Death of a Chancellor (30 page)

After six and three-quarter hours the train finally arrived at Bristol Temple Meads. A cab brought Powerscourt quickly to 42 Clifton Rise, a respectable-looking house at the bottom of a hill. A
maid showed Powerscourt into the little drawing room. Patrick Butler was certainly right about one thing, Powerscourt said to himself, looking at the Blessed Virgin Marys and the religious
tapestries on the walls, the family Ferrers owed their religious allegiance to Rome rather than Canterbury.

‘Lord Powerscourt, how very kind of you to call.’ A handsome middle-aged woman came into the room and ushered him into a chair. ‘Now would you like some tea?’

‘Mrs Ferrers,’ Powerscourt could not imagine this person to be anybody other than Mrs Ferrers, ‘I am sure you have made the journey from here to Compton by train. There were
times when I thought I could have walked it quicker. Tea would be delightful.’

‘Now, Lord Powerscourt, you must be having a terrible time investigating these horrid murders back there in Compton! So upsetting to read about them in the newspapers!’

The adjectives, Powerscourt noticed at once, were delivered with remarkable force. Terrible and Horrid were underlined three or four times in Mrs Ferrers’ diction. He wondered briefly how
Mr Ferrers coped with it.

‘They are certainly most distressing,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically. ‘And they must be deeply worrying for you with your son so close to the centre of events.’ He just
managed to resist the temptation to stress the word deeply.

‘I’m sure all the mothers find it a great anxiety at this time, Lord Powerscourt. Anthony, that’s my husband, and I have been most concerned.’ Even simple words like
great and most could be struck with the force of a great bell. She began pouring the tea.

‘Forgive me, Mrs Ferrers,’ said Powerscourt, his eye drawn to a picture of the Pope on the opposite wall, ‘I have no wish to pry into your family’s personal or religious
affairs. But I must confess I am curious as to why Augustine comes to be singing in a Protestant choir.’

Mrs Ferrers laughed. ‘Lots of people have asked us that. But it is perfectly simple really. Augustine, how should I put this, he is a dear dear boy, Lord Powerscourt, but he is not very
bright. He was our seventh child.’ Powerscourt noted the massive emphasis on the word seventh as if it had some cabbalistic significance. ‘My husband says we had too many children and
there weren’t enough brains to go around. The one thing Augustine excelled at was singing. There aren’t any choirs in Catholic cathedrals where he could be well paid, but Compton does
pay moderately well, considering it’s a rural place. Augustine has been on the reserve list for the vicars choral for some time and when that poor man Arthur Rudd died, they sent for
him.’

Powerscourt took a cup of tea and a slice of chocolate cake. ‘Were you worried about him going there,’ he asked, ‘with all the trouble?’

‘Oh No,’ replied Mrs Ferrers with a mighty stress on the No, ‘Father Kilblane said he would be perfectly safe there. Father Kilblane is our parish priest at St Francis of
Assisi up at the top of the hill.’

Did he indeed? Powerscourt said to himself. How could a Catholic priest in Bristol be sure that one of his flock would be perfectly safe in Compton where the roll call of the dead and the
disappeared was so long? Was he privy to the secrets of the cathedral?

‘Did Father Kilblane say how he was so sure?’ he asked.

‘He didn’t give any reasons, Lord Powerscourt. He gave us his word that Augustine would be as safe in Compton as if he were still under our own roof here in Clifton.’

‘Just one last question, if I may, Mrs Ferrers, and then I shall be on my way. Did the Cathedral authorities in Compton raise any objections on the ground of Augustine’s religious
beliefs?’

‘I don’t think so, Lord Powerscourt. Father Kilblane fixed it all up with the Dean or the Archdeacon, I can’t remember which.’

Powerscourt felt the ground shifting slightly under his feet. He thought he should make his excuses and leave as soon as he decently could. The last thing he wanted was any message going back
from Bristol to Compton about his inquiries. He wondered if there was some perfectly innocent explanation. Perhaps Father Kilblane had been at school with the Dean or the Archdeacon or had had some
dealings with them in the past. Perhaps he was the priest who served Mass on Sundays at Melbury Clinton. Christ, Powerscourt said to himself, I’d better stop speculating in here with Mrs
Ferrers.

‘Is he an experienced man, Father Kilblane?’ Powerscourt tried to make it sound as innocent as he could.

‘Oh No,’ Mrs Ferrers replied. ‘He’s quite young, I should say in his late twenties or early thirties. I think he came to the priesthood slightly later than some. He was
at the English College in Rome for three or four years. There was a rumour, but I’ve never heard it confirmed, that he was a convert from the Anglican Church.’ Mrs Ferrers eyes lit up
at the mention of conversion. ‘He’s been with us for about a year and a half.’

His eyes reeling from the Virgins on the walls, his ears still ringing with the force of Mrs Ferrers’ adverbs and adjectives, Powerscourt took his leave of 42 Clifton Rise. God in heaven.
A Catholic priest advising a member of his flock to take up a position singing the heretic hymns and anthems in a Protestant cathedral. A Catholic priest who felt able to assure the family that
their son would be safe in a city rent with murder and dismemberment. Did he know the dark secret of Compton Minster? Part of Powerscourt dearly wanted to make the short journey up the hill to
question Father Kilblane in his sanctuary at the Church of St Francis of Assisi. But he felt it was too dangerous. Cambridge next, he said to himself, at least I shall feel on surer ground in
Cambridge.

Anne Herbert had her private suspicions about why Patrick Butler should be taking her to Glastonbury for the day. Never before, in all the months she had known him, had he
proposed an expedition out of Compton, not even to the seaside some twenty miles away. She had dressed in sensible rather than fashionable clothes, fearing that any trip to Glastonbury with Patrick
might involve the ascent of Glastonbury Tor. He had chatted happily on the train, regaling Anne with details of the first excerpt of the monk’s diary from the time of the Dissolution of the
Monasteries which was to be published in the
Grafton Mercury
the following week.

‘The Bishop seems to have done a splendid job with the translation, Anne. I rather feared it would all be very dry and boring. We don’t know the fellow’s name so he’s
just referred to as the monk of Compton. He seems to have spent a lot of time complaining about the food and the sloppy habits of his superiors.’

Now they were standing on the edge of the field that contained the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. ‘The farmer doesn’t mind people wandering about,’ Patrick assured Anne. ‘I
checked in that hotel where we had our coffee. Just have to be careful not to disturb the sheep.’

Glastonbury Abbey had once been one of the richest and grandest abbeys in Britain. It was famed throughout the kingdom for its relics and its collection of gold and silver ornaments. Now most of
it had disappeared. Grass, moss and lichen had spent three hundred and sixty years creeping over the walls so they were now a dark green colour. The local birds had taken sanctuary here, rooks and
starlings and sparrows building their nests in masonry that had once been nave and cloister. The sun was shining but a bitter wind swirled around what was left of the walls. The windows, once
graced with the most elaborate stained glass the sixteenth-century craftsmen could produce, now gave vistas of distant hills or other sections of ruined wall. The doors through which the abbot and
the monks had processed to their daily round of services now gave entrance to flocks of wandering sheep.

‘How did it come to be such a ruin, Patrick?’ said Anne Herbert, pointing across to the melancholy view.

‘I expect somebody bought it for the stone after the abbey was dissolved. Then he’ll have sold it off. I expect half the town is built with the stones that were here once. Come,
Anne, if we go up there I think we’ll be where the high altar must have been.’

Anne Herbert looked at him sadly. ‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘do you think Compton Minster will look like this in a hundred years’ time?’

‘It might.’ Patrick Butler laughed at the thought of the splendid spate of stories that would be produced by the Decline and Fall of Compton. ‘We must have had two religious
revolutions in this country at least, Anne. One when Christianity replaced the pagans and the Druids. Another when this abbey here was closed down. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t
have another, this time an agnostic or atheist revolution. It’s amazing how many of these people there are already. All churches to be abolished by order of the state. Building fabric to be
used for the construction of dwellings for the deserving poor. That’s what happened here, after all, except the dwellings were for the deserving rich.’

He took Anne by the hand and led her towards what he thought must be the remains of the high altar. That, she felt suddenly, would be an interesting place for a proposal of marriage. Perhaps
that was what Patrick had planned all along.

An elderly porter who remembered Powerscourt from his days as an undergraduate pointed him in the direction of his old tutor’s rooms.

‘He’s still in the same place, my lord, Mr Brooke, though he’s very frail now. The Head Porter doesn’t think he’ll last the year out. Myself, I’m not so sure.
Mr Brooke says the port will see him through.’

‘Come in,’ said the old man, rising slowly from his chair, leaning heavily on a stick. ‘Good to see you, Powerscourt. Last time you were here was in ’97. I looked it up
in my diary. Some nasty business with Germans, I seem to remember.’

‘How are you, sir?’ said Powerscourt, slipping effortlessly into the mode of address of his student days.

‘I’m less mobile than I was even then,’ said the senior tutor, subsiding into his chair once more. ‘College is in much better shape, mind you. That terrible man who was
Master then, he’s gone. Dropped dead in the Senate House Passage. I’d say the Good Lord called him home if I believed in the Good Lord. New Master believes in proper food. Thank God for
that too. And proper wine. Place used to be like a second rate boarding school in the victualling department. Now it’s more like a London Club.’

Powerscourt smiled. He noticed that the old copies of
The Times
were still piled high around the old man’s chair. Soon they might be as high as his head.

‘Now then, Powerscourt, mustn’t keep you from your work.’ Gavin Brooke reached across to a little table and brought out a letter. He searched all his pockets for his spectacles
before discovering that they too were on the table.

‘Reformation, you said in your first letter. That’s what you want to know about. We’ve got just the man for you here in college. Young fellow by the name of Broome, Jarvis
Broome. It’s his special field of expertise. He’s expecting you now. And then you asked about a theologian. After lunch I’ve arranged for you to see our Dean. He’s very
sound on all that sort of stuff.’

Powerscourt thanked the old man and was about to take his leave.

‘I was thinking the other day, Powerscourt, about my books,’ said the old man, gazing up at the shelves where a long row of works by Gavin Brooke, Senior Tutor and University
Lecturer in Modern History, were prominently displayed. ‘At the time I wrote the early ones on Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, some of the participants were still alive.
Did you know that the last surviving member of the British delegation to the Congress of Vienna didn’t pass on until 1885? Now they’re all dead, all those people I wrote about. Every
single one of them.’ The old man shook his head.

‘Maybe you’ll meet them all on the other side, Mr Brooke. You could give history lectures up in heaven. I’m sure your subjects would flock along. They can’t have very
much to do up there.’

‘Be on your way, young man. I tell you what they’d do, all those people I wrote about if I met them in heaven or hell. They’d probably be like all the other bloody historians
I’ve met down here. They’d say I had the emphasis wrong. Even more likely they’d tear my books to shreds.’

Patrick Butler actually had three different proposals of marriage, carefully written out and currently incarcerated in his back pocket. First he had gone to the poetry section
of the County Library and made copious notes. Then, late one evening when his reporters had all gone home, he composed them in his office surrounded by the normal detritus of his trade. The first
was heavily dependent on the love sonnets of Shakespeare. The second was equally reliant on the work of John Donne, though even Patrick, who was not easily shocked, had been a little embarrassed at
some of the language employed by the Dean of St Paul’s. At least he hadn’t ventured as far as Rochester. And the third was entirely his own work. Cynics might have said that it sounded
too like one of his own leading articles in the
Grafton Mercury,
but it was late by this stage and Patrick was growing tired.

‘Look, Anne,’ he said, standing by a rectangular row of bricks, now only a couple of feet high and almost invisible in the long grass. ‘This is where the high altar must have
been. The choir must have been down there by that wall on the left.’

‘Are you sure, Patrick?’ said Anne, feeling that this was not after all a particularly romantic spot.

‘I think so,’ Patrick replied, leading her further down towards the remains of the nave. ‘And I think they’ve put the Lady Chapel at the wrong end, if you see what I
mean. It’s right down at the far end. I think it should be up here somewhere. Maybe the masons looked at their plan the wrong way round.’ The Lady Chapel, he thought, that might be
better for his purpose. At least a lot of it was still standing.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was trying to work out how many times he must have walked this short route from the porter’s lodge to the last staircase by the river in the three years he had
lived there during his time in Cambridge. Five or six times a day say forty times a week, three hundred and fifty a term, a thousand a year, three thousand times altogether. He was passing the hall
and the kitchens now where the young Powerscourt, rather nervously, had intoned the Latin Grace before dinner.
Quid quid appositum est, aut apponetur, Christus benedicere dignetur in nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
The words came back to him automatically. Powerscourt didn’t think he would have described the food in his time as being like that served in the clubs
of London, certainly not in any of the ones he belonged to. It was much worse than the second rate boarding school derided by his former tutor. Here was the staircase. He walked a few paces forward
and peered down at the river, still meandering in its sluggish way along the Backs. To his left was King’s where the famous Chapel was hidden from sight by the buildings of Clare. To his
right the solid mass of Trinity and the glory of Wren’s great Library inside.