David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

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?’

‘So big now, they say, Berlin. And getting bigger all the time,’ the old lady went on. ‘Carl said he could hardly recognize it. Great big buildings for the Parliament and things. It wasn’t like that when we were young.’

‘Why was he going to Frankfurt and Berlin? Was it a holiday?’ Powerscourt was finding politeness increasingly difficult.

‘You never can take a holiday from a bank, Father used to say. There was something wrong at the bank. Even when you are away you take the worries with you, even to somewhere as beautiful as the Lakes. Poor Father.’

‘Did Carl think there was something wrong at the bank? Something wrong at his bank in the City?’ Powerscourt was struggling now to hide his irritation.

‘Father used to say the only time a banker could ever feel at peace was when they put him in his grave.’ Old Miss Harrison stared defiantly at Powerscourt. ‘Well, Carl is there too now. I hope he’s found some peace there. He said there was precious little peace left to him in his last years.’

‘Was it Carl saying that, or your father? About precious little peace?’ Powerscourt realized that he wanted to shake her but he knew it would be hopeless.

‘Father was buried in that big church in the middle of Frankfurt. So many people there, such a fine service. It rained too, I remember, even though it was early summer. Not as bad as the rain here. I can hear it upstairs, you know, rattling on my window and making noises on the roof. There are very strange noises on the roof sometimes. They seem to have stopped now.’

‘What was Carl worried about?’ I’m on my last throw now, Powerscourt thought to himself, I can’t take much more of this.

‘Mother’s buried there too,’ the old woman said to him, ‘in the same church, just eight months later. She never really recovered, you know. They say that sorrow brought it on. Do you think that can be true, Lord Powerscourt? If sorrow could kill us there wouldn’t be so many people left in the world, would there?’

‘Indeed,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Was it the bank that Carl was worried about?’

‘Always worries in a bank, Father used to say. Always worries, yes. Worries. All the time.’

‘Did Carl say what it was that worried him about the bank?’

‘Always worries in a Bank, Father used to say . . .’

Powerscourt wondered if the old lady was better in the mornings. Probably she was. Maybe he would ask Lady Lucy to come and speak to her in German. Will I end up like that, he asked himself, my mind meandering round the past like a stream making its way to the sea? He thought he would rather be dead.

There were only two facts he could take away with him, the confirmation of what Fitzgerald had told him about the trips to Germany and the knowledge that Old Mr Harrison had been worried about the bank. At the very back of his mind he had filed away what she had said about the noises on the roof, terrible noises that the rain could not have made. But something else could have made the noises. A body perhaps, being pulled along above a household meant to be asleep, a body due to be decapitated in the woods, a body destined to be dumped in the river, a body destined to be found many miles away bumping alongside a ship moored by London Bridge.