‘I have some news for you now,’ said Finn, drawing his thin coat around him against the rain that flew into their faces and dripped from the branches above. ‘And I think it’s worth a lot of money.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked the agent wearily. He carried in his jacket pocket enough for Finn’s latest subvention. Long experience had taught him to carry at least twice as much money as seemed necessary.
‘Michael Byrne now, you’ve heard tell of Michael Byrne?’
The agent nodded, his eyes sweeping the park to make sure they were not being watched.
‘He’s got a sweetheart,’ Finn was talking very quietly,’ a pretty wee thing called Marie O’Dowd. He’s been sending her over to London.’
‘Do you know why?’ asked the agent.
‘It’ll be some sort of reconnaissance mission, don’t you see. She’s a teacher, that Marie. She goes for interviews for jobs at the schools in London. That’s what her auntie told my ma’s cousin when they met at Mass the other morning.’
‘She could just be intending to go and live in London, couldn’t she?’ said the agent, who had moved to Ireland from England’s capital. ‘Lots of people like London better than Dublin, you know.’
As he thought of the squalor and the poverty, the lies and the treacheries and the betrayals, the sheer elusiveness of Dublin’s inhabitants, the agent knew where home would be for him.
‘You don’t understand, man,’ said Finn, ‘she’s besotted with Michael Byrne, totally besotted with him. She’d do anything for him. It’s as if Michael Byrne himself has been walking the streets of London.’
A troop of horse, part of the detachment guarding the Viceroy’s residence, trotted past the clump of trees, the horses’ coats shining in the rain.
‘Do you know if she did anything particular for him when she was in London?’ said the agent.
‘That I do not. She was always drawing things, that one. She’s got one of the best eyes in Dublin, you know. She could do you a perfect picture of the front of Buckingham Palace in about five minutes.’
The agent looked thoughtful, even alarmed. All agents were trained to show no emotion at all, not even anger, when dealing with their informants.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We have been here long enough. Here is your money, and a little bit more besides. That’s all there is today.’ Nothing upset this agent more than arguing with the treacherous Irish, bartering information for scraps of gold as if they were in some oriental market.
Fergus Finn took his forty pieces of silver and went back to his office. The agent waited under the trees for a full fifteen minutes before he walked back across the city to his quarters in Dublin Castle.
News of the meeting reached Dominic Knox, senior officer in the British service responsible for intelligence gathering in Ireland, the following day. He swore as he looked out on the cobblestones of Dublin Castle at the little chapel built to commemorate British rule in Ireland. The names of the English rulers were written round its walls. It was one of the very few places in Dublin where the name of Cromwell could be found. The sentries stood to rigid attention in their dark blue boxes. The Viceroy’s carriage was waiting haughtily at the main entrance. Inside the castle walls was all the authority and certainty of the British Empire. Outside in the smoke and grime of the filthy city a handful of badly organized fanatics were trying to plot the end of English rule in Ireland.
Knox sent a message to his counterpart in London. They were to circulate all the elementary schools in London – he corrected himself as he struggled with his codes, all the Catholic elementary schools in London – asking for details of all applicants for positions. All applicants from Ireland. It was to be part of an administrative survey into the provision of teaching staff in the capital. The circular should be sent out immediately.
The Commissioner sent his apologies. He was delayed at a meeting. Powerscourt drank cup after cup of Metropolitan Police tea, strong and sweet. He chatted briefly with Arthur Stone, the assistant who had told him about the fire at Blackwater. There was a further message from the Commissioner. His meeting was taking much longer than expected. Powerscourt drank more tea, wondering why even these offices had to be so drab.
‘My dear Lord Powerscourt.’ The Commissioner was effusive in his apologies. ‘It’s the Jubilee, the wretched Jubilee. The nearer it gets the more anxious the organizers become. You’d think they were orchestrating the Second Coming.’
Powerscourt told the Commissioner about the fire, about his suspicions that it had not started accidentally, about the whisky butler in the basement, about the mystery of the missing key.
‘If the fire was started deliberately, do you think the purpose was to kill Frederick Harrison?’ The Commissioner was putting some papers in a folder labelled ‘Jubilee 1897’. Powerscourt felt sure that somewhere in the building was a folder labelled ‘Jubilee 1887’. He wondered if they had one ready yet for Victoria’s funeral.
‘That is the only conclusion I can draw,’ said Powerscourt wearily. ‘But I cannot find any clear motive unless it is to obtain for Mr Charles Harrison the complete control over the bank’s affairs.’
‘Does he have that now – that control, I mean?’ The Commissioner looked keenly at Powerscourt.
‘Not quite yet. Almost, but not quite. There is a senior clerk by the name of Williamson who has to approve all major decisions, according to the rules of the partnership. But he could just ignore that. As to why he wants control of the bank now, if that is his purpose, when it would pass to him naturally in a couple of years, I have no idea at all. But I feel Williamson’s life may be in danger.’
‘Would you like us to watch him,’ said the Commissioner, ‘to make sure he is safe?’
‘I would be most grateful,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I have all the necessary details with me here.’
‘Is there anybody else you would like us to watch, Lord Powerscourt? Anything that might help you in your inquiries?’
Powerscourt thought about this generous offer. This might just shorten the odds against him. ‘There is, sir, if you can afford the necessary manpower. I should like you to watch Mr Charles Harrison.’
Powerscourt spent some time reading the back copies of the financial papers in the London Library. He spent some time in trains, always enjoyable for him. He travelled to Blackwater where, officially, he was keeping an eye on things, maintaining contact with Inspector Wilson, wandering about the ruined house, having desultory conversations with Jones the butler. He walked round the lake alone, stopping to peer into the temples, pausing to read the epitaphs in the churchyard. He walked to the river, mentally timing how long it would take a man on a fast horse to get there from the house, admiring the boathouse with the well-kept rowing boats by the side of the Thames.
But, if he was honest with himself, he knew the real reason he was there. He had fallen in love. Perhaps it’s more of an infatuation, perhaps it will pass, he said to himself.
He had fallen in love with the library, its green surroundings, the promise of the books that lined its walls, the air of serenity that pervaded the long room. Here he would sit, sometimes making notes of things to do, sometimes wandering around and pausing to bring down a Thucydides or a Clarendon, a Plutarch or a de Tocqueville from the tall cases that reached up to the vaulted ceiling. He thought of his other recent train journey, a visit to the seaside to another Harrison, Lothar of Harrison’s Private Bank, in his grand house in Eastbourne a few days before.
A row of goat carts had been waiting patiently for their little passengers outside the front door of the Harrison house, right on the front near the pier. Behind them on the beach the bathing machines were unlikely to have much custom on this day for the rain was pouring down, the wind strong from the sea. Through the windows of Lothar Harrison’s drawing room on the first floor a couple of fishing boats could be seen, beating slowly back towards the shore.