‘Indeed, my lord. I have written down all the relevant details, times and so on, for Your Lordship. Is there anything else I can tell Your Lordship about these trains?’ Leith contrived to look impassive and hopeful at the same time.
‘Only this, Leith. Let us assume that one journey may suffice. Which of those places is the easiest to get to?’
‘The easiest to get to, my lord? There can be little doubt of that. Their engines are newer than most, my lord. Their carriages are better upholstered than most.’ Leith shuddered at the memory of some badly upholstered seats, his master’s fury echoing down the train. ‘They are usually punctual. Amble, my lord, is by far the easiest place to reach, if that fits in with Your Lordship’s plans.’
‘Indeed it does. I am most grateful to you, most grateful.’
Powerscourt wondered if the Russian Ambassador would serve him tea in a samovar. He did not. He served the finest Indian tea in the finest Meissen china.
Count Vasily Timofeyevich Volsky, Ambassador from the Court of the Romanovs, Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, to the Court of St James was charm personified. ‘He’s extremely rich,’ had been Rosebery’s verdict. ‘Extremely rich. Thousands and thousands of acres. Far more than I’ve got. Palaces full of paintings all over the place. Far more than I’ve got. Terrible wife. Probably can’t wait to get back to St Petersburg. God knows why they all want to go back to Mother Russia, but they do.’
‘Lord Powerscourt, I can be very brief in answer to the questions you raised in your letter. Is there any record of Russian anarchists or revolutionaries operating outside our country? The answer, I fear, is no. They confine their criminal activities to our own poor homeland. I do not believe they have ever operated abroad. Exile, of course, many of them are in exile in Paris or Geneva or even here in London, but they are always well behaved when abroad. They save their wickedness for home.’
He looked sadly at Powerscourt as though grieving for the sins of his compatriots.
‘And these gentlemen whose names you gave me. You said you were certain they were law-abiding citizens, but felt you had to check. I admire your thoroughness, Lord Powerscourt. These are all good citizens. The Professor I have met myself. He likes to read Pushkin in his garden. What could be more peaceful than that?
‘I do not know what you are seeking. I do know the answers are not be found in Russia. May I wish you good luck in your mission, Lord Powerscourt? ’
One last call, thought Powerscourt. Then the London end of this part of the investigation will be over. After that comes the bit I am not looking forward to, the voyage round the remains of HMS Britannia, that strange cruise of the Bacchante all those years ago.
Dominic Knox, of the Ireland Office, welcomed him into an enormous room overlooking Horseguards Parade. Out in St James’s Park the afternoon parade of nannies with perambulators was in full swing, the overfed ducks crowding round the hands that fed them. Knox was a small wiry man, casually dressed, with a neat goatee beard.
‘Now then,’ he seated them both in two comfortable chairs looking out over the trees towards Buckingham Palace, ‘let me try to help you in your business. Do you know much about the security operation in Ireland, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I am glad to say that I do not.’ Powerscourt wondered if he was in for a lecture for the rest of the afternoon. At least there were no dusty files hiding on the top of rickety steps.
‘Well, let me enlighten you. It is huge, the security operation, that is. Everybody remembers the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Secretary Burke ten years ago in the Phoenix Park. But the ferment started long before that. There were nineteen separate attempts on the life of Forster when he was Chief Secretary of Ireland before Cavendish. Nineteen, Lord Powerscourt.
‘Secret societies flourish over there like mushrooms in the dark. Fenians, Irish Republican Brotherhood, Invincibles, Captain Moonlight, once you think you have got to the bottom of one of them, another one pops up somewhere else. They’re like weeds, particularly obstinate weeds. You know how you can do battle with an obdurate bramble; you trace the damned thing back to its roots, you follow the roots along the earth, eventually you pull it up and think you have won. One week later the bramble is back again. That’s what Irish secret societies are like.
‘Dublin Castle now has one of the largest networks of informants in the world. Every one of these secret societies is infiltrated by the police or the Government. Some of their meetings probably have more informants in the audience than real people attending the meeting. Informants are tripping over each other to pay their subscriptions. Soon we’ll need informers to tell us about the other informers. I’m sure that a lot of them are doubles, working for the Irish secret organizations and reporting back on us. Maybe there are trebles, quadruples, it could go on for ever.’
‘Jesus Christ only had twelve, and one of them was a double,’ said Powerscourt flippantly.
‘If he’d come down to Ireland about four or five of his disciples would have been working for the other side. Thirty pieces of silver is pretty cheap these days when you think of the amount of money handed over to these Irish Iscariots.’
Knox looked down at a file in his hand. Out on Horseguards a troop of cavalry was rehearsing, the crisp upper class orders carrying across the park to the nannies and the babies on their peaceful progress through the afternoon until it was time for tea.
‘I come to your particular requests, Lord Powerscourt. We have run your names from the telegraph pole operation through our files in Dublin Castle. None of them appears. That does not mean that they may not be men of violence – any sensible assassin would take good care to keep out of our books, after all. But I think it very unlikely.
‘Sometimes they venture across the Irish Sea to place bombs in London. But on the whole, the Irish are obsessed with their own little island, their own place in it, the relative rights of any of the foreigners who have settled in it for the last 800 years. They look backward, not forward. They look inward, not outward.
‘In short, Lord Powerscourt, I think it unlikely that any of these telegraph people are dangerous. But I could be wrong. The English usually are, where Ireland is concerned.’
A small collection of admirers had gathered round Lady Pembridge’s new curtains in St James’s Square.
‘Aren’t they just divine? I think the colours go so well with this room, Rosalind!’ Mary, Mrs William Burke, middle sister of Lord Francis Powerscourt, was paying tribute to her elder sister, proud proprietress of the new materials hanging in splendour across the great windows of her drawing-room. ‘And the finish! They’re so beautifully made!’ Linings were fingered, pelmets assessed.
‘Do you know,’ said her sister, ‘I tried to interest Pembridge in the colours and the design. I might as well have asked the lions in Trafalgar Square. Completely hopeless. No idea about design at all.’
‘I think they’re all like that,’ said her sister. ‘Husbands, I mean. It’s probably just as well,’ she went on, thinking of the expense on the new sofas in her own house the previous year.
This was a gathering of the clans, a special Annual General Meeting of the Powerscourt family, summoned for a conclave by the eldest brother.
‘They may get pretty inquisitive. In fact they are bound to do so, I’m afraid,’ Lord Powerscourt had said to Lady Lucy as he prepared her for the initiation rites into a family evening in St James’s Square.
‘And what will they be inquisitive about, Lord Francis?’ Lady Lucy was inspecting her dress for the fifth time as they prepared to leave her house in Markham Square.