Death of a Chancellor lfp-4

by David Dickinson

  The Compton Horse were now a few miles from the city that bore their name. Every now and then the Colonel would look back to check that his little troop were in their proper formation.

  ‘Don’t suppose you know how long the campaign will last, Powerscourt?’ he said as the spire of the minster came into view. ‘Short engagement, or long siege? Bloody boring things sieges, so they tell me.’

  ‘I doubt if it will last more than a couple of days,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But without your assistance the whole affair would have been a complete fiasco.’

  ‘Never thought we’d end up guarding a flock of treacherous parsons,’ the Colonel continued. ‘Don’t suppose we’ll be adding it to the regimental colours.’

  ‘I’m sure that your role will be recognized,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if they would be in time. Johnny Fitzgerald had ridden ahead to find out how long before the service would end.

  ‘I’d better detach a couple of fellows to sort out the commissariat,’ said the Colonel. ‘I feel as though I could manage a bite of luncheon quite soon.’

  The Bishop was addressing his congregation. Anne Herbert was feeling deeply irritated that all these men, who had cared for her so well after the death of her husband, were now desecrating his memory. Lady Lucy was wondering where Francis was and if he would arrive in time. Patrick Butler was trying to hear what was happening outside. Once he heard the horses’ hooves rattling on the stones outside, he said to himself, he would slip out the side door. He checked once more the spot where the Chief Constable and Chief Inspector Yates had been sitting. They were not there.

  The Bishop was holding up the box containing the words of the monk of Compton, recently serialized in the Mercury. ‘This casket,’ he told his congregation, holding it well aloft above the ornate pulpit, ‘contains the link between Compton’s past and Compton’s future. It was discovered in our crypt earlier this year. It contains what I believe to be the last writings of a monk who dwelt here in the days before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Those of you who live in or around Compton may have read my translations of the earlier sections of the document in our local newspaper. For the visitors to our cathedral on this special day, our one thousandth birthday, I would merely say that it is like a diary, the fears, the reflections, the last words of this monk, whose name we do not know, as his end approached and he went to the scaffold for his faith.’

  The Bishop paused briefly. Patrick Butler listened hard for noises outside. There were none.

  ‘These are the last words of the monk of Compton before he was led away and put to death. “Tomorrow they are coming for me. It will be my last day on earth before I go to meet my father in heaven. They have brought me clean clothes. I would not have chosen to be hung drawn and quartered for my beliefs. But I cannot betray my conscience and my God by subscribing to a faith I do not believe in. I shall fix my eyes on Christ on the cross. May my blood flow in memory of his. May my wounds echo the sufferings of our Saviour in his last hours. May my agony contribute to the final victory of Christ over his enemies. And for my tormentors, secure in the faith of our fathers, I pray that the Lord will forgive them, for they know not what they do.”’

  The Bishop put away his notes. The congregation were very still. Patrick Butler heard no noises coming in from outside. The Bishop raised his arms high above his head.

  ‘May the martyred monk of Compton act as a bridge between our glorious heritage of six hundred years in the true faith and the fresh dawn of a new Catholic beginning we are witnessing here today. For today is Christ risen. Today the stone has been rolled from the sepulchre of his dark entombment. Today is this cathedral risen from its own long entombment in the false religion so brutally imposed on God’s people all those years ago. True religion cannot depend on the lusts of princes or the arrogance and greed of their ministers. True religion cannot depend on the fancies of a Parliament or the passing whims of an electorate that may be moved more by the lures of Mammon than by the faith of our fathers. True religion could never depend on the body of men now sitting in the House of Commons, a body peopled by ever-growing numbers of professed atheists and a host of unbelievers. Thou art Peter, our Lord said, and upon this rock will I build my Church. That rock, that Church have survived intact across the years since those words were uttered in Jerusalem. The authority of Christ’s true Church stretches out across the centuries in an unbroken line to us here in Compton today. It is an authority above and beyond the reach of politicians and the fashionable doctrines of this unhappy world. That authority, slowly accumulated over the long ages of the Church’s life, is stamped on the patterns of our worship and on the conduct of our lives.’

  Patrick Butler was still scribbling furiously in his notebook. Lady Lucy wondered if the Bishop was longing for martyrdom like the monk of Compton. Anne Herbert was wondering if the new cathedral authorities would apply to Propaganda for the monk to be canonized.

  ‘Let us give thanks on this day for the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour. Let us give thanks for the life and example of the monk of Compton, so brutally murdered for his refusal to betray the true faith. Let us give thanks for the Resurrection of our own cathedral, one thousand years old this year. Let us offer up our own sins and our own weaknesses and our own failings to God in his mercy.

  ‘Let me close by invoking the name of one of the greatest English Catholics of the last century. John Henry Newman was born and baptized an Anglican. He was ordained as an Anglican priest. He became a leader of the Oxford Movement, a doomed attempt to reform the Anglican faith. Shortly before he was received into the Catholic Church he wrote a remarkable essay. At the time he was making a choice, a choice between the soft life of an Oxford academic, the companionship of its fellows, the quiet beauty of its quadrangles, the cloistered havens of its great libraries, the candlelight and the fine wine flowing beneath the portraits of scholars past at High Table, and the very different world of the Catholic faithful, a world he had never met and scarcely knew. Newman’s words reach out to us all from the tiny parish of Littlemore outside Oxford where the future Cardinal wrote them seventy years ago. They call on us to make our choice of faith while we still have the chance. If we do not, the consequences may last for ever. Time is short, wrote Newman. Eternity is long.’

  The Bishop bowed his head. A great silence had fallen over the cathedral. Nobody stirred. Nobody changed their position in the pews. Nobody checked the angle of their hat or crossed or uncrossed their legs. Many of them had their eyes closed in silent prayer. Maybe the spirit of John Henry Newman had descended on Compton’s cathedral to deliver a final benediction to the faithful. Then the Bishop turned very slowly and began his descent from the pulpit. The choir rose to their feet and resumed the singing of the Mass. Very faintly outside there came the noise of horses’ hooves. The cavalry had arrived. Patrick Butler began to rise from his feet to find out what was happening outside. Anne Herbert placed a hand firmly on his arm.

  ‘You can’t leave now, Patrick,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll never see anything like this again in your life. It would be like leaving Hamlet before the last act.’

  Reluctantly he sat down again. The Mass carried on. He was wondering if Time is Short Eternity is Long could be fitted as a headline across one page or if he should run it, in the largest typeface his printers possessed, across a double page spread.

  Shortly before the end of the service Chief Inspector Yates and five of his officers placed themselves very quietly in a line across the top of the nave. The Chief Inspector watched the Communion ceremony very carefully.

  ‘Et qui, expletis passionis dominicae diebus,’ sang the choir, ‘You have mourned for Christ’s sufferings, now you celebrate the joy of his Resurrection, May you come with joy to the feast that lasts for ever.’

  The service was over. As the clergy moved slowly down the choir Patrick Butler saw that the police were directing them out of the cathedral not by the west door at the bottom of the nave but by the entrance th
at led past the chapter house towards Vicars Close. He could contain himself no longer. He ran at top speed out of the west door and sprinted off towards the south transept.

  As the procession reached the top of the steps leading them out of the minster they were met by a body of eight dismounted cavalry men. Colonel Wheeler and the Chief Inspector ushered them into the chapter house. Powerscourt, standing a few paces behind, thought that the chapter house couldn’t have been this full of clergy since before the Reformation. When they were all seated, the Chief Constable, the Colonel at his side, addressed them.

  ‘My lord Bishop, Dean, Archdeacon, members of the Chapter, distinguished visitors,’ the Chief Constable nodded to the Bishop from Rome who was scowling furiously in a corner, ‘I have to tell you that you are all under house arrest. You have broken the laws of this country, more specifically, the Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and Administration of the Sacraments, passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First.’

  Powerscourt had remembered on the final lap into Compton with the cavalry that there was an Act of Parliament reproduced at the very beginning of the Book of Common Prayer. He had drawn it to the Chief Constable’s attention shortly before the end of the Mass in the cathedral.

  ‘Under this Act,’ the Chief Constable went on, sounding, Powerscourt thought, as if he had learned the legislation by heart many years before, ‘it is illegal to hold any service in any church or cathedral other than those contained in the Book of Common Prayer. The Catholic Mass, as you know as well as I do, is not included in that Book. Your fate will be decided by the justices, in accordance with the statutes of the Act of Uniformity, acting in concert with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Until such time you are all under house arrest. You may not leave your residences without permission. You may not leave Compton under any circumstances. The cathedral is closed until further notice.’

  As the clergy were led away, escorted by police and cavalry, Patrick Butler found Powerscourt staring at the departing figure of the Dean.

  ‘Well done, my lord, at least you and Johnny Fitzgerald brought the reinforcements here in time.’

  ‘Well done, do you say, Patrick? Well done? I failed to prevent all this happening this morning. And there’s another failure to be laid at my door.’

  ‘What’s that, my lord?’ said Patrick.

  ‘The Bishop and the parsons may all be locked up, Patrick,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I still have to find the murderer.’

  25

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was pacing up and down in front of Anne Herbert’s cottage. Inside the Herbert household the Chief Constable was talking to a young canon from Exeter called Gill who had been an unobtrusive witness to the morning’s events. Chief Inspector Yates and his men, accompanied by a section of Colonel Wheeler’s horse, were ensuring the safe dispersal of all the visitors to their trains. Patrick Butler had departed to his office to write up his notes while they were still fresh in his mind. Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy were indoors, discussing the Bishop’s sermon.

  Powerscourt thought of the murder that had brought him to Compton in the first place, John Eustace, one of England’s richest men, despatched in his own bed. He thought of Arthur Rudd, roasted after his death on the spit in the kitchen of Vicars Hall, the flesh falling off the cremated body. He thought of Edward Gillespie, hung drawn and quartered, sections of his frame dumped all across the surrounding countryside. He wondered again about the murderer. The Dean with those organizational skills? The Archdeacon, longest known convert to Catholicism, with his secret visits to celebrate Mass at Melbury Clinton? The Bishop himself, so secure and comfortable that morning in his new role? The Dean's monosyllabic servant, strong enough to tip that pile of masonry over Powerscourt in the minutes before the cathedral closed? The mysterious Italian from Civitas Dei, Father Barberi, companion of the Archdeacon? Five of them, he thought, like the Five Wounds of Christ. Then it struck him. There might just be a way to bring the matter to a conclusion. It would be risky, it would be dangerous, there could be yet another death in Compton. He rushed inside to fetch Canon Gill. As the Bishop had said, Time is short.

  The two men walked along the path that led to the west front. The statues were still there in their niches, staring past the sinners below them towards John Henry Newman’s long eternity. Powerscourt did most of the talking. Canon Gill was in his early thirties, clean shaven with a distant look in his soft brown eyes.

  ‘I think it could be done,’ the Canon said at last. ‘It wouldn’t be the real thing, of course, but then that wouldn’t matter for your purposes. And I would need another Anglican priest. But I’m sure we could rustle up one of those from a neighbouring parish.’

  ‘You do realize, Canon,’ Powerscourt was very emphatic at this point, ‘that it could be very dangerous. It could even prove fatal for somebody if we’re not careful.’

  The Canon smiled. ‘Of course I realize that, Lord Powerscourt. But in my profession we are not meant to take any account of such things.’

  ‘Forgive me if I ask this question, Canon. Do you have a wife and children? You do realize that you could leave them without a husband and father if things go wrong?’

  ‘I believe, Lord Powerscourt, that you too have a wife and children. Shall we return and confer with the Chief Constable?’

  Johnny Fitzgerald looked very closely at his friend as he came back into the room. ‘I know that look, Francis,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I don’t think you’ve been discussing the finer points of Reformation theology out there. I think you’ve been concocting some scheme or other.’

  Powerscourt smiled. ‘I have indeed. Lucy, Chief Constable, Johnny Anne, Canon Gill from Exeter, let me put forward a plan that might get us out of some of our difficulties.’

  He removed a one-legged teddy bear, property and victim of one of Anne Herbert’s children, from the corner of a chair and sat down. ‘In all the excitement of the past few days, I have not lost sight of one thing. I am here to investigate a murder, not to participate in any religious wars. I want to see if you agree with my hypothesis about this murderer.’

  He paused and accepted a cup of tea. ‘We presume that he has killed to ensure that the service earlier today went ahead. His three victims were all slaughtered because in one way or another they threatened to expose the plans to make Compton a Catholic cathedral once again. I have been extremely concerned in the days of Holy Week that any possible threat to his plan would make him kill again.’

  Lady Lucy was watching her husband’s hands which were twisting round each other as he spoke. The Chief Constable was looking closely at Powerscourt’s face. Johnny was watching Canon Gill from Exeter who was looking something up in the appendix to a very small and very battered Book of Common Prayer.

  ‘Now,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘you might think that the murderer will be able to rest on his laurels, as it were. His mission has been successful. His work is done. But what do you think would happen if there was a sudden reversal in the position of the cathedral?’

  ‘What do you mean, Powerscourt?’ said the Chief Constable.

  ‘My plan is very simple. We set a trap to catch the murderer. The cathedral should be reconsecrated to the Anglican faith at the earliest possible opportunity, tomorrow if it is not feasible today. The murderer will have to try to stop that, by fair means or foul, since it would mean all his efforts had been in vain.’

  ‘But,’ the Chief Constable interrupted again, ‘the murderer is surely under house arrest. How is he going to stop it?’

  Johnny Fitzgerald had seen Powerscourt carrying out a similar manoeuvre in a murder case in Simla. ‘I presume, Francis,’ he said, ‘that you are going to suggest that word is put about to all those under house arrest that the cathedral is going to be rededicated at a particular time. Discreetly, of course. But the gossip must be swirling round all those houses like wildfire. Then you would flush him out.’

  Powerscourt smiled. ‘Absolutely right, J
ohnny. Your men, Chief Constable, would have to relax their guard at the appointed time. The murderer or murderers would have to be allowed to escape from their confinement to go to the cathedral. Johnny and I would be hiding inside. After ten or fifteen minutes from the start of the service your men and Colonel Wheeler’s horse would surround every known exit from the building. We wait for the murderer to make his move. Then we pounce. Then this terrible affair might be at an end.’

  The Chief Constable looked apprehensive. ‘Could you do it?’ he asked Canon Gill. ‘Rededicate the cathedral, I mean?’

  Canon Gill looked up from his prayer book. His voice was very soft. Outside they could hear the local children playing on the Green. ‘The answer is No and Yes,’ he said. ‘No in the sense that I must confess I do not know the precise form of service to be used in these circumstances. But I am not sure that matters. I just need another Anglican priest to assist me. We can cobble together some form of service that might not be entirely correct but would be sufficient to convince the murderer. We could quote from the Act of Supremacy that you invoked earlier, Chief Constable. We could read the Thirty-Nine Articles. I’m sure I could make it pretty convincing.’

  Lady Lucy intervened for the first time. ‘Wouldn’t the murderer know that it was the wrong form of service? If he’s been pretending to be an Anglican all these years wouldn’t he realize that this wasn’t the proper way to do it? And therefore that the re-dedication would be invalid and the cathedral still be a Catholic one? So he wouldn’t have to stop it.’

  ‘What you say is entirely plausible, Lady Powerscourt,’ Canon Gill bowed his head slightly in her direction as he spoke, ‘but I don’t think it’s going to be like that. These gentlemen now under house arrest know all about how to rededicate the cathedral to Rome. But I don’t think they will have thought for a second about the traffic the other way, if you see what I mean. You could spend your whole life in the Church of England, you could end up as Archbishop of Canterbury, without knowing what to do in these circumstances. Nobody’s been here since the Reformation.’