David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

It was Thomas who claimed he saw him first. He had appropriated the binoculars from his mother, in true male fashion, and thought he recogniszed another figure with binoculars on the deck of HMS Fearless.

‘There he is!’ he shouted. ‘There’s Papa! Up at the front of the ship with the binoculars!’ He shouted at the very top of his voice, ‘Papa! Papa!’ and waved furiously as fast as his hands could move. The other people waiting at the quayside for their loved ones smiled at the little boy and his enthusiasm. Now they were all waving, all three of them, Olivia standing on tiptoe so her father would recognize her across the water.

Then Powerscourt saw them. He put his binoculars down and waved for all he was worth. Johnny Fitzgerald had stolen a naval flag from somewhere and was waving it above their heads like a banner. Powerscourt thought he was going to cry. These three little figures, waving as though their lives depended on it, these three, not the mighty ships with their great guns, not the peaceful English countryside that rolled back behind the city, these three were his homecoming, his landfall.

He came down the gangway as the church bells of Portsmouth rang the hour of eight. He embraced Lady Lucy. She was crying. He picked up Thomas in his arms and kissed him violently. He hid Olivia inside his cloak and squeezed her till she thought she might break.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was home.

John Eustace came from a family of four. His elder brother Edward had died serving with his regiment in India. His twin brother James had moved to New York where he dabbled unsuccessfully in share speculation. His elder sister Augusta Frederica Cockburn was the first to hear the news of his death, and the first to set out for Hawke’s Broughton.

Life had not been kind to Augusta Cockburn, nee Eustace. She had been born with some of the features thought desirable in a young woman. She was rich, very rich. She had a great deal of energy. She was tall, with a face adorned with a long thin nose and large protruding ears. Her fine brown eyes, one of her best features when she was young, had grown suspicious, almost bitter with the passing years. Her marriage at the age of nineteen, an act, she told her friends at the time, largely undertaken to escape from her mother, had seemed glorious at first. George Cockburn was handsome, charming, an adornment to any dinner table, a good fellow at any weekend house party. Everyone thought he had money when he led Augusta up the aisle at St James’s Piccadilly all those years ago. He did have money, after a fashion. But he had it, as his brother-in-law once remarked, in negative quantities. He was always in debt. Some scheme, launched by the artful dodgers on the fringes of the City of London, was bound to attract him. The schemes invariably failed. He began to chase after other women. He began losing heavily at cards. After ten years of marriage Augusta had four young children, all of them looking distressingly like their father. After fifteen years of marriage they were all she had left to live for, George Cockburn being seldom seen in the family home and then usually drunk, or come to steal some trinket he could take to the pawnshop or use as a stake at the gambling tables. The very generous settlement bestowed on her by her father at the time of her marriage had almost all gone.

Many families progress upwards as they move through life. They move into larger houses to accommodate their growing numbers. Augusta found herself carrying out the same manoeuvre, only in reverse. The family moved from Mayfair to Chelsea, from Chelsea to Notting Hill, from Notting Hill to an address that Augusta referred to as West Kensington but that everybody else, particularly the postmen, knew as Hammersmith.

Augusta did not take these changes well. She grew sour and embittered. Only the appeal to his nephews and nieces persuaded her brother John to keep her financially afloat. So when she heard of his death she resolved to set out at once, without the children, on a visit of mourning and condolence to Fairfield Park. Her real purpose was to discover what had happened to her brother’s money, and, if possible, to appropriate as much of it as possible for herself and her family. Thus could she restore the fortunes her wastrel husband had thrown away.

It also has to be said that Augusta had not been a welcome visitor in her brother’s house. John Eustace found her constant complaints, the endless whingeing about poverty and the cost of school fees rather wearing, particularly as it began over the breakfast table when a man wants to read his newspaper. And she was bad with the servants, peremptory, short-tempered, always secretly resentful that there were far more of them than she could afford back in West Kensington or Hammersmith. They, in turn, had devised subtle forms of revenge. Her morning tea was never cold, but never hot either. Tepid perhaps, lukewarm. The junior footman, who was almost a genius at pipes and plumbing, would contrive an ingenious and elaborate system for the course of her stay whereby the water in the bathroom, like the tea, was never hot but never cold. In the autumn and winter her room would be so thoroughly aired that the temperature would sink almost to freezing point. Then the fire would be made so hot it was virtually unbearable. They had, to be fair to them, the servants, decided that in view of the tragic circumstances they would behave properly in the course of her visit to the bereaved household. But only, said the junior footman who doubled as a plumbing expert, only if she behaved herself.

It was now three days since the passing of John Eustace. Andrew McKenna, waiting nervously in the Great Hall to greet Augusta Cockburn, had found them very difficult. He had never liked lying. He didn’t think he was particularly good at it. As he told the servants the sad news of their master’s death, he tried to sound as authoritative as he could. Grief overwhelmed them so fast they had no time to notice the anxiety in his voice, the slightly shaky legs. That too, he told himself, could have been put down to shock. But now, he knew with deep foreboding in his heart, he would face a much sterner test, Mrs Augusta Cockburn with the light of battle in her eyes. The trouble was, he said to himself as he waited for the sound of the carriage coming down the hill, that he still wasn’t certain he and Dr Blackstaff had done the right thing.

Then the nightmare started. Leaving the servants to carry in her small mountain of luggage, she swept him off to the great drawing room at the back of the house, looking out over the gardens and the ornamental pond.

‘McDougal, isn’t it?’ she said imperiously, settling herself into what had been her brother’s favourite chair.

‘McKenna, madam, McKenna,’ said the unfortunate butler, wondering if he was about to develop a stammer.

‘No need to say it twice,’ snapped Augusta Cockburn, ‘I’m not stupid. I knew it was Scottish anyway.’

She was twisting slightly in her chair to get a better view. McKenna was hovering at what he hoped was a safe distance.

‘Come here, McKenna! Come closer where I can see you properly! No need to skulk over there like a criminal.’

Criminal was the very worst word she could have used. For Andrew McKenna had often suspected in the previous seventy-two hours that he was indeed a criminal. Some phrase about obstructing the course of justice kept wandering in and out of his mind. He blushed as he advanced to a new and more dangerous position right in front of Mrs Augusta Cockburn.

‘Tell me how my brother died, McKenna. I want all the details. I shall not rest until I am satisfied that I know absolutely everything about it.’ She made it sound like an accusation.

‘Well, madam,’ said McKenna, wondering already if his legs were holding firm, ‘he went over to see the doctor three nights ago. That would have been on Monday night. I believe Mr Eustace was feeling unwell, madam. The doctor thought he was not well enough to come home so he kept him at his house overnight. That way he could keep an eye on Mr Eustace, madam, and give him any attention he needed. Unfortunately the doctor could not save him. He died at about ten o’clock the following morning, madam. His heart had given out. Dr Blackstaff came to tell us just after eleven.’