‘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?’
‘I called on Parker in his cottage on the way here. He told me about the fire. And I gather my uncle has perished in the blaze.’
So Charles Harrison knew about the fire before he got here, thought Powerscourt, staring keenly at the last remaining male member of the House of Harrison. That would explain why he didn’t
look around the outside of Blackwater before he went in. Or would it?
Melancholy introductions had been made on the portico outside the east front, Inspector Wilson and Chief Fire Officer Perkins apologizing for the grime on their hands, Fire Investigator Hardy
staring fixedly at an innocent-looking bundle of ash lying on the floor inside.
‘This is a sad occasion, indeed,’ said Harrison, turning to look at the open windows of what had once been the picture gallery, ‘my poor uncle. My poor uncle.’ He took
off his hat as if already at the graveside. Powerscourt thought he didn’t seem very upset about his relation’s death. He remembered Charles Harrison’s unhappy upbringing, brought
up by a family that didn’t really want him.
‘Could I ask you, gentlemen,’ Harrison went on, ‘to grant me some repose before any proper interviews and exchanges of information take place? Could we meet in the library here
tomorrow morning, at, say, eleven o’clock?’
‘That’ll give him eighteen hours to think about his story,’ Hardy said to Powerscourt later as they walked down the drive.
‘Do you suspect Mr Charles Harrison of being implicated in the fire?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘I’m not saying I do and I’m not saying I don’t,’ replied Hardy enigmatically, ‘but there’s something about his manner that doesn’t ring quite
right. I’ve watched enough people who have started fires in my time trying to pretend that they had nothing to do with them afterwards.’
Police and fire departed in one of Perkins’ fire engines. Powerscourt decided to pay a brief call on Samuel Parker to ask for a lift to the station.
‘Mr Parker,’ he began, ushering the head groom on to the little path in front of his house, ‘Mr Charles has just called, I understand.’
‘That he has, sir, that he has. He popped in to see old Miss Harrison, so he did, but she was asleep, thank God. Lady Powerscourt left after she dropped off. I took her to the station, my
lord.’ He rubbed his forehead as if the old lady was becoming rather a trial to the Parker household.
‘Is she any better? Miss Harrison, I mean?’
‘It’s hard to say, sir,’ said Parker, shaking his head. ‘The doctor is coming again in the morning, I understand, so he is. She was talking about fire the last time I saw
her.’
‘Oh dear. Could I ask you a favour, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt felt a great urge to escape from Blackwater as quickly as possible. ‘Could you take me to the station as well? I
have to be back in London tonight. I shall return in the morning, of course.’
As they rattled along the lanes Powerscourt asked a question he knew he should have asked before. It wasn’t important, just a piece of routine.
‘Jones, the butler, the man who rescued Miss Harrison,’ he began, ‘has he been with the family long?’
‘Jones isn’t his real name, sir, not proper like.’ Samuel Parker was driving quite slowly, his face fixed firmly on the road ahead. ‘I’m just trying to remember
what his real name is now.’
‘Does he not come from these parts?’
‘No, he does not, my lord. He’s German too, like the Harrisons. Goldman, Goldstein, Goldfarb . . .’
Powerscourt wondered if the horses in front had been named after German families once known to the Harrisons in a previous life.
‘Goldschmidt, that’s what it is. Jones’s name, I mean. Goldschmidt. I remember Mabel saying it must be the same word as our own Goldsmiths. Goldschmidt.’
Parker sounded pleased with his feat of memory.
‘Why did he call himself Jones?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘He could have just changed his name to Goldsmith, perfectly good English name.’
‘I don’t rightly know, my lord,’ said Parker, ‘but I do know that he came here with the Harrisons when they moved up from London. So he must have worked for them
before.’
‘Did Old Mr Harrison ever talk about him as he was going round the lake, that sort of thing?’ Strings of possibilities, all of them unpleasant, were running through
Powerscourt’s brain.
‘No, he didn’t, my lord. But the rumour about the place was that his family had been bankers in Frankfurt who’d all been ruined in some smash, my lord.’ Parker
didn’t sound too familiar with financial smashes.
‘So the two families must have known each other before,’ said Powerscourt, alighting from the carriage outside the station. ‘Thank you, Mr Parker, thank you very much indeed.
Perhaps I shall see you tomorrow. I have to be back for eleven o’clock.’