Death of a Chancellor lfp-4

by David Dickinson

  At last she found the steps and sat halfway up to wait for the flood that would engulf her to rise slowly up the Norman pillars. Sometimes she thought it was subsiding, draining away perhaps through some porous section of the walls. Then it rose again, slowly, steadily, stealthily, almost like some wild animal stalking its prey in a jungle and waiting to pounce. Lady Lucy found herself thinking of her grandfather in Scotland who had dreamed of her marrying the Viceroy of India. He had taught her to shoot in case she needed to defend herself against hostile natives or marauding wild animals. Bullets would not help me now, she said to herself. I must remain calm, she told herself. If I panic or turn hysterical I shall die even sooner. She tried to imagine what Francis would say. She thought she knew exactly what his message to her would be. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.

  Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were riding into Compton faster than they had ever galloped across the South African veldt the year before. Johnny had a dark bag on his back, filled with strange implements that would open doors and windows designed to keep intruders out. The sun was setting over to their right, the glorious greens of an English spring turning back to the anonymous grey of twilight. Once or twice Johnny glanced wistfully at some bird of prey hovering above the fields. Powerscourt was calculating how long it would take them to reach Compton. And how long the murderer had already had to kill his Lucy.

  Lady Lucy had counted fifteen steps from the bottom of the crypt to the great door that had banged shut on her some time before. She was sitting on step number eight, peering at the tide of water that swirled about her feet. Not that she could see the water, but she heard its presence everywhere, rippling round the pillars, slurping along the walls at the back. She had drawn her feet up to the step beneath. As the water rose she was going to retreat higher until she ended up crouching on the top step with her back to the door. She had moved on from the prayers and the collects to St Patrick’s Breastplate. One of her grandmothers used to recite it to her as a lullaby at bedtime. The words had never left her.

  ‘Christ for my guardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards.

  Christ with me

  Christ before me

  Christ behind me.’

  Christ was not beneath her. The water was. It had risen again during her prayer. Lady Lucy retreated to step number nine. She found herself wondering why the murderer was so sensitive about the choir. Her mind went back to the conversation with the choirmaster when he had threatened to expel her for taking too much interest in the boys. They have a lot of new music to learn for the commemoration service, he had said, as well as the Messiah. What sort of new music? Catholic music? Music that would never gain countenance in an Anglican cathedral, perhaps? And the choirboys might have told her? Surely that was the answer. She would have to tell Francis when she saw him. Maybe the choirmaster was the murderer. Then Lady Lucy’s courage broke down and the tears rolled down her face to add a touch of salt to the malevolent flood beneath her. She might never see Francis again. He would never know how much she loved him, how she had loved him ever since that meeting in the National Gallery nine years before when she had talked with such passion about Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. The thought that Francis would never know how much she felt for him reduced Lady Lucy to bouts of uncontrollable weeping. The waters advanced again. Lady Lucy retreated. She was on step number ten now. Only five to go.

  Powerscourt reined in his horse on the edge of the Cathedral Close. He felt very cold in spite of the vigour of his ride.

  ‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘do you think you could pick up the cathedral keys from the Deanery over there? I’m going round to the choirboys’ house. I’ll see you at the west door in a few minutes.’

  The choir were still practising as Powerscourt raced round to the Georgian house that was their home. He heard the singing from twenty yards away, the choirmaster not happy with his charges, making them sing the same phrase over and over again. Powerscourt thought there was something unusual about this music, something not right, but he had no time to wait and listen further. He pulled vigorously on the bell. You would think the bell in this sort of house would be melodious, he said to himself as he waited for an answer, a Mozart or a Haydn among door bells. But this one was harsh and grating, a dissonant note with the heavenly voices on the upper floor.

  An enormous man in his late thirties with a large black beard opened the door.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘My wife has gone missing. She is a member of the choir for the Messiah. I wonder if you’ve seen her at all earlier this evening?’

  ‘We all know Lady Powerscourt,’ said the man ominously, ‘and I can promise you we haven’t seen her at all this evening. Goodnight to you, sir.’

  And with that the man closed the door very sharply in Powerscourt’s face. There was some strange accent there in the man’s speech, Powerscourt thought, but he hadn’t time to wonder what it was. He led his horse back to the front of the cathedral. It was twenty-five past eight.

  Lady Lucy was on step number twelve now. She had cried all she could. Now she felt very cold. The water was beginning to creep up around her ankles. Ever since she was a child Lady Lucy had believed in heaven. Now she felt she might see it rather sooner than she expected. She had given up all hope of rescue, all hope that the remorseless flood might stop rising. She wondered if they had cleaning and drying facilities for new arrivals up above. God’s laundry, she said to herself, presided over by a couple of wrinkled female saints, dispensing good cheer and heavenly soapsuds in equal measure. She wondered suddenly if there were big queues at busy periods, remembering the long delays that sometimes occurred at her local laundry on the corner of Sloane Square. She would just have to wait and see.

  She began rehearsing some of her sins for the questions higher up. She hoped she would get preferential treatment for being so wet. Most of the new arrivals must come in perfectly dry after all. She should have been kinder to her mother. Lady Lucy suspected the authorities must have heard that one before. Sometimes she had been too strict with the children. Another familiar refrain. The waters were rising again. Lady Lucy, on her very own ghastly stairway to heaven, climbed back another step. Number thirteen. Unlucky thirteen.

  Johnny Fitzgerald was carrying an enormous bunch of keys. ‘The Dean’s man wasn’t about,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I had to interrupt the Dean in the middle of a meeting for him to fetch me the keys. He looked pretty cross.’ Johnny began inspecting the bunch for the key of the west door, Powerscourt trying not to become impatient beside him.

  ‘I think it might be this one,’ he said, inserting an enormous key into the lock. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Backed a loser there. Hold on, Francis, sorry about the delay.’ The second key didn’t work either. Neither did the third, Powerscourt feeling desperate by his side. The fourth did. Johnny Fitzgerald handed Powerscourt a lantern and they set off together up the nave, dramatic shadows falling across the tombs and the chantry chapels of the dead. They kept together by long custom, remembering from years of experience that two might make quicker progress separately, but that one person on their own is easier to kill. The sound of their boots went echoing up into the roof. They spoke in whispers. Powerscourt felt relieved when they passed the high altar and found it empty. He had been wondering if the murderer’s macabre imagination could have left Lucy on top of it, like the victim of a human sacrifice. He tried to remember if his historians had talked of any women being put to death during the agonies of the Reformation. There was only one he could recall, a woman widely believed to have been a witch who had been burnt at the stake. He shuddered as they passed into the Lady Chapel behind the altar. A host of medieval saints and sinners peered down at them from the stained glass. But of Lady Lucy there was no sign.

  Lady Lucy was on the fourteenth step now. Just one more to go before the end. The tears were back in her eyes as she thought of her children gr
owing up without her. She would never see Thomas and Olivia married, she would never hold their children in her arms. Perhaps Thomas would become a soldier like his father and ride off overseas in some resplendent uniform to fight his country’s battles. She felt very cold, shivering now as the waters approached. Then she thought she could hear some faint noise outside the door. Down at the bottom of the crypt, in amongst the pillars and the thick stone arches, you could hear nothing at all. But higher up it was different. She decided to make one last try for life. ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Francis! Francis!’ She thought it would be fitting if she perished with her husband’s name on her lips. But there was no reply, only the mocking swirl of the waters that were coming to envelop her. She carried on regardless. ‘Help! Help! Francis! Francis!’

  It wasn’t Powerscourt who heard the noise but Johnny Fitzgerald. He stopped suddenly and held Powerscourt back with his hand. ‘Listen, Francis, I thought I heard a noise, coming from down there somewhere to the side of the choir.’ They strained forward. They were over a hundred yards away from the entrance to the crypt. The next time they both heard it. ‘Lucy! Lucy’ they shouted at the tops of their voices as they sprinted down the south ambulatory, bumping into the tomb of Duke William of Hereford as they went. They stopped in the south transept and listened once more. This time they heard it more clearly. ‘Francis! Francis!’ There was hope in the voice now. Lucy thought she heard the sound of footsteps drawing near to the crypt.

  ‘The crypt, Francis, the crypt. Over there in the corner. God knows which one of these bloody keys it is. Christ, why do they have so many? There’s enough here to maintain a decent-sized prison.’

  Powerscourt was banging on the door, calling out to Lucy inside. Johnny found the key at last. They rushed down a narrow passageway of twelve large steps to the second door. Water was now swirling round their feet. Johnny took one look at the second door and pulled out a vicious-looking iron crowbar.

  ‘To hell with this bunch of keys, Francis,’ he said. ‘God knows what the divine punishment is for damaging cathedral property but I’ll take my chance.’

  With that he struck two mighty blows at the lock. Then he produced another instrument from his bag and wrenched the lock out of place. The door fell forward and with it a very wet Lady Lucy. She was crying. Powerscourt took her in his arms and carried her back up to the body of the cathedral.

  ‘It’s all my fault, Francis, it really is. If only I had listened to your advice about the choirboys.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my love,’ said Powerscourt, stroking her hair, and striding fast towards the west door. ‘You’re safe now. You can tell us what happened later. We’re going to take you to Anne Herbert’s house. I’m sure you can have a bath and borrow some dry clothes.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was packing up his tools. Powerscourt suddenly remembered his conversation with Chief Inspector Yates in the cloisters where the policeman had told him about the diverted stream and the sluice gate.

  Powerscourt shook his head. When was this murderer going to stop? he said to himself. John Eustace, Arthur Rudd, Edward Gillespie. He’d tried to kill Powerscourt once. Now he’d tried, perhaps, to kill Lady Lucy. Let Easter Sunday come quickly, he thought. Then there may be an end of it.

  Two days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking up the cobbled street of the Vicars Close. Two rows of ancient houses, with pretty little gardens in the front, ran up the hill away from the cathedral. Not Compton Cathedral this time, but Wells, a couple of hours away by train. For two days Powerscourt had sat at Lucy’s bedside. The long exposure in the crypt, the cold and the water, had left her weak and feverish. Privately Powerscourt blamed himself. They should have left her in Anne Herbert’s house rather than bringing her on yet another journey back to Fairfield Park. Dr Blackstaff was a regular visitor and prescribed a couple of medicines and a lot of rest. When the fever was running high Lady Lucy would plead with Francis to find out about the music. She was certain that the Protestant choirboys were being forced to learn the tunes and the words of the Church of Rome. She was sure the boys were not allowed to tell their parents for fear of some terrible punishment. Only that morning, Palm Sunday, as the procession of palms made its way round the cathedral and then up to the high altar inside, she had pleaded with him again.

  Powerscourt had not told her about the singing he had heard on the way to the rescue. But it had stayed in his mind. Dr Blackstaff, a veteran of many West Country choirs, had written on his behalf to the assistant choirmaster in Wells. The doctor understood only too well why Powerscourt might not wish to pursue his queries in Compton.

  Michael Matthews opened the door himself. He was a cheerful young man, almost six feet tall, with curly blond hair and merry brown eyes.

  ‘You must be Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘Welcome to Wells. Do come in. We should have time to sort out your problem before Evensong.’

  He showed Powerscourt into a little sitting room. His house was at the top of the Close, looking down towards the chapter house and the north transept of the cathedral. The first thing Powerscourt noticed was a large piano which occupied most of one wall of the tiny room. The second thing was a wall full of books, many of them lives of the composers. And the third thing was that the floor was covered with musical scores, Byrd and Thomas Tallis, Purcell and Handel, Mozart and Haydn, the great choral tradition of Western Europe scattered in random piles across the fraying carpet. In one corner of the room Powerscourt thought he saw some Gilbert and Sullivan, a touch of the profane hiding among the sacred.

  ‘Please forgive me, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Michael Matthews, waving towards his floor, ‘I’m in the middle of a tidying-up session. If you’d been half an hour later, all of this lot would have gone.’

  ‘Don’t worry at all,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘there’s always a lot of confusion when you’re in the middle of a clear-out.’

  ‘How can I help you, Lord Powerscourt?’ said Matthews, ushering him to a small chair by the side of the piano.

  ‘I believe Dr Blackstaff told you I am investigating a series of murders in Compton,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘He certainly did,’ said the young man. ‘I pray we may never be afflicted with anything similar here in Wells.’

  ‘Things in Compton at present, how should I put this, Mr Matthews, are rather delicate. We have not found the murderer, though I hope we shall do so soon. However strange it may sound, I must ask you to keep our conversation absolutely confidential. You have not seen me. We have not spoken. We did not meet.’ Powerscourt knew he was sounding melodramatic, perhaps a little mad, but just one scribbled note from Wells to Compton might spark another round of murder.

  The young man began to laugh, then stopped when he saw how serious was the face of his visitor.

  ‘Secrets,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Have no fear, Lord Powerscourt. I shan’t tell a soul about today. Now then,’ he moved away from his mantelpiece and sat down by the piano, ‘what is this piece of music you want to have identified? Perhaps you could hum it or sing it if you can remember it.’

  Powerscourt hummed about six or seven bars. Matthews tapped them out on his piano with his right hand. Then he added an accompaniment with his left.

  ‘Something like that, Lord Powerscourt?’

  Powerscourt shook his head. ‘The last three or four notes sound right, but not the beginning.’

  ‘Try to remember exactly where you were when you heard this piece. Now close your eyes. Now try again.’

  Powerscourt delivered another opening, slightly different from the first. Again the young man picked out the notes with his right hand.

  ‘Just one more time, if you would, Lord Powerscourt. I think I’ve got it.’

  Powerscourt closed his eyes again, remembering the noise coming to him across the Close from the choristers’ house as he searched for Lady Lucy. This time the young man was delighted.

  ‘Splendid, Lord Powerscourt, splendid. Not exactly the piece of choral music you would expect to hear floa
ting across an English cathedral close.’ Michael Matthews played a very brief introduction. Then he sang along with a powerful tenor voice.

  ‘Credo in unum Deum

  Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae.’

  I believe in one God the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and earth, Powerscourt muttered to himself.

  ‘You might think it’s a musical version of one of the Anglican creeds, words virtually identical,’ said Matthews, abandoning his singing but keeping the tune going on his piano. ‘But wait for the great blast at the end.

  ‘Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.

  Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.

  Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum,

  et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.’

  Michael Matthews played a virtuoso conclusion, a great descant swelling through the higher notes.

  We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church, Powerscourt translated as he went, we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

  ‘The music you heard, Lord Powerscourt, is the Profession of Faith of the Catholic Liturgy, to be used on Sundays and holy days. When the congregations get to the line about one holy and apostolic and catholic church, they belt it out as if they were singing their own National Anthem. No, better than that, it’s their equivalent of the Battle Hymn of the Republic’

  Powerscourt looked closely at Michael Matthews. Matthews didn’t think he was at all surprised. As Powerscourt made his way out of the little house and back down the Vicars Close to Wells station, the assistant choirmaster stood at his window and watched him go. What on earth was going on down there in Compton? Why were the choir singing the music of a different faith? Ours not to reason why, he said to himself and sat down once more at his piano. The window was slightly open. Powerscourt could just hear the strains of ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, played with great sadness, pursuing him down the street.