David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

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.’

‘What are you going to tell them? Suter is the Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, isn’t he? What’s Shepstone’s official title?’

‘Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household, William. Whatever that means.’

Powerscourt turned back from his window. A posse of rooks were flying in formation from the tall trees by the bell tower to scavenge in the fields beyond.

‘The thing to remember is that they do their master’s bidding. They do what the Prince of Wales tells them. I do not believe they would have killed Lord Gresham, or tried to kill me, if they did not think they were carrying out his wishes. I have to convince the Prince of Wales, through these two officials of his, that it is time to stop.’

‘How are you going to do that, Francis?’

Powerscourt told him. A slow smile spread across Burke’s face.

‘Would he do that? Rosebery, I mean?’

‘I’m sure he would. Absolutely sure. The whole thing started with blackmail. It’s going to end with a different sort of blackmail.’

‘Pressure, Francis, pressure. That’s what we say in the City about these kind of transactions. Pressure is a much nicer word than blackmail. Come to think of it, I can bring a little bit of pressure of my own to the meeting. And the Prince of Wales won’t like it at all. There are all sorts of pressures in this wicked world, Francis. But money pressure is one of the most powerful of them all.’

Burke looked at his watch. He had left the cab waiting at the front door.

‘I must return to London, Francis. Do you have a date for this meeting?’

‘I have said that we propose to call at eleven o’clock in two days’ time. On Thursday. I shall see you on the steps outside.’

‘Goodbye, Francis. Take great care of yourself.’ His cab was turning to ride up the hill to Oundle. A small figure, it might have been McKenzie, was standing behind a clump of trees two hundred yards from Rokesley Hall, staring out at the bare landscape. He had a gun in his hand.

‘Your sister sends you a message from London, Francis. Stay indoors, she says. At all times. Very dangerous place, Northamptonshire.’

‘And where have you been?’ Lord Johnny Fitzgerald was propped up on a mountain of pillows in Powerscourt’s bed. The doctor had called. The dressings had been changed. Powerscourt thought he looked a little better. ‘Really, Francis, I don’t think you’re the man I’d ask to come to see me on my deathbed. You’d never get here in time.’