William Alaric Piper was having trouble with his latest millionaire. He had taken Lewis B. Black on his normal introductory tour, the National Gallery, the weekend at a grand house in the country, the reverential tour round his own exhibition. William P. McCracken, Piper reflected bitterly, may have been overly susceptible to the views of the elders of the Third Presbyterian in Lincoln Street in his home town of Concord, Massachusetts. His wife might have had strong views about pictorial propriety. But at least he had talked. Lewis B. Black scarcely spoke at all. In the National Gallery on a visit lasting almost three hours he had uttered precisely two words in front of a Turner. ‘Nice sunset.’
In Piper’s own gallery he had hummed and erred in front of various paintings. He seemed to be pregnant with speech. But no words came out. For a man of Piper’s temperament, volatile, mercurial, this was maddening. He wanted to pick up Mr Black, not a very large man, and shake him. After two or three hours in his company Piper would feel exhausted, emotionally worn out. He wondered if it was damaging his health. He would have to go to his doctor. Maybe there would be some pills he could prescribe.
When William Alaric Piper tried to work out why Black spoke so little he could only guess. Maybe words were like money. The less you talked the richer you would become. After ten or fifteen years you would become a word millionaire, you would have a hoard, a treasure trove of unspoken thoughts. Maybe Black spent his life surrounded by people who wanted him to make decisions. Close down that factory. Invest in these bonds. Buy this mansion in Newport Rhode Island. Silence would torture his staff as surely as it tortured Piper. Surely, he felt, Cornelius P. Stockman could not be another of the silent plutocrats.
Lord Francis Powerscourt felt like a pygmy, a dwarf, a midget. He was surrounded by other pygmies, dwarves and midgets, humans ranged in front of the west front of Lincoln Cathedral, a vast structure like a fortress guarding the glories of God within. Powerscourt had been in the city for two days now in search of the elusive Horace Aloysius Buckley and the sheer size, the weight, the massiveness of the ancient building still overpowered him. It makes Stonehenge look like something a group of children might put together if they were left with a heap of bricks in a garden, he thought. Maybe God had prefabricated it in heaven and dropped the whole edifice down on to this unlikely Lincolnshire hill. The later bits, he reminded himself, dated from somewhere about 1265, over six hundred years before.
In the mornings Powerscourt waited in attendance at the railway station, looking at the passengers who decamped off the services from London or Peterborough or Ely. In his pocket he had the likeness of a scowling Horace Aloysius Buckley in cricket flannels and a white sweater, bat in his hand. No Buckley had appeared so far. Powerscourt carried his likeness from the lower section of the town up the aptly named Steep Hill. He carried Mr Buckley round the glories of the cathedral, the friezes showing Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, little stone people with little stone animals in a little stone boat leaving Noah’s Ark, the Harrowing of Hell where the monstrous jaws of hell itself are stuffed with the souls of tiny naked sinners, Lust, with a man and a woman having their private parts gnawed at by serpents. He took him along the nave, drenched with space and light, the stone vaults reaching up to heaven. He showed the likeness of Horace Aloysius Buckley the Lincoln Imp, frozen in stone up a pillar, a little devil complete with horns and claws, covered in feathers, unable to prey on humankind any more.
Powerscourt would always remember the moment he found the living Horace Aloysius Buckley. Faintly from somewhere outside the cathedral, a house in the close perhaps, a choir was practising. And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. The voices soared upwards, the strings chasing them through the octaves to rise above the choir, knitting the sound together, driving it forwards, higher and higher. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hall-el-uj-ah. The word echoed in Powerscourt’s brain all through his first conversation with the London lawyer, husband of the beautiful and enigmatic Rosalind Buckley, former lover of the late Christopher Montague.
Buckley was sitting on a stone bench in front of the Angel Choir, messengers of God dispensing the justice of the Lord. He was wearing, not cricket flannels, but a nondescript suit of pale blue with a dark shirt and an undistinguished tie. His shoes were scuffed as if he had been walking a great deal.
‘Are you Mr Horace Buckley?’ said Powerscourt in his gentlest voice.
Buckley stared at him in terror, his eyes bulging, his hands clutching at his watch chain as if it would deliver him from evil. ‘I am,’ he stammered, ‘and who on earth are you?’
Powerscourt felt he could have announced himself as the Angel Gabriel or Moses recently returned from the mountain top and been believed.
‘My name is Powerscourt,’ he said softly. ‘I am investigating the deaths of Christopher Montague, art critic, and Thomas Jenkins, late of Emmanuel College, Oxford.’
Buckley looked paler yet. His hands began a series of convulsive movements round the watch chain, like a nun with her rosary. ‘I see,’ he said finally, with the air of a man whose past has finally caught up with him, ‘I see.’
‘I don’t think we should talk in here,’ said Powerscourt, looking apprehensively at the various representatives of God’s purpose on the surrounding walls of the Angel Choir. ‘Come with me.’
Powerscourt led him past the north choir aisle and along the north-east transept into the cloister. There was a feeble sun here, casting faint shadows across the cloisters. Hallelujah, Powerscourt heard in his head again, Hall-el-uj-ah. He realized suddenly that he had Buckley’s movements the wrong way round. He couldn’t have come from the south at all. He must be on his way back from the north, from Durham perhaps, last resting place of the Venerable Bede. Maybe Carlisle, though Powerscourt remembered from his train map with the red lines that connections were difficult.
‘How many cathedrals have you visited now? For Evensong, I mean?’
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.