‘Fire? Fire?’ said the old lady crossly. ‘Why does everybody keep talking about fire all the time? Oh dear,’ she looked about her surroundings again, ‘they haven’t made a mistake, have they? I’m not down there in the bad place, with the flames, am I?’
‘You’re not in hell, Miss Harrison,’ Lady Lucy spoke very firmly, ‘you’re not in heaven either. You’re in Mrs Parker’s cottage!’
‘Hell,’ said the old lady sadly, ‘I never thought I’d end up there. Oh dear, is it going to be terrible? And you,’ she pointed an old accusing finger at Lady Lucy, ‘what did you do to deserve to come here? What were your sins when you were on the other side?’
‘Never mind, Miss Harrison.’ Lady Lucy spoke very gently. ‘Why don’t you drink your tea? Another cup perhaps? I’m sure the doctor will be here soon.’
Lord Francis Powerscourt had walked down to the lake, where he stared moodily at the inscrutable temples. He had walked round the house time and again, angry shouts from inside escaping occasionally through the great holes in the roof. He watched a bright red fox peering carefully out from the edge of the Blackwater Park. No scarlet-jacketed riders were to be seen. No hunting horns disturbed the Oxfordshire afternoon. The fox trotted slowly off towards the woods.
He was thinking of a list of questions to send to William Burke on his return to London. Who owned the capital of Harrison’s Bank? Had any share or portion passed to the female line, nieces or sisters whose lives might be in peril? And what of the chief clerk? If he had capital in the bank, then he must be warned, and soon. Powerscourt felt he could not bear another untimely death on his already troubled conscience.
He was standing in a reverie by the great castellated gateway that marked the entrance to Blackwater when he was hailed by a young man of about thirty years alighting from a cab.
‘Good afternoon,’ the newcomer called cheerfully. ‘Would you by any chance be Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I would. I mean I am. I am he,’ said Powerscourt, his syntax temporarily confused as he shook the young man by the hand.
‘Hardy,’ said the man, ‘Joseph Hardy, fire investigator, at your service, sir.’ He bowed slightly. ‘But everybody calls me Joe.’
Like Chief Officer Perkins Hardy was clean-shaven. He had tousled blond hair and cheerful blue eyes that looked as though he laughed a lot.
‘I got your message this morning,’ Hardy went on, marching purposefully up the drive. ‘But the warehouses meant I couldn’t get away any sooner. Damned warehouses. Forgive my language, my lord.’
‘Don’t worry at all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But why warehouses?’
‘There are far too many of the wretched things now, my lord. In the old days you sold your cotton from Alabama to a man in New South Wales, let’s say. The cotton came to London, it was stored in its warehouse, then it was shipped on to Australia. Not any longer. No, sir. Nowadays the man in Alabama sends his cotton direct to New South Wales. There’s no need for it to go to London. There’s no need for the wretched warehouse. It’s all done by telegraph these days, my lord.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but why should the man in Alabama or the man in Australia delay your journey here to Blackwater? Not that I’m complaining, not for a moment. We didn’t expect to see you here today at all.’
‘I’m just coming to that, my lord,’ said Hardy cheerfully. ‘When nobody wants your warehouse, what are you to do? I’ll tell you what a lot of them do, my lord. They insure it, and its contents, mostly invented, for a great deal of money. Then they burn it down. Then they claim the insurance.’
‘Would I be right in thinking,’ said Powerscourt, deciding he had taken a liking to the young man, ‘that the insurance companies are not happy in these circumstances? And they employ you to show that the claims are fraudulent?’
‘How right you are, my lord.’ Joe Hardy grinned. ‘It was another of those fires I was working on this morning. Those insurance companies have very suspicious minds, my lord, almost as suspicious as yours, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Hardy laughed.
Powerscourt told him about the fire, about the earlier deaths, about his suspicions that the inferno at Blackwater was no accident. He mentioned the policemen and the fire officials already at the scene.
‘I see, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Joseph Hardy. ‘Could you just walk me round the outside? Show me the lie of the land?’
As they went on their melancholy journey round the charred remains of Blackwater House, Hardy pulled a notebook from his pocket and began making quick sketches of the building. The notebook, Powerscourt saw, was red. Red for danger, red for fire. ‘The thing everybody always wants to know,’ said Hardy, sitting down suddenly to study the west front at the back of the house, ‘is how I became a fire investigator in the first place.’ His right hand was working furiously. From time to time he would snatch a different coloured pencil from his jacket until a pile of them made a small pyre on the lawn.
‘I’ve always been fascinated by fires,’ he went on, glancing up at the parapet from time to time. ‘I was always on at my father to make bonfires. Then I used to inspect the ashes when they went out. I used to do the same thing on bonfire night – that was always the best day of my year when I was small.’
Powerscourt could see him, a little boy with blond hair and dirty trousers trampling about in the ashes. He wondered if he had a red notebook even then.
‘I made a bomb once,’ Hardy laughed. ‘I made it all by myself and took it down to the woods. It made a bloody great bang, it did. I hadn’t got far enough away. I was blown backwards into a tree and knocked out for a couple of minutes.’
He collected his pencils and closed his book. ‘Right, Lord Powerscourt, I’m going inside now. I think you should stay here. The Commissioner wouldn’t be very pleased with me if you broke your neck on the remains of the stairs. I shall see you in about an hour. The photographer will be here in the morning.’
With that he disappeared into the gloom, waving happily as he went.
‘Francis, how are you?’
Lady Lucy had come to seek him out, her vigil at the bedside of Miss Harrison temporarily abandoned.
‘Lucy, I had almost forgotten you were here. How terrible of me.’
‘You have a lot on your mind today,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Who was the very blond gentleman who just went inside?’
‘That, Lucy, was Mr Hardy, fire investigator,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and a specialist, he tells me, in bonfires in his youth and warehouses in his adult years. But tell me, how is old Miss Harrison?’
‘Oh Francis, it is so sad. Her mind has gone. Dr Compton has given her a draught to make her sleep. She thought she had gone to heaven.’
‘In the Parkers’ cottage? That must have seemed a bit of a let-down after a life spent in there.’ He nodded at the wreck of Blackwater House. ‘Did she have any special news about heaven, Lucy? God and the angels well, that sort of thing?’
‘You mustn’t be flippant, Francis,’ Lady Lucy smiled. ‘There were no immediate tidings about God or the angels, I fear, but no indication either that your investigative powers were needed up there at present. She was very relieved about the tea.’
‘Tea?’ said Powerscourt incredulously. ‘Does God drink tea? Indian? Chinese? Ceylon?’
‘It was Mrs Parker’s tea, silly.’ Lady Lucy took her husband’s arm. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Indian.’
‘Is she asleep now?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should go back and sit with her again. Mrs Parker is looking pretty tired.’
‘So would you be,’ said Powerscourt, leading her back down the path to the Parkers’, ‘if your little cottage had been turned into heaven for the day. Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven, enjoy it before Satan burns it down. The fires of hell have come to Oxfordshire, consuming all in their path.’
‘Do shut up, Francis.’ Lady Lucy squeezed his arm. ‘Look, I think your investigator friend wants to speak to you.’