Lady Lucy poured some more tea. Fitzgerald was thinking back to his last contact with the man from the secret society.
‘The chap did go very frosty at the end,’ he said, ‘man by the name of Munster. Creepy sort of character. I didn’t quite trust him. Mind you, it sounds as if he would
have trusted me even less.’
Powerscourt’s leg was going numb. If he sat still any longer he would be locked into his chair. He rose and began to hobble stiffly around the room. ‘The question is this,’ he
said with a grimace as the cramp shot up his leg. ‘Who’s in charge of whatever is going on? London or Berlin? Who is calling the shots?’
He came back to his chair and sank slowly down. He continued rubbing his thigh. ‘If we knew the answer to that, we might, we might just know the answer to everything.’
There was a firm knock at the drawing room door. Rhys the butler came in with a letter on a tray.
‘This has just come for you, my lord,’ he said. ‘The man said it was very urgent.’
Lady Lucy watched her husband’s face as his eyes flickered down the letter. She watched them go back to the top and read it again. She watched him turn pale, very pale.
‘Bad news, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy.
‘Tell us what it says,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.
‘Williamson is dead,’ said Powerscourt very quietly. He paused and looked down again at his letter. ‘The clerk at Harrison’s Bank who still had some shares in the
business. The one man who stood between Charles Harrison and total control of the bank. Run over by an underground train at Bank station this evening. It’s not clear at all if he fell, or if
he was pushed. The Commissioner says their man meant to be looking after Williamson lost him in the crush. Death would have been instantaneous.’
Powerscourt remembered the only time he had met Williamson, a careful, rather worried old gentleman anxious to secure the best for his bank and its clients. He need worry no more.
‘How terrible,’ said Lady Lucy.
‘That makes a quartet of death now,’ said Powerscourt. ‘One in the yacht, one in the Thames, one in the inferno at Blackwater, one under the wheels of a train. There’s
only one person left in charge of Harrison’s Bank. Nobody else can stop him now. He’s on his own.’
London was filling up for the Jubilee. Many of the fifty thousand troops from all corners of Victoria’s Empire had arrived. They walked open-mouthed around the great
shopping streets, dazzled by the wealth on show. Some of them went to the Victorian era exhibition at Earl’s Court displaying sixty years of British art and music, women’s work and
sport. Stands were being erected all along the route with the newspapers complaining that large sections of the West End had been turned into a timber yard.
At the War Office General Arbuthnot was holding a final meeting with the Metropolitan Police and Dominic Knox of the Intelligence Department of the Irish Office.
‘What do you think, Knox? Are we to expect a terrorist attack or not?’
‘You are always asking me for a definite answer,’ said Knox, irritated with this need for simple certainties in the battle against a devious and invisible enemy. ‘On balance, I
should say that there will be an attempt at some kind of outrage. It may be that we will be able to prevent it. But I do not believe it will take place on the main route of the
procession.’
‘Why not?’ said the General.
‘Think of it, man, think of it.’ Knox addressed the General as though he was talking to a rather stupid child. ‘This isn’t like a football match with supporters of two
different teams attending. There is only one team, Victoria’s team. Fifty thousand soldiers are going to march along the route. All of them are to be told to keep their eyes open for anything
unusual in the crowds. There will be policemen everywhere charged with the same mission. Plain-clothes men will be placed among the crowd at certain points – one entire stand near Fleet
Street will be filled with them. Nobody could attempt to fire a shot or place a bomb with that amount of surveillance, not unless they are on a suicide mission. And however much the Irish profess
their love for their country and its freedom, none of them has so far been prepared to blow himself up in the process.’ General Arbuthnot always found it difficult talking to Knox. The man
was so elusive, so quick to qualify whatever decisions he might have made.
‘So where might we expect something, do you suppose, Mr Knox?’
‘I don’t know, General.’ He’s off again, thought the General, longing for the ordered certainties of the parade ground. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t
know.’
Lord Francis Powerscourt had gone back to Blackwater. He had forbidden himself the library in case of distractions. He knocked once more at the door of Samuel Parker’s
cottage.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ said Parker. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘I trust Mrs Parker is well? And you must be relieved to have Miss Harrison off your hands?’
Powerscourt smiled. From what Lady Lucy had told him, old Miss Harrison would not have been an easy visitor, residing in her mind somewhere between heaven and hell.
‘She’s gone to those Italian Lakes, my lord. Mabel was right glad to see her go. Old Miss Harrison began talking to her one day as if she was an angel.’ Samuel Parker shook his
head sadly. ‘I’m not saying that Mabel mightn’t have looked a bit like an angel when she was young. But you’d have to be off your head to think she was one now.’
‘Mr Parker,’ Powerscourt was moving on from the civilities, ‘I wonder if I could borrow your keys, the ones to the temples round the lakes you had with you before. I’d
just like to have another look around. And is there a boat anywhere I could borrow – a rowing boat, I mean? I thought I might have a poke about on that little island.’
‘The island, my lord? I’ve just remembered. I don’t think I mentioned it last time, it quite slipped my mind. But sometimes Old Mr Harrison used to row himself over there, all
on his own, my lord. He wasn’t a very good rower, mind you, it used to take him about ten minutes. He went round in circles sometimes.’
Parker disappeared behind his front door and came back with one of the largest bunches of keys Powerscourt had ever seen.
‘The temples are all marked, my lord. And you’ll find a boat underneath the Temple of Flora.’
Parker watched him go, the sunshine dancing on the lake. I’ll say one thing for Lord Francis Powerscourt, he said to himself as he went inside to tell Mabel the latest news, he
doesn’t give up easily.
Powerscourt wandered slowly round the lake. Somewhere there must be a key or a clue to the terrible events that had engulfed the House of Harrison. Round these paths the old man had wandered on
his pony, the faithful Parker accompanying him. By these temples he had stopped and taken out his writing desk, already trying to solve the mystery that brought Powerscourt to this water’s
edge. Inside these temples, perhaps, he had conducted his correspondence with his contacts in Germany, sending Parker to post them on his own to avoid the postal system in the main house. Inside
them too, he had read his replies, returning to Blackwater to mutter to his sister after dinner about conspiracies and secret societies. Old Mr Harrison had made some connection between events in
Germany, perhaps in Berlin, and the deaths that struck his family and weakened his bank.
Powerscourt walked into the echoing dome of the Pantheon. The statues mocked him. We know, we are gods, they seemed to say. You are merely an ignorant mortal doomed to wander in the shadows of
ignorance for the rest of your days. The cupboards and the window seats in The Cottage had no secrets for him. The sun was flooding the Temple of Apollo, the lead statue of the hero glowing in the
light. Once again Powerscourt tapped on the lead as he had tapped on the marble of the other statues. No hollow sound, no promise of a secret cache here. The whole lake seemed to be laughing at
him, mocking his ignorance and rejoicing in its older, superior knowledge.
By the Temple of Flora, where yet more statues failed to yield up any secrets, he found the boathouse. He was looking out at the Pantheon and the little island that lay half-way between it and
The Cottage. Powerscourt rowed slowly, remembering the flat fens he had rowed past in his days at Cambridge, the thrill of the chase, the wonderful excitement of making a bump on the boat ahead. No
other boats followed him here, only the ripples on the water. He tied his boat to the nearest tree and went to explore.
The island was very small, some seventy yards long and fifty yards wide. It was ringed by trees so the little clearing at the centre was almost invisible from the shore. Powerscourt suddenly
heard the voice of the Sibyl in Book Six of the
Aeneid
sounding in his brain.
‘In a dark tree there hides a golden bough and it is sacred to the Juno of Hell: It is not given to anybody to approach earth’s hidden places except he first plucked from that tree
its golden foliage.’
Golden boughs and golden foliage seemed appropriate to a banking family, thought Powerscourt, looking round for dark trees with golden foliage. There was a dark tree, but it was old and
withered. It had a hollow centre reaching up to his shoulder. Feeling slightly self-conscious he put his hand inside. There were leaves and clods of earth lying on the top. There was something hard
beneath them. When he had brushed the mould away Powerscourt saw there was an ill-fitting piece of wood lying across the hollow, like a badly made trapdoor. He tried to move it with his hands. It
didn’t move. He tried levering it up with Mr Parker’s largest key, a formidable instrument over two feet long. There was a crack, then a harsh creaking noise as the wood came away.
Powerscourt peered inside. The top of the tiny chamber was covered with towels. There must have been half a dozen of them. He thought of the housekeeper at Blackwater, checking her stores, looking
in her books, complaining to anyone who would listen that her towels kept on disappearing.
At the bottom of the towels was a small black document box, made of iron and sealed with a formidable lock. As he lifted it out of its hiding place he could see the legend ‘C.F.
Harrison’ written on the side.
Powerscourt peered through the trees. For some time he had wondered if he was being watched. There was nothing definite, just the sense of hidden eyes following him round the lake. Perhaps it
was the statues.
He looked at the lock. He wondered if any of Mr Parker’s keys would open the box. He wondered about Mr Parker. Surely he must have known about the cache on the island on the lake? Surely
he must have known that his master sometimes took things to and from his box? Was Mr Parker to be trusted, or was he yet another mystery in the labyrinth that was Blackwater?
Powerscourt sat on the ground and began working through Mr Parker’s keys. There must have been over fifty on the ring. Beyond the island a cormorant beat its way across the lake, making
guttural calls to its fellows. Blackwater foresters could be heard way in the distance sawing at a rotten tree. He wondered if the key had been kept by Old Mr Harrison himself on his own key ring.
Perhaps it had been removed, like his head, before his last macabre voyage down the Thames to London Bridge. Then he found it. The key was stiff, maybe the lock was stiff after all that time in the
tree. Powerscourt turned it and found a very small pile of papers at the bottom of the box. Damp had got to some of them, the ink fading before its time. There was a musty smell as if the papers
themselves were going bad.
He pulled out four letters, all written in German. There were also two newspaper articles, going yellow with age. Both related to the fall of Barings Bank some seven years before. The old man
had made marks on the articles in a red pen, circling some passages and underlining others. Maybe Harrison’s had been involved in the rescue, Powerscourt thought.
Should he put the letters back in the box? Should he take the box away with him? Should he take the box back to Mr Parker and tell him he was taking it and its contents back to London? He looked
at the key, sitting comfortably on Mr Parker’s key ring. It looked as though it had been there for years. He wondered once more about Samuel Parker, sitting on the ground, looking out over
the water. He could see his little rowing boat bobbing gently up and down. The classical façade of the Pantheon was on his other side, the statues within guarding their ancient mysteries.
Was Samuel Parker secretly in league with Charles Harrison, reporting Powerscourt’s every move and repeating every word he said? He couldn’t be sure. He even wondered about an unlikely
alliance between Parker and Jones the butler, praying together perhaps on the stone floor, whisky bottles drained beside the shells and the golden cross as they planned a campaign of fire and
murder.
Whatever he did he must act fast. Powerscourt thought he had been on the island for about ten minutes. That he could describe satisfactorily. Anything longer might be a problem. He took the
letters and the newspaper articles out of the box. He folded them carefully and put them in his pocket. Please God I don’t have an accident on the way back to the shore, he said to himself,
the papers would become so sodden you couldn’t read anything at all. He locked the box and put it back in the tree. He covered it with the towels and its trapdoor. Then he gathered some
leaves and moss from the bottom of the tree and placed them on top. He found a branch lying on the ground and brushed the area around it, trying to remove any footprints that might reveal his
presence.
Then he went back. Mr Parker was waiting for him at the boathouse. Powerscourt wondered if Parker had watched his every move. He looked back to the island, reassured that you could not have seen
a man removing boxes from the hollow tree. ‘Did your mission meet with success, my lord?’
‘In a way it did,’ said Powerscourt, handing over the keys. ‘I’d completely forgotten how much I enjoyed rowing. Maybe I shall get back on the river.’
Powerscourt was lost in thought about possible links between Blackwater, Berlin and Harrison’s Bank when he returned to Markham Square. The noise hit him as soon as he
opened the door. There seemed to have been an insurrection on the upper floors. Doors were banging. Fists were beating on the walls. Occasional screams broke through the high-pitched racket.
Punctuating the sound effects came the repeated cry ‘I don’t want to go to bed! I don’t want to go to bed!’ Thomas Powerscourt was not on his best behaviour.