Death of a Chancellor (25 page)

‘I’m afraid,’ said Powerscourt gravely ‘that I should advise you to be very careful who you talk to. If word gets back to the murderer that you are helping me collect the
names of every single person who lives around the Close, your life – let us not mince words here – could be in danger.’

‘Rest assured, Lord Powerscourt, I shall be most discreet. I could say that I am compiling a list for one of the cathedral charities I am involved with. Nobody could object to
that.’

‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But please be careful. I am going to see how up-to-date the electoral register is in the County Hall. But I fear it may be years out of date.
They often are.’

‘You’re right there,’ said Patrick Butler, ‘we at the
Mercury
have simply given up on it as an accurate and up-to-date record. Somebody in County Hall should take
the matter in hand. But then, nothing ever moves very fast over there in County Hall.’

‘Could I ask you one general question, Mrs Herbert?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I presume that most of the servants and other auxiliaries are local people, people from Compton or the
surrounding countryside, I mean?’

‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Lord Powerscourt, although it’s what you would expect. The clergy, of course, come from all over the place. But there are quite a lot
of foreigners in the servant population. The Dean has a French cook who’s married to that enormous servant of his. The Precentor has a Spanish couple, one a cook, the other the butler, I
think. The Archdeacon has an Italian friend who comes to stay for a week or so every month. He’s always beautifully turned out, but rather superior in his manner.’

Anne Herbert paused and looked out of her windows, as if reminding herself of who lived in which house. ‘There’s another foreign couple somewhere, I remember now, it’s the
Sub-dean, he’s also got a French cook with a wife who acts as housekeeper. And there are Irish everywhere, not just in service, but singing with the Vicars Choral. There’s two or three
of them from Ireland.’

The only common thread Powerscourt could wrap round this strange miscellany of foreign persons was that they all seemed to come from Catholic countries. He couldn’t see the writ or the
decisions of the Bishop of Compton cutting much ice in Turin or Tipperary or Toledo. But he thought little of it.

‘I tell you what, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Anne Herbert. ‘You ought to go and talk to Old Peter. I can’t even remember his surname. Do you know what it is,
Patrick?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve only ever heard him referred to as Old Peter.’

‘No relation of the apostle?’ said Powerscourt.

‘No,’ Anne Herbert laughed. ‘But Old Peter was Head Verger in the cathedral for almost thirty years. Before that he worked as the Bishop’s coachman, I think. He’s
lived in Compton all his life. He must be nearly ninety now.’

‘He’s ninety-one, actually,’ said Patrick Butler. ‘We featured him last year in an article on Compton’s ninety-year-olds. There are only three of them left. The
other two are sisters and live down by the railway station.’

‘Anyway Lord Powerscourt, I’m sure Old Peter would be able to help you. He’s known everybody round here for years. He lives in a little cottage at the far end of the garden in
the Bishop’s Palace. I think the Bishop’s servants keep an eye on him. I could come with you and make the introductions if you like.’

Powerscourt was doing rapid arithmetical calculations as he put his coat back on and collected his walking stick. ‘Old Peter must be old enough to be the Bishop’s grandfather,’
he said cheerfully. ‘He would have been five at the time of Waterloo, well into his forties by the Crimean War. Let’s hear what this Methuselah of Compton has to say for
himself.’

The most remarkable thing about Old Peter was his hair. He didn’t seem to have lost any of it through his decades of service to the Cathedral. It was snow white and
flowed down the sides of his face, giving him the air of a Druid functionary rather than a man who had spent his life in the service of the Church of England. His eyes were light brown and he
fiddled constantly with an aged pipe that looked as if it might have been older than he was. He pointed Powerscourt to a battered sofa in front of his fire and returned to a faded leather armchair
by the side. Anne Herbert had effected the introductions and returned to her cottage. Like many elderly people Old Peter gave his visitor a preliminary bulletin on his health.

‘I can still see,’ he said, pointing the pipe dangerously close to his eyes, ‘and I can still smell. Hearing not what it used to be, my lord, so you may have to speak up a bit.
The legs still work though the left one’s going a bit rickety at the knee. Doctor says I may be getting a touch of gout.’

‘I wanted to ask you about the people who live round the Cathedral Close, Peter,’ said Powerscourt raising his voice slightly. ‘Mrs Herbert told me you would know if there was
anything unusual about them.’

‘Unusual, my lord?’ said Old Peter with a cackling laugh. ‘If you think going to church every day at the same time morning and afternoon and wearing the same funny clothes and
saying the same prayers each time for forty or fifty years is usual, then you’re a better man than me.’

‘You’re not a believer, then, Peter?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m not saying I am and I’m not saying I’m not,’ said the old man diplomatically, ‘but there have been some strange goings-on at this place, long before all
this terrible murder.’ He paused and began to refill his pipe with some strong black tobacco.

‘When I started here, my lord, the whole place was more like a family business than a house of God. You’ll have heard of the Fentimans, I suppose. One of them the bishop, another the
Dean, every time there was a vacant canonry or prebendary, another bloody member of the Fentiman family popped up to take the position. Liveried servants behind every seat in the dining room of the
Bishop’s Palace every night, whether there were visitors or not. Fentimans taking every valuable living that fell vacant and putting in vicars to hold the service and paying them a pittance.
Nobody could work out how to get rid of them, my lord. Had to wait for the grim reaper to do his work in the end.’

‘I was wondering about more recent members of the Close, Peter,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to embark on a historical survey of Compton Minster, decade by decade, ‘I was
wondering about some of the foreigners. There seem to be quite a lot of them.’

Old Peter looked at him suspiciously. ‘Plenty of foreigners here, my lord. Never did hold much with foreigners myself. Don’t see why they can’t stay where they were put, if you
see what I mean. Still, I suppose Jesus Christ himself would be a foreigner round here so maybe we shouldn’t complain. If you ask me,’ Old Peter paused to fiddle with a match to light
his pipe, ‘the strangest one is that Italian who comes to stay with the Archdeacon.’ There was a further pause as a cloud of smoke threatened briefly to make Old Peter temporarily
invisible. ‘Every month he comes, my lord, regular as clockwork, second week usually, and he stays for a week or ten days each time. He’s got his own room on the top floor of the
Archdeacon’s house. Keeps himself to himself. And do you know the strangest thing about him? Every Tuesday I take my dinner with them over at the house and Bill, the Archdeacon’s
coachman, told me this only the other day.’

Old Peter paused and blew a great mouthful of smoke into his fireplace. ‘Nobody’s ever seen him at a service in the cathedral, this Italian. Not once in the eight or nine years
he’s been coming here. Wouldn’t you say that was strange?’

Powerscourt was keen to move on. ‘What about the French people, one with the Dean, I think, and another with the Subdean on the other side of the Close?’

Old Peter rummaged around in his pockets for his matches. The pipe, in spite of its earlier clouds of smoke, appeared to have gone out. ‘Whoever heard of a man being a cook, my lord.
It’s not natural. Women were meant to do the cooking ever since we all lived in caves if you ask me. Antoine, the Subdean’s cook, is very thick with Mrs Douglas over at the Deanery.
She’s French too, you see. Local shops not good enough for them, my lord. Every couple of months they go off to London and come back with hampers and hampers of smelly oils and funny looking
herbs and potions they put all over their food. They’ve even got some special French mustard they put on the Dean’s rabbit. They say he’s very partial to this Frenchified rabbit,
the Dean. Maybe they even give him those frogs’ legs with that horrible garlic, my lord.’

‘And the Spaniards over at the Precentor’s house, Peter? What about them?’

Old Peter scratched his leg. Maybe it was the bad one, Powerscourt thought.

‘Them Spaniards are a lovely couple, my lord. He’s strong as an ox, that Francisco. They say he was a great wrestler in his young days. And Isabella is as sweet a person as you could
hope to meet. I heard the other day that she’s expecting their first child but they haven’t said anything about it.’

‘And do all these foreigners belong to the Anglican faith?’

‘They do not, my lord.’ Old Peter spat into his fire. ‘There’s a little Catholic chapel down by the station. That’s where most of them go. I don’t think
Francisco goes very often.’ Old Peter brushed a couple of locks of hair away from his face. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to know if I think any of these people round the Close
could be the murderer, my lord.’

‘Do you?’ said Powerscourt, rather taken aback until he remembered that the
Grafton Mercury
had trumpeted his arrival to find the killer all over the county. The latest issue
of the paper was lying on the floor beside him.

‘It’s a funny thing, Lord Powerscourt. Every day in that building over there,’ he nodded behind his shoulder to the cathedral, ‘every day in there they celebrate a
murder, if you like, the killing of their God by the Romans, and a pretty terrible killing it was too, stuck up there on that cross for hours and hours drinking foreign vinegar. If you live with
that week in week out it mightn’t be too difficult to contemplate a killing or two of your own.’

‘Anybody in particular?’ asked Powerscourt, marvelling at the twisted theology of this ninety-year-old.

‘All of them,’ said Old Peter, puffing contentedly at his pipe.

Shortly after three o’clock Powerscourt presented himself at the choirmaster’s front door. Vaughan Wyndham was a tall harassed-looking man with black hair turning
to silver at the sides.

‘Please forgive me for being unable to meet with you yesterday afternoon,’ said Powerscourt, accepting a seat by the window looking out over Cathedral Green. ‘I hope that now
is not too inconvenient. I shall be brief. All I want to know is what you can tell me of Arthur Rudd, the late vicar choral.’

‘First class voice,’ Wyndham replied. ‘I should say he would have been a credit to any choir in the country.’ Wyndham spoke fast, with the air of one who wanted to finish
the interview as speedily as possible.

‘Please forgive me, it wasn’t his voice I was thinking of, more of any personal problems he might have had.’

‘I suppose,’ said Vaughan Wyndham rather brutally, ‘that what you really want to know is if I can think of any reason why somebody might want to kill him.’

Powerscourt nodded. ‘Rudd wasn’t married,’ Wyndham went on, ‘he wasn’t, as far as I know, emotionally involved with anybody in Cathedral Close. When people live in
very close proximity like the Compton choir, they very quickly learn everybody else’s business, as you can imagine. He didn’t have any expensive tastes. He didn’t drink very much
or you could have told it in his voice. But there was one thing about the late Arthur Rudd that always worried his colleagues.’

Wyndham paused suddenly, worried perhaps that he might have said too much.

‘I do hope you will feel able to tell me what it was,’ Powerscourt said, quietly but firmly. ‘I’m sure you know that I am investigating the death on the Bishop’s
instructions. And I don’t have to remind you that anything you say will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

The choirmaster was peering intently out of his window towards the great buttresses on the eastern side of the cathedral. ‘Debt,’ he said finally. ‘Arthur Rudd was permanently,
chronically in debt.’

‘Debts to whom?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Debts to other members of the choir, other members of the Chapter and the wider cathedral community?’

‘Not any more,’ said Vaughan Wyndham bitterly. Powerscourt wondered suddenly if he too had a large debt outstanding with the late Arthur Rudd. ‘Nobody here around the Close
would lend him any more. They’d all been burnt once too often. Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, I hadn’t realized quite how offensive that was until I’d said it.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Powerscourt, his mind racing. Supposing Arthur Rudd had refused so often to repay a debt to one particular member of the choir, would that have
been reason enough to kill him? To burn his body on a spit in the Vicars Hall? ‘If Rudd couldn’t borrow money here in this community, where did he go? Somebody else in Compton?
Somewhere further afield? And did anybody know why he borrowed all this money? Surely there must have been a reason.’

‘If he did have a reason,’ said Wyndham, beginning to collect the music he needed for Evensong, ‘he never told us. And I don’t think he could have been borrowing money
here in Compton. He must have gone further afield, Exeter perhaps, maybe even Bristol. And now, perhaps we could finish our conversation on the way to the cathedral, if you will forgive
me.’

Powerscourt watched Vaughan Wyndham as he walked up the nave towards the choir, plucking at his red cassock as he went. Debt, he thought. Could you be killed for not paying your debts? The one
certain fact about Arthur Rudd was that he was no longer in a position to pay off any debts in this world. But suppose he owed some unscrupulous lender a very large sum indeed. Would that lender
have him killed
pour encourager les autres,
to act as a dreadful warning to others under obligation to the same lender? Pay up, or you’ll end up like Arthur Rudd, dead and roasted in
Vicars Close.