Death and the Jubilee lfp-2 Page 39

  Powerscourt was thinking about Lucy and the journey they would take when all of this was over. Maybe the Italian Lakes, he said to himself, remembering Old Miss Harrison in Blackwater House describing her holidays there all those years ago. Charles William Adams, he read, Mary Nightingale, Albert James Smith, beloved husband of Martha.

  Maybe the Italian coast, Portofino in its fabulous position right on the sea’s edge. Somebody had told him about Corsica, wild and mountainous but with magnificent scenery and great peaks rising out of the very coastline itself. Anne Louisa Jackson, Catherine Jane O’Malley, Thomas Piper, Gone but not Forgotten.

  Maybe we shouldn’t go abroad at all, he thought. Maybe we should just go about our lives very quietly rejoicing in each other and the fact that we’re still alive and not in a place like this. The roll call of the dead went on, the names tolling in his head as he passed them by.

  Peter John Cartwright, Rest in Peace, Bertha Jane Hardy, George Michael Simpson, Gone to his Father in Heaven.

  ‘Francis, Francis!’ Johnny Fitzgerald was beckoning to him from about two hundred yards away. Powerscourt ran the whole way, his spade over his shoulder, hoping that the long search was over at last.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Fitzgerald softly, ‘Dermot Sebastian Freely, born 18th February 1820, passed away 30th May 1897. I am the Resurrection and the Life.’

  Powerscourt looked carefully round the cemetery. He saw no living soul, only the birds rising and swooping over the rich pickings of Belgravia. In his tree the small boy snuggled into his branches, scarcely daring to breathe.

  Resurrection was coming early for Dermot Sebastian Freely. In a few minutes Fitzgerald was lying on top of the grave, great piles of earth on one side of him, screwdriver in hand.

  ‘One,’ said Fitzgerald, placing a large screw between his teeth. Powerscourt was gazing round the four corners of the West London Cemetery.

  ‘Two,’ said Fitzgerald. Powerscourt turned from his inspection and peered down into the open grave.

  ‘Three,’ said Fitzgerald rather indistinctly as the third screw was clamped between his teeth. The small boy saw that the two men had their backs to him now. The fisherman’s jersey wasn’t looking round the place any more. He knew what they were doing, opening up the grave. The Christian Brothers at school had told him this was a mortal sin. Very slowly, very quietly, he began to make his way down the tree onto the path outside the walls.

  ‘Four,’ said Fitzgerald, placing the screws carefully on the ground beside his spade. Powerscourt made his way to the other end of the coffin. They began to pull at the lid as hard as they could.

  The small boy had reached the ground. He looked around him quickly. Then he began to run as fast as he could to find his father. His Pa and his new friend from Dublin would be pleased with him.

  ‘Heave,’ said Fitzgerald, panting hard. ‘Heave for God’s sake.’ Powerscourt put his feet on the bottom section of the coffin and pulled with all his might. Very slowly the lid came off, inch by tantalizing inch. The coffin did not want to reveal its secrets. Then it came off completely, throwing Powerscourt and Fitzgerald back on to the grass. Dermot Sebastian Freely was not inside.

  36

  Platoons of pink clouds were drifting across the sky, floating gently towards the west and the setting sun. Powerscourt and Fitzgerald looked at each other. Then they stared, mesmerized, at the contents of the grave. Dermot Sebastian Freely’s coffin contained no mortal remains, but four long packages, wrapped in brown paper. At the bottom were a number of small boxes. Mauser Gesellschaft, Berlin, said the legend.

  Here, thought Powerscourt, here is the final, the conclusive proof of the links between the German secret society and the Irish revolutionaries. He had watched these coffins come ashore in the middle of the night in the little harbour of Greystones, borne into land by muffled oars from a great yacht out at sea. He had followed them on their sinister journey into the Wicklow Mountains just a month ago. Now he met them again, sent from Ireland to this enormous cemetery to lie among the English dead, before being collected and sent on their deadly mission.

  Fitzgerald opened one of the boxes. The bullets looked sinister in the gloaming, the dying sun glinting off the tips as Fitzgerald held them up to the light. Powerscourt opened one of the packages. The rifle was shorter than the ones he had seen so often in India, but beautifully made.

  ‘Right, Johnny. The most important thing is to get these rifles away from here. Somebody can watch over Freely’s grave later to see who turns up. Let’s get these damned things out of the cemetery. We can put the coffin back in the grave later.’

  Carrying two rifles each, Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald set out for the entrance to the cemetery, some two hundred yards away. The light was fading fast now, the long shadows from the tall tombstones fading into the ground. Suddenly Powerscourt saw a tree moving by the rear wall. He tapped his friend on the arm and put two fingers to his lips. They were no longer alone. Two men were climbing slowly down to the ground.

  Powerscourt and Fitzgerald ducked behind a pair of ornate gravestones. It may have saved their lives. The first shot sounded very loud, echoing round the dead. The bullet whipped into one of the tombstones and ricocheted off towards the opposite wall.

  ‘Christ!’ whispered Fitzgerald to Powerscourt, pulling a pistol from his pocket, ‘these people aren’t very friendly. Must be colleagues of the late Mr Freely.’ With that he crawled off into a long patch of shadow to the left.

  Powerscourt saw that the opposition were still advancing. He dropped to the ground and took careful aim with his gun at the man closest to him. He heard a scream. He didn’t wait to see how badly hurt the man was. He gathered up the rifles and sprinted half-way towards the rabbit warren of Belgravia and its mausoleums.

  There were another two shots. Johnny Fitzgerald must be firing, Powerscourt thought, covering my position. Another bullet sang into a tombstone a few feet to his left. This was getting too close for comfort. He peered round the side of his tombstone and fired at his opponent, less than fifty yards away. He missed. He gathered the rifles again and set off. Belgravia was only a few feet away when he heard the shot. Then he felt the bullet pass through his left shoulder. Blood was pouring down the fisherman’s jersey. He staggered into the shadows of one of the mausoleums and let the rifles drop to the ground. He peered out through the iron grille at the cemetery in front of him. Bats were squeaking all around, flapping dementedly at the night air. The rooks and the crows were fleeing the cemetery of the dead and the dying as fast as they could.

  Powerscourt sat on the ground and tried to staunch the blood. He looked out. His adversary was advancing very slowly towards him, unsure which mausoleum he was in. Powerscourt took careful aim and fired. Damn, Damn. He had missed. The wound must be upsetting his aim. He had given his position away. I’m damned, he thought to himself, if I’m going to end my days in a bloody cemetery. I want to die in my bed. He worked his way backwards, inching slowly, painfully away from his previous position.

  Where was Johnny Fitzgerald? Had he been wounded too? Was he dead? But the man knew where he was now. Powerscourt saw him raise his pistol and point it very precisely at where he sat. The man was taking his time. He was going to make certain. Then another shot rang out into the west London twilight. The man toppled forward and crashed on to the ground. At the far end of the cemetery a pair of owls were having a conversation, loud and insistent hoots that echoed the sound of Fitzgerald’s pistol.

  ‘Just making sure this bugger’s dead, Francis.’ The voice of Johnny Fitzgerald sounded very close. ‘Are you all right?’

  Powerscourt winced as he rose to his feet in the mausoleum of Jonathan Sanderson of Richmond. The shoulder was very painful.

  ‘Delighted to hear from you, Johnny,’ he said. ‘I’ve stopped a bullet with my shoulder. There’s a lot of blood but I think it’s only a flesh wound.’

  ‘The other one’s dead too, Francis,’ said Fitzgerald, tying a large handkerchie
f round Powerscourt’s wounded shoulder. ‘That’s one each. One for me, one for you. The bugger here was a pretty good shot.’ Fitzgerald laughed suddenly.

  ‘I’ve got a great idea, Francis,’ he said happily. ‘Why don’t we bundle the two of them into the coffin of our friend Dermot Sebastian Freely? Then we could give them both a decent burial in Freely’s grave.’

  ‘So then we picked up the rifles and got out as fast as we could.’ One hour later Powerscourt was back in Markham Square, telling Lady Lucy what had happened. A local doctor had bandaged his shoulder. The guns were safely locked up in the nearest police station. Johnny Fitzgerald had gone to tell the glad tidings to Dominic Knox.

  ‘You look pale, Francis. You must have lost a lot of blood.’ Lady Lucy was looking at her husband very carefully.

  ‘What do you say to Sorrento, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Sorrento?’ said Lady Lucy incredulously. ‘It’s late, Francis. You’ve had a very tiring few weeks. You must rest.’ She peered at him anxiously.

  ‘Sorrento as a place to escape to, Lucy, once this shoulder is better. We could go for a week or so. Spectacular scenery, dramatic walks round the coast. You can look at the Bay of Naples. On a good day you can see Capri.’

  ‘I think that is an excellent idea, Francis.’ Lady Lucy smiled at him, relieved that his brain was still working normally.

  ‘You see,’ said Powerscourt, moving on the sofa to find a more comfortable position, ‘I am sure this affair is over at last. So many times I have told myself the business has finally ended only for some other problem to occur, your kidnap, the missing rifles. Harrison’s Bank is safe. Mr Knox has no problems now with Irish terrorists. The Queen can ride out in glory on her great parade as safe as if she was in her own garden. It’s over.’

  37

  Powerscourt had never seen anything like it. Neither had anybody else. Stretched out before him in five long lines lay the British Fleet, or some of it. Eleven first class battleships, five first class cruisers, thirteen second class cruisers, thirty-eight small cruisers, thirty new torpedo boat destroyers, one hundred and sixty-three warships of the Royal Navy spread out across the Solent, thirty miles of Victoria’s sea power manned by forty thousand men and carrying three thousand naval guns.

  Three days before one million Londoners had cheered themselves hoarse as a small great-grandmother, dressed in sober grey, had crossed the streets of her capital to a service outside St Paul’s Cathedral with an escort of fifty thousand troops from around her vast empire. Sophie Williams’ class of six-year-olds had been to a Jubilee dinner in the Town Hall and had gorged themselves on cakes and jelly. There had been no incidents along the route. Dominic Knox of the Irish Office had taken himself off to Biarritz for a celebratory holiday and a flutter on the tables.

  But of Charles Harrison, wanted by the police in connection with the abduction of Richard Martin and the kidnapping of Lady Lucy, there had been no sign. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had told Powerscourt that Harrison might have left the country by private means or be hiding somewhere remote like the north of Scotland.

  If the Jubilee in London was a celebration of the length of the Queen’s reign and the size of her Empire, the celebrations at the Naval Review at Spithead were about the might of the Royal Navy. Without calling home a single vessel from the overseas stations, the Admiralty had assembled the most powerful fleet the world had ever seen. Powerscourt, his left shoulder still in a light sling, and Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald were guests of Rosebery aboard the Danube, the vessel carrying members of the House of Lords, one of a flotilla of boats that followed the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert through the lines of warships, all manned by sailors in regular lines along the length of every deck. Salutes rang out over the water, clouds of smoke drifting towards the land. As the Prince of Wales in the Royal Yacht, flying among its five huge flags the Royal Standard of Great Britain and the German Imperial Standard, a black eagle on a gold background, moved through the fleet, bands played the National Anthem. The sailors cheered and waved their caps in the air as royalty passed by.

  ‘What are those ships over there?’ said Powerscourt to Rosebery, pointing to the most distant line, the one furthest from the land.

  ‘Those are the foreigners,’ said Rosebery, ‘Americans, Italians, Russians, Norwegians, Germans. They’ve come to see what the British Empire can put on the water.’

  ‘And what is that old ship with the two red stripes around her funnel at the end of the line?’ asked Powerscourt, raising his telescope to his eye.

  ‘That is SMS Konig Wilhelm of the Imperial German Navy.’ Rosebery too was peering at the foreign vessel. ‘Fellow from the Admiralty told me on the way down that she was actually built at Blackwell’s Yard in England nearly thirty years ago now.’

  ‘Why would the Kaiser send such a hulk to this parade, Rosebery?’

  ‘The admiralty man said it was very significant, that it was all done for public opinion at home.’ Rosebery was squinting through his glasses. ‘Bloody Kaiser wants the Germans to feel ashamed so they will vote him lots of money to build new ships. He’s just appointed a new Naval Secretary too, a man by the name of Tirpitz.’

  The Royal Yacht was drawing abreast of the pride of the American Navy, the USS Brooklyn, painted not in black like the British, but in a gleaming white. More cheers rang out across the Solent.

  ‘God bless my soul!’ said Powerscourt suddenly. ‘I don’t believe it. Johnny, take a look at the party on the German deck, next to the Captain.’

  Fitzgerald raised a telescope to his eye.

  ‘I don’t see anything unusual, Francis.’ He fiddled with the aperture. ‘Can’t see anything strange. Oh my God. I see what you mean. God in heaven, Francis, this is too much, it really is!’

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Rosebery

  ‘It’s not what we’re looking at Rosebery, it’s who.’ Powerscourt had turned pale. Standing on deck, chatting cheerfully to the Captain, dressed in an immaculate white suit that was almost indistinguishable from the uniforms, was Charles Harrison, former banker of the City of London, suspected of multiple murder, the man who tried to ruin Britain’s world-wide reputation for financial probity, the man whose secret society had sent the Mausers from Germany to Ireland to spoil an Empress’s Jubilee.

  The Royal Yacht had reached the Konig Wilhelm. The German band broke into the British National Anthem. Some of the elderly peers on board the Danube, well fortified with champagne by now, began to sing.

  ‘Send her victorious

  Happy and Glorious!’

  The Prince of Wales looked particularly pleased with the reception from his cousin’s fleet. He bowed stiffly to the party on the deck.

  ‘That fellow in the white suit, the one not in uniform, Rosebery, do you see him? That is Charles Harrison.’ Powerscourt pointed to the bridge of the Konig Wilhelm.

  ‘Is he, by God,’ said Rosebery. ‘He’s got well away. He’s back among his own people now. That’s German territory, that ship. British police have no jurisdiction on board there.’

  The German band had moved on to ‘Rule Britannia’. The peers were singing heartily.

  ‘When Britain first, at heaven’s command,

  Arose from out the azure main . . .’

  Powerscourt was remembering the conversation with his old tutor in Cambridge. Had Brooke not said that the leader of the secret society was an officer in the German Navy? Perhaps he was the Captain of the Konig Wilhelm.

  ‘This was the charter of the land

  And guardian angels sang this strain . . .’

  And then Charles Harrison saw Powerscourt. The same look of astonishment passed across his face that had crossed Powerscourt’s a few minutes before. He scowled. He shook his fist at them across the water. He shouted something in between the verses.

  Powerscourt thought it was ‘One day we’ll get even with you, you’ll see.’ Johnny Fitzgerald thought the parting message was slightly diffe
rent: ‘One day we’ll send you to the bottom of the sea.’ With a final shake of his fist he disappeared below the decks of the Konig Wilhelm.

  ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves . . .’ Some of the peers were stamping their feet on the deck as they bellowed out the chorus. ‘Britons never never never will be slaves.’

  For a split second Powerscourt didn’t know what to do. He looked round suddenly to make sure Lady Lucy was safe. She was chatting happily to an elderly peer. Harrison was escaping back to Germany. He could never be brought to justice now for all his crimes. But then, Powerscourt realized, he had won. Harrison’s plans had been thwarted. The City of London had been saved. The Irish rifles had been intercepted. Lady Lucy was safe.

  He waved back across the water, as if saying goodbye. Fitzgerald and Rosebery joined him in the salute as the Royal Yacht passed on to the end of the line and turned back towards Portsmouth. The Konig Wilhelm band had fallen silent. ‘Rule Britannia’ had finished.

  ‘I tell you one thing,’ said Rosebery cheerfully, looking at the contrast between the old German ship and the assembled might of the Royal Navy. ‘They say he wants to build a fleet to rival ours, that Tirpitz and the bloody Kaiser. Well, just look at the difference between what they’ve got and what we’ve got. It’s going to take them a bloody long time.’

  Suddenly, in the midst of this vast Naval Review, Powerscourt and Lady Lucy found themselves completely alone on one side of the boat. The other passengers had gone to inspect the flagship of the Imperial Russian fleet on the other side of the Danube.

  ‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, in a voice she hadn’t heard for weeks, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Yes, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy, her eyes sparkling brighter than the shine on the ship’s polished brass.