David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

Augusta Cockburn thought there was something wrong about this account. The man spoke as if he had learned it off by heart, or had just translated it from a foreign language. Precisely what was wrong she did not yet know. But she was going to find out.

‘Hold on, McKenna or McDougal or whatever your name is -’

‘McKenna, madam.’

‘Don’t interrupt me when I am speaking to you. You have begun at the end. I want you to begin at the beginning. What happened on the Monday? Was my brother feeling unwell? Did he complain about pains in his chest or anything like that? People don’t usually drop down dead with no warning at all.’

‘Sorry madam. Your brother went off to the cathedral in the normal way on Monday morning. He came back about five, I believe, madam, and had some tea in his study. James the footman brought it in to him. We served his dinner in the dining room at eight o’clock, madam. He would have been finished about a quarter to nine. Then Mr Eustace went back to his study, madam.’

He paused. Now came the difficult bit. For if everything he had said so far was totally or partially true, the words he was about to utter were complete fabrication. And there was no mercy from his interrogator.

‘Get on with it, McKenna. All of this only happened three days ago. It’s not as if you’re telling me the line of battle at Trafalgar.’

‘I went to see Mr Eustace at about nine thirty in his study to ask if there was anything he wanted. He said I was not to wait up as he might be working till quite late. That was the last time I or anybody else in this house saw him, madam.’ Until I found him dead in bed in the middle of the night, he thought, blood all over the sheets.

Augusta Cockburn sniffed the air slightly, like a bloodhound. If she had suspected something was amiss before, she was almost certain now. How unfortunate it was that a man so bad at lying should have encountered a bloodhound like Augusta Cockburn at such a time. For if he was bad at lying, she was an expert in its detection. She felt she could hold down a chair, the Regius Professorship in Lie Detection, at one of the ancient universities. After all her long years of marriage she had listened to so many lies from her own husband. Lies innumerable as the grains of sand on the seashore or the stardust on the Milky Way. Kept very late at dinner, couldn’t get away. Need some money to buy some railroad shares. Damaged my ankle so badly at the club I couldn’t even walk down the stairs. Some damned woman spilt her perfume right down my shirt. Fellow insisted I go home with him for a nightcap. Bloody trains cancelled yet again, couldn’t make it home. Those were just the preface. Now she stared at McKenna as though he were a common criminal.

‘And where is the body?’

‘The body, madam?’

‘My brother’s body, McDougal. Where is it and when can we pay our last respects and say our goodbyes?’

‘I believe the body is at the undertaker’s in Compton, madam.’

‘And when is it being brought back here for the family’s last respects?’

‘I’m afraid I could not say, madam. The doctor has been looking after the arrangements.’

‘Are you not meant to be the butler here? Are you not meant to be looking after the arrangements, as you put it? Is that not what you are paid to do?’

Andrew McKenna turned bright red at the insult to his professional abilities. ‘I have been butler here for the last fifteen years, madam. I have never had any complaints about the performance of my duties.’

Augusta Cockburn snorted. The whole house obviously needed taking in hand from top to bottom.

‘I have not found this interview at all satisfactory,’ she said, drawing herself erect in the chair, her eyes flashing. ‘You may go now. I shall be writing to this doctor, Blacksmith or Blackstaff or whatever he is called. Perhaps you could arrange for its immediate delivery.’

‘Dr Blackstaff, madam,’ said McKenna, heading as fast as he dared for the escape route. Before Augusta Cockburn had time to speak again, McKenna had reached the safety of the door. He closed it firmly, possibly too firmly, behind him and fled to the sanctuary of the servants’ hall below.

‘Just look at this, Anne. I’m really pleased with it.’ A slim young man with dark brown hair and dancing eyes was sitting at the kitchen table in a little house right on the edge of the Cathedral Close in Compton. The young man was called Patrick Butler and he was talking to Anne Herbert, the twenty-eight-year-old widow of the Reverend Frank Herbert, previously vicar of St Peter under the Arches in the city. When he met a tragic death in a train accident the Dean and Chapter had given the use of this house to his widow.

Butler had an early issue of the county newspaper in his hand. He was the editor of this weekly journal, the Grafton Mercury, not one of the mightiest organs of opinion in the land, but a post where a man might make a name for himself and progress to greater things. He had been in Compton for nine months now, promoted from a position on an evening paper in Bristol.

Anne brushed a couple of her children’s drawings on to a chair and opened up the newspaper. Patrick was hovering enthusiastically by her shoulder. She read of the tragic death of John Eustace. There were glowing tributes from the Bishop, ‘always a humble and devoted servant of the cathedral and the people of this city,’ ‘beloved by all who knew him, a terrible loss to the community,’ from the Dean, ‘taken from us in his prime, when he had so much left to give,’ from the Archdeacon.

Then came the paragraph of which Patrick Butler was particularly proud. He felt sure it would cause a sensation. He had already been in contact with a couple of the great national dailies in London about its contents. It might make his name.

‘The Grafton Mercury, ’ Anne read, aware that Patrick was somewhere very close but not sure exactly where, ‘has learned that the former Chancellor of the cathedral, John Eustace, was one of the richest men in England, possibly the richest of all. His father was a very successful engineer in Britain who went on to make a vast fortune in America. His mother was an American heiress. On their death he was left an enormous portfolio of shares whose value has grown ever larger. It is believed that he was also left another fortune by his elder brother Edward. Mr Eustace was single at the time of his death.’

Anne Herbert looked up at her friend. ‘This is amazing,’ she said. ‘How do you know it’s true?’

Patrick Butler looked at her with a teasing smile. ‘I’m not sure I can reveal my sources,’ he said. ‘We’re not meant to divulge where our information comes from, you know. It might get somebody into trouble.’

‘If you think, Mr Patrick Butler,’ said Anne firmly, ‘that you can come into my house and drink my tea and sometimes eat your supper here and not tell me how you know this, you’d better prepare for some changes about the place.’ She tried to look at him severely but knew she was failing.

‘I’ll give you three guesses where the information came from,’ he said.

‘All right,’ she replied, ‘let me think. He told you himself. How about that?’

‘No good,’ said Butler, ‘I only met the man a couple of times. Next?’

Anne was looking down at the newspaper as if Patrick might have put his source right at the bottom of the page. ‘Dr Blackstaff told you. He was always very friendly with the Chancellor.’

‘Wrong again,’ said Butler cheerfully. ‘Last go. If you don’t get it this time, then you’ve had all your chances.’

Anne thought carefully this time. It must be somebody at the cathedral, she felt. People in those closed communities usually knew everybody’s secrets.