Death of a Chancellor (35 page)

Powerscourt watched as the brush finally made up its mind and placed a perfectly formed strip of river at the bottom of the painting.

‘I know they’re all ridiculous,’ he said, ‘but sometimes even rumours can be useful in my profession, Sir Roderick. Was there any more detail about the English
operation?’

Sir Roderick, emboldened by his previous success, tried to extend the passage of his river. The paint escaped into the lower sections of the building instead, rendering some of it extremely wet,
if not uninhabitable.

‘God damn and blast!’ said the former Ambassador. ‘I shall have to redo that whole section. All the fault of those bloody Romans, if you ask me. The only other thing they said
about the English business, Powerscourt, was that it was controlled from Rome. Of course, you don’t have to be Caesar Borgia or Niccolo Machiavelli to work that one out. Whole bloody business
is controlled from Rome.’

As Powerscourt left the artist to his labours he found himself thinking about Hampton Court. Built by Cardinal Wolsey at the height of his power, he remembered. Appropriated by the King who
could not bear a mere commoner to have a grander house than he did. So had Sir Thomas More, victim of the King, walked with him in counsel in the gardens and the corridors? And, as more of his
recent history lessons came back to him, had Thomas Cromwell whispered his advice into his sovereign’s ear inside that fantastic building? Was the Dissolution of the Monasteries conceived and
planned inside Hampton Court Palace?

William McKenzie settled nervously into his first class carriage at Victoria station, feeling rather out of place. McKenzie was not used to travelling first class. Three
compartments further down Father Dominic Barberi was also travelling first class. He had not required the services of a porter to bring his luggage on to the train. One black valise was all he had.
McKenzie also felt rather nervous about the very large sum of money Powerscourt had stuffed into his pocket before he left.

‘You never know who you might need to bribe when you get there, William. And I’ve hired a guide and interpreter to meet you at the further end. A former Ambassador gave me his name.
The fellow is a retired journalist by the name of Bailey Richard Bailey. He’s married to an Italian and knows the place like the back of his hand.’

McKenzie hoped his old mother did not where he was going. For she belonged to an extreme Presbyterian sect which believed that the Catholic Church was the kingdom of the Devil and the Pope the
permanent reincarnation of Satan. The minister in their local church was a man who prided himself on his physical resemblance to John Knox, the great Calvinist divine of sixteenth-century
Edinburgh. Indeed, the minister had bought every single book ever published about Knox so he could imitate his mannerisms and recreate the patterns of his speech. How often had McKenzie sat there
in his pew beside his mother, his mind miles away, while the man preached on and on about the Anti-Christ in the Vatican and the evils of the Church of Rome, its coffers bloated by the sale of
indulgences and pardons, its members denied the basic rights of the study of the Bible and damned to all eternity by their idolatry and the worship of graven images. McKenzie had told Powerscourt
in India once that he had learned patience by sitting through these terrible sermons, so filled with hate in the name of the love of God.

He remembered Powerscourt’s last words to him in the drawing room at Markham Square. ‘William, it is important that you find out as much as you can. But it is even more important
that you do not get caught. I dread to think what might happen if these people suspect they are being followed, their affairs investigated. I cannot emphasize that enough.’

Outside, McKenzie saw that the great clock on the station platform had almost reached eleven o’clock. The last trunks and hatboxes were being loaded into the goods van, the porters
throwing the late ones in before the train departed. McKenzie checked his ticket once more. London, Calais, Paris, Lyon, Mont Cenis, Turin, Pisa, Rome. The whistles blew, the green flags came down
and the train moved slowly out of the station, a few relatives and friends waving at the carriages as they passed. William McKenzie was on his way to the Eternal City.

After his journey back to the West Country Powerscourt suspected he might be on the verge of solving one of the riddles of Compton. It was the one where he had started all
those weeks before. If he had to, he could now arrange for the exhumation of the body of John Eustace, interred with such speed and secrecy in the graveyard behind his house. But, if he was lucky,
that might not be necessary. His first port of call the following day was with Chief Inspector Yates. He showed him the papers he had brought from London.

‘Chief Inspector, thank you for the papers about the exhumation order on John Eustace. I have the Home Secretary’s signature here. I think I am going to have one last attempt on Dr
Blackstaff. But I need some ammunition. If the coffin is lifted and opened up, and we discover that Eustace did not die of natural causes, where does that leave the doctor?’

‘Well,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘we could charge him with murder straight away, if you like. He did stand to make a great deal of money out of the will after all.’

‘I’m not sure that it would be easy to secure a conviction on those grounds. And a local jury would certainly be very reluctant to convict him. He’s a very good doctor, I
believe. Is there anything else you could charge him with?’

Chief Inspector Yates scratched his head. ‘Obstruction of justice,’ he said, ‘concealing the manner of death, lying to the police forces? We could certainly rustle up something
along those lines.’

Powerscourt found Lady Lucy sitting in the garden of Fairfield Park, watching the children throwing a ball to each other. He kissed her and smiled as she ran her fingers through his hair.

‘I think we’re making progress, Lucy,’ he said. ‘But the answers I am finding are so incredible I wonder if I am going out of my mind. I don’t want to tell anybody
yet, in case I’m completely wrong.’

‘Surely you can tell me, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. A pair of sad blue eyes looked up at him. ‘We’ve been married for years and years now, after all.’

Powerscourt kissed her again. ‘I think this knowledge is very dangerous, my love. Believe me, I will tell you as soon as I can. Now, what has been happening down here?’

Lady Lucy told him about her strange encounter with the choirmaster, his comments about the amount of work the choir had to do for the
Messiah
and the commemoration service. She told him
about Johnny Fitzgerald’s discovery of one of the canons of the cathedral celebrating Mass at seven thirty in the morning in the little church at Ledbury St John. Two of them Catholic for
certain, Powerscourt said to himself, Archdeacon and Canon, maybe two more. At that point Powerscourt rose from his garden chair and walked round the garden three times, collecting his children in
his arms as he went so that three Powerscourts returned to join Lady Lucy on her chair.

‘I must go now, or I shall be late,’ he said, kissing all three of them in turn.

‘Where are you going, Papa?’ said Thomas and Olivia in unison, worried that he might disappear abroad again.

‘I have to go and see Dr Blackstaff,’ he said. ‘I’m rather worried about my health.’ As Lady Lucy watched him go out of the garden gate, she didn’t think for
one moment that it was his own health he was going to discuss, but the death that had brought them to Compton all those weeks before.

On his short journey to the Blackstaff residence Powerscourt thought about many things. He thought of the two dead bodies, one roasted all night on the spit in Vicars Hall, the
other cut into pieces and distributed around the countryside. He thought about the extra music the choir were learning for the service commemorating one thousand years of the minster. He thought of
the Archdeacon, travelling every Thursday to celebrate Mass at Melbury Clinton, his other religious identity concealed inside his bag. He thought of the dinner at Trinity College Oxford all those
years before, the candles burning brightly along the tables, the dons resplendent in their gowns of scarlet and black, the long shadows of the servants on the walls as they moved up and down to
serve the different courses, the red wine gleaming in front of Newman, his white hair shimmering like a beacon in the centre of High Table.

The daffodils in Dr Blackstaff’s garden were swaying slightly in the early evening breeze as Powerscourt rang the bell at precisely six o’clock. He had sent word to the doctor from
London that he proposed to call on him at this time. He was shown into the drawing room lined with medical prints where he had talked to the doctor about the death of John Eustace in January. He
greeted the grisly portrait of an eighteenth-century tooth extraction like an old friend. He was, after all, he reflected, about to embark on a different kind of extraction. The truth might be more
painful than an infected upper molar.

‘Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt began, as he was ushered into a high-backed leather chair by the fireplace, ‘please forgive me for troubling you once more about the death of John
Eustace.’

Dr Blackstaff looked slightly irritated. ‘I have already told you, Lord Powerscourt, all that I know about the death of my friend.’

‘But have you?’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is the question, Dr Blackstaff. You see, I’m afraid I didn’t believe the story you related about the manner of John
Eustace’s death the first time you told me, here in this room, all those weeks ago. I still don’t believe it today. There are too many discrepancies in the account you gave me and what
the butler said. You said, if I recall, that he was wearing a pale blue shirt. Andrew McKenna said it was grey. Maybe people could confuse one with the other. Perhaps. You said he was wearing black
boots. McKenna said they were brown. But, you see, it wasn’t just those variations that made me doubt you were telling me the whole truth. The demeanour of the two of you was most
unsatisfactory. Not to put too fine a point on it, you sounded as though you were lying some of the time, the unfortunate butler, one of the worst liars I have ever come across, sounded as though
he was lying almost all of the time.’

Powerscourt paused. The doctor was silent, staring at his fire. A couple of blackbirds were singing lustily in the fruit trees outside. Maybe even the birds, Powerscourt said to himself, had to
learn new tunes for the celebrations of the thousandth anniversary of Compton Minster as a site of Christian worship.

‘There was little I could do about the lack of truthful information, short of digging the body out of the grave. And then there were other murders which took my attention. But now the
situation is different.’

Powerscourt took out the papers relating to the exhumation order and placed them carefully on the table between them.

‘As you can see, I have the signature of the Home Secretary on the exhumation order already. I don’t think your brother could oppose a request now.’

The doctor pulled on a pair of spectacles and read the documents very slowly. Then he read them again.

‘Can I say at this point, Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘that I would urge you now to consider your own position. If we go ahead with the exhumation, I believe there
will be questions from the police about why they were not told the truth. There may be charges of obstructing the course of justice. It will all become most unpleasant in a personal and
professional sense. But it need not come to that.’

Powerscourt stopped. At last the doctor spoke.

‘What do you mean, it need not come to that?’

Powerscourt paused for a few moments before he replied. A gang of magpies had taken occupation of the top branches in one of the Blackstaff apple trees, noisily preparing for some malevolent
mission.

Powerscourt was at his most emollient. ‘I think one of the key factors in this terrible affair has been your intimate friendship with John Eustace and Andrew McKenna’s loyalty to his
employer. I respect you both for that. I suspect John Eustace must have been a very lovable man. Some people are just like that. And I think he was a very troubled man in the weeks and months
leading up to his death. In some ways I think that what troubled him also led to his death. I shall come to that in a moment. I think he made you promise, or you felt such a promise was inherent in
your friendship, not to tell a single soul what had been happening in the weeks before he died, or what had worried him previously. That is why you have been reticent with the true facts of the
affair.’

Powerscourt paused and looked carefully at the doctor. The doctor held his peace.

‘I said a moment ago that the exhumation need not go ahead. I am not going to ask you to break your solemn oath. I am not going to ask you to make your confession, if confession is the
right word, which I rather doubt. All I ask is that you nod your head if the version of events I am about to give you is correct in the broad outlines. We need not quibble about the accuracy of the
minor details. Do you agree, Dr Blackstaff?’

Dr Blackstaff looked once more into his fire. Powerscourt waited.

‘I agree,’ he said finally.

‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt, ‘thank you so much. Let me give you first of all my guess as to what happened on the night John Eustace died. You see, I don’t think he
died here in this house at all, as you said in your earlier account of events. I think he was dead when he came here. I think Andrew McKenna brought him here in the middle of the night. He died in
Fairfield Park, not in your surgery after a long and difficult night. I say he died in Fairfield Park, I should have said he was murdered in Fairfield Park.’

Powerscourt stopped for a moment to see if there would be a nod from the medical department. Eventually there was a slow, but definite inclination of Dr Blackstaff’s head. It was
undoubtedly a nod. Inwardly Powerscourt rejoiced.

‘The murder,’ Powerscourt went on, remembering he was speaking to John Eustace’s closest friend, ‘was truly horrible. I think his head had been cut off. I think the
intention of the murderer was to stick the head on a pole. Maybe he stuck it as a temporary measure on one of the posts on that great four-poster bed. The butler was terrified of scandal. You
wished to be loyal to your friend and to his memory. You feared, above all, what damage might be done if the circumstances surrounding John Eustace’s demise became public. So you rushed the
body off to the mortuary as fast as you could. You also made sure that only the undertaker knew what must have happened to the corpse. Nobody else in his business saw anything other than a closed
coffin.’