Later that morning Lady Lucy found her husband pacing up and down the drawing room.
‘Francis,’ she said quietly, ‘I wish you weren’t going away.’ Powerscourt turned at the far end of the room, just past the piano, and stared back at her, his eyes still a long way from Fairfield Park.
‘What was that, Lucy? Sorry, my love, I was miles away.’
Lady Lucy put her arm round her husband’s waist and marched with him back down the room towards the doors into the garden.
‘Let me come with you, Francis, this part of the way anyway. I said I wished you weren’t going away.’
Powerscourt stopped and stared out into the garden. ‘That child is very far up the tree down by the church,’ he said anxiously.
‘Is it Olivia?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’s like a monkey in those trees. I’d be much more worried if you said Thomas was at the top of one of the big oaks.’
‘I wish I wasn’t going away either, Lucy. I don’t think I’ll be gone very long.’
‘At least I’ve got the choir to keep me busy Francis. Did I tell you, I’ve made friends with two of the little choristers, Philip and William? I think I’m going to ask them to tea to meet the children.’
‘You be very careful with that choir, Lucy. I think everything’s very dangerous in Compton at the moment.’
‘Can I ask you a question, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, resuming their joint march up and down the drawing room.
‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, giving her waist a firm squeeze. ‘What is it?’
‘Are you frightened?’ said Lady Lucy, in a very serious voice.
‘Do you know,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever asked me that before.’
‘Well, I’m asking it now.’
Powerscourt stopped by the side of the piano and sat down on the stool. His fingers picked out random notes with no pretence of a tune. They sounded rather melancholy in this grand room with the sun now streaming in through the windows.
‘I think the answer is Yes and No, if I’m allowed to say that.’ Lady Lucy put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Yes, I am frightened in the sense that I find this killer so difficult to understand, so unpredictable, so terribly violent. And I can’t find any sign of a motive at all. I feel as though we are all walking on eggshells. If we say or do the wrong thing, or our inquiries upset the madman, then he may kill again. So that makes me frightened, very frightened sometimes.’ He paused and strummed some more random notes from the piano. Outside a battalion of rooks were flying across the ornamental pond, their harsh cries acting as a counterpoint to the black keys on Powerscourt’s piano.
‘I think, Lucy,’ he turned to smile up at her, ‘that it has to do with the combination of reason and imagination. Sometimes I think I’m lucky enough to solve these cases through reason, deducing how things must have happened. Sometimes it’s imagination, trying to see how the emotional connections between the various parties must have worked. But imagination cuts both ways. It can help. But in this case it’s often a hindrance because your imagination dwells on the terrible things this mad person has done and what he might do next.’
Powerscourt paused again. ‘In another sense,’ he went on, ‘I’m not frightened. I think perhaps you can be frightened and courageous at the same time. I’ve seen some acts of terrifying bravery in battle, Lucy. The bravest people are the ones who admit they are terrified but carry on all the same. I’m not as brave as they are. But I think you must keep up your courage, whatever the circumstances. If I didn’t, I think I’d feel I was betraying myself, betraying you, betraying the children, betraying all those families involved or yet to be involved in these terrible events.’
Powerscourt rose from the piano stool and embraced his wife. ‘You know, Lucy, people are meant to have these kinds of conversations very late at night when the wine and the port may have been flowing freely. Certainly not at half-past eleven in the morning.’
The eight thirty train from Compton to Bristol seemed extraordinarily slow to Powerscourt, impatient to further his investigation. It stopped regularly at what seemed to be hamlets rather than villages. At one point, peering crossly out of his first class carriage window, he thought a horseman on the adjacent road was making faster progress than one of the great symbols of the modern age. A military-looking man joined him, turning immediately to the Births Marriages and Deaths columns of The Times and remaining enraptured there for over an hour. Powerscourt wondered if he was learning every entry by heart. He wondered too about the marriage prospects for Patrick Butler and Anne Herbert and whether the proposed trip to Glastonbury would enable Patrick to pull it off. Somehow he doubted it. He suspected he would have to propose to her by letter. Perhaps he could take out a quarter page in his own newspaper and propose marriage to her there alongside the advertisements for soap and bicycles. A suitable headline could be adapted from the nursery rhyme, Editor Wants a Wife. Anne, he felt, might find that rather embarrassing. At a small town on the county border a middle-aged lady joined them and began reading the latest Henry James. Powerscourt remembered Lucy telling him about an article she had read very recently which gave a clue to the central problem of Henry James’ later novels – why were the sentences so long? This article claimed that he had stopped writing his books by hand and now dictated them to teams of typewriter operators. It was easy, Lucy had said, to imagine the Master wandering up and down his study, dictating exquisite phrase after exquisite phrase and totally forgetting to insert the full stops. Powerscourt read again the note he had received that morning from Chief Inspector Yates, telling him that it was most unlikely, but not absolutely impossible for James Fraser, the best butcher in Compton, to have killed Gillespie. They were still checking his alibi. Powerscourt’s thoughts went back to the cathedral and its inhabitants.
After six and three-quarter hours the train finally arrived at Bristol Temple Meads. A cab brought Powerscourt quickly to 42 Clifton Rise, a respectable-looking house at the bottom of a hill. A maid showed Powerscourt into the little drawing room. Patrick Butler was certainly right about one thing, Powerscourt said to himself, looking at the Blessed Virgin Marys and the religious tapestries on the walls, the family Ferrers owed their religious allegiance to Rome rather than Canterbury.
‘Lord Powerscourt, how very kind of you to call.’ A handsome middle-aged woman came into the room and ushered him into a chair. ‘Now would you like some tea?’
‘Mrs Ferrers,’ Powerscourt could not imagine this person to be anybody other than Mrs Ferrers, ‘I am sure you have made the journey from here to Compton by train. There were times when I thought I could have walked it quicker. Tea would be delightful.’
‘Now, Lord Powerscourt, you must be having a terrible time investigating these horrid murders back there in Compton! So upsetting to read about them in the newspapers!’
The adjectives, Powerscourt noticed at once, were delivered with remarkable force. Terrible and Horrid were underlined three or four times in Mrs Ferrers’ diction. He wondered briefly how Mr Ferrers coped with it.
‘They are certainly most distressing,’ said Powerscourt diplomatically. ‘And they must be deeply worrying for you with your son so close to the centre of events.’ He just managed to resist the temptation to stress the word deeply.
‘I’m sure all the mothers find it a great anxiety at this time, Lord Powerscourt. Anthony, that’s my husband, and I have been most concerned.’ Even simple words like great and most could be struck with the force of a great bell. She began pouring the tea.
‘Forgive me, Mrs Ferrers,’ said Powerscourt, his eye drawn to a picture of the Pope on the opposite wall, ‘I have no wish to pry into your family’s personal or religious affairs. But I must confess I am curious as to why Augustine comes to be singing in a Protestant choir.’