Death of a Pilgrim (14 page)

‘I wasn’t sure we could hold him,’ said the Sergeant. ‘This seemed the best thing.’

‘What do we do now?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Do we wait for him to come round?’

‘I don’t think so, Lady Powerscourt. I think he might be off again if we leave him up here. I’ll carry him down.’

In ten minutes the Sergeant and Lady Lucy had carried him down. In fifteen the three of them were installed in a little café at the bottom, waiting for Powerscourt to come round.

‘I’m still here,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve got a very sore head. I know I had a terrible attack of vertigo up there.’ He shuddered as he looked up at St Michel,
dimly visible through the dirty windows of the café. ‘I had this irresistible urge to jump off the rock.’

‘The Sergeant knocked you out, Francis. Then he carried you down.’

‘I’m very much obliged to you, Sergeant. I think you may have saved my life.’

As the Sergeant prepared to move off to more normal duties, Powerscourt held him back.

‘I say, Sergeant, I’ve only just thought of this. Do you suppose that poor man John Delaney suffered from vertigo? If he’d gone up there on his own and been sent spinning
round, he’d have fallen off or jumped off just like I nearly did.’

‘Don’t suppose we’ll find the answer to that one, Lord Powerscourt. I don’t see how we’ll ever know.’

‘I shall make inquiries in England,’ said Powerscourt, resolving to send a message to Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘If I find the answer, rest assured that you’ll be the first to
know.’

Half an hour later Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, staring at the Black Madonna above the high altar. Alex Bentley had given Powerscourt some of
the history of this strange artefact over breakfast that morning. The statue itself was small, less than three feet high. A black ebony Virgin with staring eyes was dressed today in a white robe
embroidered with fleurs-de-lis and golden roses. Halfway down, a small black Christ, wearing a crown, peeped out from under the robe.

‘Is it very old, Francis?’ whispered Lady Lucy.

‘The original was very old, Lucy. It was brought here by some Louis who was a king and saint in the late 1250s. Le Puy was famous as a Marian shrine long before that but this one up there
really put them on the map. They say Louis was given it as a present by some prince in the Middle East. The Black Madonna brought the pilgrims to Le Puy. The Black Madonna was their special
attraction. Nobody else had one. The Black Madonna made the town rich.’

‘What happened to the original, Francis?’

‘Ah well,’ said her husband, ‘the original perished in the Revolution. Some say she was burnt at the Feast of Pentecost in 1794, there’s even a story that she was
beheaded in the guillotine. You won’t be surprised to hear the church authorities decided to bring her back in the middle of the nineteenth century. Maybe she could make Le Puy rich again.
This is a copy of the first one.’

Lady Lucy wandered off to another part of the cathedral. Powerscourt moved forward, as close as he could get to the little ebony statue in her white robes up on the wall above the high altar. It
was extraordinary how this tiny figure dominated the entire building, how your eyes were drawn to it from all over the cathedral. Powerscourt wondered what it would have meant to those pilgrims
over six hundred years before. A black Madonna and a black Christ. That surely meant a black Joseph, black disciples, a black Peter, a black Mark, a black Matthew and a black Judas. Did it also
mean a black God in a black heaven with black angels and black cherubim and black seraphim? And where would thirteenth-century minds have thought this black kingdom was? Did they know where Africa
was? Probably not, he thought. No wonder people flocked to Le Puy in their tens of thousands even now to see the Black Madonna carried in glory through the streets of Le Puy on special religious
festivals. She came, quite literally, from a different world.

As they were leaving a young priest pressed a note into Powerscourt’s hand. It came from the Bishop. There was a prayer enclosed and a short message. ‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’
it said. ‘Tomorrow, after Mass, I shall read this, the pilgrim’s prayer, for all making the journey to Compostela. It is very beautiful. I would not like to think that the people who
are most meant to hear it will not understand it. Could you therefore stand by the pulpit and translate for the benefit of our English friends?’

Powerscourt nodded to the young priest. ‘Please tell the Bishop that I shall be honoured.’

Shortly before nine o’clock the next morning the pilgrims and the rest of the congregation were in their seats for the Pilgrims’ Mass. The dinner the night before
had been a great success with speeches from the Mayor and Mr Delaney and a spectacular crème brûlée from the chef. It had been washed down with Châteauneuf du Pape, hidden
away in the corner of the hotel cellars for special occasions, which Powerscourt thought was one of the finest wines he had ever tasted.

Alex Bentley had placed the pilgrims in order of their method of transport by the west door of Notre Dame. At the end of the service, he had told them, when the Bishop reached the door they were
to file out in pairs, the young ones who were going to walk first, the more sedentary pilgrims behind. On the other side of the nave Powerscourt noticed that there was a good cross section of the
citizenry come to see them off. The Mayor and some of his staff were in the front row. Behind them the Sergeant with six of his police colleagues for company. And behind them the staff of the
Hôtel St Jacques come to say goodbye to the guests they had served so well. Even the chef was there, in plain clothes.

As the Mass flowed on Powerscourt realized that at last the pilgrims and their hosts were speaking the same language. When the service was over the Bishop, clad in his purple robes, made his way
slowly into his pulpit and up the steps. Powerscourt, his copy of the prayer in his hand with his own translation underneath, stood to attention at the side.

‘
Ici nous avons
. . . ’ the Bishop began.

‘Here we have’, Powerscourt spoke slowly so his voice would not sound too hurried, ‘a pilgrim’s prayer that we believe goes back to the Middle Ages. It has been said over
countless pilgrims as they leave this cathedral to go to Compostela. This prayer is for all of you today.’ Powerscourt paused. The Bishop carried on.

‘
Dieu, vous avez appelé Abraham
. . . ’

‘Lord, you called your servant Abraham out of Ur of Chaldea and watched over him in all his wanderings; you guided the Jewish people through the desert: we ask you to watch over your
servants here who, for love of your name, make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.’

The pilgrims’ eyes were shooting between the Bishop and his translator at the bottom of the pulpit steps.

‘Be for us, a companion on the journey, direction at our crossroads, strength in our fatigue, a shelter in danger, resource on our travels, shadow in the heat, light in the dark,
consolation in our dejection, and the power of our intention; so that with your guidance, safely and unhurt, we may reach the end of our journey and, strengthened with gratitude and power, secure
and happy, may return to our homes, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Apostle James, pray for us. Holy Virgin, pray for us.’

The Bishop came down and shuffled slowly towards the west door. One of his acolytes followed, carrying a selection of objects on a silver tray.

Wee Jimmy Delaney and Charlie Flanagan were the first to leave. The Bishop blessed them. The acolyte handed each one a copy of the pilgrim’s prayer and a scallop shell, symbol of the
pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela for a thousand years.

Waldo Mulligan and Patrick MacLoughlin followed, then Shane Delaney and Willie John Delaney, Christy Delaney and Jack O’Driscoll, Girvan Connolly and Brother White, Stephen Lewis and
Maggie Delaney, Father Kennedy and Alex Bentley. Michael Delaney on his own brought up the rear. Powerscourt hurried Lady Lucy away to see the pilgrims leave. For the traditional route was down the
steps by the west door, along a corridor, through a mighty ornamental gate and then down one hundred and thirty-four steps to the Rue des Tables at the bottom. They stood at the top of the steps
and watched the pilgrims, some awkward, some relaxed, set out down the same steps into the same street on to the same route as their predecessors eight centuries before.

‘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
Hôtel 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 Hôtel St Jacques. The shouting match went on for about five minutes. The butcher’s boy seemed to have lost the battle.