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  ‘My God, Powerscourt, this is the most terrible thing I have heard in all my days. I shall speak to my counterparts in Sussex. The resources of the Brighton force will be put at your disposal.’

  Powerscourt had expressed his gratitude. ‘But don’t you see, Commissioner,’ he said, ‘how difficult the thing is. First we have to find her. But the kidnappers must not know we have found them. You have seen what they say in their note.’

  Even the Commissioner shuddered.

  ‘If we find them,’ said Powerscourt, pacing up and down the drawing room like one of Nelson’s captains on his quarterdeck, ‘we have to work out a way of getting Lucy from their clutches. And, believe me, I cannot see how we do it at present.’

  Out in the square a plain-clothes man was talking to the two policemen. A delivery van arrived and began unloading cases of wine at a house with a red door across the way. Life in Markham Square went on, even as the Prime Minister of Great Britain tried to negotiate the salvation of the City of London in Number 25 and Lord Francis Powerscourt was closer to despair than he had ever been in his life.

  There was another rush up the stairs. A distant corner of Powerscourt’s mind automatically noticed that Schomberg McDonnell was not out of breath at all. Perhaps it keeps you fit, he thought, working for the Prime Minister.

  ‘Four and a half per cent,’ he announced, ‘fifteen years.’

  ‘Christ, he’s going to make even more money out of us that way,’ said the Prime Minister, opening his eyes.

  ‘Royal Commission, Prime Minister?’ asked McDonnell.

  ‘Not yet, not yet, dammit. Try him with some of that fashionable stuff. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Weekend at Sandringham with the Prince and Princess of Wales?’ said McDonnell. ‘Dinner in their London home at Marlborough House?’

  ‘Not weekend, McDonnell, weekends. Plural.’

  ‘God help him!’ said the private secretary, and shot back down the stairs. They heard a faint click as the study door closed on the floor below.

  ‘Interest charges would run on that deal at two hundred and twenty five thousand a year,’ said William Burke. ‘That’s not including repayment of the principal.’

  The Prime Minister subsided on to the sofa once more. Burke prepared more sections of his book with headings of five million pounds. Powerscourt noticed that there was now a subsidiary row of figures labelled one per cent, half per cent, quarter per cent. Burke was preparing for all eventualities. The Governor wished most devoutly that he was somewhere else.

  So did Powerscourt. Suddenly he could hear Lucy’s voice echoing in his mind. She was reading a bedtime story to Thomas, her tone soft and quiet in the hope it would send the little boy to sleep. It was a fairy story about a princess locked up in a tower. Only a handsome prince could rescue her from her prison on the top of the mountain. He went to the window to blink back his tears.

  This time the negotiations seemed quicker than before. The Governor had only looked at his watch once before McDonnell was back.

  ‘Four per cent over fifteen years,’ he reported.

  The Prime Minister snorted as though he had expected better tidings. ‘All right, McDonnell. Royal Commission.’

  ‘Member or Chairman?’

  ‘Start with member,’ instructed the Prime Minister, ‘see how you go.

  ‘Very good, Prime Minister.’

  ‘You’re down to two hundred thousand pounds interest charges a year now, Prime Minister,’ said Burke cheerfully. ‘Total interest charges of three million. Three to catch five.’

  ‘Could be worse,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘could be worse.’

  Where is she? Powerscourt asked himself. What are they doing to her? He wished the meeting would end and he could tell his news to the Prime Minister and rush off to Brighton. He felt completely detached from this meeting, as if it were all a dream. It’s a Greek tragedy, he thought. McDonnell is the Chorus, forever coming back on stage with fresh news of atrocities and the unburied dead. Hold on, Lucy, I’m coming. Hold on.

  Rosebery had ringed a number of entries in his racing paper. Burke was now marking out further pages of his notebook ready for new calculations of interest charges. Powerscourt saw that he now had a separate heading called Repayment of Capital, underlined twice.

  ‘Maybe we should open a book on how long each negotiation will be,’ said Rosebery, inspired by his study of the turf. ‘I say he’ll be back inside three minutes.’ There was not time for anybody to reply. Just inside the Rosebery timetable McDonnell returned.

  ‘Three and three quarter per cent. Twenty years,’ he announced.

  ‘Member or Chairman?’ asked the Prime Minister.

  ‘Chairman,’ said McDonnell. ‘I thought it was worth it for the extra five years.’

  ‘What have we left now?’ The Prime Minister was still lying back on his sofa.

  ‘Let me try him with clubland, sir,’ said McDonnell. ‘I talked to a man last night who said Messel had been very disappointed when he was blackballed by the Coldstream.’

  ‘Carry on, McDonnell.’

  ‘Very good, Prime Minister.’

  ‘I hope we can deliver these bloody clubs for him, Rosebery,’ said the Prime Minister, turning to his predecessor. ‘Never cared for them much myself. But you belong to one or two, don’t you?’

  ‘Rest assured, Prime Minister, the clubs should be fine.’ Rosebery smiled. ‘The last time I counted I belonged to thirty-seven.’

  ‘God bless my soul!’ said the Prime Minister. ‘How ever do you find the time to go to them all?’

  One of the stairs at the bottom of the hall was creaking, Powerscourt noticed. There was a small but noticeable squeak that heralded the return of the private secretary.

  ‘Three and a half per cent, Prime Minister, over twenty years. It seems Mr Messel is very fond of clubs even though he doesn’t belong to many. That’s the MCC, the Royal Yacht Squadron, the Coldstream, the Warwick, the Beefsteak, the Athenaeum and the Jockey Club.’

  ‘All gone?’ asked the Prime Minister.

  ‘All gone,’ McDonnell nodded.

  ‘Christ, that’s a lot of clubs. Can we cope with that lot, Rosebery?’

  ‘We can, Prime Minister. But somebody should have warned him about the Warwick. The food is disgusting.’

  ‘We’re running out of bait,’ said the Prime Minister, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘A position on government committees, Prime Minister?’ McDonnell seemed to have taken the measure of Franz Augustine Messel. ‘I think he’d go for that, Mr Messel.’

  ‘Any damned committee?’ asked the Prime Minister. ‘Forestry? Technical Education? Maritime Shipping?’

  ‘Something like that, Prime Minister.’

  ‘Use your judgement, McDonnell. Off you go.’

  The Governor of the Bank of England joined Powerscourt by the window. The Americans had left. The policemen still guarded Number 25. Rosebery returned to the racing pages, marking out some more winners for the afternoon. Burke was now writing his own name over and over again in the last page of the account book. The Prime Minister closed his eyes once more. Powerscourt was thinking again about professional success and personal failure. He thought again about the Farrell family, thrown out on to the unforgiving streets of London. He thought that he might never see Lucy again. I’ve just got to find her, he said to himself, clenching his fists very tightly. I’m bloody well going to find her. Hold on, Lucy. I’m coming. Hold on.

  That squeak again. McDonnell’s face never changes every time he comes back, Powerscourt noticed. Nobody looking at him could have guessed what sort of tidings he was bringing with him.

  ‘Three per cent over twenty years. No interest payable for the first two years,’ he reported.

  ‘What’s that, Mr Burke?’ asked the Prime Minister from his sofa.

  ‘One hundred and fifty thousand a year, sir,’ said Burke.

  ‘Done,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I’ll settle for that. What did y
ou have to offer the fellow for the extra half per cent, McDonnell?’

  ‘I’m afraid I said it was likely that there would be a joint committee of both Houses looking into the whole question of foreign loans.’

  ‘Did you, by God,’ said the Prime Minister.

  ‘I thought,’ said McDonnell, looking his most innocent, ‘that Mr Messel might have useful things to say on the subject. And I only said it was likely, Prime Minister. Nothing definite. Nothing we couldn’t wriggle out of later on, if we had to.’

  ‘Powerscourt,’ the Prime Minister rose from his sofa at last, ‘we’re obliged to you for the loan of your house. I’d be even more grateful if you could manage some champagne. Governor, Mr Burke, could you attend to the financial paperwork and so on with Mr Messel? Soon to be Lord Messel, God help us all. Bring the fellow up here, McDonnell. We must drink a toast! To the salvation of the City!’

  Welcome, Mr Messel, thought Powerscourt bitterly, welcome to the higher hypocrisies. Welcome to the insider’s world. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the Jubilee. Welcome to Britain as it is in the year of Our Lord 1897.

  ‘Could I just have a private word, Prime Minister?’ Powerscourt closed the door on the departing financiers. He told the Prime Minister what had happened. He showed him the letter from the kidnappers, already slightly crumpled from being taken out and read so many times. He wondered what the Prime Minister would do. He knew that men said he was one of the most ruthless political operators of the century, that the corridors and the committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster were littered with the corpses of his political opponents. His first response was not what Powerscourt expected at all.

  ‘My God, Powerscourt,’ the Prime Minister said, ‘the last hour and a half must have been torture for you, listening to these negotiations and McDonnell running up and down the stairs. It must have been hell. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was fair,’ said Powerscourt sadly. ‘You can see that if these negotiations had failed, then Harrison’s Bank would have fallen and Lady Lucy could have been back in this house this evening.’

  He looked quickly round the room as if his wife might just float in through the window.

  ‘By God, you must find her, Powerscourt!’ The Prime Minister paused, stroking his beard. The Powerscourt cat had made an unexpected entrance. It curled up happily on the Prime Minister’s lap, purring loudly that it had found a new friend.

  ‘Let me tell you what I can do,’ he went on, scratching the cat’s chin as he spoke. ‘I can put the resources of the State at your disposal. If you want a regiment or two, you can have them. If you want a couple of destroyers moored off the coast of Brighton you can have them. If you want Brighton sealed off by the authorities, we can do it.’

  He paused. A look of distaste passed across his features. This was going to be the bit Powerscourt dreaded. He knew what was coming.

  ‘Let me also tell you what I cannot do, my friend.’ The cat seemed to sense that its new friend was false. It leapt off the Prime Minister’s lap and settled at Powerscourt’s feet. ‘I have had the honour to serve Her Majesty as her Prime Minister for seven years now. In that time I have done whatever I thought necessary to preserve liberty and the constitution at home and the power and reputation of this country abroad. But one thing I cannot do, however much personal circumstances might work on my heart.’

  He looked rather sadly at Powerscourt.

  ‘I cannot give in to blackmail, wherever it comes from. Government would become impossible. Thanks to your skill, this wicked plot has been uncovered and repulsed. I cannot have that victory thrown away. They say, Lord Powerscourt, that you are the most accomplished investigator in the land. I have no doubt that you will succeed in rescuing Lady Powerscourt from this contemptible gang of sordid blackmailers. Let us know if there is anything you need.’

  ‘All I need,’ said Powerscourt bitterly, ‘is the one thing I haven’t got. Time. I’ve got less than four days to find her now.’

  ‘With all my heart I wish you Godspeed,’ said the Prime Minister, rising to extricate himself from a difficult situation. ‘We shall all pray for your success.’

  30

  The train was full of families going down to Brighton for the day. Powerscourt noticed that his uniform acted as a magnet for the small children. They stared at him shyly, peering out from behind their hands, hiding round the backs of the adults. He was sharing his compartment with a family of six, accompanied by their parents.

  ‘Can I have a ride on the donkeys, Papa?’ asked a small girl of about seven.

  ‘Can we go on the pier, Papa?’ – this from a boy of about ten.

  ‘Can we go out in a boat?’ said a future sailor, then about eight years old.

  ‘Yes, yes and yes!’ laughed their father, gathering three of his brood onto his lap. ‘We’re going to have such a good day!’

  Powerscourt smiled the complicit smile of parenthood. It was, he realized, the first time he had smiled in the last eighteen hours. He hoped that he too would have a good day, but he rather doubted it. Hold on, Lucy, he said to himself as the train roared through the great tunnel a few miles from Brighton and the sea. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.

  He found Johnny Fitzgerald eating a steak pie and drinking lemonade in the hotel by Brighton station.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘but I’ve had a terrible morning.’

  ‘The lemonade, Johnny.’ Powerscourt pressed on. ‘I’ve never seen you drink lemonade before in all my life. And I’ve known you over twenty years.’

  ‘I tell you what, Francis.’ Fitzgerald had turned serious now. ‘I went for a walk along the sea front late last night when most of the citizens had gone to bed. And I said to myself that I’m not going to take another drop until we have found Lucy. Not another drop.’

  A tall man of about forty, wearing cricket whites, approached their table.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the cricketer, ‘would you gentlemen be Lord Francis Powerscourt and Lord Johnny Fitzgerald?’

  Powerscourt froze. His hand went automatically into the right-hand jacket pocket of his uniform. Surely they could not have been identified so soon? Johnny Fitzgerald’s hand tightened on his lemonade glass as if he would turn it into a weapon. You could cut somebody’s face open with a broken glass of lemonade.

  ‘We are,’ Powerscourt said quietly. The man in the flannels, he saw, had watched them both very carefully.

  ‘Chief Inspector Robin Tait of the Sussex Constabulary,’ said the man. He showed them a piece of paper with his credentials. ‘We have been warned about your problems. I have a team of six men at your disposal, sir.’ He bowed slightly to Powerscourt. ‘Most of them, like me, are in cricket clothes to look as unlike policemen as possible. More officers, the entire resources of the Sussex Constabulary, are on standby for your call, if we need them. I understand we are looking for a party of three or four people, one of them a woman. Do you by any chance have a photograph of the lady so we know who we are looking for?’

  Powerscourt produced a recent photograph of Lady Lucy and handed it over reluctantly. He always carried it with him. He felt that in some irrational way he was losing Lucy yet again, giving her over to the care of the Brighton police force. Still, at least they wouldn’t kidnap her.

  ‘Let me sum up our thoughts, Chief Inspector.’ Powerscourt managed another smile in the direction of the white-flannelled Chief Inspector. ‘We know that the party boarded a train from London to Brighton last night, two men and a woman. My first instinct was that they would stay in a hotel as I did not think they would have had the time to make earlier plans which could have involved renting houses or other accornmodation. We have three days to find them. If we do not, Lady Lucy will be killed. If either Johnny Fitzgerald or myself or any police officers in uniform or plain clothes are seen looking for them, they will start to mistreat my wife. I think you should read thi
s.’

  Powerscourt took out the kidnap note and handed it to Tait. He swore softly as he read it.

  ‘There’s a problem with these hotels, Francis.’ Fitzgerald had finished his steak pie. ‘I found a porter who had seen them arrive at Brighton station. He said Lucy looked unwell. But I haven’t been able to find anybody who drove them to wherever they were going. And these hotels aren’t very co-operative at all. I’ve tried six of them so far. But they have people checking in and out all the time. They don’t remember anybody very well.’

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Chief Inspector, handing him back the message, ‘I have the manpower to check out all these hotels by the end of the day. I should be able to do so with the men under my command, and these are all hand-picked for tact and discretion, and, if you will allow me to say so, for not looking at all like police officers. Now we have a description of the lady, it should be easier. I think you gentlemen should keep out of sight for the hours of daylight at least.’

  ‘It breaks my heart, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt sadly, ‘that I should not be able to take part in this search. But if I were spotted, and anything were to happen to Lucy, I could never forgive myself. And I think that applies to you too, Johnny.’

  The Chief Inspector rose to his feet. ‘I propose to begin the search immediately. There is a quiet hotel not two minutes from here called the Prince Regent. We have already checked that the people we are looking for are not there. Could I suggest that we meet there in a few hours’ time. If we have any luck before then I shall let you know.’