Death of a Chancellor

by David Dickinson

  ‘I think it may be helpful,’ Oliver Drake continued, rummaging in a file of papers in front of him, ‘if we take these various wills in time order.’ He glared at his little audience as if daring them to speak. Powerscourt was temporarily lost in a very fine watercolour above the fireplace which showed a brilliant sun setting behind the minster, bathing its buildings in a pale orange glow.

  ‘Will Number One dates from September 1898. I remember it because we wrote it together in my office downstairs. Apart from a number of bequests to his servants,’ Augusta Cockburn shuddered, ‘the main beneficiaries are twenty thousand pounds each to his brother and his sister, fifty thousand pounds to Dr Blackstaff’ – Augusta Cockburn glowered significantly at Powerscourt when the doctor’s name was mentioned – ‘and the remainder to the Cathedral of Compton, for its use and maintenance in perpetuity.’

  Powerscourt thought he detected a faint hint of a smile crossing the features of the Dean.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Drake,’ Augusta Cockburn interrupted again. ‘Please excuse a simple housewife and mother for asking a simple question. How much money are we talking about? How much was my brother worth?’

  Powerscourt thought you could actually hear the greed.

  Oliver Drake was ready for this one. ‘Mrs Cockburn, that is, of course, a very sensible question. But it is not susceptible to an easy answer. Until the will is proved it will be difficult to establish the entire pecuniary value of your brother’s estate.’

  ‘But you could make a guess, could you not, Mr Drake?’ She sounded like a small child who had been given a bag of sweets only to have them snatched away.

  ‘It is not the business of country solicitors to make guesses, Mrs Cockburn, but I feel I should give you an approximation.’ He paused. The logs were crackling in the grate. A hooded crow had come to perch in the tall tree opposite the window. Perhaps the crow felt it deserved something too. ‘I expect the value of the estate, including Fairfield Park, to be well over one million pounds.’

  Still Augusta Cockburn would not give up. ‘How much more?’

  ‘It could be a million and a quarter, it could be a million and a half. But I feel we should return to the main business in hand.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Drake, could you just set my mind at rest?’ Augusta Cockburn had been doing some arithmetic on a small pad in front of her. ‘In the case of the first will – and I don’t believe it to be the real one for a moment – when you take the various other legacies into account, does that mean that my brother and I would receive twenty thousand pounds each and the cathedral,’ she paused as if she could scarcely believe her calculations, ‘the cathedral,’ the scorn and incredulity formed a toxic mixture, ‘would have received almost one million pounds?’

  Oliver Drake looked at her solemnly. ‘That is correct. The second testament dates from March of the year 1900.’ Something about his tone made Powerscourt suspect that Drake didn’t believe this will was genuine. ‘Your brother made this will when staying in your house, Mrs Cockburn. He entrusted it, you say, to your husband for safekeeping. Your husband, in his turn, put it under lock and key at your family solicitors, Matlock Robinson of Chancery Lane. They in their turn forwarded the document to me.’

  Oliver Drake held up a typewritten document, less than a page long. The Dean was peering at it with great interest. Now Powerscourt was able to pinpoint one of the areas where Augusta Cockburn hadn’t told him the whole truth at their first meeting. Little had been said about this will, drawn up in her house less than a year ago.

  ‘In this document,’ Powerscourt wondered why he used the word document rather than will, ‘there are no bequests to the servants at all. Fifty thousand pounds for the twin brother, fifty thousand pounds to the Cathedral, the residue, including the house, to his sister, Mrs Winifred Augusta Cockburn, of Hammersmith, London.’

  ‘Nothing for the servants?’ asked the Dean. ‘Nothing at all? I think that is very uncharacteristic’

  It was the first time Powerscourt had seen Augusta Cockburn smile. For a few moments at least, she was rich.

  ‘The final will, in terms of time, is very recent. It was written in January this year. It too has some unusual features.’ Powerscourt wondered what he meant by too. One of the other wills? Both the other wills? ‘For a start,’ Drake went on, ‘it was not supervised by me or by any member of this firm. It was done in Homerton, about fifteen miles from here, at the local solicitor’s. The terms are identical to the first one, bequests to the servants, fifty thousand pounds for the doctor, twenty thousand pounds each for the brother and sister. But there is no mention of the cathedral at all. The residue, the sum of almost a million pounds, goes to the Salvation Army.’

  ‘The Salvation Army?’ said the Dean and Mrs Cockburn in unison. ‘Why should a man,’ the Dean simply talked over Augusta Cockburn, ‘who has served the cathedral for the best years of life, who has promised on a number of occasions, in my hearing, to leave the cathedral a large bequest, why should he then turn round and leave it to people in pretend military uniforms who try to look after drunks and beggars? I cannot believe he wanted to leave his fortune to a soup kitchen!’

  ‘Please forgive me.’ It was the first time James Eustace, twin brother of the deceased, had spoken. The accent was still English, with just a faint transatlantic twang.

  ‘I don’t have a will to put before you. But I do have a letter from my brother which I believe has a bearing on things. He wrote it to me after his visit to New York last July. Perhaps you’d like to read it out, Mr Drake?’

  Drake’s role as a conjurer of wills was over, Powerscourt felt. To produce three in one afternoon was pretty impressive going.

  ‘“Dear James,”’ read Oliver Drake. The Dean was leaning across to inspect the handwriting. ‘“It was very good to see you, even if your circumstances were a little distressing. I hope the money I have left for you will be sufficient for your needs and that you will soon be back on your feet. Please rest assured that if you need any further financial assistance I shall be only too happy to assist. Your loving brother, John.”’

  The Dean snorted. Oliver Drake coughed. Powerscourt wondered if the twin brothers had had identical handwriting. Outside the window the crow flew off noisily to a better perch.

  Oliver Drake took a large white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. The fire was warm this afternoon. ‘So there we have the current position, ladies and gentlemen. I feel that I myself am somewhat constrained in that I am named as the executor in the two wills drawn up locally. I feel that some of you may also wish to take independent legal advice. I have had my clerks prepare copies of all the wills for you to take away if you wish. I propose that we reconvene here ten days from now. That should allow time for consultations. Are there any final points before I declare this meeting closed? Mrs Cockburn.’

  Augusta Cockburn was still in fighting form. ‘It seems to me, Mr Drake,’ she said with a rare lack of venom, ‘that the easiest course would be to declare the Matlock Robinson will the authentic one and proceed accordingly.’ Then normal service was resumed. ‘I cannot believe that my brother would have wished to leave fifty thousands to a humble country doctor. Nor do I believe he would have wished to leave a million pounds to a heap of ancient stones that are merely a memorial to a long-dead religion. And I think it is quite simply inconceivable that he would wish to leave a million pounds to be wasted on the human scum who infest our great cities.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Cockburn,’ said Oliver Drake wearily. He wondered if all the women in London behaved like this. If so it must be an even more dreadful place than he thought. ‘Dean?’ He glanced at the figure in black to his right.

  ‘I have nothing but contempt for the insults we have just heard to our cathedral and, dare I say it, our God. However, I need to take advice. I expect the cathedral will wish to employ legal representation.’ Privately the Dean was deeply troubled, but not by all the complications about the will, nor by the insults of Mrs Cockbur
n. He was going to have to take advice from his Bishop. It was virtually unheard of.

  ‘Mr Eustace?’ Oliver Drake turned to the twin brother. ‘Do you have anything you wish to say?’

  ‘Nope,’ said James Eustace. ‘Bloody meeting has gone on far too long. I want to get out of here. I need a drink.’ With that he headed for the door and the saloon bar of the White Hart, two doors away.

  Five minutes after the last departure Powerscourt knocked on the door of the downstairs office of Oliver Drake.

  ‘Mr Drake? Could you spare me a few minutes of your time? And may I speak in confidence?’ Drake pointed to a comfortable armchair beside his desk. Powerscourt couldn’t help observing that not a single piece of paper, file or legal reference book was to be seen on the green leather surface. Mr Oliver Drake, he felt, must be an obsessively tidy man.

  Powerscourt explained that he was in Compton under false pretences. He was not a family friend of the Eustaces’, as represented. He was not a family friend of Mrs Augusta Cockburn’s. He was an investigator, hired by Mrs Cockburn to look into the death of her brother. He gave details of some of his previous cases to lend authority to his position. He now found himself, he told the solicitor, in the bizarre situation of harbouring misgivings about his employer.

  ‘Never thought it likely you’d be a family friend of the Cockburns’, Powerscourt,’ said Drake with a smile, ‘don’t suppose the bloody woman has any friends at all. Hell’s too cold for that woman, if you ask me. I speak in confidence, of course. But tell me, why does she want her brother’s death investigated? Do you think there was anything suspicious?’

  ‘I am not in a position to answer that at present. There are three main grounds for her suspicions. She thought the butler was lying. She thought the doctor was lying. She thought it most unusual that the coffin was closed so soon. But consider what we have heard this afternoon. Pretend, for a moment, Mr Drake, that you are also an investigator. Money, like jealousy, is one of the most potent motives for murder. Enormous sums of money, like those possessed by the late John Eustace, are an even more powerful motive. Start counting, Mr Drake. The doctor could have wanted him dead for the fifty thousand pounds. Mrs Cockburn could certainly have wanted him dead to lay her hands on the lot. In her present circumstances even twenty thousand might be worth killing for. The cathedral, taken as a human institution rather than a transmitter of God’s truth, could have wanted him dead. You can replace a lot of roof slates with one million pounds. The Salvation Army could have wanted him dead. And the twin brother, almost certainly secreted away in the public house next door as we speak, could certainly have done with the money. That’s five, for starters.’

  ‘Good God, man, you’re not saying that John Eustace was murdered, are you?’ said Oliver Drake, rising to his full height and staring out of his window.

  ‘No, of course not. I think it is extremely unlikely, but not impossible. However, Mr Drake, there are certain aspects I wish to investigate where I need your approval. Talking to the solicitors Matlock Robinson in Chancery Lane, for example. They would wish to know if I had the executor’s permission before they said anything. And I should like to bring in some examples of the late Mr Eustace’s handwriting, to compare them with those in the various wills in your possession.’

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Drake, ‘I feel absolutely certain that you are a man to be trusted. If you wish to say, as part of your inquiries, that you are assisting the firm of Drake and Co. in their handling of these wills, please feel free to do so. There’s only one condition.’

  ‘And what is that?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘That you endeavour to keep that bloody woman out of my office for as long as you possibly can.’

  ‘I take it that you are referring to my current employer?’ said Powerscourt with a smile.

  ‘I most certainly am,’ said Oliver Drake.

  Solicitor and investigator shook hands.

  Patrick Butler was sitting once more in the living room of the little house on the edge of the Cathedral Close. It was strange how frequently he found himself in this part of the city between the hours of four and five in the afternoon. Anne Herbert was making tea in the kitchen. The children had gone to their grandparents’ house where the two little boys could watch their grandfather’s trains come and go to their hearts’ content.

  ‘Anne . . .’ Patrick came through to the kitchen. He didn’t think his news would wait. ‘I’ve made a very exciting discovery.’

  Anne Herbert smiled indulgently at her friend. Anybody who came in regular contact with Patrick Butler was the recipient of very exciting discoveries two or three times a day. ‘What is it this time?’ she said.

  ‘I shan’t tell you anything if you’re going to be like that, treating me like a child,’ said Patrick, lifting the tea tray to carry it into the other room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Patrick. Please tell me about your discovery.’

  Patrick looked at her suspiciously. But he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘You know that man who’s staying at the Eustaces’ house at Hawke’s Broughton? The one we saw at the funeral service?’

  ‘Was he a tall fellow with dark curly hair and an expensive-looking coat?’

  ‘The same,’ said Patrick, helping himself to a homemade biscuit. ‘His name is Powerscourt, Lord Francis Powerscourt. I looked him up in Debrett’s. They keep a copy over in the cathedral library. He’s supposed to be a friend of the Eustace family.’

  ‘How did you discover his name, Patrick?’ said Anne Herbert, pouring two cups of tea. She sometimes suspected that Patrick and his staff would stoop to almost anything to find out what they wanted.

  ‘One of the servants at Fairfield Park told me,’ Patrick said, managing to spill some of his tea as he spoke. It was a diversionary tactic. He did not care to mention that since the death of John Eustace regular sums of money, moderate but not inconsequential, had been entrusted to the care of the butler in exchange for information. ‘But that is not the point, Anne. I was talking to one of those London reporters last week.’

  Five of Fleet Street’s finest feature writers had been despatched to this obscure part of the country to entertain their readers with tales of the death and funeral of the Chancellor of Compton. His house, in these accounts, had been magnified in size until it was considerably larger than Knole or Chatsworth or Blenheim Palace. The wealth had been increased too, rising to sums of almost unimaginable size as if Eustace had been richer than the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers combined. And the grief of the town was portrayed on a truly Homeric scale, frail old men, strange peasant hats on their venerable heads, leaning on their rustic sticks as they lined the coffin’s route, clay pipes held in reverential tribute by their sides, weeping mothers holding up their children to watch and mourn as the funeral cortège went past, public houses empty and deserted in tribute to the dead. This last touch appealed particularly to the scribes from the capital. There was no greater testimony to the depth of mourning that they could imagine.

  ‘And what did this London reporter say?’ Anne Herbert had read one of these accounts in a great national daily and been appalled. She hoped that her Patrick was not going to be contaminated by these strangers who could arrive in a town and tell packs of lies about the inhabitants, secure in the knowledge that they would shortly be on the next train back to London.

  ‘He said, Anne,’ Patrick looked into those green eyes again with great delight, ‘that this Lord Powerscourt is an investigator. He is famous for solving murders and mysteries of every description! How about that!?’

  ‘Well, he may well be an investigator, Patrick. He may equally well be a friend of the family as everybody says. You mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said the editor of the Grafton Mercury. ‘But what if he was? What has he come to investigate? Death Comes to the Cathedral? The Curse of Compton Minster?’

  Anne Herbert had decided long ago that journalists like her friend fell in
love with their headlines rather more than they did with the truth.

  ‘That’s all very interesting, Patrick,’ she said, looking at him in rather the same way she looked at her eldest when he came up with some outlandish piece of nonsense. ‘I think you’d better have another biscuit.’

  The subject of Patrick Butler’s speculation let himself quietly out of the side door of Fairfield Park. It was raining heavily again, large puddles threatening to meet and cover the little road with water. In the distance a lone horseman leant forward in his saddle, trotting peacefully towards his destination. Lord Francis Powerscourt was going to pay his respects and ask his questions of Dr William Blackstaff, friend of John Eustace, and the last man to see him alive.

  He wondered about the lies and the liars he had known as he splashed his way towards the doctor’s house. Some people were just very bad at lying. He suspected that the butler Andrew McKenna was one of those. A furtive air came over him any time his late master’s death was mentioned. Others simply convinced themselves that the lie was true, that the falsehoods they were telling had actually happened. And Powerscourt was certain as he entered the drive of Dr Blackstaff’s house that it was seldom the words that gave the liars away. Rather it was the gestures, the lack of eye contact, the slight shifting in the chair, the sudden combing of the hair. He remembered one spectacularly successful liar and fraudster in India whose only fault was that the fingers of his left hand would strum very slowly on his knee when he began to dissemble. The greater the lie, the faster the strumming became.

  A servant showed him into the doctor’s drawing room at the back of the house. Curtained windows led out to where the Blackstaff garden must have been. There were three sofas and a couple of old armchairs on either side of a great fire.