Death of a Chancellor (43 page)

The Archdeacon began to address the faithful once again. ‘On this day of all days, at this time so close to midnight and Easter Sunday,’ he said, ‘we value the dark. The
cathedral is dark. Christ’s tomb, the sepulchre where he lies is dark. The darkness is the darkness of sin, of error, waiting for redemption from the light of Christ’s Resurrection. The
Gospel of St Mark: “And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll away the
stone from the door of the sepulchre?”’ Heads were bowed everywhere. The Archdeacon continued: ‘“And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away for it was
great. And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side and he saith unto them: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is not here: he is
risen.”’

The Archdeacon crossed himself. So did most of the crowd.

‘On the last stroke of midnight,’ the Archdeacon’s voice was beginning to show signs of its labours during the night. It cracked ever so slightly on the word midnight,
‘it will be Easter Sunday. I invite you all to take your candles into the church and leave them there. Stewards will show you the way. The paschal candles are by the door for you to relight
your own. The light in the church will be the light of Christ’s glory The light in the church will be the symbol of the church’s victory over its enemies.’ Powerscourt wondered
who he meant. Luther? Calvin? Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries? Henry the Eighth? ‘People of Compton,’ the Archdeacon held his arms aloft for the last time,
‘I commend to you the words of the prophet Isaiah: the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light
shined.’

The Archdeacon paused.
‘Dominus vobiscum.’

There was nearly a minute of almost total silence. Some of the choirs were trying to clear their throats. Some of the crowd were retrieving their candles from the ground. Then the trumpet
sounded once again, the young man on top of the west front enjoying his second moment of glory As the last note died away, the Cathedral clock began to toll the hour of midnight. Great Tom, cast in
Bristol in 1258, who had spoken every day for centuries, gave forth once more. This was his six hundred and forty-third Easter Sunday. One, two, three. People began to shuffle forward from the
back. The Archdeacon was still aloft on his scaffold, waving graciously to the people who passed beneath. Four, five, six. Powerscourt was holding Lady Lucy very tight, hoping she wasn’t too
cold. Patrick Butler had disappeared on another of his forays into the crowd. Seven, eight, nine. Powerscourt wondered if the Lord Lieutenant had abandoned his port to come into Compton for the
bonfire. He tried to remember who the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for on Sundays. Murderers? Heretics? Ten, eleven, twelve.

The great doors of the cathedral swung open. The inside was completely dark but at the door two stewards were holding out the paschal candles, large enough and broad enough to rekindle all those
which had burned so brightly on Cathedral Green. The choirs processed slowly through the doors, preceded by men carrying the banners of The Five Wounds of Christ, and made their way up the nave
towards the stalls. They were singing from the Resurrection section of the
Messiah:
‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall
come in.’

Sconces to hold the candles had been placed all over the cathedral, in the aisles and the ambulatories, on the great pillars of the nave, in the north and south transepts, in the presbytery and
the choir. Great empty stacks were waiting in the Lady Chapel and the side chapels to receive the surplus. Two orderly queues had formed outside the doors, shuffling forward to cast their light
into the darkness.

‘Who is the King of Glory? Who is the King of Glory?’

Patrick Butler reappeared as suddenly as he had vanished. He took Anne Herbert by the hand and led her off towards the cathedral, both of them clutching their candles. Powerscourt thought
suddenly that they might prefer to be alone but he did make one request before they left.

‘Could you see if you can find Chief Inspector Yates for me, Patrick? He must be about somewhere. I’d very much like to speak to him.’

The candles were beginning to have an impact now. The first arrivals were all instructed to leave theirs at the bottom of the nave. The lower section of the minster became incandescent with
candles that flickered, candles that burned straight up, candles that burnt quickly, candles that looked as though they would burn for ever. It was a glacier of light, inching its way up the
cathedral as the pilgrims left their tribute.

‘Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.’

‘You must be feeling very annoyed, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘You told everybody this was going to happen and it has.’

‘Well, there’s one consolation, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You always believed in me. I can’t tell you what a help that has been. Come, we’d better bring our
candles. I think I’d feel incomplete if we didn’t.’

The Archdeacon had finally come down from his scaffold. He inspected the remains of the bonfire carefully as if trying to make sure all the Acts had been properly consumed. Inside the glacier of
light had reached the top of the nave. The pillars and the soaring tracery were bathed in a golden light, glowing and glimmering as they had seldom glowed before in all their long history.

‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.’

Patrick Butler found Powerscourt and Johnny and Lady Lucy very near the front of the queue. The editor of the
Grafton Mercury
was more than usually excited. ‘Lord
Powerscourt,’ he said, panting slightly, ‘I’ve been making inquiries as to where all these people came from. They’ve come from all over southern England, London, Bristol,
Reading, Southampton. And they’ve all known about it for months. The thing’s been organized like a military operation. The local Compton people think they’ve been invaded.
They’ve all gone home. They’re just going to wait until things quieten down.’

‘Have you had time, Patrick,’ said Lady Lucy in her sweetest voice, ‘to think of a headline for tonight’s proceedings?’ Lady Lucy had grown rather attached to
Patrick’s headlines.

‘Well,’ said the young man, drawing Anne Herbert even closer to him, ‘I’ve known what the headline should be for some time, but I’m not sure all my readers will
understand it.’

‘Share it with us, Patrick,’ Lady Lucy smiled, ‘we’ll do our best to grasp it.’

Patrick looked sheepish all of a sudden. ‘You’re teasing me,’ he said. ‘I shan’t tell you about my headline at all. You’ll never get to hear about the Bonfire
of the Vanities.’ ‘Who is the King of Glory? Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory.’

Powerscourt was dazzled as he and his companions finally entered the cathedral, their candles rekindled by the paschal candle at the door. The glacier had reached the bottom of the choir.
Looking back down the nave he thought he had seldom seen anything so beautiful. He transposed Wordsworth’s daffodils into the candles of Compton in his mind.

Powerscourt placed his candle on a sconce at the top of the choir, Lady Lucy’s behind it, Johnny’s nestling very close to a wooden angel with a harp. The wounds of Christ on the
banners were gleaming in the light. The choir were belting out Handel’s most famous Chorus.

‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’

The queues were still there as they left, shorter now, but still patient, snaking their way towards the west front. An extremely excited Patrick Butler was waiting for them.

‘Lord Powerscourt, you must all come at once! I found Chief Inspector Yates with the Chief Constable. They’ve been looking for you, my lord. They should be in Anne’s house by
now. I didn’t think you’d want to talk to them anywhere near the cathedral.’

Powerscourt remembered meeting the Chief Constable very early in this investigation. He had seemed a most capable individual then, sitting in the Dean’s front room, discussing the murder
of Arthur Rudd. Now he was distraught.

‘Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt, Lord Fitzgerald, please forgive me for the lateness of this visit. I would welcome some advice. Chief Inspector Yates informed me of your suspicions some
time ago, Powerscourt. I wasn’t sure whether to believe your theories or not, and it is difficult to take action when nothing has been done. But now I am convinced these people are going to
rededicate the cathedral to the Catholic faith tomorrow. The Archdeacon said so. Even then I don’t think I have the power to act until something has actually happened.’

‘Do you think you can arrest them?’ said Powerscourt.

‘That’s just one of my worries, Powerscourt. I’d have to arrest the Bishop, the Dean and the entire Chapter. I’m not sure we have enough cells to hold them all here in
Compton. We’d have to throw out the current incumbents, two burglars, one suspected murderer and a couple of horse thieves. I don’t think that would go down too well with the
citizens.’

‘Why don’t you put them under house arrest?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Confine them all to their own quarters. Lock up the bloody cathedral for the time being.’

The Chief Constable smiled. ‘I’ve thought of that. But I don’t have the manpower to keep them all confined to their quarters. That’s my other worry, you see. You all saw
what that crowd was like on the Green this evening. They could cause a great deal of trouble. They might even decide to storm the jail if they thought their people were inside.’

‘Are you saying, Chief Constable,’ asked Powerscourt, ‘that as things stand, you will be unable to take any action in defence of the laws of this country tomorrow?’

‘I’m afraid that is the case,’ the Chief Constable replied, looking even more miserable as he said it.

Silence fell in Anne Herbert’s little drawing room. Outside they could still hear faint noises of singing. It was Johnny Fitzgerald who spoke first.

‘Francis,’ he said, ‘you will recall that I did some reconnaissance into the military in the locality?’

Powerscourt nodded. That would have to do with Johnny’s acquisition of explosives, not a subject he wished to go into in present company.

‘Well,’ Johnny went on, ‘what the Chief Constable needs are reinforcements. Soldiers can be used like policemen, can’t they? There’s a crowd of infantry about
twenty miles from here. I don’t think they’d be able to get here in time. But there’s cavalry five miles further away. I’m sure they could be persuaded to come to the
rescue. They always like arriving at the last possible minute.’

‘My dear Lord Fitzgerald,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘your suggestion is admirable. But I fail to see how they could reach here in time.’

‘That’s easy,’ said Johnny, ‘we just get go and get them, Francis and I.’

‘But it’s nearly two o’clock in the morning. Even if you set out at first light they couldn’t get here in time.’

‘Chief Constable,’ said Powerscourt, sensing that Johnny was about to get irritated, ‘what Johnny means is that we leave now. Once we can get changed and on to our
horses.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said the Chief Constable.

‘We will meet with you or your representatives outside the cathedral during Mass tomorrow morning,’ said Powerscourt. ‘With or without the cavalry.’

While he waited for Lucy to collect her things before the return to Fairfield Park and the horses, Powerscourt went to have a final look at the cathedral. The last pilgrims were making their way
inside. Even at a distance it glowed magnificently, the light from hundreds and hundreds of candles streaming out of the doors. The choir were nearly finished.

‘And he shall reign for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!’

Powerscourt bumped into the Archdeacon on his way back.

‘Shall we be seeing you at Mass tomorrow, Lord Powerscourt?’ asked the Archdeacon.

‘You might, Archdeacon,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘you very well might.’

By four o’clock in the morning Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were nearly halfway to the cavalry camp at Bampton. It was a clear night with a silver crescent of a
moon. The road took them past a number of villages sleeping peacefully under the stars.

Powerscourt was thinking about the murderer. Chief Inspector Yates had told him as they left Anne Herbert’s house that the final checks had been carried out on the movements and the alibi
of the butcher Fraser. The police were convinced the man was totally innocent of the murder of Edward Gillespie. And all their inquiries among the murky undergrowth of moneylenders in Bristol and
Exeter who might have had dealings with Arthur Rudd had been fruitless. The murderer must reside inside the great circle Powerscourt had drawn around the Cathedral Close in his notebook weeks
before. But which of them was it? The Bishop with his service record in the Guards? The Dean with his passion for efficiency that would have been disturbed by defectors who changed their minds? The
Archdeacon with that passion for the faith he had demonstrated so eloquently up there on his scaffold the night before? The choirmaster who had threatened to expel Lady Lucy from his choir? The
mysterious member of Civitas Dei, Father Barberi, regular visitor to Compton, London and the College of Propaganda in Rome? Five of them, Powerscourt thought, three murders, two attempted murders,
himself and Lady Lucy, to their name. Maybe they hadn’t finished yet. Maybe it would take one more murder before the killer was unmasked.