Here Powerscourt found comfort. Here he could relax. Eight days in Sandringham had left him drained, as if he had been living in a hothouse. A Hothouse of Death where the inmates came to worship, feeding off the rituals and the details of doom. He had walked for one whole day since his return to Northamptonshire, through the great Rockingham forest and across his fields to Fotheringhay. Now at last he could talk to Lord Johnny Fitzgerald in peace.
Lord Johnny had replaced the beer of King’s Lynn with two bottles of Nuits St Georges. Fine burgundy, he assured Powerscourt, is a powerful stimulant to thought.
‘Johnny . . .’ Powerscourt tore himself away from his Venetian daydream, wondering if the nobles processing around Piazza San Marco were as difficult to deal with as the British Royal Family. ‘It’s time to take stock.’
‘I’ve been thinking about this murder too, Francis. I don’t feel we have very much to go on. Did those old miseries ever let you talk to members of the family about what happened on the night he was killed?’
‘There are many old miseries up there, Johnny. The particular old misery you are referring to on this occasion is Sir William Suter, Housemaster of Sandringham.’
Powerscourt remembered bitterly his entreaties to the Private Secretary. If he was meant to investigate, then surely he must be allowed to ask a few questions. Did they want him to attempt to solve this terrible crime or not? Did they have any idea of how difficult his task was when he had no information to go on?
It was a waste of time. Sir William assured him that nobody had heard anything at all unusual, that he need not bother himself with inquiries that would lead him nowhere and cause needless offence to members of a family under severe strain.
‘Do you think they had anything to hide? Could they have been protecting one of their own? Was that why they wouldn’t talk?’ Lord Johnny had finished his business with the corkscrew and was eyeing a rich ruby glass of Nuits St Georges.
‘They may have. They may well have. But I don’t think we should start there. Now then, Johnny, let’s go right back to the beginning. Who might want to kill Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Avondale?’
‘All right, all right, let’s think about motives.’ Fitzgerald took a sip of wine to aid his mental processes. ‘Suppose you’re the Government. I don’t mean any particular minister, just the Government in general. There’s Victoria, entombed in black in Windsor or Osborne or Balmoral or wherever it is in perpetual mourning for Albert and John Brown. She’s not going to last much longer. Then they get Edward on the throne. King Tum Tum himself.’
Powerscourt wondered if the burgundy had the power to turn its consumers into republicans, the tricolour exported not by force of arms but by dusty bottles and Premier Crus.
‘Edward VII, he’ll be, won’t he?’ Lord Johnny went on. ‘I think they could probably cope with him all right. The Government, I mean. They’ll just invent lots of ceremonial stuff so he can dress up all the time. But look what they get then on the throne of England. They get that listless homosexual half-wit. Or they would have got him. You’re not going to be very happy as Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary going in to bat for Britain with that clown at the top of the order. So why not get rid of him now? How’s that?’ Johnny Fitzgerald looked pleased with himself, as if he had just clean bowled an opening batsman facing his first ball.
‘Perhaps they did, Johnny. That’s not bad at all. One of those equerries, in the pay of one of those secret departments Shepstone told me about, sets off to Sandringham to save the nation. I think it’s entirely possible. Only one thing makes me wonder about it.’
‘What’s that, Francis, you’re not going to tell me that Governments suffer from fits of morality?’
‘Certainly not,’ Powerscourt laughed. ‘But I just wonder about time scales. Different people have different time scales, I think. If you’re the Royals, Rosebery tells me, you have a very long time scale indeed, even longer than aristocrats. You think of the survival of your house, the crown on each succeeding head, twenty, fifty years into the future.
‘But if you’re the Government, you have a very short time scale. You don’t think much beyond the next election. Eddy wasn’t going to be a real problem until he came to the throne, and that would have been some time away, way beyond the next time the country goes to the polls. That’s why I don’t think it very likely the Government did it. But it’s not impossible.’
‘Government as twenty to one outsiders in the Prince Eddy Memorial Stakes, then.’ Lord Johnny drew his fingers into a pinnacle and eyed them carefully. ‘Family Time now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Happy Families. Royal Families. Family Life. Family Death. Which of his relations might want to get rid of him? Let’s begin with Victoria.’
Lord Johnny moved the pinnacle of his fingertips to a crown above his head. ‘You’re the Queen. You’re the Empress, first emperor in Britain since the Romans. You’re Victoria, waterfalls, whole swathes of Australia, railway stations named after you. You want your family to remain on the throne for ever. You have grave doubts about our earlier friend Edward King Tum Tum on the throne, your throne. But think of the doubts you must have about his eldest son.
‘Think of them, Francis. All her life Victoria has been plagued by the memory of her wicked uncles, Uncle Clarence – note the name, my friend – with his ten illegitimate children, that awful old rake Uncle Cumberland. Then there was Uncle King, Uncle George IV with his mistresses and his debauchery in that Brighton Pavilion and everywhere else. And here is her grandson, Grandson Clarence, who seems to combine the vices of all of them with a few extra ones of his own.
‘So what do you do? You harden your heart, you put out the word, very quietly, that the family would be better off without him, and you climb happily into deep mourning when you hear of his passing.’
‘You should have been a barrister, Johnny. Case for the Prosecution against Her Majesty completed. How about the case against the father?’
Lord Johnny poured the last of the first bottle into his glass and held it up to the light. ‘The Prince of Wales? I think that’s easier still. Remember the blackmail that started all this business off? Let’s suppose the blackmailer isn’t putting the squeeze on because of something the Prince of Wales has done, but for something his son has done. The best way to get rid of the blackmailer is to get rid of Eddy – then there’s nothing left for him to be blackmailed about. Didn’t you tell me that the father wanted him out of the country for two years on some cultural and political tour of Europe, a sort of nineteenth-century Rake’s Progress? When he couldn’t get his way that way, then he just got rid of him. Now then, your turn. What do you say to the mother, Francis?’
‘I will not hear a word said against Princess Alexandra,’ said Powerscourt primly.’ ‘I regard her as above suspicion.’
‘Are you falling a little bit in love with the Sea King’s daughter from over the sea, Francis?’
‘I think everybody falls a little bit in love with her, Johnny. She’s just that sort of person.’
‘I see.’ Lord Johnny looked very grave. ‘And shall I have to inform Lady Lucy of this sad development? I am sure it would break her heart, Francis. And she speaks so highly of you all over London town.’
Powerscourt made as if to throw a cushion at his friend. ‘Leave Lady Lucy out of it. That is a private matter.’ He blushed a deep red.
‘What can you say of the brother, Johnny, – I give the sisters exemption from suspicion, along with their mother.’
‘The brother, the brother . . .’ Fitzgerald looked very thoughtful, as if he thought a bet on the brother might be a sound investment. ‘He’s a very solid sort of chap, isn’t he. Reliable, a bit dull, our George, not very much there in the brains department. I seem to remember you telling me he doesn’t like change. At his age, for God’s sake. What is he, twenty-five? But you would have to say one thing for that sort of character. He’s absolutely perfectly fitted for the throne. Stupid, boring, not likely to cause anybody any trouble, he’s an ideal king, the perfect monarch. So, either the conspirators, whoever they might be, know that they have the perfect substitute for the appalling Clarence. Or the substitute himself is the plot, and nips next door to slit his brother’s throat. That’s easy.’