Death of a Chancellor Read online

  ‘Are you a beneficiary under my brother’s will, Dr Blackstaff? Has he left you a lot of money?’

  Blackstaff turned bright red. Augusta Cockburn thought this denoted guilt. In reality it was anger that such a question, such an imputation, be directed at him.

  ‘No, to the best of my knowledge, I am not, madam. And now, if you will excuse me, I have patients to see to. The living have rights as well as the dead. I wish you a very good morning, madam.’

  With that the doctor picked up his bag and strode from the room.

  Augusta Cockburn stared at the doctor’s departing back. She continued to stare at the door long after he had gone. She was not a bad woman, Augusta Cockburn. She had loved her brother. She loved her family, except, of course, for her lying husband. But the circumstances of her life brought out all the worst aspects of her character.

  She picked up the latest edition of the Grafton Mercury, lying on the table in front of her. She wondered if there was anything about her brother inside. She gave a little cry when she came to Patrick Butler’s favourite paragraph. Charles John Whitney Eustace one of the richest men in England. An enormous portfolio of shares. Mother an American heiress. She read it again. She knew her brother was rich but not as rich as this paper said he was. It definitely did say he was one of the richest men in England. How did they know that, the people in this little backwater, miles from civilization? How did this twopenny-halfpenny scandal sheet, the Grafton Mercury, filled with information about the price of pigs and meetings of the parish councils, know it? Had all of Compton known it? Did the money, heaven forbid, have anything to do with his death?

  Augusta Cockburn stood and stared out of the window at her late brother’s garden. A couple of robins were hopping energetically on the lawn. A light rain was falling. She hadn’t believed the butler. She hadn’t believed the doctor either. Dr Blackstaff might have been a more professional liar than McKenna or McKendrick or whatever the wretched man was called – doctors have to lie every day of their working lives, she thought – but there was something suspicious about his story too.

  One phrase kept echoing round her head. One of the richest men in England. Maybe she could move house again, back to a proper address. One of the richest men in England. She could provide properly for her four children. She could pay off all the debts her wretched husband had accumulated. One of the richest men in England. She could pay her husband off with a large sum of money so that she never had to set eyes on him again. They would, for once, have enough money to live on without worrying about how the next bill was going to be paid. One of the richest men in England.

  Augusta Cockburn moved to the far side of the room and went into her brother’s study. She locked the door, gazing quickly behind her to make sure she was not being watched. She opened the drawers of the great desk where her brother did his work. She checked through all of them. She looked in the little cubby-holes on the top, full of writing paper and envelopes. She checked that there were no secret compartments where important documents might be hidden away. She didn’t find what she was looking for. She unlocked the door and rang the bell.

  ‘McKendrick, or whatever your name is,’ she said, ‘I wish to go to the railway station. I have to go back to London. I shall return in a few days’ time. Order the carriage.’

  ‘Certainly madam.’ Andrew McKenna rejoiced as he heard of their tormentor’s departure. He and his colleagues had escaped from jail for a few days at least.

  Mrs Augusta Cockburn was returning to London to find a private investigator to look into her brother’s death. She suspected very strongly that he had been murdered.

  3

  Anne Herbert was waiting for Patrick Butler in the coffee house on Exchequergate, a couple of hundred yards from the west front of the cathedral. Patrick was late. He was, Anne smiled to herself, usually late. Just had to talk to a couple of fellows, he would say with that great smile of his.

  Anne Herbert was tall and slim, with dark hair, a regular nose and very fetching green eyes. It was two years now since she had lost her husband, and been left with the two young children in the little house on the edge of the Cathedral Close. ‘She’s so pretty, that Anne Herbert,’ the Dean had said to John Eustace after arranging her new accommodation, ‘I’m sure she’ll be married inside a couple of years, if not sooner.’ Marriage had seemed a distant, an impossible option to Anne for the first year. She had loved her husband very dearly and found the prospect of a replacement inconceivable. One or two of the younger curates had tried and failed to woo her. Then five months ago, she had met Patrick at one of the Dean’s tea parties. He had simply walked up to her, cup of tea in one hand and a large piece of the Deanery’s best chocolate cake in the other, and said, ‘How do you do. I’m Patrick Butler.’ They had been seeing each other with increasing frequency ever since. The Dean had prophesied once more, saying this time to his housekeeper that he expected them to be married within the year. The Dean planned to conduct the service himself. He was searching, he told the Bishop, for a suitable passage of scripture concerning the scribes in the Bible to pay tribute to Patrick’s profession.

  Then Butler himself walked in and ordered two cups of coffee. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said with a smile. ‘Had to talk to a man down at the cathedral. How are the children?’

  Anne smiled back at him. ‘The children are fine,’ she said. ‘Have you had any reaction to the article about Mr Eustace? Everybody in Compton is talking about it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve got some news on that front. But first I need to ask you this.’ He leaned forward in his chair in case they could be overheard. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you? I mean you were born here, weren’t you?’

  Anne’s father was the local stationmaster. ‘Yes, I have.’

  The young man pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. ‘Ten months ago, just before I came to work here, one of the vicars choral simply disappeared. That’s right, isn’t it?’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Singing person by the name of William Gordon, my man in the cathedral tells me.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. But what of it? Everybody’s forgotten about it by now.’

  ‘But he wasn’t the first one to disappear, was he? There was another one, about eighteen months back. I can’t find anybody who remembers his name, though. Even the old boy in the cathedral couldn’t remember him.’

  Anne Herbert looked at Patrick. He was very excited. Then she remembered a young vicar choral called Peter Conway coming to lunch when her husband was still alive. He had great plans for his future, he had told the young couple, hoping to end up as a choirmaster in one of the great cathedrals of England. Then he vanished without trace. Nobody paid very much attention to either disappearance. Vicars choral, for some unknown reason, had a reputation for flighty and irresponsible behaviour.

  ‘I think he was called Peter Conway,’ she said very quietly. A couple of middle-aged ladies were planning a shopping expedition to Exeter in very loud voices a couple of tables away, their voices bright with expectation and greed. ‘But what of it, Patrick?’ Something in the nature of the young man’s occupation always worried Anne Herbert. It was all too excitable. Patrick and his colleagues were often obsessed with the dark side of human nature. As usual, he had laughed when she told him of her anxieties.

  ‘Heavens above, Anne,’ he had said, ‘do you want everything to run like your father’s trains, punctual down to the last minute, schedules planned months in advance? In the newspaper world, believe me, variety is the spice of life!’

  Now he looked over at the middle-aged ladies. ‘Think of the reaction of respectable people like that when they read the article, Anne.’

  ‘Which article, Patrick? The one about how rich Mr Eustace was?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Patrick Butler, turning back to inspect Anne Herbert’s eyes. They were still green, still the same colour he often thought about last thing at night before he fell asleep. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself. Two v
anished vicars choral, missing, possibly deceased. Late vicars choral. Singing for their suppers no more. One dead Chancellor Eustace, called to his maker long before his time was up. Three of them altogether. I think I’m going to call it the Curse of Compton Minster. That should cause quite a stir!’

  Anne was appalled. She had spent most of her adult years surrounded by the clergy and the choristers of this cathedral city. Now Patrick was going to blaspheme against her household gods, bringing the sordid techniques of his occupation to bear against the traditions of her upbringing. It was the profane assaulting the sacred.

  ‘You can’t possibly write such an article, Patrick. Nobody knows those two men are dead. I don’t think anybody even suggested it at the time. And you can’t be suggesting that there was anything suspicious about Mr Eustace’s death. That’s ridiculous.’

  Patrick Butler thought it was time to beat a tactical retreat. Maybe certain things had to be sacrificed in the cause of love. But he wasn’t going to give up easily.

  ‘I wasn’t going to run this article soon, Anne, if it ever runs at all. I shall have to wait until after the funeral. And if it really upsets you, then I may never run it at all.’

  Lady Lucy Powerscourt had been planning her campaign for over six months. Like all great generals she had carried out a number of reconnaissance missions. The final details had been fixed for some time. All that mattered, as with most military missions, was the timing. If that misfired, her strategy could collapse in a matter of minutes. She looked over at her husband, peacefully reading the newspapers in his favourite chair by the fire. It was now a fortnight since Powerscourt had stepped ashore in Portsmouth. Life was beginning to return to what she would regard as normal. He had spent a great deal of time with his children, mostly listening as they filled him in on the details of their lives while he was away, details that now seemed as important to Powerscourt as the schemes and stratagems he had hatched against the Boers thousands of miles from Markham Square. The previous evening he had taken Lucy to a concert where a young German pianist had taken their breath away with his interpretation of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Afterwards there had been a romantic dinner by candlelight where Powerscourt had repeated his private vow to her. Semper Fidelis. Forever Faithful.

  ‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy to the figure in the armchair. It was a slightly hesitant ‘Francis,’ as if she was not quite sure about what was to come. Like all famous commanders she was slightly nervous at the start of her operations.

  ‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, putting down his newspaper and smiling with pleasure at the sight of his wife, ‘something tells me you are up to something.’

  Lady Lucy was momentarily taken aback. How could he know what she was about after just one word? Then she rallied. ‘It’s just there’s something I wanted to discuss with you.’

  Powerscourt rose to his feet and leant on the mantelpiece. ‘Can I have a guess as to what this is all about?’ he said cheerfully. ‘Let me see, perhaps the kitchen is in need of modernization, though I don’t think it is going to be that. Change the bedrooms all around? New carpets for the hall? I don’t think it’s any of those but I could be wrong. Maybe it has something to do with this room we’re in now?’

  Lady Lucy blushed slightly, embarrassed at the nature of her plans having been so easily rumbled. ‘It does have to do with this room, Francis, you’re quite right.’

  ‘And what were you proposing to do here, Lucy?’

  Before she could reply there came a slight apologetic cough. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, always coughed apologetically when he entered a room. Powerscourt had often wondered if the man had coughed slightly before proposing to his wife or stating his marriage vows in church.

  ‘Excuse me, my lord, my lady. There is somebody waiting downstairs who wishes to speak with you, my lord.’

  Powerscourt looked apprehensive all of sudden. Was his peace, so ardently desired, so long awaited, about to be disturbed? ‘Does this person have a name, Rhys?’

  ‘Of course, my lord. Sorry, my lord. She is a Mrs Cockburn, Mrs Augusta Cockburn.’

  ‘Then you’d better show her up.’ Lady Lucy looked at her husband carefully as she left the room. He was looking miserable and he hadn’t looked miserable once since his homecoming. Just when her plans were coming to fruition too.

  Augusta Cockburn had decided to dress in mourning clothes for her visit. She thought it might make a better impression. Perched demurely on the edge of the Powerscourt sofa, she poured out her story. Powerscourt decided not to interrupt. Her suspicions about her brother’s death. The butler whose account she did not believe. The doctor whose account she did not believe. The strange, almost inexplicable fact that nobody could pay their last respects to the dead man because he was sealed up for all eternity in his coffin in the Compton undertaker’s. Her overpowering sense that something was being concealed and that that something might be very terrible indeed. The fact, if it was relevant, that her brother had been one of the richest men in England.

  ‘I would like you to investigate the matter, Lord Powerscourt,’ she concluded. ‘They say you are one of the finest investigators in the country.’

  Powerscourt wondered precisely what her motives might be. Was she a humble seeker of the truth about her brother’s death? He rather doubted it. Where did the money fit in? But most of all he wished she hadn’t come. He didn’t want to be bothered with another investigation so soon after his return.

  ‘I have to tell you, Mrs Cockburn, that it is most unlikely that I shall be able to take the case on. I have only just returned from a year and more on service in South Africa. I have hardly had time to reacquaint myself with my wife and children.’

  ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t take you long, Lord Powerscourt. Not a man of your abilities.’

  ‘Perhaps I could just ask one or two questions, Mrs Cockburn. Do you know the details of your brother’s will?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not,’ said Augusta Cockburn vaguely. ‘Not exactly. It’s just possible that he left it in our house or at our solicitor’s, I’m not sure. I believe my husband may have helped him with it, but George, Mr Cockburn, is away at present.’

  Augusta Cockburn was a much more accomplished liar than Andrew McKenna or Dr Blackstaff. Maybe the years with her deceitful husband had taught her something after all.

  ‘Did your brother ever give any indication about his intentions in his will?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘Not specifically, Lord Powerscourt, no. But he always said that my family would be well provided for. Sorry, I should have told you before. My brother was not married. There were no children.’

  ‘And what do you think actually happened to your brother?’ asked Powerscourt, the investigator in him always fascinated by puzzles and mysteries.

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out, Lord Powerscourt.’

  ‘Do you think he was murdered?’

  Silence fell over the Powerscourt drawing room. It lasted quite a long time. Powerscourt waited for her reply.

  ‘He certainly could have been, Lord Powerscourt. I don’t think we can rule it out.’

  ‘He didn’t by any chance suffer from a debilitating illness? Something that could have disfigured his face?’

  ‘Not as far as I am aware, Lord Powerscourt. And I’m sure the doctor would have mentioned it if he had been.’

  ‘Very good, Mrs Cockburn, you have presented the facts of the affair very clearly.’ And not all of them completely truthfully, Powerscourt thought, but which part was fiction and which the truth he did not yet know. He checked the address on her card. ‘If you can leave me until this afternoon, I will let you know then whether I can take the case on or not. I must speak with my wife.’

  Two minutes after Augusta Cockburn’s departure Lady Lucy was back in the drawing room. She found her husband pacing up and down. She thought he was swearing under his breath.

  ‘Johnny and I used to do a lot of this walking up and down on that ship on the way home, Lucy.
Helped to pass the time.’ Now it was her turn to wait until he was ready to speak. It was a full five minutes before he sat down and told her the details of the death of John Eustace.

  ‘That poor woman, his sister,’ said Lady Lucy sadly.

  ‘You wouldn’t say poor woman if you spent any time with her. She’s bitter and twisted inside as though she had a corkscrew in her heart.’

  Lady Lucy winced. ‘What are you going to do, Francis? Are you going to take it on?’

  Powerscourt started walking up and down again. ‘I really don’t know. I’ve only just got home.’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if you’re going back to South Africa.’

  ‘Do you think I should do it, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, stopping by his wife’s chair.

  ‘You know what I think about these things,’ said Lady Lucy very quietly, looking at her husband’s face. ‘Let’s suppose this poor clergyman was murdered. Somebody else may get murdered after that. And then there may be more victims. I think you have to remember the number of people who may be left alive after you’ve finished, the ones who might have been killed if you hadn’t come along.’

  Powerscourt smiled suddenly. ‘Lucy what were you just about to say earlier this morning when that woman was announced?’

  Lady Lucy blushed. Interior decoration didn’t seem quite so important now. ‘I was just going to suggest, only a suggestion, Francis, that we might . . .’ She paused briefly, then her courage returned. ‘We might just redecorate this room. New sofas, new wallpaper, that sort of thing.’

  Powerscourt took her in his arms. ‘You go right ahead, Lucy, my love. Just as long as I can hang on to that chair of mine. After all, I may not be about very much for a while.’

  Five days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the nave of Compton Cathedral, waiting for the funeral service of John Eustace to begin. He was early. The ancient bells, high up in the great tower, were tolling very slowly for one of their own. Powerscourt had arrived at Fairfield Park as a guest of the family, an old family friend from London come down to help Mrs Cockburn through the ordeal of the funeral and the revelation of the will. So far Powerscourt had asked no questions. He had chatted inconsequentially with the servants. He had spent a lot of time in the dead man’s bedroom and in his study. He had walked the short journey between the Park and the doctor’s house a number of times. He was waiting until he became a more familiar figure before he talked to anybody, but he was careful to be as charming as he could to every servant he came across. Augusta Cockburn was astonished at the improvements in daily life in Fairfield Park since Powerscourt’s arrival. Baths were actually hot. Meals were served at the proper temperature. It’s probably because he’s a man, she told herself bitterly.