Goodnight Sweet Prince

by David Dickinson

  ‘Who else is in residence at Sandringham House at the moment?’ Barrington leaned forward. Rosebery kept thinking of him as a bloodhound hot on the scent of death. His colleague took shorthand at a prodigious speed, his pen coming to rest a few seconds after the speaker had finished.

  ‘Duke and Duchess of Fife, Duke and Duchess of Teck and their children, Prince and Princess of Wales obviously, Prince George, Princess Maud, Princess Victoria, a number of friends and equerries who had come to celebrate the Prince’s birthday on Friday.’ Rosebery took great care, on Powerscourt’s instructions, not to give the names of any of the equerries. The shorthand pen hurtled across the page, the scratching of the nib filling in the silences as Rosebery spoke.

  ‘We feel,’ Rosebery nodded gravely at Sir George Trevelyan, ‘that the first announcement in the newspapers should confine itself to a bald announcement of the illness, accompanied, if you feel appropriate, by a list of those in residence at Sandringham.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Barrington nodded gravely in his turn. If the newspapers were as tame and as docile as this all the time, Rosebery felt, we would not be in such difficulties.

  ‘However, there is some background information about the possible origins of the disease which could, perhaps, be included on the following day, should the illness persist, of course.’

  ‘The Times would be most grateful to you, Lord Rosebery, Sir George.’ Trevelyan thought that Barrington sounded like the Ambassador from a major power proposing the terms of a treaty at the Foreign Office.

  ‘On Monday of last week the Duke felt unwell as he attended the funeral of Prince Victor of Hohenhoe. On Tuesday he remained at Sandringham. On Wednesday he went shooting – and that, as I am sure you will remember, even in the warmth of London, was a very cold day. On Thursday he felt unwell again and on Friday he felt ill again on his birthday.’

  Suddenly Rosebery felt completely blank. He had forgotten something. Like an actor, he had lost his lines. But there was no prompter, only Trevelyan, and he hadn’t yet read the whole script. Had Eddy attended his birthday dinner party or not? Had he stayed in his room, according to the legend he and Suter and Shepstone had concocted earlier that day? Or had he attended and had to leave early? He simply could not remember.

  He pressed on regardless. ‘And that, gentlemen, is about as much as we can tell you at present.’

  Silence fell on the room, the shorthand nib quiet at last. Barrington looked at his watch.

  ‘Lord Rosebery, Sir George, please forgive me. Time waits for no man, not even The Times.’

  Trevelyan wondered how often he had used that quip in the past twenty years. ‘I must return to my offices. We must include this story in the first editions. We should be on our way. We are most grateful to you. I shall despatch a reporter to Sandringham at once.’

  Times present turned into Times past as the two men were ushered from the room.

  ‘I think that went as well as might have been expected, Lord Rosebery. We need to co-ordinate further plans.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed.’ Rosebery was staring at his empty sofa.

  ‘Do you think Barrington brings that other chap with him everywhere he goes? A silent amanuensis? I don’t believe he spoke a single word all the time he was here.’

  ‘Perhaps he is the Official Scribe,’ said Trevelyan, ‘like those characters with tablets who used to follow Eastern potentates around their palaces, writing down every word.’

  Rosebery laughed suddenly, the tension draining away. ‘Do you suppose he tastes Barrington’s food as well?’

  Snow had turned into slush in the ancient streets of King’s Lynn, seven miles south west of Sandringham. Powaerscourt splashed his way through the entrance hall of the King’s Head hotel and found Lord Johnny Fitzgerald drinking beer and William McKenzie drinking tea in a private sitting-room on the first floor. His reinforcements had arrived.

  ‘Powerscourt! At last!’ Fitzgerald eased his tall frame out of the best chair and shook his friend warmly by the hand.

  ‘It’s turning into a gathering of the clans here tonight.’ McKenzie was a small, silent man in his early thirties. He was what they had called in India a tracker. Trained in his native Scotland in the complicated arts of stalking stags, he had transferred his skills to tracking humans. In India, as in his homeland, they spoke of him with awe.

  ‘I am so glad you are both here.’ Powerscourt sank into a chair by the fire and looked at his companions. ‘Let me tell you what this business is about.’

  Powerscourt left nothing out, the great slit across the throat, the other arteries slashed, the pools of blood on the floor. He told them of the plan to conceal the death from the public and the authorities. He filled them in on the activities of Major Dawnay and his band of mysterious experts with their arcane skills, military and civilian.

  ‘Do they expect us to find out who did it? I suppose they do.’ Fitzgerald took a long draught from an enormous tankard of ale. ‘How in God’s name are we supposed to do that, Francis? Blood in puddles all over the floor. It’s like a butcher’s shop on slaughter day.’

  ‘All we can do,’ Powerscourt surveyed his small forces, ‘is to begin from the beginning. That’s what we have always done in India or in London. In Wiltshire, you will remember, we had even less to go on than we do here. I think . . .’ He paused to gaze with horror at an extremely sentimental picture of the Scottish Highlands hanging on the wall. ‘I think we have to start by trying to eliminate the outsiders.

  ‘Johnny.’ Fitzgerald had just completed his tankard and was eyeing it curiously, as if amazed that it could be empty so soon. ‘There have been reports of Russians in the vicinity. Reports have reached the Sandringham servants that there are Russians at Dersingham, at Hunstanton, at Fakenham even. There are also reports of Irishmen in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Where the hell is Fakenham?’ Fitzgerald was notorious for his total ignorance of geography, even of countries he had lived in for years.

  ‘It’s north and east of Sandringham. This map on the wall should help you. The Prince of Wales is convinced that one or more of these Russians, if they exist, killed his son. Myself, I rather doubt it but I intend to keep the Russian ball in play for as long as possible. I don’t think I want them to know just yet where my suspicions lie.

  ‘And you, William McKenzie, I need your skills as never before. I need to know if you can tell if anybody has been trying to break into or out of Sandringham. There are great walls all around the estate and the gates are locked at night. It will be very very difficult with all this snow about.’

  ‘Difficult, difficult, but not impossible, I dare say.’

  Suddenly Powerscourt felt very tired. Tomorrow, he knew, would be another trying day at the big house. But as he looked as his two companions, already peering at the map and discussing tomorrow, he knew he was no longer alone.

  It was so like Francis, his eldest sister Rosalind reflected bitterly, to disappear like that. One moment he was playing happily with her children upstairs, that ridiculous board thing with all those toy soldiers and the Battle of Waterloo, the next moment he was gone.

  And then there was Lady Lucy, entertained at dinner here in her house in St James’s Square, taken to look at the boring pictures in the National Gallery, friendship possibly ripening into something more substantial. Now she had been abandoned, like one of those Greek people, dumped on some hot island while the hero sailed away and forgot to change his sails.

  Lady Rosalind Pembridge had invited Lady Lucy Hamilton to tea. She was very fond of Lady Lucy. Maybe she could get some information about how the friendship was progressing. Maybe she could set Lady Lucy’s mind at rest about the ridiculous habits of her brother. But she had even more important matters on her mind as she poured the tea and proffered some egg sandwiches.

  ‘I’m thinking of changing the curtains in here, Lady Lucy. Pembridge says I can spend a couple of hundred pounds or so. Patterned or plain, do you think?’

 
‘They’ve got some beautiful fabrics in Liberty’s just now,’ said Lady Lucy, aware that curtains can be a difficult and troublesome question.

  ‘I’ve got a man from Liberty’s coming round tomorrow morning,’ said Lady Rosalind. ‘He’s going to bring a whole book of things with him. He tried to interest me in some Japanese designs. He said they were the coming thing. Have you seen these Japanese designs, Lady Lucy?’

  ‘I have seen some of them. And they are very pretty. Very peaceful, I think. What does Lord Pembridge think about it all?’

  ‘Pembridge!’ Lady Rosalind laughed a sardonic laugh. ‘Pembridge wouldn’t notice if his curtains were made in Tokyo or Timbuctoo. He really wouldn’t.’ She shook her head sadly at the lack of interest of the other half of the human race in things of beauty. Her mind jumped sideways, to her brother. ‘Have you heard from Francis at all, Lady Lucy?’

  ‘I had a note from him. In fact I have had a couple of notes from him.’ Lady Lucy smiled a private smile to herself. ‘He’s somewhere in Norfolk. He didn’t tell me where. He said it had to do with his work and was very difficult.’

  ‘That’s so like him.’ Lady Rosalind poured some more tea. The lamps were being lit in the great square outside. ‘When we first lived in London years ago, before we were married,’ she looked as if it was hard to remember the time before she was married, ‘Francis used to take us to balls and things, the three of us girls. I suppose he was doing his duty. But even then you’d look round sometimes for a spare man, to fill in a gap on your card, or to take you in to supper, and Francis would have disappeared! Vanished into thin air! He always came back before the end of course to take us home. But it was so irritating. Eleanor, my youngest sister, once hit him over the head with her bag on the way home.’

  ‘Is he a good dancer? Francis, I mean. When he’s actually there.’ Lady Lucy had a sudden vision of herself and Francis floating round one of the great ballrooms of London, not talking, their eyes waltzing into the future.

  ‘Well, he is, since you mention it. He’s very good. But you’re never quite sure if his mind is with you. The feet are fine, the brain may have wandered off somewhere else.’

  Lady Lucy smiled. She could see it all.

  ‘You might think,’ Lady Rosalind went on, warming to the character assassination of her brother, ‘it would have stopped once we were all married and he didn’t have to go to these balls and things. The disappearing Francis, that is. But no. It went on. It still does. Have you met his great friend Lord Rosebery?’

  Lady Lucy said she had met him at her brother’s house years ago.

  ‘When Rosebery was Foreign Secretary, a couple of years back, he invited Francis to some very important dinner at the Foreign Office. Ambassadors, one or two other Foreign Secretaries, those kind of people. I think there was some big conference on in London. All goes well until the pudding. Francis sits in his seat, makes polite conversation, doesn’t spill anything on the floor. Then one of the waiters brings him a note with the crème brûlée. Rosebery said it was a particularly fine crème brûlée, much better than you get in Paris. Francis reads this note. And then he just disappears. He vanishes through the kitchens. The German Ambassador, Count Von somebody or other, finds himself talking to an empty chair. The wife of the French Foreign Secretary from the Quai d’Orsay is addressing her remarks to a crumpled napkin. There is a gap in the glittering party, as if a tooth has just fallen out. Francis has disappeared into the night. Even Rosebery was quite cross about that.’

  Lady Lucy laughed. She felt Francis must have had a very good reason for disappearing. But she wasn’t sure she should say so.

  There was a tentative knock at the door.

  ‘Who can that be at this hour?’ Lady Rosalind looked peeved. ‘Pembridge never comes back this early.’

  The knocking continued.

  ‘Come in!’ called Lady Rosalind.

  A nervous small boy poked a tousled head round the door. William Pembridge, eight years old, had been chosen by his brothers to lead this deputation to the terrifying world of the downstairs drawing-room.

  ‘William, what are you doing here?’ The voice was kind, but firm.

  ‘It’s the battle, Mama. We don’t know what happens next.’

  ‘Battle? What battle, William? Are you three fighting up there again?’

  ‘No, Mama, we’re not fighting.’ William looked weary, exhausted perhaps by his mission to the lower floors. ‘We don’t know what happens next. At Waterloo. On that big board game. The one Uncle Francis gave us, the one with the soldiers.’

  ‘Here we go again. Here we go again. Francis, Francis.’ Lady Rosalind sighed in exasperation, as if brothers were even more troublesome than sons. ‘Francis, Lady Lucy, very kindly bought the boys this big board thing for Christmas. It’s a huge model of the site of Waterloo with soldiers and toy farms and all sorts of things. The four of them used to play with it happily for hours up there. Four little boys together. Then Francis disappears in the middle of the early stages of the battle and rushes off with Lord Rosebery into the night. Now the boys are upset. What seems to be the trouble, William?’

  ‘We don’t know what happens now. After the farm at Hoggymut. Do you know, Mama?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, William. Of course I don’t. I don’t think your father knows either. You’ll just have to wait until Uncle Francis comes back.’

  William looked very sad. He would have to report failure to his brothers. They were so looking forward to the next part of the battle. ‘But Uncle Francis may not come back for a bit. You said he’d disappeared.’

  ‘You know what your uncle is like as well as I do, William.’

  ‘Maybe I can help.’

  William looked doubtfully at the slim elegant figure of Lady Lucy. Girls didn’t know about battles and important things like that.

  ‘You see, I know quite a lot about Waterloo. My grandfather fought there. He was with the cavalry. He used to tell us about it when we were little. And when we were bigger, come to that.’

  ‘The finest day of my life, the proudest moment of my whole career,’ the old General used to say in his last years, looking into the fire with his nearly blind eyes. ‘What a day! What a charge!’

  ‘Lady Lucy has far better things to do than go upstairs with you and play toy soldiers, William. Back you go upstairs. Off you go now.’

  ‘Please, Mama. Couldn’t Lady Lucy come up for a minute? It would make a big difference.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come up. I’d be delighted to help out, if I can.’ Lady Lucy assured Lady Rosalind that it was no trouble at all. As William opened the door of the drawing-room his two brothers nearly fell in. They had been listening at the keyhole.

  ‘I’m Patrick,’ said the middle brother. ‘I’m the drummer boy who leads the French Army when they charge.’

  ‘And I’m Alexander,’ said the smallest one. ‘I’ve got the bugle. I blow when the Duke of Wellington says so.’

  They looked up at Lady Lucy with hope in their eyes.

  ‘Now then,’ said Lady Lucy, surveying the battlefield on the top floor. ‘The attack on the farm at Hougoumont has failed, I see.’

  She explained about the British cavalry charge down the slope, the horses galloping ever faster, galloping to disaster as the French decimated them in the valley below. She wondered if any of these model horsemen had been based on her grandfather. She explained about the advance of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard up the slope, led by Marshal Ney, spurred on by the relentless beat of the drummer boys. She explained how the British waited for the enemy, lying behind the slope, waiting for a corps that had never been defeated in twenty years of warfare.

  Down below in her drawing-room Lady Rosalind had an image of Francis and Lucy living in a large house. The top floor was a whole series of huge boards. Battles, soldiers, guns, drums were laid out across the attics.

  Malplaquet, she thought. Blenheim. Oudenaard. She stopped.

  She couldn’t remember any more b
attles.

  9

  The Times, Monday, 11th January 1892

  The Influenza

  Illness of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale

  We regret to announce that the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, who is with the Prince and Princess of Wales at Sandringham, is suffering from a severe attack of influenza, accompanied by pneumonia. A telegram last evening from Sandringham states that his Royal Highness’ strength is well maintained. Dr Laking has been at Sandringham since Saturday. All the Duke’s engagements have, of course, for the present, been cancelled.

  ‘You must have seen lots of dead bodies, Lord Powerscourt?’ Lord Henry Lancaster was the man who had found the body of Prince Eddy. He was the younger son of the Duke of Dorset, twenty-five years old, tall and very slim, his fair hair blowing in the stiff North Sea wind. Powerscourt had taken him right away from Sandringham House to walk in the dunes and the sand beyond Hunstanton, a few miles up the coast.

  ‘I mean, I’ve seen a few,’ he went on, as if not wanting to seem a complete innocent in such matters, ‘but you must have seen lots and lots.’

  Powerscourt looked at him with a sudden rush of sympathy. He had thought of this interview as an interrogation in his mind; he had rehearsed in his analytical way the various avenues he would explore, the points where the evasions would most likely come, the lies he might be told. Now he saw that it was not the mind of the historian that was called for, but the empathy of a father. Well, his period of fatherhood had been brief, but he had served a long and often painful apprenticeship as an elder brother.

  ‘Well, I saw quite a few in India in some of those Afghan wars and things, you know. It’s always all right in the heat of battle when the blood is pumping through your veins. If it’s going well, you think you’re immortal, that you can’t be killed that day. It’s only afterwards that men grow sad when they think of their fallen comrades. Like Byron in Childe Harold where he talked of