Death and the Jubilee lfp-2 Page 3

  Samuel could just remember the family who lived in the great house before Old Mr Harrison bought it thirty-five years ago. The sons had gambled away the family money, the house and the estates all had to be sold, and the Harrisons, originally German bankers in Hamburg and Frankfurt, had moved in. Three generations of them lived in the house now: Carl Harrison known as Old Mr Harrison, his sister Augusta Harrison, known as Miss Harrison, his son Mr Frederick Harrison and his great-nephew, Charles Harrison, Young Mr Harrison as they were known to the servants.

  Old Mr Harrison loved the lake and the two-mile walk that ran around its borders. There were strange grottoes and classical temples, funny buildings as Samuel thought of them, dotted around it and sometimes Old Mr Harrison would spend a lot of time inside these Roman buildings, looking at the statues or reading his correspondence beneath some pagan god.

  Samuel Parker thought Old Mr Harrison had been worried recently. For the past few months his correspondence had been coming from foreign parts, from Bremen and Berlin, from Paris and Munich and Cologne. He had written a lot of letters too, perched at his table in the temple, a thick cape protecting him from the winds that whipped the waters of the lake and tore the leaves from the trees. And – this was what alarmed Samuel more than anything else – Old Mr Harrison had asked Samuel to post the letters he wrote down by the lake, as if he didn’t want anybody in the big house to know who he was writing to.

  The lake would be wreathed in mist this morning, Samuel knew, the great trees and the classical temples swirling in and out of sight like things glimpsed in nightmares. Samuel thought there were strange spirits living around it, older than the house, older than the village, older than the ancient church, older possibly than Christianity itself. Maybe the Druids or the pagan gods had dwelt there long ago, now living uneasily with the worldly deities of Rome.

  It was twenty days, maybe more, since Old Mr Harrison had come for his morning ride, walking stiffly down the drive from the house, leaning on his stick. Samuel had lost count. Sometimes they would go round the lake twice or even three times in one day when the weather was good and the sun shone on the water, reflections of pillars and pediments dancing on the surface of the lake. The old pony knew something was wrong. It gazed sadly at the ground, raising a hoof from time to time to paw at the gravel.

  Even Samuel’s wife Martha, so crippled now that she could scarcely manage the hundred yards to the church to lay the flowers on Sundays, could not remember how long it was since Old Mr Harrison had disappeared.

  ‘He’ll have gone to London to see the rest of them, to be sure,’ she would say anxiously, raking over the embers in the fire. But she didn’t sound as though she believed it.

  ‘None of the servants in the big house say he’s gone to London. And how would he get there? He couldn’t walk to the station, could he, not the way he is. I’ve taken Old Mr Harrison to and from that train every time he’s gone anywhere for over thirty years. And I haven’t taken him to the station, have I?’

  ‘No, you haven’t, Samuel.’

  At half-past ten, after half an hour of waiting, Samuel took the pony back to its stall. He gave it some water. ‘He’s not coming today, either. Another day has gone,’ he said to the pony.

  As he walked down the path to his cottage Samuel Parker wondered for the hundredth time if he should tell anyone about his vanished master. But he wasn’t sure who to tell. And he knew Old Mr Harrison would not want him to raise the alarm. ‘You can’t trust anybody these days,’ Samuel remembered the old man muttering to himself after a long day with his correspondence by the lake, ‘not even your own flesh and blood.’

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was feeling curious as he made his way across London to the Commissioner’s office. Maybe another case was going to begin. Ever since he was a small boy growing up in Ireland he had been fascinated by riddles and puzzles. He had devoted much of his adult life to solving mysteries and murders, codes and cryptograms in Kashmir and Afghanistan and the summer capital of the Raj at Simla during his time in the Army. He had solved a gruesome series of murders in the wine business at Oporto in Portugal where the victims were dumped in barrels of port, their flesh turned purple by the viscous liquor, and a long catalogue of murders in Britain and Ireland. His most important case had come five years before when he had solved the mystery of the strange death of Prince Eddy, the wastrel eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

  Sir William Spence, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, rose to meet Powerscourt in his office at Scotland Yard .

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, how very kind of you to come.’

  ‘As you know, Sir William, I am in debt to your service and its officers for help rendered me in the past more than I can say.’

  This was true. In two of his previous cases Powerscourt had received invaluable help from the police force of the capital. On the last occasion the Commissioner had treated Powerscourt to a magnificent dinner at his club where they had consumed two bottles of the finest claret in the cellars and the old man had told him terrifying tales of army life on the North West Frontier forty years before.

  ‘Let me come straight to the point.’ Sir William’s moustaches were not quite as formidable as those of his constable, but they were still substantial. Powerscourt wondered if moustache cultivation was now obligatory for all those in police uniform. ‘You will have seen the newspaper coverage of the body found in the Thames.’

  ‘One could scarcely avoid it,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It has dominated the papers every day since the unfortunate discovery itself.’

  ‘Most of what you read is made up, of course. The newspaper gentlemen enjoy themselves most when there are no facts at all to be reported, apart from the body itself. I sometimes think how easy it must be to be one of these reporters, making up the most fantastic stories out of your head and then presenting them as the very latest news.’

  Sir William shook his head at the sins of the reporters. ‘But let me ask you this, Lord Powerscourt. Have you any idea of how many people have come forward to claim the corpse? To say that it is a long-lost member of their family?’

  ‘I have no idea, Sir William.’ Powerscourt noticed that the four great maps of London, North South East and West, still adorned the office walls. And he observed that, as before, the East End was covered with small red circles denoting the most recent crimes.

  ‘So far we have had over one hundred and fifty.’ Sir William nodded to a pile of correspondence spilling out of a file on his desk. ‘Would you believe it? We have kept that figure well out of the newspapers, of course. If they were to print it, we would be deluged under a flood of more claims. Some of them may be genuine, families where the parent or grandparent has disappeared and they would like the reassurance of being able to bury him. But even then there is something greedy about them, as if the urge to wipe away the social disgrace caused by the disappearance could be washed away by a proper funeral. But the others. . . .’ Sir William paused and looked directly at Powerscourt.

  ‘Insurance claims?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Claims that need a body or a proper death certificate to satisfy the insurance companies?’

  ‘You have it, Lord Powerscourt. Your powers are as strong as ever, I see. The attraction with these insurance claims is, of course, the money payable on the death of the subject of the policy. Without a body there can be no claim. So now we have the entry of the bounty hunters. We have one claim from a wealthy widow whose husband ran off twenty years ago but left her in possession of policies on his life. The widow is certain’ – Sir William reached for a letter from his file – ‘that the corpse by London Bridge is that of her vanished spouse. “Once I read the accounts in the papers,” Mrs Willoughby of Highgate writes, “I knew that it was Alfred come back at last, albeit in unfortunate circumstances. It would be the last act of a sorrowing widow to come and identify the body, however harrowing that might be. I believe I owe it to Alfred’s memory to perform this final act of piety from the living towards the dead�
�.’

  Sir William looked up with a ghost of a smile disturbing his moustaches. ‘That might or might not be satisfactory. But then Mrs Willoughby rather gives the game away. “I believe it is customary in these circumstances for the next of kin to be given a copy of the death certificate so it can be forwarded to the appropriate authorities and the insurance companies.”’

  ‘Insurance companies plural?’ said Powerscourt quickly. ‘Was she going to cash him in twice, or even three times?’

  ‘We cannot tell.’ The Commissioner shrugged his shoulders. ‘But we do know this. We could have positive identifications of that corpse one hundred and fifty times over, and not one of them would be right. Not one.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say that you know who the corpse is, or rather was?’ Powerscourt was leaning forward in his chair, his mind racing through the possibilities of the case.

  ‘No, we don’t. But don’t you see how difficult our position is? Here are all these widows and orphans desperate to identify the body as their Alfred or Uncle Richard or Grandfather Matthew. Soon they will start writing to the papers saying the heartless police have refused to let them identify their loved ones. The longer the mystery remains a mystery the more hostile public opinion will become, the greater the pressure to open the floodgates and allow these bounty hunters to claim their prize. Unless we know who the dead man is, we cannot refuse them.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’ said Powerscourt, anxious to offer his services. ‘I mean to say, I cannot see how I could be of service, but I am more than willing to try.’

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, how very kind of you.’ The Commissioner fingered his moustaches. ‘And forgive me for burdening you with our troubles. Let me tell you what we do know that has not appeared in the newspapers and has not been made up.’

  Once more the Commissioner reached down to the mass of papers on his desk. ‘This is what the medical men who have examined the body have to say. All the usual disclaimers, of course, three paragraphs of them. Why can’t these people ever tell you anything straight?’

  He frowned as he read through the circumspection of the medical profession.

  ‘They believe the man was between seventy-five and eighty years old, though they could, of course, be wrong. They believe he may have been killed by a bullet wound to the head, though as we have no head, they may be right in their caution on that score. They believe he had been dead for a period of two to four weeks before ending up in the Thames. Though they could, of course, be wrong. And here, Lord Powerscourt, is the only useful thing they have to say. They believe that he was not poor, or destitute. Quite the contrary. Examination of the stomach and other organs gives reason to believe that the dead man may have been comfortably off at least, if not rich. I presume they worked out that he hadn’t been living on tripe and onions. When I talked to these doctors they said that although they wouldn’t like to put it down on paper, they thought he was a rich old man. Mind you, that’s probably another reason why somebody wanted to kill him off.’ Sir William nodded grimly at his file of one hundred and fifty bounty hunters.

  ‘I don’t suppose the internal organs indicate how many life assurance policies he had,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if his flippancy was out of place.

  ‘Very good.’ The Commissioner laughed a laugh that turned into a strange braying noise at the end. ‘This is what we would like you to do for us, Lord Powerscourt. You move in the best society. You have connections with the aristocracy, with the City of London where our unfortunate cadaver made his last resting place. Could you put out discreet inquiries about anybody who might have gone missing, anybody who has just disappeared? These people are not very likely to come to us as their first port of call. They would much more likely come to you. But if you could help us, the Metropolitan Police would be in your debt. We must clear this matter up as quickly as possibly.’

  ‘I can assure you,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘that nobody has made any approaches to me, none at all. But I shall be only too pleased to help.’

  As he left the Commissioner’s office Powerscourt paused briefly by the map of the East End. He noticed a fresh-looking circle which appeared to have been added in the last few days.

  It was right across London Bridge.

  3

  ‘Isn’t this fine, Richard, isn’t it just fine!’ Sophie Williams danced a little jig, oblivious to the strict looks of the sober locals, all dressed up in their Sunday best and on their way to church.

  ‘It is,’ replied Richard, slightly embarrassed at Sophie’s exuberance. ‘If we hurry on, we should see the river quite soon.’ He sounded anxious to escape from the citizens of Twickenham.

  The young people had travelled to Twickenham by train and planned to walk along the river to Hampton Court. They had considered bringing their bicycles but Richard was not sure how suitable the roads and paths would be for two-wheeled traffic and he had an irrational fear of punctures.

  Sophie Williams was twenty-one years old. She worked as a teacher in an elementary school by day and as a devoted campaigner for the suffragist cause by night. She was tall and slim with liquid blue eyes and wore her independence like a badge.

  ‘There is Eel Pie Island, Sophie. Should you like an eel pie for tea on our way home?’

  ‘I’ve only had eel pie once in my life,’ said Sophie. ‘I think it was by the sea somewhere when I was small and it didn’t agree with me. Maybe I should try again!’

  They struck out boldly along the river path. A steamer from London was approaching the island, clouds of steam rising from its twin funnels and important hoots from its siren. The passengers stared eagerly at the sight of their landing stage and a faint cheer sounded across the March morning. There was a bright sun but a stiff breeze which blew the Thames into tiny waves that rippled against the banks.

  Richard Martin was twenty-two years old. He was a slim, studious-looking young man with masses of curly brown hair. He lived with his widowed mother and worked as a clerk in Harrison’s Bank in the City. Richard had been there for five years now, studying at home in his spare time to improve his knowledge of commerce and banking. He went to evening classes to learn French and hoped to move on to German soon – Harrison’s had wide connections with other houses and merchants in Hamburg and Frankfurt and Berlin.

  ‘I’ve just got another three pupils in my class,’ said Sophie, as they struck out towards Teddington Lock. Richard had not known Sophie for very long but already he felt that he had a close acquaintance with the pupils in her care and the other two teachers in her school.

  ‘How many have you got now?’ he asked, keen to reduce matters to the safety of numbers. Richard had always been very proficient at numbers, equations, mathematical calculations that were invaluable to his work in the City.

  ‘Forty-seven,’ said Sophie. ‘Forty-seven six-year-olds.’

  ‘Do you think you should be paid according to the numbers of pupils you have?’ said Richard, looking for a formula in wide application in the Square Mile.

  ‘Nonsense, absolute nonsense.’ Sophie laughed. ‘I’d be perfectly happy to have fifty or sixty, particularly if they were all as well behaved as some of them. Little Mary Jones and Matilda Sharp are as good as gold. I wish I could say the same about some of the boys.’

  Richard suspected, but he would never have dared say it, that the girls, potential voters all, might receive favourable treatment in Miss Williams’ class. Overhead a group of seagulls crying out against the wind hurried on towards the rich pickings of Teddington Lock.

  ‘That’s the one they call the coffin lock,’ said Richard, pointing to a deep tomb of a lock with water many feet below the river. ‘And that huge one there, the barge lock, can take a steam tug and six barges at the same time.’

  He wondered if some of the produce shipped in and out of London and financed by bills of exchange underwritten by his bank passed through this very lock.

  ‘Just think of it, Sophie, somebody might send wool for America from the Cots
wolds through here. And it would be paid for at each end through the bank!’

  Sophie didn’t seem very excited at the thought. ‘You’re a romantic, Richard,’ she said, ‘a true romantic. For some people it’s poetry or music, for you it’s bills of exchange! But come on, if we don’t hurry up we’ll never get to Hampton Court at all.’

  Richard was quite upset at being called a romantic. He didn’t feel romantic about locks. But he knew he felt very romantic about Sophie. She had a toss of her head that turned his heart every time he saw it. But he didn’t know if Sophie had any room for romance in her soul. She was so filled with the righteousness of the cause of women that she seemed to have no time for anything else.

  ‘You don’t want to have anything to do with girls like that, Richard,’ his mother had said to him when he told her of his new friend who lived at the far end of the street. ‘They don’t know how to care for a man. They’d probably rather be men, running round in those strange pantaloons and smoking cigarettes and wanting the vote for Parliament. Whoever heard of such a thing. Your father wouldn’t have let any of them in the house.’

  ‘But she’s very pretty, Mother, very pretty indeed.’

  ‘They don’t care about things like that, those new women,’ said his mother, a lifetime of scorn whipped into the phrase ‘new women’. ‘They’re not interested in finding a nice young man and settling down properly.’

  His own new woman was striding ahead of him along the path. Richard hurried to catch up. ‘Wait for me, Sophie,’ he cried, breaking into a trot.

  She turned and smiled. ‘That makes a nice change, Richard. Men asking for women to wait so they can catch up!’

  She turned and, as if contradicting her own words, she ran off down the path, calling back as she went, ‘Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me! That’s what they say in the playground!’

  Eventually he did catch her and there ahead of them was the Tudor front of Hampton Court Palace, with the King’s Beasts on guard around the entrance gate.