David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

Here, thought Powerscourt, was the glory of the British Army laying down their lives for King and country. And eighty years later, here we are discussing the male brothels of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

Lord Johnny was used to his friend’s temporary absences, lost in thought at the non-striker’s end.

‘There was that place in Cleveland Street a few years ago, you remember. There’s a few more that have sprung up in the same part of London, behind Fitzroy Square and round at the back of King’s Cross station. But the rich people were terrified after Cleveland Street. They have no intention of getting caught ever again. They’ve upped sticks and bought a very fine house near the river beyond Hammersmith. Gentlemen arrive there at discreet intervals. There’s a giant of a man on duty at the door who might well have been a Regimental Sergeant Major. Nobody seems to arrive until after dark. Now I wasn’t there for long enough to find out if our Eddy is a customer or not. But I bet he is. And it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out.’

‘Did you try to go in?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘That I did not. It would have been rather difficult from where I was. Forty feet up a tree with cramp in my leg.’ Lord Johnny laughed.

‘I too have some intelligence to report.’ Powerscourt’s mood had suddenly turned sombre. ‘The Prince of Wales has massive debts. At the last count he owes Messrs Finch’s amp; Co., not two hundred yards from where we sit, the princely figure of ?200,000.’

‘So while I think I’m a bit of a hero for freezing up a Hammersmith tree, you’ve been going round breaking into banks. I didn’t think you had it in you, Francis.’

‘I don’t,’ Powerscourt grinned. ‘But my second sister, Mary, is married to a man of business. Have you met William Burke, Johnny? He looks perfectly normal, eyes and ears in the usual place, devoted to his children, adores cricket, likes hunting with the South Essex. But he’s one of those people who just understands money, where it comes from, where it’s going, what’s up and what’s down. Our William is a director of some pretty big companies. One of them is Finch’s Bank. God knows how he spirited the figures out of there but he says it’s the biggest overdraft Finch’s have ever seen.’

‘?200,000 is an astronomical sum of money, Francis.’ Vignobles, sun-drenched fields dripping with noble grapes swam before Lord Johnny’s eyes. You could buy yourself entire villages in Bordeaux or Burgundy with that, St Estephe or Margaux, le Montrachet or Pommard.

‘William says that the richest man in England, who is a massive coal owner, or one of those shopping magnates like Maples or Lipton, has well over ?100,000 a year in income, maybe even more. So the Prince owes twice as much as that. And William said the debt had not accumulated overnight. It had grown over a period of time, rather like a tree, getting bigger and bigger every year.’

‘You don’t suppose . . .’ Fitzgerald and Powerscourt always discussed their cases in this way, throwing out the most fantastic ideas, some of which later turned out to be true. ‘You don’t suppose he’s been paying this blackmailer for years and years, do you?’

‘Well, he might have been,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully, ‘or it may just be that he can’t live within his income. I don’t suppose Daisy Brooke is cheap to run. And there’s something else. Rosebery told me that twelve or thirteen years ago Prince Eddy and his younger brother Prince George were sent round the world on a cruise, a cruise that lasted two whole years.’

‘Was there any suggestion of scandal about that, Francis?’

‘Rosebery couldn’t remember. But he’s going to find out for me. That means he’ll probably ask the First Sea Lord himself . . . But I must reply to His Royal Private Secretaryship down the road.’

‘Can you be as pompous as he is, Francis?’ Lord Johnny had nearly finished his Chablis.

‘Let me try, Johnny, just let me try. “Dear Sir William.”’ Powerscourt began writing at the little desk by the window, with the lamps being lit in St James’s Square below. ‘“Thank you for your letter of 21st inst. I regret to have to inform you that it has never been my custom to set out possible avenues of inquiry on paper. Such documents have a habit of ending up in the wrong hands. I believe that such circumspection is also followed in your own establishment. I am, of course, only too happy to come and discuss matters with you or your colleagues at your convenience. I am anxious that the matters under discussion should proceed with all due despatch.” Is that pompous enough, Johnny?’

‘I don’t think that man Suter would know pomposity if it came and stroked his beard. He’s steeped in it, Francis. Positively marinated in pomposity.’

‘Do you know,’ Powerscourt was laughing now, ‘I might just see if I can get a special dispensation to put my memorandum in for the Suter Prize this year.’

Trafalgar Square was jammed. The press of traffic was so great that every single vehicle, cart, carriage and coach had come to a full stop. A furniture remover’s enormous van had toppled over by the edge of the fountain, its contents spilling out on to the road under the astonished gaze of a Landseer lion.

Waiting for Lady Lucy on the portico leading into the National Gallery, Powerscourt wondered if the whole of London would come to a complete halt one day. High on his column, ignoring the chaos below, his plinth festooned with pigeon droppings as the sails of his great ships had once been festooned with round shot holes, Horatio Nelson gazed imperturbably towards Big Ben and Parliament Square and the river that could carry him away.

Then she was beside him. Lady Lucy Hamilton, looking demure in grey but with a slightly raffish hat. Lady Lucy had wondered about the hat, even as she put it on. A little too fast? A trifle ostentatious for a morning rendezvous by the pictures in the National Gallery? It was pink. It was undoubtedly fashionable, and it certainly showed off her blue eyes. Never mind, if I dither about in front of this mirror any longer, thought Lady Lucy, I shall be late.

‘Good morning to you, Lady Lucy.’ Powerscourt wrenched himself happily away from the chaos in the square without. Looking at Lady Lucy, so charming with that smile of welcome, he felt suddenly that it might be replaced by a different chaos within. ‘Shall we go inside? What would you like to look at this morning?’

‘Do you have any favourites you would like to visit, Lord Francis?’

A party of art students rushed past them, sketch books in hand, pencils dropping out of their pockets.

‘Well, I would quite like to look at a couple of Raphaels. Do you like Raphael, Lady Lucy?’

‘Oh yes, I do.’ She smiled broadly at him, wondering yet again about her hat. ‘And I should like to look at some of the Turners.’

A curvaceous St Catherine, the curves of her dress suggesting the curves of her wheel, was followed by an austere Raphael Madonna, flanked by pillars and a couple of obscure saints.

‘Do you think, Lord Francis, that there were conventions for what all these saints actually looked like? I mean, do you think there was some sort of artists’ guidebook, only available to a select few of course, which said that St Jerome always looked sad and St Bartholomew happy? I know St Sebastian always appears with those beastly arrows and the four Evangelists usually have a book to write, but what about the rest?’

‘It is a pretty thought, Lady Lucy. I have to confess that I don’t know the answer.’

Behind them was a great rolling of wheels. A large trolley was conveying a full-length portrait of some seventeenth-century gentleman through the gallery. He was a sombre figure, painted in black with a Bible in his hand and a small dog at his feet. Behind the trolley an anxious curator repeated instructions to the bearers to go more slowly, to mind the bumps in the floor.