‘Yes, they are,’ said the young man.
‘And where is the book now? Does the Sergeant take it away with him when he leaves?’
‘He does, usually. But he left it behind today. I think he was in a hurry. He said something, I think, about his wife’s mother coming over.’
‘So do you have this book in your room, or the room where the interviews take place?’
‘I do.’
‘Could you copy it before morning, before the Sergeant comes back?’
‘Of course,’ said Alex Bentley, and rose to begin the process of turning himself into the scribe of Le Puy.
‘Don’t go yet,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Having access to that information could make my life easier, Mr Delaney,’ he added. He didn’t say that he would have access through the book to what nine of the pilgrims had told the authorities about where they were on the day John Delaney died. He leant forward and helped himself to the last slice of the tarte aux myrtilles. Lady Lucy declined. Father Kennedy watched it go rather wistfully. He thought he had enough room for one more helping.
‘Let me tell you, gentlemen, my current thoughts. I have been thinking about this situation on the train. In one sense, there is a paradox at the centre of affairs. You have employed me, Mr Delaney, to find out who killed your cousin John. If you are an investigator, what could be better than to have all the suspects cooped up in one place? They can’t go out. They’re in a sort of sealed box where the investigator can have access to them whenever he wants. But that doesn’t suit your particular circumstances. You are here on pilgrimage. You want to move on, all of you.’
‘Of course we want to move on,’ said Michael Delaney with feeling. ‘The question is, how do we do it?’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the first thing is to speed up the process of translation. Lady Lucy or I will translate tomorrow for the Sergeant for a start. You see, I don’t think these people can be persuaded to let you go until the due processes have been completed. I’m not familiar enough with French police procedure to know what is meant to happen next. But I think the time has come to take the initiative.’
Michael Delaney cheered up at this point. He had always believed that in business, if you didn’t take the initiative, somebody else would do it for you and you would lose the deal. Alex Bentley was wondering if this Lord Powerscourt might not be as formidable an operator in his special field as Delaney was in his.
‘Tomorrow morning – ’ Powerscourt began, and then stopped as the rest of the pilgrims began drifting out of the room. He turned to face them. ‘Gentlemen, Miss Delaney, my apologies, I noticed a facility for posting letters in the hotel entrance on my way in here this evening. Have any of you actually posted a message to what we might call the outside world? If you have, would you be so kind as to let me know before you leave the room?
‘Tomorrow morning’, he continued, looking back at Michael Delaney, ‘I have interviews booked with the Mayor of Le Puy, with the Chief of Police in the town and with the Bishop. I telegraphed from Calais to a young man who works for the American Ambassador in London and asked him to arrange them. I think the Mayor may be the key, they’re very influential people in France, these Mayors. With your permission, Mr Delaney, I propose to mention money to them. Obviously it will be your money. Do you have any objections?’
‘None at all,’ said Delaney with a smile. The man had only just arrived and already he was talking about bribing a bishop and a Chief of Police. This was progress indeed. This Powerscourt could have a great career in American business. Alex Bentley didn’t think anything as crude as bribery was going to be employed. He felt Powerscourt was holding back as much as he was divulging about his plans.
Powerscourt noticed two pilgrims hanging back rather sheepishly by the door. ‘Excuse me, Lucy, Mr Delaney,’ he said, and walked over to join them. As he talked to the first one, the second drifted off to a far corner of the dining room.
‘Delaney, Lord Powerscourt, sir, Shane Delaney from Swindon in England, sir. I’m very sorry sir, but I wrote a letter to my wife, Sinead. She’s dying, you see, sir, of some incurable disease and I’m here to take her place. She’s too ill to travel. She can only just get down the road to her mother’s, if you follow me.’
‘My sympathy goes out to you and your wife,’ said Powerscourt solemnly. ‘May I ask what the letter said? In general terms, of course.’
‘Well, sir, in the first version I talked about the food a lot. Your man the chef here is a wizard in the kitchen, as you will see. Then I thought she might get mad at me, filling my face with fancy cooking while she’s dying slowly back there in Swindon. So I tore that one up, sir. The one I did send I just talked about praying with Father Kennedy and the Black Madonna up there in the cathedral and how the Bishop might come and see us. That’s all, sir, cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘You didn’t mention the death of John Delaney at all?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Good God no, sir. She’d have had me on the next train home if I had, so she would.’
Powerscourt smiled and said no harm would come of it. Jack O’Driscoll was unrepentant about writing an article for his paper, which included a lot of detail about the death. But, he assured Powerscourt, he hadn’t sent it yet. Indeed, he hadn’t finished it. ‘The trouble with stories like this, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Jack in his most man of the world voice, ‘is that the readers expect a proper ending, so they do. They don’t like being left hanging in the air.’
Powerscourt nodded his agreement. He said he could see the difficulty. But he made the young man promise that he would only send the article after he, Lord Powerscourt, had seen it and approved it. Jack O’Driscoll showed unusual maturity for a young reporter. ‘Of course, Lord Powerscourt, I can see that. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of a murder investigation, if this is a murder investigation. That’s much more important than a newspaper article.’
As Powerscourt watched Jack O’Driscoll take the stairs two at a time he thought he had found another weapon in his quest, one that might prove much more potent than the young reporter knew. And then he remembered, one or other of the two people he had just spoken to might be a murderer.
‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy later, in bed reading a book about pilgrimages, ‘you’re not really going to bribe these people in the morning, are you?’
Her husband was staring at the ceiling, his mind far away. ‘What’s that, Lucy?’ he said, returning to earth. ‘Of course I’m not going to bribe them. Not in the orthodox way at any rate. We have to convince the authorities, Lucy, that it’s their idea, or in their best interests, to let the pilgrims go, not ours. We have to work things so that they think they have thought of it first.’
‘And just how are you going to do it, my love?’ said Lady Lucy, taking temporary possession of her husband’s left shoulder.
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it might work out like this . . . ’
Early the next morning Lord Francis Powerscourt wrapped his dark blue cape round his shoulders and set off for a quick look round Le Puy-en-Velay. He bought two large black notebooks in a Maison de la Presse, a French newsagent, the pages filled with those irritating squares. He checked out the Town Hall – the Hotel de Ville – the French tricolour flying from the flagpole, in the Place du Martouret, a handsome square with a plaque that told him that the guillotine had been installed here during the Revolution between March 1793 and January 1795. Forty-one citizens had been put to death in this little town. The memory of the French Revolution was everywhere, Powerscourt thought. It might have happened over a century before but the footprints were still there, all over the Republic it had created, wading through blood and terror.
There was a gasp in the dining room of the Hotel St Jacques when Powerscourt took off his cape and sat down to breakfast. He was wearing full military uniform, the black trousers and scarlet jacket of a colonel in the Irish Guards, medals marching across his chest, gold epaulettes on his shoulders. Lady Lucy smiled when she saw the effect. She thought her Francis looked very handsome. Charlie Flanagan dropped a croissant on the floor. Christy Delaney was in the middle of ordering more pain au chocolat and coffee from a pretty waitress, and his newfound French deserted him.