David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘Chief Constable told me about your occupation, Powerscourt,’ said the Dean, trying to warm himself in front of his fire. ‘Suggested I should send for you.’

‘What has happened?’ said Powerscourt, his mind alert from his ride through the snow. ‘Has there been a disaster of some kind?’

‘Disaster?’ snorted the Dean. ‘You could call it that. Or maybe worse.’ He pulled his dressing gown tighter round his powerful frame. ‘Let me give you the facts. On the far side of the cathedral you may have seen a little terrace called Vicars Close. That is where the vicars choral, the people who sing in the choir, live while they are with us. There is a large building at the bottom of the Close, the end nearest the cathedral, called Vicars Hall where they eat their meals. The kitchen there is huge. It has a great spit, large enough to roast an ox. At four thirty-five this morning, the porter found the remains of a man who had been roasted all night on that spit. He was almost unrecognizable, but the porter managed to identify him as Arthur Rudd, a senior member of the community of vicars choral.’

The Dean crossed himself very quickly. The Chief Constable bowed his head. Powerscourt looked at the fire. The flames of hell have come to this tiny city, he thought. For our God, he remembered the lines from the Old Testament, is a consuming fire, a fire that had sucked the last breath from the lungs of the unfortunate Arthur Rudd. Hieronymus Bosch and his apocalyptic vision of the torments of the damned are stalking the inhabitants of Compton Minster. What more tortures did he have in store for his victims?

‘This is terrible news,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Has a doctor been to inspect the body?’

The Dean nodded. In matters of practical efficiency the Dean had no equal in the Cathedral Close. On the higher questions of the nature of good and evil, of sin and redemption, he might not have been so strong.

‘Dr Williams is with him now. He is supervising the removal of the body from the Vicars Hall to the undertakers. He is going to conduct a preliminary investigation there. He should be joining us shortly. And,’ the Dean went on, with a faint note of distaste in his voice, ‘I have asked the Bishop to be here at six o’clock.’

‘Could I ask you, Powerscourt,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘if you have ever come across anything like this before?’

‘I have not,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It is appalling. Could I ask, Dean, if the dead man had a wife and children?’

‘He did not,’ replied the Dean, ‘but I must tell you two gentlemen that I am almost at a loss to know what to do in these circumstances.’ Powerscourt rather enjoyed the almost. It implied that the situation might be desperate, the enemy might be at the gates, the vandals might be about to enter Rome, but the Dean would remain master of events.

‘I’m not sure I understand you, Dean,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘The matter must be investigated in the normal way, however distasteful that may prove to the members of the church administration.’

‘Think of our situation, Chief Constable, think of it, I pray you,’ said the Dean, stretching his hands in front of him as if he was preaching a sermon and imploring the sinners to repentance. ‘We have just had various members of the national press on our doorstep after the unfortunate death of Chancellor Eustace. I have to say that in spite of our best efforts that publicity was not altogether favourable. I dread to think what those gentlemen may say if they return to report on a member of the cathedral Chapter roasted to death on a spit in the Vicars Hall. The millennial celebrations for the Abbey and Cathedral of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary are but weeks away. And the last thing the Church of England as a whole can afford is another scandal. Our congregations are not growing any larger, as you know, Chief Constable. One more scandal could see them fall yet further until we minister only to assemblies of devout old women and dying old age pensioners.’

No need to talk to the faithful about imagining the fires of hell any longer, Powerscourt thought flippantly. You had a perfect example of the flames operating here, right inside the Cathedral Close itself. There was a loud knock on the door. Dr Williams, a handsome young man in his early thirties carrying a large medical bag, and the Bishop himself took their seats in the Dean’s drawing room. Formal introductions were made. Even in these dreadful circumstances, Powerscourt said to himself, decency and good manners must prevail.

‘The doctor has just told me what happened,’ said the Bishop, ‘we met on our way over here. It’s truly terrible.’ The Bishop shook his head. Powerscourt remembered what the Dean had told him on the train to London. He doubted if expertise in the textual differences in the early versions of the Four Gospels would be much use to a bishop at a time like this. Maybe that other Moreton, Headmaster Moreton, accustomed to coping with scandals about drinking and debauchery among his pupils, might have been a better man in these circumstances. He looked closely at the Bishop. Episcopus, he remembered it said in Latin on the Bishop’s cathedra, or chair, in the ornate and beautiful choir stalls in the heart of the cathedral. Beatus Vir. The Bishop. A holy man. Like the Dean, the Bishop was tall, but not so powerfully built. He had a distinguished shock of grey hair, and eyes that seemed to look elsewhere, at the plains of Galilee perhaps, or the kingdom of God. He kept clasping and unclasping his hands.

‘Dr Williams,’ said Powerscourt, ‘have you had the time to complete a preliminary investigation of the late Arthur Rudd?’

‘I have,’ said the doctor.

‘Could I ask you a question, if I may? Was the man dead before he was put on the spit, or was he killed by the flames?’

The Dean looked shocked that such a question should be asked in his drawing room. The doctor took a quick glance at the Dean as if asking permission to proceed. The Dean, wrapping his dressing gown ever tighter around his body, nodded slightly.

‘I cannot be certain yet,’ said the doctor. ‘I shall have to conduct another examination when, forgive me, the body has cooled down further. But I am fairly sure he was dead before he was placed on the spit.’

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Powerscourt. He doubted if it would make much difference, but it might cast light on whether they were dealing with a complete madman, or merely a murderer with an advanced taste for the macabre.

‘Forgive me, Lord Powerscourt, but if the man had still been alive I am sure he would have screamed out in his agony. Other inhabitants of Vicars Close would have been woken in their beds by the noise. But no screams were heard, so I say I think he was dead.’

‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt, ‘thank you very much.’

He wondered if the Dean would return to his earlier theme. He did.

‘My lord,’ he said, gazing down at Bishop Moreton, ‘I was raising the question shortly before you arrived of the possible methods of handling these terrible events.’

The Bishop looked up at the Dean as if he didn’t quite understand what he was saying.

‘I was pointing out,’ the Dean carried on, ‘that a wave of scandal would erupt over this cathedral and over the Church of England if the full details of what happened in the early hours of this morning were ever to see the light of day. Think of what the newspapers will say, and all this just weeks before the celebrations for the thousand years of the minster.’

He’s proposing a cover-up, Powerscourt said to himself. His mind drifted back to an earlier cover-up at Sandringham House years before when the Prince of Wales decided to conceal the murder of his eldest son. That too had been in January. Then too it had been snowing, great drifts piling up on the royal gardens and the royal roof. Then too doctors had been involved, concocting medical bulletins to deceive the newspapers and the public. He wondered about another doctor, Dr Blackstaff, asleep in his bed now, no doubt. Had he too concocted a cover-up story with the butler to conceal the facts about the death of John Eustace?