He stopped and stared into the fire. The audience outside in the square were very still. They’re mesmerised, thought Powerscourt. He said nothing.
‘Then I bumped into her near the Tottenham Court Road one day. Quite by chance. She’d changed her name. That wasn’t surprising. You wouldn’t want to go on being called Louisa after that. She told me the story in one of those little tea rooms they have round there. Awful cakes. Terrible tea, I remember, terrible tea. I had to promise to give her fifty pounds. Christ, I’d have given her five hundred.’
Powerscourt leaned forward and refilled Gresham’s glass in sympathy for the terrible tea. He spoke not a word.
‘This is what happened. This is Louisa’s story, Louisa Powell, Louisa from Yorkshire. Not my Louisa. Not the beautiful one. Not the girl I married. My Louisa.’
Powerscourt thought he might be going to cry. Greshams don’t cry, he remembered. They didn’t.
‘Eddy had been making advances for days. I don’t think he knew that Louisa was expecting a child. The house we lived in was built on a slope. At the back, opening out from the drawing-room, there was a great long flight of steps leading out into the garden. Louisa was very fond of gardens. She knew a lot about flowers and things like that. They had some sort of a row, Eddy and Louisa. The other Louisa heard shouting. My Louisa was saying No, very loudly, a number of times. The other Louisa came round to see if that would calm things down. Not in front of the servants, that sort of thing.
‘She saw Eddy push my Louisa quite hard. Then he pushed her again. He pushed her down the steps. She thought she heard him shouting after her. My Louisa cracked her head open at the bottom. That was that. My Louisa was dead. The baby was dead. Eddy ran away. Louisa ran away. I’ve been running away too. Ever since. Ever since Eddy killed her. “There’s no bottom, none, in his voluptuousness.” Macbeth. Malcolm in Act Four. I played him at school. I’ve changed the words to suit him better.
“. . . your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up
The cisterns of his lust.”
Powerscourt thought you could add the sons and husbands to Prince Eddy’s list. Droit de seigneur. Eddy had watched his father all those years. Take what you want. Come to bed with the Prince of Wales by Royal Command.
Except Eddy had men in his cistern as well.
He thought of the young Gresham on stage, like he was tonight in Venice’s grandest auditorium. He thought of Lancaster reciting Byron’s lines about the fallen at the age of twelve. Lancaster had fallen too. So many bodies.
The young man stared at Powerscourt. His eyes went wild again. He stared out of the window. Silence filled the square. Silence filled the little room with the dark blue walls, flecked with gold.
‘I’ve been followed, you know, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve been followed ever since I arrived here in Venice. There’s somebody behind that mirror above you, watching everything I do.’
Powerscourt was saved by the return of Giovanni the waiter.
‘May I clear all this away? You have enjoyed the guinea fowl? Good. Now then, gentlemen, in a few moments, some fruit, a little tiramisu? We have a very good lemon tart this evening, a speciality of the cook. And then some coffee? A little grappa with the coffee?’
‘That mirror, Lord Powerscourt.’ The waiter was still closing the doors. ‘The person watching us. I thought I saw a face in there earlier on during the fish course. Implacable eyes, it had – the face, I mean. Like it was Judgement Day.
‘They’re out there too.’ The young man rushed from the table and flung open the windows, frightening a group of pigeons into flight. ‘There’s more of them. They’re all watching me. Don’t tell me I’m imagining things, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve got a recess in my little room at the Hotel Pellegrini. There’s somebody on the far side of that too, watching, listening. I shouted at them before I came out. I don’t think it made any difference at all. They’re still there.’
God in heaven, thought Powerscourt. The poor man’s going crazy. He can’t have been feeling very stable before he got here. Pannone’s waiters are pushing him over the edge.
‘Everybody sees things in Venice, Lord Gresham. I shouldn’t worry about it. Come, let me walk you back to your hotel.’
Gresham was talking non-stop as they left, as if he couldn’t control himself. He talked about the mirror, about the faces that followed him round the streets of Venice, about the gold fleck in the wallpaper, turning into snakes, hissing at him across the room. The cold night air seemed to calm him down as they left. The great square was deserted, the Campanile soaring into the night, the four lions on top of the Basilica of St Mark preparing for a night hunt across the rooftops of the city.
Out of the corner of his eye, Powerscourt saw two of the waiters vanishing up the Mercerie and the Calle dei Fabbri on the opposite side of St Mark’s Square. Gresham shouted at the disappearing bodies.
‘There they are! There they are! I told you!’
He ran at great speed across the stones, the racing footsteps echoing into the walls. Powerscourt found him a few minutes later, panting sadly by the door of a hotel. ‘Bastards got away. Bastards. I’ll get even with them. I will. I bloody well will.’ The two men walked slowly up the narrow street. At the top there was a left turn, then a little bridge, then another long stretch of the Calle dei Fabbri. Three-quarters of the way up a face peered slowly out from an alleyway. When it saw the two people approaching, it disappeared.
Gresham was off again.
‘Come back! Come back!’ he shouted in despair, too late to reach the vanishing figure. He sprinted up the street, peering into the little roads that twisted off towards the Grand Canal.
‘Lord Gresham, come, come. I think you need to rest. Here is the Hotel Pellegrini at last. Why don’t you call on me in the morning, at eleven o’clock at the Danieli. Things will seem better in the morning. We could plan our day together.’
Powerscourt watched Gresham right into his hotel, the night manager solicitous, taking his coat and escorting him to his room.
As he walked back towards the seafront, he remembered that great brick building at Morpeth, set back from the town, filled with the isolation wards of the insane. The Northumberland County Lunatic Asylum, full of people with visions, snakes in the wallpaper, mirrors with eyes. It’s full of Greshams, he reflected sadly, wandering round those long corridors, doctors with strait-jackets waiting to protect them from the demons in their heads.
It’s a race, he said to himself.
A race between my ability to obtain Gresham’s confession. If he has one. And Gresham’s ability to go mad.
23
Very early the next morning Powerscourt took a trip out to sea in the Danieli gondola. ‘I don’t care where we go,’ he said to the boatman, ‘just bring me back here in half an hour. I need to think.’
The gondolier took him out towards the Lido, the great curve of the seafront, Riva degli Schiavoni, named after the Slav traders who had done business there years before, gradually shrinking into a pencil line on a map behind him.
Lord Gresham nearly told me something last night, he thought. At one stage we were just a second or two away. But that was in the evening when the messengers and the wine conspired to send him almost mad. Powerscourt didn’t think there could be too many more of these heavy, confession-laden conversations. If he doesn’t tell me something this morning, I shall just have to ask him a question.
Just one would do.
He finalized his plan of campaign as the gondolier brought him back to the landing stage with a last flourish of his oar. Powerscourt realized that the man had been singing solidly for the past fifteen minutes. He hadn’t heard a thing.
He sent a cable by the hotel telegraph when he returned to the Danieli to William Burke, his brother-in-law in London, asking him to forward the message to Johnny Fitzgerald with all speed. The answer was needed by 10.30.
Various changes were made to Powerscourt’s suite
on the first floor. A large writing desk, adorned with many forms of pen and pencil, was installed in the centre of the room. Three paintings were removed from the walls. Three of Mr Pannone’s finest mirrors replaced them, gold frames resting happily on the red walls. A reproduction Madonna and Child took over from the Canaletto View over the Basin of St Mark. A large silver crucifix now hung beside the window, directly in the eyeline of the person sitting at the writing desk. And above the bed an empty space was filled with a reproduction of Tintoretto’s Christ on the Cross, suffering and despair dripping from the canvas.
I’m not sure I’d like to sleep in this room any more, thought Powerscourt grimly. But I need all the assistance I can find.
Mr Pannone hovered, offering hints on how best to achieve the desired effect. The crucifix had been his idea. He offered to organize a parade of priests, patrolling ceaselessly outside the window, ever visible from above. Powerscourt declined.
‘So, Lord Powerscourt.’ Mr Pannone checked the final arrangements. ‘It is now half-past ten of the clock. He is due here at eleven. As ever, we know when he come, the Lord Gresham. You do not meet him in the entrance down the stairs. I take him up here to meet you.
‘Five minute after he come, I bring you the message. You do not have the message yet, I think. Ah, you do have the message. But there is the blank space left. You wait for the answer from London, it is so?’
Powerscourt handed the hotel manager a piece of paper. He had written the message at eight o’clock that morning.
Lord Johnny Fitzgerald was late. Perhaps he couldn’t find the answer. Perhaps he wasn’t in London at all. Perhaps he was out when the message found him, though Powerscourt felt sure he would still be having his breakfast. He wasn’t an early riser, Lord Johnny.
‘He has left the Pellegrini now! The Lord Gresham! He comes!’ Pannone looked rather nervous, flitting anxiously between the reception and the telegraph room. ‘He is looking around a lot again. He’s walking fast. He should be here in ten minutes.’
Powerscourt took a last glance around his room. A smaller stage this morning, maybe a more intimate piece of theatre to play across these boards.
‘Now he is passing the Rialto!’
Powerscourt made a final adjustment to the pens on the writing table. He checked that you could see the three mirrors from the chair by the coffee table near the window.
‘He is just coming into St Mark’s Square! Do you wish me to hold him up down below while we wait for the message? No?’
Powerscourt looked out of the window. It was a grey day, wind and rain whipping across the seafront, tourists hurrying indoors, the braver ones marching on towards their chosen place of pilgrimage, plenty of customers for the art galleries today.
‘Lord Powerscourt!’ Pannone rushed into the room. ‘It is here!’
He handed over a telegraph form. Lord Johnny’s not sparing the words this morning, thought Powerscourt. But I suppose William Burke is paying the bill.
‘Is there no peace?’ the message read. ‘Just when I have a few days rest your message comes to wake me up. Am I never to be left alone? Name you want is General George Brooke. Not related to the Daisy. Beware the courtesans. Fitzgerald.’
There was just time to add three words to his earlier message. He could hear Gresham coming up the stairs. He slipped it to Pannone as he left.
‘Lord Gresham! How nice to see you again!’
‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt.’
Gresham did not look much better this morning. The untidy tuft on his chin had gone. But his cravat was twisted. He was wearing the same shirt as the night before. The hair was unruly, the eyes rather wild.
‘They’re still following me about, Lord Powerscourt. In broad daylight.’
Gresham’s eyes looked at the three mirrors, at the crucifix, at the Madonna and Child. They went back in terror towards the mirrors. Powerscourt wondered if he saw snakes, or eyes, or the faces of murdered Venetians peering out from those golden frames. Two Doges, he remembered, had been killed just round the corner from the hotel.
‘Come, I have ordered coffee. We can make our plans.’
There was a knock at the door. Pannone entered, bearing a tray of coffee and a message for Powerscourt.
‘This has just arrived for you, Lord Powerscourt. It was delivered by special messenger to the hotel. Thank you, my lord.’ He bowed deeply to the crucifix and departed.
‘Goodness me. Goodness me,’ said Powerscourt, scanning the words he had written three hours before. ‘The British Military Attaché to the Italian Government is in town. He is here with the Ambassador for some conference or other. He wonders if we would like to join him for lunch. Man by the name of Brooke, General George Brooke. Do you know the fellow, Gresham? This Brooke person?’
Gresham had turned pale, very pale. He stared at the mirrors as if General Brooke was hiding on the other side of the glass.
‘I do. I do,’ he said very quietly. ‘He was my first commanding officer. For four years.’ He fell silent. Powerscourt stared at the silver crucifix. ‘I can’t meet him. I just can’t. I’ve got to get away.’
He looked round as if he thought of jumping straight out of the window. Tintoretto’s crucified Christ bled slowly above the bedspread. The mirrors sent Gresham the cryptic messages inside his head. The Madonna and Child looked gravely down, the Virgin aware across the centuries that the child she held in her arms was destined to die on the cross.
‘Lord Powerscourt, please help me. I’ve got to get away. I’ve got to get away from here.’
Powerscourt waited.
‘Will you take a message to England for me? I don’t think I shall ever go back.’
‘I should be happy to take a message for you. Of course, my dear Gresham. Why don’t you write it down? There seems to be lots of paper and things on the desk. I shall just go and sort out this lunch. This General Brooke will have to find some other guests to entertain him.’
Down in the entrance hall, a fresh party of Americans had arrived from Vienna. Pannone was efficient in his reception, bags despatched here, porters summoned, welcomes and good wishes exchanged with the transatlantic visitors. The Danieli cat, Powerscourt noticed, had fallen asleep, wrapped around a potted plant by the reception desk. Outside it was still raining, little streams of moisture running down the hotel’s windowpanes in crooked lines.
I wonder if they have thought of it yet, Powerscourt said to himself, Father Gilbey and the Monsignors and the Cardinals. Confession by letter. You don’t need to speak inside those dark boxes, just leave your message, posted through the grille. You could come back later for the answer.
The Venetians, Powerscourt remembered, looking at a portrait of a sinister-looking Doge on Mr Pannone’s wall, had a slightly different system. They believed in betrayal, not confession, through the post, betrayal through those little post boxes, bocca di leone, mouth of the lion. They were emptied every night. There were several of them in the Doges’ Palace. You denounced your enemies, or your friends, or your husband, or your next-door neighbour. All you had to do was write the letter and put it in the lion’s mouth. Or the lion’s den. The secret police did the rest.
Fifteen minutes, thought Powerscourt. Surely he would have written his message by now. Pannone gave him a reassuring tap on the shoulder as he tiptoed back up the stairs to his room.
It was empty. Gresham had gone.
‘Pannone! Pannone!’
The little man had never heard him shout before.
‘He’s gone! The bird has flown! Gresham has cleared off!’
‘Don’t worry, Lord Powerscourt. The waiters are watching. Very soon, we shall know where he has gone. But see, he has left you the message.’
The envelope was addressed to Lord Francis Powerscourt, The Danieli Hotel. The ink was still wet. Powerscourt took a paper knife and slit it open.
Dear Lord Powerscourt,
I would like you to take a message to my mother when you return to England. Please
tell her I am well and that I shall write to her soon. I should have done it before. I think she gets worried when I am not there.
I am going to Florence. I cannot stay in Venice any more. I feel I am going out of my mind. Those mirrors don’t leave you alone, not for a moment. Then I am going to Perugia. I may go to Arezzo on the way, then on to Rome. In Rome, or on the way to Rome, I shall make my confession.
Then I shall break some more commandments. I am going to shoot myself. You’re not meant to commit suicide in the Catholic Church. But they won’t know about it until it is too late. I am going to join Louisa, my Louisa, on the other side. I hope they’ll let me in.
‘He is back in the Pellegrini now, the Lord Gresham. He is packing his bags. Maybe he go to the railway station. We have many waiters there.’ Pannone rushed through his latest report.
One last thing, Lord Powerscourt. I am sure you know this already. I killed Prince Eddy. You know why. I climbed over the roof and into his room. I think Lancaster heard me battering that photograph of Princess May with the heel of my boot. He may have seen me climbing out of the window, I don’t know.
I don’t regret it. But I know I must make my penance after I have confessed my sins.
I wish you had met Louisa. So beautiful. And I wish I had met your Caroline, lying at the bottom of the sea. My Louisa. So beautiful, my Louisa . . .
I have no more time. Goodbye Lord Powerscourt. Goodbye.
Goodnight Sweet Prince Page 26
