William Burke left his sentence hanging in the air.
‘Two deaths in the same family in a year and a half. One body never found, another one floating by London Bridge.’ Powerscourt looked sombre. ‘And the young man, Charles
Harrison, now, you say, a rising force in Harrison’s City. The old man was his great-uncle, and his four uncles ran the two banks between them. Is that right?’
Burke nodded.
‘Why did he join the City bank rather than the private bank, William?’
Burke tapped some ash into his fireplace.
‘They say he is very ambitious, that he wanted a larger stage to play on than the safe quarters of private banking. I believe he had a miserable childhood. His mother ran off with a Polish
count, his father drank himself to death and Charles was shuffled round the other members of his family. I’ve heard that none of them ever wanted him, but they felt they had to bring him
up.’
Burke looked at his watch suddenly as if he wanted to retire.
‘One last thing, Francis,’ he said, looking carefully at his brother-in-law. ‘I was asked if you were the man to investigate.’ Burke remembered the hasty conversation on
the steps of the Royal Exchange. ‘I said that as your brother-in-law I couldn’t possibly make any recommendations. But speaking off the record I said you were the most brilliant man in
England for this kind of work. Pray God I haven’t sent you into some terrible danger.’
‘I am concerned with one aspect of the Curse of the House of Harrison.’ Powerscourt was thinking fast, planning already the moves he might make in this investigation. ‘Let us
suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the death of Willi was not an accident. Whatever the motive, the murderer has not got what he wants. So now Old Mr Harrison goes to join his son in the
bankers’ heaven, an Elysian Field of profitable loans and successful arbitrage, perhaps. But what if the murderer has still not got what he wanted, William? What happens then?’
‘You don’t mean –’ Burke began.
‘I do. I mean precisely that. There may be a terrible threat, a terrible danger, to the remaining Harrisons. But whether it comes from inside or outside the bank, I cannot tell.’
The park was nearly empty now. A stiff breeze, driving hard through the trees, had sent most of the walkers home to Sunday evening tea or Sunday evening service. But for
Richard Martin and Sophie Williams, this was how they liked it. During the week they met rarely, Sophie often busy with her suffragist activities and Richard reluctant to face the censure of his
mother.
‘Where do you think you are going now, Richard?’ she would say, sometimes tracking him down as he tried to escape through the small back door. ‘You’re not creeping out to
meet that girl again, are you? Haven’t I warned you about her before? What would your poor father say if he knew that his son was leaving his mother all alone in our little house to carry on
with that young woman?’
Richard suspected that his father would have wished him luck in the pursuit of such a pretty girl as Sophie Williams, but he never said so. It was easier, as well as more dutiful, to follow her
wishes.
But Sundays, he felt, Sundays were his own, the only day completely clear of his work in the City. And on Sundays his mother was often busy on church business. Anyway, he thought, she
wouldn’t be able to imagine anybody flirting with a member of the opposite sex on the Sabbath.
So here they were, in the park a few streets from their homes, Richard and his Sophie, as they often were at this time on a Sunday.
‘Richard,’ said Sophie eagerly ‘you must tell me all about what’s been going on at your bank. Fancy a dead man turning up in such a respectable place!’
‘Well,’ Richard said quickly, ‘he didn’t exactly turn up at the bank itself.’ He had a sudden vision of the headless corpse walking up the stairs and taking a seat
in the partners’ room on the first floor. ‘He was found in the river some time ago. It was just the news that it was Old Mr Harrison that arrived this week. But, think of this, Sophie.
I have met the Governor of the Bank of England!’
‘You haven’t! Is he more important than the Lord Mayor? Does he have a cat like Dick Whittington?’
‘He is the most important man in the City, Sophie. He has influence over everything. Everything. And I had to show him upstairs to Mr Frederick. “How do you do, young man,” he
said to me very civilly on the staircase.’
‘One day, when women have the vote and true equality, those banks and counting houses will not be run entirely by men.’
Richard groaned internally as the tale of his triumph was turned into another attack on the wickedness of male society.
‘There are women working there already, Sophie,’ he said, trying to deflect her.
‘Oh, I know. I have met some of them at meetings. But they are only allowed in humble positions, operating the typing machines and junior clerking, that sort of thing. They’re not
going to be important.’
Sophie’s eyes danced with passion as she preached her gospel. Richard looked at the vivacity, the animation of her, and he knew more than ever that he was in love with her.
‘But tell me,’ said Sophie, returning once more to Harrison’s Bank, ‘how did they take it? The partners, I mean. Were they very upset?’
‘Well, no, I don’t think they were,’ said Richard, moving off the path briefly as two very large dogs chased each other across the park, pursued by the shouts of their owners.
‘I think Mr Williamson, the partner who used to be the senior clerk, was the most upset of all.’
‘But he wasn’t even a relation!’ Sophie turned to him, shocked at the inhumanity of bankers.
‘Well, I think Mr Frederick – the one who’s senior partner now was worried in case there was going to be a run on the bank. That’s why he asked the Governor to
call.’
Few matters in City offices escaped the notice of the junior staff. Gossip ran just as freely and just as widely inside the offices as it did on the streets and in the chop houses.
‘And the young Mr Harrison, Charles, he just seemed to be cross about the whole business. Maybe he was so angry with whoever had done such dreadful things to his great-uncle.’
‘Did you get to see the body, Richard?’ asked Sophie, turning ghoulish, something she would undoubtedly have discouraged in her pupils. ‘Was it very horrid?’
‘No, I did not, Sophie,’ Richard laughed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t satisfy your curiosity there.’
‘And will the bank continue to prosper? Surely things aren’t any different? Mr Frederick has been in charge for some time.’
Although she didn’t like to say so, Sophie was suddenly worried about Richard’s future.
‘In theory, you are right, Sophie,’ the young man replied, unaware of the girl’s concerns. ‘But in practice, I am not so sure. Most of the really important decisions were
referred to the old man since Willi Harrison died. Many’s the time we have lost money, or not made as much as we might have done, while we waited for a reply to telegrams and messages to
Blackwater. On one occasion, when the telegraph was broken, we lost fifteen thousand pounds.’
In spite of his youth and inexperience, Richard Martin had a sharp banking brain. He had watched and learnt a lot in his five years at Harrison’s and studying for his banking exams.
‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I just don’t know.’
Sophie knew little of the City. But she was sad to see Richard so sombre.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ she said, looking at him directly.
‘Of course,’ said Richard, his heart beating a little faster.
‘I have to go for an interview with the headmistress on Thursday afternoon. I don’t know what she wants to see me about but I’m a bit worried. Could I see you in the evening,
just to let you know what happened?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Richard. He wondered how he could deceive his mother. Maybe he could tell her he would have to work late at the office. Maybe he would be able to leave early
on Thursday. ‘You’re not in trouble, are you Sophie? They couldn’t be unhappy with your teaching, your children are all doing so well.’
‘I don’t know what it is about. Maybe it isn’t serious. But she did give me a very strange look last week.’
‘Look,’ said Richard, ‘I’ll see you in that coffee house opposite Liverpool Street station at five o’clock. I’m sure they’ll let me go a bit early if I
tell them it’s important.’
As they set off, Sophie was worried about Richard’s bank and her own interview. But Richard was feeling strangely elated. If she asked for this special meeting, didn’t it mean that
she must care for him a little bit?
They buried Old Mr Harrison on a bright spring morning, the little church at Blackwater filled to overflowing with servants and tenants and local people as well as a number of
visitors come from London to pay their last respects. His coffin was carried down from the house past the lake he loved, the sunlight dancing on the water and lighting up the classical buildings
that shared his secrets. He was to lie in the new Harrison Chapel, next to his eldest son.
Some days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking up the drive to call on Old Mr Harrison’s sister, the oldest surviving member of the family.
‘She’s well into her eighties,’ Frederick Harrison had told him at his morning meeting in the bank’s offices in the City. ‘She can still see, she can still hear
most of the time, but her mind is liable to wander. It’s as though parts of her brain get detached from the main instrument, then they rejoin it a little later.’
Johnny Fitzgerald had been despatched to Cowes to make inquiries about Willi Harrison, the eldest son who had perished in the boating accident. Powerscourt wasn’t sure how much would be
remembered about the event, well over a year after the tragedy, or how much would have been exaggerated with time. But he needed to know if his brother-in-law’s information was correct.
He was shown through a handsome entrance hall, a cube of some thirty feet, full of paintings of the family. He thought he recognized Frederick in younger days, seated on a handsome horse,
surveying his park.
Old Miss Augusta Harrison was waiting for him in the salon, a fine room with an ornate ceiling and views of the gardens beyond. She’s shrinking, Powerscourt thought, as she welcomed him
formally to Blackwater. Every year she must be smaller than the one before.
‘And how can I help you, Lord Powerscourt?’ she said slowly, showing him to a chair by the marble mantelpiece.
‘I am very grateful to you for seeing me at such a difficult time,’ Powerscourt began, thinking that the mourning black reminded him of Queen Victoria. ‘I would just like to
ask you some questions about your brother.’
‘That would have been when we lived in Frankfurt,’ she said slowly. Powerscourt wondered if she had never really mastered English and was slipping in and out of German in her mind.
She paused and looked at Powerscourt suspiciously. ‘What did you want to know about my brother?’ She returned to normality. ‘I don’t know anything about the bank.’ She
shook her head. ‘I never did and I don’t suppose I’m going to start now.’
‘I wanted to know how he spent his time when he was down here, you know, how he passed the time,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a Roman statue of a Vestal Virgin in the corner of the
room.
‘Do you speak German, Lord Powerscourt? I find everything easier in German.’ The old lady seemed to be pleading with him, her gnarled hands rubbing together in her nervousness.
‘I’m afraid I don’t, Miss Harrison. My wife does, but she is not with me today. But take your time, please, I have no wish to hurry you.’ He smiled.
‘The trees are beginning to come out in the park,’ the old lady said. ‘I always like it here in the spring. It’s not as good as the Rhine, nowhere is more beautiful than
the Rhine in the spring.’
Powerscourt wondered about the ratio between connection and wandering in her mind. It seemed to be about half and half. He felt he couldn’t in all decency stay much more than an hour. He
wondered if he would get any information at all.
‘I was wondering,’ he said in his gentlest voice, ‘how he spent his time when he was down here, your brother.’
‘Carl lived very quietly when he was down here. He loved walking in the gardens and by the lake. It must have been in ‘35 or ’36 that Father took us to Garda,’ she went
on, her mind slipping out of gear once more. ‘Carl used to take me rowing in a boat.’
‘Was he worried at all in the last year or so?’ Powerscourt cut in quickly, trying to bring her back.
‘Anybody involved in banking has reasons to worry, that’s what Father used to say. Worries all the time. I think he was worried about something, yes. There were such dances in
Garda,’ she went on, a faint smile playing across her withered lips, ‘and all the young men looked so handsome. Sometimes they would build a platform out on to the water so you could
dance on top of the lake. Not any more, not any more . . .’ she was muttering now, shaking her white head sadly from side to side.
‘What do you think he was worried about?’ Powerscourt tried again.
‘And the mountains!’ She was happier now, her eyes bright with the memories inside her head. ‘The mountains were so beautiful. And you could walk up into them for such a long
way. Carl used to take me up to look at the flowers. He was so worried that he went to Germany quite a lot in the last year. He went several times. On Saturdays we used to take a family party to
row out down the lake and stop at some of the little villages by the waterside. Sometimes we would take tea in them. They had very good cakes. Do you know the cakes in the Lakes, Lord
Powerscourt?’
‘I do,’ Powerscourt lied, ‘very fine cakes they are too. Where did your brother go when he went to Germany?’
‘I sometimes wish we had never left, you know, that we’d never come all the way from Frankfurt to London. Carl said business would be better here than it was in Germany. Frankfurt
and Berlin are such fine cities, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘Very fine.’ Powerscourt felt faint stirrings of irritation creeping over him. ‘Was that where Carl went? To Frankfurt and Berlin?’