Death of a Chancellor (37 page)

‘What’s that, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, coming to his rescue.

‘It’s very simple,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘It’s incredibly simple when you think about it rationally. You see, I can make theories, join things together, a piece of
damaged string here, a frayed rope there, maybe make two and two add up to eighteen. But I can’t prove a bloody word of it.’

‘Why do you have to be able to prove it, Lord Powerscourt?’ Patrick Butler was already thinking about how he would tell the story in his newspaper, if he was ever able to tell
it.

‘Forgive me, Patrick, I’m not making myself clear. It seems to me that I have a responsibility to try to prevent this thing happening if I can. Compton going back to the Catholic
faith will cause a sensation, not just here but all over the country. The newspapers will be full of it for days. There will be questions in Parliament. Nobody, least of all, I suspect, the
Anglican Church, will have any idea what to do about it. I think the Bishop and his friends may be able to pull this thing off for a couple of days, but then some form of authority will have to
intervene. Whether it’s the Church or the State I don’t know. Perhaps in these circumstances they are one and the same, I’m not sure. But what can I do? I can write to the
Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of Exeter, being the nearest see to Compton. I can write to the Prime Minister in Downing Street or the Lord Lieutenant of the county here. And what will they
do? They may talk to the Bishop or the Dean. What nonsense, they will say. Powerscourt has gone mad. Pity really, he was quite a good investigator when he was younger. Ought to be locked up now,
mind you. Poor Lady Powerscourt and the little Powerscourts, having a madman for a husband and a father. And then they will carry on with their plans.’

Lady Lucy smiled up at the maniac at the other end of the table. ‘Surely, Francis, there is some evidence. There’s the Archdeacon going to Melbury Clinton for a start. And the Canon
celebrating Mass in Ledbury. And all these dreadful murders.’

‘Of course there is some evidence, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, taking a further sip of his port, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t have got as far as this. But I’m sure the
Archdeacon and the Canon could cook up some perfectly reasonable explanation. They’ve got all those Jesuits in Farm Street at their beck and call, not to mention the Civitas Dei people in
Rome. Something would be concocted. But the scheme could still go on.’

‘What about John Eustace, Francis, where do you think he fits into all of this?’ Johnny Fitzgerald had finished doodling his crucifix on the tablecloth. He seemed now to be working
on a cathedral spire.

Powerscourt sighed. ‘I didn’t want to go into the murders at this stage, but I think I’d better. There have been three of them.’

His little audience stared at him. Two, surely, not three. Perhaps he was losing his wits after all.

‘Sorry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I only learnt very recently – please don’t ask me how – that John Eustace, last owner of this house where we sit, was also
murdered. His head was cut off and placed on one of the posts in his great four-poster bed. Then there was Arthur Rudd, murdered and roasted on the spit in the Vicars Hall. Third but not least was
Edward Gillespie, his body hacked to pieces and left lying all over the county. There is a connection, of course. I should have seen it sooner. I must have been blind.’

‘What is the connection?’ said Patrick Butler.

‘The connection, believe it or not,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘is the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Let me make myself clear. For six hundred and forty years what is now the
cathedral was a Roman Catholic abbey, devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The break came with the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538. Compton was one of the last to be
dismembered. Some time after that it became the Protestant cathedral we know today. A number of people in Compton opposed the transfer from one faith to another. They were put to death in a variety
of ways. One was burnt at the stake, in the manner of Arthur Rudd. One was hung drawn and quartered in the manner of Edward Gillespie. The abbot himself, I believe, was beheaded and his head stuck
on a pole at the entrance to the Cathedral Green. The fate of poor John Eustace. Whether his head was destined to go somewhere other than his own four-poster I do not know. So the murderer is after
a certain symbolic symmetry, if you like. Three people who opposed the transfer from Catholic to Anglican all those years ago were killed in particular and very horrible ways. Three people who
opposed the return from Anglican back to Catholic, presumably, have been killed in the last weeks in ways which echo those earlier deaths three hundred and seventy years ago. It’s a warped
form of Catholic revenge in a way.’

Patrick Butler was drumming his fingers on the table. He longed to reach inside his pocket for notebook and pen. Anne Herbert was feeling rather faint. Lady Lucy found herself humming one of the
arias in the
Messiah
to herself under her breath. Johnny Fitzgerald had not touched his port for at least a quarter of an hour. Outside a lone owl hooted into the night.

‘Surely Francis,’ Johnny said, ‘this makes the case for the Archbishop and the authorities all the stronger. All this history and stuff about the monasteries before.’

‘That’s the problem.’ Powerscourt surveyed his little audience one by one. ‘I don’t think it does. You see, it seems quite possible to me that the people organizing
the return to Catholicism are not the murderers. They may be just as upset and confused by it as we are. The murderer may be somebody completely different, though I doubt it. I suspect the two are
so closely linked you couldn’t get a hair between them, but I can’t prove it.’ Powerscourt suddenly realized, looking at Anne Herbert, that she might faint at any moment. Perhaps
it had been a mistake inviting them here.

‘And there, I suggest,’ he said, smiling at Lady Lucy, ‘we leave things for now. I was going to ask your advice but that can wait for another time. Just one last point. I think
we should all pray very hard that none of those involved in the Catholic Compton conspiracy change their minds between now and Easter Sunday.’

‘Surely, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘we should be praying the other way round, that they should repent of their ways and remain as Anglicans.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if they change their minds, then the murderer will treat them in the same way he has treated their predecessors. Anglican or Catholic,
even in Compton you’re better off alive than dead.’

As Powerscourt rode into Compton the next morning to confer with Chief Inspector Yates he began thinking about the letters he knew he had to write to the Bishop of Exeter, the
Lord Lieutenant and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Private Secretary. ‘Please forgive me if the contents of this letter seem rather extraordinary,’ he said to himself as his horse
trotted down the country lanes. No, that wasn’t quite right. ‘Please rest assured that however bizarre the contents of this letter may appear, I am still in full possession of my
faculties.’ That wouldn’t do either. Powerscourt was convinced that once he began telling people he wasn’t mad, they would instantly jump to the opposite conclusion. Maybe he
should confine himself to the facts. But a bald narrative of events might not be credible either. One letter he had written before his breakfast that day to one of his employers, Mrs Augusta
Cockburn, sister of the late John Eustace, currently residing in a small villa outside Florence. He regretted very much, he told her, having to confirm her suspicions that her brother had been
murdered. He did not give details of the manner of his death. He promised to write again shortly with the name of the murderer. He hoped that the Italian postal service was not too quick.

Chief Inspector Yates was reading a pile of reports in his little office at the back of the police station and making notes in a large black book. Inside, Powerscourt knew, the Chief Inspector
was collating the movements and the alibis of every single resident of the Close. Powerscourt had already told him about the death of John Eustace. Now he told him about the plans for the mass
defection to Rome on Easter Sunday. The Chief Inspector was astonished.

‘God bless my soul, my lord, are you sure? This will tear Compton in half.’

Powerscourt went back over his reasons, the secret of the Archdeacon’s visits to Melbury Clinton, the Canon’s pilgrimages to Mass in Ledbury St John, the connections with the late
Cardinal Newman. Above all, he told him about his conversations with Dr Blackstaff.

‘Isn’t it all illegal, this sort of thing?’ said the Chief Inspector vaguely, only too aware that his previous training and experience did not equip him to quote section or
subsection of Act of Parliament.

‘I’m sure it’s illegal,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But God knows which Act of Parliament it is. Before Catholic Emancipation I think it was illegal to celebrate Mass in an
Anglican church, but I don’t know if this still applies. But at the moment nobody has actually done anything illegal. You can’t arrest people on suspicion of being about to do something
in a week’s time.’

‘Do you think it helps with the murders?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

‘I’m not really sure that it does,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It may be that the Catholic conspirators are as upset about the killings as we are. What terrifies me is what the
killer may do if we start asking around about the mass conversions. I think he may kill again. I’m sure he might kill again. He’s not like any murderer I have ever come across before,
Chief Inspector. I feel he’s driven by a kind of madness that ordinary mortals simply wouldn’t understand.

‘You know as well as I do,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘about the most common motives for murder. Money. Greed. Hatred. Jealousy. Revenge. I’m not sure that any of those work
in this case. Hatred perhaps. Revenge maybe.’

‘Seems to me, my lord,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘that there’s domestic murder, and then there’s state killing in war if that’s the right word. Millions must
have been killed in wars in the name of religion, isn’t that right?’

Powerscourt thought of the Christians massacred in the Colosseum, of purges and pogroms throughout the Middle Ages, Cathars despatched in their mountain fortress of Montsegur in the Pyrenees or
slaughtered wholesale in the amphitheatre at Verona, the ruinous wars of religion that swept over Europe in the sixteenth century, the list went on and on.

‘I’m sure you’re right, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s only that the wars of religion seem to have returned to Compton a century or two after they
finished everywhere else.’

‘This has just come for you, Lady Powerscourt.’ Andrew McKenna handed over a rather battered envelope with the address written in a childish hand. ‘Lady
Powerscourt, Fairfield Park.’

‘Did you see how it got here, McKenna?’ Lady Lucy asked, slitting open her missive.

‘No, I did not, madam. It was found lying inside the front door. It must have been delivered by hand.’

‘Dear Lady Powerscourt,’ Lady Lucy read. The letters were large and sprawled across the page. ‘Could you meet us in the south transept to the side of the choir just before five
thirty this afternoon. William and Philip, choirboys.’ McKenna took his leave. Lady Lucy was rejoicing. These were the two choirboys she had managed to speak to on a number of occasions after
the rehearsals for the
Messiah.
Now they were asking for a meeting. Now perhaps she would discover the secrets of their fear and their unhappiness. Now perhaps she would be able to improve
their situation. Never had she seen a collection of little boys so constantly crestfallen, so much in need of love and proper food and attention. She checked her watch. It was shortly after
half-past four. Should she wait for Francis to return from his visit to the Chief Inspector? She knew how worried he had been about her interest in the choir, how often he had spelt out how
dangerous it could be. She knew he might insist on accompanying her. Then she made up her mind. They were her special interest, these children. She had gone out of her way to try to get close to
them. The presence of a man might put them off. Maybe the boys would say nothing at all. She scribbled a brief note to her husband, saying she had popped into Compton and hoped to return by
half-past six at the latest. She did not specify precisely where she was going.

Lord Francis Powerscourt thought he could manage the first paragraph of his letter to the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary on his ride back to Fairfield Park. He
remembered Rosebery telling him that the Prime Minister himself was unwell, his mind now so exhausted by the pressure of work that he had had to give up his beloved Foreign Office, his mighty frame
so weary that he frequently fell asleep in cabinet meetings. Schomberg McDonnell, Private Secretary, confidant, intimate, the man who knew where all the Prime Minister’s political enemies
were buried, he was the man to write to.

Powerscourt sat himself down at the desk in John Eustace’s study and began his letter. Lady Lucy’s note was still sitting, unseen and unread, on the table in the drawing room.

‘I am currently engaged,’ he began, ‘on an investigation into some very bizarre deaths in the Cathedral City of Compton in the west of England.’ Begin with the
intelligence that is easy to understand, he reminded himself of his days in the Army, and move on slowly to the unpalatable conclusions. ‘In the course of my inquiries,’ he went on,
‘I have discovered a plot so unusual and so potentially divisive in the country as a whole, that I felt duty bound to lay the details before you.’ Make them curious, he said to himself,
make them want to keep reading.

‘But before I do, however disagreeable I find it to advertise my previous achievements, I felt I should remind you of my own earlier involvements in the fields of detection and some of my
past services to Crown and Country.’

Lady Lucy was humming the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to herself as she walked up the nave of the cathedral. The late afternoon sun was casting great beams of light across
the body of the cathedral, some of it multicoloured as it was filtered through the stained glass. What a pity we couldn’t sing the
Messiah
here, she said to herself as she peered into
the choir stalls to the left of the south transept. The building appeared to be completely deserted. There was no sign of the two boys. Perhaps they were late, or were hiding somewhere to give her
a surprise. Then she saw a light coming round an open door in the corner. Perhaps they’re over there, she said to herself, and set off to investigate. As she reached the bottom of the steps
she called for them by name.