Death of a Chancellor

21

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.

‘Our father which art in heaven,’ she began, her voice sounding strange in the deserted crypt, ‘hallowed be thy name . . .’

It was nearly half-past seven when Powerscourt finished his letter. He read it through three times. Then he decided to leave it until the morning before he posted it and the two other versions he would send to the Archbishop and the Lord Lieutenant. He had decided to omit the Bishop of Exeter. Maybe he could improve it in the morning. As he set off through the drawing room to join Johnny and the children, he saw Lucy’s letter on the table. He read it once and called for the butler in his loudest voice.

‘McKenna! McKenna!’

The butler came running into the room. He had never heard Powerscourt shout before.

‘Do you know why Lady Powerscourt went into Compton this afternoon?’ said Powerscourt, staring hard at Andrew McKenna.

‘All I know is that there was a letter, my lord. It came about half-past four, I think.’

‘Did you see who brought it?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘No, my lord. Nobody saw the bearer. It was addressed to Lady Powerscourt at Fairfield Park. The handwriting might have been a child’s.’

Or somebody pretending to be a child, Powerscourt thought bitterly.

‘And did she go out straight away?’

‘Yes, my lord. She rode off into Compton at about a quarter to five.’

‘Right, McKenna,’ said Powerscourt, ‘can you ask the coachman to take Mrs Herbert and the two children back to the Cathedral Close. And ask him to wait outside her house.’ He strode out into the garden. Johnny and Anne Herbert were looking sadly at the remains of a small bird that seemed to have fallen victim to one of the Fairfield cats. Johnny was proposing burial underneath the trees, the children nodding slowly in agreement. None of them had been to a funeral before.

‘Mrs Herbert,’ even now Powerscourt remembered his manners, ‘the coachman will take you and the boys back into town as soon as you are ready. Johnny, we must go now. I think Lucy may be in danger.’

‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee oh Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The closing prayer of Evensong, which Lady Lucy had heard so often less than a hundred yards from her dungeon, gave her some comfort. Fragments of prayers and bits of collects jumbled themselves up in her mind. She had prayed for the means of grace and the hope of glory She had prayed for the hope of grace and the means of glory She didn’t think God would mind if the message was confused. This after all was one of his own on temporary sojourn in the valley of the shadow of death. Then she heard a noise. Only when she heard it did she realize that up till now, fifteen to twenty minutes after her incarceration, she thought, she had heard absolutely nothing. No human voice, no passing carriages, no songbird gracing the walls of the minster with its music, not even the trebles of the choirboys could be heard down here. The walls must have been ten feet thick, built to last at the end of the eleventh century, rendering the crypt the perfect place for the contemplation of one’s soul in peace. Or the contemplation of your own death in peace, Lady Lucy said to herself, huddling ever closer to one of the central pillars. The noise was growing louder, a hissing noise, a gurgling noise, a noise that grew in volume as time went by. Lady Lucy was virtually certain what it was. Then she felt it running over her shoes. Water was flooding into the Compton crypt, not in a deluge, but in a steady flow that must surely fill the entire chamber if it continued. Lady Lucy began looking for the steps. Over there was higher ground. Twice she fell over and her dress and her blouse were soaked. What a frightful sight I’m going to be if anybody ever manages to find me, or if the monster decides to turn off the water, she said to herself. She thought of Thomas and Olivia grieving for a drowned mother. She wondered how Francis would cope on his own. Perhaps he would marry again. He didn’t seem to have very much luck with his wives staying alive, she reflected bitterly. Two drowned, one in the Irish Sea, one in the crypt of Compton.

At last she found the steps and sat halfway up to wait for the flood that would engulf her to rise slowly up the Norman pillars. Sometimes she thought it was subsiding, draining away perhaps through some porous section of the walls. Then it rose again, slowly, steadily, stealthily, almost like some wild animal stalking its prey in a jungle and waiting to pounce. Lady Lucy found herself thinking of her grandfather in Scotland who had dreamed of her marrying the Viceroy of India. He had taught her to shoot in case she needed to defend herself against hostile natives or marauding wild animals. Bullets would not help me now, she said to herself. I must remain calm, she told herself. If I panic or turn hysterical I shall die even sooner. She tried to imagine what Francis would say. She thought she knew exactly what his message to her would be. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were riding into Compton faster than they had ever galloped across the South African veldt the year before. Johnny had a dark bag on his back, filled with strange implements that would open doors and windows designed to keep intruders out. The sun was setting over to their right, the glorious greens of an English spring turning back to the anonymous grey of twilight. Once or twice Johnny glanced wistfully at some bird of prey hovering above the fields. Powerscourt was calculating how long it would take them to reach Compton. And how long the murderer had already had to kill his Lucy.

Lady Lucy had counted fifteen steps from the bottom of the crypt to the great door that had banged shut on her some time before. She was sitting on step number eight, peering at the tide of water that swirled about her feet. Not that she could see the water, but she heard its presence everywhere, rippling round the pillars, slurping along the walls at the back. She had drawn her feet up to the step beneath. As the water rose she was going to retreat higher until she ended up crouching on the top step with her back to the door. She had moved on from the prayers and the collects to St Patrick’s Breastplate. One of her grandmothers used to recite it to her as a lullaby at bedtime. The words had never left her.

‘Christ for my guardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards.

Christ with me

Christ before me

Christ behind me.’

Christ was not beneath her. The water was. It had risen again during her prayer. Lady Lucy retreated to step number nine. She found herself wondering why the murderer was so sensitive about the choir. Her mind went back to the conversation with the choirmaster when he had threatened to expel her for taking too much interest in the boys. They have a lot of new music to learn for the commemoration service, he had said, as well as the Messiah. What sort of new music? Catholic music? Music that would never gain countenance in an Anglican cathedral, perhaps? And the choirboys might have told her? Surely that was the answer. She would have to tell Francis when she saw him. Maybe the choirmaster was the murderer. Then Lady Lucy’s courage broke down and the tears rolled down her face to add a touch of salt to the malevolent flood beneath her. She might never see Francis again. He would never know how much she loved him, how she had loved him ever since that meeting in the National Gallery nine years before when she had talked with such passion about Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. The thought that Francis would never know how much she felt for him reduced Lady Lucy to bouts of uncontrollable weeping. The waters advanced again. Lady Lucy retreated. She was on step number ten now. Only five to go.

Powerscourt reined in his horse on the edge of the Cathedral Close. He felt very cold in spite of the vigour of his ride.

‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘do you think you could pick up the cathedral keys from the Deanery over there? I’m going round to the choirboys’ house. I’ll see you at the west door in a few minutes.’

The choir were still practising as Powerscourt raced round to the Georgian house that was their home. He heard the singing from twenty yards away, the choirmaster not happy with his charges, making them sing the same phrase over and over again. Powerscourt thought there was something unusual about this music, something not right, but he had no time to wait and listen further. He pulled vigorously on the bell. You would think the bell in this sort of house would be melodious, he said to himself as he waited for an answer, a Mozart or a Haydn among door bells. But this one was harsh and grating, a dissonant note with the heavenly voices on the upper floor.

An enormous man in his late thirties with a large black beard opened the door.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘My wife has gone missing. She is a member of the choir for the Messiah. I wonder if you’ve seen her at all earlier this evening?’

‘We all know Lady Powerscourt,’ said the man ominously, ‘and I can promise you we haven’t seen her at all this evening. Goodnight to you, sir.’

And with that the man closed the door very sharply in Powerscourt’s face. There was some strange accent there in the man’s speech, Powerscourt thought, but he hadn’t time to wonder what it was. He led his horse back to the front of the cathedral. It was twenty-five past eight.

Lady Lucy was on step number twelve now. She had cried all she could. Now she felt very cold. The water was beginning to creep up around her ankles. Ever since she was a child Lady Lucy had believed in heaven. Now she felt she might see it rather sooner than she expected. She had given up all hope of rescue, all hope that the remorseless flood might stop rising. She wondered if they had cleaning and drying facilities for new arrivals up above. God’s laundry, she said to herself, presided over by a couple of wrinkled female saints, dispensing good cheer and heavenly soapsuds in equal measure. She wondered suddenly if there were big queues at busy periods, remembering the long delays that sometimes occurred at her local laundry on the corner of Sloane Square. She would just have to wait and see.

She began rehearsing some of her sins for the questions higher up. She hoped she would get preferential treatment for being so wet. Most of the new arrivals must come in perfectly dry after all. She should have been kinder to her mother. Lady Lucy suspected the authorities must have heard that one before. Sometimes she had been too strict with the children. Another familiar refrain. The waters were rising again. Lady Lucy, on her very own ghastly stairway to heaven, climbed back another step. Number thirteen. Unlucky thirteen.

Johnny Fitzgerald was carrying an enormous bunch of keys. ‘The Dean’s man wasn’t about,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I had to interrupt the Dean in the middle of a meeting for him to fetch me the keys. He looked pretty cross.’ Johnny began inspecting the bunch for the key of the west door, Powerscourt trying not to become impatient beside him.

‘I think it might be this one,’ he said, inserting an enormous key into the lock. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Backed a loser there. Hold on, Francis, sorry about the delay.’ The second key didn’t work either. Neither did the third, Powerscourt feeling desperate by his side. The fourth did. Johnny Fitzgerald handed Powerscourt a lantern and they set off together up the nave, dramatic shadows falling across the tombs and the chantry chapels of the dead. They kept together by long custom, remembering from years of experience that two might make quicker progress separately, but that one person on their own is easier to kill. The sound of their boots went echoing up into the roof. They spoke in whispers. Powerscourt felt relieved when they passed the high altar and found it empty. He had been wondering if the murderer’s macabre imagination could have left Lucy on top of it, like the victim of a human sacrifice. He tried to remember if his historians had talked of any women being put to death during the agonies of the Reformation. There was only one he could recall, a woman widely believed to have been a witch who had been burnt at the stake. He shuddered as they passed into the Lady Chapel behind the altar. A host of medieval saints and sinners peered down at them from the stained glass. But of Lady Lucy there was no sign.

Lady Lucy was on the fourteenth step now. Just one more to go before the end. The tears were back in her eyes as she thought of her children growing up without her. She would never see Thomas and Olivia married, she would never hold their children in her arms. Perhaps Thomas would become a soldier like his father and ride off overseas in some resplendent uniform to fight his country’s battles. She felt very cold, shivering now as the waters approached. Then she thought she could hear some faint noise outside the door. Down at the bottom of the crypt, in amongst the pillars and the thick stone arches, you could hear nothing at all. But higher up it was different. She decided to make one last try for life. ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Francis! Francis!’ She thought it would be fitting if she perished with her husband’s name on her lips. But there was no reply, only the mocking swirl of the waters that were coming to envelop her. She carried on regardless. ‘Help! Help! Francis! Francis!’

It wasn’t Powerscourt who heard the noise but Johnny Fitzgerald. He stopped suddenly and held Powerscourt back with his hand. ‘Listen, Francis, I thought I heard a noise, coming from down there somewhere to the side of the choir.’ They strained forward. They were over a hundred yards away from the entrance to the crypt. The next time they both heard it. ‘Lucy! Lucy’ they shouted at the tops of their voices as they sprinted down the south ambulatory, bumping into the tomb of Duke William of Hereford as they went. They stopped in the south transept and listened once more. This time they heard it more clearly. ‘Francis! Francis!’ There was hope in the voice now. Lucy thought she heard the sound of footsteps drawing near to the crypt.

‘The crypt, Francis, the crypt. Over there in the corner. God knows which one of these bloody keys it is. Christ, why do they have so many? There’s enough here to maintain a decent-sized prison.’

Powerscourt was banging on the door, calling out to Lucy inside. Johnny found the key at last. They rushed down a narrow passageway of twelve large steps to the second door. Water was now swirling round their feet. Johnny took one look at the second door and pulled out a vicious-looking iron crowbar.

‘To hell with this bunch of keys, Francis,’ he said. ‘God knows what the divine punishment is for damaging cathedral property but I’ll take my chance.’

With that he struck two mighty blows at the lock. Then he produced another instrument from his bag and wrenched the lock out of place. The door fell forward and with it a very wet Lady Lucy. She was crying. Powerscourt took her in his arms and carried her back up to the body of the cathedral.

‘It’s all my fault, Francis, it really is. If only I had listened to your advice about the choirboys.’

‘Don’t worry, my love,’ said Powerscourt, stroking her hair, and striding fast towards the west door. ‘You’re safe now. You can tell us what happened later. We’re going to take you to Anne Herbert’s house. I’m sure you can have a bath and borrow some dry clothes.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was packing up his tools. Powerscourt suddenly remembered his conversation with Chief Inspector Yates in the cloisters where the policeman had told him about the diverted stream and the sluice gate.

Powerscourt shook his head. When was this murderer going to stop? he said to himself. John Eustace, Arthur Rudd, Edward Gillespie. He’d tried to kill Powerscourt once. Now he’d tried, perhaps, to kill Lady Lucy. Let Easter Sunday come quickly, he thought. Then there may be an end of it.

Two days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking up the cobbled street of the Vicars Close. Two rows of ancient houses, with pretty little gardens in the front, ran up the hill away from the cathedral. Not Compton Cathedral this time, but Wells, a couple of hours away by train. For two days Powerscourt had sat at Lucy’s bedside. The long exposure in the crypt, the cold and the water, had left her weak and feverish. Privately Powerscourt blamed himself. They should have left her in Anne Herbert’s house rather than bringing her on yet another journey back to Fairfield Park. Dr Blackstaff was a regular visitor and prescribed a couple of medicines and a lot of rest. When the fever was running high Lady Lucy would plead with Francis to find out about the music. She was certain that the Protestant choirboys were being forced to learn the tunes and the words of the Church of Rome. She was sure the boys were not allowed to tell their parents for fear of some terrible punishment. Only that morning, Palm Sunday, as the procession of palms made its way round the cathedral and then up to the high altar inside, she had pleaded with him again.

Powerscourt had not told her about the singing he had heard on the way to the rescue. But it had stayed in his mind. Dr Blackstaff, a veteran of many West Country choirs, had written on his behalf to the assistant choirmaster in Wells. The doctor understood only too well why Powerscourt might not wish to pursue his queries in Compton.

Michael Matthews opened the door himself. He was a cheerful young man, almost six feet tall, with curly blond hair and merry brown eyes.

‘You must be Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘Welcome to Wells. Do come in. We should have time to sort out your problem before Evensong.’

He showed Powerscourt into a little sitting room. His house was at the top of the Close, looking down towards the chapter house and the north transept of the cathedral. The first thing Powerscourt noticed was a large piano which occupied most of one wall of the tiny room. The second thing was a wall full of books, many of them lives of the composers. And the third thing was that the floor was covered with musical scores, Byrd and Thomas Tallis, Purcell and Handel, Mozart and Haydn, the great choral tradition of Western Europe scattered in random piles across the fraying carpet. In one corner of the room Powerscourt thought he saw some Gilbert and Sullivan, a touch of the profane hiding among the sacred.

‘Please forgive me, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Michael Matthews, waving towards his floor, ‘I’m in the middle of a tidying-up session. If you’d been half an hour later, all of this lot would have gone.’

‘Don’t worry at all,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘there’s always a lot of confusion when you’re in the middle of a clear-out.’

‘How can I help you, Lord Powerscourt?’ said Matthews, ushering him to a small chair by the side of the piano.

‘I believe Dr Blackstaff told you I am investigating a series of murders in Compton,’ said Powerscourt.

‘He certainly did,’ said the young man. ‘I pray we may never be afflicted with anything similar here in Wells.’

‘Things in Compton at present, how should I put this, Mr Matthews, are rather delicate. We have not found the murderer, though I hope we shall do so soon. However strange it may sound, I must ask you to keep our conversation absolutely confidential. You have not seen me. We have not spoken. We did not meet.’ Powerscourt knew he was sounding melodramatic, perhaps a little mad, but just one scribbled note from Wells to Compton might spark another round of murder.

The young man began to laugh, then stopped when he saw how serious was the face of his visitor.

‘Secrets,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Have no fear, Lord Powerscourt. I shan’t tell a soul about today. Now then,’ he moved away from his mantelpiece and sat down by the piano, ‘what is this piece of music you want to have identified? Perhaps you could hum it or sing it if you can remember it.’

Powerscourt hummed about six or seven bars. Matthews tapped them out on his piano with his right hand. Then he added an accompaniment with his left.

‘Something like that, Lord Powerscourt?’

Powerscourt shook his head. ‘The last three or four notes sound right, but not the beginning.’

‘Try to remember exactly where you were when you heard this piece. Now close your eyes. Now try again.’

Powerscourt delivered another opening, slightly different from the first. Again the young man picked out the notes with his right hand.

‘Just one more time, if you would, Lord Powerscourt. I think I’ve got it.’

Powerscourt closed his eyes again, remembering the noise coming to him across the Close from the choristers’ house as he searched for Lady Lucy. This time the young man was delighted.

‘Splendid, Lord Powerscourt, splendid. Not exactly the piece of choral music you would expect to hear floating across an English cathedral close.’ Michael Matthews played a very brief introduction. Then he sang along with a powerful tenor voice.

‘Credo in unum Deum

Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae.’

I believe in one God the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and earth, Powerscourt muttered to himself.

‘You might think it’s a musical version of one of the Anglican creeds, words virtually identical,’ said Matthews, abandoning his singing but keeping the tune going on his piano. ‘But wait for the great blast at the end.

‘Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.

Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum,

et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.’

Michael Matthews played a virtuoso conclusion, a great descant swelling through the higher notes.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church, Powerscourt translated as he went, we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

‘The music you heard, Lord Powerscourt, is the Profession of Faith of the Catholic Liturgy, to be used on Sundays and holy days. When the congregations get to the line about one holy and apostolic and catholic church, they belt it out as if they were singing their own National Anthem. No, better than that, it’s their equivalent of the Battle Hymn of the Republic’

Powerscourt looked closely at Michael Matthews. Matthews didn’t think he was at all surprised. As Powerscourt made his way out of the little house and back down the Vicars Close to Wells station, the assistant choirmaster stood at his window and watched him go. What on earth was going on down there in Compton? Why were the choir singing the music of a different faith? Ours not to reason why, he said to himself and sat down once more at his piano. The window was slightly open. Powerscourt could just hear the strains of ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, played with great sadness, pursuing him down the street.

There was a telegraph message from William McKenzie waiting for Powerscourt on his return to Fairfield Park. It seemed to have taken rather a long time to reach Compton, despatched from the Central Telegraph Office in Piazza San Silvestro on Wednesday morning and only arriving at its destination on Friday afternoon. Maybe, said Powerscourt to himself, the wires were down somewhere along the route.

‘Subject reached destination safely,’ the message began, couched in the normal cryptic of McKenzie’s despatches. ‘Subject has spent his days in conclave with high officials of the parent organization.’ Christ, thought Powerscourt, McKenzie could have been describing the activities of a bank manager rather than a priest in conspiratorial meetings with the College of Propaganda. ‘Evenings in restaurants with prominent citizens dressed in strange colours?’ What in God’s name was a prominent citizen dressed in strange colours? Powerscourt asked himself. A member of the Swiss Guard charged with the protection of the Pontiff? A member of the Italian Upper House – did they wander round the streets of Caesar and the Borgias looking like members of the British House of Lords? Was McKenzie’s prey, Father Dominic Barberi, dining with one of the cardinals, the scarlet robes of the descendants of St Peter tucking into some Roman speciality like carpaccio tiepido di pescatrice, brill with raw beef, or mignonettes alla Regina Victoria, veal with pate and an eight-cheese sauce? Then Powerscourt reached the most important part of the message. ‘Subject and two colleagues returning London, arriving Monday night. Meeting would be beneficial.’

Powerscourt looked up and saw that Johnny Fitzgerald had come in and was reading the Grafton Mercury on a chair by the garden. There was a final sentence, straight from McKenzie’s heart. ‘Local food inedible. Much worse than Afghan.’ Powerscourt smiled. The unfortunate McKenzie suffered, indeed he had suffered all the time Powerscourt had known him, from a weak stomach. It was his only failing. Powerscourt remembered him surviving six weeks of an Indian summer on a special diet of hard boiled eggs for breakfast, hard boiled eggs for lunch and yet more hard boiled eggs for supper. Johnny Fitzgerald always maintained that McKenzie only attained dietary peace in his native Scotland where he survived on home-baked scones and a regimen of lightly boiled fish with no sauce.

‘William’s been having trouble with the food in Rome, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Johnny. ‘He’s a lost hermit, that William McKenzie, he’d be perfectly happy with bread and water for the rest of his life.’

There was another letter waiting for Powerscourt. ‘Here we go, Johnny,’ he said, ‘I think this is a reply from the Lord Lieutenant. I don’t hold out much hope here.’

‘Read it out, Francis, why don’t you. I’ve reached the Births Marriages and Deaths section of our friend Patrick’s paper. I think I might get through another few hours of life without any more of that.’

‘“Dear Powerscourt,”’ the recipient read, walking up and down the room, ‘“thank you for your letter. I am most grateful to you for bringing your views to my attention.”’

‘Frosty start, Francis,’ said Johnny. ‘Don’t think you’re about to receive an open invitation to Lord Lieutenant Castle or wherever the bugger lives.’

‘Here we go, Johnny, second paragraph. “I have played cricket with the Bishop of Compton. I have hunted with the Dean. Both of them and their senior colleagues have been frequent guests at my table. I have had the honour of receiving Communion from their hands and instruction and enlightenment from their sermons. Five out of my six daughters were baptized in their font and three of them were married at their altar.”’

‘Five out of six daughters, Francis? Is this the case of the son that got away?’

Powerscourt continued. ‘‘’I do not intend to insult the probity or the intelligence of either of these elders of the Church by laying your preposterous charges before them. I regard them as beneath contempt.”’

‘That sounds pretty clear to me, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, staring cheerfully at his friend. ‘Don’t think his Lord Lieutenancy agrees with you. Would that be a fair interpretation of the letter so far?’

‘There’s more, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, holding the top left-hand corner of the letter in his right hand as if it smelt. ‘Third paragraph coming.’

‘I reckon this is where he says you’re out of your mind, Francis. Terribly sad really.’

‘“Permit me to say -”’

‘People always say that when they’re about to be really unpleasant.’

‘Really Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m not at all happy with all these interruptions. You may have to go to the back of the class. “Permit me to say how perturbed I was to discover that such a distinguished public servant, with such an exemplary record of achievement and success, had come to a point where he was unable to distinguish between the wilder fantasies of his own imagination and the realities of the true facts of the situation. Believe me, Powerscourt, I have seen this kind of thing before. During my long service in India I saw how the great heat in Oudh or the Punjab could rot men’s minds and rob them of their sanity. It is most unfortunate. I have known a good many promising officers afflicted in this fashion.”’

‘Pompous old bugger,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Do they select these people because they’re stupid?’

‘The Lord Lieutenant, as I’m sure you know, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt sternly, ‘is the local representative in Compton of the King Emperor himself. So there.’

‘Does the Lieutenant – he sounds much better like that, Francis, don’t you think, – have any more words of wisdom? I suspect he’s going to recommend you to some dreadful spa in Germany.’

‘Last paragraph, Johnny, here we go. “I feel I would be derelict in the execution of my duties if I did not offer you some advice.”’

‘Here comes the bloody spa, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald triumphantly.

‘“The seaside resorts,”’ Powerscourt wagged his finger at his friend, ‘“to the south of Compton are highly regarded as places of recovery and recuperation for those afflicted in mind and body. The sea air can help disperse the malevolent humours that infect the brain. Others speak of the beneficent influence of twenty-mile walks. I can recommend most highly the services of a near neighbour, Dr Blackstaff, while you are away from the care of your own man in London.”’

‘At least you’ve missed out on the cold baths, Francis. It could have been worse. And you’ve escaped the spa with the Germans in lederhosen.’

Powerscourt held up his hand again. ‘Here comes the parting shot, Johnny. You’ll like this bit.’ Powerscourt turned his letter over. ‘“Finally, Powerscourt, let me say how saddened I was by the contents of your letter and the revelations within it about your state of mind. I wish you a speedy recovery. Yours et cetera et cetera et cetera.”’

‘Tremendous, Francis, tremendous!’ Johnny Fitzgerald was laughing heartily by the window into the garden. ‘Do you think the other two will be as good as that? I haven’t given up hope of the spa yet, you know, Francis. There’s still a chance.’

Powerscourt folded the letter up and put it back in its envelope. ‘This will always be one of my dearest possessions, Johnny,’ he said. ‘I may have to make special dispensation for it in my will. The British Museum? The library of my old college in Cambridge? We shall see. You ask about the other two. I don’t think they will be as bad as this one. The Archbishop’s man may be slightly more polite. I suspect he’s the only chance of a recommendation of Bad Godesberg or Marienbad as a place of recovery and recuperation, to quote the Lord Lieutenant’s very own words. Schomberg McDonnell will be the most respectful, I’m sure.’

‘So do we just wait and let this mass defection take place, Francis? There must be something we can do.’

‘There is, Johnny. Tomorrow I have to go to London to meet William. Perhaps I could buy him a square meal. Or perhaps not. I’ll be back on Tuesday night. In the meantime could you do a couple of things for me?’

‘Just as long as I don’t have to talk to that bloody Lieutenant Lord person, Francis. Otherwise I’m at your disposal.’

‘Could you ask Patrick Butler to find out from his future father-in-law the stationmaster if there are any special trains coming down to Compton for the celebrations? And if so when they are due to arrive and so on.’

‘No problem,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘And the other thing?’

‘The other thing,’ said Powerscourt, staring out into the garden, ‘is more difficult. I want you to get hold of some explosives.’