill. Who killed him? Powerscourt thought he might know the answer but he couldn’t prove it. He didn’t think he would ever be able to prove it. There were other questions to settle. When and where and how should he and Inspector Blunden reveal their findings? He didn’t want to talk of death and windmill sails and garrotting in the hotel and there wasn’t a room that was suitable in Inspector Blunden’s police station. He wondered suddenly where Sherlock Holmes would have announced his discoveries in this case to an astonished world. Then he had it. The truth of The Man with the One-Sided Face would be revealed in the saloon at Candlesby Hall with the paint peeling off the shutters and the deformed animals in their glass containers. Charles could organize it. Two days from now, he thought. Maybe three. He went off to arrange a meeting with the pathologist Dr Carey on a crackling line to Bart’s Hospital.
Lady Lucy was back with the old ladies. None of them were any better. Mary and Maggie told Lady Lucy she was lucky so far. None of her patients had died while she was on watch. Today she had brought some drawing books and coloured pencils for the children. Her popularity with the youngest inhabitants of the village rose further yet.
It was hard to tell if the old lady she was with now was alive or dead. She lay on her side, perfectly still. Lady Lucy felt a great wave of sadness when she saw the holes in the old lady’s nightdress. It would be bad enough to be stretched out in bed in a nightdress with holes, but to die in one would be too much. She wondered if she could contrive some means of smuggling new nightdresses into the village without being accused of charity or condescension. For the moment she couldn’t see a way of doing it. Perhaps Francis would know.
The day after the discoveries at the windmill Lady Lucy’s husband took himself to London. He had secured an appointment at pathologist Nat Carey’s hospital. After he learnt the news, the doctor drew a series of doodles on his notepad. Powerscourt saw that they were windmills.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That must be how he was killed. How stupid of us not to think of it, with windmills dotted about all over that coast. There’s just one thing, though.’
‘What is that, sir?’
‘Well,’ said the great pathologist, ‘this is more your province than mine actually. It’s miles away from my expertise. But suppose you really wanted to kill this man. Suppose you really hated him. Would it be enough to watch him being beaten up by the sails of a windmill?’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Powerscourt, thinking back to the terrible storm, the marks on the sails, the waves and the spray crashing on to the pier at the little bay. He thought too about the marks on the body in the morgue.
‘There was a strange-looking instrument, like a spade or a fork, in the basement. Maybe the murderer had a bash at the face every now and then. In between the blows from the sails of the windmill.’
‘Two possible means of death are usually very convincing for a jury,’ said Nat Carey, preparing to shuffle off to his lecture room and his medical students. ‘I’ve never been able to work out why.’
Powerscourt paid a brief visit to his home where the twins were cross with him for coming on the train. ‘Why couldn’t you come in the Ghost, Papa?’ they kept saying. ‘Then we could have taken Rupert for a ride.’
The twins had recently acquired a new friend, exactly their age, who lived on the opposite side of Markham Square and refused to believe that anybody owned a motor car called a Silver Ghost. He paid a brief visit to his old friend, former Prime Minister Rosebery, and asked for assistance in case things turned nasty in Lincolnshire. But the principal reason for his visit to the capital was lunch, lunch with his barrister friend Charles Augustus Pugh. Powerscourt wanted to check whether certain kinds of evidence were admissible in murder trials. He thought he knew the answer but he needed to be certain. Pugh, happily devouring an enormous plate of Escoffier’s finest scallops washed down by a bottle of Rully Premier Cru at the Savoy Hotel, ascertained the facts in the case and left Powerscourt in no doubt at all about the matter.
The night before the meeting Powerscourt held a long conference in the Candlesby Arms with Inspector Blunden, who brought news of the various inquiries Powerscourt had requested. Blunden was resigned about the views of Charles Augustus Pugh.
‘I thought that’s what he would say, my lord,’ he said, staring moodily at his beer. ‘I thought that’s what any defence lawyer would probably say. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? By the way, my lord,’ he changed course suddenly, ‘I suppose you want the last part of the operation to start tomorrow?’
‘Yes please,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Reveille at six o’clock. Knock on the doors at six thirty.’
Johnny Fitzgerald, who always knew all that his friend knew about any particular case, had decided to make the acquaintance of the gentlemen of the press who had advised Powerscourt earlier in his investigation. He met Rufus Kershaw, chief reporter of the Horncastle Standard, in the bar of the Admiral Rodney Hotel. Kershaw had some interesting gossip to report. There was a rumour circulating, believed to have originated at the golf club, that the Chief Constable was thinking of having Powerscourt removed from the case, if not actually arrested. Was there any truth in this asked young Rufus, over his second pint of Lincolnshire Poacher best bitter. Absolutely not, said Johnny. No truth in it whatsoever. Have another pint. However, if Rufus were to turn up at Candlesby Hall at about five o’clock on the following afternoon, there might be some developments to report. Kershaw did say that his editor, James Roper, thought the Chief Constable was not fit for his job and was more than happy to print anything that might show him in a bad light.