Powerscourt took another look at the view from the little tower. He felt sure he would be up here again. ‘Some of Constable Watchett’s tea would be excellent, Inspector. There are a number of points I would like to raise with you back in that splendid library, if I may,’ he said, making his way down the stairs and back the way they came. Once again the water in the moat, its shifting elusive surfaces, the way it shimmered one minute and was absolutely still the next, fascinated him. Maybe the Powerscourt family could go and live in a house with a moat. He could sit by a window and pretend to read a book while watching the changing behaviour of the surface of the water. He checked himself when he realized that somebody would have to be on call twenty-four hours a day to pull the twins out after they fell in, which they surely would, several times a day.
Inspector Clayton removed the rope that had guarded Mrs Martin’s bay in the library and pulled up a couple of chairs. Constable Watchett had found some tasty fruit cake to accompany the tea.
‘Will?’ said Powerscourt, the word muffled by the cake.
‘Will who?’ said Clayton, wondering if Powerscourt had discovered another suspect.
‘Sorry,’ said Powerscourt, washing his mouthful down with some of the constable’s excellent tea, ‘do we know if Mrs Martin left a will? Or,’ he said after a pause, ‘come to that, Mr Martin?’
The Inspector sighed. Powerscourt seemed to have touched a sensitive point. ‘I have to confess, my lord,’ he began, ‘that I feel bad about this will business, very bad. The family solicitors are Evans Watkinson and Ragg over at Tonbridge. When I started this case, I’ll be honest with you, my lord, I had a mass of work to finish off from two other cases. So I asked Constable Watchett to write to them on my behalf.’ Powerscourt wondered if the letter had been laced with home-spun wisdom better suited to the local pub than to a solicitor’s office. ‘Anyway, my lord, a letter came back, addressed to me, suggesting I remember my duties, which include liaising with the deceased’s solicitors, before asking ill-qualified members of the constabulary to address their betters. I have written a letter of apology, but they have still not replied. It was not well done, my lord, and now my Chief Constable asks about the wills every other day.’
Powerscourt smiled at the Inspector. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I remember similar problems of bureaucracy and administration in South Africa. Give me the address for Evans Watkinson and Ragg before I go this evening, and I will call on them tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, my lord, thank you very much. I may say that I found no sign of any wills in the desks of either Martin, but they could have decided to keep them with the lawyers for safety.’
‘Let me ask you something else, Inspector, something that I think might have led to Mrs Martin’s death. Is there any sign that she received any letters or cables from her husband while he was in Russia?’
‘Cables? Not that I have seen so far, my lord.’
‘This is going to sound preposterous, Inspector, so please make allowances for a tired investigator whose wits may have been sapped by prolonged exposure to the Russian temperament and the Russian climate.’ Powerscourt took another draught of the Watchett tea and promised himself a further piece of cake if he could make his proposal believable.
‘It goes something like this. Martin, you will remember, saw the Tsar in his country palace about fifteen miles from St Petersburg. Furthermore, Martin saw the Tsar on his own. That means the questions under discussion must have been of the utmost importance, questions of the highest national policy, questions so sensitive that Tsar Nicholas didn’t want anybody else to hear about them. Let us suppose, however, that somebody else in the entourage gets an inkling of what they talked about. They pursue Martin back to St Petersburg. Before they find him he sends a message to his wife, telling her what he knows. When the somebody else and his colleagues catch up with Martin, they torture him until he tells what he knows, including the fact that he has passed the information on to his wife. They kill him, and dump the body on the frozen river. A few weeks later, they come here and kill his wife, leaving the body in the moat. By the time the Kennedys find Mrs Martin, the killer or killers have reached Hamburg or Berlin on their journey back to St Petersburg.’
Inspector Clayton peered outside at the fading of the light. Soon it would be dark and he always found the place oppressive then.
‘There’s only one query I have with that premise, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton, eyeing Powerscourt carefully as he tucked in to another slice of fruit cake. ‘If you are being tortured, not that I am an expert, mind you, but suppose you have told your enemies what you know. Why do you need to tell them you have sent a message to somebody else as well?’
‘That’s a very fair observation, Inspector,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘Let me try to answer it. The answer, I believe, lies in the psychology of torturer and tortured, if you follow me. The torturer believes that there is always one further piece of information to be extracted from his victim, no matter how much he has dragged out of him already. And the tortured man thinks he would have attained relief by disclosing the most important thing he knows. But he hasn’t. Why can’t they leave him in peace? So he throws them one more titbit, in the hope that the pain will finally stop. By this stage, that is probably all he can think of.’
‘Thank God we live in a civilized society where these things don’t happen,’ said the Inspector. ‘There are a couple of things you need to be aware of, my lord. I’ve just heard your cab coming down the hill, so I’ll be brief. The first I have no direct knowledge of, merely station gossip. There is or there was some feud about the ownership of this house, Lord Powerscourt. There was a long court case between different branches of the Martin family before Roderick and Letitia took up residence.’
‘And the second?’ asked Powerscourt, hoping for a sympathetic lawyer under the age of seventy-five on the morrow.
‘Johnny Fitzgerald told me about it this morning, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton, ‘and no doubt he will have more details for you this evening – he told me he was dining at your house. It seems that Mr Martin may not have been the only one to have strayed from the holding the betrothed from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part. Mrs Martin was very friendly with a Colonel Fitzmaurice, a retired military man from over Ashford way. They went away together, my lord, though nothing else has ever been proved.’
‘And what of the gallant Colonel, Inspector? What does he have to say for himself?’
‘That’s the problem,’ said the Inspector, raising a hand to ask the cabbie by the door to wait a moment longer. ‘Unless Johnny Fitzgerald has had some luck today, the Colonel has disappeared, vanished off the face of the earth. My Chief Constable believes he may have gone to join the Martins on the other side.’
11
The last dishes had been cleared away. The candles had burnt halfway down. A great-great-grandfather of Lady Lucy’s, resplendent in a scarlet coat with enormous moustaches and a chest covered with medals, painted by Lawrence, was standing to attention over the fireplace, surveying his descendants. A bottle of claret and a bottle of port awaited the gentlemen’s attention. Lady Lucy was sitting at the head of the table with Francis on her right and Johnny on her left. She felt so proud to have Francis home. Olivia had confided to her at bedtime that they were now a proper family once again, and while Lady Lucy might have questioned the assumption that she couldn’t cope on her own, she was largely in agreement.