David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

‘And what,’ asked Lady Lucy quietly, praying for one last lucid moment, ‘did he say to himself in his sleep by the fire after supper?’

‘They call this one the Temple of Flora, my lord,’ said Samuel Parker, ushering him inside. The air was damp. Spiders were taking over the left-hand wall of the little temple, their webs cascading down the walls. There were a couple of busts of ancient heroes and two sturdy seats, almost benches, on either side.

‘Did Old Mr Harrison ever stop here,’ asked Powerscourt, looking carefully at the statues, ‘to read his papers or to write?’

‘Only very rarely, my lord. Very rarely.’ Samuel Parker was shaking his head, the wisps of his grey beard waving in symmetry. ‘Once or twice he did, perhaps. One day I do remember him stopping in here and me bringing in his little table off the pony.’

‘Can you remember how long ago that was? Did he seem to be in a great hurry to get started that day?’ Powerscourt was looking carefully at the busts, Marcus Aurelius on the left, he thought, Alexander the Great on the right.

‘I think he was, my lord. In a hurry, I mean. And I think that would have been last summer. I remember it was very hot, even though it was early in the morning.’

They set off again, the path turning now uphill towards the tree-lined hills, now down towards the water’s edge. Sometimes another temple could be seen across the lake, sitting proudly on its semi-circle of turf. Sometimes it disappeared, lost among the bushes and the trees.

‘I presume, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that the garden was designed a long time ago, long before the Harrisons came here?’

‘It was, my lord. It was created in the seventeen hundreds, I think. But Old Mr Harrison knew all about it. He used to quote to me in Latin sometimes out of his head. He read all about the building of it in the library up in the big house.’

They passed through a grotto, where a statue of a river god pointed the way forwards and a marble maiden slumbered on her bed of rock while the water dripped on all around her.

‘I don’t suppose Mr Harrison did much work here,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, as he bumped his head on a rocky outcrop, the bottoms of his trousers watered by the local deities.

‘Not in there, my lord. But just a few yards up the road is what they call The Cottage. He worked a lot in there.’

The lake frontage was open at this point, with wide views across the water. A kingfisher, brilliant in blue, shot across the water at astonishing speed. On the hills above the lake the birds were singing happily, making occasional forays to forage at the water’s edge.

The Cottage was laid out like a small summerhouse, converted only a couple of years before.

‘In here,’ Samuel Parker wrestled with his keys again, ‘there is a table by the window as you can see. Sometimes I would wait for an hour or so while he wrote things or pottered about. Quite often he would break off in the middle of something and go and stare at the water, just by that tree over there. Then he would go back inside. The pony always liked to stop here. The grass is quite lush round this part.’ What on earth was the old man writing down here? thought Powerscourt. Who was he writing to? Did these peaceful pursuits lead to his death? What was he looking for? Of one thing he was certain. Long before he came on the scene somebody else had embarked on a journey of discovery. The old man had been here before him. But of the nature of his quest, or his success or failure, he had, for the present, no idea.

‘It must have been very peaceful for him here,’ he said, smiling gently at Samuel Parker.

‘It was, my lord, it certainly was. Now, there’s one last place he used to work and then we’ll have done the full circuit. It’s the Pantheon next, my lord.’

So that was what the temple reminded him of. Powerscourt knew he had seen it somewhere before. It had been on a trip to Rome with Lucy for a wedding anniversary. The Pantheon. The pagan gods of Rome had transplanted themselves from the banks of the Tiber to a new home in the depths of Oxfordshire.

‘Sometimes he would talk in German, sometimes in Yiddish.’ The old lady was concentrating hard, as if she knew her time was limited. Lady Lucy wondered if Francis would want her to take a crash course in Yiddish. She rather hoped not. She waited. She thought Miss Harrison’s mind was about to take off on one of its own private journeys once more.

‘Secret societies, secret societies,’ the old lady was whispering now. ‘Why do people want to have secret societies, my dear? Father used to complain about them at the universities. He said they were terrible organizations devoted to duelling and drinking and that sort of thing,’

She stopped, lost in thought. Lady Lucy tried to head her off before she disappeared.

‘Here, or in Germany?’ she said in her most matter-of-fact voice.

‘He knew they were in Germany. Oh yes.’ The old lady was very definite suddenly. ‘He knew that. Do you know what they say about getting old, my dear?’

Lady Lucy shook her head.

‘They say that you can remember things that happened fifty years ago but you can’t remember what happened yesterday. He didn’t know if they were in England as well as in Germany. That’s what my brother said in his sleep. Father got so upset about these secret societies because his best friend’s son was left with a terrible duelling scar, right down one side of his face. Such a handsome boy he used to be before that.’

She drew a line from just below her ear to the side of her wrinkled mouth. Lady Lucy wondered if she had been in love with this handsome boy, all those years ago.

‘Did he ever say what the secret society was for? What its purpose was?’

‘No good will come of it, Father used to say,’ Miss Harrison went on, ‘no good at all. You don’t want to go round stirring up hatred. That boy with the scar, look what happened to him after all that fighting. The girls would never look at him after that. What a shame, Father used to say. Duelling finished his future, poor boy.’

Lady Lucy longed to ask if Miss Harrison had been in love with him before his terrible scar. But she pressed on. Francis would never forgive her if she encouraged the love stories of the old lady from sixty years before.

‘Did he ever say what the secret society was for?’ she asked, remembering Francis’ description of how he had wanted to shake Miss Harrison into sense as the interview went on.

‘It’s a secret brotherhood. It’s a secret bloody brotherhood. I remember him shouting that once, not so very long ago. We’d had goose for supper. We used to have goose sometimes for Christmas when I was a little girl. Sometimes there were so many of us that we had two or even three. I can remember the smell, you know, of those geese cooking in the oven. It used to spread all over the house. Father loved carving goose. I remember him saying once with the great carving knife in his hand that he should have been a surgeon rather than a banker. Then he could have carved away all day.’ Miss Harrison laughed a tinny laugh.

Lady Lucy smiled sympathetically. ‘Is there anything else you can remember, Miss Harrison? Anything else of what he used to say in his sleep?’ She tried another tack. ‘Just imagine that he’s sitting here now, in this chair, after supper, just the two of you. The fire is burning in the grate. It’s dark outside. The curtains are drawn. It’s very quiet. Gradually he falls asleep.’ Lady Lucy slowly closed her eyes. ‘Perhaps he begins to snore. Then suddenly he speaks. He mutters in his sleep, your brother. What is he saying?’ She let her head fall on to her shoulder.

The old lady puckered her face as if she was a small child confronted with a nasty piece of mental arithmetic. Then she too closed her eyes.