‘So you would be walking, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt, slowing his pace to that of that of the old man. ‘Old Mr Harrison would be on his pony with his portable table and his
papers. Tell me, did you always have keys to the buildings? I mean, were they always locked up in the past?’
‘They were not, my lord.’ Samuel Parker was indignant. ‘Old Mr Harrison only had the locks put on them in the last couple of years.’
‘Did he say why, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt was looking curious.
‘He did not, my lord. But the man who made them said to me afterwards that they was mighty strong locks. You’d think the old man had the Crown jewels inside them old temples rather
than a couple of mouldy statues, he used to say to me. He’s still there. Harold Webster, my lord, up at the big house, the man who fitted them.’
They had reached the path that ran round the lake, disappearing out of sight from time to time as it curved round the water’s edge. A couple of rooks greeted their arrival, striking out
over the water to the woods beyond.
‘Which way do we go here, Mr Parker?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘Well, my lord, we can go left or we can go right as you can see. I never knew which way the old gentleman wanted to go until we got here. But I think at this time of year we would have
turned right.’
Soon the flowering chestnuts and the rhododendrons would paint the path with colour. This morning they walked on, the old man leading, through green conifers and huge oaks.
‘Did he talk to you much along the way, Mr Parker?’ asked Powerscourt, noting that the classical temple had suddenly disappeared from view.
‘He didn’t talk to me, my lord. He talked to himself sometimes though. In German usually, I think, sometimes in some other language.’
‘What was that?’
‘I don’t rightly know, my lord.’ Samuel Parker shook his head. ‘I never had any time to learn any of those foreign languages at school. I found it hard enough learning
how to spell this one. But Mabel thought it might have been Yiddish.’
‘How on earth did she know that? Does Mabel know Yiddish, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt marvelled again at the detective powers of Mrs Parker.
‘Mabel speak Yiddish, my lord? Never a word of it. I think the vicar told her. He’d heard Old Mr Harrison talking to himself too. Yiddish, the vicar said, or maybe some other
language beginning with an A. Arabian? Aramaic? I can’t remember.’
They were now approaching another temple, not previously visible on the walk. It was quite a small temple with a portico of four Doric columns and an imposing inscription over the door.
‘
Procul, o procul este, profani
’, the message warned. Powerscourt had sudden memories of translating the
Aeneid
at school, watched over by an unforgiving master. Be gone,
be gone, you uninitiated persons, he said to himself. It’s the Sybil speaking in Book Six, just as Aeneas was about to begin his descent into the underworld to meet his father and hear the
story of the founding of Rome, a perilous journey from which few travellers returned. As he stood at the door while Samuel Parker fiddled with his bunch of keys, Powerscourt wondered if he too was
entering some private underworld of the Harrisons where filial respect was marked out, not with piety and messages from the Sibyls, but with the bodies of the dead.
‘What was he worried about, Miss Harrison?’ Lady Lucy was looking concerned, hoping against hope that the old lady hadn’t lost her mind again.
‘He never told me very much, Lady Powerscourt. I tried to remember, after your husband called the time before. Germany, I think, it had to do with Germany. It’s not the same now
it’s all one. I remember all those little states we used to have before that dreadful old Bismarck got his way and bundled them all up together like a big parcel.’
The old lady stopped suddenly and smiled a vacant smile. She’s going, she’s going, thought Lady Lucy. ‘Was that why he went to Germany in the last years? Was he looking for
whatever it was that troubled him?’
‘Berlin,’ the old lady said definitely. ‘I know he went there. On business for the bank, he said. Frankfurt. He went there too. Berlin is full of soldiers now, marching up and
down all the time, as if they want to fight somebody. That’s what he said.’
‘And did he have letters from Germany too?’
‘Letters, letters?’ said the old lady wildly, looking round as if the post had not been delivered that morning. ‘Letters . . .’ Old Miss Harrison was lost again.
‘Father used to check we had learnt our letters when we were very small. Letters are very important, my children, he used to say, nearly as important in this world as numbers. That’s
what he used to say.’
‘I’m sure he was right,’ said Lady Lucy diplomatically. ‘Did your brother have correspondents in Germany?’
‘All our letters were handed out every morning by the butler at the end of breakfast. We children were so excited when we had letters of our own. I used to look at the stamps and the
postmarks.’ She nodded as if confirming the educational value of the postal services. ‘He did have letters from Germany, my brother,’ she went on, ‘I remember the postmarks.
Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Frankfurt, one from Munich with a beautiful stamp on it. Mountains, I think. Do they have mountains near Munich?’
Lady Lucy assured her that they did.
‘Did he ever talk to you about his worries at all?’ she continued, stressing ‘at all’ as if she thought it impossible that the two old people could have shared a house
without sharing their fears.
‘He talked in his sleep sometimes, he did. When he was sitting by the fire, just where you are now. After supper, he would usually fall asleep and sometimes he would mutter to himself in
his sleep. I can’t sleep much now at night. I can get off all right, but then I keep waking up again. Mother never could sleep at all at the end, you know. One of the doctors said if
she’d slept better she wouldn’t have been gone so soon after Father passed on. She wouldn’t have gone so soon. That’s what he said.’
‘And what,’ asked Lady Lucy quietly, praying for one last lucid moment, ‘did he say to himself in his sleep by the fire after supper?’
‘They call this one the Temple of Flora, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker, ushering him inside. The air was damp. Spiders were taking over the left-hand wall of the
little temple, their webs cascading down the walls. There were a couple of busts of ancient heroes and two sturdy seats, almost benches, on either side.
‘Did Old Mr Harrison ever stop here,’ asked Powerscourt, looking carefully at the statues, ‘to read his papers or to write?’
‘Only very rarely, my lord. Very rarely.’ Samuel Parker was shaking his head, the wisps of his grey beard waving in symmetry. ‘Once or twice he did, perhaps. One day I do
remember him stopping in here and me bringing in his little table off the pony.’
‘Can you remember how long ago that was? Did he seem to be in a great hurry to get started that day?’ Powerscourt was looking carefully at the busts, Marcus Aurelius on the left, he
thought, Alexander the Great on the right.
‘I think he was, my lord. In a hurry, I mean. And I think that would have been last summer. I remember it was very hot, even though it was early in the morning.’
They set off again, the path turning now uphill towards the tree-lined hills, now down towards the water’s edge. Sometimes another temple could be seen across the lake, sitting proudly on
its semi-circle of turf. Sometimes it disappeared, lost among the bushes and the trees.
‘I presume, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that the garden was designed a long time ago, long before the Harrisons came here?’
‘It was, my lord. It was created in the seventeen hundreds, I think. But Old Mr Harrison knew all about it. He used to quote to me in Latin sometimes out of his head. He read all about the
building of it in the library up in the big house.’
They passed through a grotto, where a statue of a river god pointed the way forwards and a marble maiden slumbered on her bed of rock while the water dripped on all around her.
‘I don’t suppose Mr Harrison did much work here,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, as he bumped his head on a rocky outcrop, the bottoms of his trousers watered by the local
deities.
‘Not in there, my lord. But just a few yards up the road is what they call The Cottage. He worked a lot in there.’
The lake frontage was open at this point, with wide views across the water. A kingfisher, brilliant in blue, shot across the water at astonishing speed. On the hills above the lake the birds
were singing happily, making occasional forays to forage at the water’s edge.
The Cottage was laid out like a small summerhouse, converted only a couple of years before.
‘In here,’ Samuel Parker wrestled with his keys again, ‘there is a table by the window as you can see. Sometimes I would wait for an hour or so while he wrote things or
pottered about. Quite often he would break off in the middle of something and go and stare at the water, just by that tree over there. Then he would go back inside. The pony always liked to stop
here. The grass is quite lush round this part.’ What on earth was the old man writing down here? thought Powerscourt. Who was he writing to? Did these peaceful pursuits lead to his death?
What was he looking for? Of one thing he was certain. Long before he came on the scene somebody else had embarked on a journey of discovery. The old man had been here before him. But of the nature
of his quest, or his success or failure, he had, for the present, no idea.
‘It must have been very peaceful for him here,’ he said, smiling gently at Samuel Parker.
‘It was, my lord, it certainly was. Now, there’s one last place he used to work and then we’ll have done the full circuit. It’s the Pantheon next, my lord.’
So that was what the temple reminded him of. Powerscourt knew he had seen it somewhere before. It had been on a trip to Rome with Lucy for a wedding anniversary. The Pantheon. The pagan gods of
Rome had transplanted themselves from the banks of the Tiber to a new home in the depths of Oxfordshire.
‘Sometimes he would talk in German, sometimes in Yiddish.’ The old lady was concentrating hard, as if she knew her time was limited. Lady Lucy wondered if Francis
would want her to take a crash course in Yiddish. She rather hoped not. She waited. She thought Miss Harrison’s mind was about to take off on one of its own private journeys once more.
‘Secret societies, secret societies,’ the old lady was whispering now. ‘Why do people want to have secret societies, my dear? Father used to complain about them at the
universities. He said they were terrible organizations devoted to duelling and drinking and that sort of thing,’
She stopped, lost in thought. Lady Lucy tried to head her off before she disappeared.
‘Here, or in Germany?’ she said in her most matter-of-fact voice.
‘He knew they were in Germany. Oh yes.’ The old lady was very definite suddenly. ‘He knew that. Do you know what they say about getting old, my dear?’
Lady Lucy shook her head.
‘They say that you can remember things that happened fifty years ago but you can’t remember what happened yesterday. He didn’t know if they were in England as well as in
Germany. That’s what my brother said in his sleep. Father got so upset about these secret societies because his best friend’s son was left with a terrible duelling scar, right down one
side of his face. Such a handsome boy he used to be before that.’
She drew a line from just below her ear to the side of her wrinkled mouth. Lady Lucy wondered if she had been in love with this handsome boy, all those years ago.
‘Did he ever say what the secret society was for? What its purpose was?’
‘No good will come of it, Father used to say,’ Miss Harrison went on, ‘no good at all. You don’t want to go round stirring up hatred. That boy with the scar, look what
happened to him after all that fighting. The girls would never look at him after that. What a shame, Father used to say. Duelling finished his future, poor boy.’
Lady Lucy longed to ask if Miss Harrison had been in love with him before his terrible scar. But she pressed on. Francis would never forgive her if she encouraged the love stories of the old
lady from sixty years before.
‘Did he ever say what the secret society was for?’ she asked, remembering Francis’ description of how he had wanted to shake Miss Harrison into sense as the interview went
on.
‘It’s a secret brotherhood. It’s a secret bloody brotherhood. I remember him shouting that once, not so very long ago. We’d had goose for supper. We used to have goose
sometimes for Christmas when I was a little girl. Sometimes there were so many of us that we had two or even three. I can remember the smell, you know, of those geese cooking in the oven. It used
to spread all over the house. Father loved carving goose. I remember him saying once with the great carving knife in his hand that he should have been a surgeon rather than a banker. Then he could
have carved away all day.’ Miss Harrison laughed a tinny laugh.
Lady Lucy smiled sympathetically. ‘Is there anything else you can remember, Miss Harrison? Anything else of what he used to say in his sleep?’ She tried another tack. ‘Just
imagine that he’s sitting here now, in this chair, after supper, just the two of you. The fire is burning in the grate. It’s dark outside. The curtains are drawn. It’s very quiet.
Gradually he falls asleep.’ Lady Lucy slowly closed her eyes. ‘Perhaps he begins to snore. Then suddenly he speaks. He mutters in his sleep, your brother. What is he saying?’ She
let her head fall on to her shoulder.
The old lady puckered her face as if she was a small child confronted with a nasty piece of mental arithmetic. Then she too closed her eyes.
Lady Lucy waited, eyes closed. When she peeped out of them she saw that her device had failed. The old lady’s eyes had closed too. Her breathing grew slow and regular. Just at the point
when she might have been about to tell the whole story, Miss Augusta Harrison had fallen asleep.
Six Corinthian columns flanked by a couple of ancient statues gazed out across the lake. This must have been the centrepiece of the whole place, thought Powerscourt, wondering
not for the first time about the strange mind of the man who had designed these fabulous gardens, a mind where the ancient myths of Greece and Rome and the poetry of Virgil seemed to have been more
important than the eighteenth-century world he actually inhabited. Powerscourt thought he would have liked to meet the mind, if it could be summoned forth from the springs and grottoes it had left
behind.