‘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.