They had reached the edge of the river now. On the far side a few boats were setting out for a Sunday trip along the Thames. Behind them a stiff breeze was rustling through the trees.
‘The next day,’ Johnny Fitzgerald tried skimming a couple of stones across the water, ‘I went to see the vicar. And there I had one of the most uplifting experiences of my life. I shall always remember it.’
‘You were converted.’ Powerscourt looked suitably grave. ‘You saw the light. You repented of the error of your ways.’
‘I did not. But the vicar’s wife gave me some of her elderberry wine. ’95 she said it was, one of her better years. God knows what the bad years must taste like, Francis.’ Fitzgerald grimaced at the memory. ‘I cannot describe the taste. It was horrible, so sweet it made you feel sick. Christ.’
A successful skim of about ten hops began to restore his spirits.
‘The vicar knew the family, of course. He hadn’t seen anything of Old Mr Harrison for a while. But he recommended me to another elderly citizen, one Samuel Parker, chief man for the horses at the Harrison house. I could just see Mrs Vicar about to pour me some more of that elderberry tincture, so I got out as fast as I could.’
‘We’d better be getting back to the house, Johnny.’ Powerscourt remembered the family proprieties. ‘We mustn’t be late for Sunday lunch with a Bishop to carve the joint. What happened with Mr Parker?’
Fitzgerald sent a final stone skimming into the middle of the Thames, nearly hitting a pleasure boat on its way downstream. Then he turned to stare intently at a bird that had just fled from a clump of trees on their left.
‘Mother of God, Francis, was that a kestrel? Damn, I can’t see it any more. Mr Parker took me down to the lake, a fabulous place, full of temples and statues of gods and a waterfall and stuff. He said he was desperately worried, that he didn’t know what to do. When I told him I’d been in Germany and that Old Mr Harrison wasn’t there he got even more worried. He went very pale when I told him that, white as a sheet in fact. “He’s not in London. He’s not in Germany. He’s not here. So where is he?” he said quietly. Then it transpired that he too had seen the newspaper cutting about the body in the river. He hadn’t wanted to tell his wife, so he’d bottled it all up.
‘“There’s only one thing you can do,” I said to him. “You must report it to the police.”He said he’d been thinking about that, but hadn’t liked to. Surely it was the job of the other members of the family to do that. “Maybe they don’t know,” I said to him. “Anyway they’re down in London. The policeman is only up the road.”’
‘So that very afternoon I drove him over to the police station where he reported that Old Mr Harrison was missing. Then I drove him back to his wife. Did I do wrong in getting him to the police station, Francis?’
Powerscourt paused. The elegant facade of the Burke house was just coming into view through the trees.
‘I think you were right, Johnny. The police have been inundated with people claiming the body. We just have to alert them to take this one seriously. Maybe the family doctor or one of the members of the family could identify him without the head. He certainly fits the doctors’ description of the corpse being a rich old man.’
‘Do you think the corpse is Old Mr Harrison?’
‘I do, actually, or I think I do,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But I’m very worried about why the rest of the family have done nothing.’
‘Maybe the entire Harrison family killed him off and don’t want to be found out.’
‘Maybe they know he’s dead but they want to keep it secret.’
‘Bet you whatever you like,’ said Fitzgerald, quickening his pace as they approached the front door, ‘that the body in the Thames was Old Mr Harrison. Now then, do you suppose William has laid on anything good to drink with the Bishop here and all? I need something to cleanse my palate after that elderberry wine. Christ, Francis, I can still taste it now. A bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin perhaps, a touch of Pomerol?’
5
Five men shuffled uneasily into a small office at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. On ordinary days senior doctors used it to pass on bad news to the relatives of their patients, news of the ones who had passed away, the ones who were doomed to pass away quite soon, the ones who would never recover. Long melancholy usage had given the room an aura of sorrow all its own. On one wall hung a portrait of Queen Victoria at her first Jubilee, a small but defiant representative of monarchical continuity, on the other an iconic painting of Florence Nightingale, looking like a saint rather than a nurse. Even her skills would not be enough to save the lives of those whose fate was discussed in here.
This morning the room had been taken over by the Metropolitan Police. Two of its representatives stood uneasily at one end of the long table in the middle of the room. Inspector Burroughs felt that one part of his mission had been accomplished; he picked uneasily at his tie, hoping it had not detached itself from its collar to roam freely around the top of his shirt. Sergeant Cork stood rigidly to attention, looking, Burroughs thought sourly, like a recruitment poster for the force he served. Dr James Compton had come up to town for the day from Oxfordshire. He had attended on Old Mr Harrison for many years. Mr Frederick Harrison, eldest son of Old Mr Harrison, had abandoned his counting house for the more disturbing quarters of the hospital and its morgue. Dr Peter Mclvor, the custodian of the body for St Bart’s, the man responsible for preserving it in some sort of order until it could be identified, made up the final member of the party.
Normally it would have taken ten days or more for a report from an obscure Oxfordshire village about a suspected missing person to reach the Metropolitan Police. This time the process had been accelerated by the normal processes being reversed. The police, alerted by Powerscourt, acting on Johnny Fitzgerald’s report, had gone looking for Samuel Parker’s account of his fears, delivered to an elderly and rather deaf constable in the village of Wallingford.
The inspection of the corpse had been brief. McIvor had moved it into a small ante-room where it had more dignity than in its usual resting place, in which it was surrounded by other cadavers earmarked for dissection by the doctors and their medical students. The two doctors had examined it closely. The body had been turned on to its side, then rolled right over. The doctors muttered to each other about the processes of muscular decay and the impact on the skin of prolonged exposure to the polluted waters of the Thames. Frederick Harrison had merely looked at two places on the body, an area of the upper back and the lower part of the left leg. He shivered slightly at what he saw.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Inspector Burroughs uneasily, ‘pray let us be seated.’ Sergeant Cork thought he sounded like a vicar asking his congregation to take their pews.
‘I have here some forms – regulation forms,’ he added quickly, ‘which may have to be filled in. But first, I must ask you some questions.’
He looked at Frederick Harrison.
‘Do you, Frederick Harrison, of Harrison’s Bank in the City of London, confirm that the body you have seen this morning is that of your father, Carl Harrison, of Blackwater, Oxfordshire?’
Outside, a group of medical students sounded as if they were playing a game of rugby in the corridor. Frederick Harrison looked directly at the policeman.