David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

‘I had noticed over a period of a year or so that your brother’s heart might be deteriorating,’ the doctor went on, shifting his gaze now to the logs burning in the grate. ‘He became tired quite easily. He wasn’t able to walk as far as he had done in the past. Sometimes when he had to take one of the great services in the cathedral or preach a sermon on some important occasion, it wore him out. This could, of course, be the normal process of people slowing down in middle age. Nothing concrete was ever revealed under examination. And believe me, Mrs Cockburn,’ suddenly he did look her straight in the eye, ‘I examined him many times.’

‘Was he worried about something, Dr Blackstaff? I have been told that anxiety can cause all sorts of problems.’

‘No, no, he wasn’t worried. I would have been the first to know if he had been. He wasn’t worried at all,’ said the doctor, who knew better than any man on earth just how worried John Eustace had been in the last months of his life.

A sliver, a scintilla of a suspicion passed through Augusta Cockburn’s mind. Did the man protest too much? Was he too telling her a pack of lies?

‘To come to his last hours, if I may.’ The doctor paused briefly, running through his story in his mind yet again. ‘He came to see me about ten o’clock on the evening before he died. He was feeling unwell. On examination he was suffering from a condition known as cardiac disfibrillation, a sort of racing of the heart. It could be that all sorts of things were going wrong, but we do not at present have the means to detect what those might be. I gave him something to ease the condition and a draught to help him sleep. I advised him against returning to his own house at that time. I thought it was merely a precaution. I did not imagine that John would never see his own house again.’ The doctor turned from staring into the fire to look at Augusta Cockburn and he shook his head sadly.

‘The next morning, there was little change. I examined him again. I gave him some more medicine. But it was no good. Whatever was wrong with his heart, whatever pieces of human equipment were malfunctioning, his God called him home just after ten o’clock.’ The doctor paused again. ‘I don’t believe he was in any great pain. His heart just stopped working and he was gone.’

‘And why is nobody allowed to see him before he is buried? Why is he locked up in the undertaker’s as if he had the plague?’

Dr Blackstaff had known this was coming. ‘He told me several times over the last few years that he didn’t want any procession of people peering in at him when he was gone.’

The doctor was not prepared for the next salvo.

‘When did he tell you? What were you doing? Were you in this house or in his?’

‘I can’t remember exactly where it was,’ the doctor said, ‘not exactly. But he certainly said it.’

‘You can’t remember where you were when my brother said such a strange thing? You can’t remember?’ Augusta Cockburn’s voice rang with scorn.

‘Mrs Cockburn,’ the doctor said in his most authoritative tones, ‘believe me, in the course of my professional duties, I have a great many confidential conversations with my patients. I carry around in my head all sorts of wishes and requests relating to what people want to happen when they die. I cannot be expected to recall exactly where I was on each and every occasion.’

‘But you might have muddled them up, might you not, doctor? Somebody else might have told you they wished to remain locked up in their coffin like a criminal. If you can’t remember where you were, how can anybody be sure that you’ve got the right person? Somebody else might have told you they didn’t wish to be seen.’

Dr Blackstaff shook his head. ‘I know I am right,’ he said.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared him for the next blast.

‘Are you a beneficiary under my brother’s will, Dr Blackstaff? Has he left you a lot of money?’

Blackstaff turned bright red. Augusta Cockburn thought this denoted guilt. In reality it was anger that such a question, such an imputation, be directed at him.

‘No, to the best of my knowledge, I am not, madam. And now, if you will excuse me, I have patients to see to. The living have rights as well as the dead. I wish you a very good morning, madam.’

With that the doctor picked up his bag and strode from the room.

Augusta Cockburn stared at the doctor’s departing back. She continued to stare at the door long after he had gone. She was not a bad woman, Augusta Cockburn. She had loved her brother. She loved her family, except, of course, for her lying husband. But the circumstances of her life brought out all the worst aspects of her character.

She picked up the latest edition of the Grafton Mercury, lying on the table in front of her. She wondered if there was anything about her brother inside. She gave a little cry when she came to Patrick Butler’s favourite paragraph. Charles John Whitney Eustace one of the richest men in England. An enormous portfolio of shares. Mother an American heiress. She read it again. She knew her brother was rich but not as rich as this paper said he was. It definitely did say he was one of the richest men in England. How did they know that, the people in this little backwater, miles from civilization? How did this twopenny-halfpenny scandal sheet, the Grafton Mercury, filled with information about the price of pigs and meetings of the parish councils, know it? Had all of Compton known it? Did the money, heaven forbid, have anything to do with his death?

Augusta Cockburn stood and stared out of the window at her late brother’s garden. A couple of robins were hopping energetically on the lawn. A light rain was falling. She hadn’t believed the butler. She hadn’t believed the doctor either. Dr Blackstaff might have been a more professional liar than McKenna or McKendrick or whatever the wretched man was called – doctors have to lie every day of their working lives, she thought – but there was something suspicious about his story too.

One phrase kept echoing round her head. One of the richest men in England. Maybe she could move house again, back to a proper address. One of the richest men in England. She could provide properly for her four children. She could pay off all the debts her wretched husband had accumulated. One of the richest men in England. She could pay her husband off with a large sum of money so that she never had to set eyes on him again. They would, for once, have enough money to live on without worrying about how the next bill was going to be paid. One of the richest men in England.

Augusta Cockburn moved to the far side of the room and went into her brother’s study. She locked the door, gazing quickly behind her to make sure she was not being watched. She opened the drawers of the great desk where her brother did his work. She checked through all of them. She looked in the little cubby-holes on the top, full of writing paper and envelopes. She checked that there were no secret compartments where important documents might be hidden away. She didn’t find what she was looking for. She unlocked the door and rang the bell.

‘McKendrick, or whatever your name is,’ she said, ‘I wish to go to the railway station. I have to go back to London. I shall return in a few days’ time. Order the carriage.’

‘Certainly madam.’ Andrew McKenna rejoiced as he heard of their tormentor’s departure. He and his colleagues had escaped from jail for a few days at least.

Mrs Augusta Cockburn was returning to London to find a private investigator to look into her brother’s death. She suspected very strongly that he had been murdered.

Anne Herbert was waiting for Patrick Butler in the coffee house on Exchequergate, a couple of hundred yards from the west front of the cathedral. Patrick was late. He was, Anne smiled to herself, usually late. Just had to talk to a couple of fellows, he would say with that great smile of his.