At last she found the steps and sat halfway up to wait for the flood that would engulf her to rise slowly up the Norman pillars. Sometimes she thought it was subsiding, draining away perhaps through some porous section of the walls. Then it rose again, slowly, steadily, stealthily, almost like some wild animal stalking its prey in a jungle and waiting to pounce. Lady Lucy found herself thinking of her grandfather in Scotland who had dreamed of her marrying the Viceroy of India. He had taught her to shoot in case she needed to defend herself against hostile natives or marauding wild animals. Bullets would not help me now, she said to herself. I must remain calm, she told herself. If I panic or turn hysterical I shall die even sooner. She tried to imagine what Francis would say. She thought she knew exactly what his message to her would be. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.
Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were riding into Compton faster than they had ever galloped across the South African veldt the year before. Johnny had a dark bag on his back, filled with strange implements that would open doors and windows designed to keep intruders out. The sun was setting over to their right, the glorious greens of an English spring turning back to the anonymous grey of twilight. Once or twice Johnny glanced wistfully at some bird of prey hovering above the fields. Powerscourt was calculating how long it would take them to reach Compton. And how long the murderer had already had to kill his Lucy.
Lady Lucy had counted fifteen steps from the bottom of the crypt to the great door that had banged shut on her some time before. She was sitting on step number eight, peering at the tide of water that swirled about her feet. Not that she could see the water, but she heard its presence everywhere, rippling round the pillars, slurping along the walls at the back. She had drawn her feet up to the step beneath. As the water rose she was going to retreat higher until she ended up crouching on the top step with her back to the door. She had moved on from the prayers and the collects to St Patrick’s Breastplate. One of her grandmothers used to recite it to her as a lullaby at bedtime. The words had never left her.
‘Christ for my guardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards.
Christ with me
Christ before me
Christ behind me.’
Christ was not beneath her. The water was. It had risen again during her prayer. Lady Lucy retreated to step number nine. She found herself wondering why the murderer was so sensitive about the choir. Her mind went back to the conversation with the choirmaster when he had threatened to expel her for taking too much interest in the boys. They have a lot of new music to learn for the commemoration service, he had said, as well as the Messiah. What sort of new music? Catholic music? Music that would never gain countenance in an Anglican cathedral, perhaps? And the choirboys might have told her? Surely that was the answer. She would have to tell Francis when she saw him. Maybe the choirmaster was the murderer. Then Lady Lucy’s courage broke down and the tears rolled down her face to add a touch of salt to the malevolent flood beneath her. She might never see Francis again. He would never know how much she loved him, how she had loved him ever since that meeting in the National Gallery nine years before when she had talked with such passion about Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. The thought that Francis would never know how much she felt for him reduced Lady Lucy to bouts of uncontrollable weeping. The waters advanced again. Lady Lucy retreated. She was on step number ten now. Only five to go.
Powerscourt reined in his horse on the edge of the Cathedral Close. He felt very cold in spite of the vigour of his ride.
‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘do you think you could pick up the cathedral keys from the Deanery over there? I’m going round to the choirboys’ house. I’ll see you at the west door in a few minutes.’
The choir were still practising as Powerscourt raced round to the Georgian house that was their home. He heard the singing from twenty yards away, the choirmaster not happy with his charges, making them sing the same phrase over and over again. Powerscourt thought there was something unusual about this music, something not right, but he had no time to wait and listen further. He pulled vigorously on the bell. You would think the bell in this sort of house would be melodious, he said to himself as he waited for an answer, a Mozart or a Haydn among door bells. But this one was harsh and grating, a dissonant note with the heavenly voices on the upper floor.
An enormous man in his late thirties with a large black beard opened the door.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘My wife has gone missing. She is a member of the choir for the Messiah. I wonder if you’ve seen her at all earlier this evening?’
‘We all know Lady Powerscourt,’ said the man ominously, ‘and I can promise you we haven’t seen her at all this evening. Goodnight to you, sir.’
And with that the man closed the door very sharply in Powerscourt’s face. There was some strange accent there in the man’s speech, Powerscourt thought, but he hadn’t time to wonder what it was. He led his horse back to the front of the cathedral. It was twenty-five past eight.
Lady Lucy was on step number twelve now. She had cried all she could. Now she felt very cold. The water was beginning to creep up around her ankles. Ever since she was a child Lady Lucy had believed in heaven. Now she felt she might see it rather sooner than she expected. She had given up all hope of rescue, all hope that the remorseless flood might stop rising. She wondered if they had cleaning and drying facilities for new arrivals up above. God’s laundry, she said to herself, presided over by a couple of wrinkled female saints, dispensing good cheer and heavenly soapsuds in equal measure. She wondered suddenly if there were big queues at busy periods, remembering the long delays that sometimes occurred at her local laundry on the corner of Sloane Square. She would just have to wait and see.
She began rehearsing some of her sins for the questions higher up. She hoped she would get preferential treatment for being so wet. Most of the new arrivals must come in perfectly dry after all. She should have been kinder to her mother. Lady Lucy suspected the authorities must have heard that one before. Sometimes she had been too strict with the children. Another familiar refrain. The waters were rising again. Lady Lucy, on her very own ghastly stairway to heaven, climbed back another step. Number thirteen. Unlucky thirteen.