He was nearing open country now. The Victorian villas had stopped their relentless advance along the river bank and the spire of St Nicholas’ Church was behind him. There were no lights to be seen ahead, only the flickering of the moon across the water as the clouds scudded overhead. As he rounded a bend Prince Eddy could see a large house in the distance. That was his destination.
A mere eighteen months before, the nation had been shocked by the Cleveland Street scandal when a house at No. 19 was exposed as a homosexual brothel, run by a certain Charles Hammond. The scandal deepened when it was revealed that Lord Frederick Ravenscourt, an equerry to the Prince of Wales and to Prince Eddy, had been involved and had fled the country to escape disgrace or to avoid implicating his masters. The homosexual elite of London had reacted promptly. They abandoned Cleveland Street and began a six-month search for more suitable accommodation. They found Brandon House ideal for their purposes.
It sat in its own grounds a mile from Hammersmith Bridge in one direction, and the same distance from Barnes Railway Bridge to the west. To the north there was nothing between it and the grounds of Chiswick House where Eddy had played as a boy. South was the river, and the staff of Brandon House kept two boats permanently moored, oars tucked into the sides, in case a rapid escape was needed to the green fields of Barnes on the other side.
The Club, as it was known, had a very special set of rules. The entry fee was ?500. The Club operated on the principle of mutual blackmail to survive. Membership was by personal recommendation only. And then the Club’s management, half seriously referred to by the members as the Star Chamber, took and checked the names and addresses of two close family relatives of each member – wives, mothers, brothers, sisters. Any breach of the society’s rules, which were remarkably strict, led to immediate disclosure, first to the family and then, if necessary, to the newspapers. Two well-known suicides of the previous decade were attributed by those in the know to the activities of the Star Chamber.
The house was built in the late eighteenth century. It had a kitchen in the basement, three grand reception rooms on the ground floor and a series of bedrooms on the two floors above. All the windows on the first two floors were heavily shuttered. The house rarely opened its doors before nine o’clock in the evening in summer and six o’clock in winter. Thin beams of light were shining through the shutters as Eddy entered the drive.
The staff of the Club were all former sergeant majors or petty officers from the Navy who encouraged proper discipline in the running of the Club’s affairs. Its finances were looked after by a distinguished banker, its legal problems, on the rare occasions it attracted them, by a couple of MPs and a High Court judge. Once a month there was a masked ball. Once a year there was a fancy dress party when historical figures ranging from the Marquis de Sade to Cleopatra graced the White Drawing Room. And as he unbuttoned his gloves and greeted the duty porter the Duke of Clarence and Avondale was told: ‘Good evening, sir. All the normal services are available this evening.’
4
‘Just look at this thing, Johnny, look at it for God’s sake.’
Powerscourt and his friend Lord Johnny Fitzgerald were in a small sitting-room on the top floor of his sister’s house in St James’s Square. It was known in the house as Uncle Francis’ room. The presence of some scattered toys showed that his nephews were regular visitors.
‘I mean, you’ve got to laugh really. They’re so pompous, those Marlborough House people.’ Powerscourt was holding a couple of letters up to the light. ‘Twelve days ago Rosebery and I go to see Private Secretary Suter at Marlborough House. He says that he needs more time to consider some of the proposals I put to him, the ones we discussed at Rokesley, if you recall.’
Lord Johnny nodded, thinking more of the bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet with the fish than the minutiae of detection. He was working his way down a mere bottle of Chablis this evening.
‘Of course, we said. So Suter says that he will let me know in a couple of days. After that I get the first little billet-doux, which I’ve got here somewhere,’ Powerscourt looked around desperately as if it might be hiding behind one of his nephews’ battered Roman legionnaires, ‘and then I got this second one here today.’ Powerscourt waved the missive up and down and began to read.
‘“Marlborough House, Pall Mall et cetera, et cetera. My dear Powerscourt, Please accept my humble apologies for the apparent procrastination in response to your proposals. We have been in receipt of another of those blackmailing messages. It referred to the fact that HRH the Prince of Wales had been in Easton Lodge with Lady Brooke. It commented, again, that the ordinary people of Britain would not countenance his behaviour and the monarchy would be brought down in scandal and disgrace.
‘“Turning to the substance of your proposals, I regret to have to inform you that we require a further period of consultation and clarification before we can give you any more definite reply. It would be helpful if you could furnish us with a written memorandum outlining what we discussed in more detail. This would enable the consultation with colleagues to proceed at a more expeditious pace. I look forward to hearing from you. Your humble servant et cetera, et cetera.”
‘There,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you could win prizes for that lot. The Suter Prize, awarded annually to first year undergraduates for the most pompous piece of prose in England. And why should I write anything down? Do I not have my own little state secrets, my own red boxes, which are not to be passed around after dinner at Marlborough House or left on the billiard table at that Marlborough Club just a dice throw away across the street?’
Fitzgerald laughed, examining the label on his bottle of Chablis very closely. ‘Never mind, Francis, never mind. Do you think that new blackmail message is important? Do you suppose the Beresfords have opened up a little newspaper cutting and pasting operation over there in Eaton Square, that they are the blackmailers?’
‘They could be, of course they could be. But the messages could just as easily have come from the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Foreign Secretary for all I know. Anybody could have sent the things. They could even have come from inside Marlborough House itself.’ Powerscourt was fiddling absent-mindedly with a one-legged member of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, wounded in battle with a nephew.
‘Why don’t I tell you what I have discovered since our evening in Oundle? It’s not very much, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘Very good, Johnny. Tell me all.’
‘Now then,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘you remember we talked about Prince Eddy and whether or not he might be involved in the world of male brothels?’
Powerscourt’s eye was drawn to one of his many paintings of the Battle of Waterloo. It showed a British regiment of the line forming square at Quatre Bras forty-eight hours before the great engagement itself. In the centre of the square stood the massive figure of a Regimental Sergeant Major guarding the flag of the Union and the colours of the regiment. Standing and firing was one half of the men in the square. Kneeling in the front row, bayonets poised to impale any French cavalry who dared approach, was the rest of the detachment, some of them little more than boys, shouting cheerful defiance at the enemy. On the fringes of the picture French cavalry whirled, lances raised, unable to break through. Around the participants there swirled the smoke from the rifles and the distant firings of the great guns.
Here, thought Powerscourt, was the glory of the British Army laying down their lives for King and country. And eighty years later, here we are discussing the male brothels of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales.
Lord Johnny was used to his friend’s temporary absences, lost in thought at the non-striker’s end.
‘There was that place in Cleveland Street a few years ago, you remember. There’s a few more that have sprung up in the same part of London, behind Fitzroy Square and round at the back of King’s Cross station. But the rich people were terrified after Cleveland Street. They have no intention of getting caught ever again. They’ve upped sticks and
bought a very fine house near the river beyond Hammersmith. Gentlemen arrive there at discreet intervals. There’s a giant of a man on duty at the door who might well have been a Regimental Sergeant Major. Nobody seems to arrive until after dark. Now I wasn’t there for long enough to find out if our Eddy is a customer or not. But I bet he is. And it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out.’
‘Did you try to go in?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘That I did not. It would have been rather difficult from where I was. Forty feet up a tree with cramp in my leg.’ Lord Johnny laughed.
‘I too have some intelligence to report.’ Powerscourt’s mood had suddenly turned sombre. ‘The Prince of Wales has massive debts. At the last count he owes Messrs Finch’s amp; Co., not two hundred yards from where we sit, the princely figure of ?200,000.’
‘So while I think I’m a bit of a hero for freezing up a Hammersmith tree, you’ve been going round breaking into banks. I didn’t think you had it in you, Francis.’
‘I don’t,’ Powerscourt grinned. ‘But my second sister, Mary, is married to a man of business. Have you met William Burke, Johnny? He looks perfectly normal, eyes and ears in the usual place, devoted to his children, adores cricket, likes hunting with the South Essex. But he’s one of those people who just understands money, where it comes from, where it’s going, what’s up and what’s down. Our William is a director of some pretty big companies. One of them is Finch’s Bank. God knows how he spirited the figures out of there but he says it’s the biggest overdraft Finch’s have ever seen.’
‘?200,000 is an astronomical sum of money, Francis.’ Vignobles, sun-drenched fields dripping with noble grapes swam before Lord Johnny’s eyes. You could buy yourself entire villages in Bordeaux or Burgundy with that, St Estephe or Margaux, le Montrachet or Pommard.
‘William says that the richest man in England, who is a massive coal owner, or one of those shopping magnates like Maples or Lipton, has well over ?100,000 a year in income, maybe even more. So the Prince owes twice as much as that. And William said the debt had not accumulated overnight. It had grown over a period of time, rather like a tree, getting bigger and bigger every year.’
‘You don’t suppose . . .’ Fitzgerald and Powerscourt always discussed their cases in this way, throwing out the most fantastic ideas, some of which later turned out to be true. ‘You don’t suppose he’s been paying this blackmailer for years and years, do you?’
‘Well, he might have been,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully, ‘or it may just be that he can’t live within his income. I don’t suppose Daisy Brooke is cheap to run. And there’s something else. Rosebery told me that twelve or thirteen years ago Prince Eddy and his younger brother Prince George were sent round the world on a cruise, a cruise that lasted two whole years.’
‘Was there any suggestion of scandal about that, Francis?’
‘Rosebery couldn’t remember. But he’s going to find out for me. That means he’ll probably ask the First Sea Lord himself . . . But I must reply to His Royal Private Secretaryship down the road.’
‘Can you be as pompous as he is, Francis?’ Lord Johnny had nearly finished his Chablis.
‘Let me try, Johnny, just let me try. “Dear Sir William.”’ Powerscourt began writing at the little desk by the window, with the lamps being lit in St James’s Square below. ‘“Thank you for your letter of 21st inst. I regret to have to inform you that it has never been my custom to set out possible avenues of inquiry on paper. Such documents have a habit of ending up in the wrong hands. I believe that such circumspection is also followed in your own establishment. I am, of course, only too happy to come and discuss matters with you or your colleagues at your convenience. I am anxious that the matters under discussion should proceed with all due despatch.” Is that pompous enough, Johnny?’
‘I don’t think that man Suter would know pomposity if it came and stroked his beard. He’s steeped in it, Francis. Positively marinated in pomposity.’
‘Do you know,’ Powerscourt was laughing now, ‘I might just see if I can get a special dispensation to put my memorandum in for the Suter Prize this year.’
Trafalgar Square was jammed. The press of traffic was so great that every single vehicle, cart, carriage and coach had come to a full stop. A furniture remover’s enormous van had toppled over by the edge of the fountain, its contents spilling out on to the road under the astonished gaze of a Landseer lion.
Waiting for Lady Lucy on the portico leading into the National Gallery, Powerscourt wondered if the whole of London would come to a complete halt one day. High on his column, ignoring the chaos below, his plinth festooned with pigeon droppings as the sails of his great ships had once been festooned with round shot holes, Horatio Nelson gazed imperturbably towards Big Ben and Parliament Square and the river that could carry him away.
Then she was beside him. Lady Lucy Hamilton, looking demure in grey but with a slightly raffish hat. Lady Lucy had wondered about the hat, even as she put it on. A little too fast? A trifle ostentatious for a morning rendezvous by the pictures in the National Gallery? It was pink. It was undoubtedly fashionable, and it certainly showed off her blue eyes. Never mind, if I dither about in front of this mirror any longer, thought Lady Lucy, I shall be late.
‘Good morning to you, Lady Lucy.’ Powerscourt wrenched himself happily away from the chaos in the square without. Looking at Lady Lucy, so charming with that smile of welcome, he felt suddenly that it might be replaced by a different chaos within. ‘Shall we go inside? What would you like to look at this morning?’
‘Do you have any favourites you would like to visit, Lord Francis?’
A party of art students rushed past them, sketch books in hand, pencils dropping out of their pockets.
‘Well, I would quite like to look at a couple of Raphaels. Do you like Raphael, Lady Lucy?’
‘Oh yes, I do.’ She smiled broadly at him, wondering yet again about her hat. ‘And I should like to look at some of the Turners.’
A curvaceous St Catherine, the curves of her dress suggesting the curves of her wheel, was followed by an austere Raphael Madonna, flanked by pillars and a couple of obscure saints.
‘Do you think, Lord Francis, that there were conventions for what all these saints actually looked like? I mean, do you think there was some sort of artists’ guidebook, only available to a select few of course, which said that St Jerome always looked sad and St Bartholomew happy? I know St Sebastian always appears with those beastly arrows and the four Evangelists usually have a book to write, but what about the rest?’
‘It is a pretty thought, Lady Lucy. I have to confess that I don’t know the answer.’
Behind them was a great rolling of wheels. A large trolley was conveying a full-length portrait of some seventeenth-century gentleman through the gallery. He was a sombre figure, painted in black with a Bible in his hand and a small dog at his feet. Behind the trolley an anxious curator repeated instructions to the bearers to go more slowly, to mind the bumps in the floor.
‘Where are they taking that Dutch gentleman? Are they throwing him out, do you suppose?’ whispered Lady Lucy as the strange cortege passed within a few feet of them.
‘Maybe the Last Trump has sounded for him,’ said Powerscourt. ‘His maker, or rather his restorer, is probably making the call not for the last judgement, but for his paint to be restored. I fancy he is going to the workshops for cleaning, that sort of thing.’
‘It must be rather upsetting, if you’re a picture,’ said Lady Lucy, gazing at the retreating trolley as it rolled off towards the basement. ‘One minute you’re sitting happily on the wall, minding your own business, and then some horrid men come and take you away.’
‘It’s the same with people, don’t you think?’ replied Powerscourt. ‘One minute you’re sitting happily under the pictures on your wall at home, then Death comes with his trolley, and you’re on your way. Down to the basement with you.’
‘I don’t like that at all,’ said Lady Lucy, laughin
g. ‘Let me take you to some Turners.’ She steered Powerscourt away to a different part of the gallery. There were storms, shipwrecks, deaths at sea, blazing seconds of steam, sunsets, romantic ruins of ravaged Italian landscapes. Lady Lucy felt light-headed, dizzy, as she looked at them all.
‘But look . . .’ She planted Powerscourt on a bench looking out at The Fighting Temeraire. ‘Is this not the finest of them all?’
At the far end of the room a party of students were rolling up their sketches and collecting their equipment. Two curators looked solemnly on, their faces bored or impassive. Outside the bells of St Martin in the Fields called the hour of twelve.
‘They say,’ said Powerscourt, stretching out his legs until they became a hazard for unwary passers-by, ‘that this is one of the most reproduced paintings in England. There are nearly as many Fighting Temeraires hanging on the walls of Britain as there are portraits of Queen Victoria.’
‘I know which one I would rather have,’ said Lady Lucy disloyally, checking that her hat had not got completely out of hand. ‘What do you think it means, Lord Francis?’
‘What did Turner mean? Or what does it mean to the spectator? I’ve always thought that paintings, like people’s faces, can have multiple meanings.’ He stole a quick glance at Lady Lucy’s face, mesmerized by the iridescent sunset, Turner’s golds and coppers gleaming over the Thames. ‘They say it has to do with the coming of the age of steam, don’t they? This is the valediction to sail, condemned to be pulled by that ugly black tug on its final voyage to the breaker’s yard. Farewell romance, hello smoke, farewell sail, hello mighty engines.’
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