Death and the Jubilee

31

At two o’clock in the morning four of Dominic Knox’s agents called on a thirty-five-year-old chemistry teacher of Irish extraction who was famous for his ability to make fireworks at his school of St Michael and St James. Declan Macbride was dreaming when the officers called. He dreamt he was sitting at his desk marking an enormous pile of exam papers. However many he corrected, the pile never grew any less. It was, he had decided wearily, the educational equivalent of Sisyphus pushing his rock uphill for all eternity.

The agents were very polite, but insistent. They wanted to search his rooms. They knew, as did he, that Declan Macbride had been visited in the last few days by three messengers from Michael Byrne in Dublin. They searched his small desk. They went through his clothes and his books, they went through his cupboards. Shortly before three o’clock they started on the floorboards.

Two other officers called on a Catholic hostel off the Fulham Palace Road, well known for its links with travellers from Dublin. Three young women had to submit to the same treatment.

At four o’clock in the morning Lord Francis Powerscourt tiptoed out of his hotel. He made his way slowly down to the sea front. A wind had risen off the sea. Small breakers beat feebly against the pebbles of the beach. There was no moon. He walked past the ruins of the old Chain Pier, gazing sadly at the great hotels, their front doors now locked, curtains drawn against the night air. A lone fisherman was setting out on Brighton’s oldest occupation. The pursuit of fish had been happening here centuries before the pursuit of fashion. Somewhere behind these windows, he told himself is Lucy. A frightened Lucy, perhaps a drugged Lucy. The bastards. The bastards. He could hear the fisherman’s boat scraping along the beach as he pulled it down into the water. He wondered if he should offer to help him. The first very faint hint of pale grey was appearing on the horizon. Dawn was coming to Brighton, another day for him to find his beloved. He felt hungry suddenly. He wondered if Lucy felt hungry too. Then it struck him. There might just be another way to find her. He hurried back to his hotel and waited for Inspector Tait and his policemen to arrive.

They came at seven o’clock, a disconsolate bunch, their spirits down after the fruitless visits of yesterday. But Powerscourt was in cheerful form.

‘I think we may have been asking the wrong question yesterday. In the hotels, I mean. I’m not sure we could have asked the right question until today.’

‘Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘you’re speaking in riddles. Explain yourself, man.’

‘My apologies, gentlemen.’ Powerscourt looked round his little audience. ‘My assumption was that the three people we are looking for would have gone to a hotel. I still think they have gone to a hotel. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that they checked into the hotel as a threesome. One German could have checked in with Lady Lucy posing as his wife. Or he could have left Lucy sitting on a chair in the hotel reception while he checked in for them both. The other fellow could have checked in later or gone for a walk, anything like that. It’s quite possible that nobody in the hotel has ever seen them together. So, when we asked about a threesome, the hotel people said they didn’t know, because they actually hadn’t seen a threesome.’

Chief Inspector Tait was still dressed in cricket flannels, topped off today by a straw hat. ‘So what is the right question, my lord?’

‘I think the right question is this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But before I come to it, let me say one other thing. I think our German friends will be very anxious about being followed, or discovered, or rushed by a party of policemen or soldiers. They kidnapped somebody earlier in this case, Chief Inspector, and they did not succeed. Johnny and I rescued him. So they will want somewhere where they have a good view of all routes in and out of where they are. One of them will have to watch Lady Lucy all the time. That means, it seems to me, that they cannot leave their rooms. If they have meals in the hotel dining room somebody may spot Lady Lucy. If they leave the building they themselves may be recognized. So while they have Lucy as their prisoner, they are, to a large extent, prisoners themselves in Room 689 of the Duke of York’s Hotel, or whatever it is called.’

‘For God’s sake, Francis.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was growing exasperated. ‘What is the bloody question?’

‘Simple,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do you have any guests who have all their meals sent up to their rooms? All of their meals.’

Chief Inspector Tait grinned. He looks ten years younger all of a sudden, Powerscourt thought.

‘Excellent, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Tait. ‘When did you think of that?’

‘Just before five o’clock this morning,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk along the sea front. I suddenly felt hungry and wanted some breakfast. Then I wondered if Lucy felt hungry too. Then I asked myself how she would get her breakfast.’

‘Right,’ said Tait. ‘They go on serving breakfast until about ten in most of these places. Shortly after ten we can begin our inquiries. Do you suppose, Lord Powerscourt, that we have to begin all over again and revisit all those hotels we called at yesterday?’

‘I’m afraid you do, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I shall go and organize things immediately. No harm in getting our men back in position nice and early. But may I ask you one question, Lord Powerscourt? How do you propose to effect the rescue? I have been thinking about that and there are terrible risks whichever way we do it.’

‘I think there may be a way of lessening the odds.’ Powerscourt felt almost cheerful now. ‘But I don’t yet know if it will work. Let’s find them first.’

‘Christ Almighty! God in heaven!’ Dominic Knox seldom swore, but the news from his agents at eight o’clock that morning left him in despair. His agents had searched all night and found nothing apart from a few trivial gifts in the schoolteacher’s little kitchen. Nothing. Whatever Michael Byrne was plotting, whatever his schemes for the disruption of the Jubilee, Knox had been sure that these three young women were crucial. They would be carrying explosives or bits of rifles to be assembled in London. That was why he had been so careful not to intercept them until he knew where they had been, who they had visited in the capital. Now his strategy was in ruins. He had been tricked by his Irish opponents. Were the three messengers merely decoys to throw him off the scent? And if they were, what was Michael Byrne really planning? Knox realized he had been looking in the wrong direction, that all his plans had failed. Suddenly he remembered the rifles, buried in their coffins in Wicklow. He sent a telegraph to Dublin to open those graves at once and check the contents of the coffins. Pray to God, said Knox to himself, pray to God those bloody rifles are still there.

Powerscourt was pacing up and down his living room in the Prince Regent, pausing every now and then to gaze out to sea. Fitzgerald, looking even more decrepit than the day before, had gone to patrol the streets of Brighton. Powerscourt was turning his plan over and over in his mind, looking for flaws. They would only have one chance, just one chance to rescue Lady Lucy and restore happiness to both of them. Shortly after ten, just as the first of Tait’s policemen were interviewing their hotel managers, he spotted a flaw in his plan. Damn, he said to himself. There must be a way round it. He stared at the West Pier, fortune tellers and Pierrots already getting into position for the day’s work. The chambermaid knocked on the door and asked if she could clean the room.

‘Later, please, later,’ Powerscourt said abstractedly, looking at the prints of Regency Brighton on the walls. What had the Prime Minister said to him two days before? ‘I can put the resources of the State at your disposal. If you want a regiment or two, you can have them. If you want a couple of destroyers moored off the coast of Brighton you can have them. If you want Brighton sealed off by the authorities, we can do it.’

Powerscourt sat down at the writing desk in the corner and composed a telegram to Schomberg McDonnell, private secretary to the Prime Minister.

The hotel managers of Brighton have always been a world-weary and rather cynical body of men. They felt cheerful that morning. Bright and sunny weather was always good for business. But on this day, as on the day before, they were visited again by the local police, asking a different question this time. No, we have no guests taking meals in their rooms, said the man from the Bristol. His brothers in Christ at the Worcester, the Old Steine, the Sea View and the Royal Exeter agreed. We do have one guest who takes meals in her rooms, the manager of the George told the policeman, who looked up with great expectations in his eyes as he heard the news, but she is eighty-seven years old and is not expected to live long. The Suffolk, the Royal Brighton, the York and the Oxford all shook their heads sadly and wondered what on earth was going on. In a quiet conclave later that afternoon they suspected that some terrible London murderer had fled to the worldly delights of Brighton. A man from the Burlington wondered if Jack the Ripper had come for a holiday by the sea.

At eleven o’clock Lord Francis Powerscourt had a visitor.

‘What a splendid day to come to the seaside!’ said a young man of about thirty years with laughing blue eyes and tousled fair hair.

‘Mr Hardy, you were very prompt in answering my telegram from yesterday,’ said Powerscourt, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘How very good to see you.’

‘You didn’t give me very much detail,’ said Hardy, the fire investigator who had helped Powerscourt at Blackwater, ‘but life always seems to be interesting when you’re around, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve brought a few things with me but I forgot to pack my bucket and spade.’

Powerscourt told him of Lucy’s kidnap. He showed him the kidnap letter. He explained that the police were talking to every hotel owner in Brighton. He explained to Hardy what he wanted.

‘I see, I see. What fun! What a lark, Lord Powerscourt!’ Hardy was rubbing his hands together in delight at the challenge ahead. ‘I did take the liberty of sending a wire to the local brigade. Am I right in thinking that you don’t yet know precisely which hotel we may be talking about?’

Powerscourt assured him that he did not yet have that intelligence.

‘I think I’ll take a walk down to the sea front,’ the young man said, ‘and have a look at the type of building we may be dealing with. But I tell you this, Lord Powerscourt. It’s all a lot more fun than those insurance claims back in London!’

At twelve o’clock the cannon on the West Pier boomed out for midday, a secular and seaside Angelus for the holidaymakers promenading up and down the front. The seagulls protested loudly and flew out to sea in angry battalions. Even after years of the gun tolling twelve they still hadn’t learnt to expect it.

The hotel managers of the Rottingdean and the Kemptown told the policemen that they had no guests taking their meals in their rooms. The Piccadilly did have such a guest but he was a young man who had broken his leg the day before. The Piccadilly’s hotel manager assured his visitors that the young man expected to be mobile in a couple of days. The policemen were half-way up the front by now and were almost opposite the Royal Pavilion.

Powerscourt stood staring out of the window at the sea front. One o’clock passed, then two. Joseph Hardy had not returned from his inspection of the hotels. Johnny Fitzgerald had departed once more in his tramp’s uniform to see what he could find. Maybe I’ve been wrong all along, Powerscourt thought bitterly. He looked at his watch. He could now calculate from any given hour of the day exactly how long he had to save Lady Lucy. At this point there were fifty-eight hours and eighteen minutes left. There might be a bit longer while the messages came down from London that Harrison’s Bank had been rescued. But then?

There was a sudden pounding up the stairs to his room. Chief Inspector Robin Tait burst in. ‘We’ve found them!’ he panted. ‘I’ve run all the way from the hotel to tell you! They’re in the King George the Fourth, not far from the West Pier!’

‘Well done, Chief Inspector!’ Powerscourt shook the policeman firmly by the hand and pumped it up and down. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am. This is fantastic news. How did you find them? Is there any news of Lucy?’

Tait slumped into a chair and wiped his brow with a perfectly ironed handkerchief. His wife likes to see him well turned out, Powerscourt thought.

‘It began as a perfectly routine inquiry, my lord, the normal sort of thing my officers have been doing for the last two days. At first they only got the assistant manager and he looked at them rather suspiciously, demanded to see their papers and that sort of thing. It’s amazing the difference not having a uniform makes to the way people see you. I’m sure we’ll find that very useful later on. Anyway, the assistant manager went off to speak to the kitchens. That took about ten minutes. Then he came back and said he just needed to check with the manager.’

‘Did your men know by now that they had found what they were looking for?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I think they did,’ said Tait, proud of the efficiency of his officers, ‘there was something in the assistant manager’s face, as if he felt guilty. This is what happened. One man booked two adjacent suites on the sixth floor of what you might call the west wing of the King George the Fourth Hotel two nights ago. There’s an interconnecting door between the two suites. The other two, a man and a woman, came later. The woman looked pale and tired, as if she’d had a fainting fit or something like that. They all disappeared into Rooms 607 and 608. They haven’t been seen since. All their meals have been sent up. They haven’t even let the chambermaid in to clean up.’

‘Didn’t anybody think that was suspicious?’ asked Powerscourt, his mind far away now with Lucy in her prison cell on the sixth floor of the King George the Fourth. Did she have any clean clothes? He knew she hated not having fresh things to wear every day.

‘They might have done, my lord,’ said Tait, aware suddenly of just how fragile Powerscourt was at that moment, ‘but quite a lot of money kept changing hands.’

There was a loud knock at the door. Joseph Hardy, fire expert and fire investigator had returned.

‘Mr Hardy, allow me to introduce Chief Inspector Tait of the local constabulary. Mr Hardy is an expert in fires of every sort. Let me tell you, Mr Hardy, that the Chief Inspector and his men have worked a miracle. Lady Lucy and the two villains are on the sixth floor of the King George the Fourth near the West Pier.’

‘Splendid, splendid!’ said Hardy cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. ‘I did a few sketches when I was down on the front, my Lord. Including the King George the Fourth.’ He produced a piece of paper from his satchel.

The hotel had a massive frontage, almost all of it looking out to sea. But on the west side, nearer to Hove, a turretlike structure jutted out, with one window looking straight out to sea, the window on its left looking west towards the pier, and a final window looking on to the street below and the other street running back towards the town.

‘It’s a perfect lookout post,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could see people, or policemen, coming at you from three directions.’

Chief Inspector Tait was to tell his wife later that he knew even then how Powerscourt proposed to free the hostages. He didn’t know if it would work.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Powerscourt, ‘let me tell you how I think the rescue is to be effected. Any direct assault, either from the corridor outside or through the windows, might succeed. But the villains would have time to shoot Lady Lucy before they were overpowered. We could put something in their food, a powerful sedative of some kind, and then rush the rooms. But somebody might not eat the food. Lady Lucy might take two helpings and not wake up at all. If we had time, we could simply wait. But we don’t have time. In fact,’ he looked quickly at his watch, ‘we have fifty-seven hours and fifty minutes to effect a rescue.’

Joseph Hardy was adding to his drawing of the King George the Fourth, the west wing in particular. Powerscourt could see sheets of red and great blobs of grey pencil moving up the side of the building. Hardy was smiling to himself.

‘So, tonight or tomorrow night,’ said Powerscourt, ‘we have a fire. It won’t really be a fire, of course, mostly smoke. The fire will be concentrated up the stairs and in the areas adjacent to the sixth-floor rooms. We will be able to make the fire fiercer, if necessary, to smoke them out. We can do that, Mr Hardy?’

‘Yes, my lord, we can,’ said Hardy cheerfully. ‘That would be great sport.’

‘At some point,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘they will have to come out. We shall have to make sure that there are no possible exits to the roof. We may need men with blankets, or whatever you fire people use, waiting down below in case they jump. Once they’re out of their rooms and coming down the stairs, we seize them all. Especially Lady Lucy.’

Chief Inspector Tait looked sombre. Powerscourt suddenly suspected that he and his men might feel they were missing the fun. All the glory would go to the firemen.

‘The role of the police, of course,’ he went on, ‘is absolutely vital. Your men, Chief Inspector, and there may have to be quite a lot of them, will have to be ready to break into the rooms if necessary. The hotel may have to be cordoned off. In the meantime I presume that you have posted a discreet watch all around the hotel in case our friends decide to cut their losses?’

Chief Inspector Tait nodded. He was fascinated by Hardy’s drawings. The little blobs of grey pencil had now reached the sky. The top of the hotel was virtually obliterated.

‘There are two things I must do,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I must send a telegram to the Prime Minister’s office in London. I propose that we reassemble here at seven o’clock this evening. Mr Hardy, could you bring your colleague or colleagues from the local fire brigade? And could you in the meantime work out in more detail how our fire could work to the best effect? Chief Inspector, could you bring your Chief Constable with you to the meeting? And could you also ensure that the hotel manager attends?’

Both men nodded their agreement.

‘And the second thing you have to do?’ This time Tait had no idea what was coming.

‘I presume, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that you can smuggle me into that hotel by the back door or through the kitchens? And I would be most grateful if you could find me the conductor of the orchestra who plays there in the evening. They do have a bloody orchestra, I presume?’

‘They claim,’ said Tait loyally, ‘that it is the best one of its kind in Sussex.’ He wondered if Powerscourt had gone out of his mind. Was he going to have specially selected music wafting up the stairs to Room 607, Music for the Royal Fireworks or something similar? ‘Could I ask why you want to see the orchestral gentleman, Lord Powerscourt?’

Powerscourt smiled. Tait noticed that his eyes stayed cold.

‘Of course you may, Chief Inspector. And no, I’m not going mad. I’m going to send a message. A message to Lady Lucy.’

Hold on, Lucy, he said to himself as Tait led him off towards the rear entrance to the King George the Fourth Hotel. Hold on. I’m coming.

He stopped at the telegraph on his way and sent a one-word message to London. ‘Schomberg.’