‘I suppose they’ll save on the marmalade bills.’ Powerscourt was unable to resist the aside.
‘Francis, you are awful! There is this poor woman, William’s cousin’s wife, deserted at her age. And all you can think of is the marmalade,’ said his eldest sister, never happier than when telling her brother off.
‘But was it Cooper’s Oxford marmalade? Or that stuff in the funny jars, Tiptree I think it’s called. It comes from somewhere in Essex.’
‘Do shut up, Francis!’ All three sisters joined forces to berate him. Witches, thought Powerscourt bitterly, remembering the days when they had ganged up on him as a boy and stolen his catapults. As he looked for assistance to Lady Lucy he thought he saw a sudden conspiratorial smile flash down the table to him. A private smile from Lady Lucy was worth the whole cauldron of his sisters’ wrath.
The last servants had cleared the last plates and the last glasses from the table. The doors were closed.
Pembridge, looking every inch the paterfamilias, coughed meaningfully and tapped his fingers loudly on the table.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, smiling at them one by one round the table, an extra strong smile for the pretty Lady Lucy. Francis has asked us here this evening because he wants to enlist our help. Francis, the floor is yours.’
All evening Powerscourt had wondered about the tone he should adopt in addressing this particular gathering. After his marmalade gaffe he knew he couldn’t be flippant. No jokes, he said to himself. For God’s sake, no jokes. He knew that his two brothers-in-law were likely to take him much more seriously than his sisters, however dearly they loved him. The witches, he remembered, had always thought of his investigations as yet another male hobby, not to be taken seriously.
‘I need your help,’ he began, deciding that a policy of abasement might be the best tactic. Throw yourself on their mercy. ‘I am engaged at present on a most difficult and important investigation. Two days ago I saw the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He has promised me all the assistance at his command. I have in my pocket,’ he paused to draw out one of his letters from No. 10 Downing Street, ‘a number of letters from the Prime Minister. The recipient is left blank for me to fill in as I choose. The letter instructs that every possible assistance is to be given to Lord Francis Powerscourt who is engaged on a mission of the utmost national importance.’
He paused, looking round the table. They had fallen silent and rather serious, Pembridge looking like some hearty squire from the Pembridge past, William Burke the man of affairs, serious about his duty to Queen and country, Rosalind impassive, Mary and Eleanor curious, Lady Lucy suddenly looking rather frightened on Powerscourt’s behalf. Maybe this is all going to be very dangerous, she thought suddenly.
‘Francis, can you tell us anything of what this matter is about? Anything at all?’ Asked Lady Rosalind.
‘I am afraid that I cannot. It would not help matters and it might make life more difficult for everybody involved. Especially me.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug.
‘But you can’t expect us all to help if we don’t know what it’s about.’ Lady Eleanor neatly fulfilled her brother’s prophecy about her curiosity.
‘What is it that you would have us do, Francis?’ asked Lady Mary, practical wife of a practical man.
‘I would prefer it if you wouldn’t all talk at once for a start,’ said Powerscourt, exacting a minor revenge for the marmalade war.
The men laughed, a male combination against women and wives.
‘What I want is very simple. I want information about a number of people. I want information about their families, information about their finances, information about their fortunes, if they have any, or have recently lost them all. Informal information, the kind that comes easily in conversation, and, if I dare to use the word in this company, gossip. I have suddenly become a great fan of gossip. The kind of things, I am told, that ladies have been known to talk about when they are together. Not that there is anything wrong with gossip.’ He thought briefly of the witches conspiring again, spells cast, potions prepared, strange smells rising from the heath.
‘I have here,’ he said, anticipating what he knew was the next question, certainly from his sisters, ‘a list of the people involved. I should say that there is no suspicion at all that any of them has done anything wrong.’ He passed glibly over the lie, not daring to tell the family that one of his names might have murdered the heir presumptive to the throne. ‘No suspicion at all.’
Lord Henry Lancaster, Harry Radclyffe, Charles Peveril, William Brockham, Lord Edward Gresham, the Honourable Frederick Mortimer. Powerscourt recited the names easily. He used to recite them to himself in moments of boredom, shaving, or waiting for the underground railway trains to appear.
‘But, Francis -’ began Rosalind.
‘What exactly is it -’ said Mary Burke.
‘Do you seriously expect us -’ asked Eleanor, her face bright with interest and curiosity.
‘There you go again. You’re all talking at once. Just for a change.’ Powerscourt smiled at his three witches, as if their spells were kindly. ‘One at a time, please.’
‘Francis,’ said his eldest sister Rosalind, taking on the rights of birth, ‘do you actually expect us to go about interrogating people about these young men? As if we were policemen or something?’
‘I do not,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I merely thought that at what you feel to be the appropriate moment you could try to steer the conversation in their direction. You haven’t heard anything about them for a while. Is it true that such and such a one is engaged to be married? Or that so and so has lost the family fortune? I am told,’ he smiled a rueful smile as he continued, ‘that ladies in society do actually have conversations of this sort from time to time.’
‘Did you know that one of those young men is dead, Powerscourt?’ Pembridge interrupted, looking very grave. ‘Lancaster. He was killed in a shooting accident in Norfolk, somewhere near Melton Constable, I believe. Terrible business.’
So that was what Dawnay had done with him, thought Powerscourt. He remembered the Major’s promise that he, Dawnay, would look after the business of the body in the woods, the brains scattered around the Sandringham trees. Forever Faithful. Semper Fidelis.
‘Yes, I did.’ Powerscourt too looked sombre. A hush had fallen in the dining-room, faint reflections of Pembridge’s shirt and Lady Lucy’s hands visible in the polished table. ‘But I am afraid that he too must be included in these conversations. His death, dare I say it, might provide a useful point of introduction.’
‘What do you want us to do with this information? Just tell you the next time we see you?’
‘No, I don’t want you to do that. I want you to write it down.’
This brought howls of pain and anguish from the three sisters.
‘Francis, you can’t be serious.’
‘We’re not going back to school.’
‘This isn’t some essay prize is it, Francis?’
William Burke came to his rescue. ‘If I may say so, that is a most sensible suggestion. People in my line of work are always forgetting exactly what people said to them. The only way to be sure is to write it all down. One of the companies I am attached to has declared it to be company policy now. Writing things down, I mean.’
‘And what should we do when we have written it all down in our little notebooks?’ Lady Eleanor was retreating defiantly.
‘You could give it to me in person. Or you could post it to me here.’
Powerscourt thought the battle was won, the witches retreating, the cauldron off the boil.
‘Tell me, Francis,’ William Burke spoke again. ‘Tell me about this financial information you want. Do you think there might be anything untoward about the situation of these young men?’
‘I would be most interested to know’ – Powerscourt looked round the table once again, daring to drop in the one word which he knew would command universal attention – ‘if any of them were being
blackmailed. Or, for that matter, if they might have been blackmailing anybody else.’
15
Morpeth railway station arrived precisely on time, fulfilling the promises of Lord Rosebery’s train-obsessed butler. The sun was setting as Powerscourt set off towards the Queen’s Hotel in Bridge Street, grey clouds chasing each other across a darkening sky. The following morning, at ten o’clock, he was due to call on Captain John Williams of Station Road, Amble, one-time commander of the naval training ship HMS Britannia. Powerscourt had written his letter most carefully, timing his visit for the early morning when full defences might not yet be in position.
An enormous building, easily the largest in the little market town, was set back from the houses and the streets. The windows were small, narrow and barred all the way up to the top floor. A small mean entrance promised little welcome to the new arrivals. Northumberland County Lunatic Asylum, said the discreet sign on the driveway.
Powerscourt wondered how many were locked up inside. It must be hundreds, he thought to himself, hundreds and hundreds of lunatics, gathered together in this inhospitable northern town. The ones who couldn’t talk. The ones who wouldn’t talk. The ones who couldn’t stop. Silent people, lost to this world, possibly lost to the next, are wandering round this ghastly building.
Powerscourt suddenly remembered the haunting poems of John Clare, locked up in an asylum in his own county town of Northampton all those years ago. The defiant verses:
‘I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self consumer of my woes . . .
And yet I am . . .’
Were there hundreds of John Clares in there, scribbling furious protests about their own sanity, ever doubted by the hostile nurses and the overworked doctors, Julius Caesars, King Charles Is, Jesus Christs on patrol in the darkened corridors? Once you were in there, thought Powerscourt, hastening on his way to the saner quarters of the Queen’s Hotel, you might never get out. It was a sort of earthly limbo for the not yet dead, a prison for those whose most serious crimes had been committed inside their heads.
Captain Williams’ house stood in a little terrace of fishermen’s cottages, looking out over the river and the sea. A mile or so away inland the Percy castle at Alnwick stood proudly on its hill, surveying from its ruined battlements both land and sea.
Captain Williams himself opened the door.
‘I suppose you must be Lord Powerscourt,’ he said doubtfully, as if hoping that some other visitor might have knocked on his door. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
‘Thank you so much,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, looking quickly round the little sitting-room. ‘How very good of you to spare the time to talk to me.’
Captain Williams’ sitting-room had seen better days. The wallpaper was beginning to peel off the walls. There were gaps on the walls, cleaner wallpaper visible, as if pictures had been removed, or sold, or pawned, though Powerscourt doubted if this little hamlet would boast a pawn shop. The fire in the grate sputtered hopelessly, trying in vain to light a room where the gloom seemed to have sunk into the furniture itself.
Captain Williams wasn’t in much better shape himself. He must have been very tall when he was younger, Powerscourt thought, looking at the hunched figure in the chair. His hair had gone. His teeth were going, black and yellow against the sad pink oval of his lips. His spirit seemed to have gone too, his clothes hanging listlessly off him, as if he didn’t look at what he put on when he rose in the mornings. The eyes were red and Captain Williams tried to hide them, staring down at the fading patterns of his carpet rather than looking directly at his visitor. Drink, thought Powerscourt. The man must drink like a fish to have eyes like that. Appropriate in a place like this, fish everywhere. Good God, he can’t have been drinking already, it’s only ten o’clock in the morning. Even Johnny Fitzgerald, always drinking but seldom drunk, didn’t start at this hour of the day.
‘Did you come by train, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I did, I came up yesterday and stayed the night at Morpeth.’
‘They say the trains get faster all the time nowadays.’ Captain Williams sounded as if he were playing for time, small talk postponing whatever interrogation might follow.
‘I’ve brought you this.’ Powerscourt took out one of his letters from Downing Street, now enclosed in a plain white envelope belonging to the Queen’s Hotel, Morpeth, and addressed in a clear hand.
‘You said you had a letter.’ Williams fumbled for his spectacles, perusing the document with a look of growing terror on his face. ‘Your business must be pretty important then, Lord Powerscourt.’ Captain Williams wondered if he could spirit himself away somewhere for a bracing dose of brandy.
Powerscourt looked at him sharply, the hands trembling as he handed back the letter. Thank heavens I came in the morning, he said to himself. God only knows what he’s like in the afternoons.
‘My wife has gone out for the day.’ Captain Williams looked desolate, as if his wife could have driven off what might follow.
‘What I want to know is quite simple, Captain Williams.’ Powerscourt tried to sound as gentle as he could. ‘What exactly happened at the end of your time in charge of HMS Britannia all those years ago? When you had the two young Princes in your charge.’
‘I knew you would come.’ Captain Williams wrapped his jacket ever closer round his thin frame. ‘Ever since, I have always known that somebody like you would come. Asking questions. Raking up the past. Dredging up things that happened long ago. Why can’t it be left in peace? Why can’t I be left alone? It wasn’t my fault, I tell you, it wasn’t my fault.’
Powerscourt felt sorry for him for a moment, a lost old man, waiting thirteen years for the knock on the door, the letter through the post. He, Powerscourt, was the exterminating angel, come to destroy what was left of an old man’s peace of mind. He thought of Prince Eddy and the rictus of death on his face, blood lying in pools across the floor, he thought of Lord Henry Lancaster lying dead in the forest. Semper Fidelis, he said to himself. Semper Fidelis.
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ said Powerscourt suddenly, trying to temper perseverance with mercy. ‘You might find it easier outside. You can tell the waves. You can tell the seagulls. You can tell the sand-dunes. I shall just be listening in.’
‘A walk?’ Captain Williams looked at him as if he were mad. Walks, however good they might be for clearing the mind of drink, didn’t appear to feature in the old man’s morning routine.
‘A walk by the sea.’ Powerscourt pressed his case. ‘At least it’s not pouring with rain.’
Two figures set out from the little cottage, the old man hunched against the bitter wind, a threadbare coat small protection against the elements, Powerscourt wrapped in his warmest cape, buttoned right up to his throat. They crossed the river and began to trudge through the sand.
One hundred yards out to sea, sometimes two hundred, great breakers began to form, crests of foam flying proudly behind them as they crashed in towards the beach. The spray was like fine rain, drifting in towards the sand-dunes and the distant castle. A lone seagull tried an unequal contest with the wind, now stationary, now blown backwards with the force of the blast. The noise thundered along the solitary beach, waves driven forward on their final journey as far as the eye could see.
‘Begin wherever you like,’ Powerscourt shouted, trying not to sound too hostile.
‘That’s very kind of you. Very kind of you indeed.’ The voice was thin and bitter. Powerscourt strained to hear it through the gale, and huddled ever closer to his companion.
There was a pause, their feet scrunching though the sand. Powerscourt waited. Far out to sea, two ships were pitching violently in the swell. More seagulls tested their wingpower against the wind. Powerscourt waited.
‘I suppose it all began when those young officers took Prince Eddy off to Portsmouth.’
Captain Williams’ words flew past Pow
erscourt. He strained to catch them, like a slip fielder diving after a thick outside edge.
‘They were meant to bring him back that night. That had all been agreed. I remember it so clearly.’ Captain Williams turned to Powerscourt, red eyes weeping with the weather.
‘But they didn’t. They disobeyed orders.’
A pause followed as the Captain’s mind was forced back thirteen years to the events preceding his disgrace.
‘They took him to some seamen’s brothel. They said they wanted to make a man of him. They said it was time for a boy who would be a king one day to become a man. And after a couple of hours, they went back and took him to another one.’
‘Another brothel?’ Powerscourt tried to shout the words gently.
‘I’m afraid so. There may even have been a third one before the night was out. And then he was brought home. I threw the book at him for disobeying orders, not coming home when he was told. Do you know what he did, Prince Eddy? He just smiled at me, that rather silly smile of his.’
A smile he took with him to the grave, thought Powerscourt, remembering Lancaster’s description of the corpse.
‘What we didn’t know, of course, was what went on with the older boys in the dormitories last thing at night.’
Oh my God, thought Powerscourt. Oh my God. He remembered Lady Eleanor’s husband’s accounts of some of the activities that went on in places like the Britannia. The sea was now depositing great sausages of foam on the shore in front of them. As the wind drove them along the beach, they gradually evaporated, the foam blown away across the dunes.
‘There was a group of five of them,’ Williams went on, hurrying now, as if he was thinking of a large drink when his ordeal was over.
Five of them, thought Powerscourt bitterly. Just like those bloody equerries.
‘Illicit sexual relations, that’s what the admiral who conducted the inquiry called it. Five of them having illicit sexual relations with each other. They all got ill. Very ill.’
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