Death and the Jubilee by David Dickinson Read Free Book Online

Harrison was not and had not been in Hamburg. I must have been
misinformed. So.’ He rose and clicked his heels together in the German fashion and bowed. ‘No Old Harrison in Germany. No Old Harrison in London. But why should they say he was in
Berlin when he wasn’t? Over to you, Francis.’
    Powerscourt was looking at his fingertips, rubbing them slowly together. But it was Lady Lucy who spoke.
    ‘Could he not have gone somewhere else, William? The Italian Lakes, or somewhere on the Rhine, perhaps. It would be so dreadful if this corpse was that poor old man.’
    ‘I don’t think he was poor.’ Burke laughed cheerfully, a man reputed to be able to value the top men in the City to the nearest ten thousand pounds. ‘Certainly not
poor.’
    ‘No matter how rich you are you shouldn’t have to end up like that. If it was Old Mr Harrison,’ said Lady Lucy, defending the rights of the dead.
    ‘I’m not sure how to proceed,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s unlikely that further inquiries in the City will make any progress. Maybe somebody should scout around their
house in the country – Oxfordshire, did you say it was, William?’
    ‘It is,’ said Burke, resuming the mantle of business. ‘But please be very careful, very discreet. The Harrisons may know that I was behind the inquiries made in Lombard Street.
Word will surely reach them that I made further inquiries in Germany. We need to be very careful indeed.
    ’And I must be off home. Thank you so much for the lemonade. You won’t forget that you are coming to me for the weekend in the country, to be there at the installation of my new
vicar? I never realized that when I bought the house and the land I bought an incumbency as well!’ William Burke laughed in the joy of his own prosperity. ‘You have to read a lesson,
Francis, you will recall. And I’ve got the Bishop coming as well. Publish it not in the streets of Gath, as the parsons say,’ Burke smiled at his hosts, ‘but I saved his whole
diocese from bankruptcy three years ago. But that’s another story.’
    With that William Burke, financier and man of property, departed into the night. ‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘come back, come back.’
    Powerscourt had disappeared into his own thoughts. Lady Lucy was used to it by now. She smiled at her husband as he stared into the dying fire.
    ‘Sorry, Lucy. I was only wondering what to do. I think we need somebody to work their way in towards the Harrison house, the village, the neighbours, the postman, that sort of
thing.’
    ‘I know who you are going to send.’ Lady Lucy leaned against his shoulder and put her arm round his waist. ‘You’re going to send Johnny Fitzgerald, aren’t you?
Well, you just tell him to be careful. That other time he was nearly killed because of you, and that was in the depths of Northamptonshire. I don’t see why Oxfordshire should be any safer for
him.’
    Lady Lucy remembered the emaciated best man at their wedding, policemen guarding the doors, a wounded Fitzgerald strapped up like a mummy, almost fainting as he stood by the altar.
    Powerscourt smiled at his wife, remembering Johnny Fitzgerald’s speech as best man at their wedding. ‘We’ll take care, Lucy. Very great care.’

 
4
    ‘Clarendon Park is a nabob’s seat, East India Company money,’ William Burke said to Powerscourt, pointing to his Palladian mansion not far from Marlow. They
were waiting for their families as the women made last-minute adjustments to hats and children before the short walk to the small church for the installation of the new vicar. ‘It was built
by a fellow called Francis Hodge who made a fortune in India and came home to retire in peace by the Thames. But things didn’t quite work out the way he thought.’
    ‘What went wrong?’ asked Powerscourt, slightly nervous, as ever, at the prospect of having to read the lesson.
    ‘The poor man – well, he was fairly poor by the end – got impeached for greed and