David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

‘Powerscourt,’ the Prime Minister rose from his sofa at last, ‘we’re obliged to you for the loan of your house. I’d be even more grateful if you could manage some champagne. Governor, Mr Burke, could you attend to the financial paperwork and so on with Mr Messel? Soon to be Lord Messel, God help us all. Bring the fellow up here, McDonnell. We must drink a toast! To the salvation of the City!’

Welcome, Mr Messel, thought Powerscourt bitterly, welcome to the higher hypocrisies. Welcome to the insider’s world. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the Jubilee. Welcome to Britain as it is in the year of Our Lord 1897.

‘Could I just have a private word, Prime Minister?’ Powerscourt closed the door on the departing financiers. He told the Prime Minister what had happened. He showed him the letter from the kidnappers, already slightly crumpled from being taken out and read so many times. He wondered what the Prime Minister would do. He knew that men said he was one of the most ruthless political operators of the century, that the corridors and the committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster were littered with the corpses of his political opponents. His first response was not what Powerscourt expected at all.

‘My God, Powerscourt,’ the Prime Minister said, ‘the last hour and a half must have been torture for you, listening to these negotiations and McDonnell running up and down the stairs. It must have been hell. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I didn’t think it was fair,’ said Powerscourt sadly. ‘You can see that if these negotiations had failed, then Harrison’s Bank would have fallen and Lady Lucy could have been back in this house this evening.’

He looked quickly round the room as if his wife might just float in through the window.

‘By God, you must find her, Powerscourt!’ The Prime Minister paused, stroking his beard. The Powerscourt cat had made an unexpected entrance. It curled up happily on the Prime Minister’s lap, purring loudly that it had found a new friend.

‘Let me tell you what I can do,’ he went on, scratching the cat’s chin as he spoke. ‘I can put the resources of the State at your disposal. If you want a regiment or two, you can have them. If you want a couple of destroyers moored off the coast of Brighton you can have them. If you want Brighton sealed off by the authorities, we can do it.’

He paused. A look of distaste passed across his features. This was going to be the bit Powerscourt dreaded. He knew what was coming.

‘Let me also tell you what I cannot do, my friend.’ The cat seemed to sense that its new friend was false. It leapt off the Prime Minister’s lap and settled at Powerscourt’s feet. ‘I have had the honour to serve Her Majesty as her Prime Minister for seven years now. In that time I have done whatever I thought necessary to preserve liberty and the constitution at home and the power and reputation of this country abroad. But one thing I cannot do, however much personal circumstances might work on my heart.’

He looked rather sadly at Powerscourt.

‘I cannot give in to blackmail, wherever it comes from. Government would become impossible. Thanks to your skill, this wicked plot has been uncovered and repulsed. I cannot have that victory thrown away. They say, Lord Powerscourt, that you are the most accomplished investigator in the land. I have no doubt that you will succeed in rescuing Lady Powerscourt from this contemptible gang of sordid blackmailers. Let us know if there is anything you need.’

‘All I need,’ said Powerscourt bitterly, ‘is the one thing I haven’t got. Time. I’ve got less than four days to find her now.’

‘With all my heart I wish you Godspeed,’ said the Prime Minister, rising to extricate himself from a difficult situation. ‘We shall all pray for your success.’

The train was full of families going down to Brighton for the day. Powerscourt noticed that his uniform acted as a magnet for the small children. They stared at him shyly, peering out from behind their hands, hiding round the backs of the adults. He was sharing his compartment with a family of six, accompanied by their parents.

‘Can I have a ride on the donkeys, Papa?’ asked a small girl of about seven.

‘Can we go on the pier, Papa?’ – this from a boy of about ten.

‘Can we go out in a boat?’ said a future sailor, then about eight years old.

‘Yes, yes and yes!’ laughed their father, gathering three of his brood onto his lap. ‘We’re going to have such a good day!’

Powerscourt smiled the complicit smile of parenthood. It was, he realized, the first time he had smiled in the last eighteen hours. He hoped that he too would have a good day, but he rather doubted it. Hold on, Lucy, he said to himself as the train roared through the great tunnel a few miles from Brighton and the sea. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.

He found Johnny Fitzgerald eating a steak pie and drinking lemonade in the hotel by Brighton station.

‘Are you feeling all right, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m fine,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘but I’ve had a terrible morning.’

‘The lemonade, Johnny.’ Powerscourt pressed on. ‘I’ve never seen you drink lemonade before in all my life. And I’ve known you over twenty years.’

‘I tell you what, Francis.’ Fitzgerald had turned serious now. ‘I went for a walk along the sea front late last night when most of the citizens had gone to bed. And I said to myself that I’m not going to take another drop until we have found Lucy. Not another drop.’

A tall man of about forty, wearing cricket whites, approached their table.

‘Forgive me,’ said the cricketer, ‘would you gentlemen be Lord Francis Powerscourt and Lord Johnny Fitzgerald?’

Powerscourt froze. His hand went automatically into the right-hand jacket pocket of his uniform. Surely they could not have been identified so soon? Johnny Fitzgerald’s hand tightened on his lemonade glass as if he would turn it into a weapon. You could cut somebody’s face open with a broken glass of lemonade.

‘We are,’ Powerscourt said quietly. The man in the flannels, he saw, had watched them both very carefully.

‘Chief Inspector Robin Tait of the Sussex Constabulary,’ said the man. He showed them a piece of paper with his credentials. ‘We have been warned about your problems. I have a team of six men at your disposal, sir.’ He bowed slightly to Powerscourt. ‘Most of them, like me, are in cricket clothes to look as unlike policemen as possible. More officers, the entire resources of the Sussex Constabulary, are on standby for your call, if we need them. I understand we are looking for a party of three or four people, one of them a woman. Do you by any chance have a photograph of the lady so we know who we are looking for?’

Powerscourt produced a recent photograph of Lady Lucy and handed it over reluctantly. He always carried it with him. He felt that in some irrational way he was losing Lucy yet again, giving her over to the care of the Brighton police force. Still, at least they wouldn’t kidnap her.

‘Let me sum up our thoughts, Chief Inspector.’ Powerscourt managed another smile in the direction of the white-flannelled Chief Inspector. ‘We know that the party boarded a train from London to Brighton last night, two men and a woman. My first instinct was that they would stay in a hotel as I did not think they would have had the time to make earlier plans which could have involved renting houses or other accornmodation. We have three days to find them. If we do not, Lady Lucy will be killed. If either Johnny Fitzgerald or myself or any police officers in uniform or plain clothes are seen looking for them, they will start to mistreat my wife. I think you should read this.’