David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘I shall be most surprised, Powerscourt, if you have solved the mystery of what happened to my brother before I return. But I shall send you an address in case you turn lucky.’

Powerscourt, now temporary master of the house, had invited Lady Lucy and the children to come and stay. He had also asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

Powerscourt was now browsing through a large box with the words ‘History of Fairfield’ on the cover. He learnt that there had been a house here in Tudor times, that most of the present building had been constructed at the end of the seventeenth century by a man called Crosthwaite, Secretary of State for War and paymaster of the armies of William the Third. There were several references to the French style of architecture fashionable at the time, the enclosed courtyard in the front, the low wings containing nurseries, and the covered passage. Covered passage? What covered passage? Powerscourt said to himself, suddenly wide awake despite the late hour. Where did it go to? Where did it start?

Further researches revealed that the passage was concealed behind a door beside the fireplace in the drawing room. But the drawing room in the sketches of the time did not correspond with where the drawing room was now. Some later Crosthwaite must have moved it. Powerscourt found an earlier map of the house, which contained no reference to this mysterious passage, but did show the previous layout of the ground floor. What had been the drawing room, he decided, must have been turned into the library, where he was now. And, sure enough, there was a door to the left of the fireplace, less than fifteen feet from where he was standing.

Powerscourt pulled hard at the door. It refused to move. He wondered if it was locked. He tried one more time. This time it creaked open very slowly, as if it had not been in use recently. Behind it Powerscourt saw another black metal door with a small knob halfway down. Powerscourt turned it and peered inside. He could see nothing apart from a set of steps leading downwards. The sensible thing to do would be to wait for the morning and descend the steps, lantern in hand. But Powerscourt wasn’t feeling particularly sensible. He fetched two enormous volumes, bound in red leather, The History of Dorset they claimed to be, and wedged them as firmly as he could in the jamb of the door. He checked carefully to make sure they could not move. Then he set off.

It was easy at the beginning. There was enough light filtering through to make the descent of the first dozen steps fairly straightforward. Then the passageway turned sharply to the left. The steps gave way to a narrow path, leading, Powerscourt thought, away from the house. The walls, he noticed, were a dark and slimy green and rather damp. He could hear water further up, dripping onto the rocky passageway below. He wondered if there were mice or rats or bats down here. Powerscourt didn’t mind mice or rats very much but he had an abiding terror of bats from his days in India. The light behind him had almost gone. He was groping his way forward now, his right hand feeling the surface of the wall, one boot brought forward so the heel rested on the toe of the one in front. His earlier calm had been replaced by a growing unease. What if the passage was three or four hundred yards long? What if the gate or the trap door at the far end was locked? If he looked back he could just see a sliver of light falling on the passageway. Soon that too would disappear.

Powerscourt pressed on. He passed the place where the drip came down from the ceiling. It fell on his head instead. It felt very cold. He wondered if he should turn round. He heard a scurrying of very light feet in the distance, rats, he thought, fleeing from the human invader. The wall was growing damper. He realized that his boots were beginning to splash their way along the floor. He heard another drip, more than a drip, a small cascade up ahead. He pressed on, trying to move faster. He forced himself to take a series of deep breaths. Panic, he knew, would be a disaster. He wished Johnny Fitzgerald was with him. Now he could see nothing at all. He thought he heard a different noise, far in the distance, a low moaning sound. Maybe the ghosts of Fairfield spent most of their half lives down here, flitting restlessly up and down this dank corridor, only emerging to haunt the living when one of the doors was opened. Up until this point Powerscourt's right hand had told him that the side of the passage was simply rock. Now it became smoother suddenly. He thought it might be bricks. That gave him hope.

The stairs were almost his undoing. However carefully he was moving his feet, he missed the first step. He fell forward, holding out his hands to break his fall. Something very unfortunate had happened to his ankle. He was now half lying, half sitting on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, in total darkness. Slowly, very slowly, he pulled himself upright. He found it was easier to crawl up the steps than to walk. They were lined with a damp and slippery mould. Twice he nearly slipped backwards. Then he banged his head very loudly on something above. Powerscourt was stunned. He felt as though something was echoing inside his skull. He waited a few minutes to compose himself, his ankle aching, his head throbbing. That must be a trap door, or something similar, above my head, he said to himself. He put both his hands up and pushed as hard as he could. The door fell backwards. Powerscourt crawled slowly out of the terrible tunnel and found himself surrounded by what seemed to be a low wooden wall. Only when he stood up did he realize that he was in the enclosed pew of the inhabitants of Fairfield Park in the little church behind the house. John Eustace, he remembered, was buried in the churchyard outside. There was a faint light coming in through the windows. Various marble tombs were semi-visible on the walls. The pulpit was only fifteen feet away. Powerscourt closed the trap door and made his way out of the church. Thank God the door wasn’t locked. He didn’t fancy spending the night in there, surrounded by the bats and the dead, even if was preferable to spending it in the passageway he had just left.

He took several deep breaths and hobbled towards the house. His brain was reeling. Maybe Augusta Cockburn had been right all along. For until now the reason he had dismissed her murder theory was that he could not see how the intruders might have got in and out of the house. All the doors and windows, he remembered the butler telling him, had been securely fastened from the inside the morning after John Eustace’s death. Now he knew how a murderer could have got in and out without being detected and without leaving any telltale trace behind. Into the church, down the passageway, into the library, up the back stairs, into John Eustace’s bedroom. But why, in that case, had the body ended up in Dr Blackstaff’s house? Unless the murderer had carried him there? Was the murderer an ally of the doctor’s? Was he acting in concert with the butler? But in that case, why did they need the murderer at all? Either or both of them could perfectly easily have walked into the bedroom without anybody else being any the wiser.

It was only just outside the house that Powerscourt noticed something was wrong. The lights in the library had gone out. When he left, not more than twenty minutes before at the most, they had been switched on. It was their light that had shone down the steps and illuminated the first stage of his journey. He checked again. He remembered standing in the garden in the daylight only the day before, making a mental note of where all the ground-floor rooms were. The library was the last room on the left from the garden. There were no lights on. Even if he was wrong, and he didn’t think he was, all the lights in this part of the house had been turned off.