David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘It’s a funny thing, Lord Powerscourt. Every day in that building over there,’ he nodded behind his shoulder to the cathedral, ‘every day in there they celebrate a murder, if you like, the killing of their God by the Romans, and a pretty terrible killing it was too, stuck up there on that cross for hours and hours drinking foreign vinegar. If you live with that week in week out it mightn’t be too difficult to contemplate a killing or two of your own.’

‘Anybody in particular?’ asked Powerscourt, marvelling at the twisted theology of this ninety-year-old.

‘All of them,’ said Old Peter, puffing contentedly at his pipe.

Shortly after three o’clock Powerscourt presented himself at the choirmaster’s front door. Vaughan Wyndham was a tall harassed-looking man with black hair turning to silver at the sides.

‘Please forgive me for being unable to meet with you yesterday afternoon,’ said Powerscourt, accepting a seat by the window looking out over Cathedral Green. ‘I hope that now is not too inconvenient. I shall be brief. All I want to know is what you can tell me of Arthur Rudd, the late vicar choral.’

‘First class voice,’ Wyndham replied. ‘I should say he would have been a credit to any choir in the country.’ Wyndham spoke fast, with the air of one who wanted to finish the interview as speedily as possible.

‘Please forgive me, it wasn’t his voice I was thinking of, more of any personal problems he might have had.’

‘I suppose,’ said Vaughan Wyndham rather brutally, ‘that what you really want to know is if I can think of any reason why somebody might want to kill him.’

Powerscourt nodded. ‘Rudd wasn’t married,’ Wyndham went on, ‘he wasn’t, as far as I know, emotionally involved with anybody in Cathedral Close. When people live in very close proximity like the Compton choir, they very quickly learn everybody else’s business, as you can imagine. He didn’t have any expensive tastes. He didn’t drink very much or you could have told it in his voice. But there was one thing about the late Arthur Rudd that always worried his colleagues.’

Wyndham paused suddenly, worried perhaps that he might have said too much.

‘I do hope you will feel able to tell me what it was,’ Powerscourt said, quietly but firmly. ‘I’m sure you know that I am investigating the death on the Bishop’s instructions. And I don’t have to remind you that anything you say will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

The choirmaster was peering intently out of his window towards the great buttresses on the eastern side of the cathedral. ‘Debt,’ he said finally. ‘Arthur Rudd was permanently, chronically in debt.’

‘Debts to whom?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Debts to other members of the choir, other members of the Chapter and the wider cathedral community?’

‘Not any more,’ said Vaughan Wyndham bitterly. Powerscourt wondered suddenly if he too had a large debt outstanding with the late Arthur Rudd. ‘Nobody here around the Close would lend him any more. They’d all been burnt once too often. Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, I hadn’t realized quite how offensive that was until I’d said it.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Powerscourt, his mind racing. Supposing Arthur Rudd had refused so often to repay a debt to one particular member of the choir, would that have been reason enough to kill him? To burn his body on a spit in the Vicars Hall? ‘If Rudd couldn’t borrow money here in this community, where did he go? Somebody else in Compton? Somewhere further afield? And did anybody know why he borrowed all this money? Surely there must have been a reason.’

‘If he did have a reason,’ said Wyndham, beginning to collect the music he needed for Evensong, ‘he never told us. And I don’t think he could have been borrowing money here in Compton. He must have gone further afield, Exeter perhaps, maybe even Bristol. And now, perhaps we could finish our conversation on the way to the cathedral, if you will forgive me.’

Powerscourt watched Vaughan Wyndham as he walked up the nave towards the choir, plucking at his red cassock as he went. Debt, he thought. Could you be killed for not paying your debts? The one certain fact about Arthur Rudd was that he was no longer in a position to pay off any debts in this world. But suppose he owed some unscrupulous lender a very large sum indeed. Would that lender have him killed pour encourager les autres, to act as a dreadful warning to others under obligation to the same lender? Pay up, or you’ll end up like Arthur Rudd, dead and roasted in Vicars Close.

‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.’ Lady Lucy was walking up and down the drawing room of Fairfield Park the following afternoon, practising the Messiah. ‘Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished . . .’ She motioned her husband to silence as he tiptoed quietly into the room. ‘The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’ Lady Lucy had joined the Compton Choir which gave occasional recitals in the city. The backbone, of course, was the Cathedral Choir itself, complete with choirboys. Lady Lucy believed she might be able to get close to them as they worked their way through Handel’s masterpiece. The opening performance was less than three weeks away, in the Church of St Nicholas in Compton on the Wednesday and Thursday before Easter.

‘Every valley shall be exalted,’ Lady Lucy sang on, her soprano voice rising through the octaves. ‘We haven’t done the next bit yet, Francis, so you don’t have to put up with any more. I’d better do some more work on the score. Oh, I forgot to mention that William McKenzie is here. He’ll be down in a moment.’

Powerscourt had written to McKenzie the morning after the attack in the cathedral, requesting his immediate presence in Compton. McKenzie had served with Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald in India and was famed for his ability to track man or beast without being detected. Powerscourt had collected his large black book from Anne Herbert’s house as she was preparing tea for Patrick Butler. Powerscourt had declined an offer to join them, thinking that Patrick Butler could find worse places and worse times to propose marriage to his beloved. He saw that Anne had done her work very thoroughly. There were pages and pages of lists of the inhabitants of the Cathedral Close. She had helpfully added the date at which each person had first arrived when she knew it. Powerscourt noted that most of the members of the clergy had been there for less than ten years. He suspected that was unusual. He no longer intended to ask anybody connected with the cathedral anything about the place if he could help it.

A slight cough announced the entry of William McKenzie. As usual he seemed to have entered the room without going through any of the doors.

‘William,’ said Powerscourt, pumping the Scotsman’s hand up and down, ‘how very good to see you. You are most welcome. And, I fear, most necessary.’ He told his colleague about the strange deaths in Compton, Chancellor Eustace passing away in mysterious circumstances, Arthur Rudd murdered and roasted on his spit in the kitchen of Vicars Hall, the attempt on Powerscourt’s own life a few days before with the falling masonry.

‘Do you have any suspects, my lord?’ asked McKenzie, who knew from experience that Powerscourt would probably be running two or three theories through his brain at any given moment.

‘That’s the problem, William,’ Powerscourt laughed. ‘Sometimes I suspect all of them. Then I suspect none of them. It’s so hard to imagine the deans and canons of an English cathedral engaged in murder. Now then, this is what I want you to do.’