Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were walking up the slope above the river Tarn. The river, Lady Lucy had remarked, was probably as wide as the Thames going through London. ‘It’s another Last Judgement, Francis.’ Lady Lucy stopped about fifteen feet away from the church door. ‘Based on the Book of Revelation. This is pretty dramatic stuff, my love: “Behold. A throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”’
Lady Lucy paused for a moment. ‘Here we go, Francis: “And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne which are the seven Spirits of God.”’
‘Don’t think the sculptor bothered with the fire and the weather bit, Lucy.’ Powerscourt was now standing by the south door of the abbey. It was set in a deep splay rather like a jaw, with the sides serrated like the central sections of human back teeth. In the centre was a pillar wreathed with lions. Above that was a lintel of rosettes. Two rows of fleurs-de-lis ran right round the central section, which was dominated by Christ, the largest figure in the group with his right hand raised in blessing. He sat, holding a scroll in his left hand, surrounded by a lion and an eagle and other beasts symbolizing the four evangelists. The twenty-four elders mentioned in the Book of Revelation were all seated, holding medieval musical instruments that looked like primitive violins, or goblets symbolizing the prayers of the saints, a medieval chamber orchestra come to Moissac with their own refreshments. They sat in three tiers, with fourteen on the bottom row, six in the middle and four in the top. All were looking up and across at the figure of Christ, and the sculptor had demonstrated his abilities by giving each head a different angle, a different tilt across and upwards.
‘Look at their legs, Francis.’ It was Lady Lucy who noticed it first. Each pair of elders’ legs, like each head, was different. Some were held close together, some were wide apart, some were folded one on top of another, some were twisted away from the body almost at right angles. But it was the face of Christ that fascinated Powerscourt. This Christ was lord and master of all he surveyed. He was bathed in majesty. His gaze travelled out of the tympanum, out over the valley of the Tarn, out over France and the known world towards the eternal and the infinite. He might have been placed on earth, carved in stone, but his kingdom stretched out into the next world.
But there was another statue that fascinated Powerscourt. It enthralled him. Its beauty was such, he told Lady Lucy later that evening, that he felt ravished by it. On either side of the south door there was a saint, presumably by the same hand that produced the tympanum above. On the left was St Paul, looking businesslike with a bible. On the right was St Jerome, a figure who did not look as if he belonged in the world of 1120 when the abbey was built. He belonged in another century altogether, hundreds of years in the future. He might even, Powerscourt thought, belong in the present. This St Jerome looked about thirty years old. His body was long, dressed in a flowing tunic, and he carried a scroll in his hands. The face and the beard and the long moustaches were all intertwined, with delicate grooves of hair that looked so soft you wanted to stroke them. His eyes, in so far as you could tell nearly eight hundred years after the sculptor finally laid down his chisel, seemed to look inward. The face was delicate, dreamy, almost feminine. Powerscourt had to remind himself that it was carved from granite, not the softest of materials. This was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He looked as if he might be carrying all the sins of the world on his shoulders. The face and the expression could have been those of Christ himself, carrying his cross to his own version of the Last Judgement to the place which is called Calvary where they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. It was the modernity of the face that haunted Powerscourt, who described it to himself as a symphony in melancholy.
Halfway between the abbey and the entrance to the cloisters there was a clatter of wheels and the reassuring noise of horses’ hooves on cobblestones. The pilgrims had arrived. They clambered round Powerscourt and Lady Lucy like excited schoolchildren released to liberty at last after a long period of detention. And they complained. They complained about the solitary confinement in the police cells. They complained about the food. They complained about conditions in the train, where they alleged the sanitary arrangements weren’t fit for pigs. They complained about the French police and their total failure to understand a word of English. The Inspector and his men shepherded them as gently as they could towards the cloisters, the Inspector confiding in a whisper to Powerscourt that he would be very relieved when they were all over the border. The prisoners had evolved their very own means of revolt. They refused to speak to him through his interpreter. They refused to speak to him at all, even in their own language, except, he thought, to swear at him. That, he said, was the only thing capable of bringing a smile to their faces.
They were just inside the cloisters when they were overwhelmed. A never-ending procession of young men in black cassocks marched in and pushed the pilgrims out of the way. Trainee priests, Léger said to Powerscourt, come to Moissac on a Sunday morning to see how their predecessors had lived in former times. Powerscourt thought there was no danger of the south of France being short of curés and monsignors and bishops in the years ahead. He thought there were over two hundred of them, maybe three hundred. The beauty of the cloisters was obscured by a black cloud of bodies. The pilgrims virtually disappeared behind a sea of cassocks. Two older men, also dressed in black, hopped over the little parapet at the bottom of the pillars and made their way into the middle of the grass in the centre. Behind them an enormous cedar tree offered shade to monks and visitors. The taller man, obviously the supervisor or tutor to the young men, introduced his colleague, a professor of history from the University of Bordeaux, a tubby little man scarcely over five feet tall but with a deep penetrating voice that had obviously been trained to reach the back of the biggest lecture hall in his university. He began by telling them about the foundation of the abbey. After five minutes he had reached the time of Dagobert’s son Clovis the Second who was apparently King of Neustria and Burgundy in the year 650. Powerscourt had to whisper a reply to Lady Lucy that no, he had no idea at all where Neustria was. After ten minutes things were looking up at the abbey when rich property owners Nizezius – possibly an early version of Michael Delaney, Powerscourt thought – and his wife, who was actually called Ermintrude, shelled out thirty thousand acres of land in the Garonne along with all the churches, mills, serfs, settlers and freemen thereon in 680. That seemed to reawaken interest in the young ordinands, whose eyes had been glazing over at the long litany of dead abbots and dead princes. After fifteen minutes the professor introduced a character called Louis the Pious who took the place under his protection. And so it went on. And on, Powerscout said to himself.
The sun was moving round the pillars, changing the areas of shade and light and the colour of the brick. Powerscourt felt a moment of relief when he realized that the history lesson might stop when the professor reached the 1100s when the cloister was built. The professor did indeed reach the year 1100. But he did not stop. He knew about architecture too, the professor, and he was not going to miss this opportunity of sharing his knowledge with the seminarians.
Powerscourt stared across at the opposite gallery. He could see about half a dozen pilgrims penned against the pillars but no more. He couldn’t see anything at all to his left or right. He presumed the rest were trapped round the other galleries. West gallery, the professor said, and now he was describing the sculptures on the capitals, the top of the pillars. Number two over there, he went on, the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac. That took a minute or two. Some of the capitals were decorative, with no sculpture at all. These merited o
nly a brief mention. Then there was Daniel in the lion’s den. Another couple of minutes. Powerscourt began doing some serious mental arithmetic. He reckoned there must be about eighty capitals with sculptures. One minute each and that meant an hour and twenty minutes. Make it a minute and a half and that was two hours. Surely the little man couldn’t go on that long. God in heaven.
Across the grass Powerscourt saw that Inspector Léger might have been making similar calculations. He was wriggling free from a scrum about four deep. There was a certain amount of pushing and shoving and then he was lost to sight. Powerscourt wondered if he should join him. After a couple of minutes the resurrection of Lazarus at pillar number nine was on the menu. Powerscourt thought that if Lazarus knew he was going to be brought back to life here and now with this interminable lecture in these cloisters he might decide to stay where he was. He saw the Inspector again making his way across the opposite gallery. He was looking worried. After a couple more minutes the professor was pointing to an inscription on pillar number twelve which referred to the construction of the buildings in 1100 when Dom Ansquitil was abbot. The Inspector was making frantic gestures to Powerscourt to join him. Then, paying no attention to the senior clergy in the centre, he hopped inside the cloisters and made his way very slowly along the four galleries. Powerscourt decided to join him.
‘Count the pilgrims,’ the Inspector whispered.
Michael Delaney and Alex Bentley were sandwiched in between a couple of very tall ordinands. Jack O’Driscoll and Christy Delaney were squashed against a pillar. Maggie Delaney was closer to Father Kennedy than she would have thought proper. The rest were scattered around the cloisters in various degrees of discomfort. Inspector Léger and Powerscourt did their rounds twice. The professor had reached murder with the story of Cain and Abel at pillar number nineteen. The Frenchman drew Powerscourt into the street outside. The church bells were tolling the Angelus. There was a small crowd in front of the tympanum.
‘How many did you make it?’ asked Léger.
‘Twelve,’ said Powerscourt, beginning to feel rather sick.
‘So did I.’
‘How many do you think there should be?’
‘Thirteen,’ said the Inspector. ‘God knows I’ve counted the buggers often enough these last two days, on and off the train, in and out of the cells.’
‘Could he have escaped? Run away in all the confusion with the priests?’
‘No, he couldn’t. One of my men is on guard just outside.’
‘Could he be in one of those rooms off the cloisters?’
‘We’d better go and see.’
18
By the end of the north gallery they came to what had been the refectory. It was completely empty. Next door was the Chapelle St Ferréol with some ancient sculptures but no living pilgrims. The professor had reached the story of David and Goliath from the first Book of Samuel at pillar number twenty-two. Along the east gallery was a series of empty chambers, full of dust with cobwebs circling out from the walls. Powerscourt began to wonder if they hadn’t just miscounted the pilgrims. One of them could have been hemmed in by the taller men in black till he was virtually invisible. The south gallery backed directly on to the side of the church but at the corner where it met the west gallery there was a set of stairs leading upwards.
‘Come on,’ said the Inspector, ‘if he’s not up here we can’t count. We’ll have to go back to school.’
The steps led them into the upper chamber, an extremely tall room with great slim arches. Strips of light were flooding in through a series of openings on an upper level. One side of the room looked directly into the church. Anybody up here could eavesdrop on weddings or baptisms down below without being seen. The vaulting was supported on twelve square ribs radiating out from a central keystone. The room was deserted. Powerscourt and the Inspector tiptoed round it in opposite directions. Then there was a muffled cry from Inspector Léger.
‘My God!’ he said. ‘After all the precautions we’ve taken, there’s been another murder!’
Powerscourt turned round and joined him. At the bottom of a little flight of steps there was a huddled shape. It looked as though somebody had taken all their clothes off and dropped them on the floor. Even in the shadows they could see drops of dark blood oozing from the back of what had once been his head. Lumps of grey matter that might have been brains, Powerscourt thought, were lying on the floor. One hand was still at the back of his head, as if trying to ward off the vicious blows that killed him.
‘Look,’ said the Inspector, pointing to dark marks on the pillar above them, ‘it seems somebody smashed the victim’s head repeatedly into the stone. He might have been gone after a few blows. It must have been like a pummelling from a giant hammer, poor soul. Do you know who he was, Powerscourt?’
Powerscourt peered down at the remains of a human being dumped on the floor of St Peter’s Abbey. ‘Connolly,’ he said quietly, ‘Girvan Connolly, related to Michael Delaney on his mother’s side. He was on the run from his creditors, Inspector, but I don’t suppose they found him here. Whatever his misdemeanours, however large his debts, he hadn’t deserved to die like this.’
‘Could you wait here till I send one of my men up? I’m going to put a man at the bottom of the steps too. All too late, of course, but at least nobody’s going to see him till the doctor gets here. And I’ll tell the priest in charge of all those young men to get them out of here. That’ll be a relief.’
Powerscourt stared sadly into the body of the church. The technique, he realized, was the same in all four murders. God, he thought, there have been four of them and my presence here has been a complete waste of time. Come with me, my friend, up the steps to the Chapel of St Michel in Le Puy, or to the river bank on the Lot, or to the back of the church in Conques, or to this upper chamber, come and I’ll tell you a secret. You’re going to like the secret very much. There was indeed a secret waiting for the person who went with the killer; their own death, always surprising even in more peaceful surroundings. And what was the secret, or the bait? Was it blackmail perhaps, or the promise of some rich pickings from Michael Delaney?
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of one of Inspector Léger’s policemen who crossed himself vigorously when he saw the bloodied bundle that had been Girvan Connolly and began saying a series of Hail Marys.
Something in the Inspector’s face must have alerted Monsignor Michelack, the priest in charge.
‘It is something serious up there, Inspector, is it not so?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ Léger replied.
‘It is not a sudden illness or you would be running for the doctor. Am I right?’
The Inspector wondered briefly if the Monsignor was not in the wrong profession.
‘It is a dead man?’ Michelack whispered. ‘Another of these murders?’
The Inspector realized that most of the clergy of southern France must know about the chequered progress of the Delaney pilgrims, their passage marked by blood and sudden death. The Church after all had been deeply involved in the discussions about what to do with them.
The Inspector nodded sadly. The priest crossed himself very slowly and deliberately. He closed his eyes and said a brief prayer. Then he turned to address his students.
‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I have a sad announcement to make. In the midst of life there is death. Death came this afternoon for one of these pilgrims in the upper chamber here behind me. Murder strikes in one of the most beautiful buildings in France. Before we go I want us to say the prayers for the dead. I want you to form up in ranks of four abreast. We shall progress round the cloisters in the manner of the monks of old, saying the same prayers they would have said for one of their own, fallen asleep in his cell perhaps, or passing away from old age as he worked in the fields.’
The young men were very solemn as they fell into their ranks. The Monsignor placed himself at the head of the column. He walked slowly, his hands joined together and pointing to the gr
ound. He spoke quietly as he led the young men in their devotions.
‘Hail Mary full of grace, blessed art thou among women, pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Amen.’
Two hundred young voices joined him in the Hail Mary. The pilgrims had prostrated themselves against the walls. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy watched from the entrance to what had once been the monks’ refectory, a place of physical rather than spiritual sustenance.
‘Absolve, Lord, we entreat you, the soul of your servant from every bond of sin . . .’
Only those near the front of the procession could hear the words of the Monsignor. For the rest the seminarians’ voices took over.
‘. . . that he may be raised up in the glory of the resurrection and live among your saints and elect, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Powerscourt thought this must be a profound experience for these young men. They will have read in their history books all about the daily life of the monks of centuries past, the seven services, the prescribed ordering of each day in God’s service. Now they were living out one part of it. Surely they would never think about monastic life in the same way again. Today, for them, the past had, quite literally, come to life, walking in order round the four galleries of the Moissac cloisters.
‘Incline your ear, oh Lord,’ the Monsignor went on, ‘to our prayers in which we humbly entreat your mercy, and bring to a place of peace and light the soul of your servant . . . ’
Maggie Delaney, standing very still against a wall near the Pillar of Cain and Abel, was weeping for the beauty of the procession and the soul of Girvan Connolly, sinner and corpse.
‘. . . which you have summoned to go forth from this world,’ the young men carried on, ‘bidding him to be numbered in the fellowship of your saints through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Powerscourt remembered his earlier conversation with Connolly as they walked the pilgrim trail, the pots and pans that wouldn’t sell, the sheets that collapsed after the first use, the debts that closed around him as death had enveloped him this afternoon. He didn’t think Connolly would have much in common with the saints.
Death of a Pilgrim Page 26