Hardy was listening intently, still making notes in his book.
‘Or is it possible that the butler is the villain of the piece? He goes upstairs to check Mr Frederick has retired, starts the fire downstairs, pops back upstairs to lock Mr Frederick in and then earns his hero’s reward by carrying Miss Harrison to safety.’
Inspector Wilson too had extracted his notebook from about his person. He was following Hardy’s example, scribbling furiously.
‘Or is it possible that a person or persons unknown enters the house after everybody has gone to bed, starts the fire, locks Mr Frederick in and flees into the night?’
Hardy looked up suddenly. ‘The key. The key, my lord,’ he said, looking at Powerscourt with a pleading look, ‘the key is the key. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. If we knew where that key was, then surely we would be well on our way to solving part of the mystery. We must search for it tomorrow. We must search everywhere.’
Powerscourt looked at the Inspector to his left. He had just turned a new page and had written the word KEY in large block capitals at the top.
Two of the horses neighed suddenly. A couple of wood pigeons took off from the roof of the stables and vanished into the trees above the lake.
‘There is another possibility,’ Powerscourt began. ‘And that is as follows . . .’
He never finished the sentence. From the bottom of the drive, less than a hundred yards away, the wheels of a carriage could be heard. The little group rose from their chairs and began to move towards the main house.
‘Wait, wait,’ whispered Powerscourt, restraining Chief Fire Officer Perkins. Another cloud of dust fluttered off his trousers on to the ground. ‘Let’s just see who it is.’
He knew who it was. All day he had been waiting for this latest visitor to the House of Harrison. Rejoice more in the lost sheep who is found than in the ninety and nine who did not stray.
Above all Powerscourt wanted to see what Charles Harrison would do. He probably knew already about the fire. Heaven knew enough messages had been sent after him all day. But if he didn’t know how bad it was then surely he would pause and look at the front of his house, to survey the damage. He would walk round the side to the west wing at the rear to check on the devastation there. He might just stand and stare at the terrible ruin at the front, the gaping holes where the windows had been, the blackened stone, parts of the roof open to the sky.
Charles Harrison did none of these things. He walked straight in through what had been his front door. Even in the stables they could hear him shout.
‘Anybody home? Anybody home?’
13
‘I called on Parker in his cottage on the way here. He told me about the fire. And I gather my uncle has perished in the blaze.’
So Charles Harrison knew about the fire before he got here, thought Powerscourt, staring keenly at the last remaining male member of the House of Harrison. That would explain why he didn’t look around the outside of Blackwater before he went in. Or would it?
Melancholy introductions had been made on the portico outside the east front, Inspector Wilson and Chief Fire Officer Perkins apologizing for the grime on their hands, Fire Investigator Hardy staring fixedly at an innocent-looking bundle of ash lying on the floor inside.
‘This is a sad occasion, indeed,’ said Harrison, turning to look at the open windows of what had once been the picture gallery, ‘my poor uncle. My poor uncle.’ He took off his hat as if already at the graveside. Powerscourt thought he didn’t seem very upset about his relation’s death. He remembered Charles Harrison’s unhappy upbringing, brought up by a family that didn’t really want him.
‘Could I ask you, gentlemen,’ Harrison went on, ‘to grant me some repose before any proper interviews and exchanges of information take place? Could we meet in the library here tomorrow morning, at, say, eleven o’clock?’
‘That’ll give him eighteen hours to think about his story,’ Hardy said to Powerscourt later as they walked down the drive.
‘Do you suspect Mr Charles Harrison of being implicated in the fire?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘I’m not saying I do and I’m not saying I don’t,’ replied Hardy enigmatically, ‘but there’s something about his manner that doesn’t ring quite right. I’ve watched enough people who have started fires in my time trying to pretend that they had nothing to do with them afterwards.’
Police and fire departed in one of Perkins’ fire engines. Powerscourt decided to pay a brief call on Samuel Parker to ask for a lift to the station.
‘Mr Parker,’ he began, ushering the head groom on to the little path in front of his house, ‘Mr Charles has just called, I understand.’
‘That he has, sir, that he has. He popped in to see old Miss Harrison, so he did, but she was asleep, thank God. Lady Powerscourt left after she dropped off. I took her to the station, my lord.’ He rubbed his forehead as if the old lady was becoming rather a trial to the Parker household.
‘Is she any better? Miss Harrison, I mean?’
‘It’s hard to say, sir,’ said Parker, shaking his head. ‘The doctor is coming again in the morning, I understand, so he is. She was talking about fire the last time I saw her.’
‘Oh dear. Could I ask you a favour, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt felt a great urge to escape from Blackwater as quickly as possible. ‘Could you take me to the station as well? I have to be back in London tonight. I shall return in the morning, of course.’
As they rattled along the lanes Powerscourt asked a question he knew he should have asked before. It wasn’t important, just a piece of routine.
‘Jones, the butler, the man who rescued Miss Harrison,’ he began, ‘has he been with the family long?’
‘Jones isn’t his real name, sir, not proper like.’ Samuel Parker was driving quite slowly, his face fixed firmly on the road ahead. ‘I’m just trying to remember what his real name is now.’
‘Does he not come from these parts?’
‘No, he does not, my lord. He’s German too, like the Harrisons. Goldman, Goldstein, Goldfarb . . .’
Powerscourt wondered if the horses in front had been named after German families once known to the Harrisons in a previous life.
‘Goldschmidt, that’s what it is. Jones’s name, I mean. Goldschmidt. I remember Mabel saying it must be the same word as our own Goldsmiths. Goldschmidt.’
Parker sounded pleased with his feat of memory.
‘Why did he call himself Jones?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘He could have just changed his name to Goldsmith, perfectly good English name.’
‘I don’t rightly know, my lord,’ said Parker, ‘but I do know that he came here with the Harrisons when they moved up from London. So he must have worked for them before.’
‘Did Old Mr Harrison ever talk about him as he was going round the lake, that sort of thing?’ Strings of possibilities, all of them unpleasant, were running through Powerscourt’s brain.
‘No, he didn’t, my lord. But the rumour about the place was that his family had been bankers in Frankfurt who’d all been ruined in some smash, my lord.’ Parker didn’t sound too familiar with financial smashes.
‘So the two families must have known each other before,’ said Powerscourt, alighting from the carriage outside the station. ‘Thank you, Mr Parker, thank you very much indeed. Perhaps I shall see you tomorrow. I have to be back for eleven o’clock.’
Two hours later he was knocking on Lord Rosebery’s front door in Berkeley Square. Lyons, Rosebery’s imperturbable butler, a man blessed with an encyclopedic knowledge of train timetables, showed him into the library.
Rosebery and Powerscourt had known each other at school. Rosebery had been intimately involved with one of Powerscourt’s cases five years before. Since then he had fulfilled one ambition. He had become Prime Minister, only to leave office after a year and a quarter. Some said his premiership was destroyed by bickering and intrigue among his Cabinet colleagues. Others said it was brought down by Rosebery’s inability to make decisions. ‘Just not worth the effort, my dear Francis,’ had been his verdict to Powerscourt on his great office two days after leaving it. ‘Dealing with horses is so much more satisfactory. They don’t conspire behind your back all the time.’