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.’
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?
There was a sudden pounding up the stairs to his room. Chief Inspector Robin Tait burst in. ‘We’ve found them!’ he panted. ‘I’ve run all the way from the hotel to tell you! They’re in the King George the Fourth, not far from the West Pier!’
‘Well done, Chief Inspector!’ Powerscourt shook the policeman firmly by the hand and pumped it up and down. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am. This is fantastic news. How did you find them? Is there any news of Lucy?’