Death of a Pilgrim

PART THREE
ESPEYRAC-FIGEAC-MOISSAC-PAMPLONA-SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

17

The city of Bath is graced with some of the most beautiful architecture in Britain. Georgian streets, Georgian squares, Georgian terraces rise in elegant and restrained splendour up the hill above the river Avon and the railway station. There is even an astonishing creation called The Circus, a perfect circle of grand town houses ranged round a garden in the centre. Johnny Fitzgerald tried to remember what he could about the place as he set off from his train up to Mr Daniel’s house. Regency bucks, he thought, dressed in those gorgeous long coats with a stock at the neck. A man called Nash who had been the arbiter of taste in late eighteenth-century Bath, and had lived openly with a woman who was not his wife. Balls. Assignations in the Roman baths or the Assembly Rooms. A marriage market discreetly carried out behind the shuttered windows of Gay Street or Golden Square. Whores by the score drawn to the place by the needs and the purses of the fashionable, the twin magnets of men and money. Johnny thought he would have rather liked it here in Bath in those times.

The door of 4 Royal Crescent, the most elegant street in an elegant city, was opened by a young butler who showed him into an enormous drawing room. Portraits of earlier Daniels lined the walls. Johnny was staring at a spectacular eighteenth-century beauty in a pale blue dress when he heard a door close behind him.

‘That one’s a Gainsborough,’ said the man. ‘Everybody gets transfixed by that painting. Allow me to introduce myself, Ralph Daniel.’

‘Johnny Fitzgerald.’

‘She came to a bad end, I’m afraid,’ Daniel went on.

‘Bad end?’ said Johnny.

‘Sorry, the Gainsborough girl. She married into a very respectable family here in Bath, then she eloped with some American playboy. He abandoned her out in the wilds of Indiana or some other place in favour of a younger woman. Nobody knows what happened to her in the end. Forgive me, I gather you have come to see me about a book. Macdonald didn’t say which one, he’s always very cagey about things like that. How can I help?’

Johnny Fitzgerald handed over his letter of introduction. He had rehearsed various stories in the train on the way down, all of them lies. Ralph Daniel was a slim gentleman of about forty-five years old, clean-shaven and blessed with a winning smile. Various pieces of military memorabilia, a curved dagger on a table, a photograph of a group of officers with Daniel in the centre, told Johnny that he might be in the presence of a military man. Retired colonels, he dimly remembered, had always been fond of Bath. Suddenly Johnny felt tired of his fictions, of wearing other people’s clothes, as he put it to himself.

‘Forgive me this question, Mr Daniel: are you or were you a military gentleman?’

‘Yes, I was, but I don’t see what it has to do with this book.’

‘It’s just easier speaking to a fellow soldier, if you see what I mean. You know the rules. I’m going to tell you a story, Mr Daniel, if you have the time to listen. I was going to tell you a pack of lies about this book, but I think you deserve better than that. The book in question came out in the last decade of the last century. It’s called Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. Can I ask you first of all, have you the read the thing?’

‘The book?’ Ralph Daniel smiled. ‘I don’t think I have. It was my father who ordered it, you see.’

Johnny was relieved to hear that this father did not come with God rest his soul attached.

‘We’d better make sure, first of all,’ said Daniel, ‘that I still have the book in the house. No point in you telling me a story if I don’t have it. I’m not sure where it is, now I come to think of it. I know I have seen it somewhere. It came with a dark green cover. I do hope my wife hasn’t tidied it away. She’s a terrible one for tidying things. Then, of course, she can’t remember where she put them. If you wait here, I’ll see what I can do. There’s a book about the British Army in India that’s just come out on that little table by the window which might interest you.’

A couple of minutes later Daniel was back, grinning, with a book in his hand. ‘This is it here,’ he said, ‘Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. Your journey hasn’t been in vain. The wife had tidied it away, as a matter of fact. She’d transferred it and a whole lot more she didn’t like the look of out of the main library up to the reserves in the attic.’

He looked inside the book. ‘I don’t think anybody has ever read it,’ Daniel said. ‘The pages haven’t been cut. Now then, tell me the story behind it.’

Johnny explained about the fate of the original work in America, pulped on Delaney’s orders. He stressed that all his information came second-hand. He told Daniel about the murders in the south of France. He told him what he knew about the progress of the investigation, that Powerscourt was working on the theory that the reason for the murders might lie deep in Delaney’s past.

Ralph Daniel was fascinated. ‘So, if I understand you correctly, the reason Delaney wanted the book destroyed was that it contained shameful secrets about his behaviour in the past? And that one of those secrets might explain this horror story on the pilgrim trail today?’

‘Exactly,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘Well, then,’ Ralph Daniel handed the book over, ‘you’d better have Michael Delaney, Robber Baron right now. Do with it what you will. I would be pleased if I could feel that a book from my house had helped to solve a murder mystery.’

‘Can I pay you for it?’ asked Johnny.

‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can’t. Do get in touch when the investigation is over and we can work out what to do with it. May I ask what you propose doing with it now?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Johnny thoughtfully. ‘You see, if I read it and tell Francis what I think are the most important bits, I may miss something. I don’t know as much as he does. I suppose I could post it to him, or I could take it over to France myself.’

‘Well,’ said Ralph Daniel, ‘you found out about the book yesterday, you came here today. Why not keep moving? I don’t think I’d rest easy in my bed putting a Robber Baron in the post. Of course ninety-nine times out of a hundred the book would get there safely. But there’s always the one that didn’t. And it sounds as if your friend is moving about a great deal. You don’t want the book mouldering away at some hotel or poste restante in Auch when your friend has moved off to Burgos or somewhere.’

‘You’ve convinced me. I’ll go today. I’ll travel through the night if I have to. Thank you so much for your assistance and your advice, Mr Daniel, I am most grateful.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Daniel replied, escorting Johnny to the front door and the full sweep of the Royal Crescent, ‘and God speed on your journey. I hope it contains what you are looking for, Michael Delaney, Robber Baron.’

‘It says here, Francis, that there’s a tympanum, one of those arched doorways with statues and things, at the Abbey of St Peter, the place with the cloisters.’ Lady Lucy Powerscourt was reading from a little guide to Moissac she had borrowed from their hotel. It was two days since the pilgrims had been locked away in the Black Marias on the journey to their special train. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were due to meet them in a couple of hours’ time.

‘Another tympanum, Lucy? I think I could become quite attached to tympanums, you know. Maybe I should write a book on them one day to go with that cathedral volume. I wonder if this one has as many horrible sinners as the one at Conques. I rather hope not.’

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were walking up the slope above the river Tarn. The river, Lady Lucy had remarked, was probably as wide as the Thames going through London. ‘It’s another Last Judgement, Francis.’ Lady Lucy stopped about fifteen feet away from the church door. ‘Based on the Book of Revelation. This is pretty dramatic stuff, my love: “Behold. A throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”’

Lady Lucy paused for a moment. ‘Here we go, Francis: “And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne which are the seven Spirits of God.”’

‘Don’t think the sculptor bothered with the fire and the weather bit, Lucy.’ Powerscourt was now standing by the south door of the abbey. It was set in a deep splay rather like a jaw, with the sides serrated like the central sections of human back teeth. In the centre was a pillar wreathed with lions. Above that was a lintel of rosettes. Two rows of fleurs-de-lis ran right round the central section, which was dominated by Christ, the largest figure in the group with his right hand raised in blessing. He sat, holding a scroll in his left hand, surrounded by a lion and an eagle and other beasts symbolizing the four evangelists. The twenty-four elders mentioned in the Book of Revelation were all seated, holding medieval musical instruments that looked like primitive violins, or goblets symbolizing the prayers of the saints, a medieval chamber orchestra come to Moissac with their own refreshments. They sat in three tiers, with fourteen on the bottom row, six in the middle and four in the top. All were looking up and across at the figure of Christ, and the sculptor had demonstrated his abilities by giving each head a different angle, a different tilt across and upwards.

‘Look at their legs, Francis.’ It was Lady Lucy who noticed it first. Each pair of elders’ legs, like each head, was different. Some were held close together, some were wide apart, some were folded one on top of another, some were twisted away from the body almost at right angles. But it was the face of Christ that fascinated Powerscourt. This Christ was lord and master of all he surveyed. He was bathed in majesty. His gaze travelled out of the tympanum, out over the valley of the Tarn, out over France and the known world towards the eternal and the infinite. He might have been placed on earth, carved in stone, but his kingdom stretched out into the next world.

But there was another statue that fascinated Powerscourt. It enthralled him. Its beauty was such, he told Lady Lucy later that evening, that he felt ravished by it. On either side of the south door there was a saint, presumably by the same hand that produced the tympanum above. On the left was St Paul, looking businesslike with a bible. On the right was St Jerome, a figure who did not look as if he belonged in the world of 1120 when the abbey was built. He belonged in another century altogether, hundreds of years in the future. He might even, Powerscourt thought, belong in the present. This St Jerome looked about thirty years old. His body was long, dressed in a flowing tunic, and he carried a scroll in his hands. The face and the beard and the long moustaches were all intertwined, with delicate grooves of hair that looked so soft you wanted to stroke them. His eyes, in so far as you could tell nearly eight hundred years after the sculptor finally laid down his chisel, seemed to look inward. The face was delicate, dreamy, almost feminine. Powerscourt had to remind himself that it was carved from granite, not the softest of materials. This was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He looked as if he might be carrying all the sins of the world on his shoulders. The face and the expression could have been those of Christ himself, carrying his cross to his own version of the Last Judgement to the place which is called Calvary where they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. It was the modernity of the face that haunted Powerscourt, who described it to himself as a symphony in melancholy.

Halfway between the abbey and the entrance to the cloisters there was a clatter of wheels and the reassuring noise of horses’ hooves on cobblestones. The pilgrims had arrived. They clambered round Powerscourt and Lady Lucy like excited schoolchildren released to liberty at last after a long period of detention. And they complained. They complained about the solitary confinement in the police cells. They complained about the food. They complained about conditions in the train, where they alleged the sanitary arrangements weren’t fit for pigs. They complained about the French police and their total failure to understand a word of English. The Inspector and his men shepherded them as gently as they could towards the cloisters, the Inspector confiding in a whisper to Powerscourt that he would be very relieved when they were all over the border. The prisoners had evolved their very own means of revolt. They refused to speak to him through his interpreter. They refused to speak to him at all, even in their own language, except, he thought, to swear at him. That, he said, was the only thing capable of bringing a smile to their faces.

They were just inside the cloisters when they were overwhelmed. A never-ending procession of young men in black cassocks marched in and pushed the pilgrims out of the way. Trainee priests, Leger said to Powerscourt, come to Moissac on a Sunday morning to see how their predecessors had lived in former times. Powerscourt thought there was no danger of the south of France being short of cures and monsignors and bishops in the years ahead. He thought there were over two hundred of them, maybe three hundred. The beauty of the cloisters was obscured by a black cloud of bodies. The pilgrims virtually disappeared behind a sea of cassocks. Two older men, also dressed in black, hopped over the little parapet at the bottom of the pillars and made their way into the middle of the grass in the centre. Behind them an enormous cedar tree offered shade to monks and visitors. The taller man, obviously the supervisor or tutor to the young men, introduced his colleague, a professor of history from the University of Bordeaux, a tubby little man scarcely over five feet tall but with a deep penetrating voice that had obviously been trained to reach the back of the biggest lecture hall in his university. He began by telling them about the foundation of the abbey. After five minutes he had reached the time of Dagobert’s son Clovis the Second who was apparently King of Neustria and Burgundy in the year 650. Powerscourt had to whisper a reply to Lady Lucy that no, he had no idea at all where Neustria was. After ten minutes things were looking up at the abbey when rich property owners Nizezius – possibly an early version of Michael Delaney, Powerscourt thought – and his wife, who was actually called Ermintrude, shelled out thirty thousand acres of land in the Garonne along with all the churches, mills, serfs, settlers and freemen thereon in 680. That seemed to reawaken interest in the young ordinands, whose eyes had been glazing over at the long litany of dead abbots and dead princes. After fifteen minutes the professor introduced a character called Louis the Pious who took the place under his protection. And so it went on. And on, Powerscout said to himself.

The sun was moving round the pillars, changing the areas of shade and light and the colour of the brick. Powerscourt felt a moment of relief when he realized that the history lesson might stop when the professor reached the 1100s when the cloister was built. The professor did indeed reach the year 1100. But he did not stop. He knew about architecture too, the professor, and he was not going to miss this opportunity of sharing his knowledge with the seminarians.

Powerscourt stared across at the opposite gallery. He could see about half a dozen pilgrims penned against the pillars but no more. He couldn’t see anything at all to his left or right. He presumed the rest were trapped round the other galleries. West gallery, the professor said, and now he was describing the sculptures on the capitals, the top of the pillars. Number two over there, he went on, the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac. That took a minute or two. Some of the capitals were decorative, with no sculpture at all. These merited only a brief mention. Then there was Daniel in the lion’s den. Another couple of minutes. Powerscourt began doing some serious mental arithmetic. He reckoned there must be about eighty capitals with sculptures. One minute each and that meant an hour and twenty minutes. Make it a minute and a half and that was two hours. Surely the little man couldn’t go on that long. God in heaven.

Across the grass Powerscourt saw that Inspector Leger might have been making similar calculations. He was wriggling free from a scrum about four deep. There was a certain amount of pushing and shoving and then he was lost to sight. Powerscourt wondered if he should join him. After a couple of minutes the resurrection of Lazarus at pillar number nine was on the menu. Powerscourt thought that if Lazarus knew he was going to be brought back to life here and now with this interminable lecture in these cloisters he might decide to stay where he was. He saw the Inspector again making his way across the opposite gallery. He was looking worried. After a couple more minutes the professor was pointing to an inscription on pillar number twelve which referred to the construction of the buildings in 1100 when Dom Ansquitil was abbot. The Inspector was making frantic gestures to Powerscourt to join him. Then, paying no attention to the senior clergy in the centre, he hopped inside the cloisters and made his way very slowly along the four galleries. Powerscourt decided to join him.

‘Count the pilgrims,’ the Inspector whispered.

Michael Delaney and Alex Bentley were sandwiched in between a couple of very tall ordinands. Jack O’Driscoll and Christy Delaney were squashed against a pillar. Maggie Delaney was closer to Father Kennedy than she would have thought proper. The rest were scattered around the cloisters in various degrees of discomfort. Inspector Leger and Powerscourt did their rounds twice. The professor had reached murder with the story of Cain and Abel at pillar number nineteen. The Frenchman drew Powerscourt into the street outside. The church bells were tolling the Angelus. There was a small crowd in front of the tympanum.

‘How many did you make it?’ asked Leger.

‘Twelve,’ said Powerscourt, beginning to feel rather sick.

‘So did I.’

‘How many do you think there should be?’

‘Thirteen,’ said the Inspector. ‘God knows I’ve counted the buggers often enough these last two days, on and off the train, in and out of the cells.’

‘Could he have escaped? Run away in all the confusion with the priests?’

‘No, he couldn’t. One of my men is on guard just outside.’

‘Could he be in one of those rooms off the cloisters?’

‘We’d better go and see.’