Death and the Jubilee
D
AVID
D
ICKINSON
was born in Dublin. He graduated from Cambridge with a first-class honours degree
in classics and joined the BBC. After a spell in radio he transferred to television and went on to become editor of
Newsnight
and
Panorama.
In 1995 he was series editor of
Monarchy,
a three-part examination of its current state and future prospects. David lives in London.
Praise for The Lord Francis Powerscourt series
‘A cracking yarn, beguilingly real from start to finish . . . you have to pinch yourself to remind you that it is fiction – or is it?’
Peter Snow
‘A kind of locked bedroom mystery . . . Dickinson’s view of the royals is edgy and shaped by our times.’
The Poisoned Pen
‘Fine prose, high society and complex plot recommend this series.’
Library Journal
Titles in this series
(listed in order)
Goodnight Sweet Prince
Death & the Jubilee
Death of an Old Master
Death of a Chancellor
Death Called to the Bar
Death on the Nevskii Prospekt
Constable & Robinson Ltd
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www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint
of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2003, this paperback
edition published by Robinson, an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2007
First US edition published by Carroll & Graf Publishers 2003,
this paperback edition, 2007
Carroll & Graf Publishers
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Copyright © David Dickinson 2003, 2007
The right of David Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been identified by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.
UK ISBN-13: 978-1-84119-584-1 (hbk)
UK ISBN: 978-1-84529-613-1
eISBN: 978-1-78033-410-3
US ISBN-13: 978-0-78672-067-5
US ISBN-10: 0-7867-2067-0
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Lizzie
London 1896
One nondescript room at the top of the War Office in London had become the nerve centre of the British Empire. It had two small windows that looked out over the rooftops of the
capital, a threadbare carpet, a fading portrait of Queen Victoria over a mean fireplace, a battered desk and an ink-stained table.
But these cramped quarters were the focal point for one of the greatest movements of military personnel the world had ever seen. Tens of thousands of soldiers and cavalrymen were to sail across
the globe on orders despatched from this bureaucratic command post.
This was the Planning Headquarters for the Jubilee Parade in honour of Victoria the Queen Empress on her Diamond Jubilee on 22nd June 1897, now a year and a quarter away. This was to be the
grandest parade the world had ever seen, grander even than Roman triumphs through the eternal city two thousand years before. No captured chieftains or Oriental despots in chains were needed to
adorn this procession. These were Victoria’s subjects, to be carried across the red-coloured map that marked the glory of her Empire. Hussars from Canada and carabiniers from Natal had to be
transported, Hong Kong Chinese Police, Cypriot Zaptiehs, Dyak head-hunters from North Borneo, Malays and Hausas, Sinhalese and Maoris, Indian lancers and Cape Mounted Rifles, cavalrymen from New
South Wales and Jamaicans resplendent in white gaiters. Fifty thousand troops were to march through London to a Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s, a splash, an explosion of colour on the
dull grey buildings of the capital, a heady and intoxicating draught of romance for the million citizens expected to wonder at their passing.
General Hugo Arbuthnot was the man in charge of this huge enterprise. He had been a soldier all his life, a life spent in the mundane details of military planning and administration. Not for him
the glory of the cavalry charge or the heroic defences of the British Army in adversity. His campaigns were fought not with the sword but with pen and ink, fought on paper in committee meetings and
the interminable boredom of staff work. From this unpromising terrain he had created an empire all his own. If some dashing general was faced with a complicated logistic problem he felt was beneath
his talents, Arbuthnot was the man. If the Army wanted a vast feat of organizational complexity, Arbuthnot was the man. Above all, he was known as having a safe pair of hands.
But there was one cross he had to bear, as he repeatedly told his wife in their tidy house in Hampshire, the lawn always neatly trimmed, the roses punctually pruned, on his return from the daily
grappling with shipping lines and the near insoluble problem of camel feed on requisitioned steamers. General Arbuthnot was also in charge of security on Jubilee Day. Security, he used to say, was
not something, like cases of rifles or ammunition, that could be nailed down. It was slippery. It was elusive. And some of the people he had to deal with on the issue of security were, he felt,
decidedly slippery, decidedly elusive.
This morning Arbuthnot had convened a meeting in his office of some of the key elements in the Whitehall jungle whose views had to be consulted. On his left sat the Honourable St John Flaherty
of the Foreign Office, an exquisitely dressed young man whose diplomatic reticence was marred by a fabulous gold watch. Flaherty was renowned in diplomatic circles for the quality of his prose and
the regularity of his affairs with diplomatic wives. On Arbuthnot’s right sat a harassed-looking Assistant Commissioner from the Metropolitan Police. Furthest away was Dominic Knox of the
Irish Office, a short and wiry man with a small beard and a secret passion for the gaming tables. Knox had no official job title but wandered through the bureaucratic maze as a senior member of the
Secretariat in Dublin Castle. Everyone round General Arbuthnot’s table knew that this was the foremost expert in Britain on terrorism, subversion and intelligence gathering in Ireland.
‘Perhaps, Mr Flaherty, you could enlighten us with the views of the Foreign Office?’ General Arbuthnot had little time for the Foreign Office, a talking shop full of milksops in his
view.
‘Thank you, General, thank you.’ Flaherty smiled a condescending smile. ‘I could burden you with the reports we have collected from our embassies round the world,
gentlemen.’ Flaherty waved at a pile of cables in his folder as if it were a bad hand at whist. ‘But I won’t. The key fact is this, gentlemen. Assassinations since the time of
Julius Caesar and before have always been home-grown affairs. Brutus and Cassius stabbed their fellow Roman on the Ides of March. Roman assassinates Roman. John Wilkes Booth shot his President
Abraham Lincoln at the theatre in Washington. American assassinates American. Russians blew up their Tsar Alexander as he drove through St Petersburg in his carriage fifteen years ago. Russian
assassinates Russian. In some parts of the Balkans and the Middle East, I believe, more rulers are assassinated than actually die in their beds.
‘In short, the most likely person to try to assassinate Queen Victoria or let off a bomb is an inhabitant of these islands, a Briton trying to assassinate a Briton. Madmen and fanatics
from anywhere in the world cannot be ruled out of course, but you cannot legislate for the insane.’
‘Quite so,’ said the General, looking up from the notes he had just made. ‘Let me now turn to the position of the Metropolitan Police. Mr Taylor.’
William Taylor, Assistant Commissioner, felt slightly out of place. He brushed his remaining hairs back across his forehead. He was a practical policeman. He had risen through the ranks from
mundane police stations in Clerkenwell and Southwark, Hoxton and Hammersmith. It would be his task to issue the public order notices, to prepare the plans of his force for the maintenance of order
on the day of the procession. The historical sweep of the Foreign Office world view left him cold.
‘Our position, General, is quite simple. We have increased our penetration of the various subversive societies that operate in and around the capital. You will recall that we were allotted
extra monies for the purpose. We are still working on our security strategy for the week or so surrounding the Jubilee. At one point we considered banning the public from the roofs of all the high
buildings along the route of the parade to St Paul’s Cathedral, but the Home Office believe it would be politically impossible.’
William Taylor winced slightly as he remembered the response of the Home Office Minister. ‘Completely, totally and utterly impossible! Impossible! We are meant to be celebrating the glory
and power of the British Empire! Are we so frightened that we have to have a flat-footed constable on every rooftop looking for assassins? What would they do if they saw one? Blow their
whistles?’
‘For the time being, General,’ Taylor went on, ‘we watch and wait. We are in very close touch with our colleagues from the Irish Office, as you know.’
A telephone was ringing insistently in the room next door. Noises of the great world beyond the windows infiltrated the War Office, clocks tolling, the rumble of traffic, the shouts of the
delivery men. General Arbuthnot looked briefly at his favourite picture. It showed an enormous military parade at Aldershot, ranks of troops stretching without end towards a pale blue horizon. Not
a button, not a plume was out of place. That was as it should be. General Arbuthnot had organized the parade.