Death of a Chancellor

by David Dickinson

  ‘This is all very unpleasant, Anne,’ Patrick went on, looking very serious, ‘and it gets worse as it goes on, much worse. You must stop me if I start to upset you.’

  Anne Herbert nodded. Privately she thought women were much less squeamish than men. Just think of childbirth, after all, she said to herself. But this was not the time for such a discussion.

  ‘At a quarter to five this morning,’ Patrick checked the time in his notebook, ‘one of the porters found a body in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. The man’s name was Rudd. They think he might have been strangled. He was one of the senior vicars choral, with three or four years’ experience in Compton. He was in his middle thirties.’

  Patrick suddenly realized that he must sound as if he was giving evidence in court or reading one of his own compositions in the Grafton Mercury.

  ‘Sorry for sounding so cold, Anne. I’ve been trying to write the story in my head ever since.’

  ‘The poor man,’ said Anne. ‘Did he have a wife and children?’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Patrick, looking once more at his notebook. ‘But that’s not all. Somebody put him on a spit and roasted the body for most of the night in front of that huge fire they have in the Vicars Hall kitchen.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Anne Herbert. She put her face in her hands and said the Lord’s Prayer. She couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘That would all be bad enough.’ Patrick was leaning forward now. ‘The Dean said he was anxious that I and our readers should know as much as possible about what had happened. He said he didn’t want to hide anything from me. He had a doctor with him, that chap Williams. I’ve known him for a while, he’s a very sound and reliable fellow. It was he who was responsible for looking after the dead man, the death certificate, all that sort of thing. He took me to the morgue in the hospital where Rudd’s body was laid out. They hadn’t cleaned him up yet.’

  Patrick Butler stopped. He wondered if he should say anything more.

  ‘You see, Anne, it’s a strange thing. I’ve never seen a dead body before. Reporters often have to write about dead bodies killed in fires or train crashes or accidents, but they never actually see them. When you start on a newspaper you have to go to magistrates’ courts, you have to go to football matches, you have to write about society weddings. You have to write about all sorts of strange things you have seen. But the one thing you’re not used to seeing is a dead body. Nor,’ he paused briefly, ‘a body that has been roasted all night on a great spit in front of a roaring fire.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to hear any more details, Patrick, if you don’t mind. I’ve heard too much already. I’m feeling rather sick.’

  Patrick was turning pale again. He was thinking of the terrible scene in the mortuary, what had happened to Arthur Rudd’s eyes, what had happened to his skin, what had happened to the hair and the skull, the eruptions that had burst forth from the poor man’s intestines. He hoped he would be able to forget it. He took another large gulp of his brandy.

  ‘Sorry Anne,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. And I don’t know what to put in the paper. The Mercury goes to press tomorrow. I’m going to have to write this story tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.’

  Anne thought that Patrick must be returning to normal. Deadlines were the bread and butter of his business. ‘What do you mean, what should you put in the paper, Patrick?’

  ‘It’s the details. How much detail should I put in? We’re meant to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Anne Herbert firmly. ‘Nobody wants to read the details in a case like this. Why can’t you just say he’d been strangled? That’s bad enough, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘But then I wouldn’t be telling the truth.’

  ‘The people of this town and this county, Patrick, do not want to read about roasted bodies over their tea and toast first thing in the morning. Nor do they want to read about it over their supper in the evening. They do not want to have to explain to their children who can read what it means to be roasted on a spit all night in the kitchen of Vicars Hall. They may even stop buying your paper if you upset them. And then where would you be?’

  Anne suddenly wondered if the snow was having an effect on her too. She could not remember having being so emphatic in her whole life. She did not realize it but she had become, for Patrick Butler, a sort of one woman litmus test of what was and what was not acceptable to his readers. Maybe he should give her an official position, not Censor in Chief, but Taste Arbiter Supreme.

  ‘Are you sure, Anne? Are you sure people might stop buying the paper if there was too much gory detail in it?’ The one unassailable deity of the newspaper world, the circulation figures, was uppermost in his mind.

  ‘I’m quite certain of it.’

  Patrick Butler munched his way through another couple of biscuits.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shall sleep on it and write the story in the morning.’

  ‘You don’t need to sleep on it, Patrick. You know what the right thing to do is. You could write it this evening.’

  The young man smiled. ‘Very good, Anne,’ he said, ‘I shall go and write it now. And, don’t worry, I’m just going to say the poor man was found strangled in Vicars Hall.’

  After he climbed up to his office for the last time that day Patrick Butler found that his informant in the town’s most expensive hotel had left him a message. Three visitors from London were expected, the note said. All of them lawyers.

  ‘Have you found him yet?’ Augusta Cockburn’s knife was poised menacingly over a breakfast kipper in the Fairfield Park dining room.

  ‘Found whom?’ asked Powerscourt, taking refuge in a slice of buttered toast.

  ‘The person who killed my brother.’ Mrs Cockburn began her demolition of the fish.

  ‘I have to inform you, Mrs Cockburn, that I am still not sure that your brother was murdered. It may all have been perfectly normal. I am not yet in a position to form a judgement.’ Powerscourt realized that a rising anger was driving him towards pomposity.

  ‘It’s the doctor, it must be the doctor.’ Augusta Cockburn began to choke slightly on a bone. ‘Look at the amount of money he was left in two of those wills. Have you questioned Dr Blackstaff, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘I have, madam, and while there were certain inconsistencies in his version of events, I have at this time no reason to believe that he is a murderer.’ Privately Powerscourt wasn’t as sure as he sounded about the doctor’s innocence. Fifty thousand pounds was a fortune. Even after a donation of five thousand or so to the lying butler you would still be rich for the rest of your life.

  ‘Maybe I should involve the local police, Lord Powerscourt. Perhaps they will be more effective in questioning him than you are.’

  Powerscourt didn’t reply. The fish bone seemed to have accomplished a task way beyond the powers of most ordinary mortals. It had reduced Augusta Cockburn to silence. But the relief was short-lived. The offending bone, like so many of her enemies, was trampled underfoot.

  ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I shall have to speak to the cook.’ She had turned slightly red. ‘Why the servants cannot perform a perfectly simple operation like filleting a fish I do not understand. Any fool could do it.’ She paused to take a mouthful of tea, still spluttering slightly. The incident had not improved her temper.

  ‘And how much longer, Lord Powerscourt, do you intend to stay in this house, consuming our victuals, sleeping in one of our beds, using up valuable fuel?’ Powerscourt thought she might have been addressing the under butler. But he was prepared for this one.

  ‘Mrs Cockburn,’ he said, ‘I regret to have to inform you that there has been a murder in Compton. One of the vicars choral was found strangled in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. The Bishop has asked me to look into it.’

  ‘Another murder?’ Mrs Cockburn spat out. ‘Another murder? Why are you so quick to take on new cases, Lord Powerscourt, when you have not found the answer to
the first one? Is it because you believe it to be beyond your abilities?’

  Powerscourt wondered if he should mention the roasting on the fire, a fate he felt sure deserved to happen to Augusta Cockburn after her departure from this life, but he did not. ‘If I could just finish,’ he went on. ‘I am content to continue my investigations into both cases. And I have asked Mr Drake, as the executor of the will, if I could rent this house for the duration of my inquiries. I have offered him a generous sum. I believe he intends to discuss it with you, madam, before the meeting about the wills this afternoon.’

  The prospect of money seemed to cheer Augusta Cockburn up. ‘I shall certainly discuss it with Drake,’ she said. ‘But rest assured, Powerscourt, I shall make a full inventory of all the valuables.’

  The Dean was reading an early edition of the latest issue of the Grafton Mercury. He was so pleased with it he read it three times. It was true that the story was placed in a prominent position in the paper. But the account of the death was short and simple. It merely said that Arthur Rudd, a senior member of the vicars choral, had been found strangled in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. There were various tributes to the dead man, including one the Dean had given personally to Patrick Butler. There were paragraphs on the antiquity of the foundation of the vicars choral and their role in the services of the cathedral. Chief Inspector Yates, the paper went on, was the officer responsible for the investigation. He was reporting directly to the Chief Constable himself. But of fires and roasted flesh, of the spit that turned all night in the kitchen, there was no mention. The Dean went so far as to congratulate himself on his success. Without his intervention, he told himself, the matter would not have been properly handled at all.

  The Bishop was wrestling with a thorny problem about the authenticity and origin of a late Hellenistic text of the Gospel according to St John. Some troublesome German scholars from Tübingen or Heidelberg, he couldn’t quite remember which one, had been making the most ridiculous claims about this document. But he too paused from his textual labours and read his copy of the Grafton Mercury when it arrived. The Bishop did not congratulate himself. He could see the attractions of concealing the details of the roasted body. But he wondered where it fitted in with his own appeal for the Church to tell the truth. The Bishop was troubled. Maybe the Dean had got the better of him again.

  Anne Herbert normally waited until the afternoon for her copy of the paper. Patrick would bring one round with him when he happened to drop in for a cup of tea. But on this occasion she went to the shops and bought her own. Her initial reaction was like the Dean’s. She was pleased that she had been able to play her part. But then she too grew troubled, although not for the same reasons as the Bishop. She wondered how much it must have hurt Patrick to leave out the gory details. Here was a man who prided himself on his paper’s ability to find things out, to tell the truth to the citizens of Compton and the county. She had even heard Patrick talk once about how important newspapers and the free flow of information were to the proper functioning of democracy. Now he had forced himself to leave something out, not to tell the truth. She wondered if it would prey on his mind.

  They were, Powerscourt thought, the three largest briefcases he had ever seen. All three were temporarily parked on the long table in the boardroom on the first floor of Oliver Drake’s offices in Compton while their owners rummaged inside for their papers for the meeting. The black one, Powerscourt realized, as Drake made the introductions, belonged to Mr Sebastian Childs of Childs, Goodman and Porter of Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Mr Childs was representing the interests of Mrs Augusta Cockburn and had the good fortune to be seated beside her. The dark blue one was the property of Mr Benjamin Wall of Wall and Sons of Bedford Square, London, representing the interests of the Salvation Army. Powerscourt had peered briefly into the street as if a marching band in military uniform might have accompanied him on his mission. The dark red briefcase contained the papers of Mr Stamford Joyce of Joyce, Hicks, Joyce and Josephs of Ludgate Hill, also from London, there to guard the interests of the Cathedral of Compton and the Church Commissioners. Stamford Joyce sat at the Dean’s right hand.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Oliver Drake, ‘the last time the will or wills were discussed I said that I had to take advice on the question of the various wills left, or purportedly left, by the late Charles John Whitney Eustace of Fairfield Park in the county of Grafton. I have been to London to take advice from Chancery counsel. I propose to inform you of my conclusions at this meeting. You have copies of the three wills in front of you – I’m sure you are all acquainted with these various documents.’

  There was a vigorous nod from Childs, a barely perceptible inclination of the head from Joyce and no acknowledgement at all from Wall. Powerscourt thought that was rather ungracious seeing the man was representing the Salvation Army.

  ‘Just to make sure there is no possible confusion,’ Drake went on, his thin and bony frame twisting slightly as he spoke, ‘I propose to name the three different wills in the order of time of composition. Will A, the oldest, of which I am the executor, left the bulk of the estate to the Cathedral of Compton. Will B, the second most recent, left the estate to Mr Eustace’s sister, Mrs Cockburn. Will C, the most recent, left the bulk of the estate to the Salvation Army.’

  Three gold pens scribbled very fast across the notepads in front of them. The London lawyers were watching Oliver Drake very carefully. One mistake, Powerscourt thought, and they’ll eat him alive.

  ‘The substance of my advice is that the first will, Will A, the one that leaves the bulk of the estate to the cathedral, should be regarded as the most appropriate record of the deceased’s intentions. I propose to apply to the Principal Probate Registry in London for it to be proved in common form. If the supporters of Wills B and C wish to contest that, all you have to do is to lodge a caveat at the Registry. Then the case will come before the Probate Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court in due course.’

  ‘All perfectly proper,’ said Stamford Joyce for Will A and the cathedral. Joyce was a small fat man with a perfectly round face that looked as if it had never had any facial hair at all. He was in his late thirties, wearing a dark suit and a Magdalen College Oxford tie. ‘My clients are perfectly willing to argue in court that Wills B and C are invalid.’

  ‘Very well!’ said Sebastian Childs for Will B and Mrs Cockburn. Childs was an elderly solicitor with a shock of white hair and at least two chins. ‘We shall certainly be advising Mrs Cockburn to lodge a caveat and demonstrate that Wills A and C are not proper.’

  ‘And so shall we,’ said Alaric Wall for Will C and the Salvation Army. Wall was the youngest man there, in his late twenties or early thirties, with a physique that said he might have been a rugby player or a rowing blue. ‘It is a well-established precedent in English law for the most recent will to take precedence over all earlier testamentary dispositions. I note that this has been ignored in this case. No doubt the court will bear that in mind. I shall be advising my clients that they too should lodge a caveat and contest the validity of Wills A and B. ‘

  Outside the snow was back. It was settling thickly on the roofs of Compton, nestling in the trees, turning everywhere beneath its fall into a carpet of white. Powerscourt could see a couple of snowmen standing like sentries on duty at the edge of the Cathedral Green. On the roof to his left a couple of birds had left symmetrical footprints in the snow. He was trying to remember the legal position from an earlier case years before that had involved the will and the very stupid family of a Master of Foxhounds in Somerset. Once the caveat was lodged, there could be no probate, no release of John Eustace’s million and a half pounds. The money would be frozen until the legal proceedings were completed and the court made its judgement.

  ‘My clients believe they can show,’ said Stamford Joyce for the cathedral, ‘that the two later wills were made under coercion or when the deceased was not in full possession of his faculties. There are many in senior positions in the ca
thedral and the Close willing to testify that the deceased had frequently informed them how he wished to leave the money. There is indeed, quite extensive correspondence with various members of the Chapter leaving detailed instructions on how he wished his estate to be used.’

  A vision of the Dean, Bishop, Precentor and Archdeacon all filing into the witness box in quick succession crossed Powerscourt’s mind. He wondered what they would wear. Suit? Cassock? Purple? Would the Staff and Mitre come too?

  ‘I’m sure that’s all perfectly possible,’ said Alaric Wall for the Salvation Army. ‘I’m sure the gentlemen of the cloth would be happy to appear in the witness box in pursuit of a million pounds. But nothing they could say would necessarily mean that the late John Eustace couldn’t have changed his mind. Which he obviously did.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Sebastian Childs for Mrs Cockburn, ‘my client is able to prove that she, as the sister of the deceased man, was in a much better position to understand his intentions than the people he happened to meet occasionally at his place of work. There is ample precedent for family considerations being given their proper place in the judgements of the Chancery Court. Appledore versus Bailey in 1894, for instance. Or Smith versus Crooks in 1899.’

  They’re bringing their weapons out now, Powerscourt felt. He wondered if it had been wise of Childs to reveal his precedents so early. Various bright young men in the offices of Wall and Sons and Joyce, Hicks, Joyce and Josephs would be poring through the records of those cases very soon.

  ‘Gentlemen, please.’ Oliver Drake was on his feet this time. ‘I feel that this argument could go on for most of the day, if not most of the week.’ He paused and looked round the combatants very slowly. ‘I have a suggestion to make, gentlemen. You are perfectly welcome to throw it out. I do not know,’ he smiled benignly at Sebastian Childs, ‘if there are any precedents.’

  The lawyers were writing in their books no longer. They stared, temporarily transfixed, at Oliver Drake.