Anne Herbert wondered if the snow was bringing personality changes all over Compton. First her Patrick, then the Dean. Maybe the Bishop would be singing bawdy songs in the public houses of the city before the day was done.
‘This is all very unpleasant, Anne,’ Patrick went on, looking very serious, ‘and it gets worse as it goes on, much worse. You must stop me if I start to upset you.’
Anne Herbert nodded. Privately she thought women were much less squeamish than men. Just think of childbirth, after all, she said to herself. But this was not the time for such a discussion.
‘At a quarter to five this morning,’ Patrick checked the time in his notebook, ‘one of the porters found a body in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. The man’s name was Rudd. They think he might have been strangled. He was one of the senior vicars choral, with three or four years’ experience in Compton. He was in his middle thirties.’
Patrick suddenly realized that he must sound as if he was giving evidence in court or reading one of his own compositions in the Grafton Mercury.
‘Sorry for sounding so cold, Anne. I’ve been trying to write the story in my head ever since.’
‘The poor man,’ said Anne. ‘Did he have a wife and children?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Patrick, looking once more at his notebook. ‘But that’s not all. Somebody put him on a spit and roasted the body for most of the night in front of that huge fire they have in the Vicars Hall kitchen.’
‘Oh, my God,’ said Anne Herbert. She put her face in her hands and said the Lord’s Prayer. She couldn’t think of anything else.
‘That would all be bad enough.’ Patrick was leaning forward now. ‘The Dean said he was anxious that I and our readers should know as much as possible about what had happened. He said he didn’t want to hide anything from me. He had a doctor with him, that chap Williams. I’ve known him for a while, he’s a very sound and reliable fellow. It was he who was responsible for looking after the dead man, the death certificate, all that sort of thing. He took me to the morgue in the hospital where Rudd’s body was laid out. They hadn’t cleaned him up yet.’
Patrick Butler stopped. He wondered if he should say anything more.
‘You see, Anne, it’s a strange thing. I’ve never seen a dead body before. Reporters often have to write about dead bodies killed in fires or train crashes or accidents, but they never actually see them. When you start on a newspaper you have to go to magistrates’ courts, you have to go to football matches, you have to write about society weddings. You have to write about all sorts of strange things you have seen. But the one thing you’re not used to seeing is a dead body. Nor,’ he paused briefly, ‘a body that has been roasted all night on a great spit in front of a roaring fire.’
‘I don’t think I want to hear any more details, Patrick, if you don’t mind. I’ve heard too much already. I’m feeling rather sick.’
Patrick was turning pale again. He was thinking of the terrible scene in the mortuary, what had happened to Arthur Rudd’s eyes, what had happened to his skin, what had happened to the hair and the skull, the eruptions that had burst forth from the poor man’s intestines. He hoped he would be able to forget it. He took another large gulp of his brandy.
‘Sorry Anne,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. And I don’t know what to put in the paper. The Mercury goes to press tomorrow. I’m going to have to write this story tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.’
Anne thought that Patrick must be returning to normal. Deadlines were the bread and butter of his business. ‘What do you mean, what should you put in the paper, Patrick?’
‘It’s the details. How much detail should I put in? We’re meant to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Anne Herbert firmly. ‘Nobody wants to read the details in a case like this. Why can’t you just say he’d been strangled? That’s bad enough, for heaven’s sake.’
‘But then I wouldn’t be telling the truth.’
‘The people of this town and this county, Patrick, do not want to read about roasted bodies over their tea and toast first thing in the morning. Nor do they want to read about it over their supper in the evening. They do not want to have to explain to their children who can read what it means to be roasted on a spit all night in the kitchen of Vicars Hall. They may even stop buying your paper if you upset them. And then where would you be?’
Anne suddenly wondered if the snow was having an effect on her too. She could not remember having being so emphatic in her whole life. She did not realize it but she had become, for Patrick Butler, a sort of one woman litmus test of what was and what was not acceptable to his readers. Maybe he should give her an official position, not Censor in Chief, but Taste Arbiter Supreme.
‘Are you sure, Anne? Are you sure people might stop buying the paper if there was too much gory detail in it?’ The one unassailable deity of the newspaper world, the circulation figures, was uppermost in his mind.
‘I’m quite certain of it.’
Patrick Butler munched his way through another couple of biscuits.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shall sleep on it and write the story in the morning.’
‘You don’t need to sleep on it, Patrick. You know what the right thing to do is. You could write it this evening.’
The young man smiled. ‘Very good, Anne,’ he said, ‘I shall go and write it now. And, don’t worry, I’m just going to say the poor man was found strangled in Vicars Hall.’
After he climbed up to his office for the last time that day Patrick Butler found that his informant in the town’s most expensive hotel had left him a message. Three visitors from London were expected, the note said. All of them lawyers.
‘Have you found him yet?’ Augusta Cockburn’s knife was poised menacingly over a breakfast kipper in the Fairfield Park dining room.
‘Found whom?’ asked Powerscourt, taking refuge in a slice of buttered toast.
‘The person who killed my brother.’ Mrs Cockburn began her demolition of the fish.
‘I have to inform you, Mrs Cockburn, that I am still not sure that your brother was murdered. It may all have been perfectly normal. I am not yet in a position to form a judgement.’ Powerscourt realized that a rising anger was driving him towards pomposity.
‘It’s the doctor, it must be the doctor.’ Augusta Cockburn began to choke slightly on a bone. ‘Look at the amount of money he was left in two of those wills. Have you questioned Dr Blackstaff, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I have, madam, and while there were certain inconsistencies in his version of events, I have at this time no reason to believe that he is a murderer.’ Privately Powerscourt wasn’t as sure as he sounded about the doctor’s innocence. Fifty thousand pounds was a fortune. Even after a donation of five thousand or so to the lying butler you would still be rich for the rest of your life.
‘Maybe I should involve the local police, Lord Powerscourt. Perhaps they will be more effective in questioning him than you are.’
Powerscourt didn’t reply. The fish bone seemed to have accomplished a task way beyond the powers of most ordinary mortals. It had reduced Augusta Cockburn to silence. But the relief was short-lived. The offending bone, like so many of her enemies, was trampled underfoot.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘I shall have to speak to the cook.’ She had turned slightly red. ‘Why the servants cannot perform a perfectly simple operation like filleting a fish I do not understand. Any fool could do it.’ She paused to take a mouthful of tea, still spluttering slightly. The incident had not improved her temper.
‘And how much longer, Lord Powerscourt, do you intend to stay in this house, consuming our victuals, sleeping in one of our beds, using up valuable fuel?’ Powerscourt thought she might have been addressing the under butler. But he was prepared for this one.