He saw Powerscourt looking alarmed.
‘Don’t worry, sir. It won’t be too hot. And we’ll be able to put it out when we want to. It’s going to be tremendous!’
With that, Joe Hardy departed into the night, whistling happily to himself as he went. As darkness fell over Brighton the Chief Constable himself appeared.
‘I’m feeling rather nervous,’ he announced. ‘But I hope everything is under control. The inferno, as that charming young man from London keeps referring to it, is to start a few minutes after one o’clock.’
Shortly after midnight Lord Francis Powerscourt crept down to the front. There was a crescent moon and the stars were shining brightly over the sea. A slight wind came in from the English Channel. Powerscourt heard whispered greetings from the shadows and the doorways as he passed. ‘Good evening, sir.’ ‘Good luck, sir.’ Chief Inspector Tait must have his men posted everywhere tonight, he thought, as he saw a further posse of policemen lying on the beach behind the fishing boats. On the West Pier the moonlight was glinting off the girders, faint shadows reflected in the dark waters beneath. The great hotels lay sleeping on the sea front, like beached liners waiting for another voyage. A stray drunk was being escorted to a place of safety by yet more of Tait’s policemen. A stray dog, watched by twenty pairs of eyes, trotted slowly along the front in the direction of the Royal Pavilion to guard the ghosts of the Prince Regent and Mrs Fitzherbert.
33
By a quarter to one Powerscourt and Fitzgerald were waiting in a room on the second floor of the west wing of the King George the Fourth. There were no lights. Hardy crept in and gave them both a collection of dampened handkerchiefs. ‘Might be useful in the smoke,’ he whispered cheerfully before departing to tend his flames.
Powerscourt knew the plan. He felt like a theatre producer who has given the stage directions for his final act but does not know what the actors are going to say. The smoke was to be increased step by step. The fire in the rooms below 607 and 608 was to burn very fast, helped by some of Joe Hardy’s inflammatory liquids. The balconies were the key to the smoke. Each room in the west wing and in the section next to it had a small balcony overlooking the sea. All the guests in this part of the building had been transferred to another section of the hotel. They were told there was a temporary problem with the water supply. Tonight the balconies were occupied by barrels filled with a mixture of oil, tar and pitch, combined in a deadly recipe to produce the maximum amount of smoke. When the three residents of Rooms 607 and 608 finally came out a platoon of six was to take care of them. Two each for the kidnappers. Two for Lady Lucy, Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald. Tait had tried to deter him, fearing that his personal involvement might make him hesitate when rapid action was called for. ‘I’m the only one who will recognize her,’ Powerscourt had said defensively. ‘In all that smoke, sir,’ Tait had said, ‘you wouldn’t recognize Queen Victoria herself.’ Powerscourt had prevailed.
The Town Hall clock struck one. Powerscourt peered out at the sea front and the West Pier. Nothing moved. There was only the low murmur of the English Channel, small waves rolling in along the pebbles of the beach. Then it started. It started very slowly. Two floors beneath him the first of Joe Hardy’s barrels began to pour a thick stream of smoke up the side of the building. That’s nothing at all, Powerscourt thought, it’s a drop in the ocean. Then other barrels began to join the chorus. Soon there were five, then ten, then fifteen, then twenty, then thirty, then Powerscourt couldn’t see very much at all.
The front of the hotel was wreathed in smoke, the west wing almost invisible. The breeze from the sea was keeping the smoke close to the side of the building. Then the flames started. Two great sheets of flame leapt upward into the night sky from the floors above. Powerscourt learned later that the flames came from blankets soaked in Joe Hardy’s most inflammable liquids. At thirteen minutes past one the hotel fire alarm went off. Hotel staff, supplemented by Tait’s policemen, were running round the building, knocking on doors, shouting to the people inside.
‘Fire! Fire! You must leave now!’ Outside the first fire engine had arrived and hosepipes were being dragged into position. ‘Ladders,’ one of the firemen shouted, ‘we need some bloody ladders. Now!’
At the front of the hotel a melancholy procession of sleepy residents was straggling out of the main entrance. The men were in dressing gowns. Women had thrown their coats over their nightgowns to face the night air. ‘Move along, now, move along.’ Powerscourt knew that the police were going to move the residents along the side of the west wing, directly underneath Rooms 607 and 608.
‘Fire! Fire!’ The shouts were everywhere in the hotel. There must have been about twenty or thirty men shouting now. ‘Come along, come along please.’ The voices of the policemen were more insistent and more irritated as the residents tottered out of the great doors. The hotel fire alarm was still sounding, a high and insistent note that wore away at the eardrums. A woman screamed very loudly just under Powerscourt’s room on the second floor. Then another. Then a chorus of screams rose up along with the smoke and the flames to the sixth floor. The rooms above me must be an inferno by now, Powerscourt thought. Police whistles began to sound through the confusion.
Outside the hotel the firemen were raising great ladders, shouting encouragement to each other as they crept up against the side of the hotel.
Powerscourt opened the door. Great waves of smoke poured in. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker up the stairway towards the higher floors. After a minute Powerscourt could scarcely see the Praetorian Guard of policemen and firemen deputed to capture the kidnappers. Behind him another fireman had appeared with a hosepipe. ‘Fire! Fire!’ The shouts were still echoing round the rest of the King George the Fourth. They must come now, Powerscourt thought to himself. Surely to God they can’t stand much more of this. They must come now. Maybe they would have to storm Rooms 607 and 608 after all. Maybe the people weren’t going to come out. Maybe they were dead.
Hardy materialized out of the inferno. He pointed upwards. Powerscourt and his little band went up the stairs very slowly. He was straining for any noise coming from the upper floors but all he could hear were the shouts of the policemen and the instructions being bellowed to the firemen outside.
They were on the fourth floor now. Still nobody came down the stairs. Had they jumped out of the window? Powerscourt knew there would be a party of firemen below, waiting to catch anybody leaping from the windows. If they could. If they didn’t miss them. If the fall wasn’t too great. The thick smoke, dark grey, almost black, was still pouring up the stairway. The banisters on the far side had completely disappeared from view. Desperately Powerscourt reached for one of Joe Hardy’s handkerchiefs and tied it round his face. He didn’t think he could bear much more of this. Beside him, invisible in the murk, Johnny Fitzgerald was coughing in great spasms. Powerscourt felt dizzy. They must come now, he thought. Nobody could take this amount of smoke. More whistles sounded through the fumes. Powerscourt wished he had paid more attention to Chief Inspector Tait telling him what they meant.
Underneath the door of the fourth-floor rooms he could see flames dancing towards the ceiling. Outside there was a succession of screams and distant shouts that Powerscourt couldn’t distinguish. Still the hotel fire alarm rang out into this smoke- filled night. They heard a noise above them. A crash, as if somebody had just fallen against the side of the wall. Someone was swearing loudly in German. They heard more noises. Powerscourt wondered if they should advance up the stairs. Wait for them to come down, Hardy and the firemen had said, wait for them. That way you hold the initiative. More noises were coming down the stairs. Hardy had explained to Powerscourt earlier how people come down stairs in the smoke. ‘You try to hold the banisters with one hand. You try to touch the person next to you with the other hand.’