‘It took three months, my lord. Father Paul gave me a good pair of boots. He gave me a map with the names of the Dominican abbeys on the way. Every time I stayed there I had to attend the
services, even though I was not a member of his Church. He said I had to remember my sins and pray to whatever God I believed in.
‘Conques, my lord. The Dominicans had a beautiful abbey there. Moissac, the abbey was full there, some of us had to sleep in the stables. San Juan de Ortega in Spain, my lord, the abbot
was completely blind but he could walk unaided from the refectory to the chapel and then back to his cell. He said the Lord was guiding him. Villafranca del Bierzo, my feet had been bleeding for
some time by then. The Dominicans said I must not have any treatment until I reached Santiago.’
‘Did you get there in time? In time to meet Father Paul?’ Powerscourt was fascinated now.
‘I met him on the day we arranged, my lord. He had come in a boat from Bordeaux. Some of the pilgrims did that, my lord. They take you to a special place in the cathedral if you are a
pilgrim. There must be a thousand candles lit before the high altar and there is a huge sphere, full of incense, that swings above your head. Then we attended the service for the Assumption.
‘Prospere procede, et regna. Assumpta est Maria in caelum; gaudet exercitus angelorum.’
Jones the butler’s hands were folded in prayer.
‘In splendour and in state, ride on in triumph,’ Powerscourt translated. ‘Mary has been taken up into heaven. The whole host of angels are rejoicing.’
‘Exactly so, my lord. The next day Father Paul baptised me into the Roman Catholic Church.’ Jones the butler crossed himself again. ‘I can still remember how cold the water
was. They say it came from a spring at Padron. That’s where the boat was found. The boat with the body of St James the Apostle that had come all the way from Palestine.’
With a severed head in its cargo, thought Powerscourt. The severed head of a saint, not a Harrison.
The sun was breaking through the clouds now. Shafts of light fell on the gold coins of the cross, glowing in Jones’s basement cell.
‘He gave me my life’s work, Father Paul. He said I had to do penance for my sins. I was to find out the Harrisons and serve them all my days. You must love your enemies, he said.
Only thus can you find God.’
Powerscourt wondered if he had found God here at Blackwater, surrounded by the pagan temples by the lake. Perhaps he had.
‘Why did you come to England? Why did you not go back to Germany?’
‘Father Paul said I could not go back to Germany. Not ever. My homeland was to be denied me. I had to be an exile from own country. He said it was my fate to wander, like Ruth, my lord,
amid the alien corn.’
Far off the bells of Blackwater church were ringing the hour of twelve. It’s the Angelus, Powerscourt remembered.
Jones the butler rose from his bed once more and knelt in front of his altar and his shells.
He prayed.
Forty miles away a young woman was drawing by the side of the Thames. Marie O’Dowd came from Dublin. She was a teacher. She had a good reason for being here in London,
attending an interview for a position as a teacher in a Catholic school in Hammersmith.
Marie was twenty-three years old with masses of curly brown hair. Her eyes were green, green for the countryside in the rain, her lover said, green for the Wicklow Mountains in the morning,
green for Ireland.
The top page of her sketchbook showed the view from Hammersmith Bridge, the river sloping away towards Chiswick, the great bulk of Harrods’ new depository on the other side. She worked
fast, pausing to smile shyly at the passers-by who stopped to admire her work. When she was alone, she flicked to the page below. This showed a very detailed drawing, as accurate as her accurate
eye could make it, of the ground directly below the bridge, of the distances between the ironwork, spaces where a man or a woman might hide a parcel, or a package. Or a bomb.
Marie O’Dowd had sketched three of London’s bridges this morning. Each page had its shadow, the one with the details, the one with the spaces for the parcel.
This afternoon she was going to Piccadilly and Ludgate Hill to sketch what she thought was the route of the procession on Jubilee Day. Tonight she would go back to Dublin and give her sketchbook
to her lover. To Michael Byrne, the man who waited by the dark waters of Glendalough, the man determined that Queen Victoria’s Jubilee would be a very special day.
Jones the Blackwater butler rose to his feet once more. The flagstone where he knelt had a small indentation in the centre. It was even more polished than its fellows.
‘Forgive me, my lord,’ he said quietly. As he rose his arm brushed on the door of the spartan wardrobe where he kept his clothes. Powerscourt caught a glimpse of neatly ironed shirts,
of black trousers hanging evenly in their presses. But something glowed at the bottom. Powerscourt could not see what it was.
‘Thank you for telling me your story,’ said Powerscourt, still not sure whether he believed it or not. It would be frightfully difficult to check, he thought. The Dominican, if he
could ever find him, if indeed he was still alive, would not tell him anything. Did the authorities at Santiago keep records of the pilgrims who passed through the shrine? Probably not, and they
were not likely to be accurate with so many different nationalities trudging across Europe to stand before the Portal de la Gloria.
‘Perhaps you could take me to the library, Jones. I need to speak to Mr Harrison.’ The cross of golden coins remained impassive on its wall, Jones’s belt still anchored inside.
The hundreds of shells looked out at the life of Christ on the opposite wall. Jones led the way out of his little cell. As he entered the passageway Powerscourt darted back to open the door of the
wardrobe. The bottom was lined with bottles, not of some sacred liquor, or Communion wine, but of whisky. There must have been over a hundred of them, lying in formation on the bottom. Was Jones
going to make another cross, this time composed of the bottles he had consumed, alone with his shells in his basement cell? Or was he merely a hopeless drunk, his fantastic story concocted and
embroidered while he lay on his little bed, staring at his cross, growing drunker and drunker on his whisky?
Powerscourt hurried back to the corridor. They passed through the basement room where he had first met Jones that morning, the polished candlesticks still standing to attention on their table.
They went up the stairs. Powerscourt passed a settee with a scallop-shell crest in the inner hall. He shook his head in disbelief. More shells. Was the whole house and its mysterious lake an
enormous puzzle, clues and distractions lying about in equal measure?
‘Mr Harrison. Lord Powerscourt, my lord.’
Jones spoke in funereal tones. Powerscourt shook Charles Harrison warmly by the hand and stood back to look at his library. It was one of the most beautiful libraries Powers-court had ever seen.
It had a green carpet with a pattern of interlacing motifs like a Roman pavement. The books, thousands of them, were set into the walls. Two elegant Regency windows looked out over the garden. The
barrelled ceiling, green like the carpet, arched across the library. At the far end, on a handsome Chippendale desk, stood a statue of Hercules, hand on hip, staring across the mahogany at the
leather-bound volumes in the corner of the room.
‘I was just telling the Inspector about the arrangements here, the night-time routine, all that sort of thing,’ said Charles Harrison.
Inspector Wilson was looking out of place, standing awkwardly by the marble fireplace.
‘Could I ask you, Mr Harrison, if you saw anything unusual on the night of the fire, when you left the house and returned to London, I mean?’
‘Any sign of any intruders, Lord Powerscourt? No, I did not. I left, as I said, about half-past ten in the evening. The good Inspector tells me that the fire people think the blaze must
have started in the early hours of the morning. Any intruders must have come later than that.’
Powerscourt watched Charles Harrison’s red eyebrows contracting and expanding as he spoke. ‘Quite so,’ he said thinking in his head about railway timetables and early morning
milk trains.
‘Could I ask you one question before I go?’ Charles Harrison sounded almost apologetic. ‘I have to make arrangements with the vicar about the funeral. Then I have to go back to
London. There is so much to see to at the bank. Maybe it is best that we are kept busy at a time like this, we have less time to grieve. But to my question.’
Charles Harrison looked from Inspector Wilson at the fireplace to Powerscourt glancing idly at the collected works of Voltaire, published in Paris in the year 1825.
‘Do you think there is an attack being mounted on my family? First Old Mr Harrison is found floating in the Thames, now my uncle perishes in this fire. Is it all a coincidence? Or is it a
conspiracy? Do you think my own life is in danger? Should I take precautions, whatever you gentlemen might advise?’
Inspector Wilson looked at Powerscourt. Powerscourt looked carefully at the cover of
Candide
. He turned to face Charles Harrison, flanked by the naked back of Hercules.
‘Mr Harrison,’ he began. He did not know quite what to say. ‘I wish I could give you an answer to that, I really do. Until further inquiries are made here we do not know the
precise cause of the fire. It was almost certainly started by natural means. Most fires are.’
He caught the Inspector giving him a very curious glance. He looked as if he might be about to speak. Powerscourt hurried on. ‘Once we know more, of course we shall let you know. In the
meantime, all I can say is that we know nothing of any conspiracy against your family. But it might be prudent to be careful over the coming weeks.’
Charles Harrison looked sombre. He thanked them both and set off on his melancholy business. As he left the library he turned back. ‘Please feel free, gentlemen, to use this room as long
as your inquiries continue. It is the most beautiful room in the house, or what remains of the house.’
Shortly afterwards they heard the sound of carriage wheels fading down the drive. Inspector Wilson lowered himself into an armchair.
‘Did you mean what you said just now, sir? About the fire starting by accident and there being no danger to Mr Harrison?’
‘I did not, Inspector. I most certainly did not. But it seemed the best thing to say for the moment. God help me if I am wrong again.’
From the other side of the house the shouts of the firemen and Mr Hardy’s instructions to his photographer drifted through the open window.
‘Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I know I have no official standing in this matter. I am here merely as an observer. But there are certain lines of inquiry I would wish to ask
of you.’
‘You’re official enough for me, my lord. I have this note here from the Chief Constable himself instructing me to give you every possible assistance in your inquiries, whatever your
requests may be.’
The Inspector pulled an envelope from his pocket and waved it in front of Powerscourt. ‘Signed, William F. Bampfylde, Oxfordshire Constabulary.’
‘That is most helpful,’ said Powerscourt, joining Inspector Wilson in an armchair in front of the fire, a relief on the overmantel depicting some biblical scene he did not recognize.
He hoped it had nothing to do with shells or St James the Apostle.
‘Now then, Inspector, we need to find out about people who might have come in and out of the house last night. Could you check the railway station for the times of all the trains arriving
and departing from the station in the night and in the early hours of the morning? Could you ask at the inn about any strangers they might have seen on the night of the fire?’
Powerscourt stopped suddenly, staring into space. A blind Milton looked down from above the entrance. Blind, like me, he thought, blind about motive, blind about the sequence of events, blind
about where all this is going to end.
‘How far is the river from here, Inspector?’
‘The Thames, my lord? I should say it’s less than a mile from the bottom of that lower lake, the one with the waterfall.’
‘Could somebody have come here or left here by boat,’ said Powerscourt, ‘coming or going from one of those little places with railway stations up and down the river? Could you
ask? Who else wanders about the place in the middle of the night? Poachers? Thieves coming to burgle houses in the small hours of the morning?’
‘Plenty of both of those, my lord, especially poachers. Lots of the poorer people round here eat quite well.’ Inspector Wilson nodded meaningfully at Powerscourt.
‘And tell me this, if you would, Inspector. You have talked to Mr Harrison about his movements the day after the fire. Where did he say he was? Why did he not come here until the
evening?’
Inspector Wilson turned back five or six pages in his notebook. ‘He left here that night because he had an important meeting the next day in Norwich, my lord. Something to do with his
bank. He returned from Norwich in the afternoon.’
The Inspector looked up, alarmed. He’s not going to ask me to check the trains to and from Norwich, is he? he said to himself. We don’t have those kind of timetables in the
station.
‘I shall take it upon myself to check the trains to East Anglia, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully. ‘I know a man who could tell me inside five minutes about every known
means of reaching Norwich by train.’
‘My lord.’ Inspector Wilson was becoming confused, his mind struggling to keep up with all the inquiries. ‘Do you have a theory as to what went on? With the fire, I
mean?’
Powerscourt smiled a feeble smile. ‘I have many theories, Inspector. They could all be wrong. They probably are all wrong. The fire could have been caused by accident. That must remain the
most likely possibility, but I should not be surprised if it was not. The fire could have been caused by somebody inside this house.’
He thought of mentioning the mysterious butler, praying in his basement cell, hiding his bottles of whisky. Did whisky burn easily? Pour a bottle down yourself in the basement. Pop upstairs to
start a fire and then retire to the golden cross and the shells down below. You probably wouldn’t remember a thing in the morning. He thought a further raft of suspicious information might
leave the Inspector completely confused.