Death of a Chancellor Page 22

  ‘Had the husband threatened Gillespie with violence?’ asked the Chief Inspector, looking up from his notebook.

  ‘I’m not sure. I think he probably did. Now, if you’ll excuse me I must go and chair my finance meeting. I’m late already.’

  ‘Just two very quick questions, Dean, before you attend to your duties,’ said Powerscourt quickly. ‘The Chief Inspector and I will accompany you to the front door. What is the name of the shopkeeper, and what was the nature of his trade?’ All three were now striding up the corridor towards the main entrance, their boots echoing on the stone floor.

  ‘The man’s name was Fraser, James Fraser,’ said the Dean. He marched on. Chief Inspector Yates thought he knew the answer now, but he asked the second question once again.

  ‘And his occupation?’

  Again that pause from the Dean of Compton. Then he whispered it very softly. ‘He was a butcher. The best butcher in all of Compton.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Powerscourt said very quietly. His brain was full of images of carcasses hanging on great hooks on the wall, of butchers’ blocks and butchers’ knives, long ones, thin ones, short ones, all of them honed to a pitch of sharpness that could dissect cows or sheep or pigs or lambs or humans. The best butcher in all of Compton.

  ‘My wife has been a customer of Fraser’s for over five years now,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘His meat is excellent. But let me deal with this, my lord. Gillespie’s affair with Mrs Fraser may have nothing to do with his death. I shall make inquiries now and let you know.’

  Powerscourt stared at the disappearing figure of Chief Inspector Yates. Had John Eustace met a perfectly innocent death? Were the butler and the doctor telling him the truth after all? Had Arthur Rudd been killed for his debt? And Edward Gillespie, had he been butchered by a cuckolded husband? The best butcher in all of Compton?

  Powerscourt was on his way to reclaim his horse from the police station and return to Fairfield Park when he bumped into Patrick Butler, just leaving Anne Herbert’s cottage on the edge of Cathedral Close. Patrick already knew most of the story of Compton’s latest murder. He grimaced with distaste when Powerscourt filled him in on the final details.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly print all that, Lord Powerscourt. Old ladies would be fainting in their beds. I’ll have to keep it very simple.’

  ‘You’re about to receive a summons from the Dean, Patrick. I think he’s going to ask you to be responsible.’

  ‘I’ll be responsible all right,’ said the young man. Then he cheered up considerably. Powerscourt wondered for a moment if he had proposed over the Assam or the Darjeeling. He hadn’t. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Lord Powerscourt. I thought of the most fantastic headline while I was taking tea with Anne. I couldn’t possibly use it, of course. But I think it’s almost perfect.’

  ‘What is this Platonic headline, Patrick?’

  The young man laughed and whispered very softly into Powerscourt’s ear.

  ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered.’

  A musical medley, a rather confused musical medley, greeted Powerscourt on his return. He could hear one piano note, played very loudly. Then there were voices, singing out of tune. He wondered if Lady Lucy had managed to steal a couple of choirboys for the evening and then he thought better of it. Choirboys couldn’t possibly be that out of tune. The piano note sounded once more.

  ‘Hal,’ sang a voice, in tune, which he recognized as Lucy’s.

  ‘Hal,’ sang a second voice, out of tune.

  ‘Orr,’ sang a third voice, nearly in tune.

  Then he remembered that his children were due to arrive that afternoon for a short stay. He listened on outside the drawing-room door. The piano and therefore the singing party were at the far end of the room.

  ‘You’re doing very well,’ he heard Lady Lucy say. ‘Let’s just try to put the whole thing together.’ She sounded out four notes on the piano. Then she played them again.

  ‘One, two, three,’ said Lady Lucy.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ sang the three voices, although Powerscourt thought Olivia was singing Orrerujah rather than Handel’s preferred text.

  ‘Hallelujah’ they sang again, Thomas still out of tune. Powerscourt opened the door and ran to embrace Thomas and Olivia. He could still remember all those long evenings in South Africa when he would have paid thousands of pounds for an armful of his children.

  ‘We’ve been singing, Papa,’ Olivia told him proudly. ‘It’s called the Orrerujah Chorus.’

  ‘It’s from Handel’s Messiah, actually,’ said Thomas Powerscourt in his most grown-up voice.

  ‘That’ll do for today,’ said Lady Lucy, smiling at her very own choir. ‘We’ll do some more practising tomorrow.’

  ‘Can we come and watch you singing in the church?’ asked Thomas. ‘When you sing in front of everybody?’

  ‘We’ll have to see about that,’ said Lady Lucy tactfully. ‘You might put me off.’

  ‘Why was that man called Handel?’ asked Olivia. ‘I thought that had something to do with opening doors.’

  ‘It does,’ said Powerscourt, ‘have something to do with opening doors. But Handel the composer, the man who wrote the music for the Messiah, came from Germany originally. George Frederick Handel was his name.’

  ‘Time for bed now,’ said Lady Lucy briskly. ‘Off you go. Papa will come and read you a story later.’

  It was just before ten o’clock when a weary William McKenzie returned from his travels and took a seat in the drawing room, armed with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits. Powerscourt remembered that McKenzie’s reports were always couched in rather unfathomable prose in case they fell into enemy hands.

  ‘I first encountered the subject at the railway station, my lord,’ McKenzie began. Powerscourt mentally substituted the word Archdeacon for subject and listened on.

  ‘He took a first class ticket to Colthorpe on the seven thirty-five train and spent the journey perusing various papers in the large bag he carried with him. I must confess I was curious about the bag, my lord. It was of much larger dimensions than gentlemen usually employ for purposes of business. He might have been going away on a visit.’

  McKenzie paused and looked down at a tiny notebook. ‘The journey from Compton to Colthorpe takes an hour and twenty minutes, my lord. At Colthorpe the subject alighted from the train and waited fifteen minutes for a local service going to Dunthorpe, Peignton Magna and Addlebury The subject took a cup of Indian tea in the restaurant while he waited, and two slices of toast with marmalade.’

  Powerscourt wondered where McKenzie secreted himself during all these activities. Did he peer in the windows? Did he conceal himself in the corner of the room? Could he make himself invisible?

  ‘The subject did not make the full journey to Addlebury my lord. He left the train at Peignton Magna at nine fifty-five,’ McKenzie checked the precise time in his notebook, ‘and was collected by a carriage. They must have known what time to expect him for those local trains are infrequent, my lord, and, I was told, rather unreliable. I nearly lost him there, my lord, for he was out of the station in a flash. Fortunately a cab drew up just after he had left, driven by a most reckless young man who said he knew where the clerical gentleman was going as he had taken him there several times in the past. At the far end of the village we caught up with them, my lord.’

  William McKenzie paused and took another drink of his tea. Powerscourt was trying to guess where the final destination might have been. So far the gossips of Compton could have been right. The subject might have a wife hidden away in the depths of the countryside.

  ‘A mile and a half outside Peignton Magna, my lord, there is a long avenue of lime trees leading off to the left. My cabbie informed me that this was always the destination of the clerical gentleman. I paid him off and proceeded as rapidly as appeared prudent up the drive. The house is most handsome, my lord, Elizabethan in construction, I would hazard, set out in the form of a square with a courtyard in the centre and a moat running rou
nd all four walls. The moat appeared to be well maintained, my lord, unlike some you might see these days. I was just in time to see the subject disappear through the main entrance. The time was ten fifteen. I secreted myself in the trees and continued to observe, my lord.’

  McKenzie was perfectly capable of waiting for his subjects for hours or even days at a time, Powerscourt remembered. One vigil in India, checking on the movements of the agents of a particularly vicious Nawab, had lasted three days and nights.

  ‘There was limited activity I could observe from my position, my lord. One or two servants going to and fro, some produce being delivered from the home farm, a vet come to attend to a sick horse. All activity seemed to stop just before twelve o’clock, my lord, and there were strange noises from inside the house I could not quite catch.’

  ‘Were there any bells at twelve, William? Ringing out from the neighbouring church perhaps?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I heard no bells, my lord,’ said McKenzie, beginning work on another biscuit and turning a page in his book. Powerscourt thought the fire needed more logs but he did not want to break the spell of McKenzie’s narrative.

  ‘Movement seemed to begin again shortly before one o’clock, my lord. There were cooking smells being blown my way and very pleasant they were too. At two thirty-five the carriage drew up again at the front door. At two forty-five the subject appeared again and was driven away.’

  ‘Was he wearing the same clothes, William? Had he changed into something from his bag?’

  ‘He was in the same clothes, my lord. The subject seemed in better humour from the brief glimpse I could get of him. The carriage took him back to the station. I ran after them as fast as I could, my lord. I was able to watch the subject board the train to Colthorpe at ten past three. There is a connection there back to Compton. The subject had purchased return tickets. He should have been back here by four fifteen. I remained in the village, my lord, and made some inquiries.’

  William McKenzie paused in his report. He looked at several pages of his notes and proceeded.

  ‘I must confess, my lord, that what follows is to some extent speculation. I have three main sources for my information. The young cabbie directed me to the village postmaster for information. The cabbie claimed that he was a notorious gossip who knew everything that went on in Peignton Magna and quite a lot that probably didn’t. He was very informative. The vicar was tending his garden when I passed. The vicar, a most reliable witness I should say, had no knowledge of these regular visits by the subject. I found that most curious. He did not seem to be aware that the clerical gentleman from Compton was in the habit of making regular visits to his own parish. Late in the afternoon I presented myself at the house. I said I was working with a colleague on an architectural volume chronicling the moated houses of England. The butler gave me a brief tour of the house, my lord. It was most instructive.’

  Powerscourt wondered why William McKenzie was taking so long to deliver his conclusions. Perhaps he didn’t believe them.

  ‘The house is called Melbury Clinton, my lord. It has been in the Melbury family for about twelve generations. They are an old Catholic family, my lord. They have priests’ holes all over the place, enough to fox Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents for days at a time, my lord. That’s what the butler told me.’

  Powerscourt had been more than impressed with McKenzie’s knowledge of the key players of Elizabethan history.

  ‘They’re still Catholic, my lord. There is a little chapel where the Jesuits used to hide on the first floor. It’s about as far from the front door as you could get. Mass is celebrated in there twice a week, the butler told me. Once on Sundays when a priest comes from Exeter. And once on Thursdays at twelve o’clock. Those noises I heard in the woods, my lord, must have been the service.’

  ‘Are you telling me, William, that the Archdeacon goes all the way from Compton every Thursday to attend Mass in the little chapel at Melbury Clinton?’

  ‘No, I am not telling you that, my lord. The subject does not go all that way to attend Mass. He goes to take the service. The subject has been officiating at Mass at Melbury Clinton for the past eight years.’

  16

  ‘God bless my soul,’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I can only go by what the butler said, my lord,’ William McKenzie replied. ‘And I didn’t want to press him too hard about the Thursday services. It might have seemed suspicious when I was meant to be working on a book about the moated houses of England.’

  ‘What exactly did he say about the Thursday services, William?’

  McKenzie turned back a few pages in his notebook. ‘I wrote all this down in the train on the way back. He said a Jesuit came to celebrate Mass every Thursday.’

  Jesuits, thought Powerscourt. The shock troops of the Counter Reformation, the Imperial Guard of the College for Propaganda in the battle for the hearts and souls of the unconverted. Christ Almighty. What on earth was going on in this sleepy cathedral town?

  ‘It makes sense of the bag, my lord. He must carry his Jesuit vestments to and from Melbury Clinton every week.’

  ‘It certainly does,’ said Powerscourt. ‘William, you have done magnificently. I shall have another assignation for you in the morning.’

  That night Powerscourt had a dream. He was in a church, not the Cathedral of Compton he knew so well, but a large church that might have been in Oxford or Cambridge. The pews were full of young men, every available seat occupied, latecomers standing at the back. The organ was playing softly. At first there were no priests to be seen. Then Powerscourt saw a figure floating above the congregation like a ghost from the other side. He knew that the spectre was the wraith of John Henry Newman, the most famous defector from the Church of England to the Church of Rome in all the nineteenth century. The ghost of Newman was beckoning the young men to follow him out of the side door into the world outside. Gradually the pews began to empty. Then it became a rush. Finally it turned into a stampede as all the young men followed Newman’s lead and abandoned their pews, and presumably their allegiance to the Church of England. At Newman’s side was another spectre, arms outstretched to summon the true believers. The other spectre was the Archdeacon of Compton Cathedral.

  Early the next morning Powerscourt was seated at the desk in John Eustace’s study, train timetable to one side of him, writing paper to the other. He wrote to the Dean, requesting the name and home addresses, if possible, of the two dead members of the community of vicars choral. Powerscourt was trying to avoid all human contact with members of the cathedral for fear it might endanger their lives if they were not the murderer, and endanger his own if they were. He still had occasional flashbacks to the falling masonry, his night vigil with the dead in their stone and marble. He wondered about the Bishop, apparently so unworldly, but with a record, Patrick Butler had informed him, of distinguished service in the Grenadier Guards. He wondered about the Dean, so impassive as he watched the horror being unveiled in the morgue. He wondered about the Archdeacon and his weekly pilgrimages to Melbury Clinton. He wrote to his old tutor in Cambridge, requesting the name and an introduction to the foremost scholar in Britain on the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He wrote to the Ferrers family of 42 Clifton Rise, Bristol, asking if he could call on them at four o’clock in the afternoon in two days’ time. He explained that he was looking into the strange deaths in Compton and wanted to talk to them. He did not specify the reason for his visit. He wrote to his old friend Lord Rosebery former Prime Minister in the liberal interest, saying that he proposed to call on him in five or six days to discuss his latest case. He particularly asked Rosebery if he could secure him, Powerscourt, a meeting with the Home Secretary. He wrote to Dr Williams asking for his co-operation in a very delicate matter.

  ‘So which Archdeacon is the real one, Francis? The Protestant one or the Catholic one?’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.

  His correspondence complete, Powerscourt had joined the oth
ers over breakfast. Thomas and Olivia had gone to climb the trees in the garden.

  ‘God only knows,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Maybe even God doesn’t know.’

  ‘Can you be a Protestant Archdeacon and a Jesuit Father at the same time?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Doesn’t each side think the other one to be heretics, if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that one either,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But I’m going to find out’ He made a mental note to write a further letter to Cambridge requesting an interview with a theologian. ‘The other question, of course,’ he went on through a mouthful of bacon and eggs, ‘is whether it is just the Archdeacon who is a Jesuit or a Roman Catholic. Maybe there are other members of the Cathedral Close who are secret adherents of the old religion.’

  ‘Maybe they all are,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. Everybody laughed.

  ‘Seriously though,’ said Powerscourt, ‘this investigation has become exceedingly difficult. I dare not ask questions of the Bishop and his people. I feel it would be too dangerous, either for me or for any of us here, or for them if they were known to have been asked those kind of questions.’

  William McKenzie had been working his way through a small mountain of toast, thinly coated with butter but without marmalade, at the far end of the table.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the time, my lord. If the butler at Melbury Clinton is right, the subject has been celebrating Mass there for eight years. He travels in his Protestant clothes, if you like, and changes when he gets there. He’s like a spy in some ways, isn’t he, Johnny? But who is he spying on? It doesn’t seem likely that the Protestant authorities in Compton want secret information about what goes on in Melbury Clinton. Nor does it seem likely that the Catholic family in Melbury Clinton want secret information about what happens in the cathedral at Compton. It’s all very difficult.’