Goodnight Sweet Prince

7

Few people slept well at Sandringham that night. Outside further falls of snow drifted down, covering the great slate roofs and the gravel driveway and lying in weird patterns on the tall trees.

The Rosebery Powerscourt Memorandum, written in Rose-bery’s best copperplate, was waiting in the little drawing-room of Sandringham House for the nine o’clock meeting.

Subject: The Days Ahead.

If the murder is to be covered up, there has to be another cause of death. Death by Influenza is the best solution. Prince Eddy was already suffering from a cold. There have been a number of tragic deaths from this disease in recent weeks. Another would not be surprising.

For Death by Influenza to work as a cover story, the Prince must, as it were, be kept alive for a couple more days. This afternoon or tomorrow a notice should be pinned to the Norwich Gates here and outside Marlborough House reporting that there is grave cause for concern and that additional medical staff have been sent for from London. This will appear in the newspapers the following day.

Tomorrow two further bulletins should be posted. Each one should be more sombre than the last. They will appear in the papers on Tuesday.

On the appropriate day, a last bulletin should be posted in the usual places, reporting that the Prince has passed away. If that happens early in the morning, say eleven o’clock, it will give the papers ample time to prepare special editions.

Sir George Trevelyan, Private Secretary to HM The Queen, is an expert at dealing with all the newspapers. He is particularly close to the editor of The Times. He should be let into the secret of the illness and entrusted with the task of liaison with the Press.

Returning to today, it is essential that the military gentlemen have access to the body and that the room be cleaned up. A Service of Prayer for the sick Prince should be held in the church this afternoon. Attendance should be recommended if not compulsory for all the domestic staff. While that is in progress, the body could be seen to. A brief inspection could be made of the roof to see if there has been any unexpected traffic up there.

Only two other people should be told the true nature of Prince Eddy’s death. One is the Prime Minister, whose authority may need to be invoked to expedite future inquiries. The other is the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who has files on all known Irish subversives, and may be able to assist with possible foreign suspects.

The Prince of Wales read slowly, pausing occasionally to polish his glasses. Suter and Shepstone were busy making notes on the pads in front of them.

‘I think this is an excellent plan,’ said the Prince of Wales, rising from his seat to gaze out of the tall windows at the white wilderness beyond. ‘Now I must make up my mind. I did not feel I could do so until I saw what the alternative plan might be. Suter, Shepstone, do you think it could work?’

The faithful courtiers gave it as their opinion that if everything was properly managed, and if there were no unforeseen circumstances like a leak of the truth along the way, then indeed it could be successfully implemented.

‘Never say yes and never say no,’ Powerscourt said to himself, remembering Rosebery’s words from the past. ‘Your backs are well covered, gentlemen. Nobody will be able to blame either of you if things go wrong. No doubt you’ve written your reservations down on those little bits of paper, just to be on the safe side. If the plan fails, all the blame is going to attach to Rosebery and me.’

All his life Rosebery had been fascinated by the way people made their decisions. He had watched politicians take great decisions in haste or on a whim, or because they couldn’t think of anything else to do, or because they felt they had to be seen to do something, in one case because the minister was going to be late for the opera. As he watched the Prince of Wales, standing by his Norfolk window, he knew that this was the most bizarre decision he would watch in his life.

‘All right. All right,’ said the Prince of Wales. ‘I want my son’s murder to be concealed. That is my final decision. Will you gentlemen see to the details?’

Sir William Suter was the first to break the silence that dropped on the room after the Prince of Wales’ departure.

‘Gentlemen,’ he announced with the satisfied air of one who is back in control of the meeting, ‘we are most grateful to you both. Let me try to divide up the tasks that yet remain if this plan is to succeed. We have a few days left in which to maintain the necessary deception. After that we must bolt the lie into the history books.’

That, thought Powerscourt, realising that he might have underestimated Suter, was rather good. Cheating history. Deceiving the future.

‘Lord Rosebery, could the Royal Family impose on your kindness and your generosity one more time? Your suggestion about Trevelyan is excellent. Could we ask you to make all speed to London and communicate with him in person? I dare not trust these tidings to a letter, nor yet to the telegraph machine. It is vital that he knows what we know as soon as possible. The Prince of Wales’ train is at Wolferton station now, waiting for whatever passengers it may have to bear. If you were to set out at once we could have Trevelyan on board by early afternoon.’

‘Hold on a moment.’ Rosebery spoke very softly. His head was in his hands and he sounded as though he was speaking from somewhere very far away. ‘Hold on a moment, gentlemen, I beg you.’

Suter, Shepstone, and Powerscourt stared intently at Rosebery, his delicate features contorted by some inner strain. He looked up.

‘Of course I should go and talk to Trevelyan in London or Osborne or wherever he is to be found at present. But consider, pray. We are about to embark on one of the great deceptions in the history of the monarchy in this nation. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who wished it thus, or the power of the reasons for that choice. But we must have a plan. If we are to cheat history, as you, Sir William, implied earlier, we must make sure that the cards, as it were, are properly sharpened, the form book doctored, the dice weighted in our favour.

‘We have one enormous advantage. Nobody would ever suspect that such a deception was being practised. History is always written by the conquerors. They get their version in first. The vanquished may rot in some prison cell or die upon the battlefield. They never tell their story, and if they do, it is usually too late.

‘But, gentlemen, we must prepare our ground. First we must fix the date of death. Then I suggest we work backwards from that date to this Sunday morning, deciding in advance what information we give out. It is as if we were writing a play backwards. We know the last act, the death of the Prince, just as Shakespeare must have known that Hamlet had to end with the death of his Prince. Hamlet was Danish too – appropriate for this household. But we have to write Acts One to Five of this drama, if the thing is to work.’

‘Are you suggesting, Rosebery,’ Suter sounded like a man going into uncharted waters, ‘that we should write everything down as if it were a play?’

‘I am not sure yet. I think we need to think about it calmly. Can anyone think of the single most important fact that we do not possess? But a fact vital to our success?’

‘Oddly enough, I can. I thought about it this morning, Rose-bery.’ Powerscourt was staring at the snow-covered lake outside.

‘And what do you think it is, Francis?’

‘Quite simply, it is this.’ Powerscourt glanced around the room, Suter looking disturbed by the fire, Sir Bartle looking vacant as if hoping the murder and the cover-up would melt away, Rosebery pacing up and down the room like a cat. ‘We know it is possible that Prince Eddy could die from influenza. People are dying from it all the time. But we can’t just tell the world he’s died from it, just like that. There has to be a history, announcements of the illness in the papers and so on. But we don’t know how long it might take. It could take two days. It could take ten, or twenty. Until we know how long that is, we cannot fix the date for the end of Rosebery’s Act Five. And, don’t you see, until we know the date of the end of Act Five, we don’t know what to put in the four acts in between. Until we know that, we are, quite simply, in the dark.’

‘Are there any doctors in this house?’ Rosebery was obviously anxious to push things forward. ‘Doctors who know, I mean?’

‘Dr Broadbent is still here. Dr Manby cannot be very far away. I could summon him now.’ Suter looked reassured at the prospect of action in the world of Private Secretaries rather than playwrights.

‘I suggest you summon them both at once. Perhaps we could reassemble here in one hour’s time.’

Rosebery left the room, beckoning Powerscourt to accompany him. They went out of the front of the house in the unforgiving cold, snow dribbling occasionally on to their thick coats. Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling discreetly out of sight, making circuits of the lakes and shrubberies. Where did Shepstone’s Major Dawnay get them all from, Powerscourt wondered? He started with fourteen. Now he must have at least fifty. If it went on like this, Dawnay would have a whole regiment by the end of the week.

The two doctors were a study in contrasts. Manby, tall, slim, looked to be in his early thirties. He had the air of the countryman about him, in his healthy cheeks and his casual tweeds. Broadbent was a creature of the town or the city, portly, his hair receding, his suit the most respectable black, his bag large and formidable.

A circular table and six dining-room chairs had been appropriated from another room and sat by the corner, waiting for meetings.

‘Dr Manby, Dr Broadbent.’ Suter was at his most unctuous. ‘Thank you for interrupting your business to give us of your wisdom. You both know the circumstances in which we are placed, and the solution that has been advocated to our difficulties. We just need a little practical advice. Rosebery?’

Courtier to the last, thought Powerscourt. Pass the parcel, pass the body, pass the corpse. Let Rosebery ask what might be called the fatal question, and no blame could attach to Suter in the future.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Rosebery in his best House of Lords voice. ‘Our question is a simple one. How long does it take for somebody to die of influenza? We are talking of a young male, some twenty-eight years old, to all intents and purposes in good health.’

‘That is not as easy a question as it sounds.’ Broadbent looked down at his bag, as if medical secrets or influenza victims were contained inside. ‘It depends on so many other factors.’

We could be here all day at this rate, thought Powerscourt, as the man in the black suit tried to wriggle out of committing himself.

‘One sees so many different varieties of symptoms, you understand. Age is only one factor, maybe not even the most important one. There have been cases where the illness has dragged on for three or four weeks and the patient has recovered, others where the disease has worked itself through much more rapidly.’

Powerscourt glanced at Rosebery to see his reaction to the delays. Would the former Foreign Secretary lose his temper?

A flicker of irritation shot across Rosebery’s face. ‘I think we are talking at cross purposes here. Both you gentlemen know what we are talking about. There are reasons I cannot divulge why the manner of Eddy’s death has to be concealed. All I can say is that those reasons are to do with state security.’

Rosebery had just thought of state security. He paused to let its full impact sink in. It was, Powerscourt reflected, the perfect justification for the cover-up. It covered everything, like the snow outside.

‘We intend to tell the world,’ Rosebery continued, ‘that Prince Eddy died from influenza, not from murder. We need to announce his illness. We need to invent medical bulletins for every day before his second death, if you follow me. We would like that process to be short, so that the normal routines of mourning can be properly observed. At present the situation is intolerable for members of the family. But we do not want it be so short that it looks implausible or improbable. Dr Manby, you are the local man here. What do you feel would be a reasonable period of time? For the thing to be plausible, I mean.’

‘Of course, I share my colleague’s reservations,’ Manby began.

Good God, thought Powerscourt. Another one. More bloody qualifications. They’ll start talking about the Hippocratic Oath soon. But he was wrong.

‘The key factor, I think, is whether it is influenza alone or if there is some accompanying illness which might speed up the process. Pneumonia comes often with influenza – two of my patients have recently died, not from the influenza, but from its terrible twin disease. If the pneumonia came quickly, you would expect the patient to go through a period of fluctuating conditions, apparently recovering one day, very high temperatures and a relapse the next. In those circumstances, the patient might die after four or five days, though that might be too abrupt. Anything between six and nine days would fit the prevailing trends of such a condition in Norfolk at the present time.’

‘Would that analysis meet with your approval, Dr Broadbent?’ Rosebery was anxious to carry the meeting with him, before further medical complications set in.

‘Of course, I do not know the particular circumstances in these rural areas.’

Here we go again, thought Powerscourt, casting a surreptitious glance at his watch.

‘But in general, that is a very fair description of the progress, the possible progress of the disease.’

‘Thank you, Dr Broadbent.’ Rosebery interrupted him neatly at the end of the sentence. Powerscourt felt Broadbent had been good for another three or four minutes of intervening conditions and unfortunate side effects.

‘Let me try to sum up our position with a concrete example.’ Rosebery smiled a thin smile at the medical gentlemen. ‘Let us say the Prince contracted the beginnings of influenza at the end of last week. We already know that he was suffering from a cold. On Friday, two days ago, he is taken seriously ill. Pneumonia symptoms appear quickly. The patient comes and goes in the manner described by Dr Manby over the weekend and through the first three days of next week. By Thursday, he could be dead.’

‘I am afraid that that is all too plausible,’ Dr Manby said. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Broadbent?’

Surprisingly, Broadbent did. Even more surprising was what Rosebery did next.

‘Suter, do you have some pens and paper in here?’

Sir William produced some from the drawers on the table.

‘Gentlemen, I am going to give you some rather gruesome homework. And I am afraid it must be done now. It’s the express wish of the Prince of Wales.’

Rosebery’s making that up, thought Powerscourt. He’s making it up to make sure they don’t wriggle out of what he wants them to do.

Rosebery wrote rapidly on five separate sheets of paper. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

‘I would ask you to remember that what you write for the Prince’s condition on Sunday will be the first news to appear in the papers. One bulletin should suffice. It will appear in the Monday editions, Monday’s bulletins appearing on Tuesday and so on. For each day from Monday to Thursday, gentlemen, we require two medical bulletins. They will be signed in your names. They will be pinned up on the railings of Sandringham House and at Marlborough House.

‘They can be brief, the bulletins, but they must be plausible. Just a couple of sentences at a time will do. Bring in the pneumonia as you feel appropriate. I think you might write a third bulletin for broadcast late on Wednesday. And I think you should also write one holding version which could be used if we find that we need another one in a hurry. No change in the patient’s condition, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you know when you want him to die, Lord Rosebery?’ Manby was looking practical, pen poised over his Sunday hymn sheet.

‘I do indeed, Dr Manby. I was just coming to that. Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, is to die at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning, in time for the papers to prepare special editions for the Friday.

‘Now, I suggest that we leave you to this distasteful task. These other gentlemen and I are going to prepare the background material that will be distributed to the newspapers at the same time as the bulletins.’

Rosebery was now in complete control of the situation. ‘Successful generals,’ he said to the two doctors as he prepared to lead the rest of his small army from the room, ‘leave nothing to chance. Everything is planned. Everything is prepared. If we want our version to be believed, we are asking people to believe in one huge lie. They are much more likely to do so if we can support the big lie with a host of smaller ones.

‘We are going,’ he looked at Suter and Shepstone, ‘to invent the host of smaller lies to buttress the bulletins, when he first felt ill, when the first doctor was called, any trips he might have made outdoors, shooting or that sort of thing, which could have brought on or aggravated his condition.’

‘Lord Rosebery.’ Broadbent sounded plaintive. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

‘I’m sure I have, my dear Broadbent. Please enlighten me. At times like this we need all the help we can get.’

‘This is Sunday,’ said Dr Broadbent. ‘Do you mean to say that you intend to get the first bulletin into the papers tomorrow?’

‘Indeed I do. That is why you gentlemen must make haste. The Prince of Wales’ special train is waiting to take me at full speed to London. There I shall meet the Queen’s Private Secretary. Together we have an appointment with the editor of The Times early this evening. ‘That is when, for our purposes, the history of this affair will begin to be written. The Official History, I mean. For that other history, the secret history, the history of secrets, could I paraphrase from the Danish play, the rest must be silence.’