Goodnight Sweet Prince Page 17

  Two figures set out from the little cottage, the old man hunched against the bitter wind, a threadbare coat small protection against the elements, Powerscourt wrapped in his warmest cape, buttoned right up to his throat. They crossed the river and began to trudge through the sand.

  One hundred yards out to sea, sometimes two hundred, great breakers began to form, crests of foam flying proudly behind them as they crashed in towards the beach. The spray was like fine rain, drifting in towards the sand-dunes and the distant castle. A lone seagull tried an unequal contest with the wind, now stationary, now blown backwards with the force of the blast. The noise thundered along the solitary beach, waves driven forward on their final journey as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Begin wherever you like,’ Powerscourt shouted, trying not to sound too hostile.

  ‘That’s very kind of you. Very kind of you indeed.’ The voice was thin and bitter. Powerscourt strained to hear it through the gale, and huddled ever closer to his companion.

  There was a pause, their feet scrunching though the sand. Powerscourt waited. Far out to sea, two ships were pitching violently in the swell. More seagulls tested their wingpower against the wind. Powerscourt waited.

  ‘I suppose it all began when those young officers took Prince Eddy off to Portsmouth.’

  Captain Williams’ words flew past Powerscourt. He strained to catch them, like a slip fielder diving after a thick outside edge.

  ‘They were meant to bring him back that night. That had all been agreed. I remember it so clearly.’ Captain Williams turned to Powerscourt, red eyes weeping with the weather.

  ‘But they didn’t. They disobeyed orders.’

  A pause followed as the Captain’s mind was forced back thirteen years to the events preceding his disgrace.

  ‘They took him to some seamen’s brothel. They said they wanted to make a man of him. They said it was time for a boy who would be a king one day to become a man. And after a couple of hours, they went back and took him to another one.’

  ‘Another brothel?’ Powerscourt tried to shout the words gently.

  ‘I’m afraid so. There may even have been a third one before the night was out. And then he was brought home. I threw the book at him for disobeying orders, not coming home when he was told. Do you know what he did, Prince Eddy? He just smiled at me, that rather silly smile of his.’

  A smile he took with him to the grave, thought Powerscourt, remembering Lancaster’s description of the corpse.

  ‘What we didn’t know, of course, was what went on with the older boys in the dormitories last thing at night.’

  Oh my God, thought Powerscourt. Oh my God. He remembered Lady Eleanor’s husband’s accounts of some of the activities that went on in places like the Britannia. The sea was now depositing great sausages of foam on the shore in front of them. As the wind drove them along the beach, they gradually evaporated, the foam blown away across the dunes.

  ‘There was a group of five of them,’ Williams went on, hurrying now, as if he was thinking of a large drink when his ordeal was over.

  Five of them, thought Powerscourt bitterly. Just like those bloody equerries.

  ‘Illicit sexual relations, that’s what the admiral who conducted the inquiry called it. Five of them having illicit sexual relations with each other. They all got ill. Very ill.’

  ‘Ill with what?’ Powerscourt was whispering now.

  ‘Syphilis, that’s what they said it was. Syphilis. I’d never heard of it until then.’

  Ulcers, Powerscourt remembered, it started with ulcers. Then fevers, headaches, spots, lesions, pustules. The New World’s revenge on the Old, carried back across the Atlantic by Colum-bus’s sailors and their successors to be spread round the cities of Europe. The French pox, very difficult to cure. Sea journeys, he said to himself, didn’t they think that long sea journeys might be the answer? Get yourself a ship, call it the Bacchante for want of a better name, pack on board the offending Prince and his brother, send them all round the world. Sea journeys. No chance of infecting anybody else, he said to himself, that bloody boat will have been patrolled night and day, the crew and passengers vetted right down to their buttonholes. God in heaven.

  ‘The Prince’s father was very good to the other boys, the ones who were ill. They said he paid for their treatment too, that he looked after them very well.’

  It wasn’t really blackmail at all, thought Powerscourt. It might be self-defence. Was it twenty thousand a year above his income that the Prince of Wales had been spending for years and years? He was sure that William Burke, ever reliable with the arithmetic, had told him that early on in his inquiry. It wasn’t really blackmail, just regular payments, treatments, maybe abroad, expensive doctors, young men with their futures ruined but still financially afloat, courtesy of Marlborough House and Messrs Finch’s & Co., Bankers. Years and years of payments, probably still going on. No wonder they didn’t want to talk to him. No wonder they hadn’t been surprised when Eddy was murdered in his bed.

  ‘Come, we had better get back now. I’m sorry that was so difficult for you. I’m very grateful to you. Do you have the names of the other boys?’

  ‘I do, oh yes, I do. Oh yes. Sometimes I take out that list and I wish they had never been born.’

  The Captain’s first act on returning home was to disappear into a scullery behind the kitchen. Powerscourt could hear liquid being poured into a glass. There was a pause, followed by what might have been a gulp, then the sound of more liquid being poured. Williams came through the door, looking rather better.

  ‘I got so cold, Lord Powerscourt. Medicinal whisky helps restore the circulation. Can I get you a glass?’

  ‘Just a very small one,’ said Powerscourt. He wondered how much you would get if you asked for a large one.

  ‘The addresses, if you could be so kind.’ Powerscourt cradled the glass in his hands, amazed at the improvement in Williams’ demeanour.

  Another piece of paper disappeared into his pocketbook. He left Amble in the same carriage that had brought him there.

  Captain Williams stood at his door and watched him go. For the rest of his life he would remember his visitor on this day, the walk on the beach, the seagulls flying backwards, his visitor straining to catch his words as the wind blew them away. Another ghastly memory to add to his collection.

  Powerscourt read the addresses on his way back to the hotel. At least this lot aren’t scattered all around the four nations of Great Britain, he thought to himself. But when he thought of his next round of conversations, once more exhuming the past, once more distressing the old, he almost wished they were.

  I shall actually be quite glad, he said to himself as his carriage rattled along the windswept lanes, to see that lunatic asylum once again.

  A note from Rosebery, asking him to call at his earliest convenience, was waiting for Powerscourt on his return to his sister’s house in St James’s Square. There was a note from Lord George Scott, former captain of the Bacchante, saying that he would be honoured to meet with Lord Powerscourt at the Army and Navy Club the following morning. There was a report from James Phillips, his footman spy in Marlborough House, saying that there was no gossip about Prince Eddy’s death in the servants’ hall and that the Prince of Wales had gone to stay with Lady Brooke at Easton Lodge. And a note from Lady Lucy, a delicate whiff of her perfume still lingering about the notepaper, asking him to lunch at her house in Markham Square the following Sunday.

  We are going to have a christening party for Robert’s boat. I think it should take place after lunch at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. I shall, of course, provide the necessary champagne.

  Robert has decided to call the boat Britannia. Don’t you think that is very patriotic for one so young?

  Yours ever,

  Lucy.

  Powerscourt’s heart sank. Not even the single word Lucy at the bottom of the page could cheer him up. Not Lady Lucy, not Lady Lucy Hamilton, not Lady Hamilton. Just Lucy. Please don’t
call it Britannia, he thought, dear God, please not Britannia. He would never be able to look at the little craft without thinking of illicit sexual practices and a naval inquest which despatched its victims to the four corners of the kingdom, a broken man whispering his terrible confidences into the teeth of the wind as the great breakers rolled in from the sea.

  ‘Francis.’ His sister appeared, apparently rushing from one appointment to another. ‘We have all been so busy working on your behalf.’

  ‘The curtains are looking particularly fine this afternoon, Rosalind. It’s as if they were chosen specially for this late afternoon light.’

  ‘No gratitude,’ said his sister, ‘no gratitude. Flippancy is my only reward.’ She dashed off to her next appointment, thinking that it was nice of brother Francis to mention her new curtains, even if he didn’t afford them the respect they deserved.

  William Leith, Rosebery’s inscrutable butler, opened the door. ‘My lord. His Lordship is in the library. Your coat, my lord.’

  Coat, hat and gloves departed to the Rosebery vestibule.

  Leith coughed. ‘Might I make so bold, my lord, as to inquire if Your Lordship has yet availed himself of the travel arrangements we discussed?’ A flicker of a smile crossed his impassive face.

  ‘Leith, my good man.’ Powerscourt wondered suddenly if he could try his luck again. It’s like having your very own travel agent, he thought to himself. ‘I have indeed. Your arrangements worked like clockwork. Now, I wonder if I could take advantage of your good offices and your expertise once more.’ He handed over another list of places, scribbled out on the train home from the North. ‘I am sorry that the writing is a trifle uncertain. I wrote it on your train coming back from Morpeth.’

  ‘Did Your Lordship catch the 8.15 or the nine o’clock? My Lordship speaks highly of the speed of the 8.15.’

  ‘The 8.15 it was, Leith. And the train was very fast.’

  Leith glanced down at the list of places. ‘My lord. These places. I shall prepare a memorandum for you to take away.’ My God, thought Powerscourt, a memorandum, the man even sounds like Rosebery in one of his pompous moods.

  ‘Could I suggest once again, if I might,’ here came the deprecating cough, the note of pleading, almost of supplication, ‘that if Your Lordship wishes to make the rounds of these localities, a special might prove the most expeditious method for attaining your objectives?’

  Specials once again. The man is obsessed with specials. What on earth is so special about specials? Powerscourt resolved to ask Rosebery.

  ‘Please include the details in your memorandum. That would be most kind.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord. If Your Lordship would like to step this way. Lord Powerscourt, my lord.’

  Leith glided away back to his lair half-way down the stairs, to enjoy moments of communion with the domestic timetables of Britain, Surrey, Gloucestershire and Hampshire in particular.

  ‘Rosebery, how good to see you.’

  ‘Powerscourt, how kind of you to call. Come and sit down.’

  ‘I have a confession to make to you, Rosebery. I have been using the expertise of your butler for information about train times.’

  Rosebery laughed. ‘You have certainly come to the right place. I keep increasing his wages in case he defects to Thomas Cook or the Travel Department at Harrods.’

  ‘But why the obsession with specials? Every time I ask, he recommends a special.’

  ‘Ah, specials,’ said Rosebery thoughtfully. ‘I have a certain weakness for specials myself. For Leith, I think,’ Rosebery looked into his fire, ‘specials simply represent the highest form of travel. They’re almost metaphysical. Your own train, your own driver, your own route, no other passengers cluttering up the place with luggage and children and the other impedimenta of mass movement. If Leith ever went to Plato’s Cave and was asked about a Form or an Ideal, he wouldn’t talk about Love or Truth or Beauty. He’d talk about a special train, chugging slowly out from the darkness of the cavern to join the Great North Eastern line at Peterborough.

  ‘But come, enough of trains.’ Rosebery abandoned his inspection of some ancient volume on the table. ‘Trevelyan told me the other day that there had been a frightful row between the Queen and Disraeli about that boat you were interested in, the Bacchante. He said the Queen seemed to wish to vet every single person on board her. Do you have any news, Francis?’

  All the way back on the train Powerscourt had wondered about who he should tell about Captain Williams’ confessions about the Britannia. Rosebery, of course. Johnny Fitzgerald, of course.

  About Durham, he began thinking about telling Lady Lucy. By York he had decided against it. Then he asked himself if he would have told Lady Lucy if he was married to her. Just supposing he was married to her, that is, a purely hypothetical question. I don’t have to marry her just in order to be able to tell her, he said to himself. Do I? By Peterborough he had decided that he would tell her if it became really necessary. But what did really necessary actually mean? By King’s Cross he was back where he started. He just couldn’t decide.

  But he could tell Rosebery. He did.

  Rosebery walked up and down the whole length of his library. Pictures, books, curios were simply blotted from his mind as he took in the import of the revelations on the Northumberland shore.

  ‘My God, Francis. What a mess. Where does this leave everything? What do you make of it?’

  ‘It seems to me that a number of things come from it. First, we do not yet know what happened to the five boys. But if they have been ill intermittently – some of them may have died by now, for heaven’s sake – that would be an ample motive for them or for other members of their families or friends to murder Prince Eddy.

  ‘Second . . .’ Powerscourt held up a hand to quell a Rosebery intervention. ‘Second, this may be the secret of the blackmail charges and the Prince of Wales. They’ve been going on for a long time, you told me right at the beginning. Of course they have. These are the payments for doctors, cures, compensation, call it what you will, payments above everything else for silence. If you’re the Prince of Wales you don’t want a single word or even a syllable of this stuff leaking out. You’ve got to feel sorry for him in a way. There he is, leading a perfectly ordinary life of adultery and debauchery. Up pops his son and does something far far worse. Of course it’s blackmail in one sense. We do not know how the payments were arranged. We do not know who took the initiative. I reckon the Prince of Wales would have paid anything for silence. Don’t you?’

  ‘He would, he would. So you think that someone connected with these five families could be the murderer. Or the blackmailer. Or both.’

  ‘I do. Or I think I do. It’s possible. A long arm of revenge reaches out from Dartmouth thirteen years ago and cuts Prince Eddy’s throat.’

  ‘Would it explain the violence of the murder itself?’

  Rosebery had turned pale. Powerscourt didn’t feel too good himself, discussing these fantastic propositions in one of London’s finest private libraries in Berkeley Square, train timetables being prepared for him down below.

  ‘It might. I have always thought that it could be a revenge attack, a life for a life, a death for a death. ‘But we do not yet have enough information. I am seeing Lord George Scott, captain of this Bacchante, tomorrow. Maybe he will have more information. And I have the addresses of the five boys from the Britannia.’

  ‘God help you, Francis. May God bless this Britannia and all who sailed in her. But I very much doubt if he did.’

  Lord Johnny Fitzgerald materialized out of the night air of London and presented himself in Powerscourt’s little sitting-room in St James’s Square. The apparition was clutching a bottle with even more devotion than usual.

  ‘Powerscourt, just look at this one here.’ Fitzgerald unwrapped his packet with the reverence Rosebery brought to volumes of Renaissance verse. ‘Armagnac, Francis. Look at it. And this bottle is sixty years old. Will you be taking a glass of this nectar here?’
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  ‘I will not. Not for the moment, thank you.’ Powerscourt shuddered at his memories of the last man with a bottle, the trembling hands, the bloodshot eyes, the look of ruin.

  ‘Have you signed the pledge now, Francis? Shall I book you in for a Temperance meeting at the Methodist Central Hall?’

  ‘I have seen your future, Johnny. And it is not a pleasant one.’ Powerscourt tried to remain as grave and as severe as he could. ‘I can now tell you what you will look like in about thirty years’ time, if you do not mend your ways. There is still time. It is never too late. Rejoice more for the one who is saved than for the ninety and nine who did not stray.

  ‘Let me tell you precisely what will happen to you, you poor addict. Believe me, I saw the signs, the portents of your future, only the other day.’ Powerscourt looked intently at Lord Johnny’s face. ‘Your hair will fall out.’ Fitzgerald checked briefly on his extravagant set of brown curls. ‘Your eyes will sink into your face. They will be red and bloodshot from over-indulgence in the golden liquids provided by the wine merchants of London. Your teeth will turn yellow and black. Your hands will shake. Your spirits will be broken by too many of the other kind. You will lose all faith in yourself and in your own future. Despair will hang over you like a great cloud, blocking out God’s own sunlight.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Francis. I’m definitely having a glass of this stuff now. It’s a fine preacher you would have been, if only you could have kept a straight face.’

  ‘I think I may partake of a very small measure of that Armagnac, Johnny. Medicinal purposes only, you understand. That’s what the man said.’

  Powerscourt told the story of Northumberland for the second time that day. There’s only Lady Lucy left to tell, now, he thought to himself. If I do tell her.

  Lord Johnny Fitzgerald was stunned into silence. There was no need to tell him what the implications were. He would have worked them out as fast as Powerscourt himself.

  The two men sat staring at the bottle of Armagnac. J. Nismes-Delclou, said the label. Specially bottled for Berry Bros and Rudd, St James’s Street, London. High-pitched voices strayed upstairs, announcing the return home of the working women of the house.