‘Think of them, Francis. All her life Victoria has been plagued by the memory of her wicked uncles, Uncle Clarence – note the name, my friend – with his ten illegitimate children, that awful old rake Uncle Cumberland. Then there was Uncle King, Uncle George IV with his mistresses and his debauchery in that Brighton Pavilion and everywhere else. And here is her grandson, Grandson Clarence, who seems to combine the vices of all of them with a few extra ones of his own.
‘So what do you do? You harden your heart, you put out the word, very quietly, that the family would be better off without him, and you climb happily into deep mourning when you hear of his passing.’
‘You should have been a barrister, Johnny. Case for the Prosecution against Her Majesty completed. How about the case against the father?’
Lord Johnny poured the last of the first bottle into his glass and held it up to the light. ‘The Prince of Wales? I think that’s easier still. Remember the blackmail that started all this business off? Let’s suppose the blackmailer isn’t putting the squeeze on because of something the Prince of Wales has done, but for something his son has done. The best way to get rid of the blackmailer is to get rid of Eddy – then there’s nothing left for him to be blackmailed about. Didn’t you tell me that the father wanted him out of the country for two years on some cultural and political tour of Europe, a sort of nineteenth-century Rake’s Progress? When he couldn’t get his way that way, then he just got rid of him. Now then, your turn. What do you say to the mother, Francis?’
‘I will not hear a word said against Princess Alexandra,’ said Powerscourt primly.’ ‘I regard her as above suspicion.’
‘Are you falling a little bit in love with the Sea King’s daughter from over the sea, Francis?’
‘I think everybody falls a little bit in love with her, Johnny. She’s just that sort of person.’
‘I see.’ Lord Johnny looked very grave. ‘And shall I have to inform Lady Lucy of this sad development? I am sure it would break her heart, Francis. And she speaks so highly of you all over London town.’
Powerscourt made as if to throw a cushion at his friend. ‘Leave Lady Lucy out of it. That is a private matter.’ He blushed a deep red.
‘What can you say of the brother, Johnny, – I give the sisters exemption from suspicion, along with their mother.’
‘The brother, the brother . . .’ Fitzgerald looked very thoughtful, as if he thought a bet on the brother might be a sound investment. ‘He’s a very solid sort of chap, isn’t he. Reliable, a bit dull, our George, not very much there in the brains department. I seem to remember you telling me he doesn’t like change. At his age, for God’s sake. What is he, twenty-five? But you would have to say one thing for that sort of character. He’s absolutely perfectly fitted for the throne. Stupid, boring, not likely to cause anybody any trouble, he’s an ideal king, the perfect monarch. So, either the conspirators, whoever they might be, know that they have the perfect substitute for the appalling Clarence. Or the substitute himself is the plot, and nips next door to slit his brother’s throat. That’s easy.’
‘I’m sure you could make out a case for almost anybody in Norfolk wielding the knife, Johnny, in this sort of form. Let me try this out on you.’
Powerscourt walked to the window and drew back the curtains. The night was full of stars. Powerscourt suddenly remembered he hadn’t seen a single star all the time he was at Sandringham, only clouds and the ever-falling snow.
He looked at the tombstones in his graveyard, watching through another night. He had remembered most of the names and the inscriptions by now, after ten years in the house: Albert George Mason, Mary Mason, his wife, William their son, departed this life aged five years, Charlotte their daughter, gone to her Father in heaven after seven. And mine eyes shall see God. Gone but not forgotten. Suffer the little children to come unto me. For Thine is the Kingdom.
A young fox was perched on top of one of the gravestones, as alert as a guardsman on duty. In the distance, on one of his tenant’s barns, an owl hooted into the night.
‘I think – no, I am sure,’ Powerscourt spoke initially to the gravestones, to those who had departed long before Prince Eddy, ‘that the key to the whole mystery lies with the equerries. We know that there were no outsiders, according to William McKenzie. We know, thanks to you, Johnny, that there were no Russians, no murderous Russians I mean. I have to check with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police about the Irishmen and the telegraph poles, but I suspect their messages were peaceful. I do not believe any of the servants did it. Not many of them sleep in the house, and those that do are a very long way indeed from Eddy’s bedroom.
‘But this is the devil of it all, Johnny. Any one of your plausible theories sits happily with the equerries. The Government could have asked one of them to do it, as you suggested. They could have been agents of Queen Victoria, or the Prince of Wales, or even the brother Prince George. Or they could have been the loyal servants of the Crown, anxious to rid it of a future problem, as we said. Or they could have been mixed up with the blackmailing business, in one way or another.
‘Good God,’ suddenly Powerscourt turned back from the window and his contemplation of the fox. ‘You don’t suppose that Eddy was the blackmailer, do you, Johnny? Blackmailing his father in the first place, then turning to one of these equerries as well for yet more money? A second helping, or maybe even a third?’
‘Eddy the blackmailer? God in heaven, that would make things complicated, wouldn’t it? It would certainly explain why nobody wanted to speak to you. They were all too frightened to confess that they have been fingered too. Perhaps he was blackmailing the whole bloody family.’
Powerscourt felt lost. Just when he thought he had advanced his inquiry a little way, it slipped back and fell away. Then he recovered.
‘Johnny – have you left any wine in that second bottle? Ah, thank you – even if Eddy is the blackmailer, I think the way forward is clear. And I think it divides into two halves. The first is concerned with the equerries: Lord Henry Lancaster, dead or alive. Harry Radclyffe. Charles Peveril. William Brockham. Lord Edward Gresham. The Honourable Frederick Mortimer.’
‘Ten to one on all of them in the Prince Eddy Memorial Stakes.’ Fitzgerald the bookmaker was busy with his odds. ‘Fifteen to one Queen Victoria. Twenty to one Prince of Wales. Twenty-five to one Prince George. Thirty to one the Government. Fifty to one The Field. Roll up! Roll up!’
‘We must investigate the equerries’ lives from the cradle to the present day.’ Powerscourt declined to take a wager yet. ‘We need to find out about every action, every friend, every love affair with man or woman. I feel that my sisters and your relations will prove invaluable allies here. You see, it could be that there were very personal reasons behind Eddy’s death. Look at the way he was killed, the picture of his fiancee smashed into small pieces all over the floor. The murderer might have had his own very private motives for the killing. Revenge maybe. Or it could be that the murderer wanted people to think that. The fiancee’s picture could be a distraction, a red herring.’
‘And the second thing, Francis?’ Lord Johnny reckoned that there was at least one glass left in the bottom of the second bottle.
‘The second has to do with scandal. Eddy’s scandal. He brought some terrible scandal with him to that house last weekend. There may be one or two or even three scandals. I suspect they go back ten or twelve years. That is what the Prince of Wales knows and dare not speak about. That is what Princess Alexandra knows about or fears. And Suter knows that they know something that he doesn’t. He is left to guess at what it might be. There are lies and secrets falling over each other to obscure the truth. You see, there was one very strange thing about the way they reacted to Prince Eddy’s death. It only struck me yesterday when I was walking back from Fotheringhay in the dusk.’
‘What was that, for God’s sake?’ said Fitzgerald, fascinated by the prospect of new information.
‘Just this.’ Powerscourt had resum
ed his place by the window looking over his graveyard. The fox was still on parade. ‘Everybody was very sad. Everybody was very upset. But I don’t think anybody was surprised. It was as if they had been expecting it.’
That night Powerscourt had another dream. He was in a large children’s playroom on the top floor of Sandringham House. There was only one child in the room. It was Prince Eddy. He was sitting on the floor. He was surrounded by copies of The Times and the Illustrated London News. Prince Eddy was cutting out letters one by one with scissors and a large knife and pasting them on to a page. He smiled happily as he worked.
Letters of blackmail. Blackmail letters. Only when he looked very carefully could Powerscourt see that the knife was dripping with blood.
. . . I think at this stage that both the normal and the unusual will be of interest. Everyday gossip below stairs as well as the rumours of life above that circulate in all great houses, any suspicion of a secret, any whiff of scandal. In short, my dear James, in this, as in all the inquiries we have undertaken together, please keep your eyes and ears open at all times. I know you will, and I look forward to reading your reports or to hearing them in person if you feel that would be more appropriate.
The old Indian rules apply. Please destroy all correspondence.
Powerscourt
The letter’s author was writing at a great hurry in the upstairs drawing-room of his sister’s house in St James’s Square.
Sudden changes had been occurring in the domestic staff at Sandringham and St James’s. Wilfrid Theakston, senior footman for many years at Marlborough House and Sandringham, had been taken ill unexpectedly and was granted indefinite leave of absence. The Prince of Wales’ household were fortunate to find a speedy replacement in one James Phillips, senior footman to Lady Pembridge, who happened to be sister-in -law to Lord Francis Powerscourt. Phillips was Powerscourt’s man; they had served together in India and in all but one of his investigations since.
Even this change had met with the normal reluctance from Suter and Shepstone. ‘Dammit, man, this is like taking a spy into our own house!’ Shepstone had protested.
For once Powerscourt had lost patience.
‘You would appear to have had a murderer in your house for some days. For all we know he may still be there. I can’t see that a pair of eyes and ears below stairs is a matter of much consequence in these circumstances.’
Suter turned red. Shepstone muttered something into his beard. But they had agreed.
Powerscourt had been writing a lot of letters. He wrote to Lord Rosebery asking for names and addresses out of the Government machine. He wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, requesting an interview on a matter of the utmost delicacy. He wrote to the Russian Ambassador. He wrote to the London end of the Irish Office in Dublin, asking for an interview with the senior man engaged in countering terrorism and subversion in that unhappy island. He wrote to Sir William Suter, asking when the equerries at Sandringham at the time of the murder had started their tours of duty. And he wrote to Lady Lucy, accepting an invitation to tea in her little house in Chelsea.
Rosebery was looking very cheerful, seated in the small library at the back of the first floor of the Athenaeum in Pall Mall. The room had no discernible wallpaper, only books. Two dark brown globes sat on either side of the fireplace. A Chinese chess set lay on a table by the window, the game unfinished, White in the ascendant. Powerscourt saw that the Black forces had been reduced to a solitary rook, a couple of pawns and a beleaguered king – all the rest were prisoners, neatly locked up according to importance behind the White lines.
‘I’ve just been spending a great deal of money, Powerscourt,’ said Rosebery happily.
Powerscourt wondered how large a sum would constitute a great deal of money in Rosebery’s book.
‘About ?15,000, since I can see you thinking about it!’ Rosebery laughed. ‘It is a rare library of ancient volumes, many from the Renaissance, that came unexpectedly on to the market in Rome. But come. To more serious business. I have a lot of information for you. First,’ Rosebery delved into a folder in front of him, ‘here are six of these letters. They’re like a blank cheque – you fill in the name and address as you think fit – requesting the recipient to provide all the help and assistance in their power to Lord Francis Powerscourt in the conduct of his current investigation, which is of the highest national importance. They’re signed by the Prime Minister in person. I thought that might be going it a bit strong myself, until Salisbury reminded me that somebody had just murdered the heir presumptive to the throne.’
Powerscourt placed the letters solemnly in his pocketbook.
‘The man you want to see about the Britannia, that naval training ship Prince Eddy and Prince George attended all those years ago, is the Admiralty archivist. He’s called Simkins, I think, and he lives in some obscure place in the Admiralty just down the road. He knows you’re coming. The man you want to see about the Irish up their telegraph poles is called Knox. He’ll be in London tomorrow and will see you in the afternoon – I just thought I would give your own request a bit of a nudge there.’
Rosebery smiled the patronising smile of the man on the inside, helping out a new arrival in the Whitehall jungle.
‘Now, if that is all there is for now, my dear Powerscourt, I had better hasten to my bankers. They will not be best pleased if they discover unexpectedly that I have just written a cheque for ?15,000.’
13
The waiting area at the Admiralty was the largest Powerscourt had ever seen, enough to hold an entire ship’s company. The pictures on the walls, reaching ever higher towards the plastered ceiling, were all of great warships under sail. Not a single vessel was powered by steam, after a mere thirty years still too modern for the First Sea Lord and his lieutenants.
Perhaps, thought Powerscourt, its size was to accommodate all those who waited here in the Navy’s great days a hundred years before during the Napoleonic Wars; gun manufacturers anxious to show off their latest cannon, chartmakers with fresh maps of unknown lands, mad inventors with startling new versions of compasses and sextants, orolobes and longitudinal clocks. Here desperate captains with no commands, living on half pay, their uniforms patched by loyal wives and mistresses, loitered in hope of preferment. Here Howe and St Vincent, Collingwood and Nelson had come for their sealed instructions. Here they had planned the twenty-year-long blockade of Napoleon’s France. Here they had planned Nelson’s funeral, his body brought to the heart of London on its last journey up the River Thames.
‘Lord Powerscourt, sir? This way, if you please.’
A solemn porter broke Powerscourt’s reverie and led him through the labyrinth to his destination. Powerscourt doubted if he could have found his way out unaided. They climbed staircases with yet more paintings of the age of sail. They went past entire departments labelled Navigation, Gunnery, Engines. At last, at the end of a dark corridor lit by a single skylight, they found the door called Archive.
‘Come in, come in. Who are you?’
Everything about the naval archivist was thin. His frame was thin and looked very old, his nose was thin, his long bony fingers were thin. His voice was a thin whine. Even his room was long and thin, like a naval galley; it stretched back for nearly a hundred feet in the gloomy light, files rising towards the roof like midshipmen climbing the top-gallants.
‘Mr Simkins, how kind of you to see me. My name is Powerscourt. I believe you are expecting me.’
‘Are you writing a book? Most of the people who come here are writing books.’ Simkins peered at Powerscourt over his thin spectacles.
‘No, I am not writing a book.’
‘Biography then. You must be one of these biographers.’
‘I’m afraid I am neither of those. I believe you have had a letter about my visit.’
‘An article for one of the naval societies perhaps? The history of a particular ship? I don’t recall an HMS Powerscourt ever gracing the waves, but I could be wrong.’
Powerscourt suspected that Simkins was deaf. The dust had gathered in layers round the edges of his great desk, almost invisible between papers and files from long ago.
‘Can’t believe they’ve sent somebody to see me who isn’t a historian. First time in thirty years apart from some rum manufacturer from the West Indies who got sent up here by mistake. Letter, did you say? Letter from where? Letter from whom?’
‘It’s a letter from the Prime Minister’s office.’
‘Who is the Prime Minister now? I seem to have forgotten.’
Powerscourt wondered if Simkins ever left this office. Maybe he sleeps here as well, he thought, guarding the secrets of the naval past with his bony frame and his peaceful spectacles.
‘It’s Lord Salisbury, Mr Simkins. Lord Salisbury.’
‘I heard you the first time. There’s no need to shout.’ Like many deaf people Simkins had sudden, unexpected bursts of perfect hearing, like the calm in the eye of the storm. ‘Salisbury, you say. Not a naval man, I think. Is he one of those Hatfield Salisburys? Cecils, all that sort of thing?’
It seemed to be easier for the archivist to place the Prime Minister in the sixteenth century rather than the nineteenth.
‘The same,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Here we are. Why didn’t you say what you were about at the beginning? Now then. I see what you are after.’ Simkins peered over his spectacles once again. ‘You are a historian after all. You want to know the names of the officers commanding HMS Britannia, naval training ship, in 1878, 1879, and the captain and officers of the vessel Bacchante which took the two young Princes round the world. Damned strange name for a ship, the Bacchante, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt? Weren’t the original Bacchantes lusty maidens with very few clothes on who danced about in the Greek islands getting drunk and worse?’
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