‘No, he couldn’t. One of my men is on guard just outside.’
‘Could he be in one of those rooms off the cloisters?’
‘We’d better go and see.’
18
By the end of the north gallery they came to what had been the refectory. It was completely empty. Next door was the Chapelle St Ferreol with some ancient sculptures but no living pilgrims. The professor had reached the story of David and Goliath from the first Book of Samuel at pillar number twenty-two. Along the east gallery was a series of empty chambers, full of dust with cobwebs circling out from the walls. Powerscourt began to wonder if they hadn’t just miscounted the pilgrims. One of them could have been hemmed in by the taller men in black till he was virtually invisible. The south gallery backed directly on to the side of the church but at the corner where it met the west gallery there was a set of stairs leading upwards.
‘Come on,’ said the Inspector, ‘if he’s not up here we can’t count. We’ll have to go back to school.’
The steps led them into the upper chamber, an extremely tall room with great slim arches. Strips of light were flooding in through a series of openings on an upper level. One side of the room looked directly into the church. Anybody up here could eavesdrop on weddings or baptisms down below without being seen. The vaulting was supported on twelve square ribs radiating out from a central keystone. The room was deserted. Powerscourt and the Inspector tiptoed round it in opposite directions. Then there was a muffled cry from Inspector Leger.
‘My God!’ he said. ‘After all the precautions we’ve taken, there’s been another murder!’
Powerscourt turned round and joined him. At the bottom of a little flight of steps there was a huddled shape. It looked as though somebody had taken all their clothes off and dropped them on the floor. Even in the shadows they could see drops of dark blood oozing from the back of what had once been his head. Lumps of grey matter that might have been brains, Powerscourt thought, were lying on the floor. One hand was still at the back of his head, as if trying to ward off the vicious blows that killed him.
‘Look,’ said the Inspector, pointing to dark marks on the pillar above them, ‘it seems somebody smashed the victim’s head repeatedly into the stone. He might have been gone after a few blows. It must have been like a pummelling from a giant hammer, poor soul. Do you know who he was, Powerscourt?’
Powerscourt peered down at the remains of a human being dumped on the floor of St Peter’s Abbey. ‘Connolly,’ he said quietly, ‘Girvan Connolly, related to Michael Delaney on his mother’s side. He was on the run from his creditors, Inspector, but I don’t suppose they found him here. Whatever his misdemeanours, however large his debts, he hadn’t deserved to die like this.’
‘Could you wait here till I send one of my men up? I’m going to put a man at the bottom of the steps too. All too late, of course, but at least nobody’s going to see him till the doctor gets here. And I’ll tell the priest in charge of all those young men to get them out of here. That’ll be a relief.’
Powerscourt stared sadly into the body of the church. The technique, he realized, was the same in all four murders. God, he thought, there have been four of them and my presence here has been a complete waste of time. Come with me, my friend, up the steps to the Chapel of St Michel in Le Puy, or to the river bank on the Lot, or to the back of the church in Conques, or to this upper chamber, come and I’ll tell you a secret. You’re going to like the secret very much. There was indeed a secret waiting for the person who went with the killer; their own death, always surprising even in more peaceful surroundings. And what was the secret, or the bait? Was it blackmail perhaps, or the promise of some rich pickings from Michael Delaney?
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of one of Inspector Leger’s policemen who crossed himself vigorously when he saw the bloodied bundle that had been Girvan Connolly and began saying a series of Hail Marys.
Something in the Inspector’s face must have alerted Monsignor Michelack, the priest in charge.
‘It is something serious up there, Inspector, is it not so?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ Leger replied.
‘It is not a sudden illness or you would be running for the doctor. Am I right?’
The Inspector wondered briefly if the Monsignor was not in the wrong profession.
‘It is a dead man?’ Michelack whispered. ‘Another of these murders?’
The Inspector realized that most of the clergy of southern France must know about the chequered progress of the Delaney pilgrims, their passage marked by blood and sudden death. The Church after all had been deeply involved in the discussions about what to do with them.
The Inspector nodded sadly. The priest crossed himself very slowly and deliberately. He closed his eyes and said a brief prayer. Then he turned to address his students.
‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I have a sad announcement to make. In the midst of life there is death. Death came this afternoon for one of these pilgrims in the upper chamber here behind me. Murder strikes in one of the most beautiful buildings in France. Before we go I want us to say the prayers for the dead. I want you to form up in ranks of four abreast. We shall progress round the cloisters in the manner of the monks of old, saying the same prayers they would have said for one of their own, fallen asleep in his cell perhaps, or passing away from old age as he worked in the fields.’
The young men were very solemn as they fell into their ranks. The Monsignor placed himself at the head of the column. He walked slowly, his hands joined together and pointing to the ground. He spoke quietly as he led the young men in their devotions.
‘Hail Mary full of grace, blessed art thou among women, pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Amen.’
Two hundred young voices joined him in the Hail Mary. The pilgrims had prostrated themselves against the walls. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy watched from the entrance to what had once been the monks’ refectory, a place of physical rather than spiritual sustenance.
‘Absolve, Lord, we entreat you, the soul of your servant from every bond of sin . . .’
Only those near the front of the procession could hear the words of the Monsignor. For the rest the seminarians’ voices took over.
‘. . . that he may be raised up in the glory of the resurrection and live among your saints and elect, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Powerscourt thought this must be a profound experience for these young men. They will have read in their history books all about the daily life of the monks of centuries past, the seven services, the prescribed ordering of each day in God’s service. Now they were living out one part of it. Surely they would never think about monastic life in the same way again. Today, for them, the past had, quite literally, come to life, walking in order round the four galleries of the Moissac cloisters.
‘Incline your ear, oh Lord,’ the Monsignor went on, ‘to our prayers in which we humbly entreat your mercy, and bring to a place of peace and light the soul of your servant . . . ’
Maggie Delaney, standing very still against a wall near the Pillar of Cain and Abel, was weeping for the beauty of the procession and the soul of Girvan Connolly, sinner and corpse.
‘. . . which you have summoned to go forth from this world,’ the young men carried on, ‘bidding him to be numbered in the fellowship of your saints through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Powerscourt remembered his earlier conversation with Connolly as they walked the pilgrim trail, the pots and pans that wouldn’t sell, the sheets that collapsed after the first use, the debts that closed around him as death had enveloped him this afternoon. He didn’t think Connolly would have much in common with the saints.
‘Hear us, oh Lord,’ the Monsignor looked as though he could go on praying for ever, ‘and let the soul of your servant profit by this sacrifice, by the offering of which you granted that the sins of the whole world should be forgiven, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’