‘Do you think the police could have taken them, Anne?’
‘No, I don’t, because Mrs Booth says the police didn’t go to the house until the following day.’
‘And has she told the police? Does Chief Inspector Yates know about this?’
Anne Herbert shook her head. ‘The police don’t know. She won’t tell them either, that Mrs Booth. Her husband was locked up a couple of years ago and she blames the police for it. She won’t talk to them at all.’
Vanishing Papers Key to Murder Mystery. Riddle of Disappearing Documents. New Clues in Hunt for Compton Killer. A variety of headlines shot through Patrick Butler’s fertile brain.
‘How did you hear about this, Anne? Did Mrs Booth tell you herself?’
‘She told me this morning. I’m not sure I should have told you now.’
Patrick was hunting through his pockets for a pen. His reporter’s notebook was in his coat in the hall. ‘Just give me her address, Anne, that would be very kind. I’ve got to go. I’ve just about got time to call on her now before it’s too late.’
With some reluctance Anne Herbert handed over the address. Mrs Booth lived in a small terrace near the railway station where the property and rental prices were depressed by the noise and smoke of the trains. Anne watched rather sadly as Patrick hurried off into the night in pursuit of another story for his paper. He didn’t even finish his tea, she said to herself. And I had that nice new cake waiting for him too. Perhaps, she reflected, her friend had been right after all. Being married to a journalist could prove to be a rather unsettled existence.
11
Johnny Fitzgerald and the Powerscourts were having breakfast in Fairfield Park. Thomas and Olivia had gone back to London with their nurse. Olivia’s favourite person in the whole world, her grandmother on Lady Lucy’s side, was coming to help look after them until their mother returned.
Powerscourt was perusing the latest edition of the Grafton Mercury. Patrick Butler had told him about the missing journals the morning after his meeting with Mrs Booth. On that occasion Patrick had confined himself to the facts. The account in the newspaper, however, was slightly more fanciful. ‘The Grafton Mercury has reason to believe,’ Powerscourt read with a slight smile, ‘that the contents of these volumes may well contain the key to the mysterious death of Mr Arthur Rudd. We call upon the authorities to display the utmost vigilance in the hunt for them. Not an hour, not a day must be lost. Even now the perpetrator of this atrocious crime may have burnt or destroyed them. They must be found before it is too late.’ People reading the article, Powerscourt felt, would suppose the author to be some middle-aged reporter, grown cynical and disillusioned with age. It was hard to imagine the youthful and cheerful figure of Patrick Butler composing this report at his chaotic desk in the chaotic offices of his paper.
For the rest of the day, as for the previous days, the Powerscourts haunted the cathedral. Powerscourt had found, oddly enough, that the most illuminating guide to the building was not a member of the Chapter or the verger, but the policeman. As a boy, Chief Inspector Yates informed Powerscourt, he had wanted to be an architect when he grew up. The only problem was that he couldn’t draw anything at all. Even his houses were scarcely recognizable. So he had become a policeman instead. Powerscourt had tried hard to work out the connection between architecture and detective work and totally failed to find it.
‘High altar, rebuilt late seventeenth century. East, my lord,’ he had said to Powerscourt the day before, standing before the high altar in the sanctuary, ‘east was the most sacred point of the compass for these medieval church builders. East pointed towards Jerusalem, towards Zion the Celestial City, linked metaphorically with the most sacred place in Christianity, the Temple in Jerusalem where God’s presence was said to be strongest.’
Chief Inspector Yates was gazing up at the great stained glass window behind the altar. He was a tall man with a neat moustache and dark brown eyes. He was twisting his hat between his hands as he spoke.
‘So, my lord, the high altar is at the east end of a church, the side altars are all placed on the east walls, the congregation faces east. The sun rising in the east is linked with the dawn on Easter Day when Christ rose from the dead. Even the dead bodies buried beneath the paving all around us, my lord, were placed with their feet to the east so that on the Last Day, when they rose from their vaults, they would stand up and face their Creator.’
Lady Lucy began her days with Matins. She knew by now the faithful, the regular attendees at the various services. The two old ladies with their walking sticks she had met at Evensong with Francis nodded to her politely as they passed. There was a tall, skeletally thin old man whose clothes no longer fitted him. Lady Lucy suspected he was dying, come to make his last peace with his Creator before he was called home. There was a tramp or a drunk, Lady Lucy couldn’t quite decide which, come perhaps to pray for the forgiveness of sins. He looked, she thought, as if he could do with the Resurrection now rather than later. So few, she thought, so very few had come to Morning Prayer in this enormous building.
‘All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.’ The choir were singing the Te Deum, Lady Lucy’s eyes fixed, as ever, on the faces of the choirboys. ‘To thee all angels cry aloud: the Heavens and all the powers therein. To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.’
The tiny choirboy had stopped singing. Lady Lucy wondered if he was going to break down and weep, here in the midst of the choir stalls.
‘Almighty God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day,’ the Dean spoke the words of the collect without looking down at his prayer book at all, ‘Defend us in the same way with thy mighty power and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger.’
Lady Lucy sank to her knees and prayed for the choirboys. She prayed that no harm might befall them that day. She prayed that no harm had befallen them in the days gone by. She prayed that no harm would come to them in the days ahead. She prayed that the fear be taken from them. But, as she followed them out of the west transept, hoping to be able to speak to one or two of them, she suspected that, on this occasion at least, her prayers would not be answered.
Powerscourt and Chief Inspector Yates were walking slowly round the cloisters. The Chief Inspector looked up at the extraordinary carvings on the roof. ‘Cloisters, my lord. Finished about 1410. Fan vaulting. Perpendicular. Last phase of English Gothic. There used to be a stream here next to these cloisters, my lord, but it was sent underground about forty years ago. The cathedral masons thought it was going to cause subsidence so they diverted it. They did leave a sluice gate that could be opened from somewhere in the cathedral so the building could be flooded in case of fire.’
‘Could we come back to the cloisters in a moment, Chief Inspector? What do you make of these missing journals of Arthur Rudd’s? Do you think they’re important?’
‘I’m not sure what to think about them,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘We had to promise an increase in the number of visits to the husband in jail before that wretched woman would speak to us at all. Even now, I’m not sure she couldn’t be mistaken. I certainly don’t think they’re as important as that young man Patrick Butler thinks they are.’ The Chief Inspector fished around in his pocket for his copy of the Grafton Mercury. ‘What did his paper say? “We call upon the authorities” – that means me in this case – “to display the utmost vigilance in the hunt for them. Not an hour, not a day must be lost.” I can tell you this, my lord. We’re looking everywhere for those bloody journals. I’ve even got a couple of my officers wading through all the rubbish in the Corporation dump. I don’t suppose the young man on the Mercury fancies a day or two of duty squelching through all that mess.’