‘I believe that some of the High Anglicans don’t think it right to marry,’ said Powerscourt.
‘High, low, wide, narrow, shallow, deep, I don’t think anybody would notice here in Compton,’ said Patrick Butler cheerfully. ‘If you said High Anglican to any of the citizens here, they’d think you were referring to the elevation of the cathedral spire. Mind you, Lord Powerscourt,’ Patrick Butler went on, the wine making him talkative, ‘there is a very good story about affairs of the heart in the cathedral but it’s about three hundred years old.’
‘Are you sure,’ said Powerscourt in a mock serious tone, ‘that it is a story you would be happy to print in the pages of the Grafton Mercury?’
‘When I judge the time is right,’ replied Patrick Butler, ‘it will receive appropriate coverage on the front page of the journal. There was an organist and choirmaster, Lord Powerscourt, in the year 1592 who had fallen in love with the wife of the Dean. One day he appeared in the cathedral at Evensong and began conducting his charges in the usual way. After a few minutes he left the cathedral by the west door and made his way over to the Deanery. There he produced a knife and tried to murder the Dean. But the Dean was an enterprising fellow and managed to escape to a bedroom where he proceeded to lock himself in. Unconcerned by the failure of his murderous mission, the choirmaster returned to the cathedral where he conducted his choir until the close of Evensong. Then he vanished, only to surface at Worcester some weeks later where he applied for the post of choirmaster there.’
‘History does not relate, I presume, whether these events took place on a Thursday? The Archdeacon’s special day?’
Patrick Butler shook his head. There were only two other clients left now in the dining room of the Queen’s Head. Outside the light was beginning to fail.
‘Could I ask you one more favour, Mr Butler?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Of course,’ the young man replied, ‘and please call me Patrick. Everybody else does.’
‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I wonder if I could read the back copies of your paper for about the last year or so? It helps me absorb the local colour.’
‘Of course,’ said Butler. Then a terrible thought struck him. He remembered the chaos, the detritus strewn all over the floor, the cramped conditions, the desks virtually invisible with the material piled all over them.
He looked embarrassed. ‘It’s just, Lord Powerscourt, it’s just . . .’
Powerscourt wondered if some of the back copies were missing. Then he remembered a visit earlier in his career to the offices of one of the London evening papers. The chaos had been indescribable.
‘If I am to understand by your hesitation that the offices of the Grafton Mercury are not perhaps as tidy as they might be, Patrick, do not worry. I have just spent six months in South Africa with a perfectly charming, extremely intelligent subaltern who had a genius for mess. He could not walk into a room without managing to leaves bits of his uniform or anything else all over the floor. His colleagues referred to his quarters as the Temple of Chaos.’
Patrick Butler smiled. ‘As long as you don’t mind, Lord Powerscourt. Could I ask you a question?’
‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, suddenly on his guard.
‘I know you’re here to investigate the death of the vicar choral. But didn’t I see you here before, at the funeral of Chancellor Eustace?’
Careful, careful, Powerscourt said to himself. Under no circumstances did he wish Patrick Butler to know that there were grave suspicions surrounding the death of John Eustace.
‘I was here then,’ he said with a smile, ‘but that’s because Mrs Cockburn, the dead man’s sister, had asked me to give her some advice about the will. Very complicated things, wills.’
‘So there’s nothing suspicious about that death?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Now then, when can I come and look at your back copies?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, Lord Powerscourt. And can I mention in the paper that you are here investigating the death of Arthur Rudd?’
‘You may indeed,’ said Powerscourt as he settled the bill, ‘but I don’t think I wish at this stage to be connected in any way with the Archdeacon’s Thursdays. That’s a much more serious matter.’
Patrick Butler was elated as he left the hotel. One of Britain’s foremost investigators come to Compton. What a good story! Mayfair Sleuth on Trail of Compton Murderer. He felt it might atone for his earlier withholding of the truth about the end of Arthur Rudd. He checked his watch. It was almost four o’clock. If he walked slowly, almost an impossibility for Patrick Butler, he could be round for tea with Anne Herbert just as the cathedral clock struck the hour.
Lord Francis Powerscourt had enjoyed his lunch. He had only one object in view. He wanted the fact that he was investigating the death of Arthur Rudd splashed across the pages of the Grafton Mercury. He hoped the murderer would read it. He was, what did they call them, the toreador or the picador whose job it was to goad the bull into action in the bullfights of Spain. He could see himself now, riding a beautifully turned-out horse, a red cape thrown over his shoulders, not on the edge of the Cathedral Green in Compton, but in some hot and dusty bull ring in Barcelona or Madrid. Beneath his feet lies the finely raked sand that will be stained later in the day by the blood of matador or bull. All around the huge crowds are shouting themselves hoarse. Picador Powerscourt taunts the great bull, its horns raking the sultry air. The bull charges. The matador takes over. Except, as Powerscourt knew, he was not really the picador. He was certainly inviting the bull or the murderer to charge. But he, Powerscourt, was the target. He wanted the Compton murderer to be roused to action. Then, perhaps, he would make a mistake.
Lady Lucy was waiting for her husband underneath the west front of the cathedral. Above her soared the remains of one of the greatest collections of medieval statuary in all of Europe. Once the hundreds and hundreds of niches had each been filled with its own limestone apostle or saint. Now less than half were left as the statues had been torn down at the time of the Reformation with its puritan decrees against graven images or despoiled by the soldiers and supporters of Cromwell’s New Model Army during the Civil War. The west front was an enormous dictionary of the Christian faith. All the apostles were up there, with special places for the four evangelists. There were scenes from the Old Testament to the right of the great door, scenes from the New Testament to the left. As the statues rose higher up the facade, bishops and saints took their places in this towering showcase for the Christian religion. At the very top was the Resurrection, so the early pilgrims, gazing in wonder up at the facade, would be transported upwards through time and space, past niche and statue from their earthly place towards eternity. Heaven lay just above the figure of the risen Christ, a paradise beyond the limestone.
Powerscourt stared up at the figures. Suddenly he looked more closely. Could the two missing vicars choral have been encased in plaster of Paris or some similar substance over their cassocks and popped into one of the empty niches? Had the absent angels or saints been replaced by missing members of the Compton choir? Reluctantly he decided it would be too difficult, hard to preserve the corpses without specialist knowledge, virtually impossible to manoeuvre the bodies into position without being seen.