Sophie looked at him carefully. Then she laughed.
‘Richard,’ she said, ‘I thought you spent your whole time in the bank adding things up and putting them in ledgers. But they seem to be teaching you a bit of wisdom as well!’
‘All kinds of human affairs pass through the banks, Sophie.’ Richard felt older than his twenty-two years. ‘Births, marriages, deaths, and most of the complicated bits in between.’
‘And what has been happening in your bank, Richard?’ Sophie seemed happier now. ‘Is everybody still alive? No more bodies floating in the Thames?’
‘We’re still alive, but only just.’ Richard Martin looked worried. ‘Nobody’s looking for any new business. The place is just ticking over. But there are some very strange things happening. I think I have been as worried about them as I have about your interview with the headmistress.’
‘Were you worried about me?’ said Sophie with a smile.
‘Of course I was. I don’t think I can say anything about what’s going on in Harrison’s Bank just yet. We’re meant to be very discreet, we bankers.’
For the past ten minutes the waiter had been dusting the neighbouring tables, pulling down the blinds, sweeping the floor.
‘I think they want us to go, Sophie. I’ll see you home.’
‘Are you very worried about what’s going on in the bank?’ asked Sophie, drawn irresistibly towards a secret.
‘I am, yes,’ said Richard, helping her into her coat, his hands lingering fractionally longer around her shoulders than they needed to. ‘But I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.’
So they joined the hurrying throng on its way home through the fog, home to loved ones, home to families, home to rest before another day in the Great City. Sophie was feeling rather proud of her Richard for being so sensible. Richard was watching the swing of her hips. He was wondering if now, with the light so bad and so many people about, if now might be the moment to hold her hand. Just in case she got lost, he said to himself.
The gravestone was granite. On top of it perched two black eagles, carved in marble to survey the city of Berlin. The epitaph was simple.
Here lies Heinrich von Treitschke. For forty years he served in the University of Berlin, instructing his students in the lessons of the past, and teaching that the history of his people points the way toward a more glorious future. In life he was revered. In death he will not be forgotten. Here lies a great German.
Even nine months after his death the flowers were piled high on top of the grave. A local florist, noting the appeal of this particular tomb, had opened an extra stall just inside the cemetery.
Both men standing there had attended the funeral, as the old historian was laid to rest with full military honours, the route from the church to his final resting place lined with hussars and guards, the slow beat of the drum punctuating his last journey.
‘Even now, Karl, the people still flock to pay tribute to his memory.’ Manfred von Munster, chief recruiter for the secret society set up to honour Treitschke’s teachings, held his hat in his hands.
‘They say in the banks,’ said Karl Schmidt, one of von Munster’s most recent recruits, ‘that they are going to name a street or a square after him.’
‘That would be splendid, a fitting memorial. But come, I have news for you today from the society.’ Von Munster spoke reverently about the society. ‘They are very pleased with your work,’ he went on. ‘The Potsdamer Bank are very pleased indeed.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Karl.
‘But now,’ said von Munster, gazing round the cemetery to make sure they were not observed, ‘is the time for you to take the next step. You must leave the Potsdamer Bank very soon.’
‘Leave?’ said the young man anxiously. ‘I thought you said they were pleased with my work.’
‘Oh, they are.’ Von Munster rubbed his hands together. ‘They’re so pleased that they are more than willing to take you back once you have accomplished your mission.’
‘Is this the journey to England of which you spoke before?’
‘It is,’ said von Munster firmly. ‘You are to travel to London and make your way to Harrison’s Bank in the City of London. A position has been reserved for you there.’
‘And what must I do when I reach London?’ asked Karl, delighted that his services were required at last. He had begun to wonder if the secret society was just a talking shop.
‘You must wait until you get there. You will receive your instructions in London. That is all I am allowed to tell you at present.’
As they made their way past the long rows of graves, some marked with the Iron Cross denoting military service, Karl had one last question to ask.
‘Manfred, can you answer this question for me?’ Von Munster smiled. ‘I will try as best I can.’
‘You said I was doing well in the Potsdamer Bank, and that they will have me back once this mission is over. How do you know all that? Do you have members of the society inside the Potsdamer Bank who keep you informed?’
Von Munster put his arm around the young man’s shoulder.
‘Karl, I should not be telling you this. But, yes, we do have members in the Potsdamer Bank. We are increasing our membership. Soon we will have members in all the most important institutions in Germany.’
11
Powerscourt was thinking about family feuds as the early train carried him south-west to Cornwall for his rendezvous with Leopold Harrison, senior partner in Harrison’s Private Bank, nephew to the man found floating by London Bridge. He knew that William Burke had said there were no rumours of a family feud in the splitting of Harrison’s Bank, but he was still curious. Could a feud, which led to the bank dividing into two, be responsible for the Curse on the House of Harrison? Professionally, Powerscourt quite liked family feuds, they could last so long that perfectly unintelligible crimes could be explained by terrible internal wars a generation or two before.
The Greeks had been pretty good at family feuds, he reflected, until the Italians came along and took the prize. As his train rolled through the innocent Hampshire countryside he remembered the curse of the house of Atreus, the infamous feast laid on in Mycenae by Atreus for his brother Thyestes. Cubes of white meat bubble in a large bronze cauldron. Atreus offers one or two specially tasty morsels to Thyestes. Thyestes eats them. At the end of the banquet Atreus’ servant brings in a plate crammed with human hands and feet. Only then does Thyestes realize that he has been eating the flesh of his own children. Revenge, hatred, murder, rape follow through the family for generations. Powerscourt had tried to count how many had perished from this one feud in his schooldays. He had given up when he reached seventeen. However ferocious a Harrison feud might have been he didn’t think it could be as bad as that, even if headless corpses with their hands cut off could have come straight out of Aeschylus.
Cawsand was one of a pair of pretty villages four or five miles by sea from Plymouth but a long way round by land. The sea curved in to form one little bay, Kingsand, swung out again into a rocky promontory, then turned back into the other little bay of Cawsand. Powerscourt’s cab deposited him in the small main square of Cawsand. The public house, the Smugglers, bore witness to the past of the inhabitants. The Harrison house was called Trehannoc, just up the twisting street that led from the square and the tiny beach. The houses were small and pretty, late eighteenth century or early in this one, Powerscourt thought, looking with admiration at the sea views they must command. He wondered if prize money from the long sea war against Napoleon had paid for them. Prize money, the lubricant of greed added to the fires of patriotism, had made the Royal Navy a terrifying force; captured privateers, caught trying to beat the blockade of France with sugar from the West Indies or coffee from Brazil, French men of war won in battle and sold off to His Majesty’s Treasury, could have paid for these little houses. Lieutenants, climbing slowly through the numbers from fourth to first, helped on their way by the death toll in battle, could have spent a comfortable retirement here, walking along the coastal paths, inspecting the ships that passed by on their way in and out of Plymouth. Rich captains and admirals, he remembered, who took the lion’s share of the spoils, would not have settled here. They bought their way into the country gentry with substantial estates in Devon and Hampshire.