‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, taking her hand, ‘I’ve just been having a most enjoyable lunch. I need a touch of Evensong to wipe out the excesses of Mammon.’
They walked up the right-hand side of the nave. Earlier bishops gazed down at them from the walls. Local magnates were interred in the floor beneath them. Powerscourt paused at the chantry chapel of Robert, Lord Walbeck, with its master lying inside, encased in stone with a great stone sword by his side. This Lord Walbeck, Powerscourt remembered the Dean telling him, had paid for the construction of a special house on the Green to house the priests who would have said the Masses for his soul. Indeed, the house was still there. Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would have happened if the Reformation had never been. Would those chantry priests, even in 1901, be processing every day across the Cathedral Green, up the nave of the cathedral to say Masses for the soul of their dead benefactor, Lord Walbeck? Would the money have run out? And, if not, how much would the man have had to leave in his will to pay for the priests? Did he have a date in his mind for the Second Coming so he knew he had to provide only up till then, and no further?
Lady Lucy was tugging at his arm. They took their seats at the back of choir. There were only two other people in the congregation, bent old ladies who had difficulty with the steps.
‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful.’ A terrible vision of the garments of the late Arthur Rudd shot across Powerscourt’s brain, literally burnt off his body. The service was being taken by a member of the Chapter he had not seen before, a tall young man with a lilting Welsh accent. The Dean was sitting resolutely in his place. The Bishop’s chair was empty. As the choir sang a psalm, Powerscourt noticed that he was sitting in the stall marked with the prosaic name of Bilton. Lucy, he thought, had done rather better in the romantic names department, as she occupied Minor Pars Altaris, the lesser part of the altar. Powerscourt looked around to see if he could find Major Pars Altaris. Perhaps he could transfer himself there. But it seemed, like so many of the statues outside, to have disappeared.
The choir had moved on to the Cantate Domino. ‘Praise the Lord upon the harp; sing to the harp with a psalm of thanksgiving. With trumpets also and shawms: O shew yourselves joyful before the Lord the King.’ Powerscourt looked closely at the decorations on the choir stalls. There was a little wooden orchestra of angels in here, singing along with the choir, angels with trumpets, angels with harps, angels with stringed instruments, even an angel with a drum. One rather superior wooden angel, carved those hundreds of years ago, seemed too important to have an instrument. It was perched just in front of the Dean’s stall. Maybe it was the conductor.
Powerscourt could sense that Lady Lucy was becoming agitated as the choir sang an anthem by Purcell. She kept casting him anxious and worried glances, but he could not tell what was upsetting her. Then it was time for the closing prayers.
‘Almighty and everlasting God,’ the Welsh voice was at its most reverend, ‘Send down upon our Bishops, and Deans, and Curates and all Congregations committed to their charge, the helpful Spirit of thy grace, and, that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing.’
Powerscourt found himself staring in disgust at the young man. How could he pray for the blessing of the Almighty God upon the clergy of this cathedral? At least one of its members, if not two, had been murdered, one of them virtually inside the precincts of the minster itself. What would God do, he wondered, if he found that one of his bishops or curates or deans was actually a murderer? Powerscourt didn’t think the Almighty would be too pleased.
Lady Lucy held him back after the choir had departed. They waited patiently for the two old ladies, prayer books firmly clutched in their left hand, walking sticks in their right to descend the steps and tap their way out through the choir and down the nave. Powerscourt wondered if there was much future for the Christian religion in Compton with such a pitiful congregation. Then he remembered the Benedictines who had worshipped here for centuries after the place was built. Nobody came to their services at all, especially the ones in the middle of the night.
‘Did you see it, Francis?’ Lady Lucy was holding very firmly on to the sleeve of his coat just outside the main door.
‘See what, Lucy? I don’t think I saw anything unusual at all,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Did you see the choirboys, Francis, those poor choirboys?’
‘Well, I think there were about a dozen of them altogether,’ said her husband. ‘Ages ranging from about eight, I should say, to thirteen. Differing heights, depending on their ages. One very tiny chorister indeed with blond hair, could just about see over the stall. All dressed for the service in red and white. All giving what is almost certainly a misleading impression of virtue, devotion and general good behaviour. Was there anything else I was supposed to notice, Lucy?’
‘Sometimes, Francis, you can be really quite irritating. It’s because your brain has wandered off somewhere that you can’t see what is right under your nose.’
‘What was I supposed to have seen, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, giving her arm a firm squeeze in recognition of his sins.
‘They all looked absolutely terrified, every single one of them. That tiny one you mentioned looked scared out of his wits to me.’
Powerscourt tried to remember the looks on the faces of the choristers. He also remembered that the youngest of them could have only been a year or two older than Thomas. Maybe that was influencing Lucy.
‘I think I should have said that they were looking solemn, Lucy. But surely the choirmaster must tell them they have to look serious in the cathedral. You couldn’t have them climbing all over the choir and running races up and down the nave.’
‘This was much more serious,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I’m going to find out what’s going on if it’s the last thing I do. I can’t bear to think of all those little boys being so unhappy.’
Anne Herbert thought Patrick Butler was looking particularly cheerful as he threw himself into her best armchair. Really she thought, as the springs gave a slight shudder, he’s not much better behaved than my two boys, just older.
‘Patrick,’ she said in an accusing tone of voice, ‘have you been having lunch all this time with Lord Powerscourt in the Queen’s Head?’
‘Lord Francis Powerscourt and I are the best of friends. He calls me Patrick now,’ said the young man.
‘And have you been drinking all afternoon?’ Anne pressed home the attack, in a voice that reminded Patrick Butler ever so slightly of his mother.
‘We had a bottle of very fine red wine, Anne. I can’t quite remember its name but I think it came from France. I can’t see any harm in that.’
Anne Herbert poured him a cup of strong tea. ‘You’d better drink some of this, Patrick. Maybe it’ll wash some of the alcohol out of your system. What did he tell you anyway?’
Now that he thought about it, Patrick wasn’t exactly sure how much Powerscourt had told him. He seemed to have done much more of the talking himself. But there was his scoop for the paper. ‘He told me he’s here to investigate the death of Arthur Rudd, the vicar choral.’
‘But I thought you knew that already, Patrick. Was it just the one bottle you had, or was there a second one to help it down?’
Patrick Butler ignored that one. ‘And,’ he said triumphantly, ‘Lord Powerscourt said I could use that in the paper.’
‘I wonder why he did that, Patrick. But listen, I’ve got a piece of news for you about the murder.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know Mrs Booth, who comes to clean here for me twice a week? Well, she also used to clean for Arthur Rudd, in his little house in Vicars Close. She did just one hour a week for him. Well, the day before poor Mr Rudd was murdered was her day for cleaning his house. She went back again the morning after he died to give the place another clean in case his parents or his relatives came to call. And she says, this Mrs Booth, that there were a number of diaries that used to be on Mr Rudd’s little desk. He kept one of these every year, apparently. Now they’ve gone. They’ve disappeared.’