Death of a Chancellor

19

God in heaven, Powerscourt said to himself. Whose God? Whose heaven? Anglican or Roman Catholic? Not one but two of them. Not just the Dean but the Bishop as well. They must have been Anglican back then or else how could they have reached their present lofty positions in Compton Minster? But suppose they had been planning to convert to Rome even then, or maybe shortly afterwards, seduced perhaps by the beauty of Newman’s prose and the luminous certainties of his faith. In that case they had been sleepers, moles burrowing deep into the Anglican hierarchy, for over twenty years. Hold on a minute, he said to himself, still staring as if hypnotized at the seating plan. It could all be a coincidence, an accident. The Dean and the Bishop could have been Anglicans all along. Maybe they still were. Then he remembered the Archdeacon and his furtive trips to Melbury Clinton on Thursdays. Perhaps there was not one but three of them. But what was the point? Why should they dissemble for so long about their true allegiance? Was there an end point, a time when the pretence could stop? An extravagant, an impossible thought shot through his mind. He put it to one side.

The bells of Oxford were ringing outside, Balliol following Trinity, Wadham following Hertford, the torch passed on down to New College and Queen’s and Magdalen with its deer park by the river. Powerscourt suddenly realized that he had been staring at the menu and the signatures for a couple of minutes at least. He returned it with a smile to Christopher Philips.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘my mind was far away.’

‘You looked, Lord Powerscourt,’ Philips replied, ‘as if you were wrestling with some mighty problem. They say, you know, that Newman stayed in college for three or four days. Apparently he grew very friendly with some of the people he met at the dinner.’

‘Really?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I don’t suppose we know which people, do we?’

‘One of them was certainly the man Moreton,’ said Christopher Philips, totally unaware that he was setting off another depth charge in Powerscourt’s brain. ‘They say they had a lot in common with their interests in early biblical scholarship.’

‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure they must have had a lot to talk about.’

The rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah was at its end. Vaughan Wyndham, the Compton choirmaster, and his choir were folding up their scores, the musicians returning their instruments into their cases. It was going well, the choirmaster thought. In a few days’ time when they had finally mastered the more difficult sections of ‘Unto us a Child is Born’, he could have a full run-through of the entire oratorio.

Lady Lucy Powerscourt leaned forward and began a conversation with the two choirboys she had spoken to before. She was just about to invite them to tea when a loud voice interrupted her.

‘Lady Powerscourt,’ said Wyndham. ‘Perhaps we could have a word after everybody has left.’ The voice, Lady Lucy thought, was harsh, the tone rather menacing. Surely you could talk to one of these dear little boys, who always looked so frightened, without the intervention of higher authority?

‘Forgive me, Lady Powerscourt,’ said the choirmaster when they were the only two people left in St Nicholas’ Church. ‘I have seen you on previous occasions trying to converse with the junior members of my choir. It is strictly forbidden.’

It sounds as if he is German, Lady Lucy thought, memories of the word verboten coming into her mind from German lessons with her governess. ‘And why is that, pray?’ she said. ‘I do not mean them any harm. I was only going to invite them to tea.’

‘At this time, Lady Powerscourt, the choir have a great deal of work to do. Not only are they working on the Messiah. They are also learning a lot of new music for the thousandth anniversary of the cathedral. They must not be disturbed in any way.’

‘I would not wish to interfere with their progress,’ said Lady Lucy, wondering why the man had laid such emphasis on the new music for the thousandth anniversary. Maybe she should tell Francis about it.

‘If you interfere any further, or try to talk to any of the boys again, I shall have no alternative, Lady Powerscourt.’

‘No alternative to what?’ said Lady Lucy, thinking the whole conversation was rather incredible.

‘I shall have no alternative,’ said choirmaster Wyndham severely, ‘but to expel you from the choir.’

With that he stalked out of the church. Lady Lucy had never been expelled from anything in her entire life. She did not propose to start now.

The plaster primroses commemorating Rosebery’s family name were in full bloom outside his front door in Berkeley Square. Leith the butler, famed throughout Rosebery’s acquaintance for his encyclopedic knowledge of the train timetables of Britain and Europe, opened the door and showed Powerscourt into the library. Rosebery and Powerscourt had been friends since their schooldays and Rosebery had been an invaluable ally in many of Powerscourt’s previous cases.

‘Come in, Francis, take a seat. I shall be with you in a second.’

Rosebery was finishing a letter at the great desk by the window that looked out into the square. ‘I’m trying to buy a library from a fellow down in Hampshire,’ he said, adding an ornate signature to the bottom of his letter. ‘He has an invaluable collection of documents and books relating to the Civil War. The only problem is that he thinks they are worth a lot more than I do.’

Powerscourt saw that portraits of the Rosebery children had replaced the racehorses on either side of the black marble fireplace. Maybe the horses were out of favour.

‘Now then . . .’ Rosebery seated himself opposite his friend. ‘Thank you for your letter. I think I can help with one or two things. This disagreeable business of exhuming a body down in Compton. I take it you now have the relevant papers from the police? You do? Then I shall have it for you tomorrow.’

Powerscourt handed over a couple of letters that had been waiting for him in Markham Square.

‘I mentioned it to Schomberg McDonnell the other day,’ said Rosebery, sounding rather pleased with his ability to manipulate the system. Schomberg McDonnell was the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary. ‘He said that after your invaluable service to the Crown in South Africa, an exhumation order was but a small thing to ask. He will obtain the necessary signatures.’

Powerscourt wondered if he could avoid the exhumation, the body brought from the grave in the middle of the night, the crowbars opening the coffin before its time, the medical people poring over the cadaver. He wondered if there was another way.

‘I am most impressed, Rosebery,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘I have two questions for you. Have you ever heard of an organization called Civitas Dei?’

Rosebery looked at his friend very carefully. ‘You are moving in deep and dangerous waters, Francis. Yes, I have heard of it, when I was Foreign Secretary, I believe. There was a briefing paper on the organization from some of our people in Rome. They suspected that they acted as outriders, the auxiliaries, the unofficial wing, if you like, of the Jesuits and the College of Propaganda in the Vatican. Their function was to perform in the dark what the Church could not countenance in the daylight. If anything was discovered about their activities, it could, of course, be denied.’

‘But what is their purpose, Rosebery, what are they for?’ said Powerscourt, realizing that whenever anybody talked about Civitas Dei, they were grasping at shadows.

‘Nobody knows for certain,’ Rosebery replied, staring at the books on the opposite wall. ‘I don’t think they are going to nail a proclamation with ninety-five theses on to the door of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, if you see what I mean. Their objectives are to increase the power and influence of the Catholic Church by all means at their disposal. And people say they are none too scrupulous about the means, either. The former Ambassador to Rome, Sir Roderick Lewis, lives just round the corner from you, Francis. He would know more than I do. Or maybe not. But I could drop him an introductory note if you think that would help your inquiries? Could you call on him tomorrow morning?’

‘That would be most kind, Rosebery. Let me now ask you my second question. I think I may need to get in touch with the Archbishop of Canterbury at very short notice. How do I do that?’

Rosebery looked closely at his friend.

‘It’s all right, Rosebery, I’m not losing my wits. Sometimes I think the conclusions in this case may be quite incredible, but I am not yet in a position to say what they might be. At first, you see, I thought there was just one riddle in Compton Minster. Now I think there may be two, perhaps three. And solving one may not mean that I have solved the others. They could each be in separate boxes. But to return to my question, what is the quickest route to the Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘His Private Secretary is a delightful young man called Lucas, Archibald Lucas. He was a scholar and fellow of Keble before taking up his new position.’ Rosebery went to his desk and pulled out an enormous address book. ‘He’s to be found at Lambeth Palace most of the time, occasionally at Canterbury. Perhaps you’d like to take a note of the postal and the telegraphic addresses.’

The little town of Ledbury St John was right at the outer limit of Johnny Fitzgerald’s collection of Roman Catholic churches. The church itself, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, stood at the very edge of the place as if the local council were slightly ashamed at having to give it house room. Johnny himself, feeling rather hungry after his long ride, was lurking at the edge of the graveyard. He could see two out of the three directions that potential worshippers might come from. A few locals passed, probably on their way to work in some of the outlying farms. Dawn was breaking over the town, a pale light seeping in over the rooftops. At twenty past seven two figures, dressed in black, he thought, made their way in through a side door. They seemed to have their own key, as there was a lot of rustling before the right implement was found. By twenty-five past the lights were lit inside the church, but no worshippers had yet appeared. At seven twenty-eight Johnny slipped in through the main door and took his seat at the very rear of the church. There was only one other member of the congregation, kneeling at the front, his face fixed on a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary above the altar where the Blessed Sacrament was already in position.

The priest, not more than thirty years old, Johnny thought, kissed the altar. The worshipper at the front genuflected, Johnny following uncertainly behind.

‘In nomine Patris et Filli et Spiritus Sanctl,’ said the priest, making the sign of the Cross. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.

‘Gratia domini nostri Iesu Christi, et caritas Dei, et communicatio Sancti Spiritus sit cum omnibus vobis.’ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Johnny Fitzgerald was staring very closely at the man celebrating Mass. He tiptoed further up the aisle to a place with a better and a closer view of the altar. The service carried on.

‘Confiteor Deo omnipotente et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et ommissione.’ I confess to you, Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault in thought, word and deed, in the things I have done and the things I have failed to do.’

The little congregation struck their breasts, lightly in the case of the priest, severely in the case of the lone worshipper, vigorously in the case of Johnny Fitzgerald. If only the man would turn round once or twice so he could get a proper look at him.

‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’ The fault is with me, the fault is with me, the fault is greatly with me.

Then Johnny knew. There was something in the profile of the man at the altar that made him certain. For he had seen him before. This priest celebrating Mass in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the parish of Ledbury St John was the same man who had been conducting the service of Evensong in the Cathedral of Compton five days before.

Sir Roderick Lewis, former Ambassador from the Court of St James to the Court of Umberto, King of Italy, was wearing a smock and had a paintbrush in his hand when Powerscourt was shown into his study. There were, Powerscourt discovered, a number of surprising facets to Sir Roderick’s character. The first was that he loathed Italy. And, especially, he loathed Rome. Its inhabitants did not rate much higher in his estimation.

‘Frightful place, Powerscourt. Perfectly acceptable if you’re a tourist and only there for a couple of days. But to live there! All that terrible food! All that dreadful olive oil! And those vulgar wines they’re so proud of that no proper Englishman would ever let into his cellar! I was never surprised the place killed Keats, you know. The bastards have even got Shelley’s heart. Killed one of my predecessors, Lord Vivian, too. And the Romans! God only knows how they acquired an empire all that time ago, Powerscourt. Couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag now, if you ask me. Intrigue, double dealing, treachery – diplomacy became a process of accommodation with a collection of particularly slippery eels.’

Powerscourt wondered if it was official Foreign Office policy to despatch the representatives of His Majesty to the places they loathed the most. Russia haters to St Petersburg, Ireland haters to Dublin, Americaphobes to Washington. Perhaps he could ask Rosebery

‘What’s more,’ Sir Roderick went on, staring balefully at the watercolour of Hampton Court taking uncertain form on his easel, ‘Rosebery tells me you want to know about Civitas Dei. Civitas Dei means the Vatican. The Vatican means the Pope. The Pope means the Curia and the self-serving collection of the sycophantic, the devious and the ambitious who make up the Papal bureaucracy.’

With that he placed a blob of blue paint in the place where the sky should have been. It did not look right.

‘Damn!’ said Sir Roderick. ‘Look what the bloody Vatican has made me do now. I’ll have to wipe that off.’

‘What do we know about Civitas Dei?’ asked Powerscourt as the former Ambassador dabbed ineffectually at his watercolour with a piece of cloth. ‘I mean know for certain.’

‘We know nothing for certain about them, Powerscourt. If the affairs of the Vatican are shrouded in mist, the affairs of Civitas Dei are surrounded by impenetrable fog, much worse than we get in London.’ He tried another splash of blue right above the roof of Hampton Court. Powerscourt was sure the roof was crooked but felt it might be better not to point this out. This time it worked. Sir Roderick’s temper improved briefly.

‘Very rich backers,’ he went on, fiddling with his brushes as he spoke. ‘Aim the improvement in fortunes if not the supremacy of the Catholic Church. Number of priests believed to be members. Very shadowy inner group based in Rome itself.’

‘You make them sound a bit like Freemasons, Sir Roderick,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Don’t think these characters have much time for aprons and funny handshakes, if you ask me,’ Sir Roderick replied, ‘much more like the thumbscrew alternating with the crucifix. What is amazing are the variety and the improbability of the rumours that circulate about them.’

The former Ambassador raised another brush full of blue. His hand hovered over where the river ought to be. Powerscourt hoped the Thames wasn’t going to be the same shade as the sky.

‘Rumour flows around Rome like the water supply, Powerscourt. There are pipes sunk into the ground to hasten its passage from place to place, aqueducts old and new to ferry it over the difficult terrain. Turn on the tap, ask a Roman to speak, and out it flows, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, more often, with their useless engineers, tepid if you want to take a bath. But the rumours flow, just like the water.’

Sir Roderick paused and raised his brush high above his canvas, as if poised to strike.

‘In the last two years, Powerscourt, we have had to listen to the following fantastic accounts of the power of the Civitas Dei. They were responsible for the recent change of government in Brazil. Any sane person would have told you it was their disastrous economic policies that brought that about. They have recently, if we are to believe the rumours, been responsible for the appointment of a new Minister of Finance in Madrid. Previous fellow was caught with his hand in the till. Two out of three cardinals appointed this past year are said to be leading members of the organization. There was even a rumour that they had a great work afoot in England itself which would cause a sensation when it happened. Rumours, all rumours, not a word of truth in any of it.’

Powerscourt watched as the brush finally made up its mind and placed a perfectly formed strip of river at the bottom of the painting.

‘I know they’re all ridiculous,’ he said, ‘but sometimes even rumours can be useful in my profession, Sir Roderick. Was there any more detail about the English operation?’

Sir Roderick, emboldened by his previous success, tried to extend the passage of his river. The paint escaped into the lower sections of the building instead, rendering some of it extremely wet, if not uninhabitable.

‘God damn and blast!’ said the former Ambassador. ‘I shall have to redo that whole section. All the fault of those bloody Romans, if you ask me. The only other thing they said about the English business, Powerscourt, was that it was controlled from Rome. Of course, you don’t have to be Caesar Borgia or Niccolo Machiavelli to work that one out. Whole bloody business is controlled from Rome.’

As Powerscourt left the artist to his labours he found himself thinking about Hampton Court. Built by Cardinal Wolsey at the height of his power, he remembered. Appropriated by the King who could not bear a mere commoner to have a grander house than he did. So had Sir Thomas More, victim of the King, walked with him in counsel in the gardens and the corridors? And, as more of his recent history lessons came back to him, had Thomas Cromwell whispered his advice into his sovereign’s ear inside that fantastic building? Was the Dissolution of the Monasteries conceived and planned inside Hampton Court Palace?

William McKenzie settled nervously into his first class carriage at Victoria station, feeling rather out of place. McKenzie was not used to travelling first class. Three compartments further down Father Dominic Barberi was also travelling first class. He had not required the services of a porter to bring his luggage on to the train. One black valise was all he had. McKenzie also felt rather nervous about the very large sum of money Powerscourt had stuffed into his pocket before he left.

‘You never know who you might need to bribe when you get there, William. And I’ve hired a guide and interpreter to meet you at the further end. A former Ambassador gave me his name. The fellow is a retired journalist by the name of Bailey Richard Bailey. He’s married to an Italian and knows the place like the back of his hand.’

McKenzie hoped his old mother did not where he was going. For she belonged to an extreme Presbyterian sect which believed that the Catholic Church was the kingdom of the Devil and the Pope the permanent reincarnation of Satan. The minister in their local church was a man who prided himself on his physical resemblance to John Knox, the great Calvinist divine of sixteenth-century Edinburgh. Indeed, the minister had bought every single book ever published about Knox so he could imitate his mannerisms and recreate the patterns of his speech. How often had McKenzie sat there in his pew beside his mother, his mind miles away, while the man preached on and on about the Anti-Christ in the Vatican and the evils of the Church of Rome, its coffers bloated by the sale of indulgences and pardons, its members denied the basic rights of the study of the Bible and damned to all eternity by their idolatry and the worship of graven images. McKenzie had told Powerscourt in India once that he had learned patience by sitting through these terrible sermons, so filled with hate in the name of the love of God.

He remembered Powerscourt’s last words to him in the drawing room at Markham Square. ‘William, it is important that you find out as much as you can. But it is even more important that you do not get caught. I dread to think what might happen if these people suspect they are being followed, their affairs investigated. I cannot emphasize that enough.’

Outside, McKenzie saw that the great clock on the station platform had almost reached eleven o’clock. The last trunks and hatboxes were being loaded into the goods van, the porters throwing the late ones in before the train departed. McKenzie checked his ticket once more. London, Calais, Paris, Lyon, Mont Cenis, Turin, Pisa, Rome. The whistles blew, the green flags came down and the train moved slowly out of the station, a few relatives and friends waving at the carriages as they passed. William McKenzie was on his way to the Eternal City.

After his journey back to the West Country Powerscourt suspected he might be on the verge of solving one of the riddles of Compton. It was the one where he had started all those weeks before. If he had to, he could now arrange for the exhumation of the body of John Eustace, interred with such speed and secrecy in the graveyard behind his house. But, if he was lucky, that might not be necessary. His first port of call the following day was with Chief Inspector Yates. He showed him the papers he had brought from London.

‘Chief Inspector, thank you for the papers about the exhumation order on John Eustace. I have the Home Secretary’s signature here. I think I am going to have one last attempt on Dr Blackstaff. But I need some ammunition. If the coffin is lifted and opened up, and we discover that Eustace did not die of natural causes, where does that leave the doctor?’

‘Well,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘we could charge him with murder straight away, if you like. He did stand to make a great deal of money out of the will after all.’

‘I’m not sure that it would be easy to secure a conviction on those grounds. And a local jury would certainly be very reluctant to convict him. He’s a very good doctor, I believe. Is there anything else you could charge him with?’

Chief Inspector Yates scratched his head. ‘Obstruction of justice,’ he said, ‘concealing the manner of death, lying to the police forces? We could certainly rustle up something along those lines.’

Powerscourt found Lady Lucy sitting in the garden of Fairfield Park, watching the children throwing a ball to each other. He kissed her and smiled as she ran her fingers through his hair.

‘I think we’re making progress, Lucy,’ he said. ‘But the answers I am finding are so incredible I wonder if I am going out of my mind. I don’t want to tell anybody yet, in case I’m completely wrong.’

‘Surely you can tell me, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. A pair of sad blue eyes looked up at him. ‘We’ve been married for years and years now, after all.’

Powerscourt kissed her again. ‘I think this knowledge is very dangerous, my love. Believe me, I will tell you as soon as I can. Now, what has been happening down here?’

Lady Lucy told him about her strange encounter with the choirmaster, his comments about the amount of work the choir had to do for the Messiah and the commemoration service. She told him about Johnny Fitzgerald’s discovery of one of the canons of the cathedral celebrating Mass at seven thirty in the morning in the little church at Ledbury St John. Two of them Catholic for certain, Powerscourt said to himself, Archdeacon and Canon, maybe two more. At that point Powerscourt rose from his garden chair and walked round the garden three times, collecting his children in his arms as he went so that three Powerscourts returned to join Lady Lucy on her chair.

‘I must go now, or I shall be late,’ he said, kissing all three of them in turn.

‘Where are you going, Papa?’ said Thomas and Olivia in unison, worried that he might disappear abroad again.

‘I have to go and see Dr Blackstaff,’ he said. ‘I’m rather worried about my health.’ As Lady Lucy watched him go out of the garden gate, she didn’t think for one moment that it was his own health he was going to discuss, but the death that had brought them to Compton all those weeks before.

On his short journey to the Blackstaff residence Powerscourt thought about many things. He thought of the two dead bodies, one roasted all night on the spit in Vicars Hall, the other cut into pieces and distributed around the countryside. He thought about the extra music the choir were learning for the service commemorating one thousand years of the minster. He thought of the Archdeacon, travelling every Thursday to celebrate Mass at Melbury Clinton, his other religious identity concealed inside his bag. He thought of the dinner at Trinity College Oxford all those years before, the candles burning brightly along the tables, the dons resplendent in their gowns of scarlet and black, the long shadows of the servants on the walls as they moved up and down to serve the different courses, the red wine gleaming in front of Newman, his white hair shimmering like a beacon in the centre of High Table.

The daffodils in Dr Blackstaff’s garden were swaying slightly in the early evening breeze as Powerscourt rang the bell at precisely six o’clock. He had sent word to the doctor from London that he proposed to call on him at this time. He was shown into the drawing room lined with medical prints where he had talked to the doctor about the death of John Eustace in January. He greeted the grisly portrait of an eighteenth-century tooth extraction like an old friend. He was, after all, he reflected, about to embark on a different kind of extraction. The truth might be more painful than an infected upper molar.

‘Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt began, as he was ushered into a high-backed leather chair by the fireplace, ‘please forgive me for troubling you once more about the death of John Eustace.’

Dr Blackstaff looked slightly irritated. ‘I have already told you, Lord Powerscourt, all that I know about the death of my friend.’

‘But have you?’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is the question, Dr Blackstaff. You see, I’m afraid I didn’t believe the story you related about the manner of John Eustace’s death the first time you told me, here in this room, all those weeks ago. I still don’t believe it today. There are too many discrepancies in the account you gave me and what the butler said. You said, if I recall, that he was wearing a pale blue shirt. Andrew McKenna said it was grey. Maybe people could confuse one with the other. Perhaps. You said he was wearing black boots. McKenna said they were brown. But, you see, it wasn’t just those variations that made me doubt you were telling me the whole truth. The demeanour of the two of you was most unsatisfactory. Not to put too fine a point on it, you sounded as though you were lying some of the time, the unfortunate butler, one of the worst liars I have ever come across, sounded as though he was lying almost all of the time.’

Powerscourt paused. The doctor was silent, staring at his fire. A couple of blackbirds were singing lustily in the fruit trees outside. Maybe even the birds, Powerscourt said to himself, had to learn new tunes for the celebrations of the thousandth anniversary of Compton Minster as a site of Christian worship.

‘There was little I could do about the lack of truthful information, short of digging the body out of the grave. And then there were other murders which took my attention. But now the situation is different.’

Powerscourt took out the papers relating to the exhumation order and placed them carefully on the table between them.

‘As you can see, I have the signature of the Home Secretary on the exhumation order already. I don’t think your brother could oppose a request now.’

The doctor pulled on a pair of spectacles and read the documents very slowly. Then he read them again.

‘Can I say at this point, Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘that I would urge you now to consider your own position. If we go ahead with the exhumation, I believe there will be questions from the police about why they were not told the truth. There may be charges of obstructing the course of justice. It will all become most unpleasant in a personal and professional sense. But it need not come to that.’

Powerscourt stopped. At last the doctor spoke.

‘What do you mean, it need not come to that?’

Powerscourt paused for a few moments before he replied. A gang of magpies had taken occupation of the top branches in one of the Blackstaff apple trees, noisily preparing for some malevolent mission.

Powerscourt was at his most emollient. ‘I think one of the key factors in this terrible affair has been your intimate friendship with John Eustace and Andrew McKenna’s loyalty to his employer. I respect you both for that. I suspect John Eustace must have been a very lovable man. Some people are just like that. And I think he was a very troubled man in the weeks and months leading up to his death. In some ways I think that what troubled him also led to his death. I shall come to that in a moment. I think he made you promise, or you felt such a promise was inherent in your friendship, not to tell a single soul what had been happening in the weeks before he died, or what had worried him previously. That is why you have been reticent with the true facts of the affair.’

Powerscourt paused and looked carefully at the doctor. The doctor held his peace.

‘I said a moment ago that the exhumation need not go ahead. I am not going to ask you to break your solemn oath. I am not going to ask you to make your confession, if confession is the right word, which I rather doubt. All I ask is that you nod your head if the version of events I am about to give you is correct in the broad outlines. We need not quibble about the accuracy of the minor details. Do you agree, Dr Blackstaff?’

Dr Blackstaff looked once more into his fire. Powerscourt waited.

‘I agree,’ he said finally.

‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt, ‘thank you so much. Let me give you first of all my guess as to what happened on the night John Eustace died. You see, I don’t think he died here in this house at all, as you said in your earlier account of events. I think he was dead when he came here. I think Andrew McKenna brought him here in the middle of the night. He died in Fairfield Park, not in your surgery after a long and difficult night. I say he died in Fairfield Park, I should have said he was murdered in Fairfield Park.’

Powerscourt stopped for a moment to see if there would be a nod from the medical department. Eventually there was a slow, but definite inclination of Dr Blackstaff’s head. It was undoubtedly a nod. Inwardly Powerscourt rejoiced.

‘The murder,’ Powerscourt went on, remembering he was speaking to John Eustace’s closest friend, ‘was truly horrible. I think his head had been cut off. I think the intention of the murderer was to stick the head on a pole. Maybe he stuck it as a temporary measure on one of the posts on that great four-poster bed. The butler was terrified of scandal. You wished to be loyal to your friend and to his memory. You feared, above all, what damage might be done if the circumstances surrounding John Eustace’s demise became public. So you rushed the body off to the mortuary as fast as you could. You also made sure that only the undertaker knew what must have happened to the corpse. Nobody else in his business saw anything other than a closed coffin.’

Dr Blackstaff looked as if he might speak. But he did not. Instead he nodded a weary nod.

‘Thank you once again,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let me tell you how your acceptance changes the position. We can leave the body where it is. The police will take no action. I am assuming the man who murdered John Eustace is the same man who murdered the man on the spit and the dismembered corpse. You cannot be hanged more than once, no matter how many people you may have slaughtered. The killer can hang for those two murders. It should not be necessary to bring a third charge. The body and the memory of John Eustace can be left in peace. I am sure that is what you would have wished, Dr Blackstaff.’

At last the doctor spoke. ‘Do you know who the killer is, Lord Powerscourt?’

Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to shake his head. ‘I do not,’ he said sadly.

‘Do you think you will find him?’

‘Yes, if he does not kill me first.’ Powerscourt told the doctor about the attempt on his life in the cathedral, the falling masonry, his hours alone with the dead of Compton’s past.

‘One last request, if I may trouble you still further.’ Powerscourt’s eye was drawn to another of the doctor’s grisly collection of medical prints on the wall opposite. It showed a long line of wounded men who snaked out of the picture into the fields beyond. Snow was falling. The head of the queue was in front of a barn which must have served as a temporary medical station, Dr Blackstaff’s predecessors working furiously inside. It must have been a terrible battle, Powerscourt thought, Inkerman perhaps or Balaclava. Heaps of amputated limbs were stacked neatly against the side of the building. An orderly was bringing a bundle of the latest arms and legs to add to the charnel house. They were arranged separately, Powerscourt saw to his horror, arms in one pile, legs in another.

‘We are still, I would suggest,’ he went on, ‘operating under the same rules as before. All you have to do is nod. I want to test out on you what I think must have been troubling John Eustace in the last weeks and months of his life. You see, I think we are in the middle, no, not the middle, I think we are very close to the end of a very daring conspiracy, a most ingenious conspiracy, a conspiracy that could have repercussions far beyond the boundaries of Compton Minster.’

Powerscourt spoke for about five minutes. He paused every now and then to collect his thoughts. He had never tried to put all the pieces together in conversation before, only in his mind, and then usually in the middle of the night. He left out a lot of the details. He did not mention the Archdeacon’s pilgrimages to Melbury Clinton or the Canon’s expeditions to Ledbury St John in case the doctor did not know of these. He spoke at length about the thousand year celebrations in the cathedral.

When he stopped he felt like an undergraduate who has just read a controversial, possibly heretical, essay to his tutor. He wondered what the verdict would be. Dr Blackstaff looked at Powerscourt in astonishment. Powerscourt wondered if he was going to be declared insane. He was not. Dr Blackstaff did not speak. He continued to stare at Powerscourt for what must have been almost a minute. Then he nodded. He nodded very vigorously indeed.