David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

The Chief Constable knew a remarkable collection of sea-shanties. Surprisingly the policemen knew all the words. Joe Hardy had wandered round the undamaged sections of the hotel, delighted at how well his plans had worked. ‘Wonderful!’ he had said to all and sundry after a couple of glasses. ‘Wonderful! Best night of my life!’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Schomberg McDonnell, looking carefully at Powerscourt, ‘that when I came down from London last night I had three letters from the Prime Minister in my possession. One was for our friend Mr Hudson. One was for the Chief Constable.’ He paused to demolish part of a kipper. ‘The third one is for you.’

Powerscourt opened the envelope. He felt sick.

‘My dear Lord Powerscourt,’ he read, ‘May I add my congratulations to those you must have already received on the successful liberation of Lady Powerscourt. I always knew you would succeed.

‘But I fear your country has more to ask of you yet. We have a major security crisis over the Queen’s Jubilee Parade. I am not au fait with all the details myself but Mr Dominic Knox of the Irish Office tells me that some German rifles have gone missing. Mr Knox tells me that you know of these rifles, that you were indeed instrumental in tracking them to their place of concealment. Knox thought he had intercepted the people he believed were bringing this weaponry to London. Now he thinks the messengers were merely decoys, designed to throw him off the scent. He believes that one or more of these rifles may be in London where an unknown assassin may be waiting to kill Her Majesty on Jubilee Day itself.

‘I would like you to return to London immediately and assist Mr Knox in his endeavours.’

Powerscourt handed the letter to Lady Lucy. He remembered that terrible night in the Wicklow Mountains where he had feigned death to put his enemies off the scent, two coffins filled with German rifles buried in the grave of Thomas Carew, two more interred in a windswept cemetery high up in the hills where Martha O’Driscoll shared her eternal rest with Mausers or Schneiders.

‘Francis.’ Lady Lucy’s voice was very firm. Many of her vast tribe of relations – enough, Powerscourt had once said, to fill two rotten boroughs in the days before the Great Reform Bill – had served in the military. Maybe the sense of duty passes down the generations. ‘I know it’s terrible,’ she said, ‘but there is no choice. We must go back to London at once. I so much want to see the children anyway. It’s only a few more days.’ She smiled bravely at him. Schomberg McDonnell had nearly demolished his kipper.

‘Can I ask you two questions, McDonnell?’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. ‘Of course I shall come. But what does Dominic Knox think should happen if he doesn’t find these rifles?’

McDonnell drank some of his coffee. ‘He has a very devious mind, that Dominic Knox,’ he began.

God in heaven, thought Powerscourt. What kind of Machiavellian intelligence does the man possess if McDonnell thinks he is devious?

‘We can’t cancel the parade. One of his suggestions is to declare that the Queen has been taken ill. She does not ride through the streets of London at all but merely appears for the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s.’

‘And the other?’ Powerscourt was fascinated.

‘The other is that we have a substitute, an old lady of the same shape and size, dressed exactly like Her Majesty, who rides out from Buckingham Palace on the great parade.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly if McDonnell wished he had thought of that one himself. ‘It’s bit tricky,’ he said, ‘if she happens to get shot and the world thinks it was the Queen.’

‘At least the Queen would still be alive,’ said McDonnell frostily. ‘You said you had two questions, Lord Powerscourt. What was the second one?’ McDonnell sounded like a man anxious to get away.

‘You said you brought three letters down to Brighton with you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I just wonder if you didn’t bring four.’

‘What would the fourth one have been?’ said McDonnell, taking refuge behind a large slice of buttered toast.

‘I think the first paragraph with congratulations about Lucy’s rescue would have turned into a paragraph of commiserations about its failure. But I think the second paragraph, bidding me come to London, would have been exactly the same. Am I right?’

Schomberg McDonnell, private secretary to the Prime Minister, confidant and colleague of the most powerful man in Great Britain, laughed.

‘I’m afraid you’re absolutely right, Lord Powerscourt. I tore the fourth letter into very small pieces first thing this morning.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘We’d better go,’ he said.

As they made their way out of the hotel dining room they were greeted enthusiastically by Joe Hardy. He embraced Lady Lucy and shook Powerscourt vigorously by the hand.

‘Just wanted to say, Lord Powerscourt, that I’m at your disposal for any further bonfires you may be planning. Gunpowder Plot, re-run of the Great Fire of London, burning down the Houses of Parliament again, I’m your man! Best night of my life!’

Dominic Knox was pacing up and down an office overlooking Horseguards. He was a short, wiry man in his late thirties. Today, Powerscourt thought, as they shook hands by the door, he looked at least fifty. Knox looked as though he hadn’t slept properly for weeks.

‘Thank God you have come, Lord Powerscourt. I fear it is too late. I fear we are all too late now.’ He looked gloomily out of the window. The park was full of visitors for the Jubilee, staring in awe at the soldiers from all over the world who were enjoying the sunshine in St James’s Park.

‘I cannot believe it is too late,’ said Powerscourt, sitting down on the far side of Knox’s enormous desk. ‘McDonnell said there was a problem with the rifles.’

‘I have two problems, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Knox, relieved perhaps to be able to share his problems with a fellow-professional. ‘The first does indeed concern the rifles. You will recall, none better, that two coffins believed to contain rifles were buried in the grave of one Thomas Carew, south of Greystones, and a further two in the grave of Martha O’Driscoll up in the Wicklow Mountains. Both have been watched ever since you left Ireland. We opened one of them up in broad daylight the day after you found them and found four Mausers of the very latest make inside.’

Knox paused and rearranged some papers on his desk. Powerscourt said nothing.

‘Two coffins are still with Thomas Carew. But there is only one coffin with Martha O’Driscoll. Four brand new high-powered rifles have left the Wicklow Mountains and gone I know not where. We only discovered that two days ago, while you were in Brighton.’

‘Christ,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You remember I told you I did not actually see the rifles being placed in the grave? All I saw was the disturbed earth on the top. They could have placed one coffin in the O’Driscoll grave and taken the other one somewhere else.’

Knox nodded gloomily. ‘Of course I remember you saying that, Lord Powerscourt. We checked the grave the following day. There were three coffins in it, one of the widow O’Driscoll and two more that came out of the sea in the night. We opened one of them and saw these four new rifles inside.’

‘And you have been watching this place ever since, I presume?’

‘We have.’ Knox stopped to swat a fly that was advancing over his desk, trying to read his secrets. ‘I don’t know how they did it. Maybe the watchers got careless or fell asleep. But one coffin has gone. And the problem is this, Lord Powerscourt. Michael Byrne, the man I believe to be responsible for this conspiracy, has been sending messengers to London. Three young women have been apprehended so far. All of them have perfectly legitimate reasons for being here, of course. All of them have gone to the house of an Irish schoolteacher. I believed that Byrne was trying to smuggle one or more of those rifles into London. Broken into pieces, of course, so they could be reassembled. But no. All they brought the teacher was one bottle of Jameson’s whisky, two pots of home-made marmalade and a large quantity of best Irish potato-bread.’