David Dickinson: Death of a Chancellor

Anne Herbert was tall and slim, with dark hair, a regular nose and very fetching green eyes. It was two years now since she had lost her husband, and been left with the two young children in the little house on the edge of the Cathedral Close. ‘She’s so pretty, that Anne Herbert,’ the Dean had said to John Eustace after arranging her new accommodation, ‘I’m sure she’ll be married inside a couple of years, if not sooner.’ Marriage had seemed a distant, an impossible option to Anne for the first year. She had loved her husband very dearly and found the prospect of a replacement inconceivable. One or two of the younger curates had tried and failed to woo her. Then five months ago, she had met Patrick at one of the Dean’s tea parties. He had simply walked up to her, cup of tea in one hand and a large piece of the Deanery’s best chocolate cake in the other, and said, ‘How do you do. I’m Patrick Butler.’ They had been seeing each other with increasing frequency ever since. The Dean had prophesied once more, saying this time to his housekeeper that he expected them to be married within the year. The Dean planned to conduct the service himself. He was searching, he told the Bishop, for a suitable passage of scripture concerning the scribes in the Bible to pay tribute to Patrick’s profession.

Then Butler himself walked in and ordered two cups of coffee. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said with a smile. ‘Had to talk to a man down at the cathedral. How are the children?’

Anne smiled back at him. ‘The children are fine,’ she said. ‘Have you had any reaction to the article about Mr Eustace? Everybody in Compton is talking about it.’

‘Good,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve got some news on that front. But first I need to ask you this.’ He leaned forward in his chair in case they could be overheard. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you? I mean you were born here, weren’t you?’

Anne’s father was the local stationmaster. ‘Yes, I have.’

The young man pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. ‘Ten months ago, just before I came to work here, one of the vicars choral simply disappeared. That’s right, isn’t it?’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Singing person by the name of William Gordon, my man in the cathedral tells me.’

‘Yes, that’s right. But what of it? Everybody’s forgotten about it by now.’

‘But he wasn’t the first one to disappear, was he? There was another one, about eighteen months back. I can’t find anybody who remembers his name, though. Even the old boy in the cathedral couldn’t remember him.’

Anne Herbert looked at Patrick. He was very excited. Then she remembered a young vicar choral called Peter Conway coming to lunch when her husband was still alive. He had great plans for his future, he had told the young couple, hoping to end up as a choirmaster in one of the great cathedrals of England. Then he vanished without trace. Nobody paid very much attention to either disappearance. Vicars choral, for some unknown reason, had a reputation for flighty and irresponsible behaviour.

‘I think he was called Peter Conway,’ she said very quietly. A couple of middle-aged ladies were planning a shopping expedition to Exeter in very loud voices a couple of tables away, their voices bright with expectation and greed. ‘But what of it, Patrick?’ Something in the nature of the young man’s occupation always worried Anne Herbert. It was all too excitable. Patrick and his colleagues were often obsessed with the dark side of human nature. As usual, he had laughed when she told him of her anxieties.

‘Heavens above, Anne,’ he had said, ‘do you want everything to run like your father’s trains, punctual down to the last minute, schedules planned months in advance? In the newspaper world, believe me, variety is the spice of life!’

Now he looked over at the middle-aged ladies. ‘Think of the reaction of respectable people like that when they read the article, Anne.’

‘Which article, Patrick? The one about how rich Mr Eustace was?’

‘Sorry,’ said Patrick Butler, turning back to inspect Anne Herbert’s eyes. They were still green, still the same colour he often thought about last thing at night before he fell asleep. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself. Two vanished vicars choral, missing, possibly deceased. Late vicars choral. Singing for their suppers no more. One dead Chancellor Eustace, called to his maker long before his time was up. Three of them altogether. I think I’m going to call it the Curse of Compton Minster. That should cause quite a stir!’

Anne was appalled. She had spent most of her adult years surrounded by the clergy and the choristers of this cathedral city. Now Patrick was going to blaspheme against her household gods, bringing the sordid techniques of his occupation to bear against the traditions of her upbringing. It was the profane assaulting the sacred.

‘You can’t possibly write such an article, Patrick. Nobody knows those two men are dead. I don’t think anybody even suggested it at the time. And you can’t be suggesting that there was anything suspicious about Mr Eustace’s death. That’s ridiculous.’

Patrick Butler thought it was time to beat a tactical retreat. Maybe certain things had to be sacrificed in the cause of love. But he wasn’t going to give up easily.

‘I wasn’t going to run this article soon, Anne, if it ever runs at all. I shall have to wait until after the funeral. And if it really upsets you, then I may never run it at all.’

Lady Lucy Powerscourt had been planning her campaign for over six months. Like all great generals she had carried out a number of reconnaissance missions. The final details had been fixed for some time. All that mattered, as with most military missions, was the timing. If that misfired, her strategy could collapse in a matter of minutes. She looked over at her husband, peacefully reading the newspapers in his favourite chair by the fire. It was now a fortnight since Powerscourt had stepped ashore in Portsmouth. Life was beginning to return to what she would regard as normal. He had spent a great deal of time with his children, mostly listening as they filled him in on the details of their lives while he was away, details that now seemed as important to Powerscourt as the schemes and stratagems he had hatched against the Boers thousands of miles from Markham Square. The previous evening he had taken Lucy to a concert where a young German pianist had taken their breath away with his interpretation of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Afterwards there had been a romantic dinner by candlelight where Powerscourt had repeated his private vow to her. Semper Fidelis. Forever Faithful.

‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy to the figure in the armchair. It was a slightly hesitant ‘Francis,’ as if she was not quite sure about what was to come. Like all famous commanders she was slightly nervous at the start of her operations.

‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, putting down his newspaper and smiling with pleasure at the sight of his wife, ‘something tells me you are up to something.’

Lady Lucy was momentarily taken aback. How could he know what she was about after just one word? Then she rallied. ‘It’s just there’s something I wanted to discuss with you.’

Powerscourt rose to his feet and leant on the mantelpiece. ‘Can I have a guess as to what this is all about?’ he said cheerfully. ‘Let me see, perhaps the kitchen is in need of modernization, though I don’t think it is going to be that. Change the bedrooms all around? New carpets for the hall? I don’t think it’s any of those but I could be wrong. Maybe it has something to do with this room we’re in now?’

Lady Lucy blushed slightly, embarrassed at the nature of her plans having been so easily rumbled. ‘It does have to do with this room, Francis, you’re quite right.’