Death of a Chancellor by David Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page B

took her in his arms. ‘You go right ahead, Lucy, my love. Just as long as I can hang on to that chair of mine. After all, I may not be about very much for a while.’
    Five days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the nave of Compton Cathedral, waiting for the funeral service of John Eustace to begin. He was early. The ancient
bells, high up in the great tower, were tolling very slowly for one of their own. Powerscourt had arrived at Fairfield Park as a guest of the family, an old family friend from London come down to
help Mrs Cockburn through the ordeal of the funeral and the revelation of the will. So far Powerscourt had asked no questions. He had chatted inconsequentially with the servants. He had spent a lot
of time in the dead man’s bedroom and in his study. He had walked the short journey between the Park and the doctor’s house a number of times. He was waiting until he became a more
familiar figure before he talked to anybody, but he was careful to be as charming as he could to every servant he came across. Augusta Cockburn was astonished at the improvements in daily life in
Fairfield Park since Powerscourt’s arrival. Baths were actually hot. Meals were served at the proper temperature. It’s probably because he’s a man, she told herself bitterly.
    There was still some time before the service was due to start. One row behind him on the other side of the nave Anne Herbert, dressed in sober black, was sitting next to Patrick Butler whose tie
was not sitting properly on his collar. Patrick was thinking about the special edition of his paper to commemorate Victoria’s death several weeks before. It was going to include tributes from
all the major towns in the county. He had prevailed on the cathedral archivist to write an article on the changes to the minster during Victoria’s reign. The headmaster of the main secondary
school, a noted if slightly erratic local historian, had agreed to contribute a similar piece on the changes in the city. The Lord Lieutenant, who had served briefly at court some thirty years
before, was going to write his personal reminiscences of his sovereign. Patrick Butler was pleased that his material had all arrived on time, the headmaster and the archivist both having let him
down on previous occasions at the turn of the century. He had launched an appeal to the major advertisers in his journal to take out larger than usual notices in his pages. ‘Most
newspapers,’ he had told the proprietor of the main hotel with disarming honesty only that morning, ‘are thrown away after a while. But this special edition of the Grafton
Mercury, each page specially edged in black, will be a permanent memorial to Victoria’s death. People will keep it safe. It will pass down the generations. Surely you would want a proper
memorial to your business in such a paper?’
    Still the bells rang out on this wet and windy afternoon. High up on the roof the crows, regular attendees, if not actually confirmed members of the Church of England, added their raucous
tribute to the dead. Powerscourt was looking at the military colours of the local regiment that hung in the north transept and thinking about the dead Queen, in whose armies he had served, and in
whose service he had seen too many lay down their lives. He looked around the congregation, late arrivals filling up the last few pews right at the back of the cathedral. How many, he wondered, in
this great throng, come to pay their last respects to a different person, how many could remember a monarch other than Victoria? He certainly couldn’t. As he looked across the tightly packed
pews on the other side of nave, he thought six or seven persons might remember the reign of William the Fourth. Victoria had seen her island kingdom rise from being an important power to the
greatest empire the world had ever seen. Powerscourt had not been the only person in Europe and North America to wonder if the Boer War in South Africa