Doctors’ names, Rosebery had always felt, would give the lie some serious substance. One man might not be telling the truth, but a trinity of doctors?
‘Let me tell you what the proposals are for the dissemination of further information. From tomorrow, regular bulletins about his progress will be posted on the Norwich Gates at Sandringham and at Marlborough House.’
‘Who else is in residence at Sandringham House at the moment?’ Barrington leaned forward. Rosebery kept thinking of him as a bloodhound hot on the scent of death. His colleague took shorthand at a prodigious speed, his pen coming to rest a few seconds after the speaker had finished.
‘Duke and Duchess of Fife, Duke and Duchess of Teck and their children, Prince and Princess of Wales obviously, Prince George, Princess Maud, Princess Victoria, a number of friends and equerries who had come to celebrate the Prince’s birthday on Friday.’ Rosebery took great care, on Powerscourt’s instructions, not to give the names of any of the equerries. The shorthand pen hurtled across the page, the scratching of the nib filling in the silences as Rosebery spoke.
‘We feel,’ Rosebery nodded gravely at Sir George Trevelyan, ‘that the first announcement in the newspapers should confine itself to a bald announcement of the illness, accompanied, if you feel appropriate, by a list of those in residence at Sandringham.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Barrington nodded gravely in his turn. If the newspapers were as tame and as docile as this all the time, Rosebery felt, we would not be in such difficulties.
‘However, there is some background information about the possible origins of the disease which could, perhaps, be included on the following day, should the illness persist, of course.’
‘The Times would be most grateful to you, Lord Rosebery, Sir George.’ Trevelyan thought that Barrington sounded like the Ambassador from a major power proposing the terms of a treaty at the Foreign Office.
‘On Monday of last week the Duke felt unwell as he attended the funeral of Prince Victor of Hohenhoe. On Tuesday he remained at Sandringham. On Wednesday he went shooting – and that, as I am sure you will remember, even in the warmth of London, was a very cold day. On Thursday he felt unwell again and on Friday he felt ill again on his birthday.’
Suddenly Rosebery felt completely blank. He had forgotten something. Like an actor, he had lost his lines. But there was no prompter, only Trevelyan, and he hadn’t yet read the whole script. Had Eddy attended his birthday dinner party or not? Had he stayed in his room, according to the legend he and Suter and Shepstone had concocted earlier that day? Or had he attended and had to leave early? He simply could not remember.
He pressed on regardless. ‘And that, gentlemen, is about as much as we can tell you at present.’
Silence fell on the room, the shorthand nib quiet at last. Barrington looked at his watch.
‘Lord Rosebery, Sir George, please forgive me. Time waits for no man, not even The Times.’
Trevelyan wondered how often he had used that quip in the past twenty years. ‘I must return to my offices. We must include this story in the first editions. We should be on our way. We are most grateful to you. I shall despatch a reporter to Sandringham at once.’
Times present turned into Times past as the two men were ushered from the room.
‘I think that went as well as might have been expected, Lord Rosebery. We need to co-ordinate further plans.’
‘Indeed, indeed.’ Rosebery was staring at his empty sofa.
‘Do you think Barrington brings that other chap with him everywhere he goes? A silent amanuensis? I don’t believe he spoke a single word all the time he was here.’
‘Perhaps he is the Official Scribe,’ said Trevelyan, ‘like those characters with tablets who used to follow Eastern potentates around their palaces, writing down every word.’
Rosebery laughed suddenly, the tension draining away. ‘Do you suppose he tastes Barrington’s food as well?’
Snow had turned into slush in the ancient streets of King’s Lynn, seven miles south west of Sandringham. Powaerscourt splashed his way through the entrance hall of the King’s Head hotel and found Lord Johnny Fitzgerald drinking beer and William McKenzie drinking tea in a private sitting-room on the first floor. His reinforcements had arrived.
‘Powerscourt! At last!’ Fitzgerald eased his tall frame out of the best chair and shook his friend warmly by the hand.
‘It’s turning into a gathering of the clans here tonight.’ McKenzie was a small, silent man in his early thirties. He was what they had called in India a tracker. Trained in his native Scotland in the complicated arts of stalking stags, he had transferred his skills to tracking humans. In India, as in his homeland, they spoke of him with awe.
‘I am so glad you are both here.’ Powerscourt sank into a chair by the fire and looked at his companions. ‘Let me tell you what this business is about.’
Powerscourt left nothing out, the great slit across the throat, the other arteries slashed, the pools of blood on the floor. He told them of the plan to conceal the death from the public and the authorities. He filled them in on the activities of Major Dawnay and his band of mysterious experts with their arcane skills, military and civilian.
‘Do they expect us to find out who did it? I suppose they do.’ Fitzgerald took a long draught from an enormous tankard of ale. ‘How in God’s name are we supposed to do that, Francis? Blood in puddles all over the floor. It’s like a butcher’s shop on slaughter day.’
‘All we can do,’ Powerscourt surveyed his small forces, ‘is to begin from the beginning. That’s what we have always done in India or in London. In Wiltshire, you will remember, we had even less to go on than we do here. I think . . .’ He paused to gaze with horror at an extremely sentimental picture of the Scottish Highlands hanging on the wall. ‘I think we have to start by trying to eliminate the outsiders.
‘Johnny.’ Fitzgerald had just completed his tankard and was eyeing it curiously, as if amazed that it could be empty so soon. ‘There have been reports of Russians in the vicinity. Reports have reached the Sandringham servants that there are Russians at Dersingham, at Hunstanton, at Fakenham even. There are also reports of Irishmen in the neighbourhood.’
‘Where the hell is Fakenham?’ Fitzgerald was notorious for his total ignorance of geography, even of countries he had lived in for years.
‘It’s north and east of Sandringham. This map on the wall should help you. The Prince of Wales is convinced that one or more of these Russians, if they exist, killed his son. Myself, I rather doubt it but I intend to keep the Russian ball in play for as long as possible. I don’t think I want them to know just yet where my suspicions lie.
‘And you, William McKenzie, I need your skills as never before. I need to know if you can tell if anybody has been trying to break into or out of Sandringham. There are great walls all around the estate and the gates are locked at night. It will be very very difficult with all this snow about.’
‘Difficult, difficult, but not impossible, I dare say.’
Suddenly Powerscourt felt very tired. Tomorrow, he knew, would be another trying day at the big house. But as he looked as his two companions, already peering at the map and discussing tomorrow, he knew he was no longer alone.
It was so like Francis, his eldest sister Rosalind reflected bitterly, to disappear like that. One moment he was playing happily with her children upstairs, that ridiculous board thing with all those toy soldiers and the Battle of Waterloo, the next moment he was gone.
And then there was Lady Lucy, entertained at dinner here in her house in St James’s Square, taken to look at the boring pictures in the National Gallery, friendship possibly ripening into something more substantial. Now she had been abandoned, like one of those Greek people, dumped on some hot island while the hero sailed away and forgot to change his sails.