Death of a Chancellor Read online

  He paused. Now came the difficult bit. For if everything he had said so far was totally or partially true, the words he was about to utter were complete fabrication. And there was no mercy from his interrogator.

  ‘Get on with it, McKenna. All of this only happened three days ago. It’s not as if you’re telling me the line of battle at Trafalgar.’

  ‘I went to see Mr Eustace at about nine thirty in his study to ask if there was anything he wanted. He said I was not to wait up as he might be working till quite late. That was the last time I or anybody else in this house saw him, madam.’ Until I found him dead in bed in the middle of the night, he thought, blood all over the sheets.

  Augusta Cockburn sniffed the air slightly, like a bloodhound. If she had suspected something was amiss before, she was almost certain now. How unfortunate it was that a man so bad at lying should have encountered a bloodhound like Augusta Cockburn at such a time. For if he was bad at lying, she was an expert in its detection. She felt she could hold down a chair, the Regius Professorship in Lie Detection, at one of the ancient universities. After all her long years of marriage she had listened to so many lies from her own husband. Lies innumerable as the grains of sand on the seashore or the stardust on the Milky Way. Kept very late at dinner, couldn’t get away. Need some money to buy some railroad shares. Damaged my ankle so badly at the club I couldn’t even walk down the stairs. Some damned woman spilt her perfume right down my shirt. Fellow insisted I go home with him for a nightcap. Bloody trains cancelled yet again, couldn’t make it home. Those were just the preface. Now she stared at McKenna as though he were a common criminal.

  ‘And where is the body?’

  ‘The body, madam?’

  ‘My brother’s body, McDougal. Where is it and when can we pay our last respects and say our goodbyes?’

  ‘I believe the body is at the undertaker’s in Compton, madam.’

  ‘And when is it being brought back here for the family’s last respects?’

  ‘I’m afraid I could not say, madam. The doctor has been looking after the arrangements.’

  ‘Are you not meant to be the butler here? Are you not meant to be looking after the arrangements, as you put it? Is that not what you are paid to do?’

  Andrew McKenna turned bright red at the insult to his professional abilities. ‘I have been butler here for the last fifteen years, madam. I have never had any complaints about the performance of my duties.’

  Augusta Cockburn snorted. The whole house obviously needed taking in hand from top to bottom.

  ‘I have not found this interview at all satisfactory,’ she said, drawing herself erect in the chair, her eyes flashing. ‘You may go now. I shall be writing to this doctor, Blacksmith or Blackstaff or whatever he is called. Perhaps you could arrange for its immediate delivery.’

  ‘Dr Blackstaff, madam,’ said McKenna, heading as fast as he dared for the escape route. Before Augusta Cockburn had time to speak again, McKenna had reached the safety of the door. He closed it firmly, possibly too firmly, behind him and fled to the sanctuary of the servants’ hall below.

  ‘Just look at this, Anne. I’m really pleased with it.’ A slim young man with dark brown hair and dancing eyes was sitting at the kitchen table in a little house right on the edge of the Cathedral Close in Compton. The young man was called Patrick Butler and he was talking to Anne Herbert, the twenty-eight-year-old widow of the Reverend Frank Herbert, previously vicar of St Peter under the Arches in the city. When he met a tragic death in a train accident the Dean and Chapter had given the use of this house to his widow.

  Butler had an early issue of the county newspaper in his hand. He was the editor of this weekly journal, the Grafton Mercury, not one of the mightiest organs of opinion in the land, but a post where a man might make a name for himself and progress to greater things. He had been in Compton for nine months now, promoted from a position on an evening paper in Bristol.

  Anne brushed a couple of her children’s drawings on to a chair and opened up the newspaper. Patrick was hovering enthusiastically by her shoulder. She read of the tragic death of John Eustace. There were glowing tributes from the Bishop, ‘always a humble and devoted servant of the cathedral and the people of this city,’ ‘beloved by all who knew him, a terrible loss to the community,’ from the Dean, ‘taken from us in his prime, when he had so much left to give,’ from the Archdeacon.

  Then came the paragraph of which Patrick Butler was particularly proud. He felt sure it would cause a sensation. He had already been in contact with a couple of the great national dailies in London about its contents. It might make his name.

  ‘The Grafton Mercury,’ Anne read, aware that Patrick was somewhere very close but not sure exactly where, ‘has learned that the former Chancellor of the cathedral, John Eustace, was one of the richest men in England, possibly the richest of all. His father was a very successful engineer in Britain who went on to make a vast fortune in America. His mother was an American heiress. On their death he was left an enormous portfolio of shares whose value has grown ever larger. It is believed that he was also left another fortune by his elder brother Edward. Mr Eustace was single at the time of his death.’

  Anne Herbert looked up at her friend. ‘This is amazing,’ she said. ‘How do you know it’s true?’

  Patrick Butler looked at her with a teasing smile. ‘I’m not sure I can reveal my sources,’ he said. ‘We’re not meant to divulge where our information comes from, you know. It might get somebody into trouble.’

  ‘If you think, Mr Patrick Butler,’ said Anne firmly, ‘that you can come into my house and drink my tea and sometimes eat your supper here and not tell me how you know this, you’d better prepare for some changes about the place.’ She tried to look at him severely but knew she was failing.

  ‘I’ll give you three guesses where the information came from,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ she replied, ‘let me think. He told you himself. How about that?’

  ‘No good,’ said Butler, ‘I only met the man a couple of times. Next?’

  Anne was looking down at the newspaper as if Patrick might have put his source right at the bottom of the page. ‘Dr Blackstaff told you. He was always very friendly with the Chancellor.’

  ‘Wrong again,’ said Butler cheerfully. ‘Last go. If you don’t get it this time, then you’ve had all your chances.’

  Anne thought carefully this time. It must be somebody at the cathedral, she felt. People in those closed communities usually knew everybody’s secrets.

  ‘It’s the Dean,’ she said authoritatively. ‘The Dean told you.’

  Patrick Butler looked impressed. ‘How on earth did you guess that? It’s not actually the Dean in person but you’re as close as could be.’

  ‘Don’t think it could have been the Archdeacon,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you’re lucky if you get the time of day out of him. I know, it’s the Bishop. It’s the Bishop!’

  Patrick Butler clapped his hands vigorously and smiled right into her eyes.

  ‘Absolutely right. Gervase Bentley Moreton, the Lord Bishop of Compton Minster, told me himself about five or six months ago.’

  ‘But won’t he be cross with you, Patrick? Won’t you get into trouble?’

  Patrick picked up his newspaper from the kitchen table and waved it about. ‘Where in this article is there any mention of the Bishop? Have I written that the Bishop told the Grafton Mercury this exciting piece of news? I have not. And he did not tell me at the time that it was confidential or anything like that. And the information would have come out at some point in the future. It’s just that we have got it first. It’s a world exclusive for the Grafton Mercury, Anne! It’s tremendous!’

  Anne smiled at the enthusiasm of her friend. ‘But when did he tell you? He wasn’t drunk or anything, was he?’

  Patrick Butler smoothed out his paper and put it back on the kitchen table. ‘It was all rather odd, really. It was at a cricket match at the end of last summer. The Friend
s of Compton Cathedral Eleven were playing a team from Exeter. The Bishop wasn’t enthroned in state in the pavilion or anything like that, he was just sitting on the grass like any ordinary mortal, watching the match. Compton were batting, with Chancellor Eustace well set batting at number four. He was a very tidy batsman, Anne, if you know what I mean. Nothing violent, nothing agricultural about his play. He just stroked the ball about, a flick here, a nudge there, the odd cover drive that looked completely effortless. He had just placed the ball way into the outfield and they were running three. The Bishop tapped me on the shoulder, I remember. “You’d never think now, looking at John Eustace play cricket, that he is one of the richest men in England.” Then he told me about his parents and all that stuff. The really odd thing was what happened when he got to the end of his story.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Anne.

  ‘Well, I wonder now if it mightn’t have been an omen. All the time he was batting you would have said Eustace was going to bat for ever, that he’d never get out. But the minute the Bishop finished his story, he was clean bowled next ball.’

  Augusta Cockburn stared angrily at her breakfast in the dining room of Fairfield Park. Her fury was as cold as the scrambled eggs in front of her. The toast was limp and soggy. Her tea was almost cold. War had been declared between the servants of the late John Eustace and the living presence of his sister. The vote in the servants’ hall the previous evening, Andrew McKenna the Speaker of this tiny democracy had been unanimous. In less than twenty-four hours Augusta Cockburn had insulted every single member of the household. Now she was paying the price. She looked again at this insult, this degradation of a breakfast. They’ll all have to go, she said to herself. Every single last one of them, out the door and with no references to help them in a hostile world.

  The footman, at least, was managing to uphold the sullied banners of propriety.

  ‘Dr Blackstaff, madam, is waiting in the drawing room.’

  This was going to be another trial. She had met the doctor on previous visits. She had not cared for him, sensing perhaps that he was much closer to her brother than she would ever be. He, in his turn, did not care greatly for Mrs Augusta Cockburn. Dr Blackstaff had developed over the years a particularly annoying habit of asking whereabouts she was currently living. ‘Still in Chelsea?’ he would inquire with a smile. When, reluctantly, she reported yet another retreat, another withdrawal of her living quarters to a less socially desirable part of the capital, he would repeat the last address as though the area contained, if not the plague, then at least elements that might not be entirely respectable. ‘West Kensington?’ she remembered him saying at their last encounter, ‘West Kensington?’ as though he could scarcely believe the place existed at all.

  But this morning Dr Blackstaff seemed to be on his best behaviour. He was wearing a dark grey suit of impeccable cut in place of the usual tweed. He began by offering his most sincere condolences for such a tragic bereavement. He went on to explain that the Dean had taken charge of the funeral arrangements. It was only right in the circumstances that the Chapter of Compton Minster should oversee the last rites of one of their own. The Dean, he went on, liked taking charge of arrangements for almost everything. That, probably, was why he was Dean in the first place. The service itself was planned, subject, of course to Mrs Cockburn’s approval, for the Wednesday afternoon the following week. The delay was because the Dean had managed to locate John Eustace’s twin brother James in New York. He was returning on the fastest transatlantic liner available and would be back in time to attend the funeral service in person. The cathedral authorities, Dr Blackstaff went on, intended to say farewell to her brother with the ecclesiastical equivalent of full military honours. There was talk of a memorial plaque in the north transept under the cathedral’s finest stained glass window, hundreds of years old. The burial itself would be in the graveyard of the little church just behind the house where they were sitting. It had been the wish of Eustace himself.

  For the first time since she had been in Fairfield Park Augusta Cockburn was impressed. She might have to fire all the servants in the house. But it seemed that the Dean and Chapter could be left in post for a little longer.

  ‘I am very happy with these arrangements,’ she said. ‘Things seem to have been very competently handled.’ She graced the doctor with a thin suspicion of a smile. ‘But forgive me, doctor, if I ask about my brother’s last hours. It is only natural for his closest relatives to want to know everything possible. And you were the last person to see him alive.’

  Dr Blackstaff was well prepared for this, possibly too well prepared. Andrew McKenna had given him a blow-by-blow account of his inquisition by Augusta Cockburn. ‘It was as if she didn’t believe a single word I said,’ he had told the doctor. ‘She’s got eyes that seem to look right into your head.’ Blackstaff had considered blinding Mrs Cockburn with medical science. He had checked out in his medical books a fleet, a veritable armada, of terms relating to heart conditions that only the fully qualified would understand. Then he thought he would probably have to explain every single one of them. He resolved on a different approach. He had practised it over and over again till he felt prepared for anything.

  ‘Let me speak as a friend as much as a doctor,’ he began, his eyes fixed on a Dutch painting over the mantelpiece. ‘Over the years your brother and I had grown very close. I think I can truly say that he was my closest friend in Compton as I was his. Of course he was close to many of the people in the cathedral but I always felt he found it more relaxing to talk to somebody who came from a different, a less exacting world.’

  Why isn’t he looking at me? said Augusta Cockburn to herself. She too stole a quick glance at the painting on the opposite wall. It showed a domestic scene in an Amsterdam household, a group of servants cleaning a great hall under the watchful eye of a person Augusta presumed to be their mistress. She noticed that they had missed a very obvious pile of dust on one of the dressers. Really, she thought, even then standards were dropping fast. More staff to be fired.

  ‘I had noticed over a period of a year or so that your brother’s heart might be deteriorating,’ the doctor went on, shifting his gaze now to the logs burning in the grate. ‘He became tired quite easily. He wasn’t able to walk as far as he had done in the past. Sometimes when he had to take one of the great services in the cathedral or preach a sermon on some important occasion, it wore him out. This could, of course, be the normal process of people slowing down in middle age. Nothing concrete was ever revealed under examination. And believe me, Mrs Cockburn,’ suddenly he did look her straight in the eye, ‘I examined him many times.’

  ‘Was he worried about something, Dr Blackstaff? I have been told that anxiety can cause all sorts of problems.’

  ‘No, no, he wasn’t worried. I would have been the first to know if he had been. He wasn’t worried at all,’ said the doctor, who knew better than any man on earth just how worried John Eustace had been in the last months of his life.

  A sliver, a scintilla of a suspicion passed through Augusta Cockburn’s mind. Did the man protest too much? Was he too telling her a pack of lies?

  ‘To come to his last hours, if I may.’ The doctor paused briefly, running through his story in his mind yet again. ‘He came to see me about ten o’clock on the evening before he died. He was feeling unwell. On examination he was suffering from a condition known as cardiac disfibrillation, a sort of racing of the heart. It could be that all sorts of things were going wrong, but we do not at present have the means to detect what those might be. I gave him something to ease the condition and a draught to help him sleep. I advised him against returning to his own house at that time. I thought it was merely a precaution. I did not imagine that John would never see his own house again.’ The doctor turned from staring into the fire to look at Augusta Cockburn and he shook his head sadly.

  ‘The next morning, there was little change. I examined him again. I gave him some more medicine. But it was no good.
Whatever was wrong with his heart, whatever pieces of human equipment were malfunctioning, his God called him home just after ten o’clock.’ The doctor paused again. ‘I don’t believe he was in any great pain. His heart just stopped working and he was gone.’

  ‘And why is nobody allowed to see him before he is buried? Why is he locked up in the undertaker’s as if he had the plague?’

  Dr Blackstaff had known this was coming. ‘He told me several times over the last few years that he didn’t want any procession of people peering in at him when he was gone.’

  The doctor was not prepared for the next salvo.

  ‘When did he tell you? What were you doing? Were you in this house or in his?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly where it was,’ the doctor said, ‘not exactly. But he certainly said it.’

  ‘You can’t remember where you were when my brother said such a strange thing? You can’t remember?’ Augusta Cockburn’s voice rang with scorn.

  ‘Mrs Cockburn,’ the doctor said in his most authoritative tones, ‘believe me, in the course of my professional duties, I have a great many confidential conversations with my patients. I carry around in my head all sorts of wishes and requests relating to what people want to happen when they die. I cannot be expected to recall exactly where I was on each and every occasion.’

  ‘But you might have muddled them up, might you not, doctor? Somebody else might have told you they wished to remain locked up in their coffin like a criminal. If you can’t remember where you were, how can anybody be sure that you’ve got the right person? Somebody else might have told you they didn’t wish to be seen.’

  Dr Blackstaff shook his head. ‘I know I am right,’ he said.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared him for the next blast.