How Bateman could tell there were flowerbeds there at all, Powerscourt never knew. The snow wrapped up every living thing.
‘Well, gentlemen, I have to tell you that I had some special equipment sent up here when I heard of this mission. But it is all equipment that can be readily purchased at reputable stores in London and the big cities, special ropes with these little grappling hooks at the end.’ He took a coiled piece of rope from his pocket.
‘It’s like a cross between a grappling hook and a rope ladder, is it not?’ McKenzie had come to the aid of his fellow mountaineer.
‘It is exactly that, Mr McKenzie. Exactly. You throw it up, it catches on a roof or a chimney, and up the rope ladder you go. I have to tell you, gentlemen,’ Bateman suddenly looked around him in case the wrong ears might be listening, ‘that it is a simple matter to cross from one side of the house to the other. I made my ascent upwards from the flowerbeds you have noted. In various places on the roof – you can’t see them with this snow’, Dawnay was fiddling with the range controls on the Prussian glasses – ‘there are little ladders. Quite new, they are. I imagine they were installed after the recent fire to enable people to escape.
‘Some five minutes after my departure’ – the man is sounding like a train timetable now, thought Powerscourt – ‘I was outside the window of the late Prince Eddy. I could have walked in and murdered him, gentlemen. If he had been there, that is.’
Corporal Bateman paused. This was becoming one of the longest speeches of his life. And to two superior officers, one of them a lord.
‘It only took me another five minutes to return to the flowerbeds where I started. Half an hour after that, there was not a trace of my activities on either side the roof. I looked most carefully, then and in the morning. The snow covered everything like a blanket.’
‘Well done, Corporal! Well done, indeed.’ Major Edwin Dawnay was proud of his man.
‘Tell me,’ said Powerscourt, ‘did you find anything while you were up there? Anything unusual?’
‘Funny you should mention that, Your Lordship. I don’t know how long it had been there, or if it means anything to you gentlemen. But I found this.’ He paused to rummage in his pockets, which were, Powerscourt noted with interest, even more capacious than those of William McKenzie. He drew out a small piece of rope ladder with one of the grappling hooks at the top missing. It was only two inches long, but its purpose was very clear.
Bateman and McKenzie disappeared into a private conversation of their own about makes of rope ladder, strength of line, chances of fracture.
‘Do you think the murderer left this up there, Powerscourt?’ Dawnay sounded alarmed, as if the murderer had suddenly taken shape and was liable to emerge at any moment from Sandringham Woods or peer down at them from the rooftops above.
‘It’s perfectly possible,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Then again, the fire brigade might have used those things when they were putting in the ladders.’
My God, he plays it very close to his chest, thought Dawnay. Pound to a penny Powerscourt or one of his friends will be round to the local fire brigade within the next twenty-four hours asking about bits of rope ladder left on the roof.
But Powerscourt hadn’t finished yet. Not by any means. He was coming to what was, for him, the most important question of all.
‘Tell me, Dawnay,’ he said nonchalantly, as though it were a mere trifle, ‘did anybody in the house hear anything? Anything at all?’
‘Of our friend Bateman’s activities, do you mean? That’s the curious thing, Powerscourt. Nobody heard a thing. Not even the dogs barked during the night.’
‘Nobody heard a thing?’ Powerscourt looked very thoughtful indeed. ‘How very interesting.’
Powerscourt was sleeping heavily. There was the light touch of a hand on his shoulder. He turned. There was an urgent whisper in his ear.
‘Lord Francis. Lord Francis.’
Powerscourt wondered if some strange new dream had come to haunt him, the hand on his shoulder shaking, shaking, shaking.
‘Lord Francis. Please wake up. Please wake up. Please.’
With a groan, Powerscourt suddenly shot up in his bed. ‘William, what on earth are you doing here? What time is it, for God’s sake?’
‘I will tell you all outside,’ whispered William McKenzie. ‘You must get dressed at once and come with me. Don’t put your boots on till we get away from the house.’
With his boots in his left hand, Powerscourt tiptoed out of his room, down a corridor he had never seen and down stairs he had never climbed. How had William McKenzie, his trusty tracker, found him in the dark? What was going on now? Where was he taking him?
They passed out of a small door at the side of the house. Powerscourt put his boots on and followed McKenzie out into the night. Their feet crunched heavily on the snow. The sound was magnified as they passed between a clump of trees. Surely somebody in the house must have heard them, thought Powerscourt, looking back in alarm. They sounded like the Blues and Royals changing the guard.
‘William, please tell me what’s going on.’ Even a whisper sounded like a sergeant major on the parade ground.
‘There’s another body, my lord. I found it an hour ago when I was having a wee patrol round the grounds. I met one of Major Dawnay’s men doing the same thing. The Major is there now. It’s about a mile from here.’
Admirably succinct, thought Powerscourt. Another body. God in heaven. When would it stop?
The cold seemed to start at the ears. Then it made an orderly progression downwards, tip of nose, lips, hands, fingers, toes. Those were the first bits that fell off the Athenians in the great plague in Thucydides, Powerscourt suddenly remembered, wishing he could keep his memories in better order. A different sort of plague seemed to have struck the coast of Norfolk. Two bodies in four days were enough for a tennis match in hell or heaven.
They were deep in the forest now. McKenzie moved so silently that at times Powerscourt thought he had lost him. Perhaps, he thought, this is the darkest hour before the dawn. And there really is a dawn chorus, he realised, as a ragged burst of birdsong broke through above the trees.
‘Nearly there.’ McKenzie was still whispering even though Sandringham House was over a mile behind.
In a small clearing ahead, Major Dawnay had a torch of sorts that cast fantastic shadows on the trees.
‘Powerscourt, my dear Lord Powerscourt. Thank God you have come.’
He turned his guttering candle to his left. The body of a man was lying on the ground. He was wearing the full dress uniform of the Coldstream Guards. He looked as though he had fallen over unexpectedly. The ground was covered with blood, and with bits of light grey and brown matter that Powerscourt presumed must have been his brains. The porridge-like material had also fallen all over his shoulder and made terrible stains on his epaulettes. Lord Henry Lancaster, the equerry who had found the body of Prince Eddy, had joined his master in death.
‘I think he shot himself through the head. Or somebody else shot him through the head. The doctor will be here presently. Do you think it is murder or suicide, Powerscourt?’
‘God knows. God knows.’ Suddenly Powerscourt wished he were at home in Rokesley, inspecting the sales catalogues of the great auction houses, or walking through his grounds. ‘We mustn’t move anything until the doctor comes. May I?’ He borrowed the makeshift torch from Major Dawnay and walked slowly around the body.