Death of a Chancellor (15 page)

At a quarter to five on the same afternoon Anne Herbert was sitting in the little drawing room of her house on the edge of the Cathedral Close. Her children had gone to make a
snowman in their friends’ garden four doors away. The snow had stopped but a wind had risen, blowing flakes of snow in random fashion all over Compton. Anne was wondering if she could afford
a new sofa. The boys seemed to have worn her present one out completely bouncing up and down and performing somersaults. Maybe it would be simpler, she thought, just to have this one re-covered. A
new sofa would be subject to the same level of assault and battery as the present one.

From time to time she found her eye wandering towards the hall and the front door. And it was not her two boys she was thinking of. Patrick Butler had been due to see the Dean at four
o’clock that afternoon. She remembered the time distinctly. The Deanery was two minutes’ walk away at most. And the Dean, she knew only too well, prided himself on the rapid despatch of
business. The entire transaction of Anne Herbert being transferred from her humble rectory after her husband died into this little house, more like a cottage than a house, had been carried out by
the Dean in less than five minutes.

Maybe she should put the kettle on again and make some fresh tea. That would make him come, some of the breakfast blend she had bought in the grocer’s that morning. Five to five now, she
checked the clock in the kitchen. There was still no sign of Patrick Butler.

Three pots of tea had been made and then thrown out before there was a knock on her door. A pale, distraught-looking editor of the
Grafton Mercury
presented himself and requested
refreshment at twenty past five. Anne did not believe he could have been with the Dean all that time.

‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘are you all right? You look very pale. You don’t look at all well to me. Hadn’t you better go home and lie down?’

Patrick did not like to tell her that the two rooms he rented on the top floor of an old house on the outskirts of the city were usually even more untidy than his office. ‘I’ll be
fine in a moment, Anne,’ he said. ‘I just need a moment or two in peace to compose myself.’

Anne was certain he must be ill now. Very ill. Possibly in need of urgent medical attention. Maybe she should take him to the hospital. For the one thing Patrick Butler had never done in all the
months she had known him was to ask for time to compose himself. The composing and the being Patrick were, in Anne’s experience, totally incompatible. He was the most restless, the most
energetic, the most mercurial person she had ever known. Composed he was not.

‘Tell me what happened, Patrick,’ she said, ‘only when you’re ready.’

By now he was lying back on the sofa. He smiled wanly at her.

‘Forgive me, Anne, I’ll be back to normal in a moment.’

‘Biscuits, Patrick? Even a drop of brandy?’ She remembered her friend’s warnings about the dangers of drink and journalism and ignored them.

A large gulp of cognac began to restore his powers of speech. ‘Let me tell it all to you from the beginning, Anne. It’s a terrible story.’

He sat up again on the sofa and polished off a couple of biscuits in quick succession.

‘At four o’clock this afternoon, as requested, I checked into the Deanery. The Dean was in a very sombre and serious mood. You know that air he usually has, of wanting to get you out
of the door as fast as possible because he has another meeting to go to, well, he wasn’t like that at all.’

Anne Herbert wondered if the snow was bringing personality changes all over Compton. First her Patrick, then the Dean. Maybe the Bishop would be singing bawdy songs in the public houses of the
city before the day was done.

‘This is all very unpleasant, Anne,’ Patrick went on, looking very serious, ‘and it gets worse as it goes on, much worse. You must stop me if I start to upset you.’

Anne Herbert nodded. Privately she thought women were much less squeamish than men. Just think of childbirth, after all, she said to herself. But this was not the time for such a discussion.

‘At a quarter to five this morning,’ Patrick checked the time in his notebook, ‘one of the porters found a body in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. The man’s name was
Rudd. They think he might have been strangled. He was one of the senior vicars choral, with three or four years’ experience in Compton. He was in his middle thirties.’

Patrick suddenly realized that he must sound as if he was giving evidence in court or reading one of his own compositions in the
Grafton Mercury.

‘Sorry for sounding so cold, Anne. I’ve been trying to write the story in my head ever since.’

‘The poor man,’ said Anne. ‘Did he have a wife and children?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Patrick, looking once more at his notebook. ‘But that’s not all. Somebody put him on a spit and roasted the body for most of the night in
front of that huge fire they have in the Vicars Hall kitchen.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Anne Herbert. She put her face in her hands and said the Lord’s Prayer. She couldn’t think of anything else.

‘That would all be bad enough.’ Patrick was leaning forward now. ‘The Dean said he was anxious that I and our readers should know as much as possible about what had happened.
He said he didn’t want to hide anything from me. He had a doctor with him, that chap Williams. I’ve known him for a while, he’s a very sound and reliable fellow. It was he who was
responsible for looking after the dead man, the death certificate, all that sort of thing. He took me to the morgue in the hospital where Rudd’s body was laid out. They hadn’t cleaned
him up yet.’

Patrick Butler stopped. He wondered if he should say anything more.

‘You see, Anne, it’s a strange thing. I’ve never seen a dead body before. Reporters often have to write about dead bodies killed in fires or train crashes or accidents, but
they never actually see them. When you start on a newspaper you have to go to magistrates’ courts, you have to go to football matches, you have to write about society weddings. You have to
write about all sorts of strange things you have seen. But the one thing you’re not used to seeing is a dead body. Nor,’ he paused briefly, ‘a body that has been roasted all night
on a great spit in front of a roaring fire.’

‘I don’t think I want to hear any more details, Patrick, if you don’t mind. I’ve heard too much already. I’m feeling rather sick.’

Patrick was turning pale again. He was thinking of the terrible scene in the mortuary, what had happened to Arthur Rudd’s eyes, what had happened to his skin, what had happened to the hair
and the skull, the eruptions that had burst forth from the poor man’s intestines. He hoped he would be able to forget it. He took another large gulp of his brandy.

‘Sorry Anne,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. And I don’t know what to put in the paper. The
Mercury
goes to press tomorrow. I’m going to have to write this
story tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.’

Anne thought that Patrick must be returning to normal. Deadlines were the bread and butter of his business. ‘What do you mean, what should you put in the paper, Patrick?’

‘It’s the details. How much detail should I put in? We’re meant to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Anne Herbert firmly. ‘Nobody wants to read the details in a case like this. Why can’t you just say he’d been strangled? That’s bad enough,
for heaven’s sake.’

‘But then I wouldn’t be telling the truth.’

‘The people of this town and this county, Patrick, do not want to read about roasted bodies over their tea and toast first thing in the morning. Nor do they want to read about it over
their supper in the evening. They do not want to have to explain to their children who can read what it means to be roasted on a spit all night in the kitchen of Vicars Hall. They may even stop
buying your paper if you upset them. And then where would you be?’

Anne suddenly wondered if the snow was having an effect on her too. She could not remember having being so emphatic in her whole life. She did not realize it but she had become, for Patrick
Butler, a sort of one woman litmus test of what was and what was not acceptable to his readers. Maybe he should give her an official position, not Censor in Chief, but Taste Arbiter Supreme.

‘Are you sure, Anne? Are you sure people might stop buying the paper if there was too much gory detail in it?’ The one unassailable deity of the newspaper world, the circulation
figures, was uppermost in his mind.

‘I’m quite certain of it.’

Patrick Butler munched his way through another couple of biscuits.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shall sleep on it and write the story in the morning.’

‘You don’t need to sleep on it, Patrick. You know what the right thing to do is. You could write it this evening.’

The young man smiled. ‘Very good, Anne,’ he said, ‘I shall go and write it now. And, don’t worry, I’m just going to say the poor man was found strangled in Vicars
Hall.’

After he climbed up to his office for the last time that day Patrick Butler found that his informant in the town’s most expensive hotel had left him a message. Three visitors from London
were expected, the note said. All of them lawyers.

‘Have you found him yet?’ Augusta Cockburn’s knife was poised menacingly over a breakfast kipper in the Fairfield Park dining room.

‘Found whom?’ asked Powerscourt, taking refuge in a slice of buttered toast.

‘The person who killed my brother.’ Mrs Cockburn began her demolition of the fish.

‘I have to inform you, Mrs Cockburn, that I am still not sure that your brother was murdered. It may all have been perfectly normal. I am not yet in a position to form a judgement.’
Powerscourt realized that a rising anger was driving him towards pomposity.

‘It’s the doctor, it must be the doctor.’ Augusta Cockburn began to choke slightly on a bone. ‘Look at the amount of money he was left in two of those wills. Have you
questioned Dr Blackstaff, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I have, madam, and while there were certain inconsistencies in his version of events, I have at this time no reason to believe that he is a murderer.’ Privately Powerscourt
wasn’t as sure as he sounded about the doctor’s innocence. Fifty thousand pounds was a fortune. Even after a donation of five thousand or so to the lying butler you would still be rich
for the rest of your life.

‘Maybe I should involve the local police, Lord Powerscourt. Perhaps they will be more effective in questioning him than you are.’

Powerscourt didn’t reply. The fish bone seemed to have accomplished a task way beyond the powers of most ordinary mortals. It had reduced Augusta Cockburn to silence. But the relief was
short-lived. The offending bone, like so many of her enemies, was trampled underfoot.

‘Really,’ she said, ‘I shall have to speak to the cook.’ She had turned slightly red. ‘Why the servants cannot perform a perfectly simple operation like filleting a
fish I do not understand. Any fool could do it.’ She paused to take a mouthful of tea, still spluttering slightly. The incident had not improved her temper.

‘And how much longer, Lord Powerscourt, do you intend to stay in this house, consuming our victuals, sleeping in one of our beds, using up valuable fuel?’ Powerscourt thought she
might have been addressing the under butler. But he was prepared for this one.

‘Mrs Cockburn,’ he said, ‘I regret to have to inform you that there has been a murder in Compton. One of the vicars choral was found strangled in the kitchen of the Vicars
Hall. The Bishop has asked me to look into it.’

‘Another murder?’ Mrs Cockburn spat out. ‘Another murder? Why are you so quick to take on new cases, Lord Powerscourt, when you have not found the answer to the first one? Is
it because you believe it to be beyond your abilities?’

Powerscourt wondered if he should mention the roasting on the fire, a fate he felt sure deserved to happen to Augusta Cockburn after her departure from this life, but he did not. ‘If I
could just finish,’ he went on. ‘I am content to continue my investigations into both cases. And I have asked Mr Drake, as the executor of the will, if I could rent this house for the
duration of my inquiries. I have offered him a generous sum. I believe he intends to discuss it with you, madam, before the meeting about the wills this afternoon.’

The prospect of money seemed to cheer Augusta Cockburn up. ‘I shall certainly discuss it with Drake,’ she said. ‘But rest assured, Powerscourt, I shall make a full inventory of
all the valuables.’

The Dean was reading an early edition of the latest issue of the
Grafton Mercury.
He was so pleased with it he read it three times. It was true that the story was placed
in a prominent position in the paper. But the account of the death was short and simple. It merely said that Arthur Rudd, a senior member of the vicars choral, had been found strangled in the
kitchen of the Vicars Hall. There were various tributes to the dead man, including one the Dean had given personally to Patrick Butler. There were paragraphs on the antiquity of the foundation of
the vicars choral and their role in the services of the cathedral. Chief Inspector Yates, the paper went on, was the officer responsible for the investigation. He was reporting directly to the
Chief Constable himself. But of fires and roasted flesh, of the spit that turned all night in the kitchen, there was no mention. The Dean went so far as to congratulate himself on his success.
Without his intervention, he told himself, the matter would not have been properly handled at all.

The Bishop was wrestling with a thorny problem about the authenticity and origin of a late Hellenistic text of the Gospel according to St John. Some troublesome German scholars from
Tübingen or Heidelberg, he couldn’t quite remember which one, had been making the most ridiculous claims about this document. But he too paused from his textual labours and read his copy
of the
Grafton Mercury
when it arrived. The Bishop did not congratulate himself. He could see the attractions of concealing the details of the roasted body. But he wondered where it fitted
in with his own appeal for the Church to tell the truth. The Bishop was troubled. Maybe the Dean had got the better of him again.