David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘Leg, not legs, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘Leg singular, I’m afraid. The police are searching all over the county for the rest of the corpse.’

‘Male, I presume?’ said Patrick Butler. Powerscourt thought you could almost see him composing the copy for his paper as he spoke.

‘Male,’ said Powerscourt, wondering how much detail the authorities would want to provide, if they ever found any details. ‘I fear you may have to be restrained again in the reporting of this death, as you were with Arthur Rudd, Patrick. It’s impossible to say at this stage.’

Patrick Butler was already on his way back to his office when he turned back for a final word with Powerscourt.

‘I saw a very curious thing yesterday afternoon, my lord. It might interest you. The choir were processing over to St Nicholas, for another rehearsal of the Messiah, I think. The replacement for Arthur Rudd has arrived. He’s a man called Ferrers, my lord, Augustine Ferrers. I was at school with one of his brothers in Bristol.’

‘What’s the curious thing, Patrick? No earthly reason why a chorister from Bristol shouldn’t come to Compton, is there?’

‘The Ferrers family,’ said Patrick Butler, watching a detachment of policemen approaching the Green, their eyes scanning the ground like uniformed retrievers, ‘are Roman Catholics, always have been.’

March 1901

There were no reports concerning the rest of the body that morning. Shortly before midday the Dean reported to Chief Inspector Yates that a member of the choir, one Edward Gillespie, was missing. Powerscourt wandered between the Close, the cathedral and the police station. He wondered if you could write an architectural history of Britain based on the houses around the Close, their construction spanning five or six hundred years, the changing fashions in domestic design still standing around the cathedral. Just after lunch a report came in from Bilton, one of the neighbouring villages, that another leg had been discovered in the churchyard. The limb was being brought to the morgue in Compton with all speed.

Powerscourt went down to the offices of the Grafton Mercury and found Patrick Butler surrounded by his normal chaos. The editor informed Powerscourt that he was reserving a space for the details of the next Minster Murder. If they had the details before ten o’clock the following morning, he could include the story in the next edition. Otherwise it would be too late. He would, of course, have an alternative story ready to fill the space, probably a report on the rehearsals of the Messiah. Powerscourt found himself wondering if Patrick Butler would place his own engagement, assuming he ever got round to it, in the appropriate section of his paper. He took away with him Butler’s best recollection of the Ferrers address in Bristol, 42 Clifton Rise, he had said, not far from that huge suspension bridge over the river.

At a quarter to three he called on Chief Inspector Yates at the police station. ‘We’ve found the head, I think,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘on the side of the road just outside Shipton. One of my men is bringing it in now. That only leaves the trunk and the arms, my lord.’

‘When is Dr Williams going to examine it, Chief Inspector?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘At six o’clock in the morgue, my lord. The Dean is coming as well to see if he can identify the corpse.’

Powerscourt wandered off again. Faint outlines of a plan were beginning to form in his mind. He remembered an earlier case involving a morgue in the Italian city of Perugia, the corridor leading to it lined with pictures of the Virgin, where he had to identify the body of Lord Edward Gresham, the man who had confessed to Powerscourt that he had killed Prince Eddy, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. There might have been a great deal of blood on that occasion, Powerscourt reflected bitterly, but at least the body was left in one piece.

He stood under the west front of the cathedral, staring up at the statues once more. He wondered if Cain’s killing of Abel was somewhere in the limestone above, Abraham raising his knife for the sacrifice of Isaac. He felt angry with himself at his inability to catch the murderer. How many more mothers and fathers, wives and children were about to have their lives ruined for ever by the madman stalking the streets of Compton? By now Powerscourt felt sure that the murderer must be mad, not in the sense that he should have been incarcerated in an asylum, though the world would be a better place if he were, but mad with a consuming passion, a hatred that came from a source so deep that Powerscourt could not yet comprehend it. This was not a madman who saw visions or heard strange voices in his head or thought he was Napoleon or Ghenghis Khan or believed he could walk on water or jump safely from a high building. This madman, thought Powerscourt, is consumed with hate, with an obsession so strong that it drives him to terrible acts. A madness that permits of no remorse, no shred of human or Christian compassion even in a city devoted for a thousand years to the worship and the glory of Almighty God. Powerscourt felt sure now that the normal motives for murder, greed, jealousy, vaulting ambition even, did not apply to his particular madman. He was of a different order of madness.

Powerscourt abandoned the west front and wandered off, his brain far away, to the railway station where he absent-mindedly collected some train timetables. He was to tell Lady Lucy later that he was scarcely aware of doing this and only realized what he had done when he found the papers in his pockets later on that evening.

Powerscourt and Chief Inspector Yates were shown into an anonymous office deep inside Compton’s little hospital shortly before six o’clock that evening. The Dean was staring moodily out of the window, pausing occasionally to look at his watch.

‘Monthly meeting of the Diocesan Finance Sub-Committee at a quarter to seven,’ he told the newcomers, still staring at the little garden outside. ‘I hope this disagreeable business isn’t going to make me late. They’re always difficult, these financial meetings.’

He turned back to face the Chief Inspector. ‘Have you managed to recover all the body now?’ He made it sound as though he believed Yates was personally responsible for the event.

‘We have, Dean,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘The other two sections were discovered in Slape late this afternoon. They are with Dr Williams now.’

Bilton, Shipton, Slape. Powerscourt wondered where he had seen these names before. In one of the past editions of the Grafton Mercury he had read in Patrick Butler’s office? On one of the walls or on the floor of the cathedral perhaps, past dignitaries from these neighbouring villages interred behind or beneath? No, he said to himself, and a feeling of great sadness overcame him as he remembered that these were some of the names on the choir stalls, names of the livings and the parishes belonging to the cathedral that had so enchanted him with their poetry earlier in his time in Compton. Maybe the corpse was the missing chorister whose body had been dismembered and sent to the very places that gave their names to the choir stalls where he had sat and sung the anthems of the Lord.

‘Forgive me if I am a trifle late.’ Dr Williams was wearing a white coat and looking rather tired. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen would like to come this way.’

He led them about fifty yards along a dark corridor and opened a very heavy thick door at the end. The walls were painted an antiseptic green. A couple of feeble bulbs in the ceiling cast a fitful light over the room. In the centre of the little morgue was a long table, about eight feet long and five feet wide with a package that might have been a body on it, covered with white sheets. There was a very strong smell, carbolic and blood, disinfectant and death, Powerscourt thought.