‘There they are! There they are! I told you!’
He ran at great speed across the stones, the racing footsteps echoing into the walls. Powerscourt found him a few minutes later, panting sadly by the door of a hotel. ‘Bastards got away. Bastards. I’ll get even with them. I will. I bloody well will.’ The two men walked slowly up the narrow street. At the top there was a left turn, then a little bridge, then another long stretch of the Calle dei Fabbri. Three-quarters of the way up a face peered slowly out from an alleyway. When it saw the two people approaching, it disappeared.
Gresham was off again.
‘Come back! Come back!’ he shouted in despair, too late to reach the vanishing figure. He sprinted up the street, peering into the little roads that twisted off towards the Grand Canal.
‘Lord Gresham, come, come. I think you need to rest. Here is the Hotel Pellegrini at last. Why don’t you call on me in the morning, at eleven o’clock at the Danieli. Things will seem better in the morning. We could plan our day together.’
Powerscourt watched Gresham right into his hotel, the night manager solicitous, taking his coat and escorting him to his room.
As he walked back towards the seafront, he remembered that great brick building at Morpeth, set back from the town, filled with the isolation wards of the insane. The Northumberland County Lunatic Asylum, full of people with visions, snakes in the wallpaper, mirrors with eyes. It’s full of Greshams, he reflected sadly, wandering round those long corridors, doctors with strait-jackets waiting to protect them from the demons in their heads.
It’s a race, he said to himself.
A race between my ability to obtain Gresham’s confession. If he has one. And Gresham’s ability to go mad.
Very early the next morning Powerscourt took a trip out to sea in the Danieli gondola. ‘I don’t care where we go,’ he said to the boatman, ‘just bring me back here in half an hour. I need to think.’
The gondolier took him out towards the Lido, the great curve of the seafront, Riva degli Schiavoni, named after the Slav traders who had done business there years before, gradually shrinking into a pencil line on a map behind him.
Lord Gresham nearly told me something last night, he thought. At one stage we were just a second or two away. But that was in the evening when the messengers and the wine conspired to send him almost mad. Powerscourt didn’t think there could be too many more of these heavy, confession-laden conversations. If he doesn’t tell me something this morning, I shall just have to ask him a question.
Just one would do.
He finalized his plan of campaign as the gondolier brought him back to the landing stage with a last flourish of his oar. Powerscourt realized that the man had been singing solidly for the past fifteen minutes. He hadn’t heard a thing.
He sent a cable by the hotel telegraph when he returned to the Danieli to William Burke, his brother-in-law in London, asking him to forward the message to Johnny Fitzgerald with all speed. The answer was needed by 10.30.
Various changes were made to Powerscourt’s suite on the first floor. A large writing desk, adorned with many forms of pen and pencil, was installed in the centre of the room. Three paintings were removed from the walls. Three of Mr Pannone’s finest mirrors replaced them, gold frames resting happily on the red walls. A reproduction Madonna and Child took over from the Canaletto View over the Basin of St Mark. A large silver crucifix now hung beside the window, directly in the eyeline of the person sitting at the writing desk. And above the bed an empty space was filled with a reproduction of Tintoretto’s Christ on the Cross, suffering and despair dripping from the canvas.
I’m not sure I’d like to sleep in this room any more, thought Powerscourt grimly. But I need all the assistance I can find.
Mr Pannone hovered, offering hints on how best to achieve the desired effect. The crucifix had been his idea. He offered to organize a parade of priests, patrolling ceaselessly outside the window, ever visible from above. Powerscourt declined.
‘So, Lord Powerscourt.’ Mr Pannone checked the final arrangements. ‘It is now half-past ten of the clock. He is due here at eleven. As ever, we know when he come, the Lord Gresham. You do not meet him in the entrance down the stairs. I take him up here to meet you.
‘Five minute after he come, I bring you the message. You do not have the message yet, I think. Ah, you do have the message. But there is the blank space left. You wait for the answer from London, it is so?’
Powerscourt handed the hotel manager a piece of paper. He had written the message at eight o’clock that morning.
Lord Johnny Fitzgerald was late. Perhaps he couldn’t find the answer. Perhaps he wasn’t in London at all. Perhaps he was out when the message found him, though Powerscourt felt sure he would still be having his breakfast. He wasn’t an early riser, Lord Johnny.
‘He has left the Pellegrini now! The Lord Gresham! He comes!’ Pannone looked rather nervous, flitting anxiously between the reception and the telegraph room. ‘He is looking around a lot again. He’s walking fast. He should be here in ten minutes.’
Powerscourt took a last glance around his room. A smaller stage this morning, maybe a more intimate piece of theatre to play across these boards.
‘Now he is passing the Rialto!’
Powerscourt made a final adjustment to the pens on the writing table. He checked that you could see the three mirrors from the chair by the coffee table near the window.
‘He is just coming into St Mark’s Square! Do you wish me to hold him up down below while we wait for the message? No?’
Powerscourt looked out of the window. It was a grey day, wind and rain whipping across the seafront, tourists hurrying indoors, the braver ones marching on towards their chosen place of pilgrimage, plenty of customers for the art galleries today.
‘Lord Powerscourt!’ Pannone rushed into the room. ‘It is here!’
He handed over a telegraph form. Lord Johnny’s not sparing the words this morning, thought Powerscourt. But I suppose William Burke is paying the bill.
‘Is there no peace?’ the message read. ‘Just when I have a few days rest your message comes to wake me up. Am I never to be left alone? Name you want is General George Brooke. Not related to the Daisy. Beware the courtesans. Fitzgerald.’
There was just time to add three words to his earlier message. He could hear Gresham coming up the stairs. He slipped it to Pannone as he left.
‘Lord Gresham! How nice to see you again!’
‘Good morning, Lord Powerscourt.’
Gresham did not look much better this morning. The untidy tuft on his chin had gone. But his cravat was twisted. He was wearing the same shirt as the night before. The hair was unruly, the eyes rather wild.
‘They’re still following me about, Lord Powerscourt. In broad daylight.’
Gresham’s eyes looked at the three mirrors, at the crucifix, at the Madonna and Child. They went back in terror towards the mirrors. Powerscourt wondered if he saw snakes, or eyes, or the faces of murdered Venetians peering out from those golden frames. Two Doges, he remembered, had been killed just round the corner from the hotel.
‘Come, I have ordered coffee. We can make our plans.’
There was a knock at the door. Pannone entered, bearing a tray of coffee and a message for Powerscourt.
‘This has just arrived for you, Lord Powerscourt. It was delivered by special messenger to the hotel. Thank you, my lord.’ He bowed deeply to the crucifix and departed.
‘Goodness me. Goodness me,’ said Powerscourt, scanning the words he had written three hours before. ‘The British Military Attache to the Italian Government is in town. He is here with the Ambassador for some conference or other. He wonders if we would like to join him for lunch. Man by the name of Brooke, General George Brooke. Do you know the fellow, Gresham? This Brooke person?’