Death and the Jubilee

32

The orchestral gentleman was a tall man in his late thirties, painfully thin. Like so many in his profession he felt that his abilities had not been properly rewarded. In his youth there had been so much talent. People had said that he would end up as a great conductor with a great orchestra in one of the great capitals of Europe. Even Paris or Vienna had not seemed beyond the realms of the possible. But his dreams had faded now. Here he was, on duty every evening with another collection of embittered violinists and mutinous sections of horn and brass, churning out waltzes and melodies to accompany the soup and the fish courses, the steaks and the creme brulees of the Brighton holidaymakers. Sometimes, very late at night in the little garret the hotel gave him at the back of the building, overlooking the kitchen rubbish dump, he would dream again that he might escape from the King George the Fourth and find his proper station.

‘How can I help you, sir?’ he said to the man in the fisherman’s jersey who had asked to see him. Powerscourt had avoided giving any name.

‘I am staying in the hotel with my wife this evening and it is our wedding anniversary.’ Powerscourt gave him a friendly smile. ‘I would be most grateful if you could play this piece of music at precisely seven o’clock.’

He handed the conductor a piece of paper.

‘Why yes, I think we could,’ said the conductor. ‘We played the whole thing at Eastbourne last year. I hope the orchestra haven’t left their scores at home. They normally bring everything with them. Sometimes people ask us to play the oddest things, you know.’

Powerscourt handed over ten pounds.

‘It’s not the usual sort of thing we play here,’ said the conductor defensively. ‘I hope there won’t be any trouble with the management or the guests.’

Powerscourt handed over a further ten pounds. The conductor looked more cheerful.

‘There won’t be any trouble with the management,’ Powerscourt assured him. ‘Don’t worry about the guests. It’ll be good for their souls.’

Powerscourt felt his arm being tugged as he walked back to the Prince Regent. He looked across. The tramp was speaking to him.

‘Francis, for the love of God, I tell you, I’m sure they’re in that hotel you’ve just walked out of.’

It was Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how very nice to see you. How in God’s name did you find that out?’

‘Well,’ Fitzgerald went on, ‘I’ve spent part of the last two days being a fortune teller on the West Pier. I gave the Great Mystic Merlin five pounds to clear off for a bit. I’ve been watching all these hotels from my pitch, just inside the entrance. There’s a set of windows on the top floor of this King George place where somebody looks out every now and then. As if they don’t want to be seen.’

‘You’re absolutely right, Johnny. The police have found them in Rooms 607 and 608. There’s a conference in my suite at the hotel at seven this evening. We’re going to plan the Great Fire of Brighton. We’re going to smoke them out.’

The conductor looked around the great dining room. The room was nearly full. The conductor noticed that all the windows looking out to sea seemed to have been opened. He tried to spot the man who had asked for this piece of music but he couldn’t find him. The conductor was running a little late. He nodded to his orchestra. He raised his baton. Very softly at first the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony floated out into the evening air of Brighton.

Four hundred yards away the manager of the King George the Fourth thought he was in the middle of a nightmare. Albert Hudson had served in the King George for nearly fifty years. Quite soon he would be able to retire with his wife to the little cottage he had bought near Ringmer, well away from the sea and well away from the ghastly tourists and what he saw as the crass vulgarity of modern Brighton. All afternoon people saying they were policemen had been skulking round his hotel. His hotel. Later on there was another collection of interlopers who said they were firemen. The worst week of his professional life up till now had been when two Indian Maharajahs had come to stay for a week; both with large retinues, mostly female, mostly from Paris. The two Indians had fallen out over one of the young women. The young women began fighting among themselves. It had been terrible. Now here he was in a meeting with a whole roomful of doubtful-looking people. There was a smart man who claimed to be the Chief Constable of Sussex. Albert Hudson thought he might have seen him somewhere before. There was a cricketer who said he was a Chief Inspector. There was a tramp who looked as if he should have been locked up. There was a man in a fisherman’s jersey who pretended to be in charge. There was a very young-looking man who kept on drawing things. Hudson thought they were fire engines. There was another man who said he was a fireman and a mild-looking man at the end of the table who said he came from the Prime Minister’s office.

Albert Hudson decided that he would defend the honour and possibly the fittings and the fabric of his hotel to his last breath.

‘Forgive me if I have misunderstood you, gentlemen. Please forgive me. Am I right in thinking that you are proposing to burn down my hotel?’

Powerscourt sighed. His mind was four hundred yards away, on the Brighton sea front, listening to the noises.

The Chief Constable intervened in what his family privately referred to as his Reading the Riot Act voice.

‘My dear Hudson,’ he began, rubbing his hands together, ‘this must all have come as rather a shock. We are not proposing to burn down your hotel. We are proposing to create an incendiary incident, mostly based on smoke rather than fire, in order to force a pair of villains who are holding Lord Powerscourt’s wife hostage on the sixth floor to come out. This has to be done as quickly as possible, or they will kill her. Perhaps Lord Powerscourt would care to show you the note they left in his house in London a couple of days ago.’

Powerscourt felt in his pocket. ‘You do not need to know anything about Harrison’s Bank,’ he said. ‘That must be regarded as confidential. But you can see what they will do to my wife.’ He handed over the note. Albert Hudson turned pale as he read the last two sentences.

The third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony begins with a melancholy sound like a hymn. Then it moves off into a different world.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had proposed to Lady Lucy Hamilton during a performance of this very symphony at the Albert Hall in London five years before. Powerscourt remembered scribbling his proposal on a scrap of newspaper, not daring to speak in case God or Beethoven sent a thunderbolt.

The conductor was pleased with his orchestra. Maybe this would mark a turning point in his career after all. The diners in the King George the Fourth paused over the Sole Meuniere or Lobster Thermidor as the music went on. Perhaps the man in the fisherman’s jersey had been right, the conductor thought. It was good for their souls.

Up on the sixth floor Lady Lucy was straining to listen. She knew this was not something the orchestra normally played. This wasn’t a waltz or a jolly piece of Handel. She strained in her seat towards the window. Her guardian of the moment was reading a foreign newspaper.

Powerscourt too was straining his ears towards the sea front. He knew the music should be well under way by now. He hoped Lucy could hear it.

Then Lucy knew. She knew the music. She knew when she had first heard it with Francis. She knew it was a message. She knew who it was from. She remembered that she had been crying softly in the Albert Hall when she had first heard this movement. She had cried till the end. I mustn’t cry now, or they’ll know something has happened, she said to herself. She wanted to sing, to shout, to perform once more her own Ode to Joy as she had wanted to in that darkened box opposite Kensington Gardens those five years ago when Francis asked her to marry him.

Francis has found me, she whispered to herself, blinking back the tears once more. Francis has found me. Francis is coming.

With a supreme effort of will, Lady Lucy Powerscourt turned slightly in her chair and pretended to fall asleep.

Francis is coming. Francis is coming.

‘What about my directors? What about my shareholders?’ said Albert Hudson, manager of the King George the Fourth, defiantly. ‘You are going to cause enormous damage to my hotel if you proceed with this madcap scheme. Who is going to pay for the repairs?’

As he looked round the room Albert Hudson thought this should have been his trump card. But he sensed that he was going to be proved wrong.

The man in the fisherman’s jersey spoke to him very gently. ‘All that has been taken care of, Mr Hudson. Mr McDonnell here has come specially from London. He is the private secretary to the Prime Minister.’

McDonnell too was gentle, trying to ease the pain of the old man whose hotel was to be sacrificed to the flames and the national interest.

‘I have a letter here from the Prime Minister, Mr Hudson. He says that Her Majesty’s Government will pay for any necessary repairs to any hotels in Brighton that follow any operations mounted by Lord Francis Powerscourt and the Chief Constable of Sussex. Here, you may read it.’

This was the result of Powerscourt’s one word telegraph to Whitehall. He had explained the likely position in an earlier message. ‘Schomberg’ simply asked for McDonnell to come in person.

Hudson stared hard at the notepaper, as if he suspected that it might be a forgery.

‘I too have had a message from the Prime Minister.’ The Chief Constable was moving in for the kill. ‘It gives me powers to take over any hotels I think fit in the Brighton area for the next forty-eight hours. Of course, I have no wish to use these powers. Co-operation will be much more satisfactory than coercion. If we can all work together then the final outcome is much more likely to succeed.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly what a hotel run by the police force would be like. Lots of minor rules and regulations, he suspected. Proper dress to be worn at all times. Drunkenness punished by a quick visit to the cells. Meals served exactly on time.

Albert Hudson looked round the room once more. Joe Hardy thought he might burst into tears, so sad had his face become as he thought of the flames and the smoke ruining the building he had tended for nearly fifty years.

‘Very good, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘With great reluctance, great reluctance, I place the King George the Fourth at your disposal. If anything should go wrong with this operation I shall tell my directors that the blame cannot be laid at my door. I presume that I may evacuate all my guests in the course of this evening.’

The Chief Constable looked at Powerscourt.

‘I’m afraid that would not fit in with our plans, Mr Hudson.’ Powerscourt spoke in his most emollient voice. He was wondering if Lucy had got the message, sent up to her through the windows of the hotel. ‘Most of this fire will take place on the upper floors of the west wing. The people we are concerned with are in Rooms 607 and 608 on the top floor, as you know. Mr Hardy here is a fire expert from London. He and Chief Fire Officer Matthews beside him from your local brigade will work out later this evening exactly how they intend to achieve the conflagration. But it is very important that the rest of the guests are evacuated at the time of the fire. It will make things look more convincing. With any luck – from our point of view, that is – there will be a certain amount of confusion. Maybe some of the women will scream. Maybe some of the children will cry. That is regrettable but it helps our purpose. These noises will carry up to the sixth floor. I hope they will help convince the two villains holding my wife that they have no alternative but to evacuate their rooms. Otherwise, they must feel, they will be burnt to a cinder.’

Chief Inspector Tait made a note in his book. Powerscourt wondered if he was going to hire some actresses for the evening to scream to police orders. Brighton had always been well supplied with actresses.

Albert Hudson knew when he was beaten. ‘I see,’ he said looking mournfully at his perfectly polished shoes. ‘I see.’

‘Now,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the more closely you are involved in the planning of the business, Mr Hudson, the greater our chances of victory. The police and the fire department here both need to return with you to your hotel for the detailed planning of this operation. I suggest this should happen at once.’

‘I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt,’ Chief Inspector Tait sounded apologetic, ‘that I should ask you and Lord Fitzgerald to wait here. Until it is dark, at least. I know it is unlikely that either of the two villains will come down into the body of the hotel but that is a risk we dare not take.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘Of course. We shall wait for the dark, Chief Inspector. We have often done it before.’

As Albert Hudson led his party of arsonists and police officers back to the King George the Fourth, Powerscourt saw Joseph Hardy showing his colleague a long list of calculations. Powerscourt thought they were talking about tar and pitch and other inflammatory substances. As they went down the stairs he heard Hardy talking about some other fiery potion whose name he did not catch. ‘That stuff,’ Hardy said with a laugh, ‘it goes up like the fires of hell themselves. It’s terrific!’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald sat waiting for another battle, as they had waited together so many times in the past. Powerscourt remembered the terrible strain, waiting hour after hour in the roasting Indian sun for the enemy to unleash their gaudy cavalry on the thin lines of redcoats and their guns. He remembered waiting in the Piazza San Marco in Venice for Lord Edward Gresham to come to a fateful rendezvous in an upstairs room of Florian’s restaurant. He remembered another Indian battle when he and Johnny had been surrounded in an ancient fortress near the Khyber Pass waiting for the Afghans to climb the slope and die in their thousands from the artillery.

‘Francis,’ said Johnny, I think I might take a little nap. Wake me in a couple of hours.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In six hours’ time, I can have a bloody great drink. I hope that hotel man can open his bar for the celebrations.’

‘One thing, Johnny, just one, before you go to sleep.’ Powerscourt sounded very solemn. ‘I realize that now may not be the best time to ask this question. It is after all a very personal matter. Forgive me for asking it. Feel free not to respond if you so wish.’

‘Get on with it, Francis!’ said Fitzgerald, draping himself neatly into the sofa.

‘It’s this, Johnny. What did you tell your customers when you were being Mystic Merlin on the West Pier?’

Fitzgerald laughed. ‘It’s terribly easy, really. Most of the customers are young girls. “Are you married, my child?” I would say, stroking their hands. “No, sir,” they would reply. I would pause for a bit and start talking about lines of the hand meeting in particular places. Then I would say I saw a little house with a garden and three children playing and a husband just coming home from work. Some of them would give me extra money for that.’

Powerscourt thought of legions of Lydia Bennets, asking for confirmation that the perfect officer was just around the corner, waiting at the ball in scarlet uniform.

‘Did you give anyone bad news, Johnny?’

‘No.’ Fitzgerald was yawning now. ‘Only one very pompous man. He looked very rich to me. God knows why he wanted to have his fortune told.’

‘Maybe he too wanted a little house with three children,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Well, I thought he had plenty of houses already. I told him I saw a mountain, a very long time ago, and a great crowd on the slopes gathered to hear a preacher man.’

‘What did the preacher man say, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘The preacher man said,’ Fitzgerald was laughing now, ‘that the meek shall inherit the earth.’

Lady Lucy ate very little that evening. She wanted to stay alert for whatever the night might bring. She told her captors she had a very bad headache and needed to be left in peace. As she pretended to doze in her armchair she could almost hear her heart beating.

Francis has found me. Francis is coming.

Her husband spent much of the evening staring out of his window towards the West Pier. Various emissaries came from the King George with details of the plans. Chief Inspector Tait came with news that everything was going splendidly. He explained to Powerscourt that the police had evolved a system of sending each other messages by whistles for use in the smoke. They sounded very complicated. Powerscourt only remembered one. One long continuous blast meant that the fire could be stopped, the smoke engines turned off.

Joe Hardy came, looking very excited about the night ahead.

‘We’re going to have a proper fire in the rooms on the two floors underneath. Proper fire,’ he went on gleefully, ‘not just smoke like everywhere else. It should help them get hot in Rooms 607 and 608.’

He saw Powerscourt looking alarmed.

‘Don’t worry, sir. It won’t be too hot. And we’ll be able to put it out when we want to. It’s going to be tremendous!’

With that, Joe Hardy departed into the night, whistling happily to himself as he went. As darkness fell over Brighton the Chief Constable himself appeared.

‘I’m feeling rather nervous,’ he announced. ‘But I hope everything is under control. The inferno, as that charming young man from London keeps referring to it, is to start a few minutes after one o’clock.’

Shortly after midnight Lord Francis Powerscourt crept down to the front. There was a crescent moon and the stars were shining brightly over the sea. A slight wind came in from the English Channel. Powerscourt heard whispered greetings from the shadows and the doorways as he passed. ‘Good evening, sir.’ ‘Good luck, sir.’ Chief Inspector Tait must have his men posted everywhere tonight, he thought, as he saw a further posse of policemen lying on the beach behind the fishing boats. On the West Pier the moonlight was glinting off the girders, faint shadows reflected in the dark waters beneath. The great hotels lay sleeping on the sea front, like beached liners waiting for another voyage. A stray drunk was being escorted to a place of safety by yet more of Tait’s policemen. A stray dog, watched by twenty pairs of eyes, trotted slowly along the front in the direction of the Royal Pavilion to guard the ghosts of the Prince Regent and Mrs Fitzherbert.