Death of a Pilgrim

8

‘I do wish we had Johnny Fitzgerald with us, Francis.’ Lady Lucy was staring sadly at the dark red covering on the walls of their bedroom, a fleur-de-lis pattern fading away, occasional marks from grease or spilt liquids staining the surface. ‘He’s always been here on the most difficult cases.’ She and Powerscourt were back in the Hotel St Jacques preparing to compile a list of the pilgrims and their whereabouts on the day John Delaney died. It was, Powerscourt had said, time to begin the work that brought them to the Auvergne, the unmasking of a killer.

‘I’m sure Johnny’s time will come, Lucy. I’ve got to cable him about John Delaney, as you know,’ Powerscourt said, placing the big black notebook he had bought in the Maison de la Presse on the little table by the window. ‘Now then, you’ve got all your notes there and the ones Alex Bentley took in the interviews with our friend the Sergeant? Let’s begin with the Americans.’

‘Do you think they’re all suspects, Francis?’

‘What do you mean, all?’

‘Well, do you include that nice young man, Alex Bentley? Father Kennedy? Michael Delaney himself?’

‘For the purpose of this exercise, Lucy, we include the lot. I’d even include the cat if they’d brought one. I’m going to give each one a page to themselves. That way we can enter more information as we go along.’

‘Here goes,’ said Lady Lucy, pulling out a page of notes in Alex Bentley’s finest hand. ‘Maggie Delaney, spinster, in her early sixties, resident in New York City, religious fanatic, cousin of Michael Delaney.’

Powerscourt was writing away. ‘Fanatic a bit strong perhaps, Lucy? On the religious front, I mean.’

‘No,’ said Lady Lucy with feeling. ‘You’ve not talked to the woman as much as I have, Francis. Fanatic possibly too weak if you ask me.’

‘Very good,’ said her husband and entered the word in his ledger. ‘Do we know what sort of cousin? First? Second? Some sort of larger number twice removed?’

‘Not clear. She only left the hotel once in the morning, she told the Sergeant. She went to buy some religious material in a shop on the Place du Plot. I’ve seen that place, Francis, it’s full of indescribably vulgar religious knick-knacks. Like you get in Lourdes only there’s no excuse here.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘What did she do in the afternoon? Prayers in the cathedral? Confession with one of the younger clergy?’

‘Not so,’ said Lady Lucy triumphantly. ‘She spent the afternoon in her room, reading works of religious devotion.’

‘God help us all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Next?’

‘Father Patrick Kennedy, aged about fifty, parish priest to Michael Delaney, accompanied him, he told the Sergeant, in the dark days of the son’s illness. He spent the morning going round the cathedral. He climbed the Rocher Corneille and the St Michel. He went back to the hotel for lunch. He rested in the afternoon.’

‘Not surprised he took a rest if he did all that lot in the morning. The good Father must have been exhausted. Anything else we know about him?’

‘Great weakness for food, especially puddings, I’ve watched him at the table.’

Powerscourt put that in too. You never knew what might be relevant.

‘Alex Bentley, aged twenty-four. New England family. Educated Princeton and Yale Law School. Secretary and general factotum to Michael Delaney. Went out once in the morning to take a coffee in the Rue des Mourgues. Otherwise worked in his room on the details of the pilgrimage.’

Powerscourt looked up from his writing. ‘Related to Delaney in any way? Or just a hired hand?’

‘Hired hand,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Rather charming sort of hired hand, I should say.’

‘Next?’

‘Wee Jimmy Delaney, aged about twenty-five, steelworker from Pittsburgh. Unspecified cousin of Michael Delaney, distance of ancestry unknown. Went first to St Michel Rock with Charlie Flanagan, then they went to the cathedral. After lunch they went to the Rocher Corneille and took a walk round the upper town. They returned to the hotel around four thirty.’

Outside they could hear a heated exchange between one of the kitchen staff and a butcher’s boy delivering meat from an enormous pannier on his bicycle. It appeared that the wrong cut of beef had been delivered to the Hotel St Jacques. The shouting match went on for about five minutes. The butcher’s boy seemed to have lost the battle.

‘Charlie Flanagan, aged early twenties again, carpenter from Baltimore, cousin of Michael Delaney on his mother’s side. His version of events is identical, almost word for word with Wee Jimmy’s. Do you think that is suspicious, Francis?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Alex Bentley was writing this down. He may have made their versions word for word because he remembered the other one. Anything else we know about this Charlie?’

‘He makes models out of wood,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘They say he did a beautiful one of the ship they crossed the Atlantic in.’

‘Next?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Waldo Mulligan,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Works for a senator in Washington. Looks slightly haunted some of the time. I saw him one afternoon drinking whisky in the bar all by himself. Like Father Kennedy he went to the two Rochers and the cathedral in the morning but in the reverse order. He stayed in the hotel in the afternoon. Possibly in the bar, but he didn’t say.

‘Our last American is Patrick MacLoughlin, aged twenty-two, training for the priesthood in Boston. He went to the cathedral in the morning and the Rocher Corneille in the afternoon. He didn’t go to St Michel at all.’

‘Didn’t he now,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. ‘I wonder why. I’d have thought that St Michel would have a greater appeal than the Rocher Corneille, Lucy, wouldn’t you?’

‘Maybe he’s scared of heights, Francis. I’ve met one or two people round here who aren’t overfond of tall rock pinnacles.’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘Next, my love?’

‘We’ve got the Irish now, but the first one lives in Swindon. Maybe he’s just moved there recently. Shane Delaney, early forties, works on the railways. On pilgrimage for his wife who’s dying of some frightful disease and isn’t well enough to travel. Spent the morning praying in front of the Black Madonna. Spent the afternoon on pilgrimage to various bars in the town with Girvan Connolly. Back at the hotel about half past four.’

Powerscourt remembered his conversation with Shane Delaney about his letter home.

‘Willie John Delaney, the man who is dying from an incurable disease. Didn’t feel well after the travelling, he says. Spent the day in his room, most of it asleep.’

‘I’ve always thought it could be a great advantage for a murderer to be dying of some frightful disease,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could kill off all your enemies one by one. With any luck you’d be dead before they brought you to trial.’

‘Francis! What a horrible thought!’

‘It’s a fairly horrible way to go, being pushed off that damned rock out there,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Who else has ventured forth from the Emerald Isle, Lucy?’

‘Christopher or Christy Delaney. Aged eighteen. Going up to Cambridge in October. He went to the cathedral and the two rocks in the morning. He spent the afternoon reading a book set by his tutor at the university, Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion.’

‘God help him,’ said Powerscourt. He too had had to read Clarendon before going up to Cambridge. Perhaps the syllabus hadn’t changed at all.

‘One last Irishman, Francis, Jack O’Driscoll, aged about twenty-five, related on his mother’s side. Newspaperman. He wandered round the town in the morning, stopping for one or two beers, and took in the sights in the afternoon. He says he left St Michel about half past four in the evening but he’s not sure. It could have been five.’

‘Isn’t that the last time we have for anybody leaving there, Lucy?’

‘I think so,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Only four to go now, Francis. Three really if you take away John Delaney.’

The marching pilgrims had made good progress. They had reached the village of St-Christophe-sur-Dolaison, some five miles from Le Puy, with a bakery, a bar and an ancient church in red stone topped by an open belfry with four bells on top. A horse with a very large cart was tethered right outside the bar. It looked as if the horse knew the place well. The barman, a cheerful soul with a bright blue apron on his front and a black beret on his head, waved happily at the pilgrims. The religious element pressed on towards their goal, unwilling to be diverted. Indeed Brother White, who had read widely before coming on pilgrimage, detected in the barman none other than Mr Worldly Wiseman from the town of Carnal Policy, determined to make Christian give up his pack and stray from the path to the Wicket Gate. Father Kennedy had felt very tempted by the eclairs in the bakery window but did not wish to draw attention to himself by stopping. Patrick MacLoughlin followed the others as they walked straight out of the little square with the bar and headed for St-Privat-d’Allier.

But the other pilgrims needed no encouragement to sit down outside the bar. Jack O’Driscoll ordered eight beers. All of them stretched their legs as far in front of them as they could.

‘Will you look at these boots of mine, for Christ’s sake,’ said Girvan Connolly. ‘I bought them for a song from a man in a market stall in Kentish Town. They’ve more or less fallen apart.’

Sure enough, as the pilgrims peered at the boots, they could see that the outside sections had become detached from the soles. In a few more miles they would have disintegrated completely. Charlie Flanagan, carpenter by trade, whipped a strange-looking instrument from his pack and some stringlike material from his pocket and carried out instant repairs.

‘There, Girvan,’ he said doubtfully, ‘those should take you to journey’s end today. I wouldn’t count on it, mind you. That sole isn’t strong at all.’

‘Does anybody know how much farther we’ve got to go today?’ asked Wee Jimmy Delaney. All the pilgrims had been given maps. All had looked at them carefully in the early stages of the march. Some had turned them upside down for better appreciation of the route. Some had peered at their map from the side, or the bottom, or the top. One or two had got down on the ground and tried to make sense of them that way. Shane Delaney had thrown his away. Only Waldo Mulligan and Christy Delaney were able to read them properly, and this gave them great prestige in the group. Neither of them had been asked to pay for the first or the second or the third beer consumed so far in St-Christophe-sur-Dolaison’s bar.

‘Another ten miles or so. We go out of this place and turn left,’ said Waldo Mulligan firmly.

‘How long till we get there, wherever there is?’ said Willie John Delaney.

‘I should think it’s about four hours,’ said Christy Delaney cheerfully. ‘We’ll be there in time for tea.’

‘Tea be damned,’ said Jack O’Driscoll. ‘I asked the barman in the St Jacques about this St Private place or whatever it’s called. I think he said it had absolutely no redeeming features, none at all. Except, the man said, it had some of the finest red wine in the Auvergne.’

‘Girvan Connolly, Francis, mother’s side, aged thirty-five or so. Described as merchant from Kentish Town. It’s not clear why he’s on pilgrimage at all. Spent the day with Shane Delaney. Fond of a drink, our Mr Connolly.’

‘How do you know that, Lucy?’

‘I saw him out of the corner of my eye yesterday evening. Our friend Girvan was forever topping up his glass when he thought nobody was looking.’

‘Well spotted, Lucy. Next?’

‘Brother White, late thirties, teaches at one of England’s leading Catholic public schools. He spent most of the day in the cathedral, Francis. He was praying in front of the Black Madonna, he says. Other people who went to Notre Dame say they saw him there.’

‘Why would you spend most of the day praying to the Black Madonna? Does she have any special educational powers, as far as you know?’

‘I don’t know the answer to that, Francis. But there’s something rather horrid about Brother White. I can’t put my finger on it just yet.’

‘Then we have the late John Delaney himself. Cousin again of Michael Delaney. He went to St Michel and the Rocher Corneille in the morning, and the cathedral in the afternoon. The last sighting we have of him was about four thirty when two of our pilgrims saw him going into the hotel.’

‘And nobody saw him go out after that?’

‘No,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘You’re going to like this last one, Francis. Stephen Lewis, mid-fifties, mother’s side again, solicitor from Frome in Somerset. Come on pilgrimage for the sake of his immortal soul and because he likes trains. Our Mr Lewis, if his story is to be believed, and I think it is, did not go to the Rocher Corneille. He did not climb the two hundred and sixty-eight steps to the chapel at the summit of St Michel. Nor he did he go up or down the one hundred and thirty-four steps that lead up to the Cathedral of Notre Dame.’

‘So what did the man do, in heaven’s name?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Mr Stephen Lewis, solicitor, from Frome in Somerset, went to the railway station in Le Puy. He looked at the engines for some time. Then he took a train south, travelling first class he tells us, to the next port of call, a stop called La Bastide St Laurent Les Bains. It’s on the Nimes line, apparently. Our Mr Lewis took lunch in the Hotel Bristol in the main square, some local pate with cornichons, duck a l’orange, and returned to Le Puy on the 2.55, arriving just before half past four. He said he didn’t have time for coffee or he’d have missed his train.’

‘He may have had a more interesting day than the rest of them,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully. ‘I don’t suppose anybody can corroborate any of that?’

‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘one or two people did see him coming back into the hotel. They report that Mr Lewis was carrying a book of timetables.’

‘Excellent!’ said Powerscourt. ‘A little bedtime reading, no doubt.’

‘I’ve forgotten one person,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘Michael Delaney himself. He went briefly to the cathedral in the morning. He didn’t go to either of the rocks. During the afternoon he was in the hotel, working on the plans for the pilgrimage with Alex Bentley.’

‘Well, Lucy,’ said her husband, rising from his little table and pacing about the room, ‘these witness statements are about as much use to us as the smile on the face of the Sphinx. This is what I think we should do tomorrow. Could you have another word with our friend Maggie Delaney before she leaves in the carriage? If Michael Delaney has any great sins in his past she may know something about them. Could you see what crimes she comes up with? And ask her about how all these people are related. I’m going walking tomorrow with the young ones and the men of God. Let’s see what they’ve got to say for themselves on the pilgrim trail and the – ’ Powerscourt stopped suddenly in mid-sentence. He looked at Lady Lucy. ‘Wait here a moment, darling. I’ve been a fool, a stupid, stupid fool.’ He headed for the door.

‘Where are you going, Francis? What’s the matter?’

‘Only this, Lucy. Here we have all these statements about people coming in and out of the hotel. All of them refer, unless I’m very much mistaken, to the front door. What about the back door? Side doors? Fire escapes? Balconies? We may have been looking in the wrong direction altogether.’

Jack O’Driscoll and Christy Delaney were in a great hurry. They were both very thirsty, completely parched as Christy put it. They had left their own party far behind. They sped past the religious brethren who had stopped to pray at a wayside shrine to St James. As they drew near to St-Privat-d’Allier a passer-by would have noted that Jack kept writing a couple of phrases in a small notebook which he passed to his companion.

‘I think this is it,’ he said finally, as they passed an ancient mill on the side of an old bridge.

‘Oon boo tile van rouge, seal voo play, that should do it.’

‘Oon boo tile van rouge, seal voo play,’ Christy repeated.

‘Good,’ said Jack.

‘And I presume on core stays the same?’

‘On core oon boo tile van rouge seal voo play might be better,’ said Jack.

‘Bien, tres bien,’ said Christy.

Powerscourt returned from his inspection of the entrances and exits to the Hotel St Jacques in sombre mood.

‘It’s hopeless, Lucy, quite hopeless,’ he said to his wife. ‘The place has got more ways in and out than a honeycomb. Round the back there are two back doors, not locked during the daytime, a rickety fire escape, and rooms on the ground floor all of which have windows that open wide enough for a man to get out. All this work’, he waved helplessly at the notebook, ‘is rendered null and void. Anybody could have got in and out without being seen. All of that evidence is all right for the front but not for the back.’

‘What do we do now, my love?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘God knows,’ said her husband.

Lady Lucy Powerscourt was taking morning coffee the next day with Maggie Delaney in a corner of the dining room at the Hotel St Jacques. She noticed that her companion ladled in three spoonfuls of sugar.

‘Can you tell me how you are related to Mr Michael Delaney, Miss Delaney?’ she began brightly.

‘That walking heap of wickedness?’ Maggie peered crossly at Lady Lucy as if she had just taken the name of the Lord in vain. ‘It goes back to our grandparents, I don’t know the precise details. I’ve tried, of course. But it isn’t easy to find out what happened in Ireland in the famine years. There’s a story that Delaney’s father did something incredibly wicked in a place called Macroom, wherever that is, something to do with the workhouses. I wouldn’t be surprised. Like father, like son.’

‘So when did your own particular interest in your cousin and his activities begin?’

Maggie inspected Lady Lucy once more. ‘Twelve years ago, it would have been. Somebody on the parish committee for the reclamation of fallen women mentioned that he’d seen the Delaney name in the papers. That’s when I started to read those money pages in the newspapers.’

‘Money pages?’ said Lady Lucy. Had Maggie been picking up tips on domestic thrift, How to Make Your Household Budget Go Further and Keep a Happy Husband? She had not.

‘I believe the proper term is the financial and business pages of the New York Times,’ she said primly.

‘You read those pages every now and again, Miss Delaney? That’s very advanced, if I might say so.’

‘I do not read those pages every now and then, as you put it,’ said Maggie Delaney crossly, ‘I read them every day. I have great files of them at home, sorted year by year, going back to 1894.’

Lady Lucy would have been the first to admit that she was not a regular reader of this material. She hardly ever looked at them at all, moving on to higher things like the accounts of forthcoming auctions, or society weddings that might feature members of her family. She dimly remembered row upon row of numbers, of company reports, of the details of the flotation of new companies on the London or New York Stock Exchanges. For some, perhaps, there was romance in all these dry figures.

‘And what was the first evidence you found about Mr Delaney’s activities?’

‘His crimes, you mean,’ said Maggie Delaney. ‘The first evidence? There was so much of it, so many sins. Did you know that somebody wrote a book about Delaney’s crimes round about that time?’

‘Really?’ said Lady Lucy, ‘What was it called? Did it do well?’

Maggie Delaney laughed. Or rather she cackled and a look of twisted triumph passed across her face. ‘The book was called Michael Delaney, Robber Baron.’

Lady Lucy thought the author hadn’t minced his words. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Was it perhaps not a very flattering portrait? Of Mr Delaney, I mean.’

‘It was not flattering, oh no. The author had got hold of the details of most of Delaney’s crimes over the previous fifteen years. It would have been very powerful. Two hundred pages of Delaney’s sins, bound for ever in a hardback cover.’

‘But what became of it, Miss Delaney? You make it sound as if something happened to the book. Did you manage to read it?’

‘Nobody, as you put it, managed to read it. When Delaney found out about it – he must have heard people were making inquiries about him – he went straight to the publishers. He bought every single copy just as they were about to start sending them out to the bookshops. Then he had them all destroyed, pulped is the term, I believe. He paid the author all the royalties he would have earned if he’d sold every single copy and a bit more to keep his mouth shut. And the author’s mouth has remained shut from that day to this. I tried to find him, of course, the author, but he’s vanished. That was the end of Michael Delaney, Robber Baron.’

Lady Lucy wondered if the author too had been pulped, like his books. Another crime for Maggie Delaney to put on her cousin’s charge sheet.

‘If you will excuse me, Lady Powerscourt,’ Maggie Delaney was gathering up her prayer book and rosary beads, ‘perhaps we could continue our conversation over lunch. I must go to the cathedral to pray in front of the Black Madonna.’

An improbable image rose to the front of Lady Lucy’s mind. She could see Maggie Delaney sitting at a table in her little apartment in New York, the walls lined, no doubt, with religious pictures of the Holy Land and the saints, the business pages of the New York Times in front of her. She had a pair of scissors in her hand and was cutting out selected paragraphs to be inserted in a large black file. Chicago meat prices. New York Stock Exchange closing prices. Timber futures. Report from London. Steel stocks firmer.

Powerscourt had ridden over to St-Privat-d’Allier and abandoned his horse at the hotel, hoping to catch up with some of the pilgrims on their march to Saugues. A party of schoolchildren in crocodile formation passed him in the village square on their way to the church, escorted by a couple of nuns. The locals stared at him with that rude and never-ending stare reserved for foreigners and people from the next village. The road was climbing now, climbing upwards towards the vast empty plateau of the Aubrac. Small farms were littered across the landscape, the occasional cart trundling past him. Two birds of prey, buzzards he thought, were performing great acrobatic swoops in the pale blue sky, waiting for a glimpse of lunch before hurtling to the ground at unimaginable speed. He found Girvan Connolly, the man who described himself as a merchant from Kentish Town, sitting beside a great rock, swearing.

Pilgrimage was not being kind to Girvan. Those two young men, Christy Delaney and Jack O’Driscoll, had stopped their consumption of St Privat’s finest red fairly early the evening before. It had, Girvan realized now, been a mistake to carry on drinking the stuff with Willie John Delaney, the man dying from an incurable disease. That pilgrim had leaned over to Girvan as he opened their third bottle and announced thickly, ‘You know the old saying, Girvan, my friend? Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die? In my case that’s almost literally true. This bloody incurable disease I can’t pronounce could take me away tomorrow, so help me God. So I may as well have a glass while I can. I can’t drink to my health so I’ll drink to yours instead.’ And with that Willie John Delaney launched a steady campaign down the third bottle.

Not only did Girvan have a hangover. His feet, in the cheap boots he had bought from a man in the market at Kentish Town, were hurting. Charlie Flanagan’s repairs were holding out but only just. When he had tried to ask by sign language in the village that morning if there might be a cobbler in the place, they had shaken their heads and pointed vaguely in the general direction of western France. Now here was this detective person arrived from nowhere and looking very cheerful. Nothing, Girvan knew, is more annoying to people with hangovers than their fellow citizens being cheerful around them.

‘Good morning, Mr Connolly,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Are you having trouble with your boots?’

Girvan pointed sadly to the offending objects. ‘They’re bad now,’ he said morosely, ‘they’re going to get worse.’

‘I’ve got a very thick pair of socks in my pack somewhere,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Would you like to borrow them?’

The socks seemed to improve things. The two men set off along the path.

‘Your business must have been doing well back in London, Mr Connolly, for you to be able to take the time off to come over here.’

Connolly laughed bitterly. ‘I wish it was,’ he said.

Powerscourt said nothing. He wondered if Girvan Connolly might tell him things out here in the wilds of the French countryside that he would never mention in the more crowded quarters of the hotel. He waited as a party of cows were driven in front of them into a neighbouring field.

‘The thing is . . . ’ Connolly began. He was tired of the lies, the lies he had told his wife, the lies he had told to the various bailiffs who had come to call at his run-down house, the lies he had told to his fellow pilgrims. He felt a sudden irresistible urge to tell the truth in the same way people sometimes tell their entire life stories, sins and all, to complete strangers on transatlantic liners or long train journeys.

‘It wasn’t going well at all,’ he said, looking not at Powerscourt but at the woods in front of them.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Connolly,’ said Powerscourt.

Then his woes poured out of Girvan Connolly. The trouble with the business, the plates and the cups and saucers and the saucepans not selling as well as they should. The little loan taken out to tide them over. The slightly larger loan at a slightly higher rate of interest taken out to buy the consignment of cheap sheets and blankets that would restore his fortunes when sold off in the market stalls of Kentish Town. Further trouble when early customers reported angrily that the sheets virtually disintegrated on washing. Yet another loan, larger still, to pay off the first instalments on the earlier loans while there was still time. And then no moneylenders left to advance him credit to pay off the loan that had accounted for the purchase of the wretched sheets and blankets. His creditors threatening to come round and sort him out. All of this poured forth like a torrent of disaster.

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘What a run of bad luck, Mr Connolly.’ He didn’t think any of these troubles would give Girvan Connolly cause to murder one of his fellow pilgrims. He carried on, ‘So what, pray, is the condition of your creditors now, Mr Connolly? Do they know you are here? Do they know they may have to wait longer yet for the debts to be repaid?’

Connolly was speaking very softly now. ‘They don’t know I’m here,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows I’m here. At least I hope they don’t.’ He looked behind him rather desperately but there were no moneylenders on the path behind, lining up for the kill.

‘Tell me this, Mr Connolly, what is the grand total that would be needed to clear your debts today? You’d better add in something for the interest racked up since you’ve been here.’

‘Fifteen pounds? Twenty pounds?’ said Connolly.

Powerscourt thought that meant twenty-five.

‘Could I make a suggestion?’

‘Please do,’ said Connolly.

‘Why don’t you speak to Michael Delaney about it? He might be able to help. Twenty or twenty-five pounds seems a lot to you, but to him it’s a drop in the ocean. You’re family, after all. He might be very happy to help.’

‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt, thank you so much.’ Ahead they could just see a group of pilgrims bathing their feet in a stream. Powerscourt had always thought there would be no single reason that had brought this disparate group of people to the Auvergne, some of them travelling over four thousand miles to get here. Religion and piety would serve for some. Guilt would account for others, and love of travel and the excitement of adventure in unknown lands. He thought of the variety of pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the different stories of the Miller and the Franklin and the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath. Thinking about Girvan Connolly, he hadn’t expected to find among these pilgrims a man on the run from his creditors.

‘I’ve only just remembered this one, this crime of Delaney’s.’ Maggie Delaney seemed to have gained fresh strength from her visit to the cathedral and the Black Madonna. She and Lady Lucy were taking lunch in the Hotel St Jacques, a dish of veal today with sweetbreads in cream accompanied by saute potatoes and carrots. Lady Lucy loathed the feel and the taste of sweetbreads and hid hers under a cairn of potatoes. ‘This,’ Maggie Delaney continued, ‘was the crime that set him on the path to riches, may God have mercy on his soul.’

‘What did he do then?’ asked Lady Lucy, preparing to make another mental note to tell Francis about when she met up with him later that day.

‘He arranged to buy a railroad with another man. I think the man was called Wharton. He, Wharton, I mean, put up most of the money. Delaney swindled him, I don’t know how. Wharton, poor man, lost the lot!’ With that Maggie Delaney speared three sweetbreads on to her fork and popped them into her mouth.

‘What happened? Surely Mr Delaney must have got caught? Shouldn’t he have been arrested for fraud or something like that?’

‘Every day, Lady Powerscourt, every day the man should be arrested for fraud or something like that. There was a great court case. Delaney hired better lawyers. He’s always hired better lawyers than his opponents. He got off. Isn’t that terrible? I doubt if God will forgive him.’

‘What happened to the man Wharton?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Did he recover?’

‘As far as I know, he never recovered. Very bitter he was apparently, very bitter.’

Francis will like this story, Lady Lucy said to herself, he’ll like it very much indeed.

Michael Delaney was not aware of the catalogue of his sins being rehearsed in the dining room of the Hotel St Jacques. He was using his last afternoon in Le Puy to walk up to the cathedral. The party travelling by carriage was due to set off for Saugues at four o’clock that afternoon to meet up with the pedestrian pilgrims. Michael Delaney was thinking about his son James. He thought of his boy many times a day. He remembered with a shudder the deathly colour on his face as he fought with death, lying motionless on that hospital bed. He remembered how pale and wan he had been for weeks afterwards, the tottering steps when he began to move about again, like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. He remembered how healthy James had looked when they had said farewell with a long embrace on the ship preparing to take Delaney back to the Old World. He wondered what James was doing now. Playing golf, he suspected, with that elegant swing the older members admired so much. Maybe he was sailing with his friends, the wind in his hair and the spray racing along the sides of the Delaney yacht. He had only bought it for James.

Michael Delaney felt a proprietary pride as he entered the Cathedral of Notre Dame. This, after all, was another of his buildings now, or it would be when twenty thousand of his francs had been spent. He wondered briefly about hourly rates of pay for French workmen, the cost of building materials, the profit margin the contractors would charge even when working for the Church. He gave up. There were too many unknowns for him to estimate how much work could be done with his money. But some small part of it would be his. Future visitors would point to some section of nave or chancel and tell each other, ‘That was repaired thanks to the generosity of an American called Michael Delaney.’

He had not thought much of the Black Madonna the first time he had looked at her on his fleeting visit a few days before. He thought even less of her now. Why was she so small? Why couldn’t they get themselves a decent-sized statue like the pink Virgin on the Rocher Corneille, fifty-two feet high, not counting the base? A visitor to Notre Dame with bad eyesight sitting halfway down the nave wouldn’t even know the thing was there. It would be invisible, a black hole rather than a Black Madonna. He wandered over to an enormous painting dating from the year 1630 on the wall. It showed a great procession of town worthies going into the cathedral to commemorate the lifting of a plague that had carried off ten thousand citizens of Le Puy. In the top right-hand corner a group of hooded White Penitents were entering the cathedral. Behind them a group of monks in brown, then another group of monks in grey. Behind them a great party of religious, dressed in their more colourful vestments, escorted the Bishop, a bearded prelate with an oriental look about him, carrying his crook. Then, in the centre of the painting, a group of consuls dressed in red with black underneath and broad white collars were carrying the Black Madonna protected by a canopy above her. Ranged to the right of them were further groups of citizens wearing the robes of their guilds or their orders. Delaney felt sure that these consuls and the other citizens were the leading men of Le Puy in their time, merchants probably, men of business, come to join with their colleagues from the church in proper celebration, thanking God for their deliverance. Delaney felt sure that he would have been in this painting had he been alive then. A consul, he thought, a leading man. He rather liked the look of those red robes.

Maggie Delaney would not have believed it, but Michael Delaney had been thinking about God too. He always thought about God when he thought of his James for the one had saved the other.

Michael Delaney’s God was not a great patriarch like Moses parting the Red Sea, bringing the Ten Commandments down from the mountain top, leading an unruly people towards the Promised Land. He wasn’t the Christ figure who preached the Sermon on the Mount and said blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Michael Delaney didn’t have much time for the meek, life’s losers in his book. Nor was his God an immanent presence in the world like the Holy Ghost, bringing God’s grace to his subjects. Michael Delaney’s God was the Chairman of the Board. He, Delaney, Michael Delaney like to think, was Managing Director of the outfit. Above him, remote, wise, all-seeing and all-knowing, was the Chairman. God.

On his way out Michael Delaney passed a statue. It showed a saint, dressed in brown with a broad-brimmed hat on his head. He carried a satchel or scrip slung round his neck and hanging by his waist. In his right hand was a large staff reaching up to the top of his hat, and in his left, a book of scripture. The bearded face seemed to Michael Delaney to be saying welcome. For this was St James the Great, the saint of the pilgrims who walk to his shrine and his memory in the Cathedral of St James in Santiago de Compostela. It was the same saint who had watched over James Delaney in his hospital bed all those months before.