Death of a Chancellor (19 page)

‘I do, I’m afraid,’ Powerscourt said. ‘and I’d be curious to know why you didn’t print it in your newspaper.’

‘I wanted to, I wanted to print it very much,’ said Patrick Butler sadly, ‘but then I thought it would upset a lot of people, especially the women. I’m sure at least as
many women as men read the
Grafton Mercury.
If we really turned their stomachs then they might stop buying the paper. It was pure self-interest in the end, however much I regretted
it.’

The main course had been cleared away. An enormous trolley appeared, filled with equally enormous puddings. There were apple pies fit for a giant, monstrous edifices of fruit and custard and
cream disguised as strawberry trifles, lemon meringue tarts. Patrick Butler opted for Goliath’s apple pie, Powerscourt asked for a small, David-sized helping of the lemon meringue.

‘To get back to any emotional entanglements on the Close, Mr Butler, if I may. Deans and archdeacons, forgive me for saying so, can be as liable to the attractions of other people’s
wives as everybody else.’

Patrick Butler was looking thoughtful. ‘I don’t think there are,’ he said, ‘and I’ve just realized something I hadn’t noticed before. I checked out Arthur
Rudd, by the way. None of his colleagues knew of any emotional involvements anywhere at all, or if they did, they weren’t telling me. But it’s quite odd, Lord Powerscourt. The main
reason I don’t think affairs of the heart can have anything to do with it is that there are hardly any women up there. The Bishop isn’t married. The Dean isn’t married. The
Precentor isn’t married. Chancellor Eustace wasn’t married. I don’t think any of the vicars choral are married, not that you could afford to have a wife and family on their wages.
Oh, there are housekeepers and so on but hardly any wives.’

‘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 have
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?’