Death of an Old Master lfp-3

by David Dickinson

  Death of an Old Master

  ( Lord Francis Powerscourt - 3 )

  David Dickinson

  David Dickinson

  Death of an Old Master

  Prologue

  Winter 1896

  The old man walked slowly across the fields. A fine rain was falling on his bare head. He let himself into the little church and walked to the position he knew so well after forty-five years as the bell ringer of St Peter’s Church. He slipped through the faded red curtain and unhooked the rope from its place on the wall. High above him in the tower the bell still carried the inscription from its maker. ‘Thomas Wilson made mee, 1714.’ The old man began to pull, his arms rising regularly above his shoulders like the swell on the sea.

  The bell tolled for a funeral, the funeral of one who would have been the lord of the manor had he still lived there before his God called him home. Charles Edward Windham Fitzmaurice de Courcy was in the church already, his coffin resting beneath the inscriptions to earlier de Courcys on the walls. It was a quarter past ten in the morning, the service scheduled for eleven o’clock.

  Two hundred and fifty yards away through the morning mist that swirled across the fields the great Jacobean mansion of de Courcy Hall continued to resist the elements as it had for the past two hundred and seventy years. Inside in the Great Hall a melancholy party was preparing to set off for the church. Alice de Courcy, wife of the dead man, wondered about her future. Edmund de Courcy, the eldest son, wondered about the size of his inheritance. Julia and Sarah, his younger sisters, wondered if they would be able to go and live in London all the year round. None of them had seen the dead man, husband and father, for the past fourteen years.

  ‘Do you think it’s time to go, Edmund?’ Mother touched her son softly on the arm. ‘We don’t want to be late.’ It was half-past ten.

  ‘Not yet, Mother, there’s still time.’

  In 1882 Charles de Courcy had abandoned his fields and his family to live with another woman in the south of France. There, so the family believed, he had fathered another two children. There, the family were convinced, he had squandered most of the family inheritance on his mistress. And she, the mistress, had announced her intention of attending the last rites this melancholy morning, though whether she would bring the children no one knew.

  ‘Did Smithson say that woman would come to the house first or go direct to the church?’ Alice de Courcy asked for the hundredth time. Alice shook every time she thought about this meeting if meeting there had to be. Smithson was the family lawyer, based in Fakenham, who had been the unhappy conduit of many messages between the two households over the preceding decade and a half. The family knew there had been great arguments about a will, with lawyers coming up from Norwich and even London to thrash out the rights of an estate owner to dispose of his property as he wished in the dusty offices of a Norfolk town. Every conversation in de Courcy Hall since they heard of the death had revolved round this single point. Would the Frenchwoman come to the Hall or would she go direct to the church?

  ‘You know Smithson didn’t say, Mama.’ Edmund was as gentle as he knew how. ‘But I don’t think there is time for her and her party to come here and then go to the church. I think we’d better set off.’ It was twenty to eleven.

  And so the de Courcy family set off across their fields for the last rites of a man they would never see again. In their different ways they prepared to meet another family they had never seen before, half-brothers, half-sisters perhaps. The girls thought it was rather dramatic and exciting, their cheeks turning red as the wind lashed through the trees. Alice was not sure she could bear it. Edmund, aware of his new responsibilities at the age of twenty-five, was uncharacteristically worried about his mother.

  To the north, past the sodden cows that huddled for shelter beneath the twisted trees, the North Sea marked the outer limits of the estate. Generations of de Courcys had planted trees in ever-growing numbers as a protection against the storms that whistled in from the angry coastline. To the south the estate stretched for many miles in the direction of Norwich.

  Sometimes the bell was very loud, as if it was right in front of them, sometimes it drifted off to the west with the wind.

  A bedraggled vicar greeted them at the door. There were tiny holes in his cassock. His boots were leaking. Payments from the de Courcy family had become increasingly irregular over the years.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs de Courcy, Edmund, Julia, Sarah.’ The vicar smiled a feeble smile, his eyes flickering down the long drive that led to de Courcy Hall. It was ten minutes to eleven.

  Edmund led his family to their pew at the front of the church, his mother huddling up against the wall as if she didn’t want to be seen. The bell was still tolling. The organ was playing a Bach fugue very softly. The women fell to their knees to pray. Servants and neighbours were filling up the pews behind them.

  On the floor to Edmund’s left, two of his ancestors stared up at the ceiling and the next life from their brass memorial on the floor. ‘Richard de Courcy lies here, God have mercy on his soul. Lady Elizabeth who was the wife of Richard de Courcy lies here, to whose soul may God be merciful. This in the year of our Lord 1380.’ Grave and inscrutable, serious and humble, the ancient faces slept on. It was five to eleven.

  In the pew opposite, Mr Smithson, the lawyer from Fakenham, was kneeling in prayer. Beside him a rather smartly dressed young man was staring at the memorial tablets on the walls. As the bell stopped a slow drip began to fall loudly on to the floor just behind the pulpit. It seemed to have caught the rhythm of the bell, the plops on the stone floor sounding at the same interval as the creation of the bellwright Thomas Wilson far above in its tower. Edmund noticed a small trail of green slime making a determined advance on the wall beside the altar.

  Edmund stole a quick glance behind him. All the pews were full now, except for the one opposite his own. The organ began to build towards a crescendo. The vicar was busying himself by the altar, water dripping from his boots and forming little puddles on the floor.

  At two minutes to eleven Edmund sensed there were new arrivals. You didn’t have to look round. There was a low murmur of excitement from the pews behind. There was a firm click as the door was closed by the newcomers. Julia and Sarah began to turn their heads to look until Edmund nudged them both firmly in the ribs. Alice de Courcy huddled ever closer to the wall and sank to her knees again to pray for deliverance.

  A handsome woman of about forty years of age, escorted by a boy of ten and a girl of seven or eight, sat down in the pew opposite. Edmund realized with a shock that the little boy looked remarkably like he had done at the same age. All three stared directly in front of them.

  The vicar coughed firmly. Resolutely looking at the back of the church he began the service.

  ‘I am the Resurrection and the life.’ The vicar’s voice was thick as if he had a heavy cold. ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  The Frenchwoman in her pew was having difficulty finding her place in the unfamiliar prayer book of the Anglican Church. The smartly dressed young man sitting beside lawyer Smithson leant forward and gave her his own, opened at the correct page. She smiled slightly in acknowledgement.

  Edmund’s memories of his father were remote. Sometimes he had to admit that he found it hard to remember what his father looked like and he had to go and stare at the portrait in the Long Gallery of de Courcy Hall where an unbroken line of nine of his male ancestors adorned the walls. He dimly recalled his father teaching him to play cricket in the walled garden at the side of the house. He thought his father had been away a lot, in London or Norwich, always ap
parently on business. He recalled all too well the shouting matches that often accompanied his return, his mother left weeping softly in a corner of the drawing room. This new half-brother and half-sister must have very different, fresher memories but he had no idea what they were. He wondered if the little boy had been taught to play cricket in some hot French garden, with French servants bringing glasses of lemonade to drink under the trees.

  ‘We brought nothing into this world,’ the vicar sounded hoarser now, ‘and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

  Edmund thought bitterly that his father, contrary to the words of the book of Job, had brought a great deal into this world. But had he left anything behind? Edward gazed sadly at the drip continuing its monotonous journey from ceiling to floor. He thought of the estate steward shaking his head as he pored over the account books. What would be left? How much would be left? How would it be divided?

  Roger Bilton, the de Courcys’ closest neighbour, had risen to read the second lesson. He was a tall, stooping man, reputed never to have travelled any further from his home than the city of Norwich. He spoke the words in a high querulous tone, as if he didn’t believe them.

  ‘Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’

  Another memorial on the floor echoed the words of St Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians. Thomas de Courcy was portrayed on his brass in full armour, holding a very long sword, as if about to go into battle. Edmund remembered the full description of the armour with its archaic vocabulary of gorgets and vambraces, tassets and epaulieres, jambarts and rerebraces, genouillaires and sabbatons.

  Livest Thou Thomas? Yeas. Where? With God on Highe.

  Art thou not dead? Yeas. And here I lye.

  I that with men on earth did live to die

  Died to live with Christ eternallie.

  The vicar was praying now, the prayers interrupted by his hacking cough, praying that the dead man’s sins might be forgiven so he could be received into God’s gracious mercy and protection.

  Three of his father’s transgressions were sitting but three feet away from him, Edmund thought to himself, casting a quick glance at the alternative family in its pew. The mother was impassive, the boy and girl taking their cue from their mother and staring resolutely straight ahead. Julia and Sarah had managed to stand right at the front of their box pew so they could look sideways without being noticed. Alice, their mother, was still huddled against the wall.

  The prayers were punctuated by the regular drip on to the floor, sounding another note of desolation and decay, as if not only the body of the dead man but the very fabric of the buildings on his estate was beginning to rot away.

  There was no sermon from the vicar. He found it impossible to know what to say in such circumstances.

  At last, at twenty minutes past eleven, it was all over.

  ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’

  Scarcely had the word ‘Amen’ died away when the smartly dressed young man sitting beside lawyer Smithson unlatched his door, opened the door of the pew in front of him and escorted the French party out of the church as fast as decency allowed. Just once Edmund met the eyes of his father’s mistress. Julia and Sarah had one quick glimpse of the half-brother and sister they had never seen before. Almost before the congregation realized what was happening the French party had fled the field.

  The bell began to toll again. Smithson had a brief word with Edmund and his mother as they stood at the gate of the church, staring out at what had been their fields, but might be their fields no longer.

  ‘They’re not going to come to the house,’ he said, trying to reassure the widow, ‘they’re going back to their hotel.’

  Smithson paused. He suspected that the ordeal of having to listen to the dead man’s will being read out, surrounded by his mistress and the bastard offspring, might prove too much for Alice de Courcy.

  ‘The young man who took them away is called McKenna, Richard McKenna. He works for Finch’s Bank. McKenna’s going to tell them the details of the will there before they go back to France.’

  How long did it take, Edmund wondered, to travel from the south of France to a remote house in Norfolk for a service that had lasted less than half an hour? Perhaps it was the will, an unknown financial future, not family piety that had brought them on their long journey into the rain and the wind that surrounded St Peter’s Church. Just visible on the long drive that led to the main road, the French carriage was making good speed as if they wanted to escape as fast as they could.

  ‘I thought,’ Smithson went on apologetically, ‘that a rest would be a good idea before the reading of the last will and testament. Mr McKenna and I propose to call on you at three o’clock this afternoon. Would the library be suitable, do you think?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Edmund and steered his mother back across the fields to de Courcy Hall. The congregation drifted off. The vicar wondered yet again if he could afford another pair of boots. The great bell rang out across the countryside and almost reached the sea. This afternoon, it would be decided. This afternoon, they would know their fate and their future.

  ‘“I, Charles Edward Windham Fitzmaurice de Courcy, formerly of de Courcy Hall in the county of Norfolk, currently resident at the Chateau de Fontcaude, Grasse, Alpes Maritimes, France, do hereby cancel, revoke and annul all previous wills and testaments.”’

  Mr Smithson, the lawyer from Fakenham, had put on his glasses. The library was on the first floor of de Courcy Hall, great oak bookcases rising almost to the ceiling. Many of the books had been purchased in Rome or Geneva, Naples or Venice, by earlier de Courcys on the Grand Tour, shorter visits to Europe than the dead man who had stayed there fifteen years. There was a large mahogany table in the middle of the room. Mr Smithson and his banker companion sat at the head, with the family below them. Outside the rain was still falling. The wind was battering against the windows. Even with a fire the room was cold.

  Julia started at the mention of the word ‘Chateau’. She had visions of some enormous palace filled with tapestries and exciting histories of romance and elopement. Edmund was wondering how much a chateau would cost to run, even a little one.

  There was a lot more legal preamble. Smithson read this as fast as he could. Then he paused. Richard McKenna was looking at what appeared to be a first edition of Dr Johnson’s dictionary, the dust sitting thickly on the top as if nobody had checked the meaning of a word for over a hundred and forty years.

  ‘“I come now to my testimonary dispositions.”’ Smithson glanced at the dead man’s family, Alice looking pale, the girls interested, Edmund apprehensive. ‘“De Courcy Hall, its contents, furniture, pictures, ornaments and everything else pertaining unto it, I leave to my son Edmund George Windham de Courcy.”’

  The girls looked relieved. They had never lived anywhere else. They would be safe. Smithson coughed. He looked slightly embarrassed as he read on.

  ‘“My estates, farms, woods, horses, cattle and sheep and all other farm animals”’ – there followed a precise geographical description of all these properties – ‘“I leave absolutely to Madame Yvette de Castelnau of Grasse for her sole use and that of her children, Francois and Marie-Claire.”’

  Charles de Courcy had done the unthinkable. He had failed to keep one of the oldest rules of the English gentry in disposing of their property. He had broken it up. In his wish to accommodate his two families he had separated the house from the lands which supported it. None of the women seemed to understand what had happened. Perhaps they had been hypnotized by the legal prose, the dead language of lawyers come to impose its will on the living.

  Edmund did. He did not know just how terrible the news was, but
he knew it meant catastrophe for himself, his mother and his sisters.

  ‘“Signed in the presence of witnesses, Albert Clement, notaire of Grasse and Jean Jacques Rives, banker of Nice, on the twentieth day of October 1895.”’

  Smithson wiped his brow. He coughed apologetically. The women looked dumb. Edmund was staring at the leather volumes opposite him, wondering how much they were worth.

  ‘I am afraid there is more that you must know,’ Smithson said, glancing briefly at his companion. ‘Mr McKenna here comes from Finch’s Bank which handles the family financial affairs. I fear you should hear from him.’

  Great God, thought Alice de Courcy, is there worse to come on this terrible day? That woman and her children coming to the funeral was bad. Breaking up the house and the estate, she suspected, was worse.

  Richard McKenna drew some papers from his bag and placed them on the table. He spoke very gently. ‘The financial position is not good,’ he began. ‘Let me deal with the house first. There are two mortgages outstanding on the property in which we sit this afternoon. They are for a total of forty thousand pounds, secured on de Courcy Hall itself. The current interest on those mortgages comes to approximately fifteen hundred pounds a year.’ The figures dropped into the room like the drops of rain from the leak in the church at the service that morning, cold, regular, unstoppable.

  ‘The estates are also mortgaged,’ McKenna went on. Edmund thought he sounded like a doctor telling his patient that they had an incurable disease. Perhaps they had. Financial cancer had spread to Norfolk, a plague of debt and impossible obligations.

  ‘They are mortgaged to the value of sixty thousand pounds. The interest on those loans from Finch’s Bank comes to the total of two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds a year.’

  McKenna paused. Now came the hammer blow. ‘The rent rolls from the estates have been falling lately. The properties are not perhaps in such good repair as they once were.’ His eyes glanced up at the cracks in the ceiling, the broken window panes, the worn patches in the carpet. ‘At present the income amounts to just four thousand pounds a year, barely enough to cover the interest payments.’