Powerscourt would have had to say, if asked, that there was not much in these newspapers that would have informed the citizenry about the wider world. Of events in the continent of Europe, of events in London, of events even in the neighbouring county there was nothing at all. The Grafton Mercury did not run to accredited correspondents in St Petersburg or Vienna, in Paris or even in Westminster or Whitehall. That was not its job. But its readers would have been very thoroughly informed about what was going on around them, a weekly budget of births, marriages and deaths, reports of the decisions of the county council, of the local court cases, of harvest festivals and outbreaks of bad weather, of the activities of every local society across the entire county of Grafton. Powerscourt thought the paper became livelier and more adventurous with the arrival of Butler as editor. Youth had replaced crabbed old age, he thought, and it showed on the page. As he read, his mind was registering what was not there in these papers as much as the printed stories themselves. There had been no murders. There were no reports of death in mysterious circumstances. There was only one unusual story about the cathedral in the seventy-eight back copies he read through. Some months before, strange pagan signs had been found, daubed on the floor beside the high altar. Powerscourt thought Return of the Druids might have been a little strong for the headline. He suspected Patrick Butler had written the headline and the story himself. It referred extensively to a prehistoric site just across the county border which was a centre for followers of ancient cults. But there were no reports of further incidents. Powerscourt felt sure that if Butler had been able to discover a scintilla of evidence for further pagan activity, however small, it would have featured heavily in the pages of the Grafton Mercury. There was one constant refrain that ran with increasing frequency through the pages. Powerscourt felt desperately sad each time he came across another report. The young men of the county had signed up for military service with the local regiment. There were glowing descriptions of their departure, the military bands playing, the young men marching off together to the war in South Africa. Now they were dying. Once a fortnight or so another death would be reported, another family heartbroken at their loss. There was talk of erecting a permanent memorial to the fallen in the cathedral when the war was over.
Powerscourt felt slightly disappointed as he headed back towards the minster across the windy expanse of the Green. He had hoped that there might be some clue hiding in the back pages that would bring him enlightenment. There was none. Evensong was nearly over when he returned, an anthem by Thomas Tallis soaring up to the roof. Lady Lucy was not to be seen. Powerscourt presumed she must have gone home. He was glad. He was growing increasingly worried about her obsession with the choirboys. He knew it all came from the highest of motives but he felt she was in danger of becoming ridiculous, something he had never encountered before in all his years of marriage.
He noticed that the builders had finally arrived. There was a battery of scaffolding in the crossing, the part of the cathedral where the nave met the transepts, underneath the tower that served as the launching pad for the spire. As he looked up Powerscourt saw that this must be the highest point inside the cathedral, a couple of hundred feet above the ground. The top of the scaffolding was next to a wooden trap door that led to the higher parts above. Waiting to be transferred the following day was an enormous pile of masonry slabs, destined to replace the broken sections further up. The workmen had spread thick dust sheets all over the surrounding floor. The Dean had complained to Powerscourt a couple of days before about the delays in the work, and about the enormous cost of having to operate at such high levels.
‘The Lord is meant to provide,’ he had said indignantly to Powerscourt, ‘but our constant fear is that one day he may forget about us here. He may have better things to do. And then what will happen to his crumbling buildings?’
The choir had finished. The silver cross led the way towards the cloisters once more. The two old ladies were definitely leaving the cathedral, nodding politely to Powerscourt as they hobbled past, chatting quietly to each other about the service they had just attended. He watched them go, almost pleased to be the only person left inside. The lights were still on in the choir, casting a faint light back down the nave. The Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary was completely silent as Powerscourt went back to stare up at the scaffolding.
Maybe it was the silence that saved him. He heard a very faint creak up above that might have been a rope running along a pulley. Powerscourt looked up. Then time stood still. The first thing that flashed across his mind was the memory of Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto which he had listened to with Lucy in London weeks before. There was one passage where the orchestra falls silent and the piano descends down the scale, falling, falling, falling, it had seemed to Powerscourt at the time, as though it was going to drop off the edge of the world. The descending notes didn’t stay with him for long. For he realized that these great slabs of masonry stone were falling from their scaffolding and would land on top of him any second. He turned and dived full length through the entrance to the choir. He slid several feet along the polished floor and came to rest against the edge of the choir stalls. He hit his head hard against an ornate piece of wooden carving.
The noise was muffled by the dust sheets. The blocks of masonry smashed on to the stone floor of the crossing. Bits of broken stone ricocheted across the transept and down the nave. The dust of ages rose from beneath the cathedral stones and flowed outwards like a whirlwind. The Pillar of Smoke has come to Compton Minster, Powerscourt thought groggily and we shall all be consumed. Shards of stone flew off and cracked the wooden seats at the top of the nave. Then the lights went out.
As he rose, very unsteadily, to his feet, Powerscourt could feel the blood flowing freely down his temple where he had hit the carving. His brain told him that he had stopped beside the stall of Chisenbury and Chute. Grantham Australis was next door. His leg must have been twisted in the fall. He limped off very slowly towards the high altar. The great gold crucifix beckoned him on towards the place of sanctuary. Then he heard the doors close. He was locked in, shortly after five thirty in the afternoon. There must be fourteen hours to go before they would open again to greet another day. Lord Francis Powerscourt sat down in front of the altar and tried to collect his thoughts.
12
As he sat there by the altar Powerscourt tried to remember his own actions just before the fall of stone. Had he touched anything by accident? Had he inadvertently pulled on some mechanism that could have caused the avalanche? No, he decided, he had not. There was only one conclusion. Somebody had just tried to kill him. That didn’t bother him very much. People of one sort or another had been trying to kill him for years. He wondered suddenly if the killer was even now heaping the coal high on to the fire in the kitchen of the Vicars Hall. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have another treat for you. After the earlier delicacy of the vicar choral, we now present another dish, Roasted Powerscourt. He shuddered and massaged his injured leg once more.
He staggered to his feet. He began to make his way slowly down the north ambulatory away from the altar. His hands felt the outline of the tomb of Abbot Parker, the last abbot but one before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Abbot felt very cold. His long thin face was wet. Powerscourt realized that he was leaving a trail of blood wherever he went. He looked back at the altar cloth, hanging stiffly in its place. No, that would never do. He took off his coat and jacket and ripped off one sleeve of his shirt. He folded it into a makeshift bandage and wrapped it round his head. With dust all over my clothes and a bloody shirt on my forehead, I must look like a tramp now, he said to himself, one of those lost souls who haunt the lonely services in the cathedral looking for salvation, or warmth. He abandoned the Abbot to his fate and moved across to the opposite wall. His fingers felt for the extraordinary memorial to the Walton family from the year 1614. There were two semicircular niches inside a marble frame. On the left was a little statue of the father, with a red cloak over a black robe, Powerscourt remembered from the hours of daylight, kneeling before a marble plaque, hands clasped in prayer. Facing him, also kneeling, also praying, was his wife, clad entirely in black, more pious perhaps than her husband. Beneath them, aligned according to age and height, were their eleven children, also kneeling in prayer, the boys beneath their father, the girls beneath their mother. The smallest was only a couple of inches high. Powerscourt wondered what terrible disaster had carried off the entire family. Maybe it had been the plague. Maybe Chief Inspector Yates would know.