Death of an Old Master (24 page)

Buckley looked at him in confusion. How on earth did the man know what he had been doing? ‘Eighteen, I think,’ he said finally, talking like a man in a dream. ‘I’ve got
to go to Ely and Peterborough on the way back.’

‘I must ask you about the murder of Christopher Montague, Mr Buckley,’ said Powerscourt, passing, he noticed, the carving of The Man with the Toothache on the cloister wall. Poor
fellow, Powerscourt thought, how long has the unfortunate man been suffering? Seven centuries of toothache? God in heaven.

Buckley twitched at his tie. He pulled his jacket straight. He’s returning to being a lawyer, Powerscourt said to himself.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Horace Aloysius Buckley firmly. ‘It was terrible. The poor man looked so distraught, sitting in his chair with his neck that purple colour.’

‘God bless my soul, Mr Buckley! Did you see him when he was dead? In that flat in Brompton Square?’ asked an astonished Powerscourt.

‘Let me explain to you,’ said Buckley, looking furtively about him. Only the cold stones of Lincoln’s cloister were listening. ‘I had known about Rosalind’s
friendship with Montague for some time. She’s very proficient at archery, you know. She used to tell me she was going to meetings all over the place. I suspect she was really going to see
Montague.’ Powerscourt had a sudden vision of a Diana with her bow, clad in a skimpy pale pink shift, one breast exposed, a quiver full of arrows at her back, cursing the hunter Actaeon who
is turned into a stag and torn into pieces by his own dogs. Was it Titian? Perhaps he could check with the President of the Royal Academy.

‘She used to go out at all kinds of strange times in the evenings,’ Buckley went on. ‘I followed her. She always went to the same place, to that flat in Brompton Square. I saw
him come down one evening to say goodbye. They embraced on the doorstep. I was only twenty feet away, hiding behind a tree. It was terrible.’

Buckley paused. Powerscourt waited. He said nothing. He observed that Buckley had stopped under the head of a lion, a rather fierce lion. ‘Forgive me, Powerscourt, for burdening you with
my domestic troubles,’ Buckley went on, his fingers still describing strange arabesques around the watch chain, ‘it is strange if you marry late. I do not think I was ever very
attractive to women. So, as the years pass, you think you may end your days as a bachelor, happy enough perhaps, but without the consolations of wife and children.’

Powerscourt suddenly thought of Lucy standing beside him with his map on the floor, of Thomas rushing around the house, of Olivia snuggled up on the sofa next to her mother. Hall-el-uj-ah.

‘Then I met Rosalind,’ Buckley went on. ‘I lost my head over her. I could not believe it when she agreed to become my wife. I had to ask her to say yes three times when I
proposed to her.’ He paused again and looked down at the worn stones at his feet. ‘I knew where she kept the keys to Montague’s flat. I had them copied. Four days before he died I
went to see him. I offered him twenty thousand pounds to leave England, to go and live abroad, never to see Rosalind again.’

‘What did he say?’ said Powerscourt, suddenly very afraid. Once the police knew what Buckley had just told him they would have to arrest him. They would have no choice. He could see
Buckley in the witness box, a hostile jury before him, a sombre judge fingering his black cap as Buckley fingered his watch chain.

‘He was very polite. He asked for four days to think about it. No doubt he talked to Rosalind about it. I was on my way to talk to him that night. Only he was dead when I got
there.’

‘Did you notice anything unusual about his flat?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Some of the books had gone,’ said Buckley. ‘The desk was empty. I couldn’t help myself. I thought there might be letters in there, you see, from Rosalind. But it was
completely empty. It must have been about eight o’clock.’

A bell tolled very loudly somewhere above their heads. It went on tolling. Powerscourt thought you must be able to hear it ten miles away across the bleak Lincolnshire countryside. He looked at
his watch.

‘Mr Buckley,’ he said quietly. ‘I find your story fascinating. But it would be a great pity if we both came all this way and missed Evensong.’ He led the way past a
wooden Virgin and Child on the wall into the main body of the cathedral. They took their seats at the back of St Hugh’s Choir. A small congregation, the old and the mad of Lincoln,
Powerscourt thought, were sitting upright in their pews.

The choir was oval in shape, the stalls of dark brown wood. On the back of some of them were inscribed the names of the local livings attached to the holder of that particular office of the
cathedral. The precentor, Powerscourt noticed, seemed to have had about eight livings attached to his position. Seated angels carved on the choir desks were playing a portable organ, harps, pipes,
drums. And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

The footsteps of the choir and the clergy echoed around the cathedral as they processed up the nave towards the high altar and turned to take up their positions. The senior choristers wore black
capes edged with blue. The others wore blue cassocks with white surplices on top. A verger with a staff preceded the Dean.

‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed,’ the Dean’s voice was a rich bass, sounding as though it was regularly lubricated with fine port,
‘and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’

The congregation knelt for the prayers. Powerscourt could feel Buckley whispering the words to himself as they proceeded. Man must be word perfect by now, said Powerscourt to himself, he’s
on his nineteenth Evensong in as many days.

They rose to their feet. The choir were singing now, faces solemn as they looked down at their music sheets or watched the conducting hands of the choirmaster.

‘My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour.’ The treble voices were rising towards the vaults above. The great organ looked on. The wider
congregation of saints and sinners, bishops and precentors interred beneath the floor listened too as the Magnificat went on.

‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and he hath exalted the humble and meek.’ Buckley’s eyes were closed. Powerscourt wondered what happened to those treble voices
when they had broken. Did they turn into fine tenors or altos, still able to sing on into their adult years? Or did the glory of their youth simply vanish for ever, replaced by a perfectly normal
adult voice with no distinction at all? It seemed rather unfair.

More prayers. Then, as prescribed in the order of service in the Book of Common Prayer, in Quires and Places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem, composed, the Dean’s fruity voice
informed his worshippers, by the former master of the choir of this cathedral, William Byrd.

That was when Powerscourt noticed another procession. Not a procession of men and boys in cassocks and surplices, but men in a different uniform, the dark blue of the Constabulary of
Lincolnshire. They were trying to walk softly to avoid interrupting Evensong but their boots sounded like a posse come to arrest a murderer in the night. Three of them remained by the door of the
west wing. Powerscourt thought he recognized the balding head of Chief Inspector Wilson, a determined expression fixed on his face as if he were a gargoyle from the walls outside. The rest fanned
out to guard the various exits. There must have been a dozen of them.

Powerscourt wondered if he should tell Buckley, still listening raptly as the last notes of the anthem died away, his hands still now, eased perhaps by the beauty of the music to desist from the
frantic scrabbling at the watch chain. He did not.

‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The Dean was on the final prayers now, the choir still
standing, Buckley on his knees, Powerscourt peering through the tracery at the positions of the policemen. The perils and dangers of this night have certainly arrived for Horace Aloysius Buckley,
Powerscourt thought, and they may last for more than forty days and nights. They might last for ever. Or a noose and a drop might put an end to them for the rest of time.

The blue cassocks and the white surplices made their way out of St Hugh’s Choir. The old and the mad of Lincoln shuffled out slowly, gossiping quietly with their neighbours. Powerscourt
put a restraining hand on Buckley’s shoulder.

‘Don’t go yet,’ he whispered quietly. ‘There are policemen everywhere. I fear they may have come for you.’

The hands started their desperate motions with the watch chain.

‘I don’t think they will arrest you in the cathedral itself,’ said Powerscourt to his companion. ‘I think it counts as a place of sanctuary.’ But not for long, he
said to himself, as Buckley’s eyes started round the building.

‘Is there anything more you want to tell me?’ said Powerscourt. How had they found Buckley, he wondered? Had the Lincoln Imp escaped from the walls and flown to Chief Inspector
Wilson’s dreary office in the Oxford police headquarters? Had one of the angels floated through the flying buttresses with the same message of doom? ‘Why were you in Oxford the day
Thomas Jenkins was killed?’

‘Powerscourt . . .’ Buckley had become quite calm. ‘Please believe me. I did not kill Christopher Montague. I did not kill the man Jenkins. I had gone to Oxford to attend
Evensong at Christ Church. I took tea with my godson at Keble beforehand. It was a coincidence that I was there at the same time as the murder.’

‘Do you need a lawyer, if they do arrest you?’ said Powerscourt. He saw two of the policemen had arrived at the north end of the choir and were waiting for them to leave. A guard of
honour to take Horace Aloysius Buckley from the house of God to the police cells of Lincoln.

‘I am a lawyer,’ Buckley replied with a bitter smile. ‘Let me ask you one question. Do you think I am guilty?’

Powerscourt paused. The policemen were shuffling anxiously from foot to foot. The bell was tolling again.

‘No, Mr Buckley,’ he said at last, ‘I do not think you are guilty.’

One of the policemen coughed, loudly, as if ordering them out of the sanctuary of the choir. Horace Aloysius Buckley rose from his seat. Powerscourt accompanied him to the door. Buckley went
with courage, Powerscourt felt, his head held high for the ordeal that was to come.

Chief Inspector Wilson waited until they were just outside the west front, pygmies once more in front of the great building.

‘Horace Aloysius Buckley,’ he said in his official voice, ‘I am arresting you in connection with the murders of Christopher Montague and Thomas Jenkins. I must warn you that
anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.’

They bundled Buckley into a waiting carriage and rattled off over the cobblestones. The choir were practising again, the sound louder outside the great walls. They must have gone straight from
Evensong back to the rehearsal. This time the words were bitter to a listening Powerscourt.

‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ the beautiful treble voice soared above the towers and the statues of Lincoln Minster, ‘and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the
earth.’

A familiar voice greeted Powerscourt on his return to Markham Square. The voice was accompanied by heavy footsteps across the first floor landing.

‘Is little Olivia hiding in this room?’ There was a sound of chairs being moved. ‘No, she’s not,’ said the voice. More footsteps. The voice was in the drawing room
now, Powerscourt himself half-way up the stairs.

‘Maybe she’s in this room instead,’ said the voice. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find her, I shall have to look for her until midnight at
least.’

There was a very faint squeak as if Olivia Eleanor Hamilton Powerscourt, now five years old, might indeed be in that room. Hide and seek, Powerscourt thought, Olivia’s favourite game. He
had once lost her for an entire afternoon playing hide and seek at his country house in Northamptonshire when Olivia had hidden so successfully in the branches of a tree that she was virtually
invisible from ground level. Hide and seek, it must be hereditary, he had been playing hide and seek with murderers for years.

‘Is she behind this chair? That would be a very good place to hide. No, she’s not.’ Johnny Fitzgerald grinned at Powerscourt and put his index finger to his lips, requesting
silence.

‘There’s a great big sort of trunk thing over here. I wonder if she’s inside there. Let me see if I can get the lid off. My word, it’s very heavy.’ Johnny
Fitzgerald made heaving and groaning noises as if he was pulling a carriage and four up the King’s Road single-handed.

‘No, she’s not. She’s lost. I shall never find her at all.’ Johnny’s voice sounded sad now.

‘Ah ha,’ he said more cheerfully, ‘I know where she must be. She’s underneath this little table with the big cloth over it that reaches right down to the floor.
I’ll just bend down now, I’m going to lift this cloth up and then Olivia will be found. Here we go. Up it comes. This is where she must be . . . But she’s not there!’

A note of astonishment brought out another faint squeak from over by the windows. Powerscourt made a sign to his friend. He pointed first to the double doors that divided the drawing room in
two. They were not wide open, but not completely closed. There was just enough room behind the door for a little person to hide. Then he pointed to the window.

‘How silly of me,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, who never tired of playing games with the Powerscourt children, ‘of course I know where she is. I should have thought of it before.
She’s hiding behind those doors over there.’ He made especially noisy footsteps as he crossed the room. ‘It’s no good, Olivia,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Time’s
up. Going to get you now. This is where you are.’

Johnny opened the doors with a great flourish. ‘Goodness me,’ he said, ‘she’s not here either. I shall have to give up.’ Powerscourt by now had tiptoed over to the
curtains. He made another sign to Johnny, pointing first to himself, then to a space behind the rocking chair in the corner.