David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

Some of the congregation’s heads were beginning to slip as the sermon went on. Behind the coffin the six pallbearers waited to resume their duties. The acolyte with the cross waited patiently at the bottom of the pulpit steps.

‘Today is a time of great sadness,’ said the Dean, laying aside his spectacles and looking around at his listeners, ‘for one of our number has been taken from us before his time. He would have had many years of service to give to this cathedral and to this city. But is also a time for rejoicing.’ The Dean’s delivery lost a fraction of its former conviction at this point. The most acute of the sermon connoisseurs, the second tenor in the body of the vicars choral, who had attended theological college before losing his faith, later attributed the change to the Dean’s suspicion that his listeners no longer believed in heaven or hell. Assuming they ever had. The Dean ploughed on.

‘For if ever a man was going to take his place in the kingdom of heaven, that man was John Eustace. We rejoice today that he has gone to be with his Father in heaven. Though worms destroy my body, as the prophet Job tells us, yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. John Eustace, a good man, a meek man. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the meek for they shall also inherit the kingdom of heaven.’

The Dean collected his papers. The acolyte escorted him back to his position. As the choir began an anthem by Purcell, the six pallbearers brought the coffin back down the nave of Compton Minster. A fleet of carriages waited to take it and the mourners to the little cemetery behind Fairfield Park. The funeral of John Eustace was over. In forty-eight hours’ time, in the offices of Drake and Co., solicitors of Compton, his last will and testament was to be read to his survivors.

Lord Francis Powerscourt decided to walk the five miles from Hawke’s Broughton into Compton the following morning. He was exceedingly angry. He took no notice of the fine scenery he was passing through, the February sun casting its pale light across the hills and the valleys. The incident that caused his wrath had occurred just after breakfast. Mrs Augusta Cockburn was decidedly tetchy this morning, he had noticed. The nose seemed to have become more pronounced, the cheeks more hollow. She snapped at the servants even more than usual. But nothing could have prepared him for the onslaught.

‘And when do you intend to start work, Lord Powerscourt?’ had been the opening salvo.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Powerscourt, half immersed in the Grafton Mercury.

‘I said, Lord Powerscourt, when do you propose to start work? You have been accommodated here at my wish and at my expense to investigate the circumstances of my brother’s death.’ She lowered her voice slightly and peered crossly at the door in case any of the servants were listening. ‘So far as I can see you have done absolutely nothing except potter around this house and take advantage of your privileged position to attend various functions like my brother’s funeral and the small reception we gave here after the burial ceremony. If I did not know of your reputation, Lord Powerscourt, I should say you were a shirker and a scrounger. We have not discussed money but I am most reluctant to pay you a penny for anything you have done so far.’

Powerscourt had not been told off like this since he was about twelve years old. Then his reaction had been to hide in the top of the stables for as long as he could. This morning, he felt that charm would be the most potent form of defence.

‘My dear Mrs Cockburn,’ he began, ‘please forgive me if I appear to be moving slowly. As I explained to you the other day I felt it was important to win the trust of the servants here before questioning them closely. If I appear as an unknown person from an unknown world I shall automatically seem hostile to them. Very soon, I know, I shall have to come out in my true colours. But not yet. Not until I judge the time is ripe. On that, I fear, you just have to trust me. In all my previous cases the people who asked me to look into murder or blackmail or whatever it was have always left me to my own devices. I would be more than happy to provide you with some references if you wish. I could start with the Prime Minister.’

Mrs Cockburn snorted slightly. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ she said, ‘but I shall be watching, Lord Powerscourt. I shall be waiting for results.’ And with that she had marched out of the room.

Bloody woman, Powerscourt said to himself on his walk, bloody woman. He could see the minster spire now, rising out of the valley like a beacon. As he entered the streets of the little city he saw that flags were still flying at half mast from the Bishop’s Palace and County Hall in memory of the late Queen and Empress.

He was, he decided, looking forward to this meeting in the solicitor’s office. He suspected that there would be trouble with the will. He suspected there might be more than one.

Oliver Drake’s offices were right on the edge of the Cathedral Green, in a handsome eighteenth-century building with great windows looking out towards the west front of the minster. Powerscourt was shown into what must have been the drawing room on the first floor. Paintings of the cathedral adorned the walls. There was a long table in the centre, able to seat at least twelve. A fire was burning in the grate.

Oliver Drake himself was very tall, with a slight stoop. He was also painfully thin. His children sometimes said that he looked more like a pencil than a person. But he was the principal lawyer in Compton, with the complex and complicated business of the cathedral and its multiplicity of ancient statutes at the heart of his practice. To his right, appropriately enough, sat the Dean, dressed today in a suit of sober black with a small crucifix round his neck. The Dean already had a notebook and a couple of pens at the ready. Perhaps the man of God is better equipped for the tasks of this world, Powerscourt thought, than the laity he served. On the other side of Oliver Drake sat James Eustace, twin brother of the deceased. Powerscourt hadn’t been able to glean very much information about him from Augusta Cockburn. She seemed to think it inappropriate for strangers to know the extent to which some of her family had fallen. Gone to America, lost most of his money, drinking himself to death were the salient facts lodged in Powerscourt’s mind. Beside James Eustace sat Mrs Augusta Cockburn herself, looking, Powerscourt felt, like a very hungry hen. He himself was on the far side of Mrs Cockburn, furthest away from the seat of custom.

‘Let me say first of all,’ Oliver Drake had a surprisingly deep voice for one so skeletally thin, ‘how sorry we all at Drake’s were to hear of the death of John Eustace. The firm offers our condolences to his family and,’ he nodded gravely to the Dean, ‘to the cathedral. John Eustace had been a client of mine for a number of years, as are so many of his colleagues.’ A thin smile to the Dean this time.

‘I regret, however, to inform you this afternoon that there are complications, great complications in the testamentary dispositions of the late Mr Eustace. It is unlikely that there can be any satisfactory resolution to the problems today. I may have to take further advice. I may have to go to London.’

Powerscourt thought he made London sound like Samarkand or Timbuktu. But Augusta Cockburn was out of her stall faster than a Derby winner.

‘Complications?’ she snapped. ‘What complications?’

Oliver Drake did not look like a man who was used to interruptions on such occasions. Powerscourt wondered how he would manage if Augusta Cockburn gave him the full treatment, rudeness, insolence and insults all combined.