David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

As he rose, very unsteadily, to his feet, Powerscourt could feel the blood flowing freely down his temple where he had hit the carving. His brain told him that he had stopped beside the stall of Chisenbury and Chute. Grantham Australis was next door. His leg must have been twisted in the fall. He limped off very slowly towards the high altar. The great gold crucifix beckoned him on towards the place of sanctuary. Then he heard the doors close. He was locked in, shortly after five thirty in the afternoon. There must be fourteen hours to go before they would open again to greet another day. Lord Francis Powerscourt sat down in front of the altar and tried to collect his thoughts.

As he sat there by the altar Powerscourt tried to remember his own actions just before the fall of stone. Had he touched anything by accident? Had he inadvertently pulled on some mechanism that could have caused the avalanche? No, he decided, he had not. There was only one conclusion. Somebody had just tried to kill him. That didn’t bother him very much. People of one sort or another had been trying to kill him for years. He wondered suddenly if the killer was even now heaping the coal high on to the fire in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have another treat for you. After the earlier delicacy of the vicar choral, we now present another dish, Roasted Powerscourt. He shuddered and massaged his injured leg once more.

He staggered to his feet. He began to make his way slowly down the north ambulatory away from the altar. His hands felt the outline of the tomb of Abbot Parker, the last abbot but one before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Abbot felt very cold. His long thin face was wet. Powerscourt realized that he was leaving a trail of blood wherever he went. He looked back at the altar cloth, hanging stiffly in its place. No, that would never do. He took off his coat and jacket and ripped off one sleeve of his shirt. He folded it into a makeshift bandage and wrapped it round his head. With dust all over my clothes and a bloody shirt on my forehead, I must look like a tramp now, he said to himself, one of those lost souls who haunt the lonely services in the cathedral looking for salvation, or warmth. He abandoned the Abbot to his fate and moved across to the opposite wall. His fingers felt for the extraordinary memorial to the Walton family from the year 1614. There were two semicircular niches inside a marble frame. On the left was a little statue of the father, with a red cloak over a black robe, Powerscourt remembered from the hours of daylight, kneeling before a marble plaque, hands clasped in prayer. Facing him, also kneeling, also praying, was his wife, clad entirely in black, more pious perhaps than her husband. Beneath them, aligned according to age and height, were their eleven children, also kneeling in prayer, the boys beneath their father, the girls beneath their mother. The smallest was only a couple of inches high. Powerscourt wondered what terrible disaster had carried off the entire family. Maybe it had been the plague. Maybe Chief Inspector Yates would know.

Powerscourt paused beside the chantry chapel of Robert, Lord of Compton, passed away sometime in the fourteenth century, he remembered. The light from the great windows was very faint now. The stained glass didn’t seem to let very much of it in. Powerscourt’s hand felt the dust from the falling masonry already lying thickly on the stone. Half the monuments in the cathedral must be covered with it already. He wondered if the murderer was coming back to make sure he was dead. Or had the murderer watched the explosion from some high place up there on the scaffolding? Powerscourt didn’t think he could have seen anything through the storm of dust that poured out of the broken floor. Had the murderer rushed off to close all the doors? Did he believe that Powerscourt was dead, one unfortunate victim of the accident to be discovered by the verger in the morning? Or was he intending to come back and finish Powerscourt off?

Powerscourt looked around for a means of defending himself. If he had the power, he reflected, he could raise a formidable host of warriors from inside the building itself. Those stone knights, facing east to meet their maker, could come clanking out of their tombs, stone swords in stone hands to terrify their enemies. There was a whole window partly filled with soldiery who had fought with Edward the Third in France in the Crecy campaigns in the fourteenth century. Powerscourt couldn’t see the detail in the darkness, but he thought there was a good selection of cavalry, some infantry and some archers, sharpshooters he could deploy to cover all the doors. Across the choir from where he now stood was the Soldiers Chapel, with flags and banners from the past two centuries hanging proudly from the stonework. Fierce sergeant majors with enormous moustaches could come back from their earlier campaigns to lead the standards into the thick of battle. There was a stained glass window there too, Powerscourt remembered, filled with the bloodied infantry of Britannia’s wars.

His shirt was not proving very effective as a bandage. Blood was dripping through it and trickling slowly down his cheek. Extremely gingerly, Powerscourt reached up and twisted it through ninety degrees so a drier part was now in place to stem his wound. His leg was throbbing fiercely. What, he wondered, had caused this attack by masonry? It couldn’t be for what he knew about the deaths of John Eustace or Arthur Rudd, unless the murderers were appraised of Johnny’s inquiries into the Eustace coffin. In truth he knew very little. It had to be for what he might find out, what he might discover in the future rather than what he knew in the present. Was the assault linked to his forthcoming interview with Organist Wyndham? Did somebody not want him to speak to the organist? Perhaps the organist knew too much. There must be some terrible secret at the heart of Compton Minster. To preserve this secret Arthur Rudd had been strangled, his body roasted on the flames, his journals stolen and almost certainly burnt. He must have known the secret. Had John Eustace known it too?

Powerscourt thought of Patrick Butler and what the Grafton Mercury might make of the attack. Murder by Masonry in the Minster? Investigator Inches From Death? He couldn’t think clearly any more but he felt certain that he wanted no publicity for the events of this night. He thought of Lady Lucy, back in Fairfield Park by now, no doubt. She would think he had gone to talk to Johnny Fitzgerald and would be late home. He thought of the Chief Inspector, back home with his family, maybe looking through another of his architectural volumes. He tried to imagine the Bishop or the Dean or the Archdeacon or the Dean’s enormous servant, two hundred feet above their transept, preparing to pull the rope that would pour all those stone slabs down on to their cathedral floor, killing somebody in the process. He thought of Thomas and Olivia, getting ready for bed, being spoilt by their grandmother, entirely ignorant of what had happened to their Papa. Maybe Compton is a more dangerous place than South Africa, he said to himself, for I went through a year and more of the Boer War without a scratch.

The bells made him jump. They were terribly loud in this empty building as they struck the hour of seven. Powerscourt felt sure that the dust moved again, swirling off the surfaces where it had settled before to find new resting places on chantry chapel or choir stall. Powerscourt knew he could not fall asleep in case his enemies found him in the dark. He looked at the choir, all dark outlines in the gloom. He needed to sit down, he decided. A sudden inspiration lightened his mood. I may be going to bleed to death in this bloody cathedral, he said to himself, but I shall go out with style. He hobbled slowly to the other side of the choir. He settled himself into the great chair. His fingers felt for the inscription on the back. This would be a good way to go. Episcopus, Beatus Vir. The Bishop, a holy man. Powerscourt, a holy man.