Death of a Chancellor Read online

  Then he heard the voice. At first he thought the delirium was back for it was the voice he knew best in the world.

  ‘Francis?’ it said in a doubtful tone. ‘Francis?’

  Powerscourt tried to run towards the voice but found he could not manage it.

  ‘Lucy! Lucy, my love, I’m here, I’m coming.’

  Husband and wife met on the edge of the transept where the falling stone had almost killed Powerscourt six hours before. Powerscourt held her very tight. ‘Oh Lucy, I’m so sorry. I’m dripping blood on to your new coat.’

  ‘Never mind my coat, Francis, you’re injured. We’d better get you home.’

  Powerscourt saw that the figure with the lantern was the enormous manservant of the Dean who had fetched him in the middle of the night Arthur Rudd was murdered. His shadow behind the lantern was enormous. Powerscourt pointed to the chaos in the transept.

  ‘All these masonry blocks were up there,’ he said to the two of them, pointing up to the roof. ‘They very nearly fell on top of me. Had to dive into the choir to get out of the way. That’s where I cut my head.’

  With Lucy on one side and the giant on the other Powerscourt hobbled out of the cathedral and into the waiting coach. ‘How did you know I was here, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, feeling giddy from the fresh air outside.

  ‘Johnny came back alone an hour ago. He rode off back into town to see if he could find you. He’s going to check back at the house at midnight to report progress. I came along in the coach to see if you were in the cathedral. I thought you might have been locked in. I had to wake up the Dean’s household to get the keys.’

  Lady Lucy did not tell her husband that she had never seen Johnny Fitzgerald ride so fast, nor that he was using language she had never heard before. The two of them watched as the Dean’s enormous servant walked slowly back to his home on the other side of the Cathedral Green. Above them, on the west front, the remaining statues remained impassive at their posts, still depicting the story of their faith into the night sky.

  Powerscourt was leaning back into his seat as the carriage clattered off towards Fairfield Park. One of Lady Lucy’s finest handkerchiefs had been wrapped around his forehead.

  ‘I didn’t like to say it in front of the Dean’s man,’ said Powerscourt, holding firmly on to his wife’s hand, ‘but I don’t think the falling masonry was an accident.’

  ‘What do you mean, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy, wondering if the shock and the injuries and the long period of incarceration were affecting her husband’s wits.

  ‘Somebody was trying to kill me, Lucy. That’s what I mean. If they had succeeded they could have taken my corpse away and done what they wanted with me. Maybe the force of the blow would have pressed me straight into the stone floor so I would have joined all those other bodies lying about all over the building.’

  Lady Lucy thought of the terrible fate of Arthur Rudd and shuddered. She couldn’t bear the thought of her Francis being roasted on a spit. She held his hand ever tighter. She knew it was useless asking him to give up the case and return to London. Giving up cases was something Francis and Johnny Fitzgerald never did, however difficult and dangerous they might be.

  ‘But why, Francis? Why should anybody want to kill you here? You don’t know who the murderer is, do you?’

  ‘I have no idea at all,’ said Powerscourt bitterly, ‘about who the murderer is. But he sent me a message tonight. Either he was going to succeed, in which case we would not be driving back to the house a few minutes before midnight. Or he’s trying to warn me off, a couple of tons of masonry to get me out of Compton before he tries again.’

  ‘So what are you going to do, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, glancing across at her husband. Even in the dark she thought he looked drained by his ordeal, six hours locked up in Compton Minster with the dead of centuries and their strange memorials, with a bleeding forehead and a strained leg.

  ‘Let me tell you, Lucy, precisely what I propose to do. I’m going to find this bloody killer. And I’d better find him soon, before he kills me.’

  13

  The Bishop of Compton would have described himself, if asked by St Peter at the gates of heaven to list his virtues, as a patient man. Patience and scholarship, after all, went together. For most of his adult life he had shuffled through the libraries of Britain in pursuit of his interest in the early versions of the Gospels. Books chained to their shelves, books that could not be removed from the floor where they were kept, books that nobody else had opened for a hundred years or more had been his daily bread for over a quarter of a century. In his youth the Bishop had dreamed of one spectacular discovery, a biblical Eureka, a modern version of Archimedes in his bath, that would make his name and secure his reputation. As time passed and no miracles were vouchsafed, he realized that steady labour and the accumulation of judgement were more valuable weapons in a scholar’s armoury than the blinding light he hoped for in his earlier days. But patience, certainly he had acquired that. Or he thought he had, until the events of yesterday evening.

  The Bishop was pacing up and down around the croquet lawn in front of his Palace where vicious battles with ball and mallet in the summer gave the lie to the concept of brotherly love among the clergy. It was ten to eleven on the morning after his encounter with the two scholars, Octavius Parslow, senior keeper of documents at the British Museum, and Theodore Crawford, Professor of History at the University of Oxford. Before their dinner they had refused to give any view on the authenticity of the documents found in the cathedral crypt which Bishop Moreton believed were a kind of diary, kept by a junior monk during the last days of the abbey at Compton before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century. Two bottles of his better claret had failed to loosen their tongues into pronouncing a verdict of any kind. A bottle of the Bishop’s vintage port, which his wine merchant assured him was the equal of anything in the kingdom, had also failed. The Bishop’s patience finally snapped when Parslow inquired shortly after midnight if the Bishop had any more port in his cellar. ‘This stuff seems quite palatable to me for the depths of the country,’ he had said, pointing to his empty glass. Then the Bishop did something he had never done before in all his fifty-four years. He excused himself from his own dinner table and left his guests to their own devices. As he said his prayers by the side of his great four-poster he prayed for forgiveness, but even then, inappropriate words came to the Bishop from the book he knew so well. ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.’

  So this morning he had determined to take matters into his own hands. He had a visitor due to call on him in his study at eleven o’clock. The two scholars, he reflected sourly, asking for remission of his sins even as the thought crossed his mind, the two scholars could go to hell.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt had returned to the cathedral, sitting quietly at the back of the nave. His forehead had been expertly bandaged by Dr Blackstaff in Fairfield Park the night before. He had a stout walking stick of Johnny Fitzgerald’s to help him with his bad ankle. Johnny had taken great delight in explaining the secrets of this particular staff.

  ‘See here, Francis,’ he had said happily as he fiddled with the top. ‘This handle here unscrews. Inside is a secret phial, this glass container thing.’ He drew out an object that looked like a very thin tumbler with a cork stopper at the top. ‘In times of pain and difficulty, Francis, a man may find consolation in a drop of medicinal whisky or brandy, whichever you prefer. I never understood why they didn’t make this glass container longer. It can only go about a quarter of the way down the bloody walking stick. They could have made it much longer. Then you could get nearly a full bottle in there.’

  The two old ladies had passed Powerscourt earlier, nodding politely to him on their way to the Communion service in the Lady Chapel. He wondered if the consumption of so much sacred bread and wine might provide the secret of eternal life. The workmen had cleared away most of the debris from the night before. A new collection of masonry was bei
ng prepared for ascent into the higher regions.

  Powerscourt wondered for the fifth time if the murderer had come back in the early hours of the morning to search for his corpse, if he had prowled all the way round the nave and the transepts and the choir looking for his victim. Or had he waited until the cathedral opened early in the morning before checking on his prey? The very first service of the day at seven thirty must have been a strange event, Powerscourt thought, the Dean or the Precentor or one of the canons reading the Order for Morning Prayer with the dust lying thickly over the choir stalls and broken slabs of masonry stone acting as hazards for the unwary across the great transept. He felt sure the service would have carried on as though nothing at all had happened. Worse things must have been endured in the past, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers in the Civil War looting all the gold and the silver they could find, tearing down the statues, Thomas Cromwell’s Commissioners come to take a record of every valuable that could be stolen from the abbey before it was dissolved.

  Powerscourt had arranged to meet Patrick Butler here after his meeting with the Bishop.

  That young man was feeling uncharacteristically uncertain as the footman led him along the corridors that led to the Bishop’s study, the walls lined with portraits of previous officers of the cathedral, surveying the present in their purple robes from the distant past. What did you do when you met a bishop? Did you bow? Did you kneel? Did you have to kiss his hand? He wasn’t quite sure.

  In the end the Bishop solved the problem for him, rising from his chair behind the great desk and shaking Patrick Butler warmly by the hand.

  ‘Mr Butler,’ said the Bishop, ‘how kind of you to call on me at such short notice. I am most grateful.’ He ushered them both into the two armchairs on either side of the fire. Patrick Butler had no idea why he was here. Perhaps it was to do with the accident in the cathedral the night before. But he didn’t think it likely that the Bishop would have asked for a meeting to talk about that. The day-today running of the minster was much more the province of the Dean.

  ‘Am I not right in saying, Mr Butler, that you are on friendly terms with Mrs Herbert, Mrs Anne Herbert, who lives on the edge of our Cathedral Close here?’

  Patrick Butler blushed slightly. Surely he hadn’t been summoned here to talk about Anne? Was the Bishop of Compton going to question him about his intentions?

  ‘That is absolutely correct, my lord,’ he replied.

  ‘I knew her first husband very well, you know,’ said the Bishop, smiling across at the young man like a benevolent uncle. ‘I believe I am godparent to the first child. I’m afraid I keep forgetting his birthday.’

  ‘That’s easily done, my lord,’ said Patrick Butler. Anne had never told him the Bishop was godfather to one of the children. Perhaps she had forgotten as well.

  ‘Rest assured, Mr Butler,’ the Bishop was beaming now, ‘that if certain things should come to pass we should be only too happy to place the cathedral at your disposal.’

  Patrick Butler hadn’t thought about proposing marriage to Anne Herbert for at least three days. Was he being pushed towards matrimony by this prelate of the Church, nudged towards the altar by the weight of Bishop, Dean and Chapter? He blushed again.

  ‘Forgive me, my dear Mr Butler, I did not ask you to come here to pry into your affairs or to interfere in any way. Forgive me if I have said more than I should. We are all so attached to Anne, you see, and eager for her happiness. But enough. Let me tell you the real reason for my invitation.’

  The Bishop rose from his armchair and fetched the red folder containing the documents found in the crypt.

  ‘I thought this might be of interest to your readers. In here, Mr Butler, is a document that was discovered by the workmen carrying out repairs in the crypt.’

  ‘Is it old, my lord? Is it valuable?’ The normal procession of headlines began to flash through the editor’s mind. Secrets of the Compton Crypt. Priceless Manuscript Found by Minster Masons.

  The Bishop smiled. ‘It is certainly old, Mr Butler. I do not yet know how valuable it may prove to be. I must emphasize the preliminary nature of my conclusions at present. Nothing is yet definite or definitive. But I believe it to be a journal or a kind of diary kept by one of the monks in the years leading up to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.’

  ‘Would that be 1538, my lord?’ asked Patrick Butler who had been fascinated by the Reformation in history classes at school. He had had a special weakness for the burning of the martyrs and the priests’ holes.

  ‘Absolutely right, young man. Very good. If it is what I think it is, it should give us a unique insight into the last days of the abbey that stood here then.’

  ‘Is it written in English, my lord?’

  ‘Latin, Mr Butler, Latin, rather ungrammatical Latin in some places, I fear. Our monk might not have been the brightest boy in the class, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Would it be possible for me to have a look at the actual manuscript, my lord? I’m sure our readers would want to have a sense of the appearance of the thing.’

  The Bishop opened his red file and held the first page up for Patrick Butler’s inspection. ‘You can certainly look at it, Mr Butler, but I must ask you not to touch it. You would have to be wearing very fine gloves for that, I’m afraid.’ Untouchable by Human Hand flitted across Patrick Butler’s brain.

  ‘Could I make a suggestion, my lord? With your permission, we could serialize it in the Grafton Mercury.’

  ‘Serialize it, Mr Butler? I’m not quite sure what you mean.’

  ‘We could publish it in instalments, my lord, over a number of weeks. I’m sure more and more people would buy the paper to find out what the old monk was saying.’

  The Bishop still looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t there a problem with that, Mr Butler?’

  ‘Problem, my lord? I don’t think so. It would be tremendous, a great honour for the paper.’

  ‘I don’t wish to sound disrespectful towards your readers, Mr Butler, but how many of them do you think would understand it?’

  Patrick Butler was at a loss. ‘Just at the moment, my lord, I must confess it is I who doesn’t understand your reservations. Of course, if you feel that a serialization would be inappropriate, then I shall withdraw the suggestion. But with great regrets.’

  The Bishop sighed. ‘I know that educational standards are rising all the time, even in remote parts of the country like Compton, but I think most, if not all, your readers, would find it difficult to understand.’

  Then Patrick Butler knew what the problem was. ‘Forgive me, my lord. How silly of me not to have seen the misunderstanding. We would have to translate the document from the original Latin. Perhaps you could make a translation yourself, my lord, or suggest another scholar you feel would be fit for the task. But I am sure it would be much more widely read if we could advertise that the translation was the work of our very own Bishop. That would be a great coup for the paper.’

  He would insert a great strapline into the text, Translated by the Bishop of Compton, the Very Reverend Doctor Gervase Bentley Moreton. It wasn’t every day you could number a bishop among your correspondents. He wondered how often it happened in The Times.

  ‘An excellent plan, Mr Butler,’ the Bishop brought him back to Compton, ‘I should be delighted to make the translation for you nearer the time. And I think you could also say, bearing in mind the reservations I have already expressed, that I intend to refer to the document in my sermon on Easter Sunday when we celebrate one thousand years of Christian worship in this community. I feel that would be perfectly proper.’

  Patrick Butler was feeling elated as he made his way back to the cathedral for his second meeting of the morning. Two excellent stories discovered before twelve o’clock in the morning. A great accident overnight in the cathedral, falling masonry lying all over the place, a miracle nobody was hurt. One of the canons had given him the details earlier in the day. He wondered if he could hint that the ghost was walking again through the
minster, a pale cleric clad in black robes said to come from the time of the Civil Wars when he lost his head to hostile soldiery. He would have to go to the County Library and look up the story of the ghost. There was, he remembered, a rather dramatic description of the spectral figure floating high above the choir around the time of the flight of King James the Second. And now this, the minster monk’s last words, found in the crypt three hundred and fifty years after his death. And translated by the Bishop himself. Patrick Butler felt his cup was overflowing.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, my goodness me, sir, you don’t look at all well. Have you been in an accident?’

  Patrick Butler found his friend seated at the back of the nave, his face pale, the bandage clearly visible beneath the curly hair. He was leaning on his alcoholic walking stick and looking at the stained glass.

  ‘Good morning to you, Patrick, and thank you for coming. I am going to tell you what happened to me, but I don’t want it published in your newspaper at present.’

  Powerscourt rose slowly from his seat and began a limping progress up the nave towards the main body of the cathedral, the sound of his stick tapping on the stone floor echoing up towards the roof.

  ‘I don’t feel happy telling you about it in here,’ he said, ‘I think we could go to the chapter house. They must have had lots of conspiratorial meetings in there over the centuries.’

  Patrick Butler noticed that Powerscourt was carrying a large black notebook, rather larger than the ones his reporters used. He didn’t think he had seen Powerscourt with such a thing before.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Powerscourt, lowering himself into a great stone seat opposite the entrance to the chapter house. In front of them the slender central pillar rose like an umbrella of stone, surrounded by carvings of foliage and unknown faces from long ago. In the centre of the tympanum above the doorway, the seated figure of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by the symbols of the Four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The story of the Book of Genesis unfolded on the walls around them, Cain slaying Abel, the drunkenness of Noah, the city and tower of Babel, Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Powerscourt wondered about taking a sip from his walking stick to ease the pain. He desisted, fearing that he might be turned into a pillar of salt. There were several such pillars ten feet to his left.