Death Comes to Lynchester Close

Book 14: Lord Francis Powerscourt

by David Dickinson

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Lord Francis Powerscourt is visited at home in London by the Bishop of Lynchester who wants his advice about the suspect for the death of an aged parishioner. Powerscourt advises that discretion rather than accusation is the best way forward, but this is just the start of his association with the diocese of Lynchester. The death of the parishioner has left available a property in the cathedral close which traditionally the church rents out to a suitable tenant. Four worthy candidates are nominated . . . and then one of them, the retail king of the south of England, is found dead in the house, poisoned by strychnine. So once again Powerscourt is summoned by the bishop as this time there is no doubt of foul play. But there are many suspects from which to choose - there are the other candidates who want to live in that very desirable property . . . or could it be more complex than that? Very soon Powerscourt uncovers a trail of greed, deception and death which goes straight to the heart of the cathedral itself.

Release date: October 24, 2017

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 384

Sample

Some wives never give up. They plough on with their requests through the deserts of indifference and the fogs of uncertainty that engulf their husbands. The most determined will sail on across uncharted seas, their voice the only one disappearing into the silence.

For the husbands the daily newspapers, sometimes raised above their face like a parapet, are the first line of defence. Close inspection of the City pages or the sports reports can hold a wife at bay for a time. Business may have to be attended to, necessitating an early retirement to the study if the husband is lucky enough to have one, or even out through the front door to the office, if he is lucky enough to have one of those. Others may find sanctuary in the garden shed, last defensive position of the husband under siege.

It has to be said that in the case of Lady Lucy Powerscourt the normal charges did not apply. Throughout her twenty years of marriage to her husband Francis she had never nagged him about anything. She was not a harridan or a bully or a domestic tyrant. But this cause was different. It was different because she regarded it as special. It was different because she had an ally in her camp, their son Thomas Powerscourt, whose views on the matter were even stronger than her own.

‘I know we went to the Deep South of the United States last year, Francis, and I know we stopped off for a night or two in New York, but I want to see New York properly, a week or ten days, something like that. I’d really like to go on a cruise round the world. There’s nothing to stop us. And I know I’ve been going on about it, but I would like it very much. So would Thomas. He reminded me about it only this morning.’

Lady Lucy seemed to have amassed a small library of brochures from English and German shipping lines.

‘Look at this, for instance. You can now sail right round the world, if you like. On this one here, the SS Cleveland, they’ve got electric lifts connecting the various decks. You can make telephone calls from one cabin to another. The ship’s got a darkroom for amateur photographers and a library stocked with books in English, French and German. That should please you, Francis. There’s a gymnasium with electrically operated machines including several in the form of a saddle. You could, as it were, take a ride in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. If you go all the way round the world, India, Burma, the Philippines, those sorts of places, you go back to New York by train from San Francisco. If they ever finish that Panama Canal on time, we’d be able to complete the entire journey by sea.’

All that Lady Lucy could see were the front and back pages of The Times, held high like a defensive wall.

‘Wouldn’t that be a good thing to do, Francis?’

There was no reply.

Lady Lucy glanced at her selection of transatlantic and round-the-world literature.

‘This one here has got a dinner menu, Francis. You start with caviar on toast. Doesn’t that sound good? Then you can have Chesterfield soup, or salmon in parsley sauce, followed by oxtail au gratin or duckling salad. For the main course you can have all sorts of things: roast spring lamb with mint sauce, calf’s head vinaigrette – I’m not at all sure about the calf’s head – or roast turkey with cranberry sauce, all served with a choice of vegetables like green peas and cauliflower. Then there’s a course of baked ham with Madeira sauce. I’m beginning to feel quite full up now so I’ll just give you the dessert course: apple tart or plum pudding, Mont Blanc jelly or lemon pie, Neapolitan ice cream to follow. What do you think of that, Francis?’

Lady Lucy looked at the dense layout of the print on the front and back pages of the newspaper. Slowly, very slowly, her husband’s defensive wall began to come down. He spoke before she could see him.

‘I’ve been wondering about the fish, my love.’

‘The fish?’

‘Do they have fishermen sailors on board, lines permanently spread out at the back, perhaps, to replenish the supplies at the tables?’

‘You’re being absurd, Francis, and you know it. What do you say to this plan?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear most of it. Some very interesting stuff in here about the situation in Ireland.’

‘You’re being unreasonable and you know it.’

‘I tell you what, Lucy. This is what I’ll do. You give me those brochures full of electric lifts and fish courses and I’ll read them all. How’s that?’

‘That’s very kind of you, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, bundling up her brochures and handing them over. She wondered as she did so if this might not be another delaying tactic, insufficient time for reading available, other matters needing attention, pressing articles in The Times or The Economist. She just didn’t know. She would have to wait for a couple of days or more before she could reopen negotiations. Of one thing she was quite sure. She wasn’t going to give up.

Many of England’s country cathedrals look as if they have been dropped down direct from heaven and secured with celestial clamps. They sit in their surroundings of well-mown grass as if they have been here forever. Occasionally the divine architects may have made a mistake in their calculations, or some of the clamps could have worked loose, segments of steeple or internal arches collapsing under their weight and discovered lying in an unsuspecting nave. Others, like Lincoln at the top of its steep hill, seem to have been despatched from the heavens as a single unit when God was in a hurry.

Lynchester, in England’s West Country, was blessed with the usual collection of chantry chapels and clerestories, chapterhouse and cloister, lady chapel and ancient stained glass, choir stalls and transept. It was not one of the great glories of the English cathedral collection like Salisbury or Wells or Winchester. Only the most discerning of architectural pilgrims made their way to see it, guidebooks in hand, comparisons to be made with the other cathedrals of England.

The font – customs point and border crossing for the new arrivals, bathed in the waters of Jordan – was by the West Door. Through the same door the dead departed after their funerals, possibly passing the font that had christened them, their souls washed in the tears of those who loved them. The nave and the choir stalls were not particularly distinguished. Above the High Altar and the magnificent stained-glass window behind it, true believers maintained, there hovered the presence of the Holy Spirit: immortal, invisible, God only wise.

The West Front was filled with sculpture. At the bottom Christ and his disciples kept grave watch over the congregations as they came and went, checking perhaps that the visitors were not going to change money inside or take the name of the Lord in vain. Above them Moses kept guard on the success of his commandments, crook in hand, back bowed from the strain of carrying the tablets down from the mountaintop single-handed. He was staring balefully at the crowds beneath, as if some of them might have been caught worshipping the golden calf. Throughout the centuries many had. The four evangelists were there, scroll or tablet in hand, wondering maybe about which, if any of them, would be read in the education of the faithful or the conversion of the ungodly. Above and beyond them a whole range of auxiliary statues acted as sentinels, telling of different aspects of the Christian faith and the sufferings of God’s chosen people.

Lynchester was very proud of its Close. It was most often compared with the great sweeps and terraces of Bath, some forty miles away. At the north end was a long curved row of houses, nearly as grand as the Royal Crescent. On either side were two handsome terraces. Other buildings – a grammar school, a former Bishop’s Palace, residences for clergy and chantry chapel priests, a small cottage hospital – were dotted about in the gaps between the terraces and the crescent. A river ran round the back and was occasionally used for water transport to the railway station when the traffic in the town was very dense. At the heart of the Close was a great sundial, clearly visible from the buildings and the West Door of the cathedral.

Passing through the great gate that linked the cathedral to the town and its railway station very early one January morning was a tall man, deep in thought. He was looking round about him as if he did not wish to be seen. His worn but well-cut suit proclaimed that he was probably on his way to a government department in London or to a solicitor’s quarters, maybe to one of the great banking houses of the City. He looked behind him from time to time, as if he thought he might be observed or maybe even followed. The man bought a first-class ticket to London and settled down behind his newspaper. He was going to a meeting where he had no appointment and had no idea if he would be welcomed.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was reading his letters in the upstairs drawing room looking out over Markham Square. There was a knock at the door followed by an apologetic cough. This had to be Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, who was incapable of entering a room without the cough, as if he might be the bearer of bad, if not cataclysmic, news.

‘Excuse me, my lord, there’s a gentleman below who wishes to speak to you as a matter of some urgency.’

‘Thank you, Rhys, do we have a name?’

‘The party says he is the Bishop of Lynchester, my lord.’

‘You sound uncertain. Better show him up.’

As the Bishop came into the room, Powerscourt realized what had made Rhys sound slightly doubtful.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Bishop, ‘how very kind of you to see me without an appointment. I was quite prepared to come back later in the day. Trevelyan is my name; Percival Trevelyan, Bishop of Lynchester, at your service.’

Powerscourt could see now what had concerned the butler. Bishop Trevelyan did not have a single item of ecclesiastical clothing on his person. There wasn’t a purple shirt or a crucifix or a dog collar or even gaiters to mark him out as one who strode out into the world clad in the whole armour of God. This Bishop was a plainclothes Bishop. It was as if Archdeacon Grantly had come to London to smite Barchester’s enemies dressed like a City solicitor. The Bishop looked very strained, as if he had received bad news that very morning.

‘Could I make one thing absolutely clear at the beginning, Lord Powerscourt. I’m not here. I haven’t been here.’

‘I beg your pardon, My Lord Bishop. You are here. I can see that you’re here. I don’t understand.’

‘Forgive me. The matter of which I am about to speak is private. That is why I am asking you for complete confidentiality. A mutual friend suggested I call on you for advice. I do not feel able to tell you his name.’

‘Very well, I am used to keeping secrets. This meeting has not taken place. Now, won’t you please sit down.’ Powerscourt showed the Bishop into his own favourite chair by the fireside. The sitting position seemed to relax him. He still knotted his fingers together all the time, but some of the earlier strain had gone from his face.

‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt. Let me say that I have been thinking about my narrative in the train.’

‘Like preparing a sermon, perhaps?’

The Bishop managed the ghost of a smile. ‘It is a matter of life and death. In every sense. Perhaps I should begin at the beginning.’ He ran his fingers through his hair now. He paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts.

‘Our cathedral owns a great deal of property in the little city of Lynchester, especially in the Cathedral Close itself. Some of the buildings have been sold off in the past. Now we prefer to maintain them to a high standard and rent them out. In one of these, Netherbury House, to the rear of the crescent, there lived an old man called Simon Jones. He was very old, he was very ill. He had one of those terrible illnesses old people get. His hands shook. He could scarcely walk unaided. He’s been this way for years; sometimes as clear in his mind as you and I, sometimes raving like a lunatic, if you’ll forgive the phrase. He used to say some years ago that being old was like an exam where they didn’t tell you the questions, never mind the answers. Last year he changed his description. He said it was like being struck dumb and blind in the middle of crossing a busy main road. You didn’t know what direction the blow was going to come from.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Bishop. Did he live alone, Mr Jones?’

‘I should have said. He did live alone apart from his housekeeper, Mrs McQuaid. She is in her early sixties but was well able to cope with the cooking and cleaning and all-round support. She had a room of her own in Netherbury House and a little cottage round the corner. I knew him well, Simon Jones. I used to call on him once a week or so. I like to think I was a person he could confide in. He was always very frank with me. He always maintained that however great his trial – I think he had been a successful lawyer in an earlier life – he would see it through to the end. He gave the impression that he would never take his own life; he knew that was a sin against God’s holy law and commandments. It does show, I suspect, that he had been thinking about it – taking his own life, I mean.’

‘Did he stick to that, the not-taking his life?’ Even as he spoke, Powerscourt knew that there must be some ambiguity about the poor man’s end, an ambiguity that brought a Bishop to Markham Square in plain clothes, almost as if he were ashamed of being a Bishop.

‘I’m coming to that, Lord Powerscourt. I must stick with the timescale of my narrative. Last Monday must have been a difficult day for poor Simon. One of the neighbours reported him trying to walk with his two sticks out of his front door. He never made it. He turned back indoors. One of the neighbour’s children said that they heard him crying and shouting later in the day towards suppertime. He went to bed. He took his sleeping pills. He was found dead in the morning by Mrs McQuaid. As I said, she has a little cottage of her own round the back but she sleeps on the top floor sometimes when he’s bad. She spent the night in Netherbury House and said she heard nothing in the night.’

‘Did he take the pills himself? Had he ended up taking an overdose?’

‘There are many things in this troubled world I am not sure of, Lord Powerscourt, but I am absolutely certain that he could not have taken his two normal pills himself, let alone any more.’

‘How do we know that he took an overdose in some fashion or other? I presume there was an overdose?’

‘There was. I now turn to the doctor who examined Simon Jones – the late Simon Jones. He came to see me immediately after his examination of the body and arranging for the undertakers to take the body away. Dr Willoughby is quite young, and new to the practice. He was very brief, almost curt with me. He told me that the poor man had died of an overdose. There should have been twenty to thirty pills left from his last prescription. Now there were half a dozen. He himself had taken the bottle of pills away. He had stressed to Mrs McQuaid that she should say she gave Mr Jones his normal ration of pills. Dr Willoughby said he had told her, as he was about to tell me, that Simon Jones had died of natural causes. That was what he proposed to put on the death certificate. That was the simplest thing to do. I was about to ask him some questions but he left, pleading an urgent engagement elsewhere.’

‘Have you tried to speak to him since?’

‘I tried and failed on a number of occasions. He seems to be especially busy at present. When I did track him down he said that he had given his opinion and he wasn’t going to change it.’

‘That doesn’t seem very polite for a young doctor not long in his post.’

‘I don’t think he’s a believer. I don’t think he approves of us very much. I’ve never seen him at any of our services and neither have any of my colleagues.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt, noting that an expression of anguish seemed to have replaced anxiety on the Bishop’s face. ‘I can see that it is a very difficult situation all round. Have you spoken to Mrs McQuaid since these events?’

‘I have. She is quite sure about the pills. She gave him two as usual. No more. Two would not have killed him.’

‘Did you ask her if she gave him any more than his usual dose? By mistake, perhaps?’

‘Of course I did. She swore she did not. She is a very religious woman, Mrs McQuaid, unlike the doctor, and she is a regular at cathedral services. I asked her if Mr Jones could have gone to the bathroom and taken the pills himself to put himself out of his misery after such a terrible day. She said she thought that was what must have happened. You can never tell what these diseases are going to do next, she said. Maybe he felt well enough or stable enough to go and do it himself. One minute you’re down, the next minute you’re up, the minute after that you might be dead. She wouldn’t say any more. I didn’t believe her.’

‘Has she been with Mr Jones long? Did she know him well?

‘She had been with him for eight years or more. She was extremely fond of him. She used to say that looking after him was a bit like caring for her own father in his last months.’

‘Is she also a patient of Dr Willoughby’s?’

‘She is.’

‘I see.’ Powerscourt waited for the reply. The Bishop was staring very hard at his shoes and wringing his hands again.

‘Now I must tell you my fear, or fears, Lord Powerscourt. I must bring them out into the open.’

The Bishop began running his hands through his hair again.

‘It seems to me that the most likely thing to have happened is that Mrs McQuaid killed him. She had watched him suffer for years. She knew he wasn’t going to get any better. He was only going to get worse. She gave him an overdose of his pills, quite a large one. Maybe he asked her to do it. She killed him out of kindness, if you like, but she killed him. That is against the teachings of the Ten Commandments. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, Lord Powerscourt, that the Sixth Commandment says: Thou shalt not kill. I believe the motive is irrelevant. She killed him as surely as if she had put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. Whichever way you look at it, it’s murder. I cannot live up to my vows as a churchman and Bishop and condone – or be seen to condone – such an act, carried out in sight of my own cathedral.’

‘What happens if Mr Jones asked her to give him an overdose?’

‘I have thought about that, too. I believe it’s still murder.’

Powerscourt wondered if he too should run his hands through his hair. This conversation was now in very difficult territory.

‘I can see your difficulties, Bishop. What do you intend to do about them?’

‘I hope you will be able to assist me in my deliberations, Lord Powerscourt. Our mutual friend said you were wise.’

It’s Rosebery – my old friend Rosebery, former Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary – he’s talked to, Powerscourt said to himself. I’m sure of it. The man has tentacles stretching out round the worlds of Westminster and Whitehall. No reason why they shouldn’t reach deep into the Church of England as well.

‘I will give you the best advice I can, Bishop. But I think you may already know what you intend to do.’

‘Your friend pleaded with me not to do anything until I had spoken to you. But I intend to make an appointment with the Chief Constable next week.’

‘Would that be to ask his advice, or would it be to lay a charge against Mrs McQuaid for murder?’

‘As I said, I intend to lay the facts before him. As a churchman I can do no other. I cannot be an accessory to murder, can I, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘Let me try to give you a summary of your position, if I may, Bishop. You believe that Mrs McQuaid, acting no doubt out of kindness, gave the unfortunate Mr Jones a fatal dose of his pills to put him out of his misery. In your book that is murder, and Mrs McQuaid should be charged with murder and brought to trial.’

‘That is correct.’

‘I am going to give you my response in three parts, if I may, Bishop.’ At the moment when he said that, Powerscourt had no idea what the second and third parts were going to be, but he trusted that his brain would have worked them out by the time he had finished the first one.

‘I would like to call my first part “A Life for a Life”, Bishop. Suppose you tell the relevant people – the Chief Constable, the doctor, perhaps – about your views and about what you think should be done. Suppose the doctor changes his mind, which I rather doubt, as he too has higher powers like the Hippocratic Oath to remember. Suppose Mrs McQuaid sticks to her story. Suppose you stick to your belief that Simon Jones would never have taken his own life and that, therefore, somebody else must have taken it from him. Suppose the case goes to court and ends up at some great theatre of the law like the Old Bailey, with Mrs McQuaid on a charge of murder.’

The Bishop was looking uncomfortable. He had not come here to be reminded of places like the Old Bailey. Powerscourt pressed on.

‘There would be wave after wave of publicity about such a case. An elderly housekeeper, a dying man, a young doctor, a Bishop of the Church – all on parade in one place and at one time. The doctor would have the full weight of the medical profession behind him. You would have to go into the witness box, Bishop. Whatever respect is due to your position, you could be sure that the defence counsel would give you a pretty hard time. But Mrs McQuaid would have an even harder time from the prosecuting counsel. If Simon Jones has mentioned her in his will, I am sure that money would be used as a motive for murder.

‘Suppose the verdict is guilty. No allowance is made in law for the question of motive. Murder is murder is murder, even if the instincts of the perpetrator are totally virtuous in their own eyes. Mrs McQuaid could be led back to the cells and hanged by the neck until she was dead. The law must take its course. A life for a life. Is that what you want, Bishop?’

Powerscourt didn’t wait for an answer. He was relieved to find that his brain had served up the two other points he wished to make.

‘My second point hangs around what I propose to call “In the Public Interest”. If it came to court, the newspapers would be all over the case and the players in the drama. Churchman holds elderly housekeeper responsible for death from an overdose of pills. A Bishop’s evidence might be enough to sway a jury, even if Mrs McQuaid denies all charges and the doctor sticks to his guns. She would have been sacrificed to save a Bishop’s conscience. And think what the reaction might be in your own community, Bishop. The people of Lynchester would be gripped by the story and its terrible end. Whatever the court decided, people would take sides. The same would probably happen with your own clergy. Do you really want hostility on the streets and in the shops of your city? Do you want faction in the chapterhouse? Your own position might become untenable. You could feel that your own role as Bishop had become impossible. The Archbishop of Canterbury and his people might have to spirit you away to a teaching position in some remote Anglican theological college, far from the controversies of Lynchester and the tragic death of Simon Jones.’

The Bishop was drumming his fingers on his knees. He looked as though he would much rather be somewhere else. Powerscourt hadn’t finished yet.

‘I propose to call my final section, “The Way of the World”. This, I feel duty bound to tell you, is pure speculation, like so much of what I have said already. This is what I think could have happened. Let us begin with Dr Willoughby. I would stress that this is hypothetical. He sees at once what must have taken place. He decides to do nothing about it and treat the death as due to natural causes. He makes off with the only evidence that might hold good in a court of law. I doubt if anyone will ever see that bottle again, with or without the remaining pills. In his judgement, that is the most sensible course of action to take. Doctors, in hospitals especially, must come across cases like this all the time, where a killing by mercy may be the best thing to do. In those cases doctors administer the dose themselves, or simply discontinue the courses of treatment necessary to keep their patients alive. Dr Willoughby may have told the senior doctor in his practice. He may have talked to a senior policeman, in confidence, about what he has done. I am sure the police and the Chief Constable would have agreed with the doctor. Far better to keep the whole thing under wraps and leave Mrs McQuaid alone with her conscience. If she wants to confess at a later stage, stricken with remorse perhaps, she will be able to do so. As long as she sticks to her story and denies all imputations of murder, it will be very difficult to bring a case anyway. You weren’t there. She was. That, I think, is how the way of the world would have worked in this case.’

Powerscourt stopped. He rose from his sofa and began pacing up and down the room like a sea captain on his quarterdeck. ‘Forgive me, Bishop, if I have been somewhat intemperate in my choice of language.’

‘Not at all,’ said the Bishop, ‘you have been most helpful.’ He was rubbing his hands through his hair again. Powerscourt thought this was the signal for maximum distress, closely followed by the fingers strumming on his knees.

‘Could I make a suggestion, Bishop? You need more time to consider your position. You need time to pray, I expect. I would not think it appropriate for you to say anything at all at this stage.’ The man needs some sort of lifeline to get him out of here. Powerscourt was sure of it. It couldn’t have been the most comfortable time Percival Trevelyan had had in his life, however many trials and tribulations come a Bishop’s way. ‘I propose that we should meet again or talk on the telephone, whichever you think is more appropriate, in three or four days’ time. I may have had further thoughts myself by then. I would be more than happy to come to Lynchester or somewhere close by if that would suit. In earlier times, Bishop, I wrote a book on English cathedrals, but I have to confess I did not pay sufficient attention to Lynchester. I would love to see it again. Of course, if you would rather not meet or talk again, that is fine by me.’

The Bishop rose slowly from his chair. ‘Lord Powerscourt, I am more grateful than I can say for your words of wisdom.’

Politeness, Powerscourt realized, could take you a long way if you were a Bishop. Poor man must have to be polite to all sorts of people every single day of the week, with a double helping on Sundays.

‘Thank you. I agree with your proposal, Lord Powerscourt. Four days should be ample. I find if you leave these questions spinning round in your head, they turn into a sort of primeval soup after a while.’

Rather like the Virgin Birth, Powerscourt said to himself, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes – extra caterers discovered suddenly on the mountainside.

‘I must return to Lynchester, Lord Powerscourt. I can see myself out.’

With that the Bishop and his sea of troubles returned to the railway station and his cathedral.

Four days later, the Bishop of Lynchester called Powerscourt to tell him that, for the time being, he had decided to let sleeping dogs lie. He said, rather ominously, that he needed more time to think. But Powerscourt’s association with the diocese of Lynchester was only just beginning. Events called him back a couple of mon. . .