Death and the Jubilee

4

‘Clarendon Park is a nabob’s seat, East India Company money,’ William Burke said to Powerscourt, pointing to his Palladian mansion not far from Marlow. They were waiting for their families as the women made last-minute adjustments to hats and children before the short walk to the small church for the installation of the new vicar. ‘It was built by a fellow called Francis Hodge who made a fortune in India and came home to retire in peace by the Thames. But things didn’t quite work out the way he thought.’

‘What went wrong?’ asked Powerscourt, slightly nervous, as ever, at the prospect of having to read the lesson.

‘The poor man – well, he was fairly poor by the end – got impeached for greed and corruption in the East, rather like Warren Hastings. There were huge lawyers’ bills. Hodge had to go up to Westminster for months on end to answer questions from sanctimonious MPs and watch the value of his shares in the East India Company falling like a stone. At one point, I believe, they dropped fifty thousand in a week.’

Powerscourt could see the appeal of such a house, its fortunes so closely linked to the City of London.

‘Don’t you worry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that some of the uncertainty might rub off on to your own affairs, William? Daily appearances before some Commons committee? Radical lawyer MPs quizzing you about your affairs?’

‘No,’ said William Burke emphatically. He laughed.

As they sat in the little church, pews filled with tenants and family, Powerscourt was wondering about his sisters. They loved each other dearly, of course, but there was always an element of competition between them. Eleanor, the youngest, had certainly married the most handsome husband, but he had very little money. Mary, the middle sister, had made a very prudent marriage to William Burke. Rosalind, the eldest, seemed to have won the marriage stakes by her alliance with Lord Pembridge, an aristocrat with a great deal of money and fine houses in St James’s Square and in Hampshire. But over the weekend he had noticed a certain smugness, an air of quiet but unmistakable triumph about Mary. It showed in the way she almost patronized her elder sister, showing off the glories of her new house, wondering aloud about how many servants and gardeners they would need to employ. And Rosalind, for once, looked as though she felt her position as the most successful of the sisters, the Queen Bee of her own little hive, was under threat.

As he rose to read his lesson Powerscourt cast a careful glance at his family to make sure the children were behaving.

‘The First Lesson,’ he began in his clear tenor voice, ‘is taken from the twenty-first Chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew.

‘“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves.”’

The new vicar, a red-headed man in his middle thirties, was looking serious. The Bishop, splendid in his purple robes, looked as if he was falling sleep. Powerscourt wondered, for the sixth or seventh time since he had entered the church, how the Bishop could have almost brought his diocese to bankruptcy. Had he fallen asleep in those apparently tedious meetings of the diocesan finance sub-committees? Had he invested the church collections unwisely on the Exchange?

‘“And he said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”’

There was a very faint creak as the door opened and a late arrival slipped quietly into a pew at the back and opened his prayer book. The newcomer winked at Powerscourt. It was Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘“And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple: and he healed them.”

‘Here endeth the First Lesson.’

Powerscourt had grown up with Lord Johnny Fitzgerald in Ireland. They had served together in Army Intelligence in India. On a number of occasions they had saved each other’s lives. Johnny had been Powerscourt’s best man at both his weddings.

‘I have come to make my report, Francis.’ Fitzgerald gave a mock salute to his former superior officer as they walked through William Burke’s woods towards the Thames below. ‘You remember you said I had to approach the matter very carefully and very slowly? Well, I did, I just hope I didn’t exceed my powers at the end.’

‘You’re not suggesting you might have disobeyed orders, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.

‘I was thinking of it more like Nelson with his blind eye. Copenhagen, was it, or the Nile? A temporary lapse for the greater good of the cause.’

‘I’m sure I should hear your report before passing any judgement, Johnny.’

‘Right,’ Fitzgerald bent down and picked up a stout branch to serve as a walking stick. ‘My story begins in Wallingford, the King’s Arms in Wallingford to be precise. I booked myself in there for a couple of days. Fine beer they have there, Francis, very fine beer with a fruity sort of taste to it. My story was that I left England some years before to be a banker in Boston in America.’

‘I don’t think bankers drink a lot of the local beer, Johnny, even if it is fruity. They’re sober, respectable sort of people,’ said Powerscourt, kicking a couple of pine cones out of their path.

‘American bankers are very different from English ones. They’re more open, more hospitable sort of characters. Anyway, I said I had been to London on banking business and then to Germany. I said I was looking for Old Mr Harrison who had taught me all I knew about banking twenty years ago when they had their offices in Bishopsgate. I checked out their old address with William, you see.’

‘And what did the regulars at the King’s Arms have to say about the old gentleman?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Not a lot, most of them. The House of Harrison is a couple of miles away, at least, quite close to the river. Very respectable family, very hard-working, very good people to work for. They said I might get more news of him at the Blackwater Arms, a sort of family pub, like Mr Burke’s family church, on the edge of the estate. It makes much more sense to have a pub rather than a church, don’t you think, Francis?’

‘I’m sure – no, I’m certain,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that you’re better qualified to be a landlord than a vicar, Johnny.’

‘They all said,’ Fitzgerald went on, ‘the natives in those parts, that Old Mr Harrison wasn’t at home, that he hadn’t been seen for a while. I was just about to go to bed when a very wizened old man called me into a corner. He fished about in his pockets and then he pulled out a piece of newspaper. It was an account of the discovery of the headless man by London Bridge. “See you here, young man,” he croaked at me, waving his piece of paper, “see you here. This dead body, floating in the Thames down there in London, that be Old Mr Harrison. Mark my words. It’s Old Mr Harrison.” Then he folded the paper as if it was a ten pound note and returned it to his pocket. “What on earth makes you think that, sir?” I said to the old scarecrow. “Jeremiah Cokestone sees things. Jeremiah Cokestone hears things. In the night or at first light before the sun has risen.” He spoke as if he was the Delphic oracle itself, I tell you. Then he downed his beer, almost a full glass, Francis, in a single pull, and he shuffled off into the night.’

They had reached the edge of the river now. On the far side a few boats were setting out for a Sunday trip along the Thames. Behind them a stiff breeze was rustling through the trees.

‘The next day,’ Johnny Fitzgerald tried skimming a couple of stones across the water, ‘I went to see the vicar. And there I had one of the most uplifting experiences of my life. I shall always remember it.’

‘You were converted.’ Powerscourt looked suitably grave. ‘You saw the light. You repented of the error of your ways.’

‘I did not. But the vicar’s wife gave me some of her elderberry wine. ’95 she said it was, one of her better years. God knows what the bad years must taste like, Francis.’ Fitzgerald grimaced at the memory. ‘I cannot describe the taste. It was horrible, so sweet it made you feel sick. Christ.’

A successful skim of about ten hops began to restore his spirits.

‘The vicar knew the family, of course. He hadn’t seen anything of Old Mr Harrison for a while. But he recommended me to another elderly citizen, one Samuel Parker, chief man for the horses at the Harrison house. I could just see Mrs Vicar about to pour me some more of that elderberry tincture, so I got out as fast as I could.’

‘We’d better be getting back to the house, Johnny.’ Powerscourt remembered the family proprieties. ‘We mustn’t be late for Sunday lunch with a Bishop to carve the joint. What happened with Mr Parker?’

Fitzgerald sent a final stone skimming into the middle of the Thames, nearly hitting a pleasure boat on its way downstream. Then he turned to stare intently at a bird that had just fled from a clump of trees on their left.

‘Mother of God, Francis, was that a kestrel? Damn, I can’t see it any more. Mr Parker took me down to the lake, a fabulous place, full of temples and statues of gods and a waterfall and stuff. He said he was desperately worried, that he didn’t know what to do. When I told him I’d been in Germany and that Old Mr Harrison wasn’t there he got even more worried. He went very pale when I told him that, white as a sheet in fact. “He’s not in London. He’s not in Germany. He’s not here. So where is he?” he said quietly. Then it transpired that he too had seen the newspaper cutting about the body in the river. He hadn’t wanted to tell his wife, so he’d bottled it all up.

‘“There’s only one thing you can do,” I said to him. “You must report it to the police.”He said he’d been thinking about that, but hadn’t liked to. Surely it was the job of the other members of the family to do that. “Maybe they don’t know,” I said to him. “Anyway they’re down in London. The policeman is only up the road.”’

‘So that very afternoon I drove him over to the police station where he reported that Old Mr Harrison was missing. Then I drove him back to his wife. Did I do wrong in getting him to the police station, Francis?’

Powerscourt paused. The elegant facade of the Burke house was just coming into view through the trees.

‘I think you were right, Johnny. The police have been inundated with people claiming the body. We just have to alert them to take this one seriously. Maybe the family doctor or one of the members of the family could identify him without the head. He certainly fits the doctors’ description of the corpse being a rich old man.’

‘Do you think the corpse is Old Mr Harrison?’

‘I do, actually, or I think I do,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But I’m very worried about why the rest of the family have done nothing.’

‘Maybe the entire Harrison family killed him off and don’t want to be found out.’

‘Maybe they know he’s dead but they want to keep it secret.’

‘Bet you whatever you like,’ said Fitzgerald, quickening his pace as they approached the front door, ‘that the body in the Thames was Old Mr Harrison. Now then, do you suppose William has laid on anything good to drink with the Bishop here and all? I need something to cleanse my palate after that elderberry wine. Christ, Francis, I can still taste it now. A bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin perhaps, a touch of Pomerol?’