Death of a Chancellor (20 page)

‘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 Disappearing 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.

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.

Powerscourt was perusing the latest edition of the
Grafton Mercury.
Patrick Butler had told him about the missing journals the morning after his meeting with Mrs Booth. On that occasion
Patrick had confined himself to the facts. The account in the newspaper, however, was slightly more fanciful. ‘The
Grafton Mercury
has reason to believe,’ Powerscourt read with a
slight smile, ‘that the contents of these volumes may well contain the key to the mysterious death of Mr Arthur Rudd. We call upon the authorities to display the utmost vigilance in the hunt
for them. Not an hour, not a day must be lost. Even now the perpetrator of this atrocious crime may have burnt or destroyed them. They must be found before it is too late.’ People reading the
article, Powerscourt felt, would suppose the author to be some middle-aged reporter, grown cynical and disillusioned with age. It was hard to imagine the youthful and cheerful figure of Patrick
Butler composing this report at his chaotic desk in the chaotic offices of his paper.

For the rest of the day, as for the previous days, the Powerscourts haunted the cathedral. Powerscourt had found, oddly enough, that the most illuminating guide to the building was not a member
of the Chapter or the verger, but the policeman. As a boy, Chief Inspector Yates informed Powerscourt, he had wanted to be an architect when he grew up. The only problem was that he couldn’t
draw anything at all. Even his houses were scarcely recognizable. So he had become a policeman instead. Powerscourt had tried hard to work out the connection between architecture and detective work
and totally failed to find it.

‘High altar, rebuilt late seventeenth century. East, my lord,’ he had said to Powerscourt the day before, standing before the high altar in the sanctuary, ‘east was the most
sacred point of the compass for these medieval church builders. East pointed towards Jerusalem, towards Zion the Celestial City, linked metaphorically with the most sacred place in Christianity,
the Temple in Jerusalem where God’s presence was said to be strongest.’

Chief Inspector Yates was gazing up at the great stained glass window behind the altar. He was a tall man with a neat moustache and dark brown eyes. He was twisting his hat between his hands as
he spoke.

‘So, my lord, the high altar is at the east end of a church, the side altars are all placed on the east walls, the congregation faces east. The sun rising in the east is linked with the
dawn on Easter Day when Christ rose from the dead. Even the dead bodies buried beneath the paving all around us, my lord, were placed with their feet to the east so that on the Last Day, when they
rose from their vaults, they would stand up and face their Creator.’

Lady Lucy began her days with Matins. She knew by now the faithful, the regular attendees at the various services. The two old ladies with their walking sticks she had met at Evensong with
Francis nodded to her politely as they passed. There was a tall, skeletally thin old man whose clothes no longer fitted him. Lady Lucy suspected he was dying, come to make his last peace with his
Creator before he was called home. There was a tramp or a drunk, Lady Lucy couldn’t quite decide which, come perhaps to pray for the forgiveness of sins. He looked, she thought, as if he
could do with the Resurrection now rather than later. So few, she thought, so very few had come to Morning Prayer in this enormous building.

‘All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.’ The choir were singing the Te Deum, Lady Lucy’s eyes fixed, as ever, on the faces of the choirboys. ‘To thee
all angels cry aloud: the Heavens and all the powers therein. To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.’

The tiny choirboy had stopped singing. Lady Lucy wondered if he was going to break down and weep, here in the midst of the choir stalls.

‘Almighty God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day,’ the Dean spoke the words of the collect without looking down at his prayer book at all, ‘Defend us in
the same way with thy mighty power and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger.’

Lady Lucy sank to her knees and prayed for the choirboys. She prayed that no harm might befall them that day. She prayed that no harm had befallen them in the days gone by. She prayed that no
harm would come to them in the days ahead. She prayed that the fear be taken from them. But, as she followed them out of the west transept, hoping to be able to speak to one or two of them, she
suspected that, on this occasion at least, her prayers would not be answered.

Powerscourt and Chief Inspector Yates were walking slowly round the cloisters. The Chief Inspector looked up at the extraordinary carvings on the roof. ‘Cloisters, my
lord. Finished about 1410. Fan vaulting. Perpendicular. Last phase of English Gothic. There used to be a stream here next to these cloisters, my lord, but it was sent underground about forty years
ago. The cathedral masons thought it was going to cause subsidence so they diverted it. They did leave a sluice gate that could be opened from somewhere in the cathedral so the building could be
flooded in case of fire.’

‘Could we come back to the cloisters in a moment, Chief Inspector? What do you make of these missing journals of Arthur Rudd’s? Do you think they’re important?’

‘I’m not sure what to think about them,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘We had to promise an increase in the number of visits to the husband in jail before that wretched
woman would speak to us at all. Even now, I’m not sure she couldn’t be mistaken. I certainly don’t think they’re as important as that young man Patrick Butler thinks they
are.’ The Chief Inspector fished around in his pocket for his copy of the
Grafton Mercury.
‘What did his paper say? “We call upon the authorities” – that means
me in this case – “to display the utmost vigilance in the hunt for them. Not an hour, not a day must be lost.” I can tell you this, my lord. We’re looking everywhere for
those bloody journals. I’ve even got a couple of my officers wading through all the rubbish in the Corporation dump. I don’t suppose the young man on the
Mercury
fancies a day or
two of duty squelching through all that mess.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘It all depends, surely,’ he said, walking past the entrance to the chapter house, ‘on why the journals were removed, if they were removed. Was it because
this diary would have told us who the killer was? Not very likely, on the face of it, because most people have no idea they’re going to be murdered, never mind who their murderer is going to
be. Or was it because it contained something that would have led us to the murderer? Was he killed because of what was in the diaries? In which case how did the murderer know what was in the
diaries? Did he pop in when Rudd was out and read the latest instalments? That doesn’t seem very likely to me. Or did the murderer intend to kill him anyway and then remove the diaries
afterwards to protect his own identity?’

The bells high up in the tower at the bottom of the spire tolled eleven o’clock. Powerscourt thought they sounded very loud. He thought briefly of all those monks long ago whose daily
lives would have been regulated by the notes of Great Tom and Isaiah and Resurrection and Ezekiel a couple of hundred feet above.

‘Had you ever thought of being a journalist, my lord?’ Chief Inspector Yates was smiling now. ‘If you can produce that many questions off the top of your head, think of the
pages of the papers you could fill without ever leaving the office. For my money, my lord, the most likely explanation is your last one. The diaries might have given us all a clue as to who the
murderer was.’ The Chief Inspector stopped suddenly and stared at the snow melting on the grass in the centre of the Great Cloisters. ‘This has only just occurred to me, my lord.
Suppose the killer has just put the unfortunate Rudd on the spit. He’s already dead, as we know. He pops three doors up into Vicars Close and does a quick check on Rudd’s possessions
and Rudd’s diaries. There’s something that would implicate the murderer. So they’ve got to go too. So the murderer trots back down into the kitchen and puts them on the fire.
They’d be turned into dust and ashes long before anybody could find them.’

Powerscourt stared at the policeman. ‘I wish I’d thought of that, Chief Inspector. It’s so obvious when you think of it.’

They pulled back to the side of the cloister to let the choir pass on their way to Holy Communion at eleven fifteen.

‘These cloisters here, my lord,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘they’re not as well preserved as the ones at Gloucester. Maybe that stream did them no good at all. I had to
go there for a murder case two years ago and I made the time to go and have a look. The thing about this fan vaulting, my lord, is that all this tracery,’ the Chief Inspector stopped and
pointed up at the delicate and elaborate patterns in stone that ran in almost perfect order along the roof of the cloisters, ‘they’re all ornamental, they don’t have any function
at all. You could say that the masons were just showing off. And now, my lord, I must leave you. My Chief Constable won’t be pleased if he finds out that we’ve been having architectural
tours of the cathedral. I do have to pop back later on this afternoon, mind you. Perhaps I’ll see you then.’