Death of a Chancellor (6 page)

‘I would like you to investigate the matter, Lord Powerscourt,’ she concluded. ‘They say you are one of the finest investigators in the country.’

Powerscourt wondered precisely what her motives might be. Was she a humble seeker of the truth about her brother’s death? He rather doubted it. Where did the money fit in? But most of all
he wished she hadn’t come. He didn’t want to be bothered with another investigation so soon after his return.

‘I have to tell you, Mrs Cockburn, that it is most unlikely that I shall be able to take the case on. I have only just returned from a year and more on service in South Africa. I have
hardly had time to reacquaint myself with my wife and children.’

‘I’m sure it wouldn’t take you long, Lord Powerscourt. Not a man of your abilities.’

‘Perhaps I could just ask one or two questions, Mrs Cockburn. Do you know the details of your brother’s will?’

‘I’m afraid I do not,’ said Augusta Cockburn vaguely. ‘Not exactly. It’s just possible that he left it in our house or at our solicitor’s, I’m not sure.
I believe my husband may have helped him with it, but George, Mr Cockburn, is away at present.’

Augusta Cockburn was a much more accomplished liar than Andrew McKenna or Dr Blackstaff. Maybe the years with her deceitful husband had taught her something after all.

‘Did your brother ever give any indication about his intentions in his will?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Not specifically, Lord Powerscourt, no. But he always said that my family would be well provided for. Sorry, I should have told you before. My brother was not married. There were no
children.’

‘And what do you think actually happened to your brother?’ asked Powerscourt, the investigator in him always fascinated by puzzles and mysteries.

‘That’s what I want you to find out, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘Do you think he was murdered?’

Silence fell over the Powerscourt drawing room. It lasted quite a long time. Powerscourt waited for her reply.

‘He certainly could have been, Lord Powerscourt. I don’t think we can rule it out.’

‘He didn’t by any chance suffer from a debilitating illness? Something that could have disfigured his face?’

‘Not as far as I am aware, Lord Powerscourt. And I’m sure the doctor would have mentioned it if he had been.’

‘Very good, Mrs Cockburn, you have presented the facts of the affair very clearly.’ And not all of them completely truthfully, Powerscourt thought, but which part was fiction and
which the truth he did not yet know. He checked the address on her card. ‘If you can leave me until this afternoon, I will let you know then whether I can take the case on or not. I must
speak with my wife.’

Two minutes after Augusta Cockburn’s departure Lady Lucy was back in the drawing room. She found her husband pacing up and down. She thought he was swearing under his breath.

‘Johnny and I used to do a lot of this walking up and down on that ship on the way home, Lucy. Helped to pass the time.’ Now it was her turn to wait until he was ready to speak. It
was a full five minutes before he sat down and told her the details of the death of John Eustace.

‘That poor woman, his sister,’ said Lady Lucy sadly.

‘You wouldn’t say poor woman if you spent any time with her. She’s bitter and twisted inside as though she had a corkscrew in her heart.’

Lady Lucy winced. ‘What are you going to do, Francis? Are you going to take it on?’

Powerscourt started walking up and down again. ‘I really don’t know. I’ve only just got home.’

‘Well, it’s not as if you’re going back to South Africa.’

‘Do you think I should do it, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, stopping by his wife’s chair.

‘You know what I think about these things,’ said Lady Lucy very quietly, looking at her husband’s face. ‘Let’s suppose this poor clergyman was murdered. Somebody
else may get murdered after that. And then there may be more victims. I think you have to remember the number of people who may be left alive after you’ve finished, the ones who might have
been killed if you hadn’t come along.’

Powerscourt smiled suddenly. ‘Lucy what were you just about to say earlier this morning when that woman was announced?’

Lady Lucy blushed. Interior decoration didn’t seem quite so important now. ‘I was just going to suggest, only a suggestion, Francis, that we might . . .’ She paused briefly,
then her courage returned. ‘We might just redecorate this room. New sofas, new wallpaper, that sort of thing.’

Powerscourt took her in his arms. ‘You go right ahead, Lucy, my love. Just as long as I can hang on to that chair of mine. After all, I may not be about very much for a while.’

Five days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the nave of Compton Cathedral, waiting for the funeral service of John Eustace to begin. He was early. The ancient
bells, high up in the great tower, were tolling very slowly for one of their own. Powerscourt had arrived at Fairfield Park as a guest of the family, an old family friend from London come down to
help Mrs Cockburn through the ordeal of the funeral and the revelation of the will. So far Powerscourt had asked no questions. He had chatted inconsequentially with the servants. He had spent a lot
of time in the dead man’s bedroom and in his study. He had walked the short journey between the Park and the doctor’s house a number of times. He was waiting until he became a more
familiar figure before he talked to anybody, but he was careful to be as charming as he could to every servant he came across. Augusta Cockburn was astonished at the improvements in daily life in
Fairfield Park since Powerscourt’s arrival. Baths were actually hot. Meals were served at the proper temperature. It’s probably because he’s a man, she told herself bitterly.

There was still some time before the service was due to start. One row behind him on the other side of the nave Anne Herbert, dressed in sober black, was sitting next to Patrick Butler whose tie
was not sitting properly on his collar. Patrick was thinking about the special edition of his paper to commemorate Victoria’s death several weeks before. It was going to include tributes from
all the major towns in the county. He had prevailed on the cathedral archivist to write an article on the changes to the minster during Victoria’s reign. The headmaster of the main secondary
school, a noted if slightly erratic local historian, had agreed to contribute a similar piece on the changes in the city. The Lord Lieutenant, who had served briefly at court some thirty years
before, was going to write his personal reminiscences of his sovereign. Patrick Butler was pleased that his material had all arrived on time, the headmaster and the archivist both having let him
down on previous occasions at the turn of the century. He had launched an appeal to the major advertisers in his journal to take out larger than usual notices in his pages. ‘Most
newspapers,’ he had told the proprietor of the main hotel with disarming honesty only that morning, ‘are thrown away after a while. But this special edition of the
Grafton
Mercury,
each page specially edged in black, will be a permanent memorial to Victoria’s death. People will keep it safe. It will pass down the generations. Surely you would want a proper
memorial to your business in such a paper?’

Still the bells rang out on this wet and windy afternoon. High up on the roof the crows, regular attendees, if not actually confirmed members of the Church of England, added their raucous
tribute to the dead. Powerscourt was looking at the military colours of the local regiment that hung in the north transept and thinking about the dead Queen, in whose armies he had served, and in
whose service he had seen too many lay down their lives. He looked around the congregation, late arrivals filling up the last few pews right at the back of the cathedral. How many, he wondered, in
this great throng, come to pay their last respects to a different person, how many could remember a monarch other than Victoria? He certainly couldn’t. As he looked across the tightly packed
pews on the other side of nave, he thought six or seven persons might remember the reign of William the Fourth. Victoria had seen her island kingdom rise from being an important power to the
greatest empire the world had ever seen. Powerscourt had not been the only person in Europe and North America to wonder if the Boer War in South Africa might seem in future years to have marked the
slow beginning of that empire’s end. And now there was a new King, Edward the Seventh. Powerscourt tried desperately to recall who Edward the Sixth had been. Was he warrior or wastrel,
playboy or saint? Dimly he remembered that Edward the Sixth had been an ardent Church reformer, sandwiched between Henry the Eighth and Bloody Mary, eager to force the Protestant religion on a
reluctant people. Maybe Compton Minster had its own martyrs to the zealotry of the Reformation. He struggled further back to earlier Edwards, Confessor and Hammer of the Scots.

The bells stopped. The entire congregation turned to look as the body of the former Chancellor, John Eustace, was carried into the cathedral. Six pallbearers, three staff from Fairfield Park led
by Andrew McKenna, and three vergers from the cathedral, all clad in black, bore the coffin in a slow procession behind the choir and three members of the Chapter. A junior vicar carried a large
silver cross in front of the Dean and the Bishop.

Powerscourt suddenly remembered walking round one of England’s finest cathedrals with his father years before on one of their rare trips from Ireland to England, Wells had it been, or
Gloucester, and his father explaining to him the different roles of the various dignitaries. The Bishop in spiritual authority over every priest and every parish in his diocese. The Dean
responsible for the administration and running of the cathedral. The Chancellor, secretary to the Chapter and responsible for the archives and the famous cathedral library. The Precentor in charge
of the music and the organist and the choirmaster, the two posts often held by one man. The Archdeacon the link between the cathedral and the work of the Bishop in the diocese. Powerscourt
remembered his father taking particular pleasure as they watched a vicious game of croquet in the gardens of the Bishop’s Palace where all the players were in dog collars. ‘The Church
Militant rather than the Church Spiritual,’ his father had said as a red ball disappeared off the lawn into the Bishop’s rose-beds.

The little procession was passing Powerscourt now, the pallbearers straining to keep in step, always fearful that one of them might slip and drop the dead man to the ground. The coffin was laid
on a table in the centre of the choir. If he strained his neck right out to one side, Powerscourt could just see the side of it through the screen. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ the
Dean had a strong tenor voice, well able to fill the great spaces around him, ‘and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.’

The choir began to sing the 60th Psalm, ‘Lord thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another.’ Powerscourt looked around again at the mourners. They were not, on the whole,
the rich of Grafton though there were many who had turned out in fashionable clothes. These, he thought, must be the respectable middle classes of Compton, shopkeepers, teachers, lawyers with whom
John Eustace had come in contact. Patrick Butler was eyeing the congregation too, wondering if there were any more advertisers he could lure into taking space in his memorial issue to Queen
Victoria. Anne Herbert was sitting beside him, fretting about his restless staring up and down the nave.

The congregation sang ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘Lead Kindly Light’ by John Henry Newman. The Bishop read one lesson, the Archdeacon of Compton the other. Then the acolyte with
the silver cross preceded the Dean to the pulpit. The congregation settled themselves noisily in their hard pews to hear him.

Connoisseurs of the sermons of the dignitaries of Compton Minster had long ago noted that the Bishop, although a considerable scholar in the Gospels of the New Testament, always preached from
texts in the Old Testament. He would tell the stories of the ordeals of the Children of Israel against Philistines and Gideonites, Danites and Ammonites, Benjamites and Schechemites, and Keilites
and Amalekites. There were often some bloodthirsty battles. There was, usually, triumph and victory for the Israelites, after many hardships along the way. Thus, the Bishop would always conclude,
does the Lord of Hosts finally triumph over the enemies of his chosen people. The Dean, the connoisseurs noted rather sourly, always tried to bring in some references to the latest theological
thinking when he preached. Neither the connoisseurs nor the congregation cared for the latest theological thinking. They preferred the older theological thinking, many feeling that the world would
be a better place if everybody still believed every word of the creation story in the Book of Genesis. The Chancellor seldom preached, but his sermons were always mercifully short. He would speak
of the transcendent importance and power of God’s love, a love handed down to his servants in so many forms, love of parents to children, love of children to parents, love of husband to wife,
wife to husband, love of the natural world created for God’s glory.

‘My text for today,’ the Dean began, peering out at his congregation over the tops of his glasses, ‘comes from the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel According to
St Matthew. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ The connoisseurs had not heard this sermon before. It must be a new one, specially composed for the occasion, rather than
an old one revamped. Powerscourt looked closely at the Dean, a tall strong figure of a man, with powerful hands which turned the pages of his sermon.

‘It is now twelve years since John Eustace came to this cathedral as Chancellor,’ the Dean went on, ‘and I can still remember his first meeting with the full Chapter of this
cathedral as if it were yesterday. He was slightly shy. He was invariably courteous. He did not push himself forward. That meekness, which shall inherit the earth, was a constant in his behaviour
with his colleagues in all the years he graced the minster with his presence.’