Death of a Chancellor (12 page)

The figures he was looking at related to the recent sales of his paper. Since his arrival he reckoned that he had increased the circulation by about twenty per cent. But that was not enough for
Patrick Butler. There were thousands and thousands of citizens in the county who were not buying his paper. When he saw the good people of Grafton en masse, on market days or attending a local
football match, he wanted to harangue them on the error of their ways. Did they know what they were missing by not buying the
Grafton Mercury
? Did they not realize how their lives would be
enriched by reading the pages of his paper? But one recent edition had sold spectacularly well. It was the commemorative special on the death of Queen Victoria which was still on sale all over the
county. It was going to make an enormous profit. What else, Patrick wondered, could merit the same treatment and deliver an equivalent volume of sales?

He rose cautiously to his feet and crouched under the grimy skylight. If he craned his neck, he could just see the spire of the minster off to his right. Something was stirring in his restless
brain. The cathedral, something to do with the cathedral. Then he had it. The anniversary, the one thousandth anniversary of the cathedral was to come at Easter. There had been announcements in the
paper already, details of the plans for the celebrations, of course. But what a perfect opportunity for another anniversary edition. The articles and headlines began to roll through the printing
presses in his mind. A Day in the Life of a Medieval Monk. The Role and Responsibilities of an Abbot. Patrick thought the Dean might enjoy writing that one. The Hands of Time, he could find
somebody to tell the story of the medieval clock, said to be the oldest in England. The Bells of God, one of the fraternity of bell ringers who still met after practice in the Bell tavern could
provide that one. He wondered briefly about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Reformation. Had there been any executions at that time? Terror Stalks Compton as Friars Burn, he particularly
liked that headline. Then there had been the corrupt and venial Dean early in the last century who had packed the offices of the cathedral with no fewer than fourteen of his own relatives.
Corruption in the Chapter. Perhaps that was a bit strong, but the article would please the dissenters and the Nonconformists. Something for everybody in the broad church of the
Grafton
Mercury.
As he pulled his head back inside his attic Patrick forgot to duck. He cracked his head loudly and painfully on one of the rafters. ‘Damn,’ he said very loudly.
‘Damn.’ He checked his watch. It was nearly half-past four. Maybe he should call on the Dean to ask him to deliver his thoughts on the managerial and administrative role of an abbot in
the reign of Edward the Confessor. His route, he realized, would take him right past the front door of Anne Herbert’s little house on the edge of the Cathedral Close. And it was tea time.

Mr Archibald Matlock was the proud owner of an office considerably larger and more opulent than that of the Editor of the
Grafton Mercury.
His was on the second floor of
a handsome old building on Chancery Lane. Prints of lawyers, old and modern, lined the walls. There were lawyers with enormous pens, lawyers with enormous faces, lawyers with enormous noses,
lawyers with enormous bellies. There was even one, Powerscourt noticed, almost hidden on the top rank of this rogues’ gallery, hanging from an enormous gibbet for his crimes against humanity.
Powerscourt rather liked that one.

‘I have come about a will,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the will of a clergyman called Charles John Whitney Eustace.’ Archibald Matlock did not look like a man who might feature
in the prints on his walls. He was of regulation height, with a regulation dark grey suit, and a regulation dark blue tie. The most noticeable thing about the man was his hair, or the lack of it.
Archibald Matlock was completely bald. Every now and then he would rub the top of his head as if checking to see if his earlier complement of hair had returned.

‘Lord Powerscourt, it is not our custom to discuss the wills of our clients with anybody else, however distinguished they may be.’ With that he smiled a deprecating smile.

‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, smiling back, ‘I should have said. I have a letter here from Mr Oliver Drake, solicitor of Compton. He is the executor of Mr Eustace’s
will.’

Matlock took out a small pair of glasses and scanned the document. ‘I see. So you are an investigator, Lord Powerscourt. Is there, may I ask, trouble about the will?’

Powerscourt felt sorely tempted to reply that he was not in the habit of discussing his client’s affairs with outsiders, however bald they might be, but he refrained.

‘There is indeed trouble about the will,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that there are three of them.’

‘Three wills?’ said Matlock incredulously. ‘I have heard of cases with two wills, but never three. Is it true that the late Mr Eustace was one of the richest men in England? I
seem to remember reading about it in the newspapers but you can never really believe what they tell you.’

‘I believe it is true,’ said Powerscourt, his eye suddenly caught by one of Matlock’s lawyers on the wall, who appeared to be reading out to a greedy-looking company from an
enormously long piece of paper with the legend Will inscribed at the top.

‘It would help me,’ he went on, ‘if you could tell me everything you can remember about the composition of this will. I believe it was written about six or seven months ago,
all of it, except the signatures, typewritten.’

Archibald Matlock paused. He went to a large cupboard at the back of his office. ‘We keep copies of all the wills that pass through our hands,’ he said. ‘These ones here should
really be locked up in the basement safe. I shall make a note to have them removed.’ Powerscourt noticed that above his head was a splendid print of two eighteenth-century lawyers, wigs
slightly adrift, consuming an enormous meal. Discarded bones are lying on the floor. Two empty bottles are lying on the table, a phalanx of further bottles waiting to one side. An elderly, very fat
lawyer is just about to carve an enormous side of roast beef.

‘I remember this will very clearly,’ said Matlock, returning to his desk with a piece of paper. ‘The whole process began when Mrs Augusta Cockburn – do you know Mrs
Cockburn, Lord Powerscourt?’ A faint tremor of distaste, it might even have been fear, passed over the Matlock countenance. Powerscourt nodded. It looked as if the woman was as ferocious in
Chancery Lane as she was in Compton. ‘Anyway the whole process began, as I was saying, when Mrs Cockburn turned forty. In my experience, turning forty can be a pretty traumatic event,
particularly for women.’ Powerscourt wondered briefly how many forty-year-old females Archibald Matlock had helped cross this particular threshold. ‘Mrs Cockburn decided it was time to
make her will. She grew very excited about the making of wills. She decided it was time for her husband to make his will, though there was nothing there to leave to anybody at all. And she decided
that it was time for her brother to make his will. He was staying with her at the time of this particular onslaught.’ Powerscourt suspected the moon must have been full at the time, Augusta
Cockburn rampant across heaven and earth.

‘Both Mr and Mrs Cockburn’s wills were made here in this office. They wrote out what they wanted, one of our young women typed it up on the machines downstairs, they were signed here
in this office.’ Archibald Matlock paused. ‘Did you know Mr Eustace, Lord Powerscourt? Did you meet him in the flesh?’

‘I have only met his twin brother,’ Powerscourt said, ‘and he is rather dissolute, to put it mildly. I never met Mr John Eustace in person. But why do you ask, Mr
Matlock?’

‘Well,’ said Archibald Matlock, running the hourly check on his bald patch with his right hand, ‘for the Eustace will, there was no signature in this office. Mrs Cockburn
brought in her brother’s dispositions and we prepared them in the normal way. She asked if I could go to the house to witness the signature and make sure everything was in order. She said her
brother was unwell.’

‘Why could it not wait until he was better?’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’m coming to that. Mrs Cockburn explained that he had to return to Compton very soon, but that he was anxious to sign the will before he left London. She said it was preying on his
mind, that he would make a better recovery once he had finished the business.’

‘Did any of this strike you as odd, Mr Matlock?’

‘After twenty-five years in this profession, Lord Powerscourt, nothing strikes me as odd any more. Subsequent events, I have to say, were odder still. May I tell you something in
confidence?’ Powerscourt nodded. He thought he knew what was coming. ‘I have never found Mrs Cockburn to be one of my easier clients. She can be very difficult. At this time, I recall,
she was very excited, almost hysterical, particularly about her brother’s will. But Matlock Robinson have looked after the family’s affairs for as long as I can remember. Obligations
have to be respected. It was not the custom to go to the clients’ houses for the signing of wills. Much better for them to come here.’ And the lawyers can remain in their offices,
earning their fees, Powerscourt thought, rather than wasting their time travelling through the crowded streets of the capital.

‘At this time,’ Matlock went on, ‘the Cockburns were living somewhere in West Kensington or Hammersmith, well out in the west. Mrs Cockburn showed me into what might at one
time have been her husband’s study. Mr Eustace was wearing a large coat with a muffler round his neck. His sister said he was feeling the cold because of his illness. There was very little
light in the room as Mrs Cockburn said it was hurting his eyes. She brought in a couple of neighbours as witnesses. Mr Eustace signed it, I signed it and the whole thing was over in less than three
minutes. I brought the will back to the office, of course, and despatched it, as requested, to my colleague Mr Drake at the appropriate time.’

‘Did John Eustace speak at all?’ said Powerscourt.

‘He may have muttered good afternoon, I’m not sure. Apart from that, if indeed he did say that, he said nothing at all.’

‘Did you see his face?’

‘Not properly, no.’

‘If he walked into this office now, Mr Matlock, would you recognize him?’

‘I very much doubt it. He was so heavily wrapped up.’

Powerscourt wondered if Matlock had reached the same conclusions as himself.

‘Did you think at all about what had happened, Mr Matlock?’

‘I can’t say that I did, Lord Powerscourt. I was in a great hurry that day. It was my wife’s birthday and I had sworn to be home early. Then the firm was very busy with a very
difficult case. But can I ask you, Lord Powerscourt, what you think was going on?’

Powerscourt looked carefully at Archibald Matlock. He decided to take him into his confidence. ‘I think it perfectly possible that the man who signed the will that day was not John
Eustace.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said the solicitor. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s only conjecture, Mr Matlock, not hard facts that lawyers like yourself are so fond of. The key thing, it seems to me, is the signature. I have compared the signature on that
will with John Eustace’s hand and I cannot tell the difference. I doubt if anybody could. But suppose you had found a forger. Suppose the forger could reproduce John Eustace’s hand, or
anybody else’s, perfectly. But he could not reproduce his voice. If the man wrapped up against his illness, with the muffler round his neck, had talked to you in a foreign accent, or an East
End accent, would you have believed he was John Eustace? You would not. So the lights are low, he is heavily wrapped up, but the signature on the will seems authentic. The will is false. But that
is almost impossible to prove.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said the solicitor. His left hand this time checked in vain for the return of the hairs on his head. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I wish I knew, Mr Matlock,’ said Powerscourt, beginning to take his leave. ‘Thank you so much for your time. I must return to Compton without delay.’ He knew perfectly
well what he was going to do but he felt he had said enough already. As he walked down the stairs towards Chancery Lane, he saw another of those prints on the wall. It showed three lawyers seated
round a table. The surface is invisible for the piles and piles of heavy coins heaped upon it. The lawyers are counting the coins and putting them into little bags. All three are smiling.

The English countryside is turning into fairyland, Powerscourt thought, a white and rather mystical fairyland. Snow was falling fast over the hills and valleys of the county of
Grafton, settling on the roads and lanes, smoothing and obliterating everything beneath it. Distant farmhouses looked like the blobs on a child’s painting. The horses were treading carefully
now as the snow piled up. Soon, reflected Powerscourt, it would be time for the fairies to go home. Perhaps they already had, darting or flying back to their magical castles through this world of
enchanted white.

It was shortly after five o’clock in the morning. The Dean’s man, a human giant, well over six feet of brawn and muscle, had called for him at Fairfield Park with a cryptic message.
‘The Dean says you’re to come at once,’ was all he would say. Powerscourt’s attempts to glean further intelligence on the short journey into Compton had been in vain. The
man was a silent giant. In the two days since his return to Compton Powerscourt had not been idle. He had walked yet again the short route between the house and the residence of Dr Blackstaff. He
had called on the Chief Constable to announce his presence in the county and to request assistance, should that become necessary. He had walked several times all around Compton itself, spotted on
one occasion by Patrick Butler, who had made a mental note that the man who might be an investigator was still in the locality.

Powerscourt didn’t think it was the habit in English cathedrals to start the day with a service at five thirty in the morning. Perhaps, centuries before, the Benedictine monks would have
been up for hours, with a couple of Masses already under their belts, but not now in this first year of the twentieth century. So what could have happened for him to be summoned at this ungodly
hour of day? Another body? Another corpse? Not far to go now. Powerscourt realized that they were approaching the walls that ran around the Cathedral Close. Then he saw a light burning in the
Deanery which lay opposite the minster in a handsome eighteenth-century house.