David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the Ambassador. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Right, young man,’ Ambassador Reid turned to the languid young man beside him, ‘this is what I want you to do. Take a cab. Go to 24 Markham Square. Find me Lord Francis Powerscourt and bring him straight back here. Immediately. You got that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the young man, heading for the door at considerable speed.

‘You’d better take him this cable so he can see what’s going on.’ James Whitney took the message from his master and hurried off through the wet streets of London. It was shortly after eleven o’clock in the morning.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in his favourite armchair by the fireplace in his upstairs drawing room reading a pamphlet by the suffragettes. He was just under six feet tall with curly brown hair and deep blue eyes that inspected the world with interest mixed with irony. He found some of the suffragette arguments quite convincing. His wife Lady Lucy was looking at the catalogue for a forthcoming auction of antique furniture. There was a loud knock at the front door and Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, slipped into the room.

He coughed. Rhys always coughed. ‘There’s a young man to see you, sir. From the American Embassy, sir. Mr James Whitney.’

The young man strode into the room and shook Powerscourt and Lady Lucy firmly by the hand.

‘Please forgive me for rushing in like this, sir, but my mission is most urgent. Ambassador Reid has sent me here to bring you to him at once. It’s terribly urgent, sir.’

Powerscourt smiled at the young man. ‘Am I being kidnapped by American forces, Mr Whitney? May I not learn something of what all this is about?’

‘My orders are to bring you at once, Lord Powerscourt. I have a cable for you to read on the way. My cab is waiting.’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I will come with you. You will remember, Lucy, the circumstances of my departure, virtually taken prisoner by our young friend here.’ With that he kissed her goodbye and was escorted off towards the American Embassy.

As they rattled along in their cab Powerscourt found himself fascinated by the little he learned from Delaney’s cable. The case interested him. A band of pilgrims marching towards a holy shrine as people had done in centuries past to Canterbury or Rome. Some of these towns on the route he knew already, Conques and Figeac and Cahors. He had always wanted to see the cloisters at Moissac. Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees spelt high romance with the death and the Chanson de Roland . Pamplona, he thought, had something to do with bulls.

‘Lord Powerscourt.’ Ambassador Reid had risen from his desk to greet his visitor. ‘Thank you so much for coming so promptly. Thank you indeed.’

‘I had little choice, Mr Ambassador,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Your young man here virtually carried me off at gunpoint.’

The Ambassador laughed. ‘Tell me, Lord Powerscourt, now you have read that cable you know about as much as we do. What do you think of it?’

‘I think the immediate position is difficult, Mr Ambassador. They can be very obstinate, these French policemen, and the French bureaucracy is never quick. Maybe Mr Delaney needs to put his hand in his pocket.’

‘What do you mean, put his hand in his pocket?’ said the American quickly. He didn’t want to see his Embassy and his country dragged through the courts of Le Puy on charges of bribery and corruption.

‘I don’t mean pressing notes into the hands or the pockets of this Sergeant and his men, Mr Ambassador,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘I was wondering about a contribution to the restoration fund of the cathedral, maybe. These ancient buildings swallow money whole, as you know. Another contribution or even the endowment of a charity to look after the widows and orphans of the local police force, something like that, perhaps?’

Whitelaw Reid had known as soon as he heard the Commissioner’s description that this was his man. Now he was certain.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Ambassador Reid, ‘let’s not beat about the bush. Will you take the case?’

‘I will,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Excellent,’ said the Ambassador. ‘May I tell Delaney the news?’

‘You may,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Is it too soon to ask how soon you will be able to depart?’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘let me see. I would like, with your permission, to bring my wife along in the first instance. Her French is better than mine. Two translators will be better than one. I have one or two commissions I would like to perform before we go. I wish to brief my companion in arms Johnny Fitzgerald about the case and to leave him here for now. It may be necessary to pursue various inquiries here or in Ireland about the background of some of these pilgrims. I hope we could set off this afternoon, Mr Ambassador.’

‘Very good, Lord Powerscourt, that all sounds in order. May I thank you again for taking the case on. Let me quote the words of your poet John Bunyan, if I may, with yourself in the role of the pilgrim:

He who would valiant be

’Gainst all disaster,

Let him in constancy

Follow the Master.

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

‘May I wish you God speed, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Who knows? Perhaps we shall meet true valour on the way.’

Michael Delaney thought his pilgrims were bearing up remarkably well as they neared the end of their third day of incarceration in the Hotel St Jacques. They knew that a miracle worker called Lord Francis Powerscourt and his wife were travelling through France at breakneck speed to help them. Father Kennedy had organized little prayer meetings in his room for interested parties. Patrick MacLoughlin, the trainee priest from Boston, was a regular participant. Shane Delaney, the man on pilgrimage for the life of his wife Sinead, had written her a long letter. In his first draft he waxed lyrical, for Shane, on the subject of the food. Then he could hear his wife’s voice in his ear: ‘What in God’s name do you think you are doing, Shane Delaney, here’s me dying now in a rainy Swindon, and all you can do is tell me about the feasts of French food in some place I can’t pronounce, all stuffed out with that disgusting garlic, no doubt. You’re not on some bloody holiday, Shane Delaney; if you’ve got nothing better to do while you’re stuck in this hotel, get down on your bloody knees and pray for me. That’s what you’re there for, in heaven’s name.’ So Shane had torn that version up and composed another letter which might not have been one hundred per cent accurate, but would surely save him from the wrath of Swindon. He talked of regular prayer meetings with Father Kennedy. He said he was going to pray for her in front of the Black Madonna in the cathedral. He mentioned, towards the end of his letter, which nearly filled a page, that the Bishop of Le Puy would be coming to visit them in the next day or two. Sinead had always had a weakness for the church hierarchy, monsignors better than priests, abbots better than monsignors, bishops better than nearly everyone else. Shane Delaney did not mention the death of John Delaney. If he had, he was sure, he would be summoned home on the next train.

Waldo Mulligan, the man who worked for the senator in Washington, had come on pilgrimage to break off an affair he had been having with a colleague’s wife. The woman’s name was Caroline. To his horror he found during these days in the hotel that Caroline had followed him across the Atlantic. He saw her slender form and dark hair disappearing round the corridors of the Hotel St Jacques. At night she came to him in his dreams, turning into a wraith and vanishing when he reached out to touch her on the other side of his bed. He didn’t know what to do. He found that the hotel bar had a good supply of Irish whiskey and Waldo would sit by himself in some dark corner twirling his drink round the glass and nursing his broken heart.