‘I’m sure you could make out a case for almost anybody in Norfolk wielding the knife, Johnny, in this sort of form. Let me try this out on you.’
Powerscourt walked to the window and drew back the curtains. The night was full of stars. Powerscourt suddenly remembered he hadn’t seen a single star all the time he was at Sandringham, only clouds and the ever-falling snow.
He looked at the tombstones in his graveyard, watching through another night. He had remembered most of the names and the inscriptions by now, after ten years in the house: Albert George Mason, Mary Mason, his wife, William their son, departed this life aged five years, Charlotte their daughter, gone to her Father in heaven after seven. And mine eyes shall see God. Gone but not forgotten. Suffer the little children to come unto me. For Thine is the Kingdom.
A young fox was perched on top of one of the gravestones, as alert as a guardsman on duty. In the distance, on one of his tenant’s barns, an owl hooted into the night.
‘I think – no, I am sure,’ Powerscourt spoke initially to the gravestones, to those who had departed long before Prince Eddy, ‘that the key to the whole mystery lies with the equerries. We know that there were no outsiders, according to William McKenzie. We know, thanks to you, Johnny, that there were no Russians, no murderous Russians I mean. I have to check with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police about the Irishmen and the telegraph poles, but I suspect their messages were peaceful. I do not believe any of the servants did it. Not many of them sleep in the house, and those that do are a very long way indeed from Eddy’s bedroom.
‘But this is the devil of it all, Johnny. Any one of your plausible theories sits happily with the equerries. The Government could have asked one of them to do it, as you suggested. They could have been agents of Queen Victoria, or the Prince of Wales, or even the brother Prince George. Or they could have been the loyal servants of the Crown, anxious to rid it of a future problem, as we said. Or they could have been mixed up with the blackmailing business, in one way or another.
‘Good God,’ suddenly Powerscourt turned back from the window and his contemplation of the fox. ‘You don’t suppose that Eddy was the blackmailer, do you, Johnny? Blackmailing his father in the first place, then turning to one of these equerries as well for yet more money? A second helping, or maybe even a third?’
‘Eddy the blackmailer? God in heaven, that would make things complicated, wouldn’t it? It would certainly explain why nobody wanted to speak to you. They were all too frightened to confess that they have been fingered too. Perhaps he was blackmailing the whole bloody family.’
Powerscourt felt lost. Just when he thought he had advanced his inquiry a little way, it slipped back and fell away. Then he recovered.
‘Johnny – have you left any wine in that second bottle? Ah, thank you – even if Eddy is the blackmailer, I think the way forward is clear. And I think it divides into two halves. The first is concerned with the equerries: Lord Henry Lancaster, dead or alive. Harry Radclyffe. Charles Peveril. William Brockham. Lord Edward Gresham. The Honourable Frederick Mortimer.’
‘Ten to one on all of them in the Prince Eddy Memorial Stakes.’ Fitzgerald the bookmaker was busy with his odds. ‘Fifteen to one Queen Victoria. Twenty to one Prince of Wales. Twenty-five to one Prince George. Thirty to one the Government. Fifty to one The Field. Roll up! Roll up!’
‘We must investigate the equerries’ lives from the cradle to the present day.’ Powerscourt declined to take a wager yet. ‘We need to find out about every action, every friend, every love affair with man or woman. I feel that my sisters and your relations will prove invaluable allies here. You see, it could be that there were very personal reasons behind Eddy’s death. Look at the way he was killed, the picture of his fiancee smashed into small pieces all over the floor. The murderer might have had his own very private motives for the killing. Revenge maybe. Or it could be that the murderer wanted people to think that. The fiancee’s picture could be a distraction, a red herring.’
‘And the second thing, Francis?’ Lord Johnny reckoned that there was at least one glass left in the bottom of the second bottle.
‘The second has to do with scandal. Eddy’s scandal. He brought some terrible scandal with him to that house last weekend. There may be one or two or even three scandals. I suspect they go back ten or twelve years. That is what the Prince of Wales knows and dare not speak about. That is what Princess Alexandra knows about or fears. And Suter knows that they know something that he doesn’t. He is left to guess at what it might be. There are lies and secrets falling over each other to obscure the truth. You see, there was one very strange thing about the way they reacted to Prince Eddy’s death. It only struck me yesterday when I was walking back from Fotheringhay in the dusk.’
‘What was that, for God’s sake?’ said Fitzgerald, fascinated by the prospect of new information.
‘Just this.’ Powerscourt had resumed his place by the window looking over his graveyard. The fox was still on parade. ‘Everybody was very sad. Everybody was very upset. But I don’t think anybody was surprised. It was as if they had been expecting it.’
That night Powerscourt had another dream. He was in a large children’s playroom on the top floor of Sandringham House. There was only one child in the room. It was Prince Eddy. He was sitting on the floor. He was surrounded by copies of The Times and the Illustrated London News. Prince Eddy was cutting out letters one by one with scissors and a large knife and pasting them on to a page. He smiled happily as he worked.
Letters of blackmail. Blackmail letters. Only when he looked very carefully could Powerscourt see that the knife was dripping with blood.
. . . I think at this stage that both the normal and the unusual will be of interest. Everyday gossip below stairs as well as the rumours of life above that circulate in all great houses, any suspicion of a secret, any whiff of scandal. In short, my dear James, in this, as in all the inquiries we have undertaken together, please keep your eyes and ears open at all times. I know you will, and I look forward to reading your reports or to hearing them in person if you feel that would be more appropriate.
The old Indian rules apply. Please destroy all correspondence.
Powerscourt
The letter’s author was writing at a great hurry in the upstairs drawing-room of his sister’s house in St James’s Square.
Sudden changes had been occurring in the domestic staff at Sandringham and St James’s. Wilfrid Theakston, senior footman for many years at Marlborough House and Sandringham, had been taken ill unexpectedly and was granted indefinite leave of absence. The Prince of Wales’ household were fortunate to find a speedy replacement in one James Phillips, senior footman to Lady Pembridge, who happened to be sister-in -law to Lord Francis Powerscourt. Phillips was Powerscourt’s man; they had served together in India and in all but one of his investigations since.
Even this change had met with the normal reluctance from Suter and Shepstone. ‘Dammit, man, this is like taking a spy into our own house!’ Shepstone had protested.