David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘He’s quite a good cricketer, since you mention it,’ said the Bishop. ‘I saw him bat last summer. He made over fifty in very quick time.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said the Dean, unwilling to be drawn into reminiscences about past performances on the cricket fields of Compton. ‘The editor’s name, Powerscourt, is Patrick Butler.’

‘Old or young?’ asked Powerscourt, suspecting that an ageing editor nearing retirement might be more amenable than a young man keen to make his name and fortune.

‘He’s young,’ said the Dean, ‘very young. He hasn’t been here very long. I should say he was an ambitious young fellow, wouldn’t you agree, Chief Constable?’

‘I certainly would,’ replied the policeman. ‘But he’s a stickler for accuracy. He and his reporters are always very careful to get their facts right.’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘my recommendation would be that you take him into your confidence as soon as possible. And there’s one other thing, if I might make another suggestion, gentlemen?’

‘Please do,’ said the Dean. Powerscourt observed that he had left his position in front of the fire and was now taking notes at a small table by the window.

‘This thought comes from my recent experiences on military service in South Africa. I was there, for your information, for slightly over a year. I have only just come back. During my time there I was present at a number of battles. I subsequently read reports of some of these encounters in the newspapers, and I made a strange discovery. When the reporters were not present at the fighting or in the immediate aftermath, their accounts contained the most gory and bloodthirsty descriptions of the action. But when they were there in person, the accounts were very different, much more restrained, much more sober. It was as if the realities of war were almost too much for them, the mutilated bodies, the faces blown off, limbs left hanging from a thread of skin.’

‘Quite so,’ said the Dean, looking at his watch. ‘Perhaps you could enlighten us, Lord Powerscourt, on the relevance of the battlefield conditions of the Boer War in South Africa to a dead man in Compton, found on a spit in the Vicars Hall?’

‘Forgive me, Dean. I’m just coming to the point.’ Powerscourt smiled diplomatically at the Dean, now turning over to a fresh page in his notebook. ‘When you tell the young man about the spit, I suggest that you have the doctor with you. I suggest that the doctor gives the goriest account he can of what had happened to the body. There is no need to go into details now, Dr Williams, but it must have been absolutely frightful. I suggest that you try to make the man literally sick, if you can. That way I think you will find, oddly enough, that the coverage of the last hours of Arthur Rudd is both more limited and more restrained than it might otherwise be. If you let these reporters imagine things, their imaginations run riot. If they have to confront the horrible truth, it sobers them up no end.’

The Dean looked at the clock above his fireplace. ‘My lord Bishop, gentlemen, please forgive me. I shall give Lord Powerscourt’s recommendations the most serious consideration. But now I am due to conduct the service of Holy Communion in fifteen minutes. Deaths, plague, wars, invasion threats have not succeeded in halting the divine offices of our cathedral in almost a thousand years. One more death shall not succeed either.’

The Dean departed to change into more appropriate clothing. Powerscourt wondered if only suggestions emanating from the Dean in person were capable of instant acceptance. Dr Williams hurried off to his corpse, Powerscourt following behind. The Chief Constable left to brief his officers. Only the Bishop remained in the Dean’s drawing room. His eyes were fixed on the fire. His lips moved slowly. He remained there a long time. Outside the snow was still falling.

Later that morning the streets of Compton were all white, the snow turning into slush in places. Anne Herbert was negotiating her way from the butcher’s to the grocer’s where she needed to purchase some more tea. Patrick particularly liked their new breakfast blend, she remembered. Then she heard a shout from across the street.

‘Anne! Anne!’ said the voice. She wondered if she shouldn’t be addressed in a public place as Mrs Herbert but she doubted if the voice would take any notice.

‘Anne,’ said the voice again, sliding to a stop beside her. ‘Are you managing all right in all this snow? Can I carry anything for you?’ The weather, Anne thought, had wrought a sharp improvement in Patrick Butler’s manners. She couldn’t remember him offering to carry anything for her before.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Patrick,’ she said, smiling at the young man. His face was slightly red and he looked ever so young as he stood before her in his new suit. Anne had supervised its purchase in Compton’s only decent tailor the week before. Patrick had said he was hopeless about clothes.

‘You must come with me at once, Anne. It’s very important.’ Anne thought these were most unusual circumstances in which to discuss elopement.

‘Where are we going, Patrick? I haven’t got all morning to gallivant round Compton with you in the snow.’

‘You must come to my office. I’d take you for coffee but we might be overheard. I’ve got something very exciting to tell you.’

Anne Herbert had been once before to the local offices of the Grafton Mercury. In spite of all the best efforts of Patrick Butler, the place had looked a most appalling mess to her. She had thought of the extreme tidiness of her father the stationmaster’s little office where everything was always in its proper place and dust was banished almost as soon as it appeared. It wasn’t that men couldn’t keep places tidy, she had decided. Some of them just didn’t want to.

‘It’s not going to take long, is it, Patrick?’ said Anne as they set off down Northgate towards the paper’s headquarters.

‘Not very long,’ said Patrick, looking as excited as Anne had ever seen him. ‘Do you think you might slip? Would you like to take my arm?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

One or two of the citizens of Compton smiled knowingly to themselves as the young couple went past, Patrick Butler talking excitedly, Anne Herbert passing the occasional comment. They were well known now as young lovers. The more romantic of those in the know predicted Easter bonnets and an Easter wedding.

‘I don’t think there’s anybody in the office,’ said Patrick, as they began the tortuous ascent of the stairs. ‘Peter’s gone off to look into a flock of sheep said to be stuck in a snowdrift up in the hills and George is in court.’

Anne gazed in despair at the chaos that was Patrick’s office. She was just about to ask why they didn’t employ somebody to clean up for them when Patrick was off.

‘Anne,’ he said, closing the door firmly behind them and speaking very quietly, ‘something terrible has happened up at the cathedral. Have you heard anything on the Close?’

‘How do you know, Patrick? It all looked perfectly fine to me when I left. There were quite a lot of policemen wandering about but that’s not unusual.’

‘There are policemen all over the place, Anne. You can’t get into Vicars Close at all. It’s been sealed off. Oh, it’s all very quietly done, there aren’t lines of men across the street, but if you try to go up there a police officer pops out from somewhere and tells you the road is closed. They won’t say why. Orders is all you can get out of them. I’ve just been there.’

‘What do you think has happened, Patrick? Do you think some of the houses are going to fall down?’

‘Those little houses, Anne, have been there for hundreds of years. I think I read somewhere that it’s the oldest inhabited street in Europe. I think it’s something terrible. And there’s more. You remember that man Powerscourt, the one who’s an investigator? He’s wandering round the place, chatting to the odd person, looking as though he’s thinking very hard. And there’s one other thing. I have received an invitation to call upon the Dean at four o’clock this afternoon. What do you make of that?’