David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘Unless,’ Powerscourt interrupted the charcuterie display ‘the people from Melbury know all about his role in Compton and would not be surprised. We can assume from the distance and the precautions that the right-hand sausage, the Protestant Archdeacon, does not want anybody to know about his role as the Jesuit in Melbury.’

‘Consider another factor,’ said Johnny, bringing his two sausages side by side, ‘what a strain it must be to alternate between these two lives.’ He swapped the two sausages round at bewildering speed. ‘We’ve all done bits of spying in our time, pretending to be somebody else for the greater good of Queen and country. It’s an exhausting business. At any moment the whole thing can go wrong.’ He dropped the two sausages back on to his plate and began to consume the Protestant Archdeacon. ‘So why the eight years? Is he going to continue the pretence until his dying day? Is he waiting for a signal to emerge into his true colours?’

Powerscourt was running his right hand through his hair, a gesture Lady Lucy knew only too well. It meant that he could not see the answer. Johnny Fitzgerald had now carved the Jesuit sausage into small pieces. McKenzie was still eating his toast. Lady Lucy was sipping her tea.

‘We’re in the dark,’ said Powerscourt, smiling at her as he said it. ‘All I would hazard is that the Jesuit Archdeacon is more likely to be the real one. If you were going to betray one faith in the cause of another I’d be much more frightened of the Jesuits than of the Bishop of Compton. Today I’m going to have another rummage in John Eustace’s papers. I may even go and call on Dr Blackstaff again. Tomorrow I am going on a journey. I think I’ll be away for a couple of days. William,’ he turned to McKenzie who had finally finished his consumption of toast, ‘I think you should turn your attention to this Italian gentleman who stays with the Archdeacon. I’m not sure if he’s there at the moment.’

‘He’s there all right,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘I saw him creeping about the town yesterday.’

‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Follow him when he goes, William. Follow him wherever he goes. Find out where he comes from. I don’t care if you have to go back to London with him.’

‘Maybe he comes from Melbury Clinton,’ said Johnny cheerfully. ‘Maybe he’s another bloody Jesuit. Pops over to Compton to keep the Archdeacon on the straight and narrow.’

‘Johnny,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘I want you to try the impossible. We need to know if any other members of the Close are secret Roman Catholics. God knows how you do it. The last thing you can do is ask any of them.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Johnny, picking up the last of his Jesuit sausage and popping it into his mouth, ‘I’ll certainly try.’

Later that morning Lady Lucy found her husband pacing up and down the drawing room.

‘Francis,’ she said quietly, ‘I wish you weren’t going away.’ Powerscourt turned at the far end of the room, just past the piano, and stared back at her, his eyes still a long way from Fairfield Park.

‘What was that, Lucy? Sorry, my love, I was miles away.’

Lady Lucy put her arm round her husband’s waist and marched with him back down the room towards the doors into the garden.

‘Let me come with you, Francis, this part of the way anyway. I said I wished you weren’t going away.’

Powerscourt stopped and stared out into the garden. ‘That child is very far up the tree down by the church,’ he said anxiously.

‘Is it Olivia?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’s like a monkey in those trees. I’d be much more worried if you said Thomas was at the top of one of the big oaks.’

‘I wish I wasn’t going away either, Lucy. I don’t think I’ll be gone very long.’

‘At least I’ve got the choir to keep me busy Francis. Did I tell you, I’ve made friends with two of the little choristers, Philip and William? I think I’m going to ask them to tea to meet the children.’

‘You be very careful with that choir, Lucy. I think everything’s very dangerous in Compton at the moment.’

‘Can I ask you a question, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, resuming their joint march up and down the drawing room.

‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, giving her waist a firm squeeze. ‘What is it?’

‘Are you frightened?’ said Lady Lucy, in a very serious voice.

‘Do you know,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever asked me that before.’

‘Well, I’m asking it now.’

Powerscourt stopped by the side of the piano and sat down on the stool. His fingers picked out random notes with no pretence of a tune. They sounded rather melancholy in this grand room with the sun now streaming in through the windows.

‘I think the answer is Yes and No, if I’m allowed to say that.’ Lady Lucy put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Yes, I am frightened in the sense that I find this killer so difficult to understand, so unpredictable, so terribly violent. And I can’t find any sign of a motive at all. I feel as though we are all walking on eggshells. If we say or do the wrong thing, or our inquiries upset the madman, then he may kill again. So that makes me frightened, very frightened sometimes.’ He paused and strummed some more random notes from the piano. Outside a battalion of rooks were flying across the ornamental pond, their harsh cries acting as a counterpoint to the black keys on Powerscourt’s piano.

‘I think, Lucy,’ he turned to smile up at her, ‘that it has to do with the combination of reason and imagination. Sometimes I think I’m lucky enough to solve these cases through reason, deducing how things must have happened. Sometimes it’s imagination, trying to see how the emotional connections between the various parties must have worked. But imagination cuts both ways. It can help. But in this case it’s often a hindrance because your imagination dwells on the terrible things this mad person has done and what he might do next.’

Powerscourt paused again. ‘In another sense,’ he went on, ‘I’m not frightened. I think perhaps you can be frightened and courageous at the same time. I’ve seen some acts of terrifying bravery in battle, Lucy. The bravest people are the ones who admit they are terrified but carry on all the same. I’m not as brave as they are. But I think you must keep up your courage, whatever the circumstances. If I didn’t, I think I’d feel I was betraying myself, betraying you, betraying the children, betraying all those families involved or yet to be involved in these terrible events.’

Powerscourt rose from the piano stool and embraced his wife. ‘You know, Lucy, people are meant to have these kinds of conversations very late at night when the wine and the port may have been flowing freely. Certainly not at half-past eleven in the morning.’

The eight thirty train from Compton to Bristol seemed extraordinarily slow to Powerscourt, impatient to further his investigation. It stopped regularly at what seemed to be hamlets rather than villages. At one point, peering crossly out of his first class carriage window, he thought a horseman on the adjacent road was making faster progress than one of the great symbols of the modern age. A military-looking man joined him, turning immediately to the Births Marriages and Deaths columns of The Times and remaining enraptured there for over an hour. Powerscourt wondered if he was learning every entry by heart. He wondered too about the marriage prospects for Patrick Butler and Anne Herbert and whether the proposed trip to Glastonbury would enable Patrick to pull it off. Somehow he doubted it. He suspected he would have to propose to her by letter. Perhaps he could take out a quarter page in his own newspaper and propose marriage to her there alongside the advertisements for soap and bicycles. A suitable headline could be adapted from the nursery rhyme, Editor Wants a Wife. Anne, he felt, might find that rather embarrassing. At a small town on the county border a middle-aged lady joined them and began reading the latest Henry James. Powerscourt remembered Lucy telling him about an article she had read very recently which gave a clue to the central problem of Henry James’ later novels – why were the sentences so long? This article claimed that he had stopped writing his books by hand and now dictated them to teams of typewriter operators. It was easy, Lucy had said, to imagine the Master wandering up and down his study, dictating exquisite phrase after exquisite phrase and totally forgetting to insert the full stops. Powerscourt read again the note he had received that morning from Chief Inspector Yates, telling him that it was most unlikely, but not absolutely impossible for James Fraser, the best butcher in Compton, to have killed Gillespie. They were still checking his alibi. Powerscourt’s thoughts went back to the cathedral and its inhabitants.