Death and the Jubilee

5

Five men shuffled uneasily into a small office at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. On ordinary days senior doctors used it to pass on bad news to the relatives of their patients, news of the ones who had passed away, the ones who were doomed to pass away quite soon, the ones who would never recover. Long melancholy usage had given the room an aura of sorrow all its own. On one wall hung a portrait of Queen Victoria at her first Jubilee, a small but defiant representative of monarchical continuity, on the other an iconic painting of Florence Nightingale, looking like a saint rather than a nurse. Even her skills would not be enough to save the lives of those whose fate was discussed in here.

This morning the room had been taken over by the Metropolitan Police. Two of its representatives stood uneasily at one end of the long table in the middle of the room. Inspector Burroughs felt that one part of his mission had been accomplished; he picked uneasily at his tie, hoping it had not detached itself from its collar to roam freely around the top of his shirt. Sergeant Cork stood rigidly to attention, looking, Burroughs thought sourly, like a recruitment poster for the force he served. Dr James Compton had come up to town for the day from Oxfordshire. He had attended on Old Mr Harrison for many years. Mr Frederick Harrison, eldest son of Old Mr Harrison, had abandoned his counting house for the more disturbing quarters of the hospital and its morgue. Dr Peter Mclvor, the custodian of the body for St Bart’s, the man responsible for preserving it in some sort of order until it could be identified, made up the final member of the party.

Normally it would have taken ten days or more for a report from an obscure Oxfordshire village about a suspected missing person to reach the Metropolitan Police. This time the process had been accelerated by the normal processes being reversed. The police, alerted by Powerscourt, acting on Johnny Fitzgerald’s report, had gone looking for Samuel Parker’s account of his fears, delivered to an elderly and rather deaf constable in the village of Wallingford.

The inspection of the corpse had been brief. McIvor had moved it into a small ante-room where it had more dignity than in its usual resting place, in which it was surrounded by other cadavers earmarked for dissection by the doctors and their medical students. The two doctors had examined it closely. The body had been turned on to its side, then rolled right over. The doctors muttered to each other about the processes of muscular decay and the impact on the skin of prolonged exposure to the polluted waters of the Thames. Frederick Harrison had merely looked at two places on the body, an area of the upper back and the lower part of the left leg. He shivered slightly at what he saw.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Inspector Burroughs uneasily, ‘pray let us be seated.’ Sergeant Cork thought he sounded like a vicar asking his congregation to take their pews.

‘I have here some forms – regulation forms,’ he added quickly, ‘which may have to be filled in. But first, I must ask you some questions.’

He looked at Frederick Harrison.

‘Do you, Frederick Harrison, of Harrison’s Bank in the City of London, confirm that the body you have seen this morning is that of your father, Carl Harrison, of Blackwater, Oxfordshire?’

Outside, a group of medical students sounded as if they were playing a game of rugby in the corridor. Frederick Harrison looked directly at the policeman.

‘I do.’

Burroughs turned his attention to Dr Compton who was stroking his moustaches. ‘Do you, Dr James Compton of Wallingford, confirm that the body you have seen this morning is that of your patient, Carl Harrison, of Blackwater, Oxfordshire?’

‘I do,’ said the doctor, ‘and let me say for the record -’ Sergeant Cork was writing busily in his police notebook – ‘what convinced me. A small mole on the upper left back had given me concern for some time. It was identical to the one on the body we have just seen. And there were a number of scars on the lower left leg, sustained in a fall from a horse some three years ago. The scars did not heal properly – they seldom do in a man of his age – and required a lot of attention. I was sorry, gentlemen, to have to inspect my own handiwork this morning. I have no doubt, no doubt, at all, that the body is that of Carl Harrison. May his soul rest in peace.’

‘May he rest in peace indeed.’ Inspector Burroughs echoed the doctor’s words. ‘Could I ask you gentlemen to sign these regulation forms I have with me, two of identification, and one of witness to the event.’

Under the watchful eyes of Florence Nightingale the three men signed. The body in the river was no longer a nameless corpse. Scandal and rumour threatened to sweep the City of London once more. Carl Harrison, founder and paterfamilias of one of the City’s leading banks, had been identified as the headless man floating uncertainly by London Bridge.

The St Bartholomew’s doctor returned to his patients. The two policemen marched off to Cannon Street police station to report their findings. Dr Compton returned to Wallingford with a heavy heart.

Frederick Harrison took a cab to his offices in the City. His concern, and it was a very real concern, was less with the fate of his father than with the future of his bank. He, Frederick Harrison, was now the senior partner in the enterprise. He had, of course, been with the bank for many years but nominal control, the biggest shareholding in the bank, had rested with his father. Until his brother Willi’s death the year before, it was Willi, not Frederick, who had been the dominant voice in the bank’s affairs. Frederick was of a nervous disposition, alarmed by having to take decisions, fearful of their consequences afterwards. He was not, by temperament, a banker at all. And now, after this terrible news, he worried about the future of the bank he had never wanted to control.

Confidence, the old man had told them so many times they no longer took any notice, confidence can take decades to acquire, but it can be lost in a day, even in a morning, even in an hour. Confidence was the glue that held the many different elements of the City together. Confidence in Harrison’s Bank could be gone before the bank closed its doors this very afternoon.

Harrison knew that rumour could destroy everything his father had built up. ‘Terrible pity about Old Mr Harrison,’ one whispered condolence would go to a colleague, ‘but do you think we should withdraw our funds at once, just in case?’ ‘I’ve just heard,’ the next rumour would whirl round the narrow streets and alleyways, that So and So are withdrawing their funds from Harrison’s. We must mourn for Old Mr Harrison, of course, but shouldn’t we look to our deposits with them?’ And the echoing rumour, flying back at breakneck speed, ‘Old Mr Harrison was the body in the river. There’s a run on Harrison’s Bank. We must get in now before it’s too late.’

Frederick knew that there was more than enough in the bank to cover all their liabilities many times over. But he was not sure how quickly he could lay his hands on it if the Gadarene swine came hurtling through his doors, all demanding their money at once.

As he walked up the stairs to the partners’ room, he thought of closing the bank for the day as a mark of respect to his father. But that would be a rare move in the City, and could give time for the rumours to spread even faster. The gain of a day could result in a catastrophe the following morning. Frederick looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. The first news would hit the streets before lunchtime. He had five hours to save his bank.

As he paced around the long partners’ room, furnished with the regulation red sofa and armchairs, a roaring fire beneath a handsome fireplace, portraits of Harrisons past and present on the walls, a row of working desks by the windows, he could think of only one precedent to guide him. Barings, the terrible fall of Barings some seven years before that had shaken the City to its foundations, brought on by imprudent lending to Latin America. He remembered his father recounting in hushed tones the emergency meetings in the Bank of England, Harrison’s themselves pledging two hundred thousand pounds to the rescue fund to maintain the reputation of the City of London. Surely the Governor, the Governor of the Bank of England, held the key to this crisis as he had held the key to the last. Should he go and call on the Governor in his handsome offices in Threadneedle Street? He looked at his watch again. A quarter to twelve. By the time he got there it might be too late. If he was seen calling on the Governor, it could be seen as a sign of weakness, of desperation even. Rumour would say that the bank was insolvent and was begging for emergency funds from the Bank of England.

Was there another way? There must be. He looked up at his ancestors on the walls. The streets outside were filled with the normal racket of rushing people, omnibuses, hawkers peddling the latest in new umbrellas and top hats. Calm, Frederick, calm, he said to himself, remembering another of his father’s prescripts. ‘Calm in banking is everything, however shrill the surrounding voices. Calm preserves, panic destroys.’

Frederick Harrison was a tall man, plump bordering on fat. He prided himself on his dress sense, always smart but always one or two steps behind the latest fashion craze to adorn the persons of the jobbers and the brokers. Then a different prescript came to his help. He could not go to the Bank. But the Bank might come to him. A visit in the early afternoon from the Governor, come to express his condolences and indirectly to affirm his confidence in the bank, that might serve his purpose.

He sat at his desk by the window and wrote a short note to the Governor. He knew that any sign of weakness would be misinterpreted, but that he must find some way of bringing the Governor to Harrison’s.

‘It is with deep regret,’ he began, ‘that I write to inform you of the death of my father, Carl Harrison. His was the corpse found floating in the Thames some weeks ago. I know that you worked closely with my father in the past and that you would wish to be informed of his tragic demise with all due speed. Naturally all the members of his family are prostrated by the news, and, in particular, by the strange circumstances of his demise.’

Now came the difficult bit. Frederick scratched his forehead and rested his pen on the tip of a finely waxed moustache. If he said that the bank would continue as before, that could raise a question mark over its ability to do so.

‘As you know,’ he went on, his handsome copperplate flowing across the page, ‘our house has prospered mightily under my father’s guidance and we shall continue to run it in the same fashion in honour of his memory. I do hope we shall have the honour of a visit from you in the near future, as you have so often honoured us in the past.’

Frederick read his note through three times. He summoned a messenger and told him to take the letter to the Bank of England as fast as he could.

Even as the boy began running through the City streets, dodging in and out of the traffic, one hand holding on to his hat, the other clutching the envelope, rumour was on the move again. Dead bodies in these parts usually meant failure, men taking their own lives because they knew they could not meet their obligations. Fear of shame and ostracism drove many to suicide. Earlier that year Barney Barnato, himself the darling of the Kaffir Circus, founder of his very own bank to advance exploration and promote successful speculation on the Rand, had jumped into the sea on a voyage between South Africa and London, his fortune and his misdeeds carried to the bottom of the ocean.

‘That body in the river was Old Mr Harrison.’

‘Impossible!’

‘It’s true! The police identified him this morning!’

‘There must be something wrong with the house! People don’t get murdered if business is in good hands!’

‘How much money do we have with Harrison’s? Can we get it back?’

‘Harrison’s are bankrupt.’

‘Harrison’s are finished. It’s going to be the biggest scandal since Barings! Withdraw!’

Even in the City there is a little respect for the dead. Men felt that maybe they should wait a while before sorting out their positions. Old Mr Harrison had been a widely respected man. His good reputation held the vultures off for a little while. They decided not to act at half-past twelve. They would wait until three.

The Governor of the Bank of England was a small plump man with a neatly trimmed beard. He was not, strictly speaking, a banker at all. Junius Berry had made his name and his fortune as a successful tea merchant. He had been on the Council of the Bank of England before being elevated to the Governorship a year before.

His position was a curious one. No formal powers attached to his office. No Act of Parliament defined and circumscribed his position and his function. Legally, he had no functions at all. He was a schoolmaster without a cane, a policeman without a uniform, a judge with no prisons to incarcerate those he sentenced. But he could cajole. He could whisper. If circumstances made it necessary, he could even wink. He could let things be known. He could bring people together. In a word he had authority, acknowledged sometimes reluctantly, sometimes petulantly by the unruly tribe he moved among. Keep on the good side of the Governor, and it would do you no harm, men said. Cross the Bank of England and it could break you.

Something of these thoughts about his position crossed Junius Berry’s mind late that morning. He grasped the importance of Harrison’s note instantly. He could call on the bank tomorrow or the next day, but he suspected Harrison might find that too late. He could call now, but that would be too soon. Very well. He checked his engagements for the day. He was due at lunch with the Council of Foreign Bond Holders very shortly. On his way back, at half-past two, he would call on Frederick Harrison.

As he ate his lobster, the Governor was told, as his predecessors had been told many times before, that conditions in the market were bad, that many of the foreign governments appeared to have little intention of paying the interest, let alone repaying the capital, on their borrowings; that the situation was so severe in some quarters that gentlemen living and working in the City of London were liable to lose their fortunes; that pressure must be brought to bear on the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to send in the Royal Navy to make the foreigners see sense, and, if that proved impossible, to seize some assets in the countries concerned to ensure that gentlemen living and working in the City of London could continue to do so in the manner to which they had become accustomed.

The Governor listened gravely. Like his predecessors, he promised to take serious account of their concerns. Like his predecessors, he did absolutely nothing. ‘It’s always the same,’ Junius Berry said to himself as he walked to Harrison’s Bank. ‘They feel they have to protect their backs in case things should go wrong and some wretched government abroad defaults on its debt. They can tell their members that they raised the matter with the Governor – what more could they do? It’s a ritual dance, a quadrille, played out at least once a year.’

At half-past two precisely the Governor arrived at Harrison’s Bank. At two thirty-one Richard Martin, trembling with the responsibility of ushering such an Olympian figure up the stairs, showed him into the partners’ room. At two forty-five, the Governor and Frederick Harrison shook hands on the doorstep, pausing for polite conversation for a couple of minutes so the passers-by could spread the word around the City. ‘Very friendly exchange of views.’ ‘Most affable meeting.’ ‘Can’t be anything wrong with Harrison’s if the Governor himself pays a call.’

And so the vultures rose once more into the City sky, circling above the Thames and the Monument in search of other prey.