‘We could rule out the possibility of any outsiders having committed the crime. There were reports of Russians and Irish in the neighbourhood. Both were traced. Both were completely innocent. There were, it seemed to me, three possibilities.’
Powerscourt was delivering his verdict in the cold neutral tones of a judge summing up a complicated case. Sir Bartle Shepstone was stroking his beard.
‘The first was a disgruntled army or naval officer who had served with Prince Eddy and thought the country would be better off without him. I can assure you that there are many such officers who despised his morals and his way of life and thought him unfit to be King.’
‘This is outrageous, outrageous!’ spluttered Shepstone.
‘He was a fine upstanding young man!’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ said Rosebery. ‘He was a disgrace. I have met many senior officers with the views of which Lord Powerscourt speaks. Pray be quiet.’
‘The second possibility was that it was one of the equerries. One of six, or rather five, after the death of Lancaster. I decided to find out everything I could about their lives, and about whether any of them might have good cause to murder Prince Eddy.
‘The third possibility was that the blackmail was connected in some way with the murder. I discovered that the Prince of Wales had been outspending his income by ?15-20,000 a year for over ten years, since 1879 in fact. That was the year in which the two young Princes left their training ship HMS Britannia, and were sent round the world on a two-year cruise on HMS Bacchante. One of the naval officers concerned believed that the main purpose of the voyage was to keep Prince Eddy out of England.
‘There was a great scandal that year on board HMS Britannia. Five young men contracted syphilis, after sexual contact with Prince Eddy. He was believed to have contracted the disease from some prostitutes in Portsmouth.’
Cisterns of lust, thought Powerscourt. Cisterns full of it. Five of them on board the Britannia. Wouldn’t one of the boys have done? Two, at the most? Suter carried on with his notes. Rosebery was looking carefully at Powerscourt, his features carved from stone.
‘Since that time the Prince of Wales has been paying regularly to all those families. You could call it medical assistance, help with treating the terrible disease. You could call it compensation for those young lives destroyed. You could call it naval pensions. Somebody did. Or you could call it blackmail, if you like. I suspect that one, or both of you gentlemen, knew all about this matter. But you did not see fit to tell me.’
Powerscourt looked up at the two servants of the Prince of Wales. They did not reply.
‘I was on the way to establishing whether or not any relatives of the victims could have committed the crime, a father or a brother. Revenge is a regular motive for murder. Two of the brothers were, in fact, in Norfolk at the time. But neither of them could have committed the murder. I was beginning to work my way through the rest of the families when a piece of news reached me about one of the equerries.’
‘Father, my sin concerns my wife. I met her two years ago near Birmingham in the middle of England. She was called Louisa. She was very beautiful.’ Lord Edward Gresham paused in his confession. Loving somebody wasn’t a sin, was it?
‘Continue, my son. Continue with your confession.’ Father Menotti’s voice was soft, but firm.
‘We fell in love. She was of the Catholic faith. I was not. She wanted me to adopt the Catholic faith before she would marry me. I received instruction from the Jesuits in Farm Street in London and was received into the Church. We were married eighteen months ago.’
A grunt, or was it a cough, came from the other side of the grille. Perhaps Father Menotti was clearing his throat. Perhaps he was rejoicing in the salvation of a Protestant heretic, in a land all too full of Protestant heretics.
‘Father, the man I killed was Prince Eddy, the son of the Prince of Wales, grandson of Queen Victoria herself. After we were married he came frequently to my house. He often came when I was away on army business. I am an officer in the British Army. Prince Eddy wanted my wife to commit adultery with him. He pleaded with her to give in to him. Everybody else did.’
‘Was he a regular fornicator with other men’s wives?’
‘He would have sexual relations with man or woman, Father. It didn’t seem to matter.’
Powerscourt looked round his little audience. It’s a soliloquy this time, he thought, somewhere towards the end of Act Five.
‘Two years ago, one of the equerries fell in love with a beautiful girl in the Midlands, near Birmingham. The girl’s father was very rich. But there was a problem. The family were Catholic. The equerry was not. To the horror of his mother he converted with the Jesuits in Farm Street, just up the road from here. They were married. The mother did not attend the wedding.’
What had Lady Lucy said to him, about Lady Blanche Gresham and the marriage?
‘Not to a grocer’s daughter’, she said. ‘Not to a Roman Catholic. Not in some pagan chapel, decked out with bleeding hearts and the false idolatry of Rome.’
‘Prince Eddy was a regular visitor to their house after they were married, especially when the equerry was away. He made regular propositions to the equerry’s wife. Equally regularly, she refused. He grew tired of these refusals. He was not used to them, from man or woman. One day he pushed her down a flight of steps and killed her. She was pregnant at the time.
‘It took our equerry four months to find out the truth. The only other person in the house, the only person who knew what happened, a servant girl, ran away. Eventually, last summer, he found her. That will have been the time he was requesting to become an equerry to Prince Eddy, I fancy. It tallies with the note you sent me, Sir William, about the dates of service of the equerries at the time of the murder.’
The cleaning party had moved on in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. The singers had moved on as well, to the Benedictus.
‘One day she refused him again. He pushed her down a flight of steps. It killed her. It killed our child as Louisa was pregnant. So I waited for my chance and I killed him. Prince Eddy had killed my Louisa. She was so beautiful. I adored her. Prince Eddy had killed our child before it was even born. Father, I know I have sinned against God’s Holy Law and Commandments. I know I have sinned against the Sixth Commandment. I do truly repent of these my sins and beg you for forgiveness.
‘I accuse myself also of all the sins of my past life, especially of those against purity and chastity. For all these sins and for those I do not remember, I ask pardon of God with my whole heart, and penance and absolution of you, my spiritual Father.’
‘On the night of 8 January or early morning of the 9th of this year, the equerry climbed over the roofs of Sandringham and murdered Prince Eddy. The equerry’s name is Lord Edward Gresham.’
Sir William Suter turned pale. Shepstone turned red.
‘Gresham? Gresham? Are you sure, Powerscourt? Dammit, I have known the family for years. I think I went to his christening in Thorpe Hall.’
‘I am quite sure, thank you, Sir Bartle. I would not tell you if I wasn’t.’
‘Dammit, Suter, this is unbelievable. Do you believe it?’
‘How can you be so sure, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I told you I was sure of it. Gresham told me himself in Venice three days ago. Do you want any more confirmation than that?’
‘Dear God,’ said Suter, laying down his pen. ‘What a terrible business. A terrible business.’ He stopped and looked down at his notes again. ‘Could I ask you to clear two little points up for us, Lord Francis?’
The Private Secretary, the bureaucrat, must ensure that all the facts are included in the report to his master.
‘I have been haunted, ever since you told us, by Lancaster’s Semper Fidelis. What does it mean?’
‘I think he saw Gresham in the room. Maybe he heard him crushing the picture of Princess May into small pieces. Maybe he saw him climbing out of the window. He knew who the murderer was. He was being faithful to his friend. He wasn’t going to betray him. So he is faithful to him for ever. Forever Faithful. Semper fidelis.’