‘Accidents. Always it is the accidents that make our life difficult.’ Ferrante was sipping slowly at his beer in a quiet corner of the hotel. Powerscourt saw that he could watch the entrance without being seen from the street. There were no lemon cakes here, only a few olives.
‘I think, Lord Powerscourt, I think of what was meant to happen, probably meant to happen. The assassins kill the Lord Gresham. They mean to leave the body somewhere. Nobody knows who he is. After a time he becomes another unknown dead person, buried with the other unknowns in the graves with no name over in the camposanto. But no. There is the accident. They are surprised, the killers. They panic. They dump the body. The nuns find it. They make the great fuss about the sign from God. It appears in your Times. You come to Perugia. Now we know who he is. But maybe they wait for you too, the killers. Somehow they know you are going to come. Maybe killers read The Times like everybody else in England. They think the Lord Powerscourt too, he will come to Perugia.
‘I tell you one thing, my friend. They will not kill you here. They will not kill you in Italy. They will have to kill Domenico Ferrante first!’
Powerscourt laughed and clasped him on the shoulder. This is getting to be a habit, he thought, embracing Italians, Pannone and Ferrante both. Two in less than a month.
‘Captain Ferrante! I am most grateful to you. I am sure that the answer to my problem lies in London, not in Perugia. Tomorrow I must go home.’
‘How do we get you home, though, my friend? That is the question. I do not think you should go back the way you came.’ Captain Ferrante was lighting a large cigar. Great clouds of smoke billowed round their little sofa, as though they were at the front of a train. ‘I did not like the look of that man who came in just now,’ he said, creating yet more clouds of smoke. ‘If we are hard to see, so much the better. Tonight, Lord Powerscourt, I keep the watch on this hotel. Very discreetly, you understand. Maybe we can catch one of these watchers and get the truth out of him. Maybe.
‘Tomorrow morning I shall come for you very early. We go to Assisi. I put you on the mail train for Rome. You go with the parcels and the letters, you understand. There are no passengers. From Rome there is the train that goes to Paris, I think. Two of my men will come with you. Just in case.’
Ferrante remembered the words of his friend the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He may be in more danger than he realises. Please send him back safely, however difficult it may be.
‘My friend. My friend.’ Ferrante ordered two more beers and another foul cigar.
‘I remember the case we had here in Italy two years ago, I think. In the end three people were killed. The first was the victim the killer intended to murder all along. But he make the mistakes along the way. Two other people know that he is the murderer. He cannot bear that other people know his secret. They could betray him. They know too much. So he kill them too. Is that how it is with you, Lord Powerscourt?’
Powerscourt thought of Suter and Shepstone in that drawing-room in Marlborough House, poring over their map of Italy, Dawnay waiting for his orders beside them. Probably they had killed Gresham. He knew they had killed Gresham. But he, Powerscourt, knew about the blackmail, he knew about the thirteen years of payments to the boys from HMS Britannia, he knew about the young man dead from syphilis. He knew the reason behind the useless voyage round the world with Lord George Scott and the parson person on HMS Bacchante. He knew about Prince Eddy and that secret homosexual club in Chiswick. He knew who killed Prince Eddy. He knew who killed Prince Eddy’s killer.
He knew too much.
If you were Suter and Shepstone, you wouldn’t want all that knowledge wandering round London or Perugia. You wouldn’t even want it wandering round Northamptonshire. You’d want it killed off for good.
Lord Francis Powerscourt. RIP.
He turned back to Captain Ferrante. ‘I think that is how it is with me. At the beginning of this case, my friend, I think all I have to do is to find a murderer. So, I find him. Then I have to find who killed the murderer. I think I have found them too. Now I have to find a way of stopping them before they kill me. Because I am the man who knows too much.’
That night Powerscourt had a dream. It was night-time in the Cathedral Square. An opera was in progress. The sides of the cathedral and the Palazzo dei Priori were lined with singers. Trumpeters stood sentry on the roof. Flaming torches threw long shadows across the audience in the square below. A girl was singing an aria, leaning on the edge of the fountain, her hand trailing in the water. A man was rushing at great speed through the square. The man, Powerscourt, paused briefly to sing a last duet with the girl. A mob was following him. Three soldiers in splendid uniforms held the mob back. Powerscourt could see that Captain Ferrante, in medieval costume, was leading the defence. Ferrante fell. The mob surged on towards the man by the fountain. The man turned, running desperately down one of the narrow streets, his feet slipping on the slope.
The woman by the fountain sang him a last goodbye.
Powerscourt raced off down the street. The music came to a great crescendo. Two gunshots rang out into the night, filling the silence left by the last chords.
He woke up.
William Leith wouldn’t approve of mail trains as a means of transport, Powerscourt said to himself the following morning. It was hard to see the elegant figure of Lord Rosebery crouching in the dark, surrounded by black sacks of Italian post. Dawn came in slivers through the slits of the carriages, the countryside slowly lit up in stripes outside. There was no glass. The wind whistled in and rushed around the sacks and the three people surrounding them, Powerscourt and his police escort, two very serious men with thin moustaches and long black gloves.
‘They will come with you to Paris,’ Ferrante had said, pressing a small heavy package into Powerscourt’s pocket as they left. ‘The gun. It is loaded. Just in case, my friend. Just in case.’
They embraced again, in the cold of Assisi station, guards patrolling the length of the train, smoke rising from the front.
In Rome the escort changed into uniform, splendid hats giving extra authority to the dark blue of their jackets and the shiny black of their trousers. Only one of them spoke English. Powerscourt and he had strange conversations on the journey, about the man’s family, about his grandfather who had marched with Garibaldi and his grandmother who had never forgiven him for leaving home for such a long time. All these marches, she said, they’re a waste of time, if you ask me. It’ll be just the same if there is a king as it was before, everything costing too much in the shops. Powerscourt told him about Lady Lucy and the fact they were going to get married. He got very excited about that, Giulio, translating rapidly for his friend outside in the corridor, endlessly watching the doors, his hand clutching something heavy in his pocket. Giulio wanted to know if he would ask Queen Victoria to his wedding. Somehow Powerscourt didn’t think so. He didn’t think he’d be inviting any members of the Royal Family.
If he lived long enough to get married.
Always they watched, north from Rome through the mountains, into the plains of Lombardy. They watched as they crossed the Alps in the dark. They watched as the train made its way north along the banks of the Rhone in the sunlight. They watched as they drew near to Paris, eyes never resting, every stranger who passed by their compartment inspected like smugglers’ luggage at the customs point.
They came with him to Calais, even though their orders said to leave him in Paris. ‘You cannot imagine the Capitano Ferrante when he is cross,’ Giulio had said. ‘It is very frightful. He say, see you safe to England. So, Lord Powerscourt, we see you safe to England.’
They watched across the flat expanses of northern France, the church steeples the only relief from the monotony of the plains. They watched him on to the boat. They inspected all the other passengers. They watched as the boat drew out, waving vigorously to Powerscourt as he stood on the deck.
‘Arrivederci! Ciao!’ they shouted from the shore. They watched until the bo
at had gone almost out of sight, ears straining for pistol shots or screams. They watched until there was nothing left to see, except the dark grey waters of the English Channel.
Lady Rosalind herself opened the front door of her house in St James’s Square.
‘Francis, Francis, you are back. At last. Thank God you are safe. Come and sit down.’
‘Why should I not be safe, Rosalind?’ said Powerscourt, relieved that the curtains in the drawing-room were still intact.
‘Francis, it’s Lord Johnny, Lord Johnny Fitzgerald. He’s been shot.’
‘Christ,’ said Powerscourt. Christ in heaven. Great waves of anger rushed through him. ‘When was he shot? Is he all right? Is he dead?’
‘No, he’s not dead. But it’s a miracle he’s still alive. He’s going to pull through. I went to see him yesterday in Rokesley.’
‘He’s in Rokesley?’
‘Yes, he went there two days ago. He said he was tired of waiting for you to come back to London. He said you must have wandered off to look at some bloody frescoes or something. He wanted to go and look at the birds.’ Rosalind spoke very softly now. ‘He’d gone out for a walk towards Fotheringhay. He said he’d seen a pair of kestrels. He heard shooting. He thought it was just an ordinary shooting party. He turned suddenly because he thought he saw one of these birds off to one side. Somebody fired. The bullet went into his chest on the right-hand side. If he hadn’t turned it would have gone right through his heart.’
The bastards, thought Powerscourt. The bastards.
‘A farmer found him and brought him back to the house. The doctors say he can’t be moved. I’m afraid there was a great deal of blood all over your hall and up into your bed. They said it would be the best place for him. He’s very weak. He’s lost a lot of blood. But he’ll get better.
‘The point is this, Francis.’ Rosalind looked at him as if he had come back from another world. ‘He was wearing your big green cape. On his walk. The one you always wear when you are in Rokesley. Lord Johnny told me before he passed out again. He didn’t think they meant to kill him. They meant to kill you.’
‘I must go to him, Rosalind. I must go at once.’
Powerscourt went to the window and pulled the precious curtain back a fraction. He peered outside into the square. He waited until his eyes got used to the dark.
‘Rosalind, can you see anyone out there? Anyone who might be watching the house?’
Together they stared into the wet London night. There was nothing suspicious. A policeman patrolled round the gardens in the middle. A couple of cabs delivered their passengers. A stray dog barked for its lost people.
What was that, down in the corner? Was that a coat, ducking into the shadows?
Powerscourt waited. The shadows refused to give up their secrets. You couldn’t tell. He sat down and wrote some letters. To William McKenzie, requesting his immediate presence at Rokesley. To Lady Lucy, telling her about Fitzgerald’s injury. To Rosebery, asking for an urgent meeting. To William Burke, saying that he wished to ask his advice at the earliest possible opportunity.
Outlines of a plan were forming in Powerscourt’s mind, a plan that might keep him alive, alive to marry Lady Lucy and to welcome the flowers of spring, a plan that required the presence of William Burke, financier, man of business, director of Finch’s amp; Co. in the final scene of the last act.
28
Powerscourt took a cab from Oundle station to his house. Normally he would have walked. Not tonight, he thought, as they rattled past the dormitories and playing fields of Oundle School, not tonight.
He thought of Johnny Fitzgerald lying on the road a couple of miles away, his life saved by a passing kestrel. He thought of him being bumped along the road back to the house, probably unconscious. I’m like one of those animals in the pictures now, he thought, the Powerscourt at Bay, waiting for a sudden explosion, the rattle of a pistol in the dark.
Rokesley Hall is under siege, the enemy disguised as shooting parties, scouring the countryside by daylight, looking for big green capes along the road. Strangers with rifles are lurking in the forest, able to pick a man out at five hundred yards distance. Wait for the knock at the door, opening into the perfect target for a gunman firing across the fields.
Men went from my house to fight at Agincourt and Crecy, he reminded himself. Perhaps we can summon their ghosts to stand sentry on the roof, deadly arrows waiting to defend their master, crossbows to the rescue.
Fitzgerald was asleep when he reached home, a troubled sleep, turning over and over in Powerscourt’s bed.
‘He keeps asking for you,’ said Mrs Warry, his housekeeper, who kept watch over the invalid. ‘He wants to know when you’ll be here.’
‘Well, I’m here now, Mrs Warry. You go and rest. What did the doctor say?’
‘The doctor came this evening, my lord. And he’ll be back again in the morning. He says he’ll be fine but that he has to rest. He gives him some medicine each time he calls. He says Lord Fitzgerald mustn’t have anything alcoholic to drink. Not for a while anyway.’
‘I shouldn’t think that went down too well, Mrs Warry. Not well at all.’
Mrs Warry laughed. ‘Only this evening he was asking for a drop of brandy. Just a drop, he said. For the pain.’
‘If he’s asking for brandy, then he’s definitely getting better. He’s on the mend.’
Powerscourt rose early the following morning. He went to the desk in his little sitting-room looking out over the garden and the churchyard. Early snowdrops were peeping through the grass. Soon, he remembered, the lawns all around the house would be ablaze with daffodils, blowing and bending in the wind. It was his favourite time of year.
He began composing a letter to his sisters in case the assassins found him. He thought of Johnny Fitzgerald, sleeping the sleep of the drugged and wounded upstairs, his shoulder still stained with blood. He thought of Lady Lucy, giving Robert his breakfast no doubt, making sure the homework had been completed. He thought of the message of the dead Lord Lancaster. In time I am sure you will come to understand that I could do no other. Semper Fidelis.
Powerscourt took out his pen and composed the last memorandum on the Strange Death of Prince Eddy. He set out the facts from beginning to end: the blackmail attempt on the Prince of Wales, the fears for the life of Prince Eddy, the terrible murder, the suicide in Sandringham Woods, the quest for motive which led him back to the Britannia and the voyage of the Bacchante all those years before. He set out the facts about Gresham: the death of his wife, Louisa, so beautiful; Gresham’s discovery of the true circumstances of Louisa’s death; Gresham’s expedition across the roofs of Sandringham to kill Prince Eddy.
He set out his own pursuit of Gresham across the streets and canals of Venice, the confession in that red room with the three mirrors, looking out over the waters of the Basin of St Mark’s, his own disclosure of the true nature of Prince Eddy’s death to Suter and Shepstone in Marlborough House. He set out the facts concerning the murder of Gresham in Perugia, the knife made in Sheffield, the corpse dumped in a fountain. He set out the facts concerning the attempted murder of Johnny Fitzgerald. Or himself.
He made two copies. A panting William McKenzie came to see him.
‘I ran most of the way from the station at Oundle,’ the tracker from Scotland explained. ‘I thought things must be pretty serious from what you said in your message.’
Powerscourt had put Most Urgent three times at the end of the cable.
‘Somebody tried to kill Johnny Fitzgerald three days ago. He was walking over towards Rockingham. He’s going to get better. He’s in my bed upstairs. He was wearing my cape at the time. He thinks they were trying to kill me.’
McKenzie peered closely out of the window as if a gunman might be lurking in the long grass or hiding in the trees.
‘I see, my lord. I see. I presume you would like me to keep an eye on things for you. I shall begin straight away. I would be advising Your Lordship not to leave the house just
now. Not until I have taken a look around, you understand.’
McKenzie disappeared out of the window and vanished round the side of the house.
Another visitor arrived in style in a cab at the front door. William Burke had left his counting house and his investments to pay a call at Rokesley Hall.
‘William! How very kind of you to come all this way.’
‘I felt I had no choice,’ said the financier. ‘Your life is in danger. God knows what may happen next. How can I help?’
Burke took off his coat and gloves and sat down beside the fire. His wife’s portrait, painted by Whistler many years before, looked down on him from the walls. She was flanked by her two sisters, looking rather younger than when he had left them.
‘You’ve got them all here,’ he said, nodding to the pictures in their heavy gold frames, ‘all three of them.’
‘I can keep an eye on them here,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully. ‘It’s the only place in England where I can be sure my sisters will do what I tell them.’
‘Must have its advantages, that. Maybe I’d better get another one done of Mary and hang it in my study at home. I could keep an eye on her there.’
‘Now then, William. I think you’d better read this. I wrote it this morning.’
Powerscourt stood by the window and looked over at his church. William Burke, spectacles fastened on his face, read through his memorandum. The organist was practising. Strains of Bach or Byrd carried across the headstones.
‘My God, Francis. This is terrible. Terrible. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to come with me to Marlborough House to see Suter and Shepstone. I need a witness. Rosebery is abroad and the Prime Minister is unwell.’
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