Powerscourt thanked God that he had stuffed the letter into his breast pocket rather than leave it on his hall table at home. He thanked God that the assistant had put both the time and the date on his message.
The Inspector eyed it suspiciously. He began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake. Visions of some stern reprimand for hindering the friends of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police flashed through his mind. One of his colleagues had been demoted from inspector to constable for being rude to a duchess he hadn’t recognized. The Commissioner’s writ didn’t extend to Oxfordshire, of course, but he was still the most powertul policeman in the land.
The Inspector looked at Powerscourt dubiously. Powerscourt gazed calmly back, remembering the firm stare required for unruly privates in the army.
‘I have met most of the members of the family here,’ he said quietly. ‘They asked me to look into the death of Old Mr Harrison, the body found floating in the Thames by London Bridge.’
Every policeman in Britain had wondered about that case. He’s not at all impressed by my uniform, the Inspector thought to himself. Pretty self-contained customer, this one. Maybe he is who he says he is. The strain of the last few hours was beginning to tell. He wiped his brow, managing to leave thin lines of blood across his forehead as he did so.
‘Wilson is my name,’ he said finally, ‘Inspector Arthur Wilson of the Oxfordshire constabulary.’
Powerscourt shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Look here, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I don’t wish to get in the way of your work. You must talk to me when you have the time, not before. I have only one question for you. Were there any fatalities in this fire?’
Only a policeman or a private investigator, Inspector Wilson felt sure, would ask that question at a time like this.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know, Lord Powerscourt,’ he replied, remembering that the letter was addressed to a Lord rather than a mere Mister Powerscourt. ‘Me and my sergeant have only been here for a couple of hours. The fire brigade won’t let anybody into the upper floors at all. They say it’s too dangerous. They’re crawling about up there on ladders and planks laid out across the floorboards. So many of them have been destroyed. I did hear the Chief Fire Officer say that there was probably one fatality, but he didn’t say who it was.’
‘I see, Inspector. Thank you so much. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let the Chief Fire Officer know I am here and that I would like to speak to him. But only when he has the time. I do not wish to interrupt his vital work for one second. Or yours, for that matter.’
Inspector Wilson disappeared inside the house. Powerscourt stood back from the house and surveyed the damage. Blackwater was composed of a central block, built in the style of a Palladian villa, with a library wing added on the south side and a picture gallery to the north. There was a basement and two rows of windows on each floor. The fire seemed to have spent most of its force on the north wing. All the windows had gone. There were holes in the roof. As Powerscourt walked round the house to the west front at the rear he peered cautiously into the picture gallery. The walls were stripped down to the plasterwork or even the original brick. The paintings themselves seemed to have been burnt to nothing. Great piles of ash and rubble lay on the floor. Above he could hear the shouts and the swearing of the firemen as they threaded their way across the floorboards. From time to time there would be a great crash as more timbers fell to the ground.
The sightseers drifted off as the morning wore on. Powerscourt sat on a seat in the west front garden and contemplated the Curse on the House of Harrison. Murders he was used to in his profession, men and women killed in the heat of passion or with the cold calculation he found so frightening. Always, in his experience, there was a motive. Somebody had a reason for killing somebody else. But the Harrison case seemed so different. He had yet to find any sign of a motive at all.
Just before midday he returned to the main entrance. There was a lot of shouting from the inside. As he peered into the remains of the entrance hall he could see two firemen, standing on ladders laid across the upper floor, lowering something wrapped in a blanket and tied firmly to a plank of wood.
‘Steady, there, steady,’ said the voice above.
‘We’re ready down here,’ said Inspector Wilson and his colleague, waiting to receive the package.
For one moment the fireman at the top of the stairs let go of his rope too quickly. The package swung down at an angle of forty-five degrees and looked as though it might fall into the rubble below.
‘Christ almighty, Bert,’ said a voice above, ‘can’t you hold the bloody thing steady, for God’s sake?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Bert, ‘it’s very heavy.’
‘I know it’s very heavy,’ said the other voice. ‘I’m just going to let my rope down until it’s level with yours and we’re back on an even keel. Don’t do anything.’
Slowly the package recovered its equilibrium, the two policemen staring at the swaying plank.
‘All together now, Bert. Slowly does it. Slowly. On the count of three, start lowering your rope. Don’t for God’s sake let go.’
Bert muttered something inaudible.
‘One, two, three. Slowly now, slowly.’
Inch by inch the package was lowered into the arms of the two policemen down below. They carried it on to a makeshift trestle table underneath the portico. The blanket was wrapped tightly around the package. There was a musty smell as if the blanket or its contents had been kept in a cupboard too long.
The Chief Fire Officer had lowered himself down to ground level on the same piece of rope.
‘Where’s that bloody doctor gone?’ he said angrily. ‘Never here when you want them, doctors. They always say they’ll be back in a moment, then they disappear.’
He stared at Powerscourt. Then he remembered what the Inspector had told him some hours before. ‘You must be Lord Powerscourt, sir,’ he said, holding out a blackened hand. ‘Chief Fire Officer Perkins, Oxfordshire Fire Service.’
Perkins was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall, in his early forties. Unlike the policemen he was clean-shaven. Powerscourt wondered if they worried about their beards catching fire in emergencies.
‘Good day to you, Chief Officer Perkins,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do I understand that you are anxious for the presence of the doctor? I believe I know where he has gone. I could fetch him if that would help?’
‘That would be right handsome of you, sir, right handsome. Is he far away?’
‘I believe he is just around the corner with Old Miss Harrison,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I shall be back directly.’
The church clock struck one as Powerscourt collected the doctor from Samuel Parker’s cottage. The sun was shining on the lake now, the Pantheon of his dreams staring inscrutably at him across the water.
‘How is Miss Harrison, doctor?’ asked Powerscourt, as they walked back to the burnt-out remains of Blackwater House.
‘It has been a terrible shock,’ said Dr Compton carefully. ‘I feel sure that she will recover in time. But for the moment her mind is wandering, and wandering in German, I’m afraid. I think I should like to send her away for some time to recover her strength.’
Powerscourt restrained himself from saying that all members of the Harrison family, in his view, should be sent away from Blackwater and indeed from London without delay.
Chief Officer Perkins was waiting impatiently by his trestle table. The two policemen stood on guard at either end.
‘Dr Compton,’ Perkins began, ‘I would be most gratetul for your assistance. We have recovered this body from one of the bedrooms on the upper floors. It is, I am relieved to say, the only fatality of this terrible fire. But I do not like to continue our work inside until this body is identified. Are you willing to try to identify it?’