David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

Lady Lucy smiled up at the maniac at the other end of the table. ‘Surely, Francis, there is some evidence. There’s the Archdeacon going to Melbury Clinton for a start. And the Canon celebrating Mass in Ledbury. And all these dreadful murders.’

‘Of course there is some evidence, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, taking a further sip of his port, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t have got as far as this. But I’m sure the Archdeacon and the Canon could cook up some perfectly reasonable explanation. They’ve got all those Jesuits in Farm Street at their beck and call, not to mention the Civitas Dei people in Rome. Something would be concocted. But the scheme could still go on.’

‘What about John Eustace, Francis, where do you think he fits into all of this?’ Johnny Fitzgerald had finished doodling his crucifix on the tablecloth. He seemed now to be working on a cathedral spire.

Powerscourt sighed. ‘I didn’t want to go into the murders at this stage, but I think I’d better. There have been three of them.’

His little audience stared at him. Two, surely, not three. Perhaps he was losing his wits after all.

‘Sorry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I only learnt very recently – please don’t ask me how – that John Eustace, last owner of this house where we sit, was also murdered. His head was cut off and placed on one of the posts in his great four-poster bed. Then there was Arthur Rudd, murdered and roasted on the spit in the Vicars Hall. Third but not least was Edward Gillespie, his body hacked to pieces and left lying all over the county. There is a connection, of course. I should have seen it sooner. I must have been blind.’

‘What is the connection?’ said Patrick Butler.

‘The connection, believe it or not,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘is the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Let me make myself clear. For six hundred and forty years what is now the cathedral was a Roman Catholic abbey, devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The break came with the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538. Compton was one of the last to be dismembered. Some time after that it became the Protestant cathedral we know today. A number of people in Compton opposed the transfer from one faith to another. They were put to death in a variety of ways. One was burnt at the stake, in the manner of Arthur Rudd. One was hung drawn and quartered in the manner of Edward Gillespie. The abbot himself, I believe, was beheaded and his head stuck on a pole at the entrance to the Cathedral Green. The fate of poor John Eustace. Whether his head was destined to go somewhere other than his own four-poster I do not know. So the murderer is after a certain symbolic symmetry, if you like. Three people who opposed the transfer from Catholic to Anglican all those years ago were killed in particular and very horrible ways. Three people who opposed the return from Anglican back to Catholic, presumably, have been killed in the last weeks in ways which echo those earlier deaths three hundred and seventy years ago. It’s a warped form of Catholic revenge in a way.’

Patrick Butler was drumming his fingers on the table. He longed to reach inside his pocket for notebook and pen. Anne Herbert was feeling rather faint. Lady Lucy found herself humming one of the arias in the Messiah to herself under her breath. Johnny Fitzgerald had not touched his port for at least a quarter of an hour. Outside a lone owl hooted into the night.

‘Surely Francis,’ Johnny said, ‘this makes the case for the Archbishop and the authorities all the stronger. All this history and stuff about the monasteries before.’

‘That’s the problem.’ Powerscourt surveyed his little audience one by one. ‘I don’t think it does. You see, it seems quite possible to me that the people organizing the return to Catholicism are not the murderers. They may be just as upset and confused by it as we are. The murderer may be somebody completely different, though I doubt it. I suspect the two are so closely linked you couldn’t get a hair between them, but I can’t prove it.’ Powerscourt suddenly realized, looking at Anne Herbert, that she might faint at any moment. Perhaps it had been a mistake inviting them here.

‘And there, I suggest,’ he said, smiling at Lady Lucy, ‘we leave things for now. I was going to ask your advice but that can wait for another time. Just one last point. I think we should all pray very hard that none of those involved in the Catholic Compton conspiracy change their minds between now and Easter Sunday.’

‘Surely, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘we should be praying the other way round, that they should repent of their ways and remain as Anglicans.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if they change their minds, then the murderer will treat them in the same way he has treated their predecessors. Anglican or Catholic, even in Compton you’re better off alive than dead.’

As Powerscourt rode into Compton the next morning to confer with Chief Inspector Yates he began thinking about the letters he knew he had to write to the Bishop of Exeter, the Lord Lieutenant and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Private Secretary. ‘Please forgive me if the contents of this letter seem rather extraordinary,’ he said to himself as his horse trotted down the country lanes. No, that wasn’t quite right. ‘Please rest assured that however bizarre the contents of this letter may appear, I am still in full possession of my faculties.’ That wouldn’t do either. Powerscourt was convinced that once he began telling people he wasn’t mad, they would instantly jump to the opposite conclusion. Maybe he should confine himself to the facts. But a bald narrative of events might not be credible either. One letter he had written before his breakfast that day to one of his employers, Mrs Augusta Cockburn, sister of the late John Eustace, currently residing in a small villa outside Florence. He regretted very much, he told her, having to confirm her suspicions that her brother had been murdered. He did not give details of the manner of his death. He promised to write again shortly with the name of the murderer. He hoped that the Italian postal service was not too quick.

Chief Inspector Yates was reading a pile of reports in his little office at the back of the police station and making notes in a large black book. Inside, Powerscourt knew, the Chief Inspector was collating the movements and the alibis of every single resident of the Close. Powerscourt had already told him about the death of John Eustace. Now he told him about the plans for the mass defection to Rome on Easter Sunday. The Chief Inspector was astonished.

‘God bless my soul, my lord, are you sure? This will tear Compton in half.’

Powerscourt went back over his reasons, the secret of the Archdeacon’s visits to Melbury Clinton, the Canon’s pilgrimages to Mass in Ledbury St John, the connections with the late Cardinal Newman. Above all, he told him about his conversations with Dr Blackstaff.

‘Isn’t it all illegal, this sort of thing?’ said the Chief Inspector vaguely, only too aware that his previous training and experience did not equip him to quote section or subsection of Act of Parliament.

‘I’m sure it’s illegal,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But God knows which Act of Parliament it is. Before Catholic Emancipation I think it was illegal to celebrate Mass in an Anglican church, but I don’t know if this still applies. But at the moment nobody has actually done anything illegal. You can’t arrest people on suspicion of being about to do something in a week’s time.’

‘Do you think it helps with the murders?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

‘I’m not really sure that it does,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It may be that the Catholic conspirators are as upset about the killings as we are. What terrifies me is what the killer may do if we start asking around about the mass conversions. I think he may kill again. I’m sure he might kill again. He’s not like any murderer I have ever come across before, Chief Inspector. I feel he’s driven by a kind of madness that ordinary mortals simply wouldn’t understand.