Powerscourt was lost in thought. Uniforms. Something to do with uniforms.
‘Johnny,’ he said, pacing up and down the room again, ‘uniforms can make you almost invisible. If you’re a fireman or somebody like that people don’t really look at
you at all. They look at the uniform.’
‘You’re not suggesting, are you,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘that we turn into the Sussex Fire Brigade? Not that I wouldn’t like climbing up those big ladders and waving the
hosepipes about.’
‘No, I’m not, Johnny.’ Powerscourt was deadly serious. ‘It was the principle of the thing I was thinking about. Army officers.’ Powerscourt said triumphantly.
‘I’ve still got my uniform. You must still have yours somewhere. We could be a couple of heroes home from the wars.’
Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy’s favourite clock. He wondered yet again where she was.
‘It’s nearly half-past nine, Johnny,’ he said firmly. ‘This is what we should do. Off you go to Brighton with your uniform. Do you have any medals? Ask at the station
about any sightings of Lucy earlier in the evening. In the morning, Captain Fitzgerald begins making discreet inquiries of the hotel managers in Brighton. Begin at the Kemptown end and work your
way along the sea front. I shall see you at the railway station at one o’clock tomorrow. I’m going to talk to the Police Commissioner here later on. We may not be able to send the
police out into the front line but we shall have a substantial body of reinforcements to call on. God speed, Johnny.’
Fitzgerald fled into the night, whistling the Londonderry Air as he searched for a cab in the soft evening air of Markham Square.
As he tossed in his bed that night, the space beside him empty and cold, Powerscourt sent out another message. He directed it down the Brighton Line.
Hold on, Lucy, I’m coming. Hold on.
‘What in God’s name is keeping him? McDonnell’s been downstairs for nearly half an hour.’
The Prime Minister was growing impatient. An improbable quartet waited nervously in the upstairs drawing room in Number 25 Markham Square. One floor below, in Powerscourt’s study, Mr Franz
Augustine Messel, millionaire many times over, was closeted with Schomberg McDonnell, private secretary to the Prime Minister, and the finest tea the Powerscourt household could provide. Messel had
travelled down from his Oxfordshire mansion, arriving in Chelsea shortly before ten o’clock.
‘We just have to be patient,’ said William Burke, poring over a book of accounts.
‘We don’t have that much time, you know,’ said the Governor of the Bank of England. ‘We really need to have that money today to make sure we can cope with all the
necessary particulars of transfer and so on.’ The Governor was, if anything, even more anxious and uncertain than he had been the night before. He paced up and down the room, wringing his
hands. Rosebery was reading the racing papers.
Powerscourt was standing by the window. Two policemen were stationed discreetly among the trees. Some stray American tourists in London for the Jubilee were admiring the houses in loud East
Coast accents and wondering if Boston could offer anything finer. He felt weak from lack of sleep and sick with worry. He thought he had drifted off a couple of times in the night but terrible
visions of Lucy being ill treated left him exhausted. He had resolved not to say anything to the Prime Minister or anybody else until this meeting was over.
There was a rush of footsteps up the stairs.
‘Right, Prime Minister.’ Schomberg McDonnell was a mild-looking young man with an innocent face and fine brown eyes. ‘Sorry that took so long. I had to explain to Mr Messel
that we could not, under any circumstances, tell him the reason why we wanted the money.’
‘What’s the score?’ asked the Prime Minister, rising from his recumbent position on the sofa.
‘Five million pounds at five per cent, payable over ten years,’ McDonnell replied.
The Bank of England looked aghast. Rosebery turned pale. The Prime Minister seemed unconcerned.
‘We couldn’t lose that much in the Treasury accounts over ten years. We need a longer payback time, McDonnell.’
‘I understand, Prime Minister.’
‘Peerage,’ said Lord Salisbury firmly.
‘Set against the interest rate or term of loan?’
‘Both,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Christ!’ said McDonnell, and fled downstairs to do his master’s bidding.
‘I was never very good at mental arithmetic at school,’ said the Prime Minister, turning to William Burke. ‘Don’t think I could ever have managed the Exchequer. But
something tells me that we should have to find two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year in interest charges alone on that deal. Couldn’t have managed it.’
Burke looked up from his account book.
‘You are absolutely right, Prime Minister. Perhaps you would like me to do the calculations for you as further bulletins emerge?’
‘That’s uncommon civil of you, Mr Burke. I’m much obliged.’
With that the Prime Minister sank back on to the sofa and closed his eyes. My God, thought Powerscourt, he’s not going to sleep at a time like this. The Governor of the Bank was looking
desperately at his watch. Burke had opened a new page in his book and was writing five million in large figures at the top. He drew a line a third of the way down the page and put another heading
of five million pounds.
Powerscourt wondered how much a human life was worth. Just one. Just Lucy’s. He thought of the other human lives, the Farrells and the thousands like them whose prospects would be ruined
if Harrison’s Private Bank were forced to sell off all the properties they held for charities. He looked again at the portrait of Lady Lucy. He felt the tears starting in his eyes and thought
of other things. He thought of Johnny Fitzgerald checking out the Brighton hotels, he thought of his meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner late the night before, the Commissioner
looking pale as he sat drinking brandy in Lady Lucy’s favourite chair.
‘My God, Powerscourt, this is the most terrible thing I have heard in all my days. I shall speak to my counterparts in Sussex. The resources of the Brighton force will be put at your
disposal.’
Powerscourt had expressed his gratitude. ‘But don’t you see, Commissioner,’ he said, ‘how difficult the thing is. First we have to find her. But the kidnappers must not
know we have found them. You have seen what they say in their note.’
Even the Commissioner shuddered.
‘If we find them,’ said Powerscourt, pacing up and down the drawing room like one of Nelson’s captains on his quarterdeck, ‘we have to work out a way of getting Lucy from
their clutches. And, believe me, I cannot see how we do it at present.’
Out in the square a plain-clothes man was talking to the two policemen. A delivery van arrived and began unloading cases of wine at a house with a red door across the way. Life in Markham Square
went on, even as the Prime Minister of Great Britain tried to negotiate the salvation of the City of London in Number 25 and Lord Francis Powerscourt was closer to despair than he had ever been in
his life.
There was another rush up the stairs. A distant corner of Powerscourt’s mind automatically noticed that Schomberg McDonnell was not out of breath at all. Perhaps it keeps you fit, he
thought, working for the Prime Minister.
‘Four and a half per cent,’ he announced, ‘fifteen years.’
‘Christ, he’s going to make even more money out of us that way,’ said the Prime Minister, opening his eyes.
‘Royal Commission, Prime Minister?’ asked McDonnell.
‘Not yet, not yet, dammit. Try him with some of that fashionable stuff. You know the sort of thing.’
‘Weekend at Sandringham with the Prince and Princess of Wales?’ said McDonnell. ‘Dinner in their London home at Marlborough House?’
‘Not weekend, McDonnell, weekends. Plural.’
‘God help him!’ said the private secretary, and shot back down the stairs. They heard a faint click as the study door closed on the floor below.
‘Interest charges would run on that deal at two hundred and twenty five thousand a year,’ said William Burke. ‘That’s not including repayment of the principal.’
The Prime Minister subsided on to the sofa once more. Burke prepared more sections of his book with headings of five million pounds. Powerscourt noticed that there was now a subsidiary row of
figures labelled one per cent, half per cent, quarter per cent. Burke was preparing for all eventualities. The Governor wished most devoutly that he was somewhere else.
So did Powerscourt. Suddenly he could hear Lucy’s voice echoing in his mind. She was reading a bedtime story to Thomas, her tone soft and quiet in the hope it would send the little boy to
sleep. It was a fairy story about a princess locked up in a tower. Only a handsome prince could rescue her from her prison on the top of the mountain. He went to the window to blink back his
tears.
This time the negotiations seemed quicker than before. The Governor had only looked at his watch once before McDonnell was back.
‘Four per cent over fifteen years,’ he reported.
The Prime Minister snorted as though he had expected better tidings. ‘All right, McDonnell. Royal Commission.’
‘Member or Chairman?’
‘Start with member,’ instructed the Prime Minister, ‘see how you go.
‘Very good, Prime Minister.’
‘You’re down to two hundred thousand pounds interest charges a year now, Prime Minister,’ said Burke cheerfully. ‘Total interest charges of three million. Three to catch
five.’
‘Could be worse,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘could be worse.’
Where is she? Powerscourt asked himself. What are they doing to her? He wished the meeting would end and he could tell his news to the Prime Minister and rush off to Brighton. He felt completely
detached from this meeting, as if it were all a dream. It’s a Greek tragedy, he thought. McDonnell is the Chorus, forever coming back on stage with fresh news of atrocities and the unburied
dead. Hold on, Lucy, I’m coming. Hold on.
Rosebery had ringed a number of entries in his racing paper. Burke was now marking out further pages of his notebook ready for new calculations of interest charges. Powerscourt saw that he now
had a separate heading called Repayment of Capital, underlined twice.
‘Maybe we should open a book on how long each negotiation will be,’ said Rosebery, inspired by his study of the turf. ‘I say he’ll be back inside three minutes.’
There was not time for anybody to reply. Just inside the Rosebery timetable McDonnell returned.
‘Three and three quarter per cent. Twenty years,’ he announced.
‘Member or Chairman?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘Chairman,’ said McDonnell. ‘I thought it was worth it for the extra five years.’
‘What have we left now?’ The Prime Minister was still lying back on his sofa.
‘Let me try him with clubland, sir,’ said McDonnell. ‘I talked to a man last night who said Messel had been very disappointed when he was blackballed by the
Coldstream.’
‘Carry on, McDonnell.’
‘Very good, Prime Minister.’
‘I hope we can deliver these bloody clubs for him, Rosebery,’ said the Prime Minister, turning to his predecessor. ‘Never cared for them much myself. But you belong to one or
two, don’t you?’
‘Rest assured, Prime Minister, the clubs should be fine.’ Rosebery smiled. ‘The last time I counted I belonged to thirty-seven.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said the Prime Minister. ‘How ever do you find the time to go to them all?’
One of the stairs at the bottom of the hall was creaking, Powerscourt noticed. There was a small but noticeable squeak that heralded the return of the private secretary.
‘Three and a half per cent, Prime Minister, over twenty years. It seems Mr Messel is very fond of clubs even though he doesn’t belong to many. That’s the MCC, the Royal Yacht
Squadron, the Coldstream, the Warwick, the Beefsteak, the Athenaeum and the Jockey Club.’
‘All gone?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘All gone,’ McDonnell nodded.
‘Christ, that’s a lot of clubs. Can we cope with that lot, Rosebery?’
‘We can, Prime Minister. But somebody should have warned him about the Warwick. The food is disgusting.’
‘We’re running out of bait,’ said the Prime Minister, rubbing his eyes.
‘A position on government committees, Prime Minister?’ McDonnell seemed to have taken the measure of Franz Augustine Messel. ‘I think he’d go for that, Mr
Messel.’
‘Any damned committee?’ asked the Prime Minister. ‘Forestry? Technical Education? Maritime Shipping?’
‘Something like that, Prime Minister.’
‘Use your judgement, McDonnell. Off you go.’
The Governor of the Bank of England joined Powerscourt by the window. The Americans had left. The policemen still guarded Number 25. Rosebery returned to the racing pages, marking out some more
winners for the afternoon. Burke was now writing his own name over and over again in the last page of the account book. The Prime Minister closed his eyes once more. Powerscourt was thinking again
about professional success and personal failure. He thought again about the Farrell family, thrown out on to the unforgiving streets of London. He thought that he might never see Lucy again.
I’ve just got to find her, he said to himself, clenching his fists very tightly. I’m bloody well going to find her. Hold on, Lucy. I’m coming. Hold on.
That squeak again. McDonnell’s face never changes every time he comes back, Powerscourt noticed. Nobody looking at him could have guessed what sort of tidings he was bringing with him.
‘Three per cent over twenty years. No interest payable for the first two years,’ he reported.
‘What’s that, Mr Burke?’ asked the Prime Minister from his sofa.
‘One hundred and fifty thousand a year, sir,’ said Burke.
‘Done,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I’ll settle for that. What did you have to offer the fellow for the extra half per cent, McDonnell?’
‘I’m afraid I said it was likely that there would be a joint committee of both Houses looking into the whole question of foreign loans.’
‘Did you, by God,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘I thought,’ said McDonnell, looking his most innocent, ‘that Mr Messel might have useful things to say on the subject. And I only said it was likely, Prime Minister. Nothing
definite. Nothing we couldn’t wriggle out of later on, if we had to.’