Powerscourt sat himself down at the desk in John Eustace’s study and began his letter. Lady Lucy’s note was still sitting, unseen and unread, on the table in the drawing room.
‘I am currently engaged,’ he began, ‘on an investigation into some very bizarre deaths in the Cathedral City of Compton in the west of England.’ Begin with the intelligence that is easy to understand, he reminded himself of his days in the Army, and move on slowly to the unpalatable conclusions. ‘In the course of my inquiries,’ he went on, ‘I have discovered a plot so unusual and so potentially divisive in the country as a whole, that I felt duty bound to lay the details before you.’ Make them curious, he said to himself, make them want to keep reading.
‘But before I do, however disagreeable I find it to advertise my previous achievements, I felt I should remind you of my own earlier involvements in the fields of detection and some of my past services to Crown and Country.’
Lady Lucy was humming the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to herself as she walked up the nave of the cathedral. The late afternoon sun was casting great beams of light across the body of the cathedral, some of it multicoloured as it was filtered through the stained glass. What a pity we couldn’t sing the Messiah here, she said to herself as she peered into the choir stalls to the left of the south transept. The building appeared to be completely deserted. There was no sign of the two boys. Perhaps they were late, or were hiding somewhere to give her a surprise. Then she saw a light coming round an open door in the corner. Perhaps they’re over there, she said to herself, and set off to investigate. As she reached the bottom of the steps she called for them by name.
‘William,’ she said softly, ‘Philip, I’m here.’
There was no answer. She moved forward, away from the door and tried again.
‘William, Philip, I’m here.’
Then two things happened virtually simultaneously. The light went out. There was a loud bang as the door slammed shut.
It was only a matter of moments before the minster was closed up for the night. And Lady Lucy Powerscourt was locked in the crypt in total impenetrable darkness.
Part Four
April 1901
21
Powerscourt gave details of his investigation into the mysterious death of Prince Eddy, eldest son of the then Prince of Wales, some nine years before. He referred to his role in the defeat of a plot to bring the City of London to its knees at the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. He mentioned his work in South Africa, undertaken at the request of the Prime Minister himself. Then he started a new paragraph about the three deaths in Compton. He left nothing out. He referred to the celebrations at Easter for the one thousandth anniversary of the cathedral as a place of Christian worship. He felt his letter was going well now. He could see his way to the end. Somewhere outside he heard Johnny Fitzgerald enthusing about the birds to Anne Herbert who had brought her children over for the afternoon.
Lady Lucy cursed herself for her folly. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have ignored every word Francis had said to her? The crypt was very low, Norman vaulting rising from great pillars in the floor. Lady Lucy felt her way very gently round her prison, realizing that a tall man would be continuously banging his head on the stonework. The walls were clammy to the touch. She remembered that the workmen in here had found the ancient volume supposed to have been written by a pre-Reformation monk and currently appearing in weekly instalments in the Grafton Mercury. Faint scurrying noises could be heard in distant corners of the underground chamber, which might have been mice. Or rats. There was a mouldy smell, as if things left down here centuries before were still rotting slowly inside the walls.
Then she remembered Francis’s fears that the murderer might strike again. Lady Lucy was not particularly frightened of the dark. She remembered games of hide and seek in gloomy Scottish castles as a child where she had been able to conceal herself in places virtually bereft of daylight. But then there had usually been a gleam from under a door, a distant shaft of light up some corridor lined with long-dead warriors in their rusty armour. Down here there was nothing. If she held her hand in front of her face she could see nothing at all. She wondered about the man roasted on the spit. She shuddered violently as she thought of the man hung drawn and quartered, his parts distributed around the county. She thought of Francis’s vigil alone in the cathedral for hours until she found him. Huddled against a pillar, tears beginning to form in her eyes, terror in her heart, Lady Lucy Powerscourt began saying her prayers.
‘Our father which art in heaven,’ she began, her voice sounding strange in the deserted crypt, ‘hallowed be thy name . . .’
It was nearly half-past seven when Powerscourt finished his letter. He read it through three times. Then he decided to leave it until the morning before he posted it and the two other versions he would send to the Archbishop and the Lord Lieutenant. He had decided to omit the Bishop of Exeter. Maybe he could improve it in the morning. As he set off through the drawing room to join Johnny and the children, he saw Lucy’s letter on the table. He read it once and called for the butler in his loudest voice.
‘McKenna! McKenna!’
The butler came running into the room. He had never heard Powerscourt shout before.
‘Do you know why Lady Powerscourt went into Compton this afternoon?’ said Powerscourt, staring hard at Andrew McKenna.
‘All I know is that there was a letter, my lord. It came about half-past four, I think.’
‘Did you see who brought it?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘No, my lord. Nobody saw the bearer. It was addressed to Lady Powerscourt at Fairfield Park. The handwriting might have been a child’s.’
Or somebody pretending to be a child, Powerscourt thought bitterly.
‘And did she go out straight away?’
‘Yes, my lord. She rode off into Compton at about a quarter to five.’
‘Right, McKenna,’ said Powerscourt, ‘can you ask the coachman to take Mrs Herbert and the two children back to the Cathedral Close. And ask him to wait outside her house.’ He strode out into the garden. Johnny and Anne Herbert were looking sadly at the remains of a small bird that seemed to have fallen victim to one of the Fairfield cats. Johnny was proposing burial underneath the trees, the children nodding slowly in agreement. None of them had been to a funeral before.
‘Mrs Herbert,’ even now Powerscourt remembered his manners, ‘the coachman will take you and the boys back into town as soon as you are ready. Johnny, we must go now. I think Lucy may be in danger.’
‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee oh Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The closing prayer of Evensong, which Lady Lucy had heard so often less than a hundred yards from her dungeon, gave her some comfort. Fragments of prayers and bits of collects jumbled themselves up in her mind. She had prayed for the means of grace and the hope of glory She had prayed for the hope of grace and the means of glory She didn’t think God would mind if the message was confused. This after all was one of his own on temporary sojourn in the valley of the shadow of death. Then she heard a noise. Only when she heard it did she realize that up till now, fifteen to twenty minutes after her incarceration, she thought, she had heard absolutely nothing. No human voice, no passing carriages, no songbird gracing the walls of the minster with its music, not even the trebles of the choirboys could be heard down here. The walls must have been ten feet thick, built to last at the end of the eleventh century, rendering the crypt the perfect place for the contemplation of one’s soul in peace. Or the contemplation of your own death in peace, Lady Lucy said to herself, huddling ever closer to one of the central pillars. The noise was growing louder, a hissing noise, a gurgling noise, a noise that grew in volume as time went by. Lady Lucy was virtually certain what it was. Then she felt it running over her shoes. Water was flooding into the Compton crypt, not in a deluge, but in a steady flow that must surely fill the entire chamber if it continued. Lady Lucy began looking for the steps. Over there was higher ground. Twice she fell over and her dress and her blouse were soaked. What a frightful sight I’m going to be if anybody ever manages to find me, or if the monster decides to turn off the water, she said to herself. She thought of Thomas and Olivia grieving for a drowned mother. She wondered how Francis would cope on his own. Perhaps he would marry again. He didn’t seem to have very much luck with his wives staying alive, she reflected bitterly. Two drowned, one in the Irish Sea, one in the crypt of Compton.