Death and the Jubilee

12

Lord Francis Powerscourt was tossing in his bed in Markham Square. Beside him Lady Lucy slept peacefully, one arm thrown lightly across her husband’s shoulder. Powerscourt was in Blackwater again, inside the little temple by the lake, the Pantheon. The light was fading fast. Suddenly he heard the iron gates shut with a terrible clang. Outside them the two great wooden doors closed as well. Powerscourt did not have the keys. The only light came from the top of the cupola. He was looking at the statues who were now his companions, Hercules and Diana, Isis and Ceres.

Then the whole temple began to fall, with ever-increasing speed. It fell as though there was a special shaft to carry it down to the hidden bowels of the earth. Procul, o procul este, profani. He remembered the inscription on the Temple of Flora, the Sibyl’s warning to the unsanctified in the Aeneid to keep clear of the entrance to the underworld. The temple was still shooting down, the flicker of light now reduced to a pinprick far far above.

As suddenly as it had fallen, the temple stopped. The iron gates swung open. The wooden doors followed. A ghostly light shone through the dead trees and the withered bushes that made up the new landscape. Wisps of fog floated by in the gloom. I’m in the underworld, Powerscourt said to himself. Soon I shall meet the boatman Charon, his eyes alive with flame, who ferries the bodies across the river of the dead. Here in the shadows I shall meet pallid disease, dejected age, fear, the terrible spectres Death and Decline, War and Lunatic Discord with the bloodstained ribbons in her snaky hair.

There was a loud and persistent knocking. Powerscourt wondered if the bodies of the unburied, doomed for all eternity to wait on the wrong side of Charon’s river, were beating on the side of his boat. The knocking grew louder. Powerscourt now felt sure that the noise was not caused by the unburied, but was a message from one of the other monsters of the underworld, the flaming Chimaera with her terrifying hiss, Briareus with a hundred arms.

Lady Lucy was shaking him violently on the shoulder.

‘Francis, Francis darling, you’re not dead, are you?’

‘I’m not dead, Lucy. I was in a dream. I was in the underworld.’

‘Well, you’re not in the underworld now, Francis. There’s somebody knocking at the front door. They’ve been at it for about five minutes while you were down below.’

‘What time is it?’ whispered Powerscourt, fastening his dressing gown and looking in vain for his slippers.

‘It’s a quarter to six. Can’t you get a move on?’

Powerscourt fled down two flights of stairs to his front door. As he opened it he found himself looking at the broad back of an officer of the Metropolitan Police.

‘Lord Powerscourt, sir?’ The back turned round. ‘I have a message for you from the Commissioner’s office, sir.’

‘Come inside, man, come inside.’ Powerscourt struggled with a lamp in his hall. He ripped open the white envelope.

‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’ he read, ‘there are reports coming in of a terrible fire at Blackwater. We have no more information at this point. I know the Commissioner would have wanted you to be informed as soon as possible. Arthur Stone, Assistant to the Commissioner.’

‘My God. Oh, my God,’ Powerscourt said very quietly. ‘This is terrible news. May I ask you to take a short message back to the Commissioner for me, young man? I won’t keep you a moment.’

‘What is the matter, Francis? Good morning, Constable.’ Lady Lucy appeared unperturbed by her early morning visitor. From the floors above came the noises of younger Powerscourts greeting the new day a little earlier than usual.

‘There’s been a fire at Blackwater, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The Commissioner wanted to let me know.’ He was writing furiously. He shoved his note into a dark brown envelope and handed it to the constable. ‘Could you make sure that the Commissioner receives this as soon as possible? Thank you so much.’

The constable made his apologies once again and departed into the cold morning air, fog drifting among the trees in the square.

‘Dear Commissioner,’ Powerscourt had written, ‘thank you so much for the news about the fire at Blackwater. I am more apprehensive than I can say. Pray God there has been no loss of life. Could you please arrange for the foremost fire investigator in London and the Home Counties to be sent to Blackwater without delay? Yours in haste, Powerscourt.’

‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, running up his stairs to get dressed, ‘I must get to Blackwater immediately. I dread to think what I will find when I get there. Could you follow me a little later on? I hope old Miss Harrison is still alive. It might be a good time to talk to her.’

Paddington station had been crowded, sacks of mail being unloaded down the platforms, early morning arrivals hastening to their place of work. Sitting in a corner seat in his train to Wallingford, Powerscourt was exceedingly angry. Not with the twist of fate that had led to the blaze at Blackwater, not with the unusually early start to his day. He was angry with himself.

Only last week, he reminded himself, I was thinking of warning the remaining Harrisons that their lives might be in danger, that they should consider removing themselves to a place of greater safety. I didn’t do it. Now one or two or three of them may be dead. And I could have stopped it. Pray to God there are no more funerals.

The Thames could be seen now out of his window, neat cottages lining its sides, early morning river traffic toiling upstream. He thought of his last encounter with the Commissioner in his great office with the maps of London.

‘Officially, Lord Powerscourt, our inquiries into the death of Old Mr Harrison are proceeding. Proceeding quietly but methodically, I should say, if asked. In fact, we have almost closed the case down. Manpower is limited. We know that you are still at work. Do you think, Lord Powerscourt, that we have heard the end of this affair?’

‘I’m afraid I do not,’ had been Powerscourt’s reply. He told the Commissioner of his fears, of the mysterious death at sea, of the sense of foreboding he had about the whole case.

‘Rest assured, Lord Powerscourt,’ had been the Commissioner’s final words, ‘that we shall keep our eyes and ears open for you. Any assistance you require, all you have to do is to ask.’

Samuel Parker was waiting at the station with a small carriage and a couple of horses. To his intense irritation Powerscourt found himself wondering what letter of the alphabet started their names. H for Hephaistos, god of fire perhaps? Better not to ask.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Parker, ‘I wasn’t expecting you here this morning. I thought Mr Charles was to be on the train. Did you see him at all on your journey?’

‘Good morning, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt, shaking him gravely by the hand. ‘I did not see Mr Charles Harrison on that train at all. It was almost empty. Would you have time to take me back to the house before the next one arrives?’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Parker, showing Powerscourt into the little carriage. Streams of travellers were waiting on the opposite platform to catch the next express to London. A distant roar announced the arrival of another train, smoke drifting back across the station.

‘What news, Mr Parker?’ said Powerscourt. ‘I heard there had been a fire but no more than that. What can you tell me?’

‘Well, sir, it’s all very confusing. There’s firemen all over the place, and policemen, and doctors too. Then there’s all kinds of locals with nothing better to do who have come to stare at the ruins. I don’t as yet know exactly what happened, sir.’

‘Ruins, Mr Parker, did you say ruins? Is Blackwater burnt down completely?’

‘No, it’s not, not completely, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker, his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, ‘but it looks as if over half of it is. Those firemen won’t let anybody into the house at all.’

‘Was anybody injured?’

‘We don’t know that either, sir.’ Parker shook his head. ‘Them firemen won’t say. Old Miss Harrison, now, she’s all right. Jones the butler carried her out of the ruins and she’s resting in our little cottage. She’s in a terrible state. She seems able to speak in German and nothing else. Mabel’s doing her best. The doctor is with her now.’

‘Was there anybody else there?’ Powerscourt was desperate for news of the living and the dead. ‘Anybody who didn’t get out?’

‘Well, my lord . . .’ Parker had turned the little carriage into the main drive up to the house. All around were the signs of England in the spring, the green fields, the trees in bloom, the ever-present sound of the birds. Then Powerscourt saw the sad remains of Blackwater House. Over half of the front of the house was blackened. Thin wisps of smoke could still be seen rising from the upper floors. Firemen on great ladders were plying their hosepipes through the ruined windows.

‘Mr Frederick,’ Parker went on, ‘we think Mr Frederick was in the house. We haven’t seen him at all. Mr Charles was here yesterday evening but he left to go to London. Nobody’s seen Mr Frederick this morning at all.’

Powerscourt felt sick. If Frederick Harrison had perished in the inferno he would feel personally responsible for his death. It was as if the house was cursed, and he, Powerscourt, had failed to prevent the latest attack of the furies.

‘And what exactly do you think you’re doing?’ a voice bellowed at him from inside the charred remains of the entrance hall. ‘We’ve got enough problems round here without strangers tramping around the place and getting in the way. Be off with you.’

A weary policeman advanced slowly into the sunlight, his face blackened, dark bloodstains on his jacket.

Procul, o procul este, profani, Powerscourt thought to himself. Keep away, keep away, unpurified ones. The inscription on the Temple of Flora come to life in an Oxfordshire police inspector.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Powerscourt warily, ‘my name is Powerscourt. I am a private investigator. I have some business with the family here. I came to find out what I could.’

‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba or Dido on her pyre in Carthage,’ said the Inspector, who liked to borrow the classics from his local library. ‘Be off with you, I say. We’ve got work to do here.’

A loud crash from the upper floors announced the collapse of more of the timberwork of Blackwater House.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Inspector, I really am,’ said Powerscourt, ‘perhaps I could show you the message I received from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s office this morning.’

Powerscourt thanked God that he had stuffed the letter into his breast pocket rather than leave it on his hall table at home. He thanked God that the assistant had put both the time and the date on his message.

The Inspector eyed it suspiciously. He began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake. Visions of some stern reprimand for hindering the friends of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police flashed through his mind. One of his colleagues had been demoted from inspector to constable for being rude to a duchess he hadn’t recognized. The Commissioner’s writ didn’t extend to Oxfordshire, of course, but he was still the most powertul policeman in the land.

The Inspector looked at Powerscourt dubiously. Powerscourt gazed calmly back, remembering the firm stare required for unruly privates in the army.

‘I have met most of the members of the family here,’ he said quietly. ‘They asked me to look into the death of Old Mr Harrison, the body found floating in the Thames by London Bridge.’

Every policeman in Britain had wondered about that case. He’s not at all impressed by my uniform, the Inspector thought to himself. Pretty self-contained customer, this one. Maybe he is who he says he is. The strain of the last few hours was beginning to tell. He wiped his brow, managing to leave thin lines of blood across his forehead as he did so.

‘Wilson is my name,’ he said finally, ‘Inspector Arthur Wilson of the Oxfordshire constabulary.’

Powerscourt shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Look here, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I don’t wish to get in the way of your work. You must talk to me when you have the time, not before. I have only one question for you. Were there any fatalities in this fire?’

Only a policeman or a private investigator, Inspector Wilson felt sure, would ask that question at a time like this.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know, Lord Powerscourt,’ he replied, remembering that the letter was addressed to a Lord rather than a mere Mister Powerscourt. ‘Me and my sergeant have only been here for a couple of hours. The fire brigade won’t let anybody into the upper floors at all. They say it’s too dangerous. They’re crawling about up there on ladders and planks laid out across the floorboards. So many of them have been destroyed. I did hear the Chief Fire Officer say that there was probably one fatality, but he didn’t say who it was.’

‘I see, Inspector. Thank you so much. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let the Chief Fire Officer know I am here and that I would like to speak to him. But only when he has the time. I do not wish to interrupt his vital work for one second. Or yours, for that matter.’

Inspector Wilson disappeared inside the house. Powerscourt stood back from the house and surveyed the damage. Blackwater was composed of a central block, built in the style of a Palladian villa, with a library wing added on the south side and a picture gallery to the north. There was a basement and two rows of windows on each floor. The fire seemed to have spent most of its force on the north wing. All the windows had gone. There were holes in the roof. As Powerscourt walked round the house to the west front at the rear he peered cautiously into the picture gallery. The walls were stripped down to the plasterwork or even the original brick. The paintings themselves seemed to have been burnt to nothing. Great piles of ash and rubble lay on the floor. Above he could hear the shouts and the swearing of the firemen as they threaded their way across the floorboards. From time to time there would be a great crash as more timbers fell to the ground.

The sightseers drifted off as the morning wore on. Powerscourt sat on a seat in the west front garden and contemplated the Curse on the House of Harrison. Murders he was used to in his profession, men and women killed in the heat of passion or with the cold calculation he found so frightening. Always, in his experience, there was a motive. Somebody had a reason for killing somebody else. But the Harrison case seemed so different. He had yet to find any sign of a motive at all.

Just before midday he returned to the main entrance. There was a lot of shouting from the inside. As he peered into the remains of the entrance hall he could see two firemen, standing on ladders laid across the upper floor, lowering something wrapped in a blanket and tied firmly to a plank of wood.

‘Steady, there, steady,’ said the voice above.

‘We’re ready down here,’ said Inspector Wilson and his colleague, waiting to receive the package.

For one moment the fireman at the top of the stairs let go of his rope too quickly. The package swung down at an angle of forty-five degrees and looked as though it might fall into the rubble below.

‘Christ almighty, Bert,’ said a voice above, ‘can’t you hold the bloody thing steady, for God’s sake?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Bert, ‘it’s very heavy.’

‘I know it’s very heavy,’ said the other voice. ‘I’m just going to let my rope down until it’s level with yours and we’re back on an even keel. Don’t do anything.’

Slowly the package recovered its equilibrium, the two policemen staring at the swaying plank.

‘All together now, Bert. Slowly does it. Slowly. On the count of three, start lowering your rope. Don’t for God’s sake let go.’

Bert muttered something inaudible.

‘One, two, three. Slowly now, slowly.’

Inch by inch the package was lowered into the arms of the two policemen down below. They carried it on to a makeshift trestle table underneath the portico. The blanket was wrapped tightly around the package. There was a musty smell as if the blanket or its contents had been kept in a cupboard too long.

The Chief Fire Officer had lowered himself down to ground level on the same piece of rope.

‘Where’s that bloody doctor gone?’ he said angrily. ‘Never here when you want them, doctors. They always say they’ll be back in a moment, then they disappear.’

He stared at Powerscourt. Then he remembered what the Inspector had told him some hours before. ‘You must be Lord Powerscourt, sir,’ he said, holding out a blackened hand. ‘Chief Fire Officer Perkins, Oxfordshire Fire Service.’

Perkins was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall, in his early forties. Unlike the policemen he was clean-shaven. Powerscourt wondered if they worried about their beards catching fire in emergencies.

‘Good day to you, Chief Officer Perkins,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do I understand that you are anxious for the presence of the doctor? I believe I know where he has gone. I could fetch him if that would help?’

‘That would be right handsome of you, sir, right handsome. Is he far away?’

‘I believe he is just around the corner with Old Miss Harrison,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I shall be back directly.’

The church clock struck one as Powerscourt collected the doctor from Samuel Parker’s cottage. The sun was shining on the lake now, the Pantheon of his dreams staring inscrutably at him across the water.

‘How is Miss Harrison, doctor?’ asked Powerscourt, as they walked back to the burnt-out remains of Blackwater House.

‘It has been a terrible shock,’ said Dr Compton carefully. ‘I feel sure that she will recover in time. But for the moment her mind is wandering, and wandering in German, I’m afraid. I think I should like to send her away for some time to recover her strength.’

Powerscourt restrained himself from saying that all members of the Harrison family, in his view, should be sent away from Blackwater and indeed from London without delay.

Chief Officer Perkins was waiting impatiently by his trestle table. The two policemen stood on guard at either end.

‘Dr Compton,’ Perkins began, ‘I would be most gratetul for your assistance. We have recovered this body from one of the bedrooms on the upper floors. It is, I am relieved to say, the only fatality of this terrible fire. But I do not like to continue our work inside until this body is identified. Are you willing to try to identify it?’

Dr Compton nodded gravely. The two policemen pulled back the blanket. Both turned white. The doctor shook his head.

‘Seldom have I seen such terrible burns. Most of the face seems to have been taken off by the flames. Mr Frederick Harrison was not my patient, you understand. He had his own man up in London. He only consulted me for minor aches and pains down here.’

Not again, thought Powerscourt savagely. Not another corpse that is so severely disfigured it is almost impossible to identify. He wondered if the murderer, if there was a murderer, had intended such a degree of incineration to make it impossible to identify the body.

Dr Compton was peering at a silver ring on what must have been Frederick Harrison’s finger. He prodded at the teeth with a small silver instrument extracted from his bag. He sighed. He took off his glasses and folded them neatly into their case.

‘I am afraid, gentlemen, that this is Mr Frederick Harrison. Or rather was Mr Frederick Harrison. You can cover him up again now.’

‘How can you be sure, Dr Compton?’ Chief Fire Officer Perkins was polite but firm.

‘His teeth for a start. He had some very expensive dental work done a few years ago by one of London’s leading dentists. He was so proud of it, he showed me the details. It was at a dinner party here in this house. Lobsters, we had, I seem to recall. I’m afraid the sight of Mr Harrison’s improved molars did very little for the appetite.’

He smiled wanly at the memory of happier times.

‘Then there is the ring. I would recognize that anywhere. He was given it by his great-grandfather in Germany before he died. The great-grandfather, I mean. It had a German eagle marked upon it. I would know it anywhere.’

‘Thank you, Dr Compton.’ Inspector Wilson was making notes in his book. His young assistant had run away from the scene. From round the corner they could hear him retching uncontrollably into the trees.

The doctor set off to care for his other patients. Powerscourt realized that the fire officer and the policeman were both unsure of who was the senior man present. In professions used to rank and hierarchy this presented something of a problem. Temporary relief was provided by the return of Wilson’s colleague, the pallor of his face made more remarkable by the blackened buildings around him.

‘Get yourself down to the stables and find a drink of water, Radcliffe,’ said Inspector Wilson with a good officer’s care for his subordinates. The young man staggered off down the path, pausing only to vomit once more into a rhododendron bush.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Powerscourt, temporarily seizing the initiative, ‘may I take you into my confidence?’

He told them of the earlier death of Mr Frederick’s uncle, the body found in the Thames. He told of the suspicions regarding the death of Mr Frederick’s brother, drowned in a boating accident off the Isle of Wight. He told of his suspicion that this death too might not have been caused by natural causes.

‘You mean that the fire might have been started deliberately?’ Chief Officer Perkins was the first to react.

‘It might have been, yes, it very well might have been.’

Chief Officer Perkins whistled quietly. Inspector Wilson stared again at the remains of the building.

‘It won’t be easy to prove anything, my lord,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What the fire didn’t destroy, the water from Mr Perkins’ hosepipes may have washed away, or soaked it to the point where it’s unrecognizable. Whatever it might be, that is. My God, sir, I don’t think you could establish any sort of a case, any sort of a case at all, with this heap of smoking dust and rubble.’

As if to prove his point there was another loud crash from the upper floors. Dust and ashes rose from the great holes in the roof.

‘That’ll be the big beam in Mr Frederick’s bedroom,’ said Perkins. ‘It’s been on the point of going for some time. Made it very dangerous up there, wondering if this beam was going to knock you on the head at any moment.’

‘Could I just ask you to bear what I have said in mind?’ said Powerscourt apologetically. ‘I know you have much to do and I do not wish to get in the way of your work in any way. I asked the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to send us the foremost fire investigator in London and the Home Counties. He should be here tomorrow. I’m sure you will afford him every assistance.’

Inspector Wilson had never heard of such a creature as a fire investigator. He longed to ask for more details of what they did and how they did it. He decided not to reveal his ignorance.

‘Very good, sir.’

Inspector Wilson disappeared once more into the ground floor. Chief Fire Officer Perkins began the slow ascent of a long ladder into the upper storey.

‘Bert,’ he shouted to his assistant, ‘where are you? What have you been doing up here? Come on, we’ve got work to do.’

Lady Lucy Powerscourt was sitting on a small chair in the main bedroom of the Parkers’ little cottage. Old Miss Harrison was still asleep, tucked firmly inside the Parkers’ best blankets. Mabel Parker stood by the door, as she had done for the last three hours.

‘She’s not dead, is she, my lady?’ she whispered for the tenth or eleventh time.

‘No, she’s not, Mrs Parker,’ said Lady Lucy quietly, ‘she’s just asleep. It must have been a terrible shock to her.’

Lady Lucy had reached Blackwater just after midday, ferried to the house by Mr Parker, still waiting in vain at the railway station for Charles Harrison to appear. There was a sudden rustling among the bedclothes. Miss Harrison looked at her new surroundings with surprise and a look of astonishment on her wrinkled face.

‘Hello, my dear,’ she said to Lady Lucy, ‘are you here too? And you so young.’

‘You’re looking well, Miss Harrison,’ Lady Lucy smiled, ‘after your ordeal.’

‘I never thought it would be like this,’ the old lady went on, peering around at the bedroom, the walls lined with pictures of the great mountains beloved by Mr Parker. ‘It seems so peaceful. And so quiet. I thought it might be noisier than this up here. And they don’t tell you about the last journey down there, do they? I’m sure somebody carried me up here. It must have been a very long way for him, a very long way.’

‘I’ll bring you some tea,’ said Mabel Parker, departing to her kitchen for the most useful restorative known to the Parker household.

‘They have tea here too,’ the old lady smiled. ‘I’m so glad they have tea. Tell me, my dear,’ she turned to inspect Lady Lucy closely, ‘how did you get here? Did somebody carry you too?’

‘We’re in Mr Parker’s cottage, Miss Harrison.’ Lady Lucy spoke quite loudly now, wondering if the old lady’s hearing had been disturbed in the fire. ‘There’s been a terrible fire in the big house. The butler carried you to safety. You’re quite safe now.’

‘Fire?’ said the old lady, sounding confused. ‘I thought they had fire down in the other place, not up here. Oh no, surely not here. You must be mistaken, my dear. Look, there are the mountains all about. We must be quite high up.’

‘You’re still alive, Miss Harrison.’ Lady Lucy realized that the old lady thought she had died and gone to heaven, here with Mrs Parker’s best blankets and cups of tea.

‘Alive?’ The old lady sounded quite cross. ‘I didn’t like being alive much at the end, you know. No, not at all. All my relations dying and all those people coming to ask me questions about my brother. I’m quite glad to be out of it really. Especially if they have tea.’

As if on cue, Mrs Parker returned with a small tray containing a cup of tea in her best willow pattern cup and a plate of biscuits.

‘They taste just like they did down below,’ Miss Harrison said, happily crunching into her digestive.

‘And so does the tea!’

Lady Lucy looked helplessly at Mrs Parker. Mrs Parker shook her head sadly. Lady Lucy resolved to make one last attempt.

‘Miss Harrison,’ she shouted, ‘we are all so glad to see you looking so well. There was a fire last night in the big house. You’ve been brought down here to Mrs Parker’s cottage. You’re going to be all right. You just need to rest.’

‘Fire? Fire?’ said the old lady crossly. ‘Why does everybody keep talking about fire all the time? Oh dear,’ she looked about her surroundings again, ‘they haven’t made a mistake, have they? I’m not down there in the bad place, with the flames, am I?’

‘You’re not in hell, Miss Harrison,’ Lady Lucy spoke very firmly, ‘you’re not in heaven either. You’re in Mrs Parker’s cottage!’

‘Hell,’ said the old lady sadly, ‘I never thought I’d end up there. Oh dear, is it going to be terrible? And you,’ she pointed an old accusing finger at Lady Lucy, ‘what did you do to deserve to come here? What were your sins when you were on the other side?’

‘Never mind, Miss Harrison.’ Lady Lucy spoke very gently. ‘Why don’t you drink your tea? Another cup perhaps? I’m sure the doctor will be here soon.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt had walked down to the lake, where he stared moodily at the inscrutable temples. He had walked round the house time and again, angry shouts from inside escaping occasionally through the great holes in the roof. He watched a bright red fox peering carefully out from the edge of the Blackwater Park. No scarlet-jacketed riders were to be seen. No hunting horns disturbed the Oxfordshire afternoon. The fox trotted slowly off towards the woods.

He was thinking of a list of questions to send to William Burke on his return to London. Who owned the capital of Harrison’s Bank? Had any share or portion passed to the female line, nieces or sisters whose lives might be in peril? And what of the chief clerk? If he had capital in the bank, then he must be warned, and soon. Powerscourt felt he could not bear another untimely death on his already troubled conscience.

He was standing in a reverie by the great castellated gateway that marked the entrance to Blackwater when he was hailed by a young man of about thirty years alighting from a cab.

‘Good afternoon,’ the newcomer called cheerfully. ‘Would you by any chance be Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I would. I mean I am. I am he,’ said Powerscourt, his syntax temporarily confused as he shook the young man by the hand.

‘Hardy,’ said the man, ‘Joseph Hardy, fire investigator, at your service, sir.’ He bowed slightly. ‘But everybody calls me Joe.’

Like Chief Officer Perkins Hardy was clean-shaven. He had tousled blond hair and cheerful blue eyes that looked as though he laughed a lot.

‘I got your message this morning,’ Hardy went on, marching purposefully up the drive. ‘But the warehouses meant I couldn’t get away any sooner. Damned warehouses. Forgive my language, my lord.’

‘Don’t worry at all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But why warehouses?’

‘There are far too many of the wretched things now, my lord. In the old days you sold your cotton from Alabama to a man in New South Wales, let’s say. The cotton came to London, it was stored in its warehouse, then it was shipped on to Australia. Not any longer. No, sir. Nowadays the man in Alabama sends his cotton direct to New South Wales. There’s no need for it to go to London. There’s no need for the wretched warehouse. It’s all done by telegraph these days, my lord.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but why should the man in Alabama or the man in Australia delay your journey here to Blackwater? Not that I’m complaining, not for a moment. We didn’t expect to see you here today at all.’

‘I’m just coming to that, my lord,’ said Hardy cheerfully. ‘When nobody wants your warehouse, what are you to do? I’ll tell you what a lot of them do, my lord. They insure it, and its contents, mostly invented, for a great deal of money. Then they burn it down. Then they claim the insurance.’

‘Would I be right in thinking,’ said Powerscourt, deciding he had taken a liking to the young man, ‘that the insurance companies are not happy in these circumstances? And they employ you to show that the claims are fraudulent?’

‘How right you are, my lord.’ Joe Hardy grinned. ‘It was another of those fires I was working on this morning. Those insurance companies have very suspicious minds, my lord, almost as suspicious as yours, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Hardy laughed.

Powerscourt told him about the fire, about the earlier deaths, about his suspicions that the inferno at Blackwater was no accident. He mentioned the policemen and the fire officials already at the scene.

‘I see, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Joseph Hardy. ‘Could you just walk me round the outside? Show me the lie of the land?’

As they went on their melancholy journey round the charred remains of Blackwater House, Hardy pulled a notebook from his pocket and began making quick sketches of the building. The notebook, Powerscourt saw, was red. Red for danger, red for fire. ‘The thing everybody always wants to know,’ said Hardy, sitting down suddenly to study the west front at the back of the house, ‘is how I became a fire investigator in the first place.’ His right hand was working furiously. From time to time he would snatch a different coloured pencil from his jacket until a pile of them made a small pyre on the lawn.

‘I’ve always been fascinated by fires,’ he went on, glancing up at the parapet from time to time. ‘I was always on at my father to make bonfires. Then I used to inspect the ashes when they went out. I used to do the same thing on bonfire night – that was always the best day of my year when I was small.’

Powerscourt could see him, a little boy with blond hair and dirty trousers trampling about in the ashes. He wondered if he had a red notebook even then.

‘I made a bomb once,’ Hardy laughed. ‘I made it all by myself and took it down to the woods. It made a bloody great bang, it did. I hadn’t got far enough away. I was blown backwards into a tree and knocked out for a couple of minutes.’

He collected his pencils and closed his book. ‘Right, Lord Powerscourt, I’m going inside now. I think you should stay here. The Commissioner wouldn’t be very pleased with me if you broke your neck on the remains of the stairs. I shall see you in about an hour. The photographer will be here in the morning.’

With that he disappeared into the gloom, waving happily as he went.

‘Francis, how are you?’

Lady Lucy had come to seek him out, her vigil at the bedside of Miss Harrison temporarily abandoned.

‘Lucy, I had almost forgotten you were here. How terrible of me.’

‘You have a lot on your mind today,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Who was the very blond gentleman who just went inside?’

‘That, Lucy, was Mr Hardy, fire investigator,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and a specialist, he tells me, in bonfires in his youth and warehouses in his adult years. But tell me, how is old Miss Harrison?’

‘Oh Francis, it is so sad. Her mind has gone. Dr Compton has given her a draught to make her sleep. She thought she had gone to heaven.’

‘In the Parkers’ cottage? That must have seemed a bit of a let-down after a life spent in there.’ He nodded at the wreck of Blackwater House. ‘Did she have any special news about heaven, Lucy? God and the angels well, that sort of thing?’

‘You mustn’t be flippant, Francis,’ Lady Lucy smiled. ‘There were no immediate tidings about God or the angels, I fear, but no indication either that your investigative powers were needed up there at present. She was very relieved about the tea.’

‘Tea?’ said Powerscourt incredulously. ‘Does God drink tea? Indian? Chinese? Ceylon?’

‘It was Mrs Parker’s tea, silly.’ Lady Lucy took her husband’s arm. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Indian.’

‘Is she asleep now?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should go back and sit with her again. Mrs Parker is looking pretty tired.’

‘So would you be,’ said Powerscourt, leading her back down the path to the Parkers’, ‘if your little cottage had been turned into heaven for the day. Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven, enjoy it before Satan burns it down. The fires of hell have come to Oxfordshire, consuming all in their path.’

‘Do shut up, Francis.’ Lady Lucy squeezed his arm. ‘Look, I think your investigator friend wants to speak to you.’

Joseph Hardy was waving cheerily to Powerscourt from the remains of the front porch.

‘Lord Powerscourt, come with me. I think we have something to show you. We’ve rigged up a safe way of getting upstairs for you. My, what a fire this must have been.’

He sounds as though he wished he had been here himself thought Powerscourt. Maybe the normal relations of heaven and hell were reversed for Joseph Hardy – fragments of Miss Harrison’s conversation with Lady Lucy flashed through his mind – so that hell, with its eternal fires, would be heaven for him. There he could tend the Devil’s cauldrons, plan newer and more fiendish ways of roasting the flesh and bones of God’s rejected.

‘Now, there’s not a great deal to see on this floor.’ The Devil’s latest disciple ushered Powerscourt into a room of utter devastation. ‘We think the fire probably started here in what used to be the cabinet room, and then made its way up to the next floor and across to the picture gallery over there.’

He pointed to the shell of the room which had once housed the Harrison collection. Privately Powerscourt thought it was not a great loss. Many of the finest paintings, the Canalettos and the Turners, had been sold some years before.

‘Up the stairs now,’ said the fire investigator. ‘I’m not saying there aren’t a number of unusual features down here, there are, but I have to take some samples away to analyse them in my workshop.’

A ladder had been placed in what had once had been the staircase.

‘Careful, my lord,’ said Hardy, as Powerscourt began his ascent. ‘Chief Fire Officer Perkins is waiting for us up there.’

They emerged into what had once been a corridor. The plaster had gone, the carpets had been reduced to ashes on the ground. Strands of lath hung precariously from the ceiling like stalactites in a cave.

‘At the end, there, that last door, that was Old Mr Harrison’s bedroom. Nobody in there, of course. There are three doors opening off this corridor on each side as you see, my lord.’

Hardy advanced half-way down the passageway. Each door except one had gone, burnt to nothing in the fire. They could hear the wind now, whistling through the open roof. It looked, thought Powerscourt, as though an angry giant had stalked down the corridor, plucking the doors away and flinging them on the flames.

Chief Officer Perkins was waiting by the one door that had not completely vanished. One solitary fragment remained, running from the floor to a couple of feet above the lock.

‘Did you find the key, Chief Fire Officer?’ said Hardy. ‘Any sign of the key?’

Perkins was crawling through the rubble on his hands and knees. The skin on his face was invisible. The dark smudges that concealed his features almost matched the black of his fireman’s jacket.

‘No, I have not,’ said Perkins gloomily. ‘I have crawled over this damned floor three times so far, and I have found nothing. I’ve even asked Bert to have a look. He may not be too bright, my lord, but he has younger eyes than mine.’

Bert was not to be seen. Perhaps he’s crawling over some other floor, looking for a different piece of debris, thought Powerscourt.

‘It was Chief Fire Officer Perkins who drew it to my attention, my lord,’ said Hardy generously. ‘He’d have made a good investigator, no doubt about that.’

Hardy smiled at the fireman, his teeth unnaturally white against the stains that marked his face. His blond hair, Powerscourt noticed, had turned almost black.

‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt apologetically, ‘for seeming so stupid. But what is the significance of the key?’ The keys of the kingdom, the keys of heaven and hell, the keys to Lady Lucy’s heart, the keys to this second death perhaps.

‘The point is this, my lord.’ Chief Officer Perkins had risen to his feet, dust falling from his person like thin grey snow. ‘This was Mr Frederick’s bedroom. His door was locked. We cannot tell if it was locked from the inside or the outside. Would you lock your own bedroom door, in your own house, in the middle of your own park, miles from anywhere?’

‘I would not,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I most certainly would not. But what you mean is that he couldn’t get out. Not out of the door anyway.’

He could imagine the dead man now, coughing violently as the smoke got into his lungs and blocked his throat, scrabbling desperately at the door to his own room, trying to escape down the stairs. The smoke would have grown so thick that he would hardly be able to see anything in front of him. Then the collapse on to the floor, the last few choking breaths, the terrible constricting pains in the chest and then oblivion. God knows where he has gone now, Powerscourt said to himself, but his last moments were certainly spent in hell. Hell on earth, hell in a bedroom, hell at Blackwater with the pictures and the house he loved burning down around him.

‘He couldn’t get out,’ said Mr Perkins finally. ‘He may have tried the windows, we don’t know.’ Two well-proportioned holes teased them from across the room. Their secrets had gone, burnt to nothing in the conflagration.

‘We’d better get out of here now,’ said Hardy, still cheerful. ‘The light’s going.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Powerscourt, tiptoeing along the shattered corridor, ‘we could discuss this on the lawn outside. There must be more you have to tell me.’

They found an old table and four rusting chairs in the stables. Surrounded by four handsome horses in their stalls, they held a melancholy conference, Inspector Wilson, his face cleaned except for one dark smear below his left eyelid, Chief Fire Officer Perkins, dust and fragments of ash still falling from his body every time he moved, Fire Investigator Hardy, smiling incronguously as his mind raced through calculations of the temperature and speed of burn of the fire, still taking notes in a book that had turned from red to dark grey, Powerscourt looking troubled. The only noise was the occasional rustling of the horses and the rising whisper of the wind.

‘Inspector Wilson,’ Powerscourt began, ‘let me trespass on your province to begin with a short summary of what we know.

‘Point Number One,’ he rapped his forefinger lightly on the table, ‘at an early stage in the evening there were four people in the house. Miss Harrison, Mr Frederick Harrison, Mr Charles Harrison and Jones the butler in his own quarters in the basement.

‘Point Number Two,’ the finger tapped again, ‘Mr Charles Harrison leaves the house at an unknown time to return to London. Our only evidence for that, if I remember right, is the butler reporting Mr Charles as saying that he would be leaving. He did not see him go.’

‘Correct, my lord,’ said Inspector Wilson.

‘Point Number Three,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘is that at about half-past one in the morning the butler becomes aware of the fire and rushes upstairs to rescue Miss Harrison who sleeps on the other side of the house.

‘Point Number Four is that at some stage in the evening Mr Frederick Harrison retires to bed for the night. And then proceeds to lock himself into his own room, from which he never escapes.’

One of the horses was listening carefully, a noble head and a pair of intelligent brown eyes fixed firmly on the strange quartet. Powerscourt wondered if this was Clytemnestra or Callimachus, Catullus or Cassandra in the Harrison horse naming system. Cassandra, he decided gloomily, prophecies destined never to be taken seriously. The horse listened on.

‘For what it’s worth,’ said Joseph Hardy, ‘I think the fire was started deliberately. I cannot be sure yet,’ he glanced down at his little book, pages and pages of which Powerscourt saw were covered by calculations, ‘but it has all the signs of that. Would you agree with that analysis, Chief Fire Officer Perkins?’

‘I think I would,’ said Perkins, flakes of dust falling from his upraised hand. ‘I mean, I am not an expert in these matters, but there are some very strange circumstances surrounding it.’

‘Let me put some possibilities to you, gentlemen,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Is it possible that Miss Harrison, for reasons best known to herself, decides to start the fire, locks her brother in his room, retires to her own quarters and waits to be rescued by the butler?’

Hardy was listening intently, still making notes in his book.

‘Or is it possible that the butler is the villain of the piece? He goes upstairs to check Mr Frederick has retired, starts the fire downstairs, pops back upstairs to lock Mr Frederick in and then earns his hero’s reward by carrying Miss Harrison to safety.’

Inspector Wilson too had extracted his notebook from about his person. He was following Hardy’s example, scribbling furiously.

‘Or is it possible that a person or persons unknown enters the house after everybody has gone to bed, starts the fire, locks Mr Frederick in and flees into the night?’

Hardy looked up suddenly. ‘The key. The key, my lord,’ he said, looking at Powerscourt with a pleading look, ‘the key is the key. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. If we knew where that key was, then surely we would be well on our way to solving part of the mystery. We must search for it tomorrow. We must search everywhere.’

Powerscourt looked at the Inspector to his left. He had just turned a new page and had written the word KEY in large block capitals at the top.

Two of the horses neighed suddenly. A couple of wood pigeons took off from the roof of the stables and vanished into the trees above the lake.

‘There is another possibility,’ Powerscourt began. ‘And that is as follows . . .’

He never finished the sentence. From the bottom of the drive, less than a hundred yards away, the wheels of a carriage could be heard. The little group rose from their chairs and began to move towards the main house.

‘Wait, wait,’ whispered Powerscourt, restraining Chief Fire Officer Perkins. Another cloud of dust fluttered off his trousers on to the ground. ‘Let’s just see who it is.’

He knew who it was. All day he had been waiting for this latest visitor to the House of Harrison. Rejoice more in the lost sheep who is found than in the ninety and nine who did not stray.

Above all Powerscourt wanted to see what Charles Harrison would do. He probably knew already about the fire. Heaven knew enough messages had been sent after him all day. But if he didn’t know how bad it was then surely he would pause and look at the front of his house, to survey the damage. He would walk round the side to the west wing at the rear to check on the devastation there. He might just stand and stare at the terrible ruin at the front, the gaping holes where the windows had been, the blackened stone, parts of the roof open to the sky.

Charles Harrison did none of these things. He walked straight in through what had been his front door. Even in the stables they could hear him shout.

‘Anybody home? Anybody home?’