Death of a Chancellor

by David Dickinson

  ‘I believe that some of the High Anglicans don’t think it right to marry,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘High, low, wide, narrow, shallow, deep, I don’t think anybody would notice here in Compton,’ said Patrick Butler cheerfully. ‘If you said High Anglican to any of the citizens here, they’d think you were referring to the elevation of the cathedral spire. Mind you, Lord Powerscourt,’ Patrick Butler went on, the wine making him talkative, ‘there is a very good story about affairs of the heart in the cathedral but it’s about three hundred years old.’

  ‘Are you sure,’ said Powerscourt in a mock serious tone, ‘that it is a story you would be happy to print in the pages of the Grafton Mercury?’

  ‘When I judge the time is right,’ replied Patrick Butler, ‘it will receive appropriate coverage on the front page of the journal. There was an organist and choirmaster, Lord Powerscourt, in the year 1592 who had fallen in love with the wife of the Dean. One day he appeared in the cathedral at Evensong and began conducting his charges in the usual way. After a few minutes he left the cathedral by the west door and made his way over to the Deanery. There he produced a knife and tried to murder the Dean. But the Dean was an enterprising fellow and managed to escape to a bedroom where he proceeded to lock himself in. Unconcerned by the failure of his murderous mission, the choirmaster returned to the cathedral where he conducted his choir until the close of Evensong. Then he vanished, only to surface at Worcester some weeks later where he applied for the post of choirmaster there.’

  ‘History does not relate, I presume, whether these events took place on a Thursday? The Archdeacon’s special day?’

  Patrick Butler shook his head. There were only two other clients left now in the dining room of the Queen’s Head. Outside the light was beginning to fail.

  ‘Could I ask you one more favour, Mr Butler?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘Of course,’ the young man replied, ‘and please call me Patrick. Everybody else does.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I wonder if I could read the back copies of your paper for about the last year or so? It helps me absorb the local colour.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Butler. Then a terrible thought struck him. He remembered the chaos, the detritus strewn all over the floor, the cramped conditions, the desks virtually invisible with the material piled all over them.

  He looked embarrassed. ‘It’s just, Lord Powerscourt, it’s just . . .’

  Powerscourt wondered if some of the back copies were missing. Then he remembered a visit earlier in his career to the offices of one of the London evening papers. The chaos had been indescribable.

  ‘If I am to understand by your hesitation that the offices of the Grafton Mercury are not perhaps as tidy as they might be, Patrick, do not worry. I have just spent six months in South Africa with a perfectly charming, extremely intelligent subaltern who had a genius for mess. He could not walk into a room without managing to leaves bits of his uniform or anything else all over the floor. His colleagues referred to his quarters as the Temple of Chaos.’

  Patrick Butler smiled. ‘As long as you don’t mind, Lord Powerscourt. Could I ask you a question?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, suddenly on his guard.

  ‘I know you’re here to investigate the death of the vicar choral. But didn’t I see you here before, at the funeral of Chancellor Eustace?’

  Careful, careful, Powerscourt said to himself. Under no circumstances did he wish Patrick Butler to know that there were grave suspicions surrounding the death of John Eustace.

  ‘I was here then,’ he said with a smile, ‘but that’s because Mrs Cockburn, the dead man’s sister, had asked me to give her some advice about the will. Very complicated things, wills.’

  ‘So there’s nothing suspicious about that death?’

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Now then, when can I come and look at your back copies?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, Lord Powerscourt. And can I mention in the paper that you are here investigating the death of Arthur Rudd?’

  ‘You may indeed,’ said Powerscourt as he settled the bill, ‘but I don’t think I wish at this stage to be connected in any way with the Archdeacon’s Thursdays. That’s a much more serious matter.’

  Patrick Butler was elated as he left the hotel. One of Britain’s foremost investigators come to Compton. What a good story! Mayfair Sleuth on Trail of Compton Murderer. He felt it might atone for his earlier withholding of the truth about the end of Arthur Rudd. He checked his watch. It was almost four o’clock. If he walked slowly, almost an impossibility for Patrick Butler, he could be round for tea with Anne Herbert just as the cathedral clock struck the hour.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt had enjoyed his lunch. He had only one object in view. He wanted the fact that he was investigating the death of Arthur Rudd splashed across the pages of the Grafton Mercury. He hoped the murderer would read it. He was, what did they call them, the toreador or the picador whose job it was to goad the bull into action in the bullfights of Spain. He could see himself now, riding a beautifully turned-out horse, a red cape thrown over his shoulders, not on the edge of the Cathedral Green in Compton, but in some hot and dusty bull ring in Barcelona or Madrid. Beneath his feet lies the finely raked sand that will be stained later in the day by the blood of matador or bull. All around the huge crowds are shouting themselves hoarse. Picador Powerscourt taunts the great bull, its horns raking the sultry air. The bull charges. The matador takes over. Except, as Powerscourt knew, he was not really the picador. He was certainly inviting the bull or the murderer to charge. But he, Powerscourt, was the target. He wanted the Compton murderer to be roused to action. Then, perhaps, he would make a mistake.

  Lady Lucy was waiting for her husband underneath the west front of the cathedral. Above her soared the remains of one of the greatest collections of medieval statuary in all of Europe. Once the hundreds and hundreds of niches had each been filled with its own limestone apostle or saint. Now less than half were left as the statues had been torn down at the time of the Reformation with its puritan decrees against graven images or despoiled by the soldiers and supporters of Cromwell’s New Model Army during the Civil War. The west front was an enormous dictionary of the Christian faith. All the apostles were up there, with special places for the four evangelists. There were scenes from the Old Testament to the right of the great door, scenes from the New Testament to the left. As the statues rose higher up the façade, bishops and saints took their places in this towering showcase for the Christian religion. At the very top was the Resurrection, so the early pilgrims, gazing in wonder up at the façade, would be transported upwards through time and space, past niche and statue from their earthly place towards eternity. Heaven lay just above the figure of the risen Christ, a paradise beyond the limestone.

  Powerscourt stared up at the figures. Suddenly he looked more closely. Could the two missing vicars choral have been encased in plaster of Paris or some similar substance over their cassocks and popped into one of the empty niches? Had the absent angels or saints been replaced by missing members of the Compton choir? Reluctantly he decided it would be too difficult, hard to preserve the corpses without specialist knowledge, virtually impossible to manoeuvre the bodies into position without being seen.

  ‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, taking her hand, ‘I’ve just been having a most enjoyable lunch. I need a touch of Evensong to wipe out the excesses of Mammon.’

  They walked up the right-hand side of the nave. Earlier bishops gazed down at them from the walls. Local magnates were interred in the floor beneath them. Powerscourt paused at the chantry chapel of Robert, Lord Walbeck, with its master lying inside, encased in stone with a great stone sword by his side. This Lord Walbeck, Powerscourt remembered the Dean telling him, had paid for the construction of a special house on the Green to house the priests who would have said the Masses for his soul. Indeed, the house was still there. Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would h
ave happened if the Reformation had never been. Would those chantry priests, even in 1901, be processing every day across the Cathedral Green, up the nave of the cathedral to say Masses for the soul of their dead benefactor, Lord Walbeck? Would the money have run out? And, if not, how much would the man have had to leave in his will to pay for the priests? Did he have a date in his mind for the Second Coming so he knew he had to provide only up till then, and no further?

  Lady Lucy was tugging at his arm. They took their seats at the back of choir. There were only two other people in the congregation, bent old ladies who had difficulty with the steps.

  ‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful.’ A terrible vision of the garments of the late Arthur Rudd shot across Powerscourt’s brain, literally burnt off his body. The service was being taken by a member of the Chapter he had not seen before, a tall young man with a lilting Welsh accent. The Dean was sitting resolutely in his place. The Bishop’s chair was empty. As the choir sang a psalm, Powerscourt noticed that he was sitting in the stall marked with the prosaic name of Bilton. Lucy, he thought, had done rather better in the romantic names department, as she occupied Minor Pars Altaris, the lesser part of the altar. Powerscourt looked around to see if he could find Major Pars Altaris. Perhaps he could transfer himself there. But it seemed, like so many of the statues outside, to have disappeared.

  The choir had moved on to the Cantate Domino. ‘Praise the Lord upon the harp; sing to the harp with a psalm of thanksgiving. With trumpets also and shawms: O shew yourselves joyful before the Lord the King.’ Powerscourt looked closely at the decorations on the choir stalls. There was a little wooden orchestra of angels in here, singing along with the choir, angels with trumpets, angels with harps, angels with stringed instruments, even an angel with a drum. One rather superior wooden angel, carved those hundreds of years ago, seemed too important to have an instrument. It was perched just in front of the Dean’s stall. Maybe it was the conductor.

  Powerscourt could sense that Lady Lucy was becoming agitated as the choir sang an anthem by Purcell. She kept casting him anxious and worried glances, but he could not tell what was upsetting her. Then it was time for the closing prayers.

  ‘Almighty and everlasting God,’ the Welsh voice was at its most reverend, ‘Send down upon our Bishops, and Deans, and Curates and all Congregations committed to their charge, the helpful Spirit of thy grace, and, that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing.’

  Powerscourt found himself staring in disgust at the young man. How could he pray for the blessing of the Almighty God upon the clergy of this cathedral? At least one of its members, if not two, had been murdered, one of them virtually inside the precincts of the minster itself. What would God do, he wondered, if he found that one of his bishops or curates or deans was actually a murderer? Powerscourt didn’t think the Almighty would be too pleased.

  Lady Lucy held him back after the choir had departed. They waited patiently for the two old ladies, prayer books firmly clutched in their left hand, walking sticks in their right to descend the steps and tap their way out through the choir and down the nave. Powerscourt wondered if there was much future for the Christian religion in Compton with such a pitiful congregation. Then he remembered the Benedictines who had worshipped here for centuries after the place was built. Nobody came to their services at all, especially the ones in the middle of the night.

  ‘Did you see it, Francis?’ Lady Lucy was holding very firmly on to the sleeve of his coat just outside the main door.

  ‘See what, Lucy? I don’t think I saw anything unusual at all,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Did you see the choirboys, Francis, those poor choirboys?’

  ‘Well, I think there were about a dozen of them altogether,’ said her husband. ‘Ages ranging from about eight, I should say, to thirteen. Differing heights, depending on their ages. One very tiny chorister indeed with blond hair, could just about see over the stall. All dressed for the service in red and white. All giving what is almost certainly a misleading impression of virtue, devotion and general good behaviour. Was there anything else I was supposed to notice, Lucy?’

  ‘Sometimes, Francis, you can be really quite irritating. It’s because your brain has wandered off somewhere that you can’t see what is right under your nose.’

  ‘What was I supposed to have seen, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, giving her arm a firm squeeze in recognition of his sins.

  ‘They all looked absolutely terrified, every single one of them. That tiny one you mentioned looked scared out of his wits to me.’

  Powerscourt tried to remember the looks on the faces of the choristers. He also remembered that the youngest of them could have only been a year or two older than Thomas. Maybe that was influencing Lucy.

  ‘I think I should have said that they were looking solemn, Lucy. But surely the choirmaster must tell them they have to look serious in the cathedral. You couldn’t have them climbing all over the choir and running races up and down the nave.’

  ‘This was much more serious,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I’m going to find out what’s going on if it’s the last thing I do. I can’t bear to think of all those little boys being so unhappy.’

  Anne Herbert thought Patrick Butler was looking particularly cheerful as he threw himself into her best armchair. Really she thought, as the springs gave a slight shudder, he’s not much better behaved than my two boys, just older.

  ‘Patrick,’ she said in an accusing tone of voice, ‘have you been having lunch all this time with Lord Powerscourt in the Queen’s Head?’

  ‘Lord Francis Powerscourt and I are the best of friends. He calls me Patrick now,’ said the young man.

  ‘And have you been drinking all afternoon?’ Anne pressed home the attack, in a voice that reminded Patrick Butler ever so slightly of his mother.

  ‘We had a bottle of very fine red wine, Anne. I can’t quite remember its name but I think it came from France. I can’t see any harm in that.’

  Anne Herbert poured him a cup of strong tea. ‘You’d better drink some of this, Patrick. Maybe it’ll wash some of the alcohol out of your system. What did he tell you anyway?’

  Now that he thought about it, Patrick wasn’t exactly sure how much Powerscourt had told him. He seemed to have done much more of the talking himself. But there was his scoop for the paper. ‘He told me he’s here to investigate the death of Arthur Rudd, the vicar choral.’

  ‘But I thought you knew that already, Patrick. Was it just the one bottle you had, or was there a second one to help it down?’

  Patrick Butler ignored that one. ‘And,’ he said triumphantly, ‘Lord Powerscourt said I could use that in the paper.’

  ‘I wonder why he did that, Patrick. But listen, I’ve got a piece of news for you about the murder.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know Mrs Booth, who comes to clean here for me twice a week? Well, she also used to clean for Arthur Rudd, in his little house in Vicars Close. She did just one hour a week for him. Well, the day before poor Mr Rudd was murdered was her day for cleaning his house. She went back again the morning after he died to give the place another clean in case his parents or his relatives came to call. And she says, this Mrs Booth, that there were a number of diaries that used to be on Mr Rudd’s little desk. He kept one of these every year, apparently. Now they’ve gone. They’ve disappeared.’

  ‘Do you think the police could have taken them, Anne?’

  ‘No, I don’t, because Mrs Booth says the police didn’t go to the house until the following day.’

  ‘And has she told the police? Does Chief Inspector Yates know about this?’

  Anne Herbert shook her head. ‘The police don’t know. She won’t tell them either, that Mrs Booth. Her husband was locked up a couple of years ago and she blames the police for it. She won’t talk to them at all.’

  Vanishing Papers Key to Murder Mystery. Riddle of Disappearin
g Documents. New Clues in Hunt for Compton Killer. A variety of headlines shot through Patrick Butler’s fertile brain.

  ‘How did you hear about this, Anne? Did Mrs Booth tell you herself?’

  ‘She told me this morning. I’m not sure I should have told you now.’

  Patrick was hunting through his pockets for a pen. His reporter’s notebook was in his coat in the hall. ‘Just give me her address, Anne, that would be very kind. I’ve got to go. I’ve just about got time to call on her now before it’s too late.’

  With some reluctance Anne Herbert handed over the address. Mrs Booth lived in a small terrace near the railway station where the property and rental prices were depressed by the noise and smoke of the trains. Anne watched rather sadly as Patrick hurried off into the night in pursuit of another story for his paper. He didn’t even finish his tea, she said to herself. And I had that nice new cake waiting for him too. Perhaps, she reflected, her friend had been right after all. Being married to a journalist could prove to be a rather unsettled existence.

  11

  Johnny Fitzgerald and the Powerscourts were having breakfast in Fairfield Park. Thomas and Olivia had gone back to London with their nurse. Olivia’s favourite person in the whole world, her grandmother on Lady Lucy’s side, was coming to help look after them until their mother returned.