He paced on, hoping that at last he might have the key to the mystery, the riddle that linked a death by drowning, a death by fire, death under a tube train and a headless corpse in the Thames.
‘Do sit down, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, smiling at her husband. ‘All this walking up and down is making me nervous.’
Powerscourt sat down. He got up again. He walked rapidly to the other end of the room, his hand running through his hair. Then he sat down again.
‘Right, Francis. I’m going to take them two at a time – you’re so impatient. I shouldn’t get over-excited about the first couple if I were you.
‘This one here,’ she held up a letter written on plain white paper, ‘comes from an old friend in Frankfurt. It says that some distant cousin has just died at the age of ninety-three. She must have been older than Queen Victoria.’
‘That’s all it says?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘It is,’ replied Lady Lucy, ‘unless there’s a message written in invisible ink. This one,’ she held out another letter, written on pale blue writing paper, ‘comes from Berlin. I think the writer must have known the Harrisons when they were in Frankfurt. He says that there are a number of secret societies in Berlin, mostly centred on the university. Everyone is joining secret societies these days, he says, societies to do with the Navy, societies to do with the Army. But the writer doesn’t know very much about them.’
Lady Lucy’s clock struck the hour of ten. Powerscourt began walking up and down again.
‘If you give me a couple of minutes, Francis, I can tell you what the other two say. They’re both from Berlin. But please, stop walking up and down.’
Mrs Martin and Sophie Williams had drunk three cups of tea. They had talked about Sophie’s work at the school, about Richard and his work at the bank.
‘I must go home now, Mrs Martin. Perhaps he has had to work late at the bank after all.’
‘Do you think so, Miss Williams, do you really think so? I would be so relieved if he has.’
Privately Sophie did not believe Richard was working late. He would have told her if he was. She suspected there had been some terrible catastrophe at the bank.
‘I’m sure he’ll be home soon,’ she said. ‘I’ll look in on the way to school in the morning, just to make sure he got back safely.’
‘That would be very kind, Miss Williams.’
‘These two are both from the same man, Francis.’ Lucy was holding up the last two letters, written on more expensive paper. ‘I think he too was someone Old Mr Harrison knew before. He also says there are secret societies all over Berlin. The most secretive, and the one thought to be the most influential, is centred on the Friedrich Wilhelm University.’
Lady Lucy let the letter drop into her lap. ‘Oh, Francis, that’s where Charles Harrison went, the Friedrich Wilhelm.’ Powerscourt was staring at the letter. ‘Go on, Lucy, please go on.’
‘The society is devoted to the work and teachings of a history professor called von Treitschke. Have you heard of this historian, Francis?’
‘No, I have not. Is that all the letter says?’
‘The rest is all about mutual friends. Most of them seem to be dying off. The last one,’ Lady Lucy picked up the final letter in her little pile, ‘is from the same man. “I have tried on your behalf,” he says, “I have tried very hard to find out if the person of whom you speak is a member of the society or not. I have not been able to find out a definite answer. Secret societies after all are meant to be secret”.’
‘Do you think that’s some heavy German joke, Lucy?’
‘Probably,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘There’s more. “I would guess from the response to my question from one of my informants that the person of whom you speak is a member. Membership is not just for the length of the university career, it goes on until you die.” That’s it, Francis.’
‘No mention of who the person of whom you speak actually is, is there?’ Powerscourt was running his hands through his hair again.
‘No, there is not. Not a clue.’
‘I suppose, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that if some of this information was so important that it killed somebody, then you wouldn’t want to put too much of it down on paper. Particularly if your correspondent felt it wasn’t safe to read his letters in his own house.’
‘So it could be anybody.’ Lady Lucy wondered if she had guessed right.
‘For all I know,’ her husband said, ‘it could be Jones the butler, recruited way back, plotting away all these years. Talking of Jones, just for now I’m going to follow his example. I’m going to have a very large whisky.’
Mrs Martin did not sleep that night. All through the early hours of the morning she waited for a door key that never turned in the lock. As dawn broke over North London she was sure her Richard was dead, run over by a carriage perhaps, or fallen under a train.
Sophie Williams did not sleep either. All night she tormented herself with the way she had treated Richard. Had she been too brusque with him? Had she talked too much about her work with the suffragists or her problems at the school?
At half-past seven she presented herself at Richard’s front door. But it was his mother who opened it, looking terrible, her face lined with grief, her eyes red with the tears of darkness.
‘Please come in, Miss Williams. Richard’s still not back yet.’
With that she broke down, sinking into a chair and weeping uncontrollably.
‘Maybe he’s left home because I didn’t treat him properly,’ she sobbed. The words came very slowly, punctuated by shaking. ‘Maybe he’s dead and the next thing we’ll hear is the policeman knocking at the door. Thank God his father’s not here to see all this.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Martin.’ Sophie Williams put her arm round Richard’s mother. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea. I’m sure he’ll be back today. Maybe they had to work all night at the bank. Some banks do, you know.’ Sophie spoke as though she had an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary banking behaviour in the City of London.
‘I tell you what,’ said Sophie, returning with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, ‘I’ll go down to the bank after school today and ask after him there.’
‘Could you do that? Could you really? That would be so kind. And then you’ll come back and tell me what happened? If I hear anything this morning, Miss Williams, I’ll drop a message into your school.’
Lord Francis Powerscourt felt he was in a time warp. He was back in his tutor’s room at Cambridge where he had sat so often over twenty-five years before. Outside the elegant windows the front court was bathed in sunshine. The grass was immaculate, divided into quarters by the paths that led off to other parts of the college and down to the river.
The porter at the front gate had recognized him after all those years.
‘Lord Powerscourt, how nice to see you again, sir. Welcome back to the college. Mr Brooke is expecting you, sir.’
Gavin Brooke, Senior Tutor in history at this establishment for over forty years, was waiting for him, showing him to a chair, leaning heavily on a stick.
‘Good to see you, Powerscourt. I’m not so mobile as I once was, as you can see. College is going to the dogs, you know, going to the dogs.’
Powerscourt remembered this as a familiar refrain. Change in any form had never pleased Gavin Brooke. His hair had turned white now, his handlebar moustache a shadow of its former self.
‘They can’t row, they can’t think, they can’t write essays any more, these undergraduates nowadays. And have you seen their clothes? Those waistcoats? The neckties? Do you know, one of these aesthetes as they call themselves asked the Master the other day if they could have an Aubrey Beardsley society. An Aubrey Beardsley society!’
‘What did the Master say, Mr Brooke?’ asked Powerscourt. Time never seemed to matter very much in Cambridge, he recalled, there was so much of it to squander until you realized it had all gone and your three years were over.
‘The Master – never did like the man, the Fellows should never have elected him, never – he refused. Refused point blank. Oh yes.’