Death of a Chancellor

13

The Bishop of Compton would have described himself, if asked by St Peter at the gates of heaven to list his virtues, as a patient man. Patience and scholarship, after all, went together. For most of his adult life he had shuffled through the libraries of Britain in pursuit of his interest in the early versions of the Gospels. Books chained to their shelves, books that could not be removed from the floor where they were kept, books that nobody else had opened for a hundred years or more had been his daily bread for over a quarter of a century. In his youth the Bishop had dreamed of one spectacular discovery, a biblical Eureka, a modern version of Archimedes in his bath, that would make his name and secure his reputation. As time passed and no miracles were vouchsafed, he realized that steady labour and the accumulation of judgement were more valuable weapons in a scholar’s armoury than the blinding light he hoped for in his earlier days. But patience, certainly he had acquired that. Or he thought he had, until the events of yesterday evening.

The Bishop was pacing up and down around the croquet lawn in front of his Palace where vicious battles with ball and mallet in the summer gave the lie to the concept of brotherly love among the clergy. It was ten to eleven on the morning after his encounter with the two scholars, Octavius Parslow, senior keeper of documents at the British Museum, and Theodore Crawford, Professor of History at the University of Oxford. Before their dinner they had refused to give any view on the authenticity of the documents found in the cathedral crypt which Bishop Moreton believed were a kind of diary, kept by a junior monk during the last days of the abbey at Compton before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century. Two bottles of his better claret had failed to loosen their tongues into pronouncing a verdict of any kind. A bottle of the Bishop’s vintage port, which his wine merchant assured him was the equal of anything in the kingdom, had also failed. The Bishop’s patience finally snapped when Parslow inquired shortly after midnight if the Bishop had any more port in his cellar. ‘This stuff seems quite palatable to me for the depths of the country,’ he had said, pointing to his empty glass. Then the Bishop did something he had never done before in all his fifty-four years. He excused himself from his own dinner table and left his guests to their own devices. As he said his prayers by the side of his great four-poster he prayed for forgiveness, but even then, inappropriate words came to the Bishop from the book he knew so well. ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.’

So this morning he had determined to take matters into his own hands. He had a visitor due to call on him in his study at eleven o’clock. The two scholars, he reflected sourly, asking for remission of his sins even as the thought crossed his mind, the two scholars could go to hell.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had returned to the cathedral, sitting quietly at the back of the nave. His forehead had been expertly bandaged by Dr Blackstaff in Fairfield Park the night before. He had a stout walking stick of Johnny Fitzgerald’s to help him with his bad ankle. Johnny had taken great delight in explaining the secrets of this particular staff.

‘See here, Francis,’ he had said happily as he fiddled with the top. ‘This handle here unscrews. Inside is a secret phial, this glass container thing.’ He drew out an object that looked like a very thin tumbler with a cork stopper at the top. ‘In times of pain and difficulty, Francis, a man may find consolation in a drop of medicinal whisky or brandy, whichever you prefer. I never understood why they didn’t make this glass container longer. It can only go about a quarter of the way down the bloody walking stick. They could have made it much longer. Then you could get nearly a full bottle in there.’

The two old ladies had passed Powerscourt earlier, nodding politely to him on their way to the Communion service in the Lady Chapel. He wondered if the consumption of so much sacred bread and wine might provide the secret of eternal life. The workmen had cleared away most of the debris from the night before. A new collection of masonry was being prepared for ascent into the higher regions.

Powerscourt wondered for the fifth time if the murderer had come back in the early hours of the morning to search for his corpse, if he had prowled all the way round the nave and the transepts and the choir looking for his victim. Or had he waited until the cathedral opened early in the morning before checking on his prey? The very first service of the day at seven thirty must have been a strange event, Powerscourt thought, the Dean or the Precentor or one of the canons reading the Order for Morning Prayer with the dust lying thickly over the choir stalls and broken slabs of masonry stone acting as hazards for the unwary across the great transept. He felt sure the service would have carried on as though nothing at all had happened. Worse things must have been endured in the past, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers in the Civil War looting all the gold and the silver they could find, tearing down the statues, Thomas Cromwell’s Commissioners come to take a record of every valuable that could be stolen from the abbey before it was dissolved.

Powerscourt had arranged to meet Patrick Butler here after his meeting with the Bishop.

That young man was feeling uncharacteristically uncertain as the footman led him along the corridors that led to the Bishop’s study, the walls lined with portraits of previous officers of the cathedral, surveying the present in their purple robes from the distant past. What did you do when you met a bishop? Did you bow? Did you kneel? Did you have to kiss his hand? He wasn’t quite sure.

In the end the Bishop solved the problem for him, rising from his chair behind the great desk and shaking Patrick Butler warmly by the hand.

‘Mr Butler,’ said the Bishop, ‘how kind of you to call on me at such short notice. I am most grateful.’ He ushered them both into the two armchairs on either side of the fire. Patrick Butler had no idea why he was here. Perhaps it was to do with the accident in the cathedral the night before. But he didn’t think it likely that the Bishop would have asked for a meeting to talk about that. The day-today running of the minster was much more the province of the Dean.

‘Am I not right in saying, Mr Butler, that you are on friendly terms with Mrs Herbert, Mrs Anne Herbert, who lives on the edge of our Cathedral Close here?’

Patrick Butler blushed slightly. Surely he hadn’t been summoned here to talk about Anne? Was the Bishop of Compton going to question him about his intentions?

‘That is absolutely correct, my lord,’ he replied.

‘I knew her first husband very well, you know,’ said the Bishop, smiling across at the young man like a benevolent uncle. ‘I believe I am godparent to the first child. I’m afraid I keep forgetting his birthday.’

‘That’s easily done, my lord,’ said Patrick Butler. Anne had never told him the Bishop was godfather to one of the children. Perhaps she had forgotten as well.

‘Rest assured, Mr Butler,’ the Bishop was beaming now, ‘that if certain things should come to pass we should be only too happy to place the cathedral at your disposal.’

Patrick Butler hadn’t thought about proposing marriage to Anne Herbert for at least three days. Was he being pushed towards matrimony by this prelate of the Church, nudged towards the altar by the weight of Bishop, Dean and Chapter? He blushed again.

‘Forgive me, my dear Mr Butler, I did not ask you to come here to pry into your affairs or to interfere in any way. Forgive me if I have said more than I should. We are all so attached to Anne, you see, and eager for her happiness. But enough. Let me tell you the real reason for my invitation.’

The Bishop rose from his armchair and fetched the red folder containing the documents found in the crypt.

‘I thought this might be of interest to your readers. In here, Mr Butler, is a document that was discovered by the workmen carrying out repairs in the crypt.’

‘Is it old, my lord? Is it valuable?’ The normal procession of headlines began to flash through the editor’s mind. Secrets of the Compton Crypt. Priceless Manuscript Found by Minster Masons.

The Bishop smiled. ‘It is certainly old, Mr Butler. I do not yet know how valuable it may prove to be. I must emphasize the preliminary nature of my conclusions at present. Nothing is yet definite or definitive. But I believe it to be a journal or a kind of diary kept by one of the monks in the years leading up to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.’

‘Would that be 1538, my lord?’ asked Patrick Butler who had been fascinated by the Reformation in history classes at school. He had had a special weakness for the burning of the martyrs and the priests’ holes.

‘Absolutely right, young man. Very good. If it is what I think it is, it should give us a unique insight into the last days of the abbey that stood here then.’

‘Is it written in English, my lord?’

‘Latin, Mr Butler, Latin, rather ungrammatical Latin in some places, I fear. Our monk might not have been the brightest boy in the class, if you see what I mean.’

‘Would it be possible for me to have a look at the actual manuscript, my lord? I’m sure our readers would want to have a sense of the appearance of the thing.’

The Bishop opened his red file and held the first page up for Patrick Butler’s inspection. ‘You can certainly look at it, Mr Butler, but I must ask you not to touch it. You would have to be wearing very fine gloves for that, I’m afraid.’ Untouchable by Human Hand flitted across Patrick Butler’s brain.

‘Could I make a suggestion, my lord? With your permission, we could serialize it in the Grafton Mercury.’

‘Serialize it, Mr Butler? I’m not quite sure what you mean.’

‘We could publish it in instalments, my lord, over a number of weeks. I’m sure more and more people would buy the paper to find out what the old monk was saying.’

The Bishop still looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t there a problem with that, Mr Butler?’

‘Problem, my lord? I don’t think so. It would be tremendous, a great honour for the paper.’

‘I don’t wish to sound disrespectful towards your readers, Mr Butler, but how many of them do you think would understand it?’

Patrick Butler was at a loss. ‘Just at the moment, my lord, I must confess it is I who doesn’t understand your reservations. Of course, if you feel that a serialization would be inappropriate, then I shall withdraw the suggestion. But with great regrets.’

The Bishop sighed. ‘I know that educational standards are rising all the time, even in remote parts of the country like Compton, but I think most, if not all, your readers, would find it difficult to understand.’

Then Patrick Butler knew what the problem was. ‘Forgive me, my lord. How silly of me not to have seen the misunderstanding. We would have to translate the document from the original Latin. Perhaps you could make a translation yourself, my lord, or suggest another scholar you feel would be fit for the task. But I am sure it would be much more widely read if we could advertise that the translation was the work of our very own Bishop. That would be a great coup for the paper.’

He would insert a great strapline into the text, Translated by the Bishop of Compton, the Very Reverend Doctor Gervase Bentley Moreton. It wasn’t every day you could number a bishop among your correspondents. He wondered how often it happened in The Times.

‘An excellent plan, Mr Butler,’ the Bishop brought him back to Compton, ‘I should be delighted to make the translation for you nearer the time. And I think you could also say, bearing in mind the reservations I have already expressed, that I intend to refer to the document in my sermon on Easter Sunday when we celebrate one thousand years of Christian worship in this community. I feel that would be perfectly proper.’

Patrick Butler was feeling elated as he made his way back to the cathedral for his second meeting of the morning. Two excellent stories discovered before twelve o’clock in the morning. A great accident overnight in the cathedral, falling masonry lying all over the place, a miracle nobody was hurt. One of the canons had given him the details earlier in the day. He wondered if he could hint that the ghost was walking again through the minster, a pale cleric clad in black robes said to come from the time of the Civil Wars when he lost his head to hostile soldiery. He would have to go to the County Library and look up the story of the ghost. There was, he remembered, a rather dramatic description of the spectral figure floating high above the choir around the time of the flight of King James the Second. And now this, the minster monk’s last words, found in the crypt three hundred and fifty years after his death. And translated by the Bishop himself. Patrick Butler felt his cup was overflowing.

‘Lord Powerscourt, my goodness me, sir, you don’t look at all well. Have you been in an accident?’

Patrick Butler found his friend seated at the back of the nave, his face pale, the bandage clearly visible beneath the curly hair. He was leaning on his alcoholic walking stick and looking at the stained glass.

‘Good morning to you, Patrick, and thank you for coming. I am going to tell you what happened to me, but I don’t want it published in your newspaper at present.’

Powerscourt rose slowly from his seat and began a limping progress up the nave towards the main body of the cathedral, the sound of his stick tapping on the stone floor echoing up towards the roof.

‘I don’t feel happy telling you about it in here,’ he said, ‘I think we could go to the chapter house. They must have had lots of conspiratorial meetings in there over the centuries.’

Patrick Butler noticed that Powerscourt was carrying a large black notebook, rather larger than the ones his reporters used. He didn’t think he had seen Powerscourt with such a thing before.

‘Here we are,’ said Powerscourt, lowering himself into a great stone seat opposite the entrance to the chapter house. In front of them the slender central pillar rose like an umbrella of stone, surrounded by carvings of foliage and unknown faces from long ago. In the centre of the tympanum above the doorway, the seated figure of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by the symbols of the Four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The story of the Book of Genesis unfolded on the walls around them, Cain slaying Abel, the drunkenness of Noah, the city and tower of Babel, Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Powerscourt wondered about taking a sip from his walking stick to ease the pain. He desisted, fearing that he might be turned into a pillar of salt. There were several such pillars ten feet to his left.

‘I presume,’ he said, ‘that a man in your position must know most of the details of the accident in the cathedral last night?’

Patrick Butler nodded. ‘Except for the time it happened,’ he said, checking that nobody was coming to disturb them.

‘I think I may be able to help you there,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘It happened in the gap between the end of Evensong and the closing of the cathedral. It must have been about twenty minutes to six.’

‘Good God, Lord Powerscourt, how do you know that? Nobody else has any idea at all about when it happened.’ Then he looked at the bandage on Powerscourt’s forehead, the walking stick by his side. ‘You don’t mean to say . . .’

‘You’re very quick this morning, Patrick. I do mean to say. I was here when it happened. I was nearly killed by that falling masonry. I hurled myself into the choir and banged my head on one of the wooden carvings. I must have twisted my ankle in the fall. Somebody was trying to kill me.’

‘But this is terrible,’ said Patrick Butler. ‘How did you get out? Did somebody lock all the doors?’

‘Yes,’ said Powerscourt, pausing to look at a stone Adam and a stone Eve fleeing from the Garden of Eden, ‘somebody did lock the doors. I don’t yet know if it was the murderer in person or the member of staff who normally shuts the place up for the night. Lucy that’s my wife, came to find me shortly after eleven o’clock. But this isn’t important now.’

‘Somebody trying to kill you, Lord Powerscourt? I’d say that was very important.’ He stopped to let a figure in clerical robes make his way down the steps into the cathedral, his boots loud against the stone. ‘If I hadn’t printed that story about your being here to investigate the death of Arthur Rudd, this might never have happened. I could never have forgiven myself if the murderer had succeeded.’

‘Just remember, Patrick, that I asked you to print that story. I went out of my way to tell you to print it, if you remember.’

‘Is there anything you have learnt from this horrible episode, my lord? Anything that can take your investigations further forward?’

Powerscourt paused. He could hear the rain falling on the roof. He looked round at all the empty seats where members of the Chapter had sat centuries before. He wondered if they could help him.

‘Yes and No is the answer to your question, I’m afraid. I had quite a lot of time to think in here last night, wandering up and down with all those corpses and the chantry chapels. I am sure that there is a terrible secret here in this cathedral or in this community. I am sure the murderer is afraid I may discover it. The secret, or the revelation of the secret, may lie in the future rather than the past. That may be why he tried to kill me. And I need your help, Patrick.’

Powerscourt opened his black notebook at the two central pages. Butler saw that it was a plan of the cathedral and the Close. The minster itself was in the centre and the streets ran round it in a rough square, with an inlet opposite the east end of the cathedral for Vicars Close and Vicars Hall. Every house on there had a number, from the Deanery at Number One to the South Canonry at Number Twelve and Exeter House at Number Twenty-One.

‘After the murder of Arthur Rudd up here,’ Powerscourt pointed to the Vicars Hall on his map, ‘I was virtually certain that the murderer must live very close to the cathedral, must be intimate with its workings, must know every detail of what goes on in the minster and the Close. The events of last night merely confirmed that. The murderer must have known how to get to the upper reaches of the great transept without being seen. Either he had himself a set of keys, or he knew precisely what time the place would be closed. If he didn’t have the keys, then he must have allowed himself enough time to get down from the high place where he tried to tip the masonry over me.’

‘Just as well the murderer didn’t get locked in too, my lord,’ said Patrick Butler.

‘That would certainly have been interesting,’ Powerscourt smiled. Single combat in the nave. Powerscourt’s Last Stand on the edge of the high altar. Wrestling match to the death among the choir stalls. Anthem of celebration for the victor. Requiem Mass for the Dead.

‘Assuming that most of the people involved with the cathedral live round here,’ Powerscourt drew a great circle, an outer ring round all his numbered houses, ‘then the murderer must live inside this territory here.’ He drew a finger round the inner circumference of his map. ‘I need to know the name of everyone inside it, servants, cooks, butlers, coachmen, clergy, cleaning staff, I probably need to know the names of every last cat and dog as well. Can be pretty sinister things, cats. There’s a very evil looking one halfway up a pillar in the nave. Can you help me with that, Patrick?’

‘Not sure about the cats, my lord,’ said Butler, pausing again while another pair of clerical boots trudged up the steps and out of the door leading to Vicars Close. ‘I can help with some of the people, but I know somebody who would be even more useful. He pointed to Number Nineteen on Powerscourt’s map. ‘That’s Close Cottage, my lord. I have a very particular friend who lives there. She has lived in Compton all her life. We could try calling on her now, if you wish, my lord. I’m sure she would love to meet you.’

As they walked across Cathedral Green Powerscourt learned more about the young woman they were going to see: that Patrick Butler had known her for an incredibly long time, eight and a half months; that she was extremely pretty with a smile that could light up the county; that he often called on her for tea between four and five in the afternoon, no, often was not the right word, it was nearly every day and when business took him out of the town he tried to leave very early in order to make his rendezvous with Anne Herbert and her teapot.

‘The Bishop hinted this morning that he would put the cathedral at our disposal,’ Butler said. ‘He didn’t actually mention the word marriage, but that’s what he meant.’

‘And are you going to propose to the young lady Patrick?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.

‘That’s my problem, Lord Powerscourt. I know it seems odd for somebody who makes their living using words, but I don’t know really know how to do it.’

‘Tricky things, proposals,’ said Powerscourt, pausing to look back at the statues on the west front. ‘I knew a man once who collected bets to the value of two hundred pounds that he could get engaged on the Underground Railway in London.’

‘Which line?’ asked Butler, with a journalist’s interest in detail.

‘The District Line, I believe. The story goes that he began his proposal between Gloucester Road and South Kensington. Perfectly respectable neighbourhood up above if you see what I mean. He could have made his offer somewhere much less salubrious, maybe between Wapping and Shadwell or some place like that in the East End.’

‘And what happened?’ asked Patrick Butler.

‘I don’t think it went very well, actually. You see, they weren’t the only people in the carriage for a start. All the other passengers were listening in to this strange conversation. The young lady rose to her feet as the train pulled in to the next station, Earls Court, I believe. She uttered just one word to her suitor. “No,” she said, and got off the train. He never saw her again.’

‘And he never saw his two hundred pounds again either, presumably,’ said Patrick Butler. ‘Rather an expensive ride on the District Line. Think how much better he might have been if he’d hired a posh carriage above ground. She might have said yes then.’

‘Well, she might have said yes. She might still have said no. But you can see some of the picture, Patrick. Privacy. Romantic setting certainly. I can’t see even the most ardent devotee of the Underground Railway thinking it a place of romance, even between Gloucester Road and South Kensington. Some men favour candlelight and champagne, that sort of thing.’

The subject of these possible proposals opened her door and showed the two men into her little drawing room.

‘I am delighted to meet you, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Anne Herbert. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from Patrick.’

‘I made so bold as to tell Lord Powerscourt that you could help him in his work, Anne,’ said Patrick Butler. He explained the attack the previous evening in the cathedral and Powerscourt’s wish to learn the names of all who lived in or around the Cathedral Close.

‘How very wicked of somebody to try to kill you, Lord Powerscourt. And in our cathedral too. I’m so glad you have survived. And I’ll help in any way I can.’

Powerscourt opened his large black book at the centre pages and placed it on the table. ‘I need to know the names of everybody who lives inside this ring here,’ he said, outlining the area of interest with his finger. ‘And anybody else who has business in the cathedral if they live outside this magic circle.’

Anne Herbert looked up at him, her green eyes troubled. Powerscourt thought she was pretty, very pretty indeed. It was easy now to see the appeal of tea every day at four o’clock.

‘Do you mean to say, Lord Powerscourt, that the murderer lives inside this circle of yours?’

‘I have to confess that I think it likely, Mrs Herbert, but I’m not sure.’

‘Could I make a suggestion?’ Anne Herbert felt quite excited at the prospect of helping to solve a murder mystery. Patrick would be so proud of her.

‘If you leave the book with me for a day or so, I can fill in all the details for you. I’ll write out the people who live in every house, numbered in the same way as you have them here. The ones I don’t know about I can ask around about.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Powerscourt gravely ‘that I should advise you to be very careful who you talk to. If word gets back to the murderer that you are helping me collect the names of every single person who lives around the Close, your life – let us not mince words here – could be in danger.’

‘Rest assured, Lord Powerscourt, I shall be most discreet. I could say that I am compiling a list for one of the cathedral charities I am involved with. Nobody could object to that.’

‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But please be careful. I am going to see how up-to-date the electoral register is in the County Hall. But I fear it may be years out of date. They often are.’

‘You’re right there,’ said Patrick Butler, ‘we at the Mercury have simply given up on it as an accurate and up-to-date record. Somebody in County Hall should take the matter in hand. But then, nothing ever moves very fast over there in County Hall.’

‘Could I ask you one general question, Mrs Herbert?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I presume that most of the servants and other auxiliaries are local people, people from Compton or the surrounding countryside, I mean?’

‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Lord Powerscourt, although it’s what you would expect. The clergy, of course, come from all over the place. But there are quite a lot of foreigners in the servant population. The Dean has a French cook who’s married to that enormous servant of his. The Precentor has a Spanish couple, one a cook, the other the butler, I think. The Archdeacon has an Italian friend who comes to stay for a week or so every month. He’s always beautifully turned out, but rather superior in his manner.’

Anne Herbert paused and looked out of her windows, as if reminding herself of who lived in which house. ‘There’s another foreign couple somewhere, I remember now, it’s the Sub-dean, he’s also got a French cook with a wife who acts as housekeeper. And there are Irish everywhere, not just in service, but singing with the Vicars Choral. There’s two or three of them from Ireland.’

The only common thread Powerscourt could wrap round this strange miscellany of foreign persons was that they all seemed to come from Catholic countries. He couldn’t see the writ or the decisions of the Bishop of Compton cutting much ice in Turin or Tipperary or Toledo. But he thought little of it.

‘I tell you what, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Anne Herbert. ‘You ought to go and talk to Old Peter. I can’t even remember his surname. Do you know what it is, Patrick?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve only ever heard him referred to as Old Peter.’

‘No relation of the apostle?’ said Powerscourt.

‘No,’ Anne Herbert laughed. ‘But Old Peter was Head Verger in the cathedral for almost thirty years. Before that he worked as the Bishop’s coachman, I think. He’s lived in Compton all his life. He must be nearly ninety now.’

‘He’s ninety-one, actually,’ said Patrick Butler. ‘We featured him last year in an article on Compton’s ninety-year-olds. There are only three of them left. The other two are sisters and live down by the railway station.’

‘Anyway Lord Powerscourt, I’m sure Old Peter would be able to help you. He’s known everybody round here for years. He lives in a little cottage at the far end of the garden in the Bishop’s Palace. I think the Bishop’s servants keep an eye on him. I could come with you and make the introductions if you like.’

Powerscourt was doing rapid arithmetical calculations as he put his coat back on and collected his walking stick. ‘Old Peter must be old enough to be the Bishop’s grandfather,’ he said cheerfully. ‘He would have been five at the time of Waterloo, well into his forties by the Crimean War. Let’s hear what this Methuselah of Compton has to say for himself.’