David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

Powerscourt took out the kidnap note and handed it to Tait. He swore softly as he read it.

‘There’s a problem with these hotels, Francis.’ Fitzgerald had finished his steak pie. ‘I found a porter who had seen them arrive at Brighton station. He said Lucy looked unwell. But I haven’t been able to find anybody who drove them to wherever they were going. And these hotels aren’t very co-operative at all. I’ve tried six of them so far. But they have people checking in and out all the time. They don’t remember anybody very well.’

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Chief Inspector, handing him back the message, ‘I have the manpower to check out all these hotels by the end of the day. I should be able to do so with the men under my command, and these are all hand-picked for tact and discretion, and, if you will allow me to say so, for not looking at all like police officers. Now we have a description of the lady, it should be easier. I think you gentlemen should keep out of sight for the hours of daylight at least.’

‘It breaks my heart, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt sadly, ‘that I should not be able to take part in this search. But if I were spotted, and anything were to happen to Lucy, I could never forgive myself. And I think that applies to you too, Johnny.’

The Chief Inspector rose to his feet. ‘I propose to begin the search immediately. There is a quiet hotel not two minutes from here called the Prince Regent. We have already checked that the people we are looking for are not there. Could I suggest that we meet there in a few hours’ time. If we have any luck before then I shall let you know.’

Lady Lucy knew they were drugging her. She thought they put something in the tea. She felt very dazed all the time. She thought at first that she was in a private house until something impersonal about the furniture and the pictures suggested she was in a hotel. The curtains were kept half drawn. Her captors spoke very little, sometimes in German and sometimes in English. One was always on duty, watching by the windows, scanning the passers-by, inspecting the pavements. Lady Lucy thought she could smell the sea. As she drifted in and out of sleep she wondered where Francis was. She saw him pacing up and down the drawing room in Markham Square, she saw him just a few days ago at the cricket match, marching back to the pavilion after his long spell at the crease, his bat tucked under his arm.

Francis will find me, she whispered to herself. Francis will find me.

From the window of his room in the Prince Regent, Powerscourt could just see the sea. Johnny Fitzgerald had gone to buy himself some really disreputable clothes.

‘My own mother won’t recognize me when I’ve finished with myself,’ he assured his friend.

Over to the right the West Pier was thronged with visitors. Sailing boats were taking parties of visitors for trips around the coast. Overhead the seagulls made their patterns and their arabesques against a blue sky flecked with small white clouds. Powerscourt had always thought Brighton was a rather raffish place, a magnet for confidence tricksters and hucksters of every description. He thought of Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice for whom a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly happiness, rows and rows of tents stretching forth filled with young and handsome officers and Lydia herself tenderly flirting with at least six of them at once. But Powerscourt was not thinking of young and handsome officers. He was racking his brains for memories of a siege or a sudden assault where the defenders held captives who had to be taken alive or the war was lost. For he knew that his problems were by no means over if and when they found Lady Lucy. How did they get her out? They could storm the building with the Prime Minister’s regiments or the massed ranks of the Sussex Constabulary but one of the ruffians could cut Lady Lucy’s throat before they surrendered. Powerscourt and his forces could try to climb in through the windows, if the windows were big enough, but there would still be time for Lady Lucy to suffer. Shortly before six o’clock he thought he had found the answer. He tried to find flaws in his scheme. He was sure it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could do. He hastened to the telegraph office and sent two messages to London, asking for a special kind of reinforcements.

At seven o’clock the Chief Inspector returned. ‘No luck so far, my lord,’ he said to Powerscourt, who was sprawled across one of the Prince Regent’s better sofas. ‘We have worked our way along the sea front and have nearly reached the end. Then we are going to begin working back into the town.’

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ said Powerscourt. Suddenly he had an idea. ‘Can you get me a boat, Inspector? I would like to take a sail along the sea front and look at the hotels.’

‘A boat? Of course we can get you a boat. We make occasional use of one or two of the fishermen’s vessels. But I would not recommend you boarding one right on the main sea front, there are too many people about. If you walk out past Kemptown towards Rottingdean over there,’ Tait pointed out Powerscourt’s route from the hotel window, ‘we shall pick you up there. I’ll get you a fisherman’s jersey, my lord, you’ll look less conspicuous.’

One hour later Powerscourt was sitting beside Tait as they made their way out into the English Channel.

‘How far out do you want to go, sir?’ asked the fisherman, a bronzed young man with tattoos down his arms.

‘Hold on a minute and I’ll tell you,’ said Powerscourt, pulling a pair of binoculars from his pocket. ‘I want to be so far out that I can see everything but nobody on shore could see me.’ He fiddled with the lenses. ‘About one hundred yards further and that should be fine.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the fisherman. Powerscourt noticed that many of the tattoos showed warships of Her Majesty’s Navy.

What an extraordinary sight it was, Powerscourt thought, as the boat made its way slowly along the Brighton shore. There were elegant Regency squares, some rotting now with the wind and the spray, others gleaming happily in the light. There were military rows like Brunswick Terrace over towards Hove where the houses were lined up in orderly precision, standing shoulder to shoulder like privates on parade. There were other grander buildings, hotels in the Second Empire style, that looked like architectural equivalents of Lydia Bennet, dressed up in frills and furbelows to the height of fashion to capture the hearts of the military buildings nearby. And in the centre of it all, set back from the sea, one of Europe’s most improbable constructions, the Brighton Pavilion with its domes and echoes of the Orient improbably transplanted into the mundane earth of Sussex.

But it was the hotel windows that interested Powerscourt most. He locked his glasses on to three of the larger hotels in turn. He made his way along the frontage, down to the ground, floor by elegant floor. One of the hotels, he noticed, had the curtains almost completely drawn on the very top floor.

‘Suppose you were the villains,’ he said to Tait. ‘You would suspect that an attempt might be made to rush your position with soldiers or policemen. So you would want to be able to see what was coming towards your hotel along the sea front. If I’m right you wouldn’t want to risk one of those hotels in the town itself because you couldn’t see what was coming as easily. The streets are often very narrow. But put yourself in one of those top floors on the front, preferably one with a view both ways, and you would be well warned.’

He handed the glasses to the policeman.

‘Four hotels have rooms that fit your description,’ Tait said. ‘But we have checked them all. And we have drawn a blank in every one. Nobody remembers three people, one of them a woman, checking in last night.’