Powerscourt paused. The doctor was silent, staring at his fire. A couple of blackbirds were singing lustily in the fruit trees outside. Maybe even the birds, Powerscourt said to himself, had to learn new tunes for the celebrations of the thousandth anniversary of Compton Minster as a site of Christian worship.
‘There was little I could do about the lack of truthful information, short of digging the body out of the grave. And then there were other murders which took my attention. But now the situation is different.’
Powerscourt took out the papers relating to the exhumation order and placed them carefully on the table between them.
‘As you can see, I have the signature of the Home Secretary on the exhumation order already. I don’t think your brother could oppose a request now.’
The doctor pulled on a pair of spectacles and read the documents very slowly. Then he read them again.
‘Can I say at this point, Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘that I would urge you now to consider your own position. If we go ahead with the exhumation, I believe there will be questions from the police about why they were not told the truth. There may be charges of obstructing the course of justice. It will all become most unpleasant in a personal and professional sense. But it need not come to that.’
Powerscourt stopped. At last the doctor spoke.
‘What do you mean, it need not come to that?’
Powerscourt paused for a few moments before he replied. A gang of magpies had taken occupation of the top branches in one of the Blackstaff apple trees, noisily preparing for some malevolent mission.
Powerscourt was at his most emollient. ‘I think one of the key factors in this terrible affair has been your intimate friendship with John Eustace and Andrew McKenna’s loyalty to his employer. I respect you both for that. I suspect John Eustace must have been a very lovable man. Some people are just like that. And I think he was a very troubled man in the weeks and months leading up to his death. In some ways I think that what troubled him also led to his death. I shall come to that in a moment. I think he made you promise, or you felt such a promise was inherent in your friendship, not to tell a single soul what had been happening in the weeks before he died, or what had worried him previously. That is why you have been reticent with the true facts of the affair.’
Powerscourt paused and looked carefully at the doctor. The doctor held his peace.
‘I said a moment ago that the exhumation need not go ahead. I am not going to ask you to break your solemn oath. I am not going to ask you to make your confession, if confession is the right word, which I rather doubt. All I ask is that you nod your head if the version of events I am about to give you is correct in the broad outlines. We need not quibble about the accuracy of the minor details. Do you agree, Dr Blackstaff?’
Dr Blackstaff looked once more into his fire. Powerscourt waited.
‘I agree,’ he said finally.
‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt, ‘thank you so much. Let me give you first of all my guess as to what happened on the night John Eustace died. You see, I don’t think he died here in this house at all, as you said in your earlier account of events. I think he was dead when he came here. I think Andrew McKenna brought him here in the middle of the night. He died in Fairfield Park, not in your surgery after a long and difficult night. I say he died in Fairfield Park, I should have said he was murdered in Fairfield Park.’
Powerscourt stopped for a moment to see if there would be a nod from the medical department. Eventually there was a slow, but definite inclination of Dr Blackstaff’s head. It was undoubtedly a nod. Inwardly Powerscourt rejoiced.
‘The murder,’ Powerscourt went on, remembering he was speaking to John Eustace’s closest friend, ‘was truly horrible. I think his head had been cut off. I think the intention of the murderer was to stick the head on a pole. Maybe he stuck it as a temporary measure on one of the posts on that great four-poster bed. The butler was terrified of scandal. You wished to be loyal to your friend and to his memory. You feared, above all, what damage might be done if the circumstances surrounding John Eustace’s demise became public. So you rushed the body off to the mortuary as fast as you could. You also made sure that only the undertaker knew what must have happened to the corpse. Nobody else in his business saw anything other than a closed coffin.’
Dr Blackstaff looked as if he might speak. But he did not. Instead he nodded a weary nod.
‘Thank you once again,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let me tell you how your acceptance changes the position. We can leave the body where it is. The police will take no action. I am assuming the man who murdered John Eustace is the same man who murdered the man on the spit and the dismembered corpse. You cannot be hanged more than once, no matter how many people you may have slaughtered. The killer can hang for those two murders. It should not be necessary to bring a third charge. The body and the memory of John Eustace can be left in peace. I am sure that is what you would have wished, Dr Blackstaff.’
At last the doctor spoke. ‘Do you know who the killer is, Lord Powerscourt?’
Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to shake his head. ‘I do not,’ he said sadly.
‘Do you think you will find him?’
‘Yes, if he does not kill me first.’ Powerscourt told the doctor about the attempt on his life in the cathedral, the falling masonry, his hours alone with the dead of Compton’s past.
‘One last request, if I may trouble you still further.’ Powerscourt’s eye was drawn to another of the doctor’s grisly collection of medical prints on the wall opposite. It showed a long line of wounded men who snaked out of the picture into the fields beyond. Snow was falling. The head of the queue was in front of a barn which must have served as a temporary medical station, Dr Blackstaff’s predecessors working furiously inside. It must have been a terrible battle, Powerscourt thought, Inkerman perhaps or Balaclava. Heaps of amputated limbs were stacked neatly against the side of the building. An orderly was bringing a bundle of the latest arms and legs to add to the charnel house. They were arranged separately, Powerscourt saw to his horror, arms in one pile, legs in another.
‘We are still, I would suggest,’ he went on, ‘operating under the same rules as before. All you have to do is nod. I want to test out on you what I think must have been troubling John Eustace in the last weeks and months of his life. You see, I think we are in the middle, no, not the middle, I think we are very close to the end of a very daring conspiracy, a most ingenious conspiracy, a conspiracy that could have repercussions far beyond the boundaries of Compton Minster.’
Powerscourt spoke for about five minutes. He paused every now and then to collect his thoughts. He had never tried to put all the pieces together in conversation before, only in his mind, and then usually in the middle of the night. He left out a lot of the details. He did not mention the Archdeacon’s pilgrimages to Melbury Clinton or the Canon’s expeditions to Ledbury St John in case the doctor did not know of these. He spoke at length about the thousand year celebrations in the cathedral.
When he stopped he felt like an undergraduate who has just read a controversial, possibly heretical, essay to his tutor. He wondered what the verdict would be. Dr Blackstaff looked at Powerscourt in astonishment. Powerscourt wondered if he was going to be declared insane. He was not. Dr Blackstaff did not speak. He continued to stare at Powerscourt for what must have been almost a minute. Then he nodded. He nodded very vigorously indeed.