Death and the Jubilee lfp-2 Page 34

  Lady Lucy knew they were drugging her. She thought they put something in the tea. She felt very dazed all the time. She thought at first that she was in a private house until something impersonal about the furniture and the pictures suggested she was in a hotel. The curtains were kept half drawn. Her captors spoke very little, sometimes in German and sometimes in English. One was always on duty, watching by the windows, scanning the passers-by, inspecting the pavements. Lady Lucy thought she could smell the sea. As she drifted in and out of sleep she wondered where Francis was. She saw him pacing up and down the drawing room in Markham Square, she saw him just a few days ago at the cricket match, marching back to the pavilion after his long spell at the crease, his bat tucked under his arm.

  Francis will find me, she whispered to herself. Francis will find me.

  From the window of his room in the Prince Regent, Powerscourt could just see the sea. Johnny Fitzgerald had gone to buy himself some really disreputable clothes.

  ‘My own mother won’t recognize me when I’ve finished with myself,’ he assured his friend.

  Over to the right the West Pier was thronged with visitors. Sailing boats were taking parties of visitors for trips around the coast. Overhead the seagulls made their patterns and their arabesques against a blue sky flecked with small white clouds. Powerscourt had always thought Brighton was a rather raffish place, a magnet for confidence tricksters and hucksters of every description. He thought of Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice for whom a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly happiness, rows and rows of tents stretching forth filled with young and handsome officers and Lydia herself tenderly flirting with at least six of them at once. But Powerscourt was not thinking of young and handsome officers. He was racking his brains for memories of a siege or a sudden assault where the defenders held captives who had to be taken alive or the war was lost. For he knew that his problems were by no means over if and when they found Lady Lucy. How did they get her out? They could storm the building with the Prime Minister’s regiments or the massed ranks of the Sussex Constabulary but one of the ruffians could cut Lady Lucy’s throat before they surrendered. Powerscourt and his forces could try to climb in through the windows, if the windows were big enough, but there would still be time for Lady Lucy to suffer. Shortly before six o’clock he thought he had found the answer. He tried to find flaws in his scheme. He was sure it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could do. He hastened to the telegraph office and sent two messages to London, asking for a special kind of reinforcements.

  At seven o’clock the Chief Inspector returned. ‘No luck so far, my lord,’ he said to Powerscourt, who was sprawled across one of the Prince Regent’s better sofas. ‘We have worked our way along the sea front and have nearly reached the end. Then we are going to begin working back into the town.’

  ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ said Powerscourt. Suddenly he had an idea. ‘Can you get me a boat, Inspector? I would like to take a sail along the sea front and look at the hotels.’

  ‘A boat? Of course we can get you a boat. We make occasional use of one or two of the fishermen’s vessels. But I would not recommend you boarding one right on the main sea front, there are too many people about. If you walk out past Kemptown towards Rottingdean over there,’ Tait pointed out Powerscourt’s route from the hotel window, ‘we shall pick you up there. I’ll get you a fisherman’s jersey, my lord, you’ll look less conspicuous.’

  One hour later Powerscourt was sitting beside Tait as they made their way out into the English Channel.

  ‘How far out do you want to go, sir?’ asked the fisherman, a bronzed young man with tattoos down his arms.

  ‘Hold on a minute and I’ll tell you,’ said Powerscourt, pulling a pair of binoculars from his pocket. ‘I want to be so far out that I can see everything but nobody on shore could see me.’ He fiddled with the lenses. ‘About one hundred yards further and that should be fine.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the fisherman. Powerscourt noticed that many of the tattoos showed warships of Her Majesty’s Navy.

  What an extraordinary sight it was, Powerscourt thought, as the boat made its way slowly along the Brighton shore. There were elegant Regency squares, some rotting now with the wind and the spray, others gleaming happily in the light. There were military rows like Brunswick Terrace over towards Hove where the houses were lined up in orderly precision, standing shoulder to shoulder like privates on parade. There were other grander buildings, hotels in the Second Empire style, that looked like architectural equivalents of Lydia Bennet, dressed up in frills and furbelows to the height of fashion to capture the hearts of the military buildings nearby. And in the centre of it all, set back from the sea, one of Europe’s most improbable constructions, the Brighton Pavilion with its domes and echoes of the Orient improbably transplanted into the mundane earth of Sussex.

  But it was the hotel windows that interested Powerscourt most. He locked his glasses on to three of the larger hotels in turn. He made his way along the frontage, down to the ground, floor by elegant floor. One of the hotels, he noticed, had the curtains almost completely drawn on the very top floor.

  ‘Suppose you were the villains,’ he said to Tait. ‘You would suspect that an attempt might be made to rush your position with soldiers or policemen. So you would want to be able to see what was coming towards your hotel along the sea front. If I’m right you wouldn’t want to risk one of those hotels in the town itself because you couldn’t see what was coming as easily. The streets are often very narrow. But put yourself in one of those top floors on the front, preferably one with a view both ways, and you would be well warned.’

  He handed the glasses to the policeman.

  ‘Four hotels have rooms that fit your description,’ Tait said. ‘But we have checked them all. And we have drawn a blank in every one. Nobody remembers three people, one of them a woman, checking in last night.’

  Late that night there was a melancholy conference in Powerscourt’s rooms. All the police reports were in. All were negative. Johnny Fitzgerald had walked about the streets, looking remarkably like a recently released jailbird, trying to see if he could spot anything. He had found nothing at all. They resolved to meet again the next morning.

  As Powerscourt leaned out of his window once more, staring at the deserted sea front and the empty elegance of the West Pier, the Town Hall clock struck midnight.

  They had seventy-two hours left to find Lady Lucy.

  31

  At two o’clock in the morning four of Dominic Knox’s agents called on a thirty-five-year-old chemistry teacher of Irish extraction who was famous for his ability to make fireworks at his school of St Michael and St James. Declan Macbride was dreaming when the officers called. He dreamt he was sitting at his desk marking an enormous pile of exam papers. However many he corrected, the pile never grew any less. It was, he had decided wearily, the educational equivalent of Sisyphus pushing his rock uphill for all eternity.

  The agents were very polite, but insistent. They wanted to search his rooms. They knew, as did he, that Declan Macbride had been visited in the last few days by three messengers from Michael Byrne in Dublin. They searched his small desk. They went through his clothes and his books, they went through his cupboards. Shortly before three o’clock they started on the floorboards.

  Two other officers called on a Catholic hostel off the Fulham Palace Road, well known for its links with travellers from Dublin. Three young women had to submit to the same treatment.

  At four o’clock in the morning Lord Francis Powerscourt tiptoed out of his hotel. He made his way slowly down to the sea front. A wind had risen off the sea. Small breakers beat feebly against the pebbles of the beach. There was no moon. He walked past the ruins of the old Chain Pier, gazing sadly at the great hotels, their front doors now locked, curtains drawn against the night air. A lone fisherman was setting out on Brighton’s oldest occupation. The pursuit of fish had been happening here centuries before the pursuit of fashion. So
mewhere behind these windows, he told himself is Lucy. A frightened Lucy, perhaps a drugged Lucy. The bastards. The bastards. He could hear the fisherman’s boat scraping along the beach as he pulled it down into the water. He wondered if he should offer to help him. The first very faint hint of pale grey was appearing on the horizon. Dawn was coming to Brighton, another day for him to find his beloved. He felt hungry suddenly. He wondered if Lucy felt hungry too. Then it struck him. There might just be another way to find her. He hurried back to his hotel and waited for Inspector Tait and his policemen to arrive.

  They came at seven o’clock, a disconsolate bunch, their spirits down after the fruitless visits of yesterday. But Powerscourt was in cheerful form.

  ‘I think we may have been asking the wrong question yesterday. In the hotels, I mean. I’m not sure we could have asked the right question until today.’

  ‘Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘you’re speaking in riddles. Explain yourself, man.’

  ‘My apologies, gentlemen.’ Powerscourt looked round his little audience. ‘My assumption was that the three people we are looking for would have gone to a hotel. I still think they have gone to a hotel. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that they checked into the hotel as a threesome. One German could have checked in with Lady Lucy posing as his wife. Or he could have left Lucy sitting on a chair in the hotel reception while he checked in for them both. The other fellow could have checked in later or gone for a walk, anything like that. It’s quite possible that nobody in the hotel has ever seen them together. So, when we asked about a threesome, the hotel people said they didn’t know, because they actually hadn’t seen a threesome.’

  Chief Inspector Tait was still dressed in cricket flannels, topped off today by a straw hat. ‘So what is the right question, my lord?’

  ‘I think the right question is this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But before I come to it, let me say one other thing. I think our German friends will be very anxious about being followed, or discovered, or rushed by a party of policemen or soldiers. They kidnapped somebody earlier in this case, Chief Inspector, and they did not succeed. Johnny and I rescued him. So they will want somewhere where they have a good view of all routes in and out of where they are. One of them will have to watch Lady Lucy all the time. That means, it seems to me, that they cannot leave their rooms. If they have meals in the hotel dining room somebody may spot Lady Lucy. If they leave the building they themselves may be recognized. So while they have Lucy as their prisoner, they are, to a large extent, prisoners themselves in Room 689 of the Duke of York’s Hotel, or whatever it is called.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Francis.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was growing exasperated. ‘What is the bloody question?’

  ‘Simple,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do you have any guests who have all their meals sent up to their rooms? All of their meals.’

  Chief Inspector Tait grinned. He looks ten years younger all of a sudden, Powerscourt thought.

  ‘Excellent, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Tait. ‘When did you think of that?’

  ‘Just before five o’clock this morning,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk along the sea front. I suddenly felt hungry and wanted some breakfast. Then I wondered if Lucy felt hungry too. Then I asked myself how she would get her breakfast.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tait. ‘They go on serving breakfast until about ten in most of these places. Shortly after ten we can begin our inquiries. Do you suppose, Lord Powerscourt, that we have to begin all over again and revisit all those hotels we called at yesterday?’

  ‘I’m afraid you do, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘I shall go and organize things immediately. No harm in getting our men back in position nice and early. But may I ask you one question, Lord Powerscourt? How do you propose to effect the rescue? I have been thinking about that and there are terrible risks whichever way we do it.’

  ‘I think there may be a way of lessening the odds.’ Powerscourt felt almost cheerful now. ‘But I don’t yet know if it will work. Let’s find them first.’

  ‘Christ Almighty! God in heaven!’ Dominic Knox seldom swore, but the news from his agents at eight o’clock that morning left him in despair. His agents had searched all night and found nothing apart from a few trivial gifts in the schoolteacher’s little kitchen. Nothing. Whatever Michael Byrne was plotting, whatever his schemes for the disruption of the Jubilee, Knox had been sure that these three young women were crucial. They would be carrying explosives or bits of rifles to be assembled in London. That was why he had been so careful not to intercept them until he knew where they had been, who they had visited in the capital. Now his strategy was in ruins. He had been tricked by his Irish opponents. Were the three messengers merely decoys to throw him off the scent? And if they were, what was Michael Byrne really planning? Knox realized he had been looking in the wrong direction, that all his plans had failed. Suddenly he remembered the rifles, buried in their coffins in Wicklow. He sent a telegraph to Dublin to open those graves at once and check the contents of the coffins. Pray to God, said Knox to himself, pray to God those bloody rifles are still there.

  Powerscourt was pacing up and down his living room in the Prince Regent, pausing every now and then to gaze out to sea. Fitzgerald, looking even more decrepit than the day before, had gone to patrol the streets of Brighton. Powerscourt was turning his plan over and over in his mind, looking for flaws. They would only have one chance, just one chance to rescue Lady Lucy and restore happiness to both of them. Shortly after ten, just as the first of Tait’s policemen were interviewing their hotel managers, he spotted a flaw in his plan. Damn, he said to himself. There must be a way round it. He stared at the West Pier, fortune tellers and Pierrots already getting into position for the day’s work. The chambermaid knocked on the door and asked if she could clean the room.

  ‘Later, please, later,’ Powerscourt said abstractedly, looking at the prints of Regency Brighton on the walls. What had the Prime Minister said to him two days before? ‘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.’

  Powerscourt sat down at the writing desk in the corner and composed a telegram to Schomberg McDonnell, private secretary to the Prime Minister.

  The hotel managers of Brighton have always been a world-weary and rather cynical body of men. They felt cheerful that morning. Bright and sunny weather was always good for business. But on this day, as on the day before, they were visited again by the local police, asking a different question this time. No, we have no guests taking meals in their rooms, said the man from the Bristol. His brothers in Christ at the Worcester, the Old Steine, the Sea View and the Royal Exeter agreed. We do have one guest who takes meals in her rooms, the manager of the George told the policeman, who looked up with great expectations in his eyes as he heard the news, but she is eighty-seven years old and is not expected to live long. The Suffolk, the Royal Brighton, the York and the Oxford all shook their heads sadly and wondered what on earth was going on. In a quiet conclave later that afternoon they suspected that some terrible London murderer had fled to the worldly delights of Brighton. A man from the Burlington wondered if Jack the Ripper had come for a holiday by the sea.

  At eleven o’clock Lord Francis Powerscourt had a visitor.

  ‘What a splendid day to come to the seaside!’ said a young man of about thirty years with laughing blue eyes and tousled fair hair.

  ‘Mr Hardy, you were very prompt in answering my telegram from yesterday,’ said Powerscourt, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘How very good to see you.’

  ‘You didn’t give me very much detail,’ said Hardy, the fire investigator who had helped Powerscourt at Blackwater, ‘but life always seems to be interesting when you’re around, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve brought a few things with me but I forgot to pack my bucket and spade.�
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  Powerscourt told him of Lucy’s kidnap. He showed him the kidnap letter. He explained that the police were talking to every hotel owner in Brighton. He explained to Hardy what he wanted.

  ‘I see, I see. What fun! What a lark, Lord Powerscourt!’ Hardy was rubbing his hands together in delight at the challenge ahead. ‘I did take the liberty of sending a wire to the local brigade. Am I right in thinking that you don’t yet know precisely which hotel we may be talking about?’

  Powerscourt assured him that he did not yet have that intelligence.

  ‘I think I’ll take a walk down to the sea front,’ the young man said, ‘and have a look at the type of building we may be dealing with. But I tell you this, Lord Powerscourt. It’s all a lot more fun than those insurance claims back in London!’

  At twelve o’clock the cannon on the West Pier boomed out for midday, a secular and seaside Angelus for the holidaymakers promenading up and down the front. The seagulls protested loudly and flew out to sea in angry battalions. Even after years of the gun tolling twelve they still hadn’t learnt to expect it.

  The hotel managers of the Rottingdean and the Kemptown told the policemen that they had no guests taking their meals in their rooms. The Piccadilly did have such a guest but he was a young man who had broken his leg the day before. The Piccadilly’s hotel manager assured his visitors that the young man expected to be mobile in a couple of days. The policemen were half-way up the front by now and were almost opposite the Royal Pavilion.

  Powerscourt stood staring out of the window at the sea front. One o’clock passed, then two. Joseph Hardy had not returned from his inspection of the hotels. Johnny Fitzgerald had departed once more in his tramp’s uniform to see what he could find. Maybe I’ve been wrong all along, Powerscourt thought bitterly. He looked at his watch. He could now calculate from any given hour of the day exactly how long he had to save Lady Lucy. At this point there were fifty-eight hours and eighteen minutes left. There might be a bit longer while the messages came down from London that Harrison’s Bank had been rescued. But then?