‘You remember I’m a reporter, Lord Powerscourt, with one of the big papers in Dublin?’
Powerscourt thought he knew what was coming. He had been expecting it. ‘Of course I do, I remember you telling me all about it.’
‘It was my editor who sent me here,’ Jack O’Driscoll went on. ‘He said it would be good for me. They’ve always been good to me on the paper.’
Powerscourt thought that the customary cynicism of the newspaperman had not yet wormed its way into the O’Driscoll soul.
‘Now I think I’m letting them down, Lord Powerscourt, so I do.’
‘And why is that?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.
‘I think you know just as well as I do.’ O’Driscoll grinned back, a rather naughty grin. ‘Here we are sitting on one of the best newspaper stories of the twentieth century. I promised you before that I wouldn’t do anything or write anything without your approval. Well, I would like to ask you to reconsider, I really would.’
‘What do you think has changed since we spoke about this before?’ Powerscourt wasn’t going to make the young man’s life too easy.
‘It’s obvious, Lord Powerscourt. Forgive me if I talk in newspaper speak for a moment. The last time we had one dead body, thrown off the twisting path up to that little chapel in Le Puy. One murder, even of an Englishman or an Irishman, in foreign parts doesn’t rate too highly. Small para in the news round-up on an inside page at best. Two deaths in the south of France, a dead American added to the mix, that’s better. Mysterious murders. Corpses sent floating down French rivers in the middle of the night. That might get you half a page and a lot of words, four or five hundred, maybe more. But three! Three dead men, sent to their end by a maniac who leaves scallop shells on the bodies of his victims. It’ll be the best murder story since Jack the Ripper stalked the tenements of Whitechapel all those years ago. Think of the ingredients, Lord Powerscourt. American millionaire. Dying son saved from death by a miracle. A pilgrimage paid for by Croesus for members of his family. A pastry priest from Manhattan, keener on his stomach than on the salvation of souls. Some of the most sacred places in France. A Black Madonna. A stolen saint. Three victims all killed in different ways. A famous Anglo-Irish investigator and his wife, summoned from London to solve the mystery. The pilgrims themselves, a dying man, another on the staff of a senator in Washington, another on the run from his creditors. What a cast! What a story! The Psychopath from Le Puy!’
Jack O’Driscoll paused, and took a deep draught of the beer he had brought with him.
‘And how would you tell the story?’ Powerscourt asked.
‘I thought about that this afternoon as a matter of fact,’ the young man said. ‘Nothing like being force-marched along the road like a bloody convict to concentrate the mind. Originally I was going to write it up as one very long story. Then I thought of the boys in the circulation department. There’s nothing they like better than splitting a story up. If they thought they could get away with it, they’d carry the reports of the football matches on successive days rather than the whole thing on the day after the game. Make the readers hungry for more, they say down in circulation. Make them want to buy the paper again the next day. Then we’ll sell more copies, charge more for the advertisements. They’d love this story, Lord Powerscourt, they’d just love it. Maybe I could write one general piece at the front about Mr Delaney’s son and the decision to make the pilgrimage. Some colour stuff about the pilgrim routes through France. Warning in the last paragraph that things are about to go terribly wrong as they reach Le Puy. Murder starts in tomorrow’s paper. Reserve your copy of the Irish Times now, that sort of thing. Then it’s a dead body a day. The Scallop Shell Murders, I quite like that for a title. What do you think, Lord Powerscourt?’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘When you put it like that, it is indeed a tremendous story, even if it does deal with the death of people we know. And I can imagine how anxious you must be to see the story in print before anybody else gets wind of it. By all means, write the story if that is what you think best. But I must ask you not to publish it, not yet any rate.’ Even as he spoke Powerscourt was desperately trying to think of an argument that would convince the young man to hold his fire.
‘Of course I shall pay great attention to your views, Lord Powerscourt.’ Powerscourt knew immediately what that meant. If Jack O’Driscoll decided to publish, his views would be politely ignored.
‘Let me tell you what I think would happen, Jack.’ Powerscourt pushed out the Christian name, like an exploratory pawn. ‘There would be a tremendous fuss. The other papers would have to decide whether to ignore it, because it came from a rival, or to send their own reporters out. English papers, French papers, American papers, the route to Compostela would soon be as packed as a Fleet Street pub. And what would happen then? I think the French would throw us out. A few dead pilgrims in holy places, that’s a minor irritant. France mocked because its detectives cannot solve a crime, the murderer still on French soil, there would be an outcry. And these pilgrims, who you know far better than I, would they not be cheated of their mission? Michael Delaney would not have offered proper thanks for the salvation of his son. Shane Delaney with the dying wife, how is he going to face his Sinead when he comes home without fulfilling his goal, and her hopes of a miracle to save her life, however improbable they might be, are dashed to the ground? A bitter cup that would be for Mrs Delaney. And what of the others whose motives are less clear? Are they to be denied what they hoped for from the pilgrimage? And all for a few newspaper articles which might make your name but would be soon forgotten when another scandal came along to knock it off the front pages.’
Powerscourt wondered if this would work. He felt that only an appeal to the wishes of his fellow pilgrims might succeed in stopping the young man and his story. To his astonishment Jack O’Driscoll laughed.
‘There’s a very old sub-editor on the paper, Lord Powerscourt, who’s always telling us not to take the business of journalism and newspapers too seriously. Remember it’ll be wrapping up somebody’s fish and chips or lining their knicker drawers tomorrow, he says. You’re right about Shane Delaney’s wife, of course. She’s much more important than the words in a newspaper article.’
The young man looked sad all of a sudden. Powerscourt couldn’t decide whether it was because of Mrs Delaney or because he was going to have to postpone publication yet again.
‘Why don’t you write as much of it as you can?’ he suggested. ‘It can’t be easy to get the tone right first time round.’
Jack O’Driscoll looked at him carefully. ‘I might just do that, Lord Powerscourt. But tell me this, do you know who the murderer is now?’
‘Not yet,’ said Powerscourt delphically. As the young man took his leave he wondered if he had said the right thing. ‘Not yet’ implied that he might be on the verge of a breakthrough. He didn’t want word to get round the pilgrim grapevine that he was on the verge of solving the mystery. That might not be good for his health. Maybe he should have said that he hadn’t a clue. But that might find its way into the newspaper article and he would be made to look a fool. One other thought struck him as he went in search of Alex Bentley. He wondered if young Jack O’Driscoll might have too soft a heart for ultimate success in his chosen profession.
Lady Lucy Powerscourt was having a very different sort of conversation with another of the pilgrims, Christy Delaney, the young man from Ireland due to go up to Cambridge in the autumn. Christy had asked Lady Lucy to take a walk with him. He wanted some advice.
‘Now then, Christy.’ Lady Lucy smiled at the young man as they left the village and headed up the twisting road towards Entraygues. ‘How can I help?’
The young man took a deep breath. ‘I’m in love, Lady Powerscourt, I’m sure of it.’