A small face peeped nervously round the door. The face had a small nose, blue eyes like his mother and a shock of fair hair. The hair looked as though Robert had been attempting, without success, to get it into some sort of order before grown-up tea.
‘Robert, darling, come and meet Lord Francis Powerscourt. Robert, Lord Francis, Lord Francis, Robert.’
Lady Lucy’s two males shook hands solemnly like Wellington and Blucher meeting at the end of Waterloo.
‘Sandwich, Robert? Sandwich, Lord Francis? Let me pour some tea.’
It was true, Powerscourt thought, about the sandwiches. The great piles began to dissolve rapidly.
‘I’ve brought you a sort of present, Robert,’ said Powerscourt between mouthfuls. ‘I don’t know if it’ll be all right.’ Lady Lucy suddenly remembered that Powerscourt was well supplied with a cricket team of nephews of his own. She felt sure that he would have a reasonable idea of what a Robert might like. Some men were completely hopeless. A friend of her father’s had presented him recently with the complete works of Ovid. Ovid!
‘It’s a sort of boat thing,’ said Powerscourt, struggling with the wrapping. He had bought it in the shop of temptation, as he referred to the place where he had spent so much money on the Voltigeurs and the Imperial Guard for his nephews.
It was a small yacht, with two sails, perfect rigging so you could adjust everything, a tiny rudder, polished wooden decks.
‘Wow! Wow!’ said its new owner, taking delivery of the vessel into his own hands. ‘Thank you very much. Thank you so much.’
His mother breathed a small sigh of relief. Forgotten thank yous, she knew, were sometimes hard to forgive.
‘Does it sort of go? Does it move?’ Robert was turning it over in his hands with great care.
‘It does. The man in the shop promised me it sails very well. Maybe you could try it out in the bath?’
‘But there isn’t any wind in the bath. Not in my bath anyway.’ Robert looked solemnly at Powerscourt as if he might be the secret owner of force five sou’westerlies blowing through his bathroom.
‘Maybe you could try bellows,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a very ornate pair in Lady Lucy’s grate.
‘Wouldn’t that make a lot of mess? The soot might get all over the sails,’ said Robert doubtfully. ‘And I’m not sure Mama would like that. Would you, Mama?’ Robert looked as if he thought bellows in the bath might produce the same result as his friend’s broken windows. Not allowed out, confined to barracks.
‘The Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. That’s where the man in the shop said it would do very well.’ Powerscourt was trying to extricate himself from bellows and soot.
Lady Lucy had a vision, of the three of them going every Sunday afternoon to the Round Pond, Robert racing away through the trees, herself and Powerscourt – were they arm in arm, she wondered? – the boat sailing proudly across the waters.
‘My only worry about that,’ said her consort, unaware of this weekly pilgrimage, ‘is that the boat might get lost. It might get stuck, I mean.’
‘What do you mean, stuck?’ said Robert anxiously.
‘Well, I mean, it might sail out as far as the middle, and not come back again. Somebody would have to wade out and get it.’
‘Lord Francis, Lord Francis, are you hopelessly impractical or what?’ said Lady Lucy, fresh from her walk with her males.
‘Well, I am as it happens. Hopelessly impractical I mean. Am I wrong about the boat?’
‘Don’t you see, if there is enough wind to take it to the middle, the wind will keep it going to the other side. Isn’t that right, Robert?’
‘Because it’s round, you mean.’ Robert was thinking hard. ‘You just have to walk round to the other side. It wouldn’t get lost at all. Or I don’t think it would.’
‘Anyway, Lord Francis, you must come and see us one weekend and we can make an expedition to the Round Pond. I quite like Kensington Gardens anyway.’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘That would be delightful. But, Robert, before your ship makes its maiden voyage you will have to give it a name. What are you going to call it?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it. Can I take the ship up to my room now, Mama? I need to work out where to put it.’
‘Of course, Robert, off you go.’
‘What a charming son, you have, Lady Lucy.’ Powerscourt had finished his tea and was looking with awe at the depleted sandwiches.
Lady Lucy blushed a fetching shade of pink. ‘Thank you, Lord Francis, thank you so much. But come, some more tea?’
‘Lady Lucy, please forgive me. I arrive late. I must leave early. It has nothing, I assure you, to do with the company. I could happily sit here for the rest of the evening. But I have another appointment I cannot break.’
‘Not more tea?’ Lady Lucy had a sudden vision of another, different, Lady Lucy pouring out cups of Earl Grey and affection for Lord Francis Powerscourt.
Powerscourt laughed. ‘No, not more tea. I have to see the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.’
‘Lord Francis, you’re not in trouble, are you?’
‘My dear Lady Lucy, of course I’m not in trouble. It’s just something I am working on at the moment.’
‘Will you tell me about your work, one day? If you can, that is.’
‘Of course I will. But, if I don’t go now, I shall be late and then they probably will arrest me.’
Powerscourt climbed into his coat and paused by the front door to say goodbye. Lady Lucy stood beside him.
‘Thank you so much for tea, Lady Lucy. I shall write to you about our next meeting.’
‘I hope it will be soon, Lord Francis.’ She leaned forward and brushed a speck of dust from his collar. Well, she thought there had been a speck of dust there.
‘Goodbye.’ Powerscourt stepped reluctantly into the night.
‘Goodbye.’ Lady Lucy watched him go. What was that he had said? ‘I could happily sit here for the rest of the evening.’ She smiled and closed the door.
As he climbed into his cab Powerscourt thought that Lady Lucy would be a good name for the boat. Lovely lines. Graceful. Elegant.
He leant forward to give the driver his destination. ‘Could you take me to Scotland Yard? Thank you so much.’
‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, how very nice to see you again!’
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was tall and thin, with the upright bearing of the former Guardsman. He must be nearing retirement age by now, thought Powerscourt, he’s been in this impossible job for years and years.
‘Sir John, it is a pleasure to meet you again.’
‘How long since our last encounter?’ Sir John was counting the years off on his fingers. ‘Five, or is it six?’
‘I fear it is seven now. None of us is getting any younger.’
In 1885 Powerscourt had been working on a particularly unpleasant case and had to call on the assistance of the Metropolitan Police Force. Powerscourt had treated them with great courtesy, with tact and, he hoped, with charm. They in their turn had done everything in their power to help him. And at the end of the case, over a very fine dinner in his club, the Commissioner had promised Powerscourt that if ever he needed help in the future, all he had to do was to ask.
‘I need some assistance, Sir John. I have come to throw myself on the mercy of your force once again.’
‘What can we do to help?’ The Commissioner opened his hands wide on the table in front of him. Powerscourt saw that on the walls of his office there were four huge maps of London, divided into North, South, East and West. On each map were small red circles, presumably denoting the scenes of recent crimes. East London is looking particularly red this evening, he thought, parts of it almost obliterated by the circles.
‘Two questions, if I may. The first relates to blackmail. And you will not be surprised to learn,’ Powerscourt rose from his chair and stood by the great map of West London, ‘that we are talking about what is known as Society, living here,’ he pointed to London’s most fashionable and expensive quarter, ‘in this area of Mayfair and Belgravia. Not many of your red blobs here, I see.’