Death of a Chancellor

9

The Rule of St Augustine. The Rule of St Benedict. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution. Lord Francis Powerscourt was browsing through the small library in Fairfield Park. Mrs Cockburn and her lawyer had both departed to London to plot further assaults on the will of the late John Eustace. Mrs Cockburn informed Powerscourt that she was going to take her family abroad for a while until the legal business was settled. Her parting shot showed that she had lost little of her venom.

‘I shall be most surprised, Powerscourt, if you have solved the mystery of what happened to my brother before I return. But I shall send you an address in case you turn lucky.’

Powerscourt, now temporary master of the house, had invited Lady Lucy and the children to come and stay. He had also asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

Powerscourt was now browsing through a large box with the words ‘History of Fairfield’ on the cover. He learnt that there had been a house here in Tudor times, that most of the present building had been constructed at the end of the seventeenth century by a man called Crosthwaite, Secretary of State for War and paymaster of the armies of William the Third. There were several references to the French style of architecture fashionable at the time, the enclosed courtyard in the front, the low wings containing nurseries, and the covered passage. Covered passage? What covered passage? Powerscourt said to himself, suddenly wide awake despite the late hour. Where did it go to? Where did it start?

Further researches revealed that the passage was concealed behind a door beside the fireplace in the drawing room. But the drawing room in the sketches of the time did not correspond with where the drawing room was now. Some later Crosthwaite must have moved it. Powerscourt found an earlier map of the house, which contained no reference to this mysterious passage, but did show the previous layout of the ground floor. What had been the drawing room, he decided, must have been turned into the library, where he was now. And, sure enough, there was a door to the left of the fireplace, less than fifteen feet from where he was standing.

Powerscourt pulled hard at the door. It refused to move. He wondered if it was locked. He tried one more time. This time it creaked open very slowly, as if it had not been in use recently. Behind it Powerscourt saw another black metal door with a small knob halfway down. Powerscourt turned it and peered inside. He could see nothing apart from a set of steps leading downwards. The sensible thing to do would be to wait for the morning and descend the steps, lantern in hand. But Powerscourt wasn’t feeling particularly sensible. He fetched two enormous volumes, bound in red leather, The History of Dorset they claimed to be, and wedged them as firmly as he could in the jamb of the door. He checked carefully to make sure they could not move. Then he set off.

It was easy at the beginning. There was enough light filtering through to make the descent of the first dozen steps fairly straightforward. Then the passageway turned sharply to the left. The steps gave way to a narrow path, leading, Powerscourt thought, away from the house. The walls, he noticed, were a dark and slimy green and rather damp. He could hear water further up, dripping onto the rocky passageway below. He wondered if there were mice or rats or bats down here. Powerscourt didn’t mind mice or rats very much but he had an abiding terror of bats from his days in India. The light behind him had almost gone. He was groping his way forward now, his right hand feeling the surface of the wall, one boot brought forward so the heel rested on the toe of the one in front. His earlier calm had been replaced by a growing unease. What if the passage was three or four hundred yards long? What if the gate or the trap door at the far end was locked? If he looked back he could just see a sliver of light falling on the passageway. Soon that too would disappear.

Powerscourt pressed on. He passed the place where the drip came down from the ceiling. It fell on his head instead. It felt very cold. He wondered if he should turn round. He heard a scurrying of very light feet in the distance, rats, he thought, fleeing from the human invader. The wall was growing damper. He realized that his boots were beginning to splash their way along the floor. He heard another drip, more than a drip, a small cascade up ahead. He pressed on, trying to move faster. He forced himself to take a series of deep breaths. Panic, he knew, would be a disaster. He wished Johnny Fitzgerald was with him. Now he could see nothing at all. He thought he heard a different noise, far in the distance, a low moaning sound. Maybe the ghosts of Fairfield spent most of their half lives down here, flitting restlessly up and down this dank corridor, only emerging to haunt the living when one of the doors was opened. Up until this point Powerscourt's right hand had told him that the side of the passage was simply rock. Now it became smoother suddenly. He thought it might be bricks. That gave him hope.

The stairs were almost his undoing. However carefully he was moving his feet, he missed the first step. He fell forward, holding out his hands to break his fall. Something very unfortunate had happened to his ankle. He was now half lying, half sitting on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, in total darkness. Slowly, very slowly, he pulled himself upright. He found it was easier to crawl up the steps than to walk. They were lined with a damp and slippery mould. Twice he nearly slipped backwards. Then he banged his head very loudly on something above. Powerscourt was stunned. He felt as though something was echoing inside his skull. He waited a few minutes to compose himself, his ankle aching, his head throbbing. That must be a trap door, or something similar, above my head, he said to himself. He put both his hands up and pushed as hard as he could. The door fell backwards. Powerscourt crawled slowly out of the terrible tunnel and found himself surrounded by what seemed to be a low wooden wall. Only when he stood up did he realize that he was in the enclosed pew of the inhabitants of Fairfield Park in the little church behind the house. John Eustace, he remembered, was buried in the churchyard outside. There was a faint light coming in through the windows. Various marble tombs were semi-visible on the walls. The pulpit was only fifteen feet away. Powerscourt closed the trap door and made his way out of the church. Thank God the door wasn’t locked. He didn’t fancy spending the night in there, surrounded by the bats and the dead, even if was preferable to spending it in the passageway he had just left.

He took several deep breaths and hobbled towards the house. His brain was reeling. Maybe Augusta Cockburn had been right all along. For until now the reason he had dismissed her murder theory was that he could not see how the intruders might have got in and out of the house. All the doors and windows, he remembered the butler telling him, had been securely fastened from the inside the morning after John Eustace’s death. Now he knew how a murderer could have got in and out without being detected and without leaving any telltale trace behind. Into the church, down the passageway, into the library, up the back stairs, into John Eustace’s bedroom. But why, in that case, had the body ended up in Dr Blackstaff’s house? Unless the murderer had carried him there? Was the murderer an ally of the doctor’s? Was he acting in concert with the butler? But in that case, why did they need the murderer at all? Either or both of them could perfectly easily have walked into the bedroom without anybody else being any the wiser.

It was only just outside the house that Powerscourt noticed something was wrong. The lights in the library had gone out. When he left, not more than twenty minutes before at the most, they had been switched on. It was their light that had shone down the steps and illuminated the first stage of his journey. He checked again. He remembered standing in the garden in the daylight only the day before, making a mental note of where all the ground-floor rooms were. The library was the last room on the left from the garden. There were no lights on. Even if he was wrong, and he didn’t think he was, all the lights in this part of the house had been turned off.

Had somebody seen him go? And tried to ensure that he wouldn’t have been able to come back? Was somebody in the house trying to send him a message? To frighten him off? But even so they must have known he could just walk out of the church and come down the path towards the back door. Had they thought the church was locked? He wondered, as he limped back into the house, what had happened to the door. Was it still open, waiting for a possible return? Was it closed? He didn’t like to think what it might mean if it was closed.

He found McKenna checking the windows at the very front of the house.

‘Good evening, McKenna,’ said Powerscourt, sidling up behind him.

‘My goodness me, my lord, you made me jump there. I thought you had gone to bed. I’ve just been putting the lights out.’

‘You know that passageway in the library, McKenna,’ Powerscourt went on, wondering yet again if he would ever get the truth about anything out of Andrew McKenna, ‘do many people know about it? I’ve just discovered it by accident.’

‘I turned the lights off in the library a moment ago, my lord. I didn’t see anybody in there. You don’t want to be going down there in the dark, my lord. Could be quite dangerous at this time of night. Lots of people know about it round these parts, my lord. If children came to call or to stay Mr Eustace used to take them down there. Scared most of them out of their wits, I shouldn't wonder. But they quite like being frightened, I sometimes think.’

‘Very good, McKenna. I’ve left a book in the library. Goodnight to you.’

‘Goodnight to you, my lord.’

Powerscourt was trying to remember how much of the library you could see from the door by the light switches. If you could see the whole room, open door to the passageway included, then Andrew McKenna was in a for a very rough time. He opened the door and turned on the switch. If you didn’t actually walk inside the room, he realized, you couldn’t see the open door. And was the door open or closed? He took three paces into the room and looked sharply to his right. The door was still as he had left it. The route to the black hole was still open. Lots of people, he remembered, knew about it in these parts.

‘Guess who’s invited me to lunch on Thursday?’ Patrick Butler had just hung his hat and coat in their usual place in Anne Herbert’s hall.

‘The Dean? The Bishop? I’m not sure bishops ask people like you to lunch, Patrick,’ said Anne, smiling as she brought in the tea.

‘No,’ said Patrick Butler, laughing. ‘Much better than that.’

‘You can’t get much more important than the Dean and the Bishop round here,’ said Anne, offering him a piece of cake.

‘Powerscourt,’ said Patrick Butler proudly. ‘Lord Francis Powerscourt has invited me to lunch at the Queen’s Head at one o’clock.’

‘Why do you think he wants to do that, Patrick? You’re not a murder suspect or anything like that, are you?’ She looked at him carefully.

‘I would think,’ said Patrick with his man of the world air, ‘that he wants to pick my brain. Local knowledge, that sort of thing.’

‘If you were an investigator, Patrick, would you ask yourself to lunch? Yourself, the newspaper editor, I mean.’

‘I’m not sure I would,’ said Patrick Butler thoughtfully. ‘Unless I wanted something, some information maybe. Or unless I wanted to see what would happen if some story was printed in the paper. Maybe that’s what he wants.’

‘Is there any news about the death of that poor man in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall?’ Anne Herbert was wondering, as she looked at Patrick, if she should suggest buying him some new shirts. His present collection were rather frayed. Better wait, she said to herself, he won’t want to talk about shirts just now.

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Patrick Butler, unaware that he had narrowly escaped ordeal by shirt and collar. ‘I had a word with that policeman this morning, Chief Inspector Yates. Do you know what he said? I thought it was rather good, but he won’t let me use it in the Mercury. “Look at these vicars choral when they are singing,” said the Chief Inspector. “Look at how wide they open their mouths. The effort seems to exhaust them for the remaining part of every day. The rest of the time their mouths are very firmly, very tightly shut. They don’t tell you a bloody thing.”’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking yet again the short distance between Fairfield Park and Dr Blackstaff’s house. Only this time he was going inside, by appointment with the good doctor in his room full of medical prints.

‘Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt began, ‘do you know of that passage between the library and the church up at the Park?’ He wanted to test the butler’s assertion that everybody in the locality knew about it.

‘Oh yes,’ said the doctor, ‘most people round here know about that passage. How did you find out about it?’

‘I discovered it by accident the other night,’ Powerscourt said, accepting a small glass of the doctor’s whisky. ‘I thought it interesting because it showed that some outside body could have gained entry to the house in the middle of the night. All they had to do was to walk into the church, lift up the trapdoor, make their way down the passageway and into the library. Nobody inside the house would have heard a thing. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr Blackstaff?’

‘It seems perfectly possible, I must admit. But why do you ask, Powerscourt?’

‘I am thinking of the suspicions of my employer, Mrs Augusta Cockburn. She suspects that her brother may have been murdered. Until now I have always been sceptical of that theory. I do not believe that any of the servants would have murdered him. I could not work out how any outsider might have gained entrance to the house when all the doors and windows were still bolted the following morning. Now I am not so sure. As you know, it would take less than a minute to walk out of the library, up the back stairs, and into Eustace’s bedroom.’ Powerscourt paused and looked across at Dr Blackstaff, sitting on the other side of the fire. ‘Do you follow me, doctor?’

‘I do,’ said Dr Blackstaff, ‘but I do not see the relevance of all this. John Eustace died here in this house, as you know.’

‘But he could have been killed in his own house, could he not, and then brought over here already dead by one of the servants, the butler, for example. Is that not so?’

Dr Blackstaff smiled. ‘In your profession, my friend,’ he said, ‘you are accustomed to looking for the darkest possible interpretation of events. I am sure that you could make a very credible case for saying that our late Queen was murdered in her bed by the agents of some wicked foreign powers. But John Eustace died here in this house, as you well know.’

Powerscourt changed tack. ‘Have you heard, doctor, about the death of Arthur Rudd, the vicar choral found strangled in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall?’ Dr Blackstaff nodded. ‘And have you had a chance to talk to Dr Williams, the medical man from Compton who attended on the dead person?’ Powerscourt believed that if the two doctors had met, the true facts surrounding the terrible demise of Arthur Rudd would have been exchanged. The medical profession might pride itself on its tact and discretion when dealing with their patients and people outside their own circle. But doctor will gossip unto doctor just as surely as lawyer will gossip unto lawyer. Blackstaff’s reply was a relief.

‘I have not spoken to Gregory Williams for some weeks now, not since we met at a party in the Bishop’s Palace, to be precise.’

Powerscourt found himself wondering briefly precisely what a party in the Bishop’s Palace might be like. Quizzes on the names of the Old Testament prophets? Or which came first in Egypt, the death of the first born or the plague of locusts? He pressed on. ‘Let me tell you, in confidence, if I may, the facts that have not been made public about this death.’ Powerscourt paused. ‘The body was actually found attached to the roasting spit in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. There was a powerful fire burning. The body had been roasting in the flames for a number of hours, five or six probably, before it was discovered. Somebody killed the poor man and then roasted him as if were an ox or a stag or a deer. I do not need to tell you, doctor, the condition of the body when it was found.’

‘How terrible, how absolutely frightful,’ said the doctor. Even he, Powerscourt noticed, turned rather pale. ‘But why are you telling me all this?’

Powerscourt was looking very sombre. ‘Let me be perfectly frank with you, Dr Blackstaff. I have to admit that there were certain inconsistencies, certain discrepancies, between your account of what happened on the night of John Eustace’s death and the account of the butler Andrew McKenna.’ Powerscourt had no intention of spelling out what the inconsistencies were. If he did, he suspected that the leaky vessel that was their story might be hastily repaired. Dr Blackstaff looked as if was about to speak, but Powerscourt held up his hand to stop him.

‘Please hear me out, doctor. And please make your own allowances for the tendency of my profession to be forever looking at the darkest sides of human nature. But suppose for a moment, if you will, that my employer’s suspicions are correct, that her brother was murdered. Now we have not one death but two. And in the case of the second one we know that there is a murderer on the loose with a macabre, not to say demented, method of killing his victims. Suppose the two deaths were linked in some way. Suppose that it was the same motive that led to the deaths of John Eustace and Arthur Rudd. And suppose that the murderer has not yet got what he wanted. Suppose there are going to be more victims in the days and weeks ahead, bodies discovered nailed to a cross on the Cathedral Green, maybe, or hanging in chains from the roof of the chapter house. I put it to you, Dr Blackstaff, that anybody in possession of any information that might be relevant to these inquiries should unburden themselves of it immediately. I put it to you that anybody in possession of such information who chooses to remain silent, may be contributing to another terrible death, or even deaths, in Compton and its surroundings. And I would remind you that any such information passed on to me would be treated in the strictest confidence.’ Powerscourt stopped for his words to sink in. Then he asked very quietly, ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me, Dr Blackstaff?’

The doctor opened his mouth as if to speak. Later Powerscourt wondered if he had come within a second or two of telling him something. Then the doctor thought better of it. He went over to the sideboard and returned with his whisky decanter.

‘Let me refresh your glass, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘and let me tell you that I have nothing further to add to my earlier account of the last night and day of my friend John Eustace. It may be that there are inconsistencies between my account and that of the butler. I would be surprised if there were not. At times of great strain people often find it difficult to recall things precisely. I have known patients – and this happens more frequently than you might think and not just with the old – who have forgotten most of what I tell them in my surgery before they reach their own front doors. I wish I could be of more assistance, I really do.’

There was an extraordinary variety of equipment on show running down the hill with an equal variety of techniques on display for controlling them. Sleds, sledges, toboggans, some with ropes to steer them, some without, one-seaters, two-seaters, one enormous toboggan that looked as if it could hold four people. More snow had fallen overnight and the great hill at the front of Fairfield Park had become a paradise for the Powerscourt children. James Bell, the coachman, had introduced Thomas and Olivia to the sledges early that morning, making repairs where necessary, checking that the ropes were in good order. He had created one enormous length of rope which stretched from one of the great oak trees at the top all the way down the slope so the children could pull themselves back up to the summit again. He had organized them to build a snow wall round the ancient statue of Neptune, halfway down the run, in case they crashed into the stone plinth and knocked themselves out.

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were standing at the very top of the hill. From there the house itself was invisible. Only a third of the way down the twisting driveway did the rooftops begin to appear.

‘I’ve always wondered why they didn’t build the house up here in the first place, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, rubbing his hands together to keep warm. ‘Just look at the view. You can see for miles.’ On a sunny day like this the view stretched for about forty miles over the snow-covered hills and the surrounding countryside.

‘Maybe it was the wind up here,’ said Lady Lucy taking her husband’s arm. ‘I think we should go part of the way down so we can see the bottom. The children are more likely to crash further down.’ There was a very loud shout of ‘Tally-ho!’ from halfway down the hill. Johnny Fitzgerald had narrowly missed the statue and was heading at considerable speed towards the giant snowman a hundred yards from the house.

‘Are you going to take a ride, Francis?’ asked Lucy, squeezing his arm.

‘I think I may have to,’ said her husband gloomily. ‘Thomas asked me if I was too old for it. I haven’t been in one of those things for years.’

Powerscourt had been fascinated by the different approaches of his two children. Thomas, the elder, was cautious, proceeding with great care down the white slopes and veering off to the left or right if he thought he was going too fast. Only once, as far as Powerscourt could see, had he reached the bottom of the run. But Olivia was like a thing possessed. She climbed in, pointed her sledge towards the bottom, kicked herself up to a good speed and hurtled down the slope, screaming with delight as she went. Her father was sure he had heard her shouting ‘Faster, faster,’ at her sledge as she went.

Johnny Fitzgerald was hauling himself back up the slope. ‘Francis,’ he said, ‘this is excellent sport. I thought I was going to crash into that bloody snowman just now.’

‘Can I ask you to do something for me, Johnny?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I want you to go down among the dead.’

Tombstones, Francis? Opening up the graves in the Compton cemetery, is that what you want me to do?’

Powerscourt smiled at his friend. ‘I don’t want you to turn into a grave robber, though it might just have its advantages.’ Powerscourt suspected that if he could just look inside the coffin of the late John Eustace, some of his problems might be solved. But he also knew that it would be almost impossible to secure an exhumation order. The Compton coroner was Dr Blackstaff’s brother and Powerscourt could not see the doctor agreeing to an exhumation. And, as Powerscourt remembered from a previous case, there was a section from the Burial Act of 1857 which stipulated that the Home Secretary had to give his consent to such an exhumation.

‘It’s the undertakers in Compton, Johnny, that’s where I want you to make some new friends. There must be a couple of labourers there who do most of the heavy work, lifting the bodies about, that sort of thing.’

‘Why do I always get such exciting jobs, Francis?’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, throwing a snowball at the passing figure of Olivia. ‘Wasn’t there anything more cheerful you could think of, making friends with the people in the morgue, perhaps? Rolling up sleeves with the staff at the local abattoir?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be able to cope, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt. He noticed that Master Thomas had finally plucked up enough courage to get to the bottom of the hill on his sledge. He was waving a small and very dirty fist in the air in triumph. ‘They have very recently received the body of Arthur Rudd, the roasted vicar choral. They must have some pretty good stories to tell about him. But what I want to know about is the body of John Eustace, the one transported there at such speed if you recall. Maybe they’ve got some stories to tell about that one too. That’s what we’re after, Johnny.’

‘Very good, Francis,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Maybe I’ll just take a turn or two down the hill before I go. I don’t suppose you managed to see if there’s a decent inn near the undertakers where a thirsty fellow might go after he’d finished packing the dead into their coffins?’

Powerscourt laughed as his friend departed up the hill. ‘I think you’ll find it’s called the Stonemason’s Arms, Johnny. Good local beer.’ Then he saw that a deputation was coming his way. The two children were pulling their sledges up the hill towards him. Lady Lucy was with them, with a rather larger model. She was smiling at him. She knew what was coming.

‘Papa,’ said Thomas seriously.

‘Yes, Thomas,’ replied Powerscourt.

‘It’s time you took a ride in one of these sledges. You can’t just stand around in the snow talking to Johnny all the time. Mama has brought one for you.’

‘And it’s great fun,’ Olivia chimed in, ‘you can go really fast.’

‘Well, I’m not sure,’ said Powerscourt, looking down at the two faces beside him. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever done it before. We didn’t have much snow in Ireland when I was growing up, you know. It’s against the rules.’

Thomas looked at him suspiciously. ‘That’s not true, Papa. There must be snow in Ireland.’

‘Course there’s snow in Ireland, Papa,’ said Olivia, who had no idea where Ireland actually was.

‘Anyway,’ said Powerscourt, moving on to a second line of defence, ‘I’m far too old for it. Didn’t you see the sign in the stables where the sledges are kept? People over thirty are forbidden to use these sledges, it said.’

He looked down at his children with his most serious face.

‘That’s not true! You’re making it up,’ said Thomas defiantly.

‘You’re not too old at all, Papa,’ said Olivia. ‘You’re only sixty-five or whatever it is. That’s a lot less than thirty.’ Olivia had always been confused by big numbers. ‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I give in. Lucy,’ he went on as the three of them began their ascent of the hill, ‘I hold you personally responsible for this. You will find my will in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk in Markham Square.’

The workmen found the body in the crypt late that afternoon. Ever since the archivist and the architect decided that the ancient crypt must be slightly larger than it appeared, they had been taking down a low wall at the eastern end of the structure. Once a section of the stones had been removed they could see that there was a space extending away from the main structure for about eight to ten feet. Closer inspection revealed a very ancient wooden coffin. Behind the coffin, as if concealed by it, was a small wooden box, about three feet square. Both were heavily covered with dust and mould.

‘Another bloody coffin,’ said William Bennett, the foreman in charge of operations. ‘That makes six we’ve found in the last ten years. I’d better tell the archivist and he can decide what to do with this one. I’ll bring him the box as well. Maybe it’s got buried treasure inside.’