David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

‘Thank you for being so frank,’ said the Mayor. ‘It is a most tricky problem.’ He stared out of his window into the Place du Martouret outside. ‘Let me ask you a most improper question, Lord Powerscourt. I give you my word that your answer will not go beyond these four walls where we sit now. You are known as a man of integrity. Let me ask you for your opinion, your advice, if you were not a man of integrity. Please pretend to be Machiavelli for a moment, if you would.’

Powerscourt thought very fast. Should he decline the gambit? Should he take it? He looked briefly at a portrait of the current President of France, Armand Fallieres, on the wall. History would come to help him. He took the gambit.

‘When I was young, Mr Mayor,’ he began, ‘I was fascinated by two of the great cardinals who gave such wise, if devious, advice to their kings, Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin. Even looking at their portraits you could tell that they too were Machiavellian in their approach. I speak now as Cardinal Mazarin. This is what I think he would say. Get rid of the pilgrims as fast as you can. Suppose the police do find the murderer, if there is one. There will have to be a trial. Do you want these witnesses to take up permanent residence in the Hotel St Jacques? Do you want the English and American newspapers writing articles about St Michel, Crag of Death? Horror Strikes in Holy City? Let the murderer be found in some other place, some other town. Let them have the problems of solving the crime and the problems of the prosecution. Put the wretched pilgrims on the first train, carriage or horse you can find and bid them God speed.

‘Once they know they’re going,’ Mazarin Powerscourt was getting into his stride now, ‘you can start on Michael Delaney. He would feel grateful, would he not, for the liberation of his friends. Take him for every charity you can think of. Separate him from as many dollars as you can. Sleep easier in your beds. The problem is not with you any more, the problem is en route to the little town of Saugues, next stop, I think, on the pilgrims’ way.’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘How was that, Mr Mayor?’

Louis Jacquet laughed. ‘Very good, Lord Powerscourt. I think you’re in the wrong profession. You should have been a politician. There’s still time, mind you, there’s still time.’

Back in the Hotel St Jacques things were moving fast. With Lady Lucy as translator and Alex Bentley as transcriber the witnesses were being polished off at remarkable speed. Lady Lucy was using all her wiles on the Sergeant, a little smile here, an occasional request for assistance with a particular word there, interested queries about his grandchildren in the intervals between witnesses. The Sergeant was captivated. Had she but known it, Lady Lucy was surrounded on both sides by admirers, though the Sergeant did not fit the description of knight errant as well as Alex Bentley. Father Kennedy was surprisingly nervous as he gave his account of the day of John Delaney’s death. Brother White was monosyllabic, thinking perhaps of all the possible beatings he was going to miss during his time away on pilgrimage. The clearest witness was Stephen Lewis, the solicitor from Frome in Somerset. He had only had occasional dealings with the criminal classes of Frome. One of his colleagues looked after those, but he knew what was required, clear and unambiguous reporting of his activities that day, refusal to be drawn into any speculation about any of the other suspects, a pleasant and open countenance. As she listened to them all Lady Lucy thought that any one of them could have been a murderer. All their statements, even a few days after the event, were woolly about exact times. The Sergeant even allowed the last interview to run on beyond the sacred hour of twelve o’clock, lunchtime for all God-fearing Frenchmen, and ended the morning session at four minutes past. There was only one interview left now, Michael Delaney himself, due at two o’clock sharp.

After he left the Town Hall, wondering if he had given too much away, Powerscourt climbed up the Rue Meymard and the Rue Cardinal de Polignac to the Bishop’s Palace beneath the cathedral. It was uphill all the way to the house of God. His interview was short for the Bishop was old and frail and suffering from a heavy cold. Powerscourt introduced himself as an investigator working for Michael Delaney. He passed on Delaney’s wish to make a donation to a fund for the restoration of the cathedral. The Bishop was very grateful.

‘I have to tell you, however, Lord Powerscourt, that I am more concerned with the souls of the pilgrims than I am with Mr Delaney’s gold. We have made arrangements to hold the funeral of that poor soul in St Michael’s Church behind the Hotel de Ville every afternoon now for the past two days. But the police won’t let us bury him. Maybe we can conduct the service tomorrow. Every day since I heard it, I have thanked God for the return of the pilgrims. I pray that these ones are but the first detachment of a mighty army of Christian soldiers marching to Santiago. Did you know that the very first pilgrim to Compostela was one of my predecessors, a Bishop of Le Puy in the tenth century? Remember that as you march out down the cathedral steps, young man. A thousand years of pilgrimage will be with you in spirit.’

Powerscourt asked if the Bishop hoped the pilgrims could start on their way soon.

‘Of course I do,’ the old man replied, ‘but we have to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. The civic authorities must decide. I do hope they walk, mind you.’ The Bishop looked very concerned about the walking. ‘Somebody told me that some of these pilgrims are going to take the train or be ferried about in carriages like the fashionable ladies in Paris.’

Powerscourt thought he made the fashionable ladies of Paris sound like the whores of Babylon.

‘Please tell them from me, young man,’ he said to Powerscourt as he hobbled to the door to bid him farewell, ‘tell them they’ve got to walk. It won’t do their souls any good at all if they take the train. It really won’t.’

Michael Delaney finished his interview at half past two. The Sergeant gathered up his papers and prepared to return to his police station. He told Lady Lucy that he would return in the morning to take her and Powerscourt to the St Michel rock. He wanted to show them the site of the incident in person.

Alex Bentley went to his room to write up his notes of the interviews. He wanted to make a good impression on the investigator from London. Princeton men could organize their data just as well as the young gentlemen from Oxford or Cambridge.

Powerscourt’s interview with the Chief of Police was postponed. When he returned to the hotel he found a chess tournament in progress in the dining room. Charlie Flanagan had discovered that the Hotel St Jacques had four sets of chessmen and vigorous battles were being fought all over the room. Willie John Delaney, the Irish pilgrim suffering from an incurable disease, was master of the board, dispatching all who faced him with a checkmate within fifteen or twenty moves. Lady Lucy was deep in conversation with Maggie Delaney in a far corner of the room. Maggie was holding forth on the subject of human wickedness. It made her very happy. If it wasn’t bad enough that all these pilgrims were so burdened with guilt at the crimes they had committed that they had to travel across the Atlantic in a desperate quest for forgiveness, here they were now, virtually encased in the flames of hell. Maggie Delaney was convinced that John Delaney had been murdered. The wrath of God must surely come upon them. Lady Lucy told Powerscourt later that day that Maggie Delaney was a living example of how the contemplation of other people’s sins can make you happy.