Gavin Lyall - Honourable Intentions

The Commander said: “Very well, the Steam Submarine Committee is in session again. We welcome Mr Noah Quinton to our humble table.”

“May I second that, chairman?” Jay said smoothly. “We’re well aware of Mr Quinton’s distinguished record in the law and honoured to have him join us.” This was obviously pre-planned: Jay didn’t normally say things like that. “And if I may presume to call on Mr Quinton’s extensive knowledge of the law, could he explain why young Grover Langhorn can never lawfully become king? – assuming, of course, that he is the King’s eldest son. Is it the Settlement Act of 1700-odd?”

“Not that one,” Quinton said briskly. “That’s mostly concerned with putting the House of Hanover on the throne and keeping Roman Catholics off it. No, it must go back earlier than that, but this isn’t a question that crops up every day, you know. I’d need to look up a few things.”

Since this was all a ploy to make Quinton feel important, Ranklin tried to keep him going by saying: “As I recall from my schooldays, when the Tudors were feuding about religion, both Mary and Elizabeth were declaring each other illegitimate and having Parliament re-legitimise themselves.”

Quinton nodded. “The very point being that illegitimacy would have kept them off the throne – so we have to look back even further than the Tudors. We’ll probably end up in common law.”

“Surely not common law?” Jay said, reverting to his usual self and getting a sharp look from the Commander.

“The common law of England,” Quinton said firmly, “is a sight more sensible and reliable than many of the half-baked measures dreamed up by Parliament these days.”

The Commander could agree on that. “Self-serving tradesmen,” he said in a cloud of pipe-smoke.

“And under common law principles of inheritance, neither property nor titles of honour can pass down an illegitimate line. Perhaps monarchy comes under ‘titles of honour’.”

The Commander sniffed loudly. “Let’s assume it does. After all, history’s full of royal bastards and none of them acceded to the throne. Now-”

But now Quinton had got the taste for exposition. “You know, this has interesting echoes of the Mylius case three years ago.”

Form his expression, the Commander could have managed without Mylius, but said politely: “Do tell us.”

“It was a criminal libel case. I believe the Palace wanted to ignore the whole thing, but the Home Secretary – then Winston Churchill – took a more aggressive line. Mylius – he was writing in an English-language paper published in Paris but distributed over here – claimed the King had secretly married a daughter of Admiral Culme-Seymour in Malta in eighteen-ninety. What he was really attacking was the supposed doctrine that the monarch can do no wrong.”

He paused and Ranklin asked: “Does that still hold?” He got a look from the Commander for encouraging the man.

“What Mylius wrote, and I quote -” he had even brought a paper to quote from “- was: ‘The King is above the law and can do no wrong. He may commit murder, rape, arson or any other crime, yet the law cannot try him.’ Of course, he could have pointed out that any diplomatist enjoys as much immunity, possibly more. However, the doctrine that the King can do no wrong is thought to obtain, for a constitutional monarch, only so long as the King does not act except upon the advice of his ministers. So unless one can envisage a minister advising the King to commit murder, rape or arson-”

“Lloyd George?” Jay suggested.

The chuckles threw Quinton off his stride and the Commander took the opportunity to say: “Most instructive. Now can-”

“Mylius got a year in jail,” Quinton muttered.

“Richly deserved. But if we can get back to the present day . . . We haven’t established that this anarchist puppy is the King’s son-”

“Probably impossible to do so.” Quinton bounced back fast; probably lawyers had to. “Presumably his birth certificate – have you dug that up yet?”

“He may have been born in America,” the Commander said. “What weight does a birth certificate have in court?”

“It’s accepted as proof unless it’s challenged. And even then, you can only show that the father named couldn’t be the real one – by reason of impotence, say, or that he was discovering the North Pole at the required time. But that tells us nothing of who the real father is. So, assuming that the birth certificate says the father is Langhorn senior, I’d say the King was not liable in law. But have you found out whether he did . . . ah, know the boy’s mother?”

“Dammit, of course he was poking her,” the Commander growled. “Every lieutenant who could afford it had a loose woman in Portsmouth. Place was stuffed with them. That’s not the point. It’s what the foreign newspapers will make of the lad’s claim to be a royal bastard if they get to hear of it. Now: is there any legal way of stopping that?”

“You – or rather, the Palace – could take out an injunction. That can be done secretly-but in the end, all it could do is bring the wrath of the law on Langhorn’s head if he spoke out. And if he wants to shout it out the next time he’s in court . . . well, I’ve advised him not to, but in the end I can’t stop him. And what he says in court is privileged, and could be reported even here.”

O’Gilroy said: “If he ups and says he’s the next king, surely everybody’ll laugh and say why not Julius Caesar or Napoleon?”

The Commander nodded firmly. “Yes, we should be concentrating on what the mother may say about the King – the Prince, in those days.”

Quinton asked: “Did he write her any letters?”

It was as if a sudden ice age had struck the room. Everybody held their breath and went quite still. Then it passed, leaving only shivers behind.

“God, I hope not,” the Commander said fervently.

In an even, reasonable voice, O’Gilroy said: “She didn’t pick this road until jest recent. She could’ve started causing this ruckus twenty-four years ago, when she found she was going to have a baby. But she didn’t. She married the American feller and started a new life in America. If she had any letters and such, probly she burned them then. Never thought she’d want to look back.”

“Thank you for that touch of common sense, O’G-Gorman,” the Commander said. “I just hope you’re right.”

Quietly, Ranklin got up, fetched the whisky decanter, and refilled the Commander’s glass. O’Gilroy and Jay shook their heads, and Quinton had taken only a couple of sips at his brandy.

“Do we know,” Quinton asked, “what the mother wants out of all this?”

“We haven’t had a peep out of her since that letter you saw,” the Commander grumbled. “But it seems to have been assumed by . . . certain others, that she’ll settle for a pension. They’ve put an advertisement in this afternoon’s Paris papers asking her to come in and get some good news from our consulate, which we take to mean money. Naturally enough, this has got the French police up in arms.”

“You know,” Ranklin said thoughtfully, “I don’t think we should necessarily assume that the woman will settle for a pension. She might just be taking this my-son’s-the-next-king stuff seriously and sees herself as the Queen Mother.”

Quinton said: “I’ve explained-”

“Not to her.”

“Well, I certainly have trouble envisaging Ma’mselle Collomb as our next queen.”

Ranklin shut his eyes and shuddered.

The Commander, who hadn’t met Berenice, smiled automatically. O’Gilroy looked disapproving on behalf of all fairy-tale milkmaids who reach the throne.