Death of a Pilgrim

21

Everybody was back in the hotel by half past eight that morning. The other pilgrims had been rounded up partying on the streets or drinking in some of the bars that never closed during Fiesta. Powerscourt had all the pilgrims assemble in a private room on the first floor. The Inspector joined them. Michael Delaney was wearing a very bright suit of yellow check today. Alex Bentley worked his way round so he could sit next to Lady Lucy at the top table. Johnny Fitzgerald wondered if anybody would notice him taking the occasional swig from his new wineskin. He hoped to be able to spend a day or two in the mountains soon, looking for vultures.

Powerscourt rose to his feet. He was finding it hard, as he had told Lady Lucy five minutes before, to believe that the case was over. It was finished. Normal life without wine cellars and bodies in cloisters could resume. He was sombre as he began.

‘Ladies’, he nodded to Maggie Delaney, ‘and gentlemen, I have both good and bad news for you this morning. I have to say I think the good outweighs the bad, but you must decide that for yourselves. We have another death, I’m afraid. Waldo Mulligan took part this morning in the running of the bulls. I’m sure you have all heard of it by now. He was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One bull got detached from the rest. I am told they are at their most dangerous when they are disoriented and separated from their companions. Waldo Mulligan was gored by the bull just above the groin. He died of his injuries shortly afterwards in the hospital in the bullring. A priest was with him at the end.’

Powerscourt did not mention that Mulligan had tried to kill him, to trip him up beneath the hooves of the bulls.

‘That is the bad news. The good news is that there will be no more murders. Waldo Mulligan confessed to me before he died that he was the killer. He was responsible for all four deaths. The Inspector here was with me at the time. He can confirm it. The special trains, the nights in the cells should all stop now, once the Spanish authorities give their approval.’

The Inspector said that he hoped to complete the formalities by that afternoon. There was a moment of silence, as if all this was too much to take in at once. Then there was a torrent of questions. When did Powerscourt know that Mulligan was the killer? How had he found out? Did he think Mulligan would have tried to kill more people? And, the most regular of all, why had Mulligan done it? What was his motive?

Michael Delaney rose to sum up the views of the pilgrims. ‘Could I say first of all, Powerscourt, how grateful we are to you for having solved the mystery. I may have spoken harshly to you the other day but I take back everything I said. And could we ask you to tell us something about your investigation?’ Powerscourt felt reluctant. Then he told himself that these pilgrims had lived with the threat of death for a long time. One short walk with the killer might have been enough to end their lives. But he felt, even after their row a few days before, that he should spare Michael Delaney.

‘I will do that, Mr Delaney,’ he said, ‘but could I suggest that you do not stay with us now? There are some matters you might not like to hear in public. I would be perfectly happy to give you the details in private later on this morning.’

‘Nonsense, man, I’ve got nothing to hide.’

Oh yes you have, Powerscourt said to himself, wondering if Delaney had blotted out large sections of his own past. ‘Really, Mr Delaney, I do think it would be better if I spoke with you in private.’

‘Nonsense, man, I’m not scared of what you might have to say.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly if he should not give the details of Delaney’s past crimes. Then he reflected that that would not be fair to the pilgrims. Delaney had been given his chance.

‘The first murder, the one that brought me here,’ he began, ‘was that of John Delaney, pushed, I believe, off the volcanic rock path of St Michel to his death. The poor man was scarcely off the train from England. Any suggestion that he might have suffered from vertigo was banished from my mind when I learnt from England that he was employed as a window cleaner. There was no motive that I could see. You will recall that Lucy and I asked you to fill out various forms about your ancestors, that we tried to engage you in conversation about your parents and grandparents. We were looking for connections. There were none that we could find.

‘The second murder was another apparently motiveless crime. So, it seemed, was the third. So, it seemed, was the fourth. They did have one thing in common. This was a murderer who operated on the spur of the moment and at lightning speed. If he saw a chance to lure one of his victims away from the rest of the party, a walk by the river at night perhaps, a look at the upper chamber at Moissac cloisters maybe, he would seize his moment the instant it appeared. Out would come the knife or the blows against a pillar and the deed would be over in a matter of minutes. There was one possible interpretation that did present itself to me from this modus operandi. It seemed to me unlikely that the victims were pre-determined. There wasn’t a plan to kill Patrick MacLoughlin or Stephen Lewis or Girvan Connolly. The victim could as easily have been any one of you here, if you had been in the right place for the killer to strike. If the opportunity arose, the nearest pilgrim would do. If this theory was right, there were two possible explanations. One, that the man was a serial killer in the manner of Jack the Ripper, that he killed at random because he enjoyed it or derived some strange satisfaction from the act of murder. The other was that the victims were all killed because they were Delaneys, that the murderer had a huge grudge against every Delaney he could find. You might ask why, in that case, he didn’t kill Michael Delaney himself and have done with it. My answer, and this, I have to say, is supposition on my part, is that he did intend to kill Michael Delaney, but as his last victim, not his first.’

Powerscourt paused to take a sip of his coffee. The pilgrims sat spellbound. Jack O’Driscoll was taking notes. Christy Delaney was scribbling away too, though Powerscourt felt it might be a love letter rather than an account of his theories.

‘All along, all through this case, I have thought that the answer lay somewhere in the chequered past of Michael Delaney. I did, of course, ask him if there were any skeletons in his cupboard. He denied it. So I have had inquiries made in both Ireland and America about events in Michael Delaney’s past. Let me tell you about them in chronological order. The first of these events took place during the worst years of the Irish famine. Most of the Delaney family in County Cork were starving. Their potatoes had failed, like everybody else’s, they had no savings and no crops to plant for the future. Their only option was the workhouse. And almost everybody who went into the workhouse at that time never came out again. But, not far away, there was a family of more prosperous Delaneys. They had money and food to spare. Time and time again various of the poor Delaneys made appeals for help to their richer relations. Time and time again they were refused. Twenty-four Delaneys went into the workhouse. Only one, a boy of about twelve, survived. All the rest perished. The richer Delaneys subsequently emigrated to America. Was it possible that the lone survivor, or his sons, traced Michael Delaney as a descendant of the family who had let their relations die? It seemed to me that this was a very long shot. There were too many variables and too many unknowns. And the time scale was too long. Corsicans or Sicilians might be able to sustain a vendetta over a period of over sixty years, but I doubted if the Irish would be able to manage it.

‘Maggie Delaney mentioned a book written some years ago about the organizer of this pilgrimage called Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. Delaney was so alarmed at the prospect of this book being published about him and his alleged misdemeanours that he bought up every copy and had them all pulped. Nobody ever got to read it. What Delaney didn’t know was that four copies had been sent to England. Johnny Fitzgerald managed to track one of them down and it is now on my bedside table upstairs. There were two pieces of deception that could have given rise to a mighty hatred of Delaney. On the first occasion he pretended to form a joint railroad company with a man called Wharton. Only it wasn’t a joint company at all. Delaney put all the shares in his own name, cutting the other man out altogether. The company prospered but Delaney’s so-called partner did not. His other ventures failed. Wharton took to drink. He failed to service his debts. His wife left him. Then he killed himself, leaving one small son as survivor. This son would now be in his thirties. But there were doubts in my mind as to whether he could have been the murderer. Why had he waited so long? Why take the trouble to come all the way to France when he could have hired a couple of killers in New York City to murder Delaney? And surely such a killer would begin with Michael Delaney himself? Why go to the trouble of killing all the other pilgrims? The same objections, I thought, applied to the children of the other people Delaney supposedly swindled in an oil prospecting business.’

Lady Lucy had been casting surreptitious glances at Michael Delaney as her husband ran through the chronicle of his crimes. His fingers were drumming nervously on the table in front of him. His face remained impassive. He might, she thought, have been sitting through a rather disagreeable board meeting where the results were not as good as had been expected. She wondered if he guessed at what was to come. Johnny Fitzgerald winked at the pilgrims and took an enormous draught from his wineskin. Then he passed it over to the pilgrims. Thirsty work, he felt, listening to Powerscourt describing his theories.

‘It was only very recently that I came across the most promising line of inquiry. It transpired that thirty-odd years ago Michael Delaney had been married for the first time. He was then living in Pittsburgh. They had a son and then when Delaney’s wife was expecting their second child he walked out without warning and without leaving any means of support for his family and went to New York, where few questions are asked about newcomers. The wife died in childbirth and the baby, a little girl, was stillborn. The little boy, aged only two, was an orphan. The priests and nuns who looked after him tracked down every relative they could find and asked them to take on the lost child and bring him up as one of their own. Suffer the little children to come unto you. They wrote to Delaneys in America, in Ireland and in England. The Delaneys all refused. Every single one of them said no. The little boy was adopted and took on the surname of his adoptive parents.’

Powerscourt paused and took another sip of his coffee. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Michael Delaney was totally still, as if he had been turned to stone. Father Kennedy had his head in his hands. The wineskin was circulating regularly among the pilgrims. They could just hear another band striking up on the street outside.

‘Here, in this news from Pittsburgh,’ Powerscourt was speaking softly now, ‘at last was a motive for killing as many Delaneys as you could. They, or their families, had, after all, refused to take you in. Here was a motive for killing Michael Delaney, the father who had abandoned you and caused the premature deaths of your own mother and sister. This was not Oedipus killing his father when he did not know who he was. This was a son deliberately setting out to murder his own father. There was a person of the right age in the pilgrim party and that was Waldo Mulligan, born Waldo Delaney, son of Michael. He tried to kill me at the running of the bulls this morning. Just before that our eyes met, and I knew and he knew that I knew that he was the killer. He confirmed as much in the hospital before he died.’

Powerscourt sat down. There was a rumble to his left and Michael Delaney rose to his feet. For a moment Powerscourt wondered if he was going to defend his conduct, but he merely asked Father Kennedy to accompany him. There were, he said, things he wished to discuss with the priest. The pilgrims watched him go, his bearing still erect, his head held high. Nobody spoke. Delaney’s departure seemed to leave a hole, a vacuum in the room, as if some of the air had been sucked out. It was Jack O’Driscoll who broke the silence.

‘That is all very clear, Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘but could you answer me a question? You’ve been here all the time. Yet you were also making inquiries in Ireland and America. How did you manage that?’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘Good question,’ he said. ‘Johnny here did all the work in England and Ireland before he joined us. He actually brought the book Michael Delaney, Robber Baron with him. And I had a very intelligent young man working for us in America but I didn’t like to mention it in Michael Delaney’s presence in case he decided to make life awkward for our man when he returns to the States. It was Alex Bentley’s brother Franklin, who works for a law firm with offices in New York and Washington. He did the devilling over there, he found out about Delaney’s first marriage in Pittsburgh.’

‘Lord Powerscourt.’ This time it was Charlie Flanagan from Baltimore. ‘This is a lot to take in all at once. We’re going to have to consider whether we carry on with the pilgrimage or not. But could we ask you one more favour? Would you and Lady Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald be the pilgrims’ guests at dinner this evening? No Father Kennedy, no Michael Delaney, just Alex Bentley and ourselves?’

Powerscourt assured them that he and Lady Lucy would be delighted. He would be most interested to hear what they decided about the pilgrimage. Johnny Fitzgerald headed a delegation towards the latest Fiesta celebrations and the nearest bar.

‘That all went well enough, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy as she led her husband off to their room. ‘But tell me this, my love, what do you think Michael Delaney is going to do?’

‘I really don’t know, Lucy. Maybe they go through emotional upheavals like that every day on Wall Street, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about his religion, but I should think he’s going to make his confession. He’s got quite a lot of sins to get through, more than most people I should think. But if I know Michael Delaney, there’ll be more to it than absolution. He’ll be offering to hand over more money for schools in poor areas, more funds for more medical research, more support for priests and nuns, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you mean that he’s going to buy his way out of trouble, Francis?’

‘Of course I do. All that stuff about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God is for the innocent and the naive, if you ask me. If you’re rich enough, you buy up all the camels, you buy up all the needles and you’ve already put down a deposit for buying heaven.’

Dinner with the pilgrims that evening was a boisterous affair. Maggie Delaney was not there. Thirty years of dislike of her cousin Michael had been washed away by the day’s revelations. She was going, she told Lady Lucy, to see what comfort she could bring him in his time of trouble. Families should stick together after all. So it was the young men who set the tone for the occasion, behaving like children just let out of school on the last day of the summer term. They had ordered up a great round table in the upstairs room where Powerscourt had addressed them that morning. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were at opposite sides of the circle with Johnny Fitzgerald halfway between them. As they made their way through stuffed red peppers and salt cod, suckling pig and sheep’s cheese from the mountains, the pilgrims plied them with questions about their past investigations, about their children, about their houses in London and Ireland, about their plans for the future. Shortly before midnight the pilgrims exchanged glances. There was a sudden banging of forks on the table and loud cries for silence. Christy Delaney, now wearing the white shirt and red neckerchief of the festival of San Fermin, rose to his feet. He looked, Lady Lucy thought, absurdly young.

‘Lady Powerscourt, Lord Powerscourt, let me welcome you to this dinner here tonight. And why I should have been chosen to speak for the pilgrims I do not know. These other characters are older, and possibly wiser, than me and they should all be making this speech instead of me.’ Christy stared in mock severity at his colleagues. Lady Lucy thought they had chosen well. Christy had charm, he had grace and he had a voice that some women would have happily listened to all day long.

‘My first duty’, he carried on, ‘is to thank you for keeping us alive. It has been a very difficult time for everybody, but we’re still here, you’re still here and the pilgrimage is still out there.’ He waved in the direction of the street where the noise of revelry was reaching new heights. ‘We have spent most of the day talking about the pilgrimage, about whether we should go on or not. I am instructed to let you know what we have decided. I think I can speak for everybody here when I say that pilgrimage takes hold of you in ways you never expected. It becomes a part of you, or you become a part of it. I know I speak for everyone here when I say that it has played and continues to play a central part in our lives. So we are not going to turn round and go home. That would devalue the meaning it has come to acquire in our hearts. So we go on, we go on to Santiago itself where the pilgrim trail ends. And, Lord Powerscourt, Lady Powersourt, Johnny Fitzgerald, we ask you to join us on our journey. Come with us across northern Spain through Burgos and Leon and Rabanal del Camino to Santiago itself. Walk with us through the heat and the dust and the flies. Lend us your company on the last stages of our journey.’

The young man stopped suddenly and looked at Powerscourt and Lady Lucy.

‘Please come,’ he concluded. ‘You’d make us all very happy.’

Powerscourt rose and had a whispered conversation with his wife.

‘Thank you, Christy,’ he said finally, ‘thank you all so much for your kind and generous offer. I’m going to have to say no, I’m afraid, though there could be a consolation prize. Lucy and I would be coming with you on false pretences, you see. From the moment you set forth from Le Puy you were on pilgrimage, a spiritual mission for many no doubt, layered perhaps with faith and thoughts of penance and absolution and forgiveness. No doubt you have found other things as well on your journeys. You are looking for spiritual sustenance of some sort. I came here looking for a murderer. Our motives are completely different. And we have young children back in London that we do not like to leave for too long. But I make you an offer, an offer of friendship if you like, of companionship. One of the great occasions in the pilgrim route happens in the cathedral in Santiago on the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. I believe there are special rituals to welcome the pilgrims who arrive on that day. Lucy and I will see you there. We will return to England and come back to meet you all again. What do you say?’

The pilgrims cheered. ‘Santiago!’ they shouted. ‘August the fifteenth!’ ‘Feast of the Assumption!’ ‘Santiago!’

Several hours later, as Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were making their way to bed, they were intercepted by an excited Alex Bentley. ‘I thought you’d like this,’ he grinned. ‘Father Kennedy is overjoyed, saying it is one of the greatest days of his life!’

‘Why is that?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Simply this. You’re going to enjoy the news. Michael Delaney has agreed to pay for two new foundations to be run by the Church.’

‘What’s so special about that?’ said Powerscourt, ‘I thought Michael Delaney sprinkles his money about like holy water all the time.’

‘This time it’s for a home for abandoned mothers, deserted by their husbands. And a new orphanage to be run by nuns, large enough to cope with most of the orphans on the eastern seaboard of the United States.’ Alex Bentley paused for effect. ‘And they’re both going to be in Pittsburgh.’

A month later Powerscourt and Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald were walking across Santiago towards the cathedral. Lady Lucy was sporting a new hat in pale blue from Bond Street. It was Wednesday, the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Santiago was treating itself to a holiday. The service was due to start at eleven o’clock. Lady Lucy was very excited about another guidebook she had brought with her from Hatchard’s in Piccadilly.

‘Do you know, Francis, that the whole story of St James may be a myth, fiction even?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the story goes something like this. I don’t think my dates will all be right but never mind. St James comes to Spain and preaches the Gospel some time after the Crucifixion. Then he goes back to Rome and is martyred, poor man, by having his head cut off. This is where it starts to get a bit odd. Somehow or other the body of James and his head are brought back to Spain in a stone boat, to Padron down the road from here. And then nothing is heard of him for about seven hundred and fifty years. Absolutely nothing. No pilgrimage, no statue, no churches, it’s as if he’s never been. Then the Spaniards are having a lot of trouble with the Moors and the Infidel. They need a patron saint of Spain to rid the country of the invaders. So, my author implies, the church authorities remembered the stories of James in his stone boat. Behold! A body is found! It is pronounced, heaven knows how, to be that of St James in person! And he becomes a mighty warrior, able to defeat whole armies of Moors single-handed. His name becomes a great battle cry, Santiago Matamoros, James the Slayer of Moors. The cathedral is built here at Santiago. The whole pilgrim industry starts up and never looks back. It was all very convenient.’

‘It’s a good story anyway,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.

Powerscourt looked up at the cathedral believed to contain the bones of St James, towering above them. ‘It looks pretty solid to me, Lucy. Who ever says myths have to be true anyway? What about the Son of God who came down to earth to be crucified and to rise again on the third day so that his followers could eat him in church every Sunday?’

Lady Lucy laughed. They were walking up the nave now, greeting their friends the pilgrims who were already in position, arranging to meet for lunch afterwards. They found outside seats halfway up the transept. There were still ten minutes to go before the service. Powerscourt noted the memorabilia of the saint, the scallop shells, the great statue of St James himself, which had been encrusted with gold until French soldiers stripped it off and carried it away to Paris during the Napoleonic Wars. Looking upwards he saw that each century had left its mark on the original construction, elaborate statues, soaring pillars, delicate carvings.

The service for the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of St James in Santiago de Compostela began. Sonorous Latin rolled across the transept and down the nave and echoed around the roof spaces far above. Every pew was filled. The congregation knelt and rose and knelt and rose again. Priests and bishop in scarlet and purple moved purposefully around the high altar. There was a handsome young man standing beside Michael Delaney, the son James whose miraculous recovery from illness had led to the pilgrimage. Now he had joined his father and the other survivors at the end, a father’s pride apparent to all every time Michael Delaney looked at his son. Powerscourt found himself thinking of the Last Judgement in the tympanum at Conques, the depiction in stone of the sins which could send a soul to hell, greed, adultery, pride, the glutton about to be roasted in some infernal cooking pot, the kings without their crowns about to suffer the torments of the damned. He thought of the fallen, John Delaney, his body bouncing off the volcanic rocks from the path to the top of the chapel of St Michel in Le Puy. Pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Amen. He thought of the trainee priest, Patrick MacLoughlin, his corpse sent down the Lot in the middle of the night to be found by schoolboys in the morning. He thought of the pilgrims he had met again that morning, their eyes bright, their faces tanned by the long march from Pamplona, now at journey’s end here in the Cathedral of St James. He resolved to hold a pilgrims’ dinner every year in London for the survivors. The young men, his young men, as he now thought of them, could relive their days in the vast open spaces of the Aubrac and the roasting plains of Spain. He thought of Stephen Lewis, cut to pieces behind the great Abbey Church of Conques. Hail Mary Mother of God.

The worshippers were beginning to come forward now to receive the sacrament, Maggie Delaney leaning on the arm of her cousin Michael, still trying to buy his way into heaven. Powerscourt remembered what he had said to Lucy a month earlier, and felt he had been right when he had spoken of the rich buying up all the camels and establishing a monopoly on needles. He thought of Girvan Connolly, feckless, burdened with debt, a man on the run from his creditors, who still did not deserve to meet his doom in the upper chamber at Moissac, his head smashed to pulp against the stone pillars. He thought of Waldo Mulligan. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.

His young men were coming forward to the altar now, on this, the culminating moment of their pilgrimage. Wee Jimmy Delaney and Brother White were raising the chalice to their lips. Blood of Christ. Body of Christ. Take this in remembrance of me. Powerscourt touched Lady Lucy’s hand and smiled at her. He wondered how they all felt, now they had finally reached journey’s end. Were their sins forgiven? Would God grant their prayers to heal the sick and make the blind see and the deaf speak?

Shortly before one o’clock the service was drawing to an end. But the ritual was not. An air of excitement ran around the cathedral. A group of eight men, dressed in dark red robes, assembled at the top of the nave, opposite the altar. They brought a great silver-plated censer over to be filled with a mixture of charcoal and incense. This was the Botafumeiro, literally Smoke Expeller in Galician and Portugese, and it was only brought out on special occasions. No priest or acolytes walked among the congregation waving this thurible about from side to side. It was too big, five feet high and weighing almost two hundred pounds. It was attached to a system of ropes that led down from a pulley in the dome and it would swing across the transept, almost from one door to another, pouring incense over the altar as it went, swooping over the heads of the congregation.

When the censer was filled it was brought back to the red-robed men, each of whom now had a rope in his hands. These were like bell ringers’ ropes except that, rather than each rope being connected to its own particular bell, they were all connected to the master rope shooting up towards the dome at one end, and to the Botafumeiro, gleaming in the light, at the other. There was a certain amount of shuffling about and then one of the red-robed men took the thurible out into the centre of the transept and gave it a push. It was, Lady Lucy thought, exactly like somebody giving a send-off shove to a model boat at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Then the red men seized their ropes and pulled, bending a long way down as they did so. The censer began to swing in longer and longer arcs, forty feet up, fifty feet up, sixty feet up, higher and higher towards the ceiling.

Then disaster struck. The man opposite Powerscourt, who had been swaying about as if he were a human thurible, suddenly tottered out into the gap between the pews, directly in the path of the censer. It was moving away from him as he lurched out. But it looked certain to hit him on the way back. Quite what impact a two-hundred-pound Botafumeiro travelling at over forty miles an hour would have on a human skull Powerscourt did not know. He shot out into the gap to try to bring the man back to safety. Lady Lucy stared at the scene in horror. The censer had turned and was shooting towards Francis at great speed. In a moment he might be dead. Johnny Fitzgerald dived from the edge of his pew and tackled Powerscourt, rugby style, just above the knees. Powerscourt and the reeling man crashed to the ground. The Botafumeiro shot over them on its journey to the other door. Johnny Fitzgerald put his arms across the others. He didn’t want them rising to their feet only for the thurible to smash into their faces on the way back. The men with the ropes appeared to change their routine to bring the thing to a halt sooner that it would under normal running. A priest ran over to make sure nobody was hurt. In a matter of moments all three men were back in their seats.

‘My God, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, brushing the dust off his jacket, ‘we come all the way to Spain on a murder investigation. Five dead men, four pilgrims and a murderer later and you’ve solved the mystery only to get yourself nearly killed by a giant block of incense.’

Johnny Fitzgerald was more philosophical. ‘Bloody country this, Francis, if you ask me, the buggers are obsessed with death,’ he whispered. ‘If you don’t get gored at the running of the bulls, you may catch it in the bullring. And if you’re still alive after that the smelly monster on the ropes will knock the back of your head off. Thank God Waldo Mulligan never got acquainted with this Botafumeiro thing – he’d have killed off half the congregation.’

The pilgrims were filing out of the cathedral now. Powerscourt thought they had been valiant against all disaster, Jack O’Driscoll and Charlie Flanagan and Christy Delaney and the other survivors. No discouragement had made them once relent their first avowed intent to be a pilgrim. They had struggled on through death and sealed trains and nights on the floors of the police cells of France. They had indeed been beset round with dismal stories of murder in the afternoon and sudden death in the morning. Perhaps, Powerscourt thought, they knew now, all of them, after this long journey towards God, that they, at the end, would life inherit, that they would fear not what men say, that they had laboured night and day, To Be a Pilgrim.