David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

Powerscourt found the great doors into the Abbey Church of Sainte Foy closed on his return. The pilgrims were huddled together, sitting on the ground on the opposite side of the square, guarded by two policemen, like prisoners being taken to the guillotine. Inspector Leger shrugged.

‘We have had a visit from the Mayor while you were away,’ he said. ‘The pilgrims are not welcome here in Conques, he told us. No hotel will give them rooms. Nobody will serve them food. Even the bar up the street will refuse their custom.’

‘He said they had defiled the town,’ Lady Lucy cut in, ‘that a place of God had been turned into a charnel house by people pretending to be pilgrims. I think he runs the wine shop, this Mayor, Francis. He smelt of drink. You could see imaginary rows of onions hanging from his neck and a beret on his head, if you know what I mean. And he had a priest with him.’

Powerscourt wondered suddenly if the priest was a regular customer, checking to see if the Mayor’s wares could be turned into the blood of Christ.

‘And he said more of the same, the priest,’ Lady Lucy went on. ‘Pilgrims not welcome, pilgrims desecrating one of the holiest sites in France, pilgrims defiling the memory of one of her greatest saints. Nothing but sinners and a murderer in the priest’s view. We are meant to leave here within the hour.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt wearily. ‘Was Father Kennedy any use? Didn’t he try launching an appeal to Christian charity, to the stuff about forgiveness of sins?’

‘I’m afraid the Father was too preoccupied with consuming some of the creamier products of the bakery up the street, Francis. He tried but it was no good. You can’t take anything seriously if it comes from a man with his mouth full of eclair.’

‘He got his order in before the Mayor arrived, did he?’ said Powerscourt. ‘He must have been quick off the mark.’

‘He was,’ said Lady Lucy sadly. ‘The Inspector has had a conversation with young Alex Bentley about accommodation. They think the best plan is to return to the Auberge des Montagnes in Espeyrac for this night. It would be too far for us to travel on to the next place where he’s booked hotels.’

‘What about the funeral?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Aren’t the pilgrims allowed to bury their dead? Can’t they even see Stephen Lewis put in the ground and say their farewells?’

‘The authorities will bury him,’ said the Inspector. ‘The priest assured us that they will give him a proper burial in the town cemetery. They don’t want Father Kennedy anywhere near the service, they said. The poor man can’t be buried by a glutton in a dog collar.’

Powerscourt turned and looked at the terrible fate of the stone glutton in the tympanum seven centuries before, being pulled towards a fire under an enormous cooking pot, the fire of hell.

‘We should go now.’ The Inspector took command, searching the top of his head once more for the vanished hair. ‘I have told the pilgrims they are to march in single file. They are not allowed to talk to each other. It should only take a couple of hours.’

Back they went, back past the cobbled streets and the half-timbered houses, back through the Porte du Barry and over the Roman bridge pilgrims had crossed in their thousands centuries before. Those earlier pilgrims, Powerscourt thought, would have left Conques with their spirits high, inspired or terrified by the Last Judgement and the fate of the figures in the tympanum, astonished by the golden wonder of the statue of the saint, blessed by the mystery of the Mass. These pilgrims of 1906 were fleeing Conques like Lot and his family in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. If they looked back they would be turned into pillars of salt. Then he remembered that one important part of the story was the wrong way round. In the Bible the refugees were fleeing from the cities of iniquity, Sodom and Gomorrah. Here, on the road to Senergues and Espeyrac, Conques, the city behind them, was totally innocent. Iniquity lay among the pilgrims.

All through the early afternoon the pilgrims marched in silence, lost in their own thoughts or contemplating their sins. Michael Delaney knew what to do with the hotelkeeper to secure their lodging for the night. He felt sure that word of the latest murder would reach the hotel before they did.

‘Offer him double what we paid the night before,’ he said to Powerscourt as Espeyrac and its spire came into view once more. ‘That should keep the fellow quiet.’

Shortly after they arrived the Inspector and Powerscourt began another round of interviews. Where exactly were the pilgrims when the schoolchildren arrived? Could they put a cross on the page with the drawing of the square the Inspector had produced from memory? Did they see Stephen Lewis go round to the side of the building? Did they see anybody go with him? How well did they know Lewis? Had they ever met him before? Had they seen anybody come back from the part of the church with the fateful coffins? As he wrote down the answers in English while the Inspector wrote them in French, Powerscourt found that his brain had moved off somewhere else even as his pen raced across the page and his voice translated from French into English and back into French again. He had done this so many times already. Perhaps he and Lucy were on an interpreter’s course and this was the final exam, though a part of his brain told him it was certainly not the final test. They might be only halfway through. Maybe they would get a diploma at the end, whenever and wherever that might be. Then he noticed something else, something that worried him very much. The harsh words of the Mayor and the priest of Conques had made the bond between the pilgrims even stronger. They looked at the Inspector as if he was an enemy and at Powerscourt as if he might be an ally who would turn traitor and desert the cause at any moment. There was an air of hostility towards the policeman that there hadn’t been in Le Puy. Powerscourt wondered if the pilgrims were telling them the truth. He wondered if they would lie for a fellow pilgrim even if they thought he might be a murderer. His investigation, never easy in this case, was growing more difficult all the time.

There were more problems later that day when Jack O’Driscoll, the young newspaperman from Dublin, asked if he could have a word in the hotelkeeper’s office. The reporter looked anxious.

‘Please forgive me for troubling you, Lord Powerscourt,’ he began. ‘I’ve got something on my mind.’

For a brief second Powerscourt felt hope flooding through him. The young man knew who the murderer was. Jack O’Driscoll had the answers. A day or two more and he and Lucy could go home to their children.

‘You remember I’m a reporter, Lord Powerscourt, with one of the big papers in Dublin?’

Powerscourt thought he knew what was coming. He had been expecting it. ‘Of course I do, I remember you telling me all about it.’

‘It was my editor who sent me here,’ Jack O’Driscoll went on. ‘He said it would be good for me. They’ve always been good to me on the paper.’

Powerscourt thought that the customary cynicism of the newspaperman had not yet wormed its way into the O’Driscoll soul.

‘Now I think I’m letting them down, Lord Powerscourt, so I do.’

‘And why is that?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.

‘I think you know just as well as I do.’ O’Driscoll grinned back, a rather naughty grin. ‘Here we are sitting on one of the best newspaper stories of the twentieth century. I promised you before that I wouldn’t do anything or write anything without your approval. Well, I would like to ask you to reconsider, I really would.’

‘What do you think has changed since we spoke about this before?’ Powerscourt wasn’t going to make the young man’s life too easy.