Goodnight Sweet Prince Page 22

  Powerscourt could see that an alliance with a Catholic family might present a few problems here in Thorpe Hall.

  ‘My family,’ she went on, ‘have been active in the business of this county or this country for centuries. We have hunted across these fields beyond these windows for generations. Generations, Lord Powerscourt. The Gresham stirrup cup, the hunt has always said, is the best in the county, if not in the country.’

  She stopped briefly. This woman’s spirit would never be broken, thought Powerscourt. They could tie her to the stake for her beliefs. She wouldn’t make a sound. Greshams don’t cry.

  ‘Edward is the latest in the line. The long line, Lord Powerscourt.’

  Something softened in her voice as she talked of her son. Suddenly Powerscourt could see them, Edward and his mother, rowing round the lake in the summer, the sun caressing the golden curls of the pretty boy, the power of a mother’s love caressing his heart. Then the softness went away.

  ‘I expect you want to ask me about his marriage, Lord Powerscourt. I will spare you the trouble of framing what might be an embarrassing question. I expect you have heard the gossip, what they are saying down there in London.’

  She made London sound like Sodom, thought Powerscourt, keeping still and silent in his chair, his eyes flickering outside to the frozen landscape.

  ‘I never met the girl. I did not attend the wedding. I did not attend the funeral, dare I say it, a happier event for me. I believe she was called Louisa. Such a common name. Shopgirls are called Louisa, I believe. So are grocers’ daughters. The marriage was simply impossible. Greshams don’t marry shopgirls. They don’t marry Catholics. They never have.’

  But they did. They had, thought Powerscourt, wondering how he could steer the conversation in the direction he wanted.

  ‘Did Edward ever bring Prince Eddy here? To Thorpe Hall?’

  ‘Prince Eddy? That one who has just died? Yes, he did. He came on a number of occasions. Very feeble young man, I thought. Bad blood, thin blood. Something wrong there. Fancy being carried off by something so mundane as influenza at his age. It just proved there was something wrong with his breeding.’

  ‘Did Prince Eddy know Louisa at all?’ Powerscourt tossed it in lightly, like a hat into a ring.

  ‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, do you expect me to know the answer to that question? I have told you. I did not attend the wedding. I did not attend the funeral. I was hardly likely to pop over to that place where they lived for grocer’s tea.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking, but do you know anything of the circumstances of her death?’

  ‘I do not. I did not ask. I did not inquire. I did not regard it as any of my business. I was merely glad that Edward was rid of her.’

  Powerscourt wondered if a mother’s love was strong enough to send Lady Blanche over to the little house, bought by the grocer father, and push a daughter-in-law she had never seen down the steps to her death. He didn’t think so. Nearly, but not quite. But he felt she was not telling him all she knew. But then, she never would, even if he waited until the frosts had thawed and the lake could welcome rowing boats once more.

  ‘And where is Edward now, Lady Gresham?’

  ‘Edward? Oh, he went away after his time at Sandringham. He came back looking quite pale, terribly pale. I expect it was the weather up there in Norfolk. Some people say he was still upset about the death of that girl.’

  She couldn’t say Louisa, thought Powerscourt. Not again. Once, or was it twice, was all she could manage. Greshams, some Greshams at any rate, don’t say Louisa.

  ‘And where did he go? When he went away?’

  ‘He said he was going to Italy, Lord Powerscourt. He only left last week. Edward said he had to make a journey to Rome. I never asked him what he meant by that. Maybe it had something to do with that ghastly religion. Do you know Italy at all, Lord Powerscourt?’

  She made Italy sound like a next-door neighbour, the nearest county family perhaps.

  ‘I do, Lady Gresham. I know it quite well. Did he say if he was going straight to Rome?’ He’s gone straight to Rome already, thought Powerscourt, like Newman and Manning and all those other converts to Catholicism, hundreds, if not thousands of them in his lifetime. But he felt it wiser not to mention that.

  ‘He did say something about that. I think he said he was going to Venice first.’

  There were two fires burning in the long long room. All the time he sat there Powerscourt had felt cold. The room was cold. Maybe it would never be warm again.

  ‘I took him to Venice for his first visit when he was sixteen years old, Lord Powerscourt. Just the two of us.’

  Powerscourt could see the two of them, not in a rowing boat, but in a gondola edging its way down the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.

  ‘Edward adored Venice. He always said it was the whole business of being there that made it so attractive. He loved walking round some of the poorer quarters, you know, Lord Powerscourt, rotting palazzos falling into the street, washing hanging out above the windows.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean, Lady Gresham. I do indeed. How well you put it.’

  She smiled a condescending smile. Powerscourt had a great urge for train timetables. Trains across Europe. The fastest way to get to Venice before Lord Edward Gresham, one-time equerry to the late Duke of Clarence and Avondale, moved off on his journey to Rome. Maybe he could telegraph to Rosebery’s butler from the railway station.

  At least Lady Blanche didn’t offer me any fruit cake, Powerscourt said to himself as he left, the rich mixtures of Shapston coming back. In fact she didn’t offer me anything at all. Maybe she found the whole business pretty distasteful.

  He saw her watching from the windows of her long long room as his carriage skidded across her frozen park towards the station, an old woman, icy with pride, watching her last visitor depart from the Gresham home at Thorpe Hall. She was alone again in that huge cold house with its baroque ceilings, alone with memories of her long-departed husband and her wayward son, memories of the Greshams of old haunting her from the walls of her salon, greeting her from their cold marble tombs in the family vault when she went to worship. Maybe she’s not all that lonely, he reflected. Maybe she lives through today by living in the past.

  Greshams don’t cry. Not then. Not now.

  Anyway, he thought, you couldn’t see Lady Blanche Gresham making a fruit cake. She’d have to send out to the shop for one.

  To the grocer’s shop.

  ‘Seven o’clock train to Dover, my lord. Connects with the boat to Calais. Quickest route, my lord.’

  A note from William Leith, Rosebery’s butler, waited for Powerscourt back in St James’s Square in reply to his telegram. He hasn’t wasted much time, Powerscourt thought. Then he reflected that for a man with Leith’s resources, shelves and shelves of timetables, this was probably child’s play. Calcutta might prove a challenge, or the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul.

  ‘Express to Paris. Arrives at 4.30. Gare du Nord, my lord. Would suggest Parisian taxi to Gare de Lyons. Night train to Milan, my lord. Departs at 7.30. Breakfast in the station. Very fine rolls in the Milan station buffet for breakfast, my lord. Connections to Venice every hour on the hour from 8 o’clock. Could reach Venice by lunchtime or early afternoon, my lord. Have taken the liberty of making you reservations on all these conveyances. Except the taxi, My Lord. Prior booking difficult if not impossible. Rooms reserved at the Danieli. Central location. Recommended by My Lordship.’

  How on earth, wondered Powerscourt, did the man know about the rolls in the buffet? Maybe his customers reported back, to add to the encyclopedias of railway knowledge in his little eyrie half-way down Rosebery’s basement stairs.

  As the train rolled southwards from Paris the following evening, past the ten crus of Beaujolais and alongside the waters of the Rhone, Powerscourt was counting his dead.

  Prince Eddy, in that charnel house of a room in Sandringham. Lancaster, suicide in the woods. Forever Faith
ful. Semper Fidelis. Simon John Robinson of Dorchester on Thames, place of death unknown. Lord forgive them for they know not what they do. The two gentlemen from the homosexual club in Chiswick. Lady Louisa Gresham, interred in some Catholic chapel in the Midlands, unmourned and unloved by her mother-in-law.

  Six of them now. Six corpses. What was the thread that held them together? Was there indeed one single thread? Was the answer in Venice or in London? Or neither?

  As his train turned eastwards and began its long ascent into the Alps, Powerscourt fell asleep. He did not dream. Clarence hath murdered dreams, he thought to himself, as the roar of the great steam engine met the deep silence of the mountains.

  Santa Lucia railway station is one third of the way down Venice’s Grand Canal. Santa Lucia, thought Powerscourt happily. They’ve even named a railway station after Lady Lucy. How nice of them. I think she’s got a church just round the corner too, maybe a palazzo. But he wasn’t sure about the palazzo.

  An aged gondolier, wiry moustache and that red beret they always seemed to wear, secured Powerscourt’s passage to his hotel. As they pushed off from the bank, the gondolier took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the dank Venetian air.

  ‘Please,’ said Powerscourt, holding up his hand just in time. ‘Please, per favore, no singing. Niente opera,’ he went on desperately. ‘Silenzio. Per favore. Niente aria. No singing.’

  The gondolier looked dumbstruck. ‘No arias? Not one, signor? Not even a little one? Drinking song from Traviata perhaps?’

  ‘No arias.’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Not one. Not even that damned drinking song.’

  The gondolier gave one of those special shrugs reserved for foreigners and resolved to add yet more lira to his bill. Powerscourt felt he had had a narrow escape. Singing Italians, usually out of tune in his view, on the way down the most romantic street in the world were an abomination not to be borne.

  Palazzos drifted by on either side. When he was a boy Powerscourt had a map with all the great ones marked, their dates of construction, the famous and the infamous who had lived there. When he was nine or ten, he could remember most of them. The names, he thought, such poetry in the names.

  Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings in Italy. Palazzo Giovanelli where they had bribed their way into the aristocracy with 100,000 golden ducats. Ca’ Rezzonico, home of yet another Venetian Pope. Palazzo Falier, home to the traitor who tried to become king and lost his head for his pains, cut off on the top of his own staircase. The vengeful aristocrats, Powerscourt remembered, had given him one hour’s notice of his execution. Palazzos built for the great families with their names in the Golden Book.

  Families with Doges. Families with Procurators of St Mark’s. Families with Popes. Families with Admirals. Families who traded in spices. Families who traded in silks. Families who traded with Shylock.

  The waters of the canal were choppy now, boats being unloaded, the gondoliers picking their way skilfully through the traffic. They were passing the Rialto Bridge, once the financial heart of Venice, the City of London on the water where two banks went bankrupt when they heard of the great voyages of Columbus back in the 1490s, Venice’s monopoly of trade with the East supposedly broken. Venice took three hundred years to die.

  The gondolier was humming now, humming quite loudly as if in revenge. Powerscourt thought it was the drinking song from Traviata, the noise blending in with the wider noises of the city, boatmen shouting at each other, porters warning the public to beware, other, better treated gondoliers bellowing away into the Basin of St Mark. The great bulk of the church of Santa Maria della Salute loomed up, a giant in Baroque, built to commemorate the salvation of the city from the plague. One million piles were sunk into the soggy ground to build it, one third of the population wiped out before they started. Even syphilis, Powerscourt thought bitterly, even syphilis hadn’t managed that yet.

  The porters at the Danieli must have been warned of his arrival.

  ‘This way, milord. Your coat, milord, your hat, milord. Cup of tea, milord?’

  The interiors were all gold leaf and dark red velvet, huge chandeliers of Murano glass hanging everywhere. Ornate rococo paintings, imitation Tiepolo, filled the walls with nymphs and satyrs from some imaginary Venetian past.

  The place was full of Americans, their nasal twang echoing round the great reception room that looked out across the water to San Giorgio and the Lido. Americans rushing around on the Grand Tour, thought Powerscourt, who rather liked Americans. Buffalo come to meet Byron. Boston embraces Botticelli. Grand Rapids hails Giorgione. Tampa salutes Titian.

  ‘Five days in Venice, five whole days,’ one bulky matron was telling her compatriots indignantly. ‘I can’t believe it takes five whole days to look at Venice. The place isn’t a quarter the size of Philadelphia! Then we’re down for seven days in Rome! Seven days! I mean, after you’ve seen the Pope and his pictures, what is there left to do?’

  A solemn little man with a small moustache, very correct in a frock coat, greeted Powerscourt. ‘Lord Powerscourt? Welcome to the Danieli. My name is Antonio Pannone. I am the manager here.’

  He led Powerscourt to a quiet table by the window and removed the reserved notice.

  ‘Lord Rosebery telegraphed to say you were coming. He is an old friend, Lord Rosebery. Any friend of Lord Rosebery must be a friend of the Hotel Danieli, no? It is so.’

  The little man looked round. Tea appeared as if by magic. He poured two cups, his eyes watching steadily as the crowds passed by his windows.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, Lord Rosebery said you were probably looking for somebody, no?’

  Powerscourt told him about his quest for Lord Edward Gresham. ‘He is a young man, in his late twenties, with fair hair and brown eyes. Lord Edward Gresham always dresses well. His friends used to tease him about his clothes.’

  ‘Here in Venice,’ said Antonio Pannone sadly, ‘everybody likes to dress well. It is the fashion. Do you have a picture or a photograph of him by any chance?’

  Powerscourt did. Johnny Fitzgerald had pressed it into his hand minutes before his train left London two days before.

  ‘For God’s sake, Francis.’ Fitzgerald was panting after his long run up the platform, searching for his friend. ‘Why do you have to travel in a compartment right at the front of the bloody train? I nearly missed you. Now then. If you’re going looking for somebody, then it sometimes helps to have a picture of them so everybody else can see what the bugger looks like. I thought even you would have realised that by now.’

  Powerscourt hadn’t. In his haste, he had quite forgotten. Lord Johnny pressed a copy of the Illustrated London News into his hand.

  ‘Page twenty-four.’ he said firmly. ‘Or maybe page twenty-five. There he is, on the steps of a house party somewhere in the country, looking very handsome too.’

  ‘How on earth did you get this, Johnny?’

  There was a lot of activity up at the front of the train. Whistles were blown, flags waved. Almost imperceptibly, the seven o’clock express to Dover and Paris began to move.

  ‘It’s my aunt, Francis. Christ, I’m going to have to do some more running to keep up with you. I’m not running all the way to bloody Venice, Francis. She collects all these magazines, my auntie. She’s got rooms full of them. She says they’ll be valuable in the years to come. She’s quite mad. She’s potty . . .’

  Lord Johnny ran out of platform. The train gathered speed. Powerscourt just heard a parting message, shouted through the smoke.

  ‘Don’t go falling into any of those bloody canals now, Francis. And don’t talk to any strange women, courtesans or whatever they’re called. Bloody place is full of them.’

  Powerscourt handed over his Illustrated London News, opened at page twenty-five. It was indeed a formal photograph of the guests at a country house weekend. The hosts and the older people were seated uncomfortably in front of a set of steps. The young women, clutching their parasols against the sun, were
lined up behind them. Draped around the steps and the flowerpots were a group of young men, boaters tilted. Most elegant of them all, lying languidly on the topmost step, one elbow on the ground, the other hand checking the precise angle of his exquisite hat, was Lord Edward Gresham. He was staring insolently at the lens, as if it was disturbing his afternoon.

  ‘This one here. The one lying down. That’s Lord Edward Gresham.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, Lord Powerscourt. He looks the bit of the dandy. It is so?’ Pannone peered intently at the picture, checking perhaps, to see if there were any regular clients of the Hotel Danieli in the frame. ‘Now, Lord Powerscourt. May I borrow this picture? Or I could get one of the local people to make a copy? Whichever you prefer. I have a plan. Have you looked for people in Venice before, Lord Powerscourt? It is more difficult than you think. Sometimes we have done this before. For the authorities, you understand.’

  More Americans were pouring their way into the great reception room. They were complaining about the prices, prices of Murano glass to take home, prices in the hotel, prices for hiring gondoliers, operatic or not. Don’t they realise, thought Powerscourt, people have been complaining about the prices in Venice for centuries, the price of salt, the price of silks. But they kept coming back.

  ‘Mr Pannone, sorry. I drifted off in my mind, like one of your gondolas. Of course you may keep the magazine. Now, tell me about your plan.’

  ‘My plan depends on the waiters, Lord Powerscourt. Everybody has to eat, it is so? So, they go to the hotels and the restaurants. Waiters serve them. Waiters have eyes and ears, none better. Now then, in a moment, I take the picture to Florian’s in Piazza San Marco. Many of the tourists go there a lot. My friend, the top waiter in Florian’s, he and I circulate your young man round all the hotels and the restaurants. For a day or two this Lord Edward will be the most famous man in the city! All the waiters looking for him!’

  Waiters, thought Powerscourt. How very neat. The waiters of Venice would be pressed into service on his behalf. His very own secret service. Waiters as spies, his spies, their eyes flickering across faces as they served the Spaghetti al Vongole or the Fegato al Veneziano, spies with the claret or the Chianti or the grappa. Such a secret service might have existed centuries before in the days of the Council of Ten or the Council of Three, running Venice’s domestic intelligence services from their shadowy headquarters in the Doges’ Palace, the victims dumped unceremoniously out to sea, or found in the misty Venetian mornings, buried heads down in the pavement by the waterfront.