Death and the Jubilee Read Online Free Page B

suddenly by his side. ‘Good morning, Constable,’ she said with her most graceful smile. ‘So Francis is going to take tea with the Commissioner? I’m
sure that will be delightful. And, Francis, you can tell Thomas and me all about it when you get back.’
    She whisked Thomas away from his father’s shoulder and began whispering to the little boy. As Powerscourt and the constable closed the door, Thomas was able to manage a small but tear-free
wave.
    Forty miles away an old man and a pony were waiting outside the stables of the great house. Samuel Parker had worked in these stables for nearly fifty years. He had risen in a
series of slow promotions from apprentice undergroom to Head of Stables. His employers had given him a little cottage on the estate to have until he died. But today Samuel was a very worried
man.
    The house was almost closed down. The younger members had gone back to their great house in Mayfair, leaving the old man and his sister alone on the top floor, except for some servants in the
basement. Every day, at ten o’clock in the morning, Old Mr Harrison would come to meet Samuel and the pony by the stables. Together they would make a circuit of the lake. Sometimes the old
man would bring letters or papers from the bank with him to read on the way. Then Samuel would strap a small portable chair and table on to the pony and they would wait while their master attended
to his business.
    Samuel could just remember the family who lived in the great house before Old Mr Harrison bought it thirty-five years ago. The sons had gambled away the family money, the house and the estates
all had to be sold, and the Harrisons, originally German bankers in Hamburg and Frankfurt, had moved in. Three generations of them lived in the house now: Carl Harrison known as Old Mr Harrison,
his sister Augusta Harrison, known as Miss Harrison, his son Mr Frederick Harrison and his great-nephew, Charles Harrison, Young Mr Harrison as they were known to the servants.
    Old Mr Harrison loved the lake and the two-mile walk that ran around its borders. There were strange grottoes and classical temples, funny buildings as Samuel thought of them, dotted around it
and sometimes Old Mr Harrison would spend a lot of time inside these Roman buildings, looking at the statues or reading his correspondence beneath some pagan god.
    Samuel Parker thought Old Mr Harrison had been worried recently. For the past few months his correspondence had been coming from foreign parts, from Bremen and Berlin, from Paris and Munich and
Cologne. He had written a lot of letters too, perched at his table in the temple, a thick cape protecting him from the winds that whipped the waters of the lake and tore the leaves from the trees.
And – this was what alarmed Samuel more than anything else – Old Mr Harrison had asked Samuel to post the letters he wrote down by the lake, as if he didn’t want anybody in the
big house to know who he was writing to.
    The lake would be wreathed in mist this morning, Samuel knew, the great trees and the classical temples swirling in and out of sight like things glimpsed in nightmares. Samuel thought there were
strange spirits living around it, older than the house, older than the village, older than the ancient church, older possibly than Christianity itself. Maybe the Druids or the pagan gods had dwelt
there long ago, now living uneasily with the worldly deities of Rome.
    It was twenty days, maybe more, since Old Mr Harrison had come for his morning ride, walking stiffly down the drive from the house, leaning on his stick. Samuel had lost count. Sometimes they
would go round the lake twice or even three times in one day when the weather was good and the sun shone on the water, reflections of pillars and pediments dancing on the surface of the lake. The
old pony knew something was wrong. It gazed sadly at the ground, raising a hoof from time to time to paw at the gravel.
    Even Samuel’s wife Martha, so crippled