David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘You know as well as I do,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘about the most common motives for murder. Money. Greed. Hatred. Jealousy. Revenge. I’m not sure that any of those work in this case. Hatred perhaps. Revenge maybe.’

‘Seems to me, my lord,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘that there’s domestic murder, and then there’s state killing in war if that’s the right word. Millions must have been killed in wars in the name of religion, isn’t that right?’

Powerscourt thought of the Christians massacred in the Colosseum, of purges and pogroms throughout the Middle Ages, Cathars despatched in their mountain fortress of Montsegur in the Pyrenees or slaughtered wholesale in the amphitheatre at Verona, the ruinous wars of religion that swept over Europe in the sixteenth century, the list went on and on.

‘I’m sure you’re right, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s only that the wars of religion seem to have returned to Compton a century or two after they finished everywhere else.’

‘This has just come for you, Lady Powerscourt.’ Andrew McKenna handed over a rather battered envelope with the address written in a childish hand. ‘Lady Powerscourt, Fairfield Park.’

‘Did you see how it got here, McKenna?’ Lady Lucy asked, slitting open her missive.

‘No, I did not, madam. It was found lying inside the front door. It must have been delivered by hand.’

‘Dear Lady Powerscourt,’ Lady Lucy read. The letters were large and sprawled across the page. ‘Could you meet us in the south transept to the side of the choir just before five thirty this afternoon. William and Philip, choirboys.’ McKenna took his leave. Lady Lucy was rejoicing. These were the two choirboys she had managed to speak to on a number of occasions after the rehearsals for the Messiah. Now they were asking for a meeting. Now perhaps she would discover the secrets of their fear and their unhappiness. Now perhaps she would be able to improve their situation. Never had she seen a collection of little boys so constantly crestfallen, so much in need of love and proper food and attention. She checked her watch. It was shortly after half-past four. Should she wait for Francis to return from his visit to the Chief Inspector? She knew how worried he had been about her interest in the choir, how often he had spelt out how dangerous it could be. She knew he might insist on accompanying her. Then she made up her mind. They were her special interest, these children. She had gone out of her way to try to get close to them. The presence of a man might put them off. Maybe the boys would say nothing at all. She scribbled a brief note to her husband, saying she had popped into Compton and hoped to return by half-past six at the latest. She did not specify precisely where she was going.

Lord Francis Powerscourt thought he could manage the first paragraph of his letter to the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary on his ride back to Fairfield Park. He remembered Rosebery telling him that the Prime Minister himself was unwell, his mind now so exhausted by the pressure of work that he had had to give up his beloved Foreign Office, his mighty frame so weary that he frequently fell asleep in cabinet meetings. Schomberg McDonnell, Private Secretary, confidant, intimate, the man who knew where all the Prime Minister’s political enemies were buried, he was the man to write to.

Powerscourt sat himself down at the desk in John Eustace’s study and began his letter. Lady Lucy’s note was still sitting, unseen and unread, on the table in the drawing room.

‘I am currently engaged,’ he began, ‘on an investigation into some very bizarre deaths in the Cathedral City of Compton in the west of England.’ Begin with the intelligence that is easy to understand, he reminded himself of his days in the Army, and move on slowly to the unpalatable conclusions. ‘In the course of my inquiries,’ he went on, ‘I have discovered a plot so unusual and so potentially divisive in the country as a whole, that I felt duty bound to lay the details before you.’ Make them curious, he said to himself, make them want to keep reading.

‘But before I do, however disagreeable I find it to advertise my previous achievements, I felt I should remind you of my own earlier involvements in the fields of detection and some of my past services to Crown and Country.’

Lady Lucy was humming the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to herself as she walked up the nave of the cathedral. The late afternoon sun was casting great beams of light across the body of the cathedral, some of it multicoloured as it was filtered through the stained glass. What a pity we couldn’t sing the Messiah here, she said to herself as she peered into the choir stalls to the left of the south transept. The building appeared to be completely deserted. There was no sign of the two boys. Perhaps they were late, or were hiding somewhere to give her a surprise. Then she saw a light coming round an open door in the corner. Perhaps they’re over there, she said to herself, and set off to investigate. As she reached the bottom of the steps she called for them by name.

‘William,’ she said softly, ‘Philip, I’m here.’

There was no answer. She moved forward, away from the door and tried again.

‘William, Philip, I’m here.’

Then two things happened virtually simultaneously. The light went out. There was a loud bang as the door slammed shut.

It was only a matter of moments before the minster was closed up for the night. And Lady Lucy Powerscourt was locked in the crypt in total impenetrable darkness.

April 1901

Powerscourt gave details of his investigation into the mysterious death of Prince Eddy, eldest son of the then Prince of Wales, some nine years before. He referred to his role in the defeat of a plot to bring the City of London to its knees at the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. He mentioned his work in South Africa, undertaken at the request of the Prime Minister himself. Then he started a new paragraph about the three deaths in Compton. He left nothing out. He referred to the celebrations at Easter for the one thousandth anniversary of the cathedral as a place of Christian worship. He felt his letter was going well now. He could see his way to the end. Somewhere outside he heard Johnny Fitzgerald enthusing about the birds to Anne Herbert who had brought her children over for the afternoon.

Lady Lucy cursed herself for her folly. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have ignored every word Francis had said to her? The crypt was very low, Norman vaulting rising from great pillars in the floor. Lady Lucy felt her way very gently round her prison, realizing that a tall man would be continuously banging his head on the stonework. The walls were clammy to the touch. She remembered that the workmen in here had found the ancient volume supposed to have been written by a pre-Reformation monk and currently appearing in weekly instalments in the Grafton Mercury. Faint scurrying noises could be heard in distant corners of the underground chamber, which might have been mice. Or rats. There was a mouldy smell, as if things left down here centuries before were still rotting slowly inside the walls.

Then she remembered Francis’s fears that the murderer might strike again. Lady Lucy was not particularly frightened of the dark. She remembered games of hide and seek in gloomy Scottish castles as a child where she had been able to conceal herself in places virtually bereft of daylight. But then there had usually been a gleam from under a door, a distant shaft of light up some corridor lined with long-dead warriors in their rusty armour. Down here there was nothing. If she held her hand in front of her face she could see nothing at all. She wondered about the man roasted on the spit. She shuddered violently as she thought of the man hung drawn and quartered, his parts distributed around the county. She thought of Francis’s vigil alone in the cathedral for hours until she found him. Huddled against a pillar, tears beginning to form in her eyes, terror in her heart, Lady Lucy Powerscourt began saying her prayers.