Death and the Jubilee lfp-2 Read online

The front door was open when he arrived. Powerscourt had a sudden premonition that something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. He called for Lady Lucy. There was no reply. He hurtled up the stairs to check that the children were safe. Thomas and Olivia slept the deep sleep of the very young. Robert was nowhere to be seen. He looked in all the bedrooms for his wife. Perhaps she has gone for a walk in the park, he said to himself. But he knew that was not very likely. Lucy had said to him before he left for his meeting with the Prime Minister that she would be waiting for his return. She was anxious to hear the news.

  Then he saw the letter. It was lying innocuously on the little table by the front door. ‘Lord Francis Powerscourt’, it said, in a handwriting that had not been learnt in an English school. Powerscourt tore it open. He noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.

  ‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’ it said, ‘We have your wife. If anything is done to save Harrison’s Bank between now and Monday, you will never see her again. If events are allowed to run their course, she will be returned unharmed. But if Harrison’s are saved, she will be dead within the hour. And if we see you or any of your associates, or any policemen, in uniform or not, we shall begin by cutting her face open.’

  Lady Lucy had been kidnapped.

  There was no signature. Powerscourt felt his head spinning. Christ in heaven, he said. Christ in heaven. He looked again at the envelope. He inspected the notepaper for any clues. Both were perfectly normal and could have been purchased in any stationer’s shop in London. Or in Germany. He looked at them again. He wanted to scream. He began walking up and down the room, blinking back the tears. Christ in heaven, he said again. The bastards. Strange memories of Lucy danced across his brain. He saw her as she had been in this very room in the early evening a couple of days before. She was sitting in her favourite armchair by the window, reading. The late afternoon sun was pouring through the windows casting a glow, almost a halo over the blonde hair. One side of her face was in deep shadow. As she read, little smiles or slight frowns would cross her face. When she realized he was looking at her, she had blushed a bright pink. ‘Francis,’ she had said, ‘I didn’t know you were watching me like that. I’m not one of your suspects, am I?’ And then she laughed as she rose to embrace him.

  Now she was gone. The bastards. Hold on Lucy, Powerscourt sent his prayer out into the pagan air of Chelsea, hold on. I’m coming, Lucy. I’m coming.

  He had no idea how to find her. He knew he wasn’t thinking very clearly. He wrote a note to Johnny Fitzgerald and signed it Excalibur. Excalibur meant drop everything, whatever you are doing, come as fast as you can. He had only used it once before. He started walking up and down the room again, his anger rising inside him in waves of fury he couldn’t control. Then the door was flung open and an exhausted Robert collapsed on the sofa. His face was very red and he was panting heavily.

  ‘Francis,’ he gasped, ‘they’ve got Mama. The bad men.’

  Powerscourt sat down beside him. ‘Let me get you a glass of water,’ he said, ‘you look as if you need it.’

  Robert drained the glass in one long pull.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Take your time. Take it slowly.’

  ‘It must have been about an hour ago.’ Robert’s voice was breaking as he spoke. ‘I heard this great row going on down below. I came out of my room and peeped round the stairs. Two men were pulling Mama along the hall. They were shouting at her to be quiet. She was shouting back. I think she was saying, How dare you? Let go of me. Then she screamed. One of the men put something over her face and she went quiet. They pulled her out of the front door. I think they had a cab waiting outside.’

  The boy stopped. He took a couple of deep breaths. Powerscourt thought the tears weren’t very far away.

  ‘I came down the stairs as fast as I could,’ Robert went on. ‘And I saw the cab up at the corner of the street so I ran after it. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.’

  ‘Did you see where it went, Robert?’

  The boy nodded and pulled a rather dirty handkerchief from his pocket. Blowing his nose seemed to calm him.

  ‘You know how bad the traffic is at that time of the day,’ he said, looking to Powerscourt for confirmation. His stepfather nodded. ‘If I ran as fast as I could, I could just about keep up with them. I kept some way behind them. I didn’t think you would want me to get too close in case they saw me.’

  Powerscourt nodded. ‘You were right, Robert, absolutely right.’

  ‘They went up the King’s Road as far as Sloane Square,’ Robert went on. Powerscourt had a sudden vision of that new restaurant he had been going to take Lucy to, just off Sloane Square, the white linen crisp and clean on the table, the candles glistening in the evening light, the wine sparkling in the glasses. He dug his nails very hard into his palms to stop the tears.

  Hold on Lucy, I’m coming, hold on.

  ‘Then they went down towards the river for a bit,’ said Robert. ‘Over into Pimlico Road – the traffic was quite light there, I had to run at full speed for about two hundred yards, I was worried I was going to lose them – and then they got stuck turning into Buckingham Palace Road. They ended up at Victoria station.’

  ‘Did they get on a train?’ Powerscourt was really worried now. Victoria was where people went if they wanted to go to Dover and the Continent. If they have left England, he thought, he might never find Lucy again.

  ‘I thought I’d lost them there, the crowds were so big,’ Robert continued. ‘Then I saw them. Mama looked as though she was drunk or drugged or something like that. The two men were pulling her along. Nobody took any notice. I suppose they thought she was ill. They took a train to Brighton. I know it was Brighton because I asked the ticket man after it had left if the train stopped at all. He said it didn’t, it went direct.’

  Then Robert broke down completely. He cried for his lost mother, sitting on the sofa in her house in Markham Square, dusk slowly falling over the streets of London. Lady Lucy’s favourite clock was ticking quietly in the corner.

  ‘Robert,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I am very very proud of you. You have done magnificently.’

  It didn’t work. The tears flowed on. Powerscourt was close to tears himself as he looked at the boy, twelve years old and you could see his mother in his face, the same eyes, the same nose, the same fair hair.

  ‘The thing is,’ Robert went on’ ‘I should have got on the train. I could have followed them to Brighton and seen where they went, then come back and told you.’ Robert shook his head. He reached for his handkerchief again and wiped his eyes. ‘But I didn’t have any money. I hadn’t any money at all. I did have the money Mama gave me but I’d been to buy a new cricket bat. It’s upstairs in my room. I think I’m going to throw it away now. If only I’d waited until tomorrow.’

  Robert wept, the tears falling onto the new cushions Lady Lucy had bought the week before. Powerscourt felt desolated.

  ‘You mustn’t throw your new bat away,’ he said very gently. ‘You must tap it in and then when your mother comes back we will come and watch you score a hundred.’

  ‘Do you think she will come back?’ asked Robert through his tears.

  ‘I’m sure of it. Thanks to you, we know where she is. All we have to do now is to find her.’

  ‘Can I help? Can I help you find her?’

  Powerscourt wondered what his mother would have thought about Robert missing school. He felt sure she wouldn’t approve. He had seen Robert packed off to his lessons with colds that would have kept lesser men in bed for the day.

  ‘I don’t think your Mama would want you in any danger, Robert,’ Powerscourt said. ‘You’ve done most of the work already, now we know where she is.’ He sat down beside Robert and held him very tight. ‘We’re going to find her,‘ he said. ‘We’re definitely going to find her.’

  Hold on Lucy, I’m coming, hold on.

  29

  Lady Lucy didn’t know very much about what was happening to her. T
hose horrid men kept putting something over her face. Fragments of hymns and prayers from her childhood floated through her mind. Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. God be with us in our waking and in our sleeping. The day thou gavest Lord has ended, the darkness falls at thy behest. One thought never left her. Francis will find me. Francis will find me. Then she would drift off to sleep.

  Johnny Fitzgerald arrived shortly before nine o’clock, clutching a sinister-looking black bag. He took one look at Powerscourt’s face. The joke he had been about to tell dried on his lips.

  ‘What’s happened, Francis? Christ, you look terrible!’

  Powerscourt told him about the abduction of Lady Lucy, about Robert’s heroic pursuit of the villainous pair, of their departure with a drugged Lucy to Brighton. He handed Fitzgerald the note they had left behind.

  Johnny Fitzgerald read it quickly. Then he read it again. He looked at his friend, his features drawn now, lines of worry etched across his forehead.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Francis. The bastards. They’ll pay for this. They bloody well will.’

  Fitzgerald helped himself to a monstrous glass of whisky from the sideboard.

  ‘We must make a plan, Johnny. We’ve never got anywhere without having some sort of idea of what we were trying to do.’

  Powerscourt thought bitterly that he and Johnny had never had such a difficult task in all their years together.

  ‘I don’t think I can go to Brighton tonight, Johnny.’ Powerscourt sounded very sad. ‘I’ve got this meeting here tomorrow morning with the Prime Minister and a man who may save Harrison’s Bank. If that fails, then Harrison’s Bank will fall in a few days time and the reputation of the City of London will be ruined for years to come. But if that happens, Lucy should come back, if those fellows keep their word.’

  ‘Francis, Francis, do you know what you are saying?’ Fitzgerald was drinking his whisky very fast. ‘You sound as if you want that meeting to succeed. Surely you want it to fail. Otherwise you may never see Lucy again. Can’t you persuade the Prime Minister to call the whole thing off, to let the bank fail and to hell with the consequences?’

  ‘I’ve thought of that, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt bitterly. ‘I seem to have a choice, don’t I? Professional success means personal failure. Professional failure means personal success, don’t you see? Success in this case could mean death for Lucy. Failure could mean that Lucy lives. So it looks as though I have to choose between the failure of the bank, the collapse of the Jubilee, and my precious Lucy, mother of my children. But I don’t think it works like that. I know which course I would pick, of course. But I also know which course the Prime Minister would take. If he has to choose between one life and national humiliation, he will sacrifice a life. That’s the kind of choice Prime Ministers have to take. Think of the number of lives they throw away when the nation goes to war. One life, just one, isn’t even going to keep him awake at night.’

  ‘So what do we do, Francis?’ Fitzgerald could see the torture in his friend’s eyes.

  ‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ said Powerscourt. ‘We’ve got to find Lucy in the next four days, that’s all we’ve got before the final showdown at that bloody bank. I think you should go down to Brighton this minute. There may be somebody left on duty at the station who may remember them, maybe even a cab driver who took them wherever they were going.’

  Fitzgerald was looking at a portrait of Lady Lucy, hanging by the fireplace. Whistler had painted her in a pale evening gown against a dark background. Her eyes looked as though she was teasing the painter. Fitzgerald took another medicinal dose of his whisky.

  ‘I would think they must have gone to a hotel, Francis,’ he said. ‘Think about it. They can’t have known before they started that they were going to have to pull off a stunt like this. They can’t have rented a house in Brighton or anything like that.

  ‘We do have a problem, Francis.’ Fitzgerald was still staring, as if hypnotized, at Whistler’s version of Lady Lucy’s face. ‘They will have a good idea of what we look like, you and I. I may even have met one or two of our kidnapping friends in Berlin. We can’t use the police. If they see a policeman they may do something to Lady Lucy. Sorry, but it’s true.’

  Powerscourt started shaking as he thought about the razors. Another wave of uncontrollable anger was surging through him. He knew he would just have to wait till it passed.

  ‘And if we send in the policemen in plain clothes,’ Fitzgerald went on quickly, ‘they’ll be recognized. I don’t know what it is about policemen in plain clothes, but they’re even more recognizable than if they had their bloody uniforms on.’

  Powerscourt was lost in thought. Uniforms. Something to do with uniforms.

  ‘Johnny,’ he said, pacing up and down the room again, ‘uniforms can make you almost invisible. If you’re a fireman or somebody like that people don’t really look at you at all. They look at the uniform.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting, are you,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘that we turn into the Sussex Fire Brigade? Not that I wouldn’t like climbing up those big ladders and waving the hosepipes about.’

  ‘No, I’m not, Johnny.’ Powerscourt was deadly serious. ‘It was the principle of the thing I was thinking about. Army officers.’ Powerscourt said triumphantly. ‘I’ve still got my uniform. You must still have yours somewhere. We could be a couple of heroes home from the wars.’

  Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy’s favourite clock. He wondered yet again where she was.

  ‘It’s nearly half-past nine, Johnny,’ he said firmly. ‘This is what we should do. Off you go to Brighton with your uniform. Do you have any medals? Ask at the station about any sightings of Lucy earlier in the evening. In the morning, Captain Fitzgerald begins making discreet inquiries of the hotel managers in Brighton. Begin at the Kemptown end and work your way along the sea front. I shall see you at the railway station at one o’clock tomorrow. I’m going to talk to the Police Commissioner here later on. We may not be able to send the police out into the front line but we shall have a substantial body of reinforcements to call on. God speed, Johnny.’

  Fitzgerald fled into the night, whistling the Londonderry Air as he searched for a cab in the soft evening air of Markham Square.

  As he tossed in his bed that night, the space beside him empty and cold, Powerscourt sent out another message. He directed it down the Brighton Line.

  Hold on, Lucy, I’m coming. Hold on.

  ‘What in God’s name is keeping him? McDonnell’s been downstairs for nearly half an hour.’

  The Prime Minister was growing impatient. An improbable quartet waited nervously in the upstairs drawing room in Number 25 Markham Square. One floor below, in Powerscourt’s study, Mr Franz Augustine Messel, millionaire many times over, was closeted with Schomberg McDonnell, private secretary to the Prime Minister, and the finest tea the Powerscourt household could provide. Messel had travelled down from his Oxfordshire mansion, arriving in Chelsea shortly before ten o’clock.

  ‘We just have to be patient,’ said William Burke, poring over a book of accounts.

  ‘We don’t have that much time, you know,’ said the Governor of the Bank of England. ‘We really need to have that money today to make sure we can cope with all the necessary particulars of transfer and so on.’ The Governor was, if anything, even more anxious and uncertain than he had been the night before. He paced up and down the room, wringing his hands. Rosebery was reading the racing papers.

  Powerscourt was standing by the window. Two policemen were stationed discreetly among the trees. Some stray American tourists in London for the Jubilee were admiring the houses in loud East Coast accents and wondering if Boston could offer anything finer. He felt weak from lack of sleep and sick with worry. He thought he had drifted off a couple of times in the night but terrible visions of Lucy being ill treated left him exhausted. He had resolved not to say anything to the Prime Minister or anybody else until this meeting was over.

  There was a rus
h of footsteps up the stairs.

  ‘Right, Prime Minister.’ Schomberg McDonnell was a mild-looking young man with an innocent face and fine brown eyes. ‘Sorry that took so long. I had to explain to Mr Messel that we could not, under any circumstances, tell him the reason why we wanted the money.’

  ‘What’s the score?’ asked the Prime Minister, rising from his recumbent position on the sofa.

  ‘Five million pounds at five per cent, payable over ten years,’ McDonnell replied.

  The Bank of England looked aghast. Rosebery turned pale. The Prime Minister seemed unconcerned.

  ‘We couldn’t lose that much in the Treasury accounts over ten years. We need a longer payback time, McDonnell.’

  ‘I understand, Prime Minister.’

  ‘Peerage,’ said Lord Salisbury firmly.

  ‘Set against the interest rate or term of loan?’

  ‘Both,’ said the Prime Minister.

  ‘Christ!’ said McDonnell, and fled downstairs to do his master’s bidding.

  ‘I was never very good at mental arithmetic at school,’ said the Prime Minister, turning to William Burke. ‘Don’t think I could ever have managed the Exchequer. But something tells me that we should have to find two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year in interest charges alone on that deal. Couldn’t have managed it.’

  Burke looked up from his account book.

  ‘You are absolutely right, Prime Minister. Perhaps you would like me to do the calculations for you as further bulletins emerge?’

  ‘That’s uncommon civil of you, Mr Burke. I’m much obliged.’

  With that the Prime Minister sank back on to the sofa and closed his eyes. My God, thought Powerscourt, he’s not going to sleep at a time like this. The Governor of the Bank was looking desperately at his watch. Burke had opened a new page in his book and was writing five million in large figures at the top. He drew a line a third of the way down the page and put another heading of five million pounds.

  Powerscourt wondered how much a human life was worth. Just one. Just Lucy’s. He thought of the other human lives, the Farrells and the thousands like them whose prospects would be ruined if Harrison’s Private Bank were forced to sell off all the properties they held for charities. He looked again at the portrait of Lady Lucy. He felt the tears starting in his eyes and thought of other things. He thought of Johnny Fitzgerald checking out the Brighton hotels, he thought of his meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner late the night before, the Commissioner looking pale as he sat drinking brandy in Lady Lucy’s favourite chair.