Death of a Pilgrim (36 page)

‘I think that’s entirely a matter for you, Mr Delaney.’ Powerscourt thought he knew what was coming. Under normal circumstances it might be possible to move away from such
sulphurous encounters. On a train there was no escape.

‘Quite so, Powerscourt. Now let us suppose we have a different sort of problem. Let us suppose a rich American decides to sponsor a pilgrimage to Europe as a thank-you to God for the
saving of his son’s life. God does you a good turn, you do God a good turn back. And let us suppose there is a suspicious death, almost certainly a murder. The French police appear to be
hopeless. You launch a search for the finest investigator in France and England who is fluent in both languages. You hire the fellow, perfectly charming, lovely English manners, delightful wife,
and with no more clue about finding the killer than the man on the moon. Does he find the murderer of the first victim? He does not.’

Delaney’s voice was rising.

‘Does he find the killer of the second victim? No, he does not.’

Delaney was shouting now. He banged his great fist on the table in front of him. His cigar had been abandoned in his wrath.

‘Does he find the murderer of the third victim? Of course not!’

Another thump on the table. Powerscourt thought the engine driver and his assistant at the front of the train must be able to hear every word by now. Thank God they wouldn’t understand any
of it.

‘Three bodies now, laid out on cold slabs in the French morgues,’ Delaney ranted on, hardly able to control himself, ‘so does the great detective fare any better with the next
one? You’d think it should be easy by now with the number of suspects dropping by the day, wouldn’t you? Does he catch the killer of victim number four? No, he does not. I might have
been better off employing nobody at all.’

A final thump on the table. Powerscourt said nothing. He wondered if it was going to come to blows. Delaney was a couple of inches taller and a great deal heavier. He looked as if he might pack
a fearful punch. But he stayed on his bench. It looked as if the anger was ebbing from him. He picked up his cigar again.

‘Five days more. That’s all. If you haven’t caught the man by then, you’re off this train and out of my sight. And I’ll spend whatever it takes to blacken your
reputation in the newspapers back there in England. I’ve done it in New York, I’m sure I can do it in London. Now get out and get on with it before I shout any more.’

Powerscourt had been in real fights in real battles that were much worse than this. But he knew that for his own self-respect he could not let these insults pass.

‘You’re perfectly entitled to your opinion, Mr Delaney, of course you are. But let me tell you this. I may not have caught the murderer yet but I am absolutely certain of one thing.
If you had told me the truth about your activities in the past and the enemies you have made throughout your long life in business, the careers you have broken, the men you have destroyed, then I
am sure the murderer would have been apprehended by now. Your actions, maybe so far back in the past you have almost forgotten them, are what lie behind these terrible deaths, I’m sure of it.
Think about it, Mr Delaney. If there is anything you wish to tell me, I shall be in the next carriage. Good morning to you.’

Delaney picked up his cigar and blew a great cloud of smoke at Powerscourt’s retreating back as if it were a flamethrower. He stared moodily out of the window.

Powerscourt found he was shaking slightly as he told Lady Lucy and Johnny what had happened.

‘Bloody man,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Maybe the murderer will sort him out. Serve him damn well right, being rude to Francis.’

‘That’s a little uncharitable, Johnny,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘We shouldn’t wish anybody dead, I’m sure, not even Mr Delaney. You’ll survive, my love,
you’ve survived much worse before.’

‘Well,’ said her husband, ‘it was a lot better than being stuck in that wine vat, I can tell you.’

The Inspector arrived in search of an interpreter. Powerscourt suggested Lady Lucy should accompany him. The pilgrims might open up more with the wife than they would with the husband. Maggie
Delaney had been befriended by two young pilgrims, Jack O’Driscoll and Christy Delaney. They had come to feel sorry for her, usually left on her own, with nobody to talk to apart from the
interminable rosary beads. They had been teaching her card games, snap and gin rummy and pontoon. The elderly lady showed a remarkable talent for poker, bluffing her way to victory, her suspicious
old eyes never giving anything away.

Powerscourt himself returned to
Michael Delaney, Robber Baron
. He had reached page forty-five without any revelations that might make a victim commit murder. His right hand fiddled with
the paper knife as he read on.

Inspector Léger and Lady Lucy realized after two or three conversations that the pilgrims were still not going to cooperate. Jack O’Driscoll muttered that he was going to write all
this up in his newspaper when he reached home. Charlie Flanagan was working on another wooden carving as he spoke to them, punctuating his answers with deft strokes of his knife that set alarm
bells ringing in the Inspector’s brain. Yes, they had been in the cloisters. Yes, they had been crushed up against the walls when the seminarians came. No, they had not seen anybody leave to
go up to the upper chamber. No, they had not seen Girvan Connolly at all. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there, just that that they hadn’t seen him. That was all they could remember.
Yes, they had been in the cloisters. Yes, they had been crushed up against the walls when the seminarians came. Pilgrim after pilgrim repeated exactly the same story in the same words, with the
same air of prisoners being interrogated by a hostile power. Lady Lucy could see how united they had become, bonds formed in adversity, together against the foe that was depriving them of decent
beds and a glass or two of beer in the evening. They were besieged, Lady Lucy felt, huddled together inside the thick walls of the ruined French castles that were so frequent in these parts. They
would parley with the enemy heralds but they would not come out and they would not surrender.

Inspector Léger checked his hair again on the way back to the Powerscourt carriage. It was hopeless. Just a couple of days, he said to himself, and he could return home to Lucille and the
vegetable patch he tended with such care. Lucille was hopeless with crops, they always went wrong when he wasn’t there.

They found Powerscourt in a state of considerable excitement. He had reached page eighty-six of the book and thought he might be on to something. He explained the complicated history of
Michael Delaney, Robber Baron
to the Inspector.

‘Now then,’ he put the book in his lap, ‘how about this. I’m not sure how long ago all this was, the author has forgotten to put a date on it, but it must be way back in
the past. I won’t read all the relevant passages, we’d be here all day. Michael Delaney owns a small railroad leading out of the city into upstate New York. It’s nothing special.
But he realizes that if he could get his hands on another line, they would complement each other and make a great deal of money. This other line belongs to a man called Wharton, James Joseph
Wharton. Why don’t we amalgamate the two lines, says Delaney. We’ll both be better off. I think this Wharton may have inherited the business from his father. He was a bookish sort of
fellow, apparently, not sharp like Delaney, spent a lot of time in the New York Public Library. Anyway, Delaney says he’ll handle the paperwork, sort everything out for the new company
that’s going to own the lines. The only thing is, he puts all the shares in his name. Wharton only finds out after the new company has been floated on the New York Stock Exchange. By then
it’s too late.

‘He hires some lawyers, as Americans always do. But they aren’t very good lawyers. Delaney hires better ones. Delaney always does. He swears Wharton agreed to let him put all the
shares in his name. Delaney wins. Wharton has lost his livelihood. Listen to what the author says about his fate: “Deprived of his livelihood by the rapacious frauds of one he supposed a
friend for life, bereft of funds to support his wife and son, he turned for solace and consolation where so many have turned in times of trouble and tribulation, to the temptations of the demon
drink.”’ Powerscourt looked up at Johnny Fitzgerald and shook his head sadly. ‘“Wharton’s health, never strong even in the good times, began to decline. He was banned
from the New York Public Library after being sick over a rare volume concerned with the early settlements in Virginia. He began to have hallucinations and blackouts, the punishment sent by nature
for alcohol abuse. Had the unfortunate man seen sense and taken the pledge, even at this late stage, as his priest and his wife continually urged him, he might yet have been saved. There was a
young son whose early impressions of fathers were of people who fell down the stairs and smelt bad. The house had to be sold to pay for the drinking. The family moved into humbler accommodation
where Winifred, the wife, who thought she was marrying upwards into a higher social class, felt ashamed of her position. When she discovered that the money she thought was destined to pay the rent
was going to the liquor store instead, she left him and went back to her mother. Three days after that, James Joseph Wharton blew his brains out. Only three people attended the funeral at a
pauper’s grave. Michael Delaney was not one of them.”’

‘Does he say what became of the boy, Francis?’ Lady Lucy leaned forward to stare at her husband. ‘Did the mother marry again? Would the boy have a different name
now?’

‘The book doesn’t say, Lucy. That’s the end of a chapter. The next one deals with matters a few years later. It may come up further on in the book but I doubt it. What do you
think of it as a motive for murder, though?’

‘Well,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘it’d be fine as a motive for killing Delaney, but he’s still here.’

‘Maybe’, said the Inspector, thoughtfully, ‘he nurses a grudge, hatred, not just for Delaney but for all the members of his clan. But without a name it is very
difficult.’

‘I shall have to wire to our friend in Washington. And I must give him all the poste restantes where we may be stopping. Inspector, do you think you could arrange for the train to stop
briefly in the next town? And could the pilgrims be permitted a night in a hotel rather than a night in the cells? I have a plan to put before the three of you. It is very dangerous. I know you
will not like it, Lucy. But it might just enable us to catch our man.’ Powerscourt had reluctantly decided that, however much he might want to keep the plan a secret, he could not keep it
from his wife.

The shadows were long as the pilgrims were marched from the train to their hotel, the d’Artagnan, in the little town of Aire-sur-l’Adour. Aire was graced with a
cathedral with a saint buried in a white marble tomb in the crypt. Edward the Confessor, Powerscourt dimly remembered, had signed a treaty here with some French bishop. And there was the Adour,
another of those rivers that grace the towns of France. The hotel was right on the waterfront, four storeys high and looking as if it might have been a barracks or a convent in earlier times. On
the first floor a ledge ran right along the frontage, joining the balconies that gave the more fortunate visitors their own private view of the Adour.

The pilgrims were chattering happily, some looking forward to the meal, others to the beer and wine, the older ones rhapsodizing about the joy of clean sheets and a proper pillow. Father Kennedy
hoped the Hôtel d’Artagnan had some decent puddings. As the pilgrims dispersed to their single rooms on the third and the fourth floors, Lady Lucy had a long conversation with the hotel
housekeeper. It was her husband, she explained. He suffered from a chronic back condition, poor man, and needed special arrangements in his bed. Did the housekeeper have large bolsters? She did?
Could Lady Powerscourt have one, maybe even two if they could be spared? While the housekeeper scurried off to her linen cupboard Lady Lucy noticed a couple of wigs lying on a small table by the
window. Previous clients must have left them behind. She couldn’t think of how they might be helpful to a man with a chronic back condition, but she still whipped them into her pocket before
the housekeeper returned. Lady Lucy declined the housekeeper’s kind offer to carry the bedding upstairs and make the necessary installations. Lucy would do it herself. There was so little,
she assured the housekeeper, that she could do to make her husband’s life more comfortable, this was one duty she could perform for him. Lying flat on the back for fifteen minutes three times
a day, the housekeeper passed on the local medical wisdom as Lady Lucy disappeared at full speed up the stairs, that’s what had cured the butcher’s chronic back condition only last
year. Maybe her husband the milord should try it.

Jack O’Driscoll had been passing on more of his recently acquired French. They were quite near to Bordeaux, he told them knowledgeably, home to the finest red wine in the whole of
France.

‘This is how you order it, boys,’ he said. ‘Oon grond vare de van rouge.’

Other pilgrims made experimental flights with Jack’s phrases and were indeed rewarded with fine glasses of red. Johnny Fitzgerald, who had always been regarded as a friend by the pilgrims,
was holding forth at one end of the bar, an expensive bottle in front of him. ‘It’s my belief’, he told the company, ‘that my friend Powerscourt has solved the mystery at
last. He’s writing a report up there in that big bedroom above the front door with the enormous balcony. He won’t tell anybody about what’s in it. I doubt if the wife knows. But
he did say he was going to present it to the Inspector in the morning.’

For the pilgrims, freedom beckoned. Release from jail is always welcome, even if the sojourn has only been for a few days. The young ones hoped they would soon be free to walk the pilgrim route
once more, for the walking had taken possession of them and they felt diminished when they couldn’t do it. One or two of the others thought they could go to Mass in the morning and pray for
their immortal souls. That, after all, was what had brought them on this strange journey in the first place. They grew elated and drank more red wine. Dinner was uneventful, Powerscourt looking
preoccupied and pausing every now and then to make some more notes in a black book he had brought to the table. Lady Lucy’s eyes scanned the diners. One of them was a murderer. One of them
had tried to kill her Francis. But the faces gave nothing away.