Death of a Chancellor Read online

  Powerscourt found two of William McKenzie’s cryptic messages waiting for him. They concerned the movements of the Archdeacon’s mysterious visitor, who had, apparently, decamped from Compton.

  ‘My lord,’ the first message began, ‘the subject departed from Compton station two days ago on the 7.45 train bound for London, stopping at Newbury, Reading and Slough for local connections. Subject travelled alone in first class carriage except for final stage of journey when he was joined by elderly female in fur coat. Very little conversation between the parties. Unlikely to have been pre-arranged rendezvous.’

  My God, thought Powerscourt, he’s got a suspicious mind, that William McKenzie. Then he reflected to himself that so did he. Perhaps they were well suited.

  ‘Subject spent most of journey reading documents in his case. Only caught sight of one of them when subject had gone to bathroom. Something to do with Consecration of Cathedrals. On arrival at Paddington subject did not take cab. Walked across London until he reached the priests’ house attached to Jesuit church in Farm Street shortly after ten o’clock in the evening. Subject let himself in with own key. Did not venture out again that evening.’

  How long had McKenzie waited, Powerscourt wondered. Eleven? Midnight? One? Did he stand in one place, behind a tree perhaps, or did he engage on regular patrols of the vicinity? What did he think about?

  The second note was dated the following evening.

  ‘My lord,’ Powerscourt wondered what was coming this time, ‘have further information to report on the subject. Subject’s name is Barberi, Father Dominic Barberi. Believe him to be a member of the Jesuit order, but am not as yet absolutely certain. Subject only ventured out once today. Went to nearest branch of Thomas Cook and purchased return ticket to Rome in three days’ time. Did not wish the clerk to make any hotel reservations in his name. Presume he must stay once more with religious order. Subject also said by housekeeper, married by chance to former corporal in our old regiment, to be member of secret Catholic society called Civitas Dei. Housekeeper unable to provide any details of said organization. Stressed it was secret.’

  Civitas Dei? City of God, maybe community or polity of God. God’s kingdom, that’s it, said Powerscourt to himself. What on earth was that? Why was it secret? What did it have to hide? What was it doing in Compton? Maybe the man at Trinity would know something about it.

  ‘Subject said to be very reserved and earnest individual. Not likely to be a bosom friend of Lord Fitzgerald. Subject works in his room during the day most of the time. Only known weakness said to be partiality for fish.’

  Powerscourt decided that somebody should write a book about the different types of Oxford and Cambridge don. They spanned an enormous range after all, from the silent, the monosyllabic, the taciturn, the sarcastic, the arrogant, the superior, the rare ones who were almost normal, the talkative, the garrulous, the ones in love with their own voice, the ones in love with their own ideas, the ones in love with their own books, the windbags and the ones who couldn’t shut up. Christopher Philips, Powerscourt was certain, sitting in his rooms overlooking the beautiful gardens of Trinity College Oxford, was in the gold medal class of the ones who couldn’t shut up. Powerscourt had explained on his arrival that he was interested in the process of conversion from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic faith over the last twenty-five years. After ten minutes without a break, without even apparently a pause to draw breath, Philips still hadn’t got as far as Newman’s arrival in Oxford as an undergraduate. After twenty minutes Newman and his friends had launched the Oxford Movement and Powerscourt had decided that the only movement he was interested in at that point was movement out of Oxford as fast as possible. After forty-five minutes Newman had defected to Rome in 1845. There were, Powerscourt realized, another fifty-five years to go before they reached the present day. At the current rate of progress that was going to be some point well after sunset.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Philips, this is all most interesting, but I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ he said. ‘It is the conversions of the last twenty-five years that are of particular interest to me.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Christopher Philips, and he was off again. The interruption did seem to have accelerated the flow of history, even if only slightly. The decades were now passing, Powerscourt calculated, at the rate of one every five minutes. Maybe he could escape in an hour and a half. He heard about Gladstone’s sister Helen, a passionate convert to the Roman faith, who refused to have lavatory paper in her house. Instead her cloakrooms were liberally provided with the published works of Protestant divines. He heard about Newman’s unhappy attempt to start a Catholic university in Dublin.

  ‘In some ways, of course, the strange thing about Newman,’ Philips said after seventy-five minutes with scarcely a pause, ‘was not that some people followed him, but that so few did so. The Cardinal at the time believed that Newman would lead a positive stampede of some of the best and brightest of the youth of England into the fold. But it never happened.’

  And then, miraculously, Christopher Philips paused. He looked up at his clock.

  ‘My goodness me, Lord Powerscourt, forgive me. I have talked for far too long already. You want to know about the last twenty-five years, I believe.’

  Powerscourt nodded. He wondered how long the man’s lectures went on for. Did he start at ten in the morning and finish about half-past three? Was there anybody left in the hall by the end?

  ‘The conversions are almost all one way, from Canterbury to Rome, as it were. They are isolated cases. They are steady but not very numerous. There are, of course, a variety of reasons for departure. You could put doubt at the top of the list, I suppose, doubt about the impact of modern science, doubts about miracles, doubts about belonging to a Church that is controlled by man in the form of the government of the day in the House of Commons rather than by a hierarchy of faith that has been in place for nearly two millennia. If you worked in the countryside you might wonder if you were in the wrong place. If you worked in the cities you might despair of ever achieving anything in the midst of such terrible social problems of dreadful housing that saps the body and the lack of work that saps the soul. Roman Catholicism offers faith to the doubtful. It offers certainty to the sceptics. It offers order to the confused. It offers hierarchy to the rootless. It offers historical tradition to those searching for authority. Once you can make the leap of faith to cross the drawbridge into it, as it were, your intellectual problems are resolved.’

  ‘Have you heard, Mr Philips, of an organization called Civitas Dei?’ Powerscourt fired his arrow into the dark.

  Christopher Philips looked at him with great interest. ‘I have, Lord Powerscourt. I have to say I am surprised to hear that you know about it. It is very secretive.’

  ‘What sort of organization is it?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘And why is it so secret?’

  ‘I don’t know very much about it, I’m afraid. It’s believed to be related to the Jesuits in some way. The headquarters are in Rome. Its aims are to advance the coming of God’s kingdom, as the title would suggest. I believe it is secretive because they wish to use every means possible to obtain their objectives.’

  ‘When you say every means possible, are you implying that they might be prepared to use illegal means?’ asked Powerscourt, thinking suddenly of bodies roasted on a spit or cut into pieces and distributed about the countryside.

  ‘I don’t think they would do anything outside the law,’ said Philips. ‘I’m afraid that’s the sum total of my knowledge.’

  As Powerscourt began to say his thank yous and goodbyes Christopher Philips held him back. ‘Just a moment, Lord Powerscourt, I think this might interest you.’

  He reached into his desk and pulled out a fading place card from a dinner at High Table. ‘This is the menu and seating plan for the dinner the Master and Fellows gave for John Henry Newman when they invited him back to Oxford in the late 1870s, over thirty years after he left. They say he derive
d more pleasure from his return to Oxford than he did when the Pope made him a Cardinal. Everyone who attended signed it on the back.’

  He handed it over to Powerscourt as if it were a holy relic or the bread at the Communion service. Powerscourt glanced down the menu, thinking that Johnny Fitzgerald would certainly have approved of the wines. Then he turned pale. For in one place at the top table, three places away from the Master’s left, was a Moreton. G.B. Moreton. Powerscourt remembered the Dean telling him about the two different Moretons who had been involved in the succession to the Bishopric of Compton. He checked the signatures on the back. There it was. Gervase Bentley Moreton. Then he had another shock. For seated at the bottom end of the table was one A.C. Talbot. Powerscourt checked the signature again. He knew it well. Like Moreton’s he had seen it before. His head was spinning. Gervase Bentley Moreton was the Bishop, and Ambrose Cornwallis Talbot was the Dean of Compton Cathedral.

  19

  God in heaven, Powerscourt said to himself. Whose God? Whose heaven? Anglican or Roman Catholic? Not one but two of them. Not just the Dean but the Bishop as well. They must have been Anglican back then or else how could they have reached their present lofty positions in Compton Minster? But suppose they had been planning to convert to Rome even then, or maybe shortly afterwards, seduced perhaps by the beauty of Newman’s prose and the luminous certainties of his faith. In that case they had been sleepers, moles burrowing deep into the Anglican hierarchy, for over twenty years. Hold on a minute, he said to himself, still staring as if hypnotized at the seating plan. It could all be a coincidence, an accident. The Dean and the Bishop could have been Anglicans all along. Maybe they still were. Then he remembered the Archdeacon and his furtive trips to Melbury Clinton on Thursdays. Perhaps there was not one but three of them. But what was the point? Why should they dissemble for so long about their true allegiance? Was there an end point, a time when the pretence could stop? An extravagant, an impossible thought shot through his mind. He put it to one side.

  The bells of Oxford were ringing outside, Balliol following Trinity, Wadham following Hertford, the torch passed on down to New College and Queen’s and Magdalen with its deer park by the river. Powerscourt suddenly realized that he had been staring at the menu and the signatures for a couple of minutes at least. He returned it with a smile to Christopher Philips.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘my mind was far away.’

  ‘You looked, Lord Powerscourt,’ Philips replied, ‘as if you were wrestling with some mighty problem. They say, you know, that Newman stayed in college for three or four days. Apparently he grew very friendly with some of the people he met at the dinner.’

  ‘Really?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I don’t suppose we know which people, do we?’

  ‘One of them was certainly the man Moreton,’ said Christopher Philips, totally unaware that he was setting off another depth charge in Powerscourt’s brain. ‘They say they had a lot in common with their interests in early biblical scholarship.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they must have had a lot to talk about.’

  The rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah was at its end. Vaughan Wyndham, the Compton choirmaster, and his choir were folding up their scores, the musicians returning their instruments into their cases. It was going well, the choirmaster thought. In a few days’ time when they had finally mastered the more difficult sections of ‘Unto us a Child is Born’, he could have a full run-through of the entire oratorio.

  Lady Lucy Powerscourt leaned forward and began a conversation with the two choirboys she had spoken to before. She was just about to invite them to tea when a loud voice interrupted her.

  ‘Lady Powerscourt,’ said Wyndham. ‘Perhaps we could have a word after everybody has left.’ The voice, Lady Lucy thought, was harsh, the tone rather menacing. Surely you could talk to one of these dear little boys, who always looked so frightened, without the intervention of higher authority?

  ‘Forgive me, Lady Powerscourt,’ said the choirmaster when they were the only two people left in St Nicholas’ Church. ‘I have seen you on previous occasions trying to converse with the junior members of my choir. It is strictly forbidden.’

  It sounds as if he is German, Lady Lucy thought, memories of the word verboten coming into her mind from German lessons with her governess. ‘And why is that, pray?’ she said. ‘I do not mean them any harm. I was only going to invite them to tea.’

  ‘At this time, Lady Powerscourt, the choir have a great deal of work to do. Not only are they working on the Messiah. They are also learning a lot of new music for the thousandth anniversary of the cathedral. They must not be disturbed in any way.’

  ‘I would not wish to interfere with their progress,’ said Lady Lucy, wondering why the man had laid such emphasis on the new music for the thousandth anniversary. Maybe she should tell Francis about it.

  ‘If you interfere any further, or try to talk to any of the boys again, I shall have no alternative, Lady Powerscourt.’

  ‘No alternative to what?’ said Lady Lucy, thinking the whole conversation was rather incredible.

  ‘I shall have no alternative,’ said choirmaster Wyndham severely, ‘but to expel you from the choir.’

  With that he stalked out of the church. Lady Lucy had never been expelled from anything in her entire life. She did not propose to start now.

  The plaster primroses commemorating Rosebery’s family name were in full bloom outside his front door in Berkeley Square. Leith the butler, famed throughout Rosebery’s acquaintance for his encyclopedic knowledge of the train timetables of Britain and Europe, opened the door and showed Powerscourt into the library. Rosebery and Powerscourt had been friends since their schooldays and Rosebery had been an invaluable ally in many of Powerscourt’s previous cases.

  ‘Come in, Francis, take a seat. I shall be with you in a second.’

  Rosebery was finishing a letter at the great desk by the window that looked out into the square. ‘I’m trying to buy a library from a fellow down in Hampshire,’ he said, adding an ornate signature to the bottom of his letter. ‘He has an invaluable collection of documents and books relating to the Civil War. The only problem is that he thinks they are worth a lot more than I do.’

  Powerscourt saw that portraits of the Rosebery children had replaced the racehorses on either side of the black marble fireplace. Maybe the horses were out of favour.

  ‘Now then . . .’ Rosebery seated himself opposite his friend. ‘Thank you for your letter. I think I can help with one or two things. This disagreeable business of exhuming a body down in Compton. I take it you now have the relevant papers from the police? You do? Then I shall have it for you tomorrow.’

  Powerscourt handed over a couple of letters that had been waiting for him in Markham Square.

  ‘I mentioned it to Schomberg McDonnell the other day,’ said Rosebery, sounding rather pleased with his ability to manipulate the system. Schomberg McDonnell was the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary. ‘He said that after your invaluable service to the Crown in South Africa, an exhumation order was but a small thing to ask. He will obtain the necessary signatures.’

  Powerscourt wondered if he could avoid the exhumation, the body brought from the grave in the middle of the night, the crowbars opening the coffin before its time, the medical people poring over the cadaver. He wondered if there was another way.

  ‘I am most impressed, Rosebery,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘I have two questions for you. Have you ever heard of an organization called Civitas Dei?’

  Rosebery looked at his friend very carefully. ‘You are moving in deep and dangerous waters, Francis. Yes, I have heard of it, when I was Foreign Secretary, I believe. There was a briefing paper on the organization from some of our people in Rome. They suspected that they acted as outriders, the auxiliaries, the unofficial wing, if you like, of the Jesuits and the College of Propaganda in the Vatican. Their function was to perform in the dark what the Church could not countenance in the day
light. If anything was discovered about their activities, it could, of course, be denied.’

  ‘But what is their purpose, Rosebery, what are they for?’ said Powerscourt, realizing that whenever anybody talked about Civitas Dei, they were grasping at shadows.

  ‘Nobody knows for certain,’ Rosebery replied, staring at the books on the opposite wall. ‘I don’t think they are going to nail a proclamation with ninety-five theses on to the door of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, if you see what I mean. Their objectives are to increase the power and influence of the Catholic Church by all means at their disposal. And people say they are none too scrupulous about the means, either. The former Ambassador to Rome, Sir Roderick Lewis, lives just round the corner from you, Francis. He would know more than I do. Or maybe not. But I could drop him an introductory note if you think that would help your inquiries? Could you call on him tomorrow morning?’

  ‘That would be most kind, Rosebery. Let me now ask you my second question. I think I may need to get in touch with the Archbishop of Canterbury at very short notice. How do I do that?’

  Rosebery looked closely at his friend.

  ‘It’s all right, Rosebery, I’m not losing my wits. Sometimes I think the conclusions in this case may be quite incredible, but I am not yet in a position to say what they might be. At first, you see, I thought there was just one riddle in Compton Minster. Now I think there may be two, perhaps three. And solving one may not mean that I have solved the others. They could each be in separate boxes. But to return to my question, what is the quickest route to the Archbishop of Canterbury?’

  ‘His Private Secretary is a delightful young man called Lucas, Archibald Lucas. He was a scholar and fellow of Keble before taking up his new position.’ Rosebery went to his desk and pulled out an enormous address book. ‘He’s to be found at Lambeth Palace most of the time, occasionally at Canterbury. Perhaps you’d like to take a note of the postal and the telegraphic addresses.’