David Dickinson: Death and the Jubilee

Lord Francis Powerscourt was one of the most successful detectives in England. He had learned his craft in Army Intelligence in India and transferred the skills learnt there to solving murders and mysteries at home. He was in his forties now, the black curly hair still intact, the blue eyes continuing to inspect the world with the same detachment and irony as before.

‘Hold on tight, hold on very tight,’ said Powerscourt, as he began a slow ascent of the stairs. He could feel two small hands hanging on very tightly to his collar. Thomas Powerscourt was four years old, born a year after his parents’ wedding in 1892. Wandering about upstairs was Thomas’s sister, Olivia, who could now tell the world that she was two.

On the wide first-floor landing Powerscourt broke into a trot.

‘Faster, Papa, faster!’ cried the little boy, beating on his shoulder with a small determined fist. ‘Faster, horse, faster!’

The horse was growing weary now and anxious for the human consolations of tea and biscuits downstairs. Coming down, Powerscourt remembered, was always a more dangerous manoeuvre than going up. His passenger was in danger of falling down right over his head and tumbling head over heels to the marble floor below. After a slow, almost funereal trot down the stairs, Powerscourt speeded up along the hall just as the doorbell rang. The maid opened the door before he could resume his human form. He found himself staring into a pair of very brightly polished black boots. Above the boots were sharply pressed trousers. Above the trousers was a uniform jacket resplendent with shining buttons. Above the jacket were a pair of enormous moustaches and a helmet. A policeman’s helmet.

‘Good morning, sir. Would you be Lord Francis Powerscourt?’ said the thin slit underneath the moustaches.

‘I would, Constable, I would.’ Powerscourt laughed happily. ‘Forgive me while I return to human form.’

Thomas Powerscourt began to cry, quietly at first and then with huge quaking sobs that racked his little frame.

‘What’s the matter, Thomas?’ said his father, smiling an apologetic parental smile at the constable. ‘What’s the matter?’

Thomas was not telling. His face was wet with tears and a small wet hand rubbed against his father’s trousers.

‘They can take on for no reason at all,’ began the constable, about to relate the story of the three children of his wife’s sister who bolted the minute he entered the room.

‘He’s a p’liceman,’ said Thomas accurately, pointing a grubby finger at the representative of law and order.

‘That’s right, Thomas. The gentleman here is a policeman.’

‘P’licemen catch bad people and put them in prison,’ sobbed the boy.

Suddenly Powerscourt could sense the anxiety, but before he could speak his son was holding desperately on to his trousers and shouting as loud as he could.

‘P’liceman won’t take my Papa away!’ He held on as if his life, or Powerscourt’s life, depended on it.

Powerscourt bent down and picked him up. The constable coughed apologetically. ‘I have a message from the Commissioner,’ he began.

The little boy clung ever tighter to his father’s neck, tears trickling down a collar that had been immaculate but a few minutes before. The Commissioner seemed to Thomas to be an even bigger, even more hostile form of policeman trying to take his Papa away to the cells or to prison. He didn’t know what a Commissioner was, but it sounded pretty frightening to Thomas.

The constable ploughed bravely on. ‘He would like to see you at once, sir,’ he said. ‘He would like to give you a cup of tea and then he will send you straight back again. I think he wants to take your advice.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘Thank you, Constable. I have often met with the Commissioner, or rather with his predecessor. I should be delighted to come with you.’

Lady Lucy appeared suddenly by his side. ‘Good morning, Constable,’ she said with her most graceful smile. ‘So Francis is going to take tea with the Commissioner? I’m sure that will be delightful. And, Francis, you can tell Thomas and me all about it when you get back.’

She whisked Thomas away from his father’s shoulder and began whispering to the little boy. As Powerscourt and the constable closed the door, Thomas was able to manage a small but tear-free wave.

Forty miles away an old man and a pony were waiting outside the stables of the great house. Samuel Parker had worked in these stables for nearly fifty years. He had risen in a series of slow promotions from apprentice undergroom to Head of Stables. His employers had given him a little cottage on the estate to have until he died. But today Samuel was a very worried man.

The house was almost closed down. The younger members had gone back to their great house in Mayfair, leaving the old man and his sister alone on the top floor, except for some servants in the basement. Every day, at ten o’clock in the morning, Old Mr Harrison would come to meet Samuel and the pony by the stables. Together they would make a circuit of the lake. Sometimes the old man would bring letters or papers from the bank with him to read on the way. Then Samuel would strap a small portable chair and table on to the pony and they would wait while their master attended to his business.

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.