David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

Normally it would have taken ten days or more for a report from an obscure Oxfordshire village about a suspected missing person to reach the Metropolitan Police. This time the process had been accelerated by the normal processes being reversed. The police, alerted by Powerscourt, acting on Johnny Fitzgerald’s report, had gone looking for Samuel Parker’s account of his fears, delivered to an elderly and rather deaf constable in the village of Wallingford.

The inspection of the corpse had been brief. McIvor had moved it into a small ante-room where it had more dignity than in its usual resting place, in which it was surrounded by other cadavers earmarked for dissection by the doctors and their medical students. The two doctors had examined it closely. The body had been turned on to its side, then rolled right over. The doctors muttered to each other about the processes of muscular decay and the impact on the skin of prolonged exposure to the polluted waters of the Thames. Frederick Harrison had merely looked at two places on the body, an area of the upper back and the lower part of the left leg. He shivered slightly at what he saw.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Inspector Burroughs uneasily, ‘pray let us be seated.’ Sergeant Cork thought he sounded like a vicar asking his congregation to take their pews.

‘I have here some forms – regulation forms,’ he added quickly, ‘which may have to be filled in. But first, I must ask you some questions.’

He looked at Frederick Harrison.

‘Do you, Frederick Harrison, of Harrison’s Bank in the City of London, confirm that the body you have seen this morning is that of your father, Carl Harrison, of Blackwater, Oxfordshire?’

Outside, a group of medical students sounded as if they were playing a game of rugby in the corridor. Frederick Harrison looked directly at the policeman.

‘I do.’

Burroughs turned his attention to Dr Compton who was stroking his moustaches. ‘Do you, Dr James Compton of Wallingford, confirm that the body you have seen this morning is that of your patient, Carl Harrison, of Blackwater, Oxfordshire?’

‘I do,’ said the doctor, ‘and let me say for the record -’ Sergeant Cork was writing busily in his police notebook – ‘what convinced me. A small mole on the upper left back had given me concern for some time. It was identical to the one on the body we have just seen. And there were a number of scars on the lower left leg, sustained in a fall from a horse some three years ago. The scars did not heal properly – they seldom do in a man of his age – and required a lot of attention. I was sorry, gentlemen, to have to inspect my own handiwork this morning. I have no doubt, no doubt, at all, that the body is that of Carl Harrison. May his soul rest in peace.’

‘May he rest in peace indeed.’ Inspector Burroughs echoed the doctor’s words. ‘Could I ask you gentlemen to sign these regulation forms I have with me, two of identification, and one of witness to the event.’

Under the watchful eyes of Florence Nightingale the three men signed. The body in the river was no longer a nameless corpse. Scandal and rumour threatened to sweep the City of London once more. Carl Harrison, founder and paterfamilias of one of the City’s leading banks, had been identified as the headless man floating uncertainly by London Bridge.

The St Bartholomew’s doctor returned to his patients. The two policemen marched off to Cannon Street police station to report their findings. Dr Compton returned to Wallingford with a heavy heart.

Frederick Harrison took a cab to his offices in the City. His concern, and it was a very real concern, was less with the fate of his father than with the future of his bank. He, Frederick Harrison, was now the senior partner in the enterprise. He had, of course, been with the bank for many years but nominal control, the biggest shareholding in the bank, had rested with his father. Until his brother Willi’s death the year before, it was Willi, not Frederick, who had been the dominant voice in the bank’s affairs. Frederick was of a nervous disposition, alarmed by having to take decisions, fearful of their consequences afterwards. He was not, by temperament, a banker at all. And now, after this terrible news, he worried about the future of the bank he had never wanted to control.

Confidence, the old man had told them so many times they no longer took any notice, confidence can take decades to acquire, but it can be lost in a day, even in a morning, even in an hour. Confidence was the glue that held the many different elements of the City together. Confidence in Harrison’s Bank could be gone before the bank closed its doors this very afternoon.

Harrison knew that rumour could destroy everything his father had built up. ‘Terrible pity about Old Mr Harrison,’ one whispered condolence would go to a colleague, ‘but do you think we should withdraw our funds at once, just in case?’ ‘I’ve just heard,’ the next rumour would whirl round the narrow streets and alleyways, that So and So are withdrawing their funds from Harrison’s. We must mourn for Old Mr Harrison, of course, but shouldn’t we look to our deposits with them?’ And the echoing rumour, flying back at breakneck speed, ‘Old Mr Harrison was the body in the river. There’s a run on Harrison’s Bank. We must get in now before it’s too late.’

Frederick knew that there was more than enough in the bank to cover all their liabilities many times over. But he was not sure how quickly he could lay his hands on it if the Gadarene swine came hurtling through his doors, all demanding their money at once.

As he walked up the stairs to the partners’ room, he thought of closing the bank for the day as a mark of respect to his father. But that would be a rare move in the City, and could give time for the rumours to spread even faster. The gain of a day could result in a catastrophe the following morning. Frederick looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. The first news would hit the streets before lunchtime. He had five hours to save his bank.

As he paced around the long partners’ room, furnished with the regulation red sofa and armchairs, a roaring fire beneath a handsome fireplace, portraits of Harrisons past and present on the walls, a row of working desks by the windows, he could think of only one precedent to guide him. Barings, the terrible fall of Barings some seven years before that had shaken the City to its foundations, brought on by imprudent lending to Latin America. He remembered his father recounting in hushed tones the emergency meetings in the Bank of England, Harrison’s themselves pledging two hundred thousand pounds to the rescue fund to maintain the reputation of the City of London. Surely the Governor, the Governor of the Bank of England, held the key to this crisis as he had held the key to the last. Should he go and call on the Governor in his handsome offices in Threadneedle Street? He looked at his watch again. A quarter to twelve. By the time he got there it might be too late. If he was seen calling on the Governor, it could be seen as a sign of weakness, of desperation even. Rumour would say that the bank was insolvent and was begging for emergency funds from the Bank of England.

Was there another way? There must be. He looked up at his ancestors on the walls. The streets outside were filled with the normal racket of rushing people, omnibuses, hawkers peddling the latest in new umbrellas and top hats. Calm, Frederick, calm, he said to himself, remembering another of his father’s prescripts. ‘Calm in banking is everything, however shrill the surrounding voices. Calm preserves, panic destroys.’

Frederick Harrison was a tall man, plump bordering on fat. He prided himself on his dress sense, always smart but always one or two steps behind the latest fashion craze to adorn the persons of the jobbers and the brokers. Then a different prescript came to his help. He could not go to the Bank. But the Bank might come to him. A visit in the early afternoon from the Governor, come to express his condolences and indirectly to affirm his confidence in the bank, that might serve his purpose.