As they drove back to Sandringham House Powerscourt asked about the other equerries and the pattern of their duties.
‘Ever since he became ill on his birthday there were six of us on duty round the clock, four hours at a time. On the day he died, I remember saying goodnight to him and then I was on duty from three to seven. There were nurses on duty on the same pattern but they had a different sitting-room to us.’
‘So when you came on duty at three, what were you told?’
‘The nurse told me Prince Eddy was sleeping and was not to be disturbed. It was only in the morning that I looked in to see if he wanted any breakfast or any cold drinks. That influenza makes people very thirsty.’
‘And who were the other equerries?’
‘Well, there was Harry Radclyffe, Charles Peveril, William Brockham, Lord Edward Gresham, Frederick Mortimer.’
‘And who was on duty just before you?’
‘That was Harry Radclyffe. The nurse said he’d gone off to bed when she told me Eddy was asleep.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think I may need to ask you some more questions later on, if you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’ Lancaster sounded relieved that the interrogation was over.
As they drove round the bend and in through the Norwich Gates, another of Shepstone’s bulletins had already appeared on the railings.
Sandringham, Monday evening.
The illness of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale continues to pursue a somewhat severe course, but His Royal Highness’ condition and strength are full.
Bartle Shepstone, Comptroller of the Household
A small crowd had gathered outside, including one or two men who were dressed for London, not for Norfolk. They had sharp inquisitive faces and were already asking questions of the local people.
Newspapermen, thought Powerscourt. They’re here already.
‘I am so sorry, Lord Powerscourt, that we should meet in such melancholy circumstances.’ Major Edwin Dawnay, officer commanding the bizarre collection of soldiery summoned by Sir Bartle Shepstone, was walking away from the front door of Sandringham House. ‘I have heard so much about your work in India.’
‘You are too kind, Major Dawnay, too kind. And the circumstances are indeed melancholy, if not macabre.’
Powerscourt shuddered slightly as he thought of the murderer alone in Prince Eddy’s room with the bleeding corpse, searching for the photograph of Princess May, stamping on it in a fit of frenzy as he tried to reduce it to rubble, the blood already flowing freely from the dead man’s veins, the glass on the picture shattering into smaller and smaller pieces as the onslaught went on. The dead man had not been safe in there. Even the photographs of the living had to be slaughtered too. ‘Your men have been very busy this afternoon, I understand.’
‘Yes they have, and a pretty good fist they have made of things so far,’ Dawnay replied. ‘But come, Lord Powerscourt, there must be a reason why you have brought me away from the house.’
‘There is,’ said Powerscourt, pausing at the top of the great gravel drive. The light was fading fast now. The snow felt crunchy underfoot. Powerscourt drew the Major behind a hedge. A small creature of the Sandringham undergrowth shot out beneath their feet and disappeared into the white wastes beyond. ‘I would like to draw your attention to the roof, Major Dawnay.’
‘The roof?’ Dawnay wondered inwardly if the man was losing his wits. It was a perfectly normal roof, the Royal Standard of the Prince of Wales faintly visible from the flagpole.
‘Count five windows to the left of the main entrance. Go up one. That is the room in which the unfortunate Prince was murdered.’
Dawnay counted the windows, still uncertain of the sanity of his companion. ‘You mean the window with the stone surround, rather than the normal red brick? With a little ornamental crest on top of it?’
An early owl hooted far off in the distance. The bells of Dersingham church tolled the hour of five.
‘Just so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now it is my belief that the window was not fastened shut on the night of the murder. You may well ask why it was left like that in temperatures like these, but sufferers from influenza or whatever it was have been known to do strange things. I wonder if the murderer could have climbed over the roof, dropped down the side of the house, opened the window, murdered Prince Eddy, and escaped the way he came.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Major Dawnay.
‘Let us walk round to the other side of the house and see where he might have started from. Do you have any good climbers in your party, Major?’
We can clean up a dead body. We can set a bloodstained room to rights, thought Dawnay. Now this Irish peer wants to know if we are also trained as mountaineers or cat burglars.
The two men were looking at the back of the house, where the light was slightly better. ‘I would draw your attention,’ Powerscourt pointed with one of those long fingers that had so fascinated Lady Lucy Hamilton, ‘to the second floor, just to the right of the flagpole. There are at least six windows along there. That is the general area that our mountaineer might have set out from.’
‘You mean the equerries’ quarters?’ Major Dawnay was aghast.
‘Major Dawnay, you and I are trained in the arts of discretion, of remaining silent and not telling what we know. It is, unfortunately, at the heart and core of our professional lives. It was because I knew that I could trust you absolutely that we are here.’ Powerscourt was whispering now as a couple of dim figures could be seen walking towards the main entrance. ‘Do you have any climbers?’
This is not a man who is going to give up easily, thought Dawnay. If he ever gives up at all. He could sense a steely determination in his companion, concealed in company by the rattle of repartee or a languid charm.
‘As a matter of fact, we do. I think we have two. But I presume that for your purposes you only want one?’
‘Correct. Now, I think that it might be rather difficult to attempt the traverse from one of those rooms themselves.’
Dawnay didn’t like to think of what might happen to any intruder, creeping through one of the equerries’ rooms in the small hours of the morning, only to vanish out of the window into the night and the roofs above. He doubted if they would get out alive.
‘But if we look further along this side of the house. Four or five windows along there is a small door, leading to the lawn. Do you have it? I think our climbing friend might start his expedition from there, don’t you? There seem to be lots of handholds and things. I don’t know if he would bring ropes and climbing gear like that?’
‘Ropes?’ Dawnay was thinking hard, his eyes measuring distances and elevations in the gloom. ‘It’s hardly the main face of the Matterhorn. But I should think ropes might be necessary, yes. But look here, Powerscourt, I am assuming that the person who may have climbed over the roof a couple of nights ago had time to do a certain amount of reconnaissance by day. He’d have wandered round the place, perhaps looking at the roof from a distance with a small telescope or something similar?’
‘I am sure that is the case,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Would you rather the scaling of Sandringham took place tomorrow night and not tonight? To give your man time to check out the task beforehand?’
‘I am sure that would be more realistic. We wouldn’t want to have to explain why one of my men died climbing the walls of Sandringham, would we, Lord Powerscourt?’ Dawnay was rubbing his hands together now to keep warm, the noise of his palms lost in the night air. ‘Shall we say two o’clock in the morning? And I presume that you do not wish me to mention this to a single living soul?’
‘Two o’clock would be excellent. And I fear that silence would be even better. And the silence must include everybody.’
‘Even Shepstone?’
‘Even Shepstone’. Powerscourt’s voice sounded very cold. Where does he go in his mind, Dawnay wondered as they trudged back to the main entrance, what ghastly journeys does his imagination take him on? For he could see now that the key to the whole investigation lay in Powerscourt’s head as he formed and reformed pieces of a blood-red jigsaw puzzle in his brain.