Goodnight Sweet Prince (11 page)

‘Oh Lord, look down from heaven, behold, visit and relieve this thy servant Prince Eddy.’ The congregation were very still, almost all of them on their knees, praying for a Prince
who would be their master one day, if he lived. ‘Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy, defend him from the danger of the enemy, and keep him in perpetual peace and safety, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.’

It’s too late, it’s too too late, Powerscourt thought. The danger of the enemy had already struck with terrible force. Eddy might have found perpetual peace, but safety had eluded
him.

Was the murderer in the church, Powerscourt wondered suddenly? He gazed desperately at the backs of the congregation, at the members of the Household and the equerries kneeling with their
straight backs in the royal pew. These hands clasped together so decorously in prayer, had one pair of them also wielded a knife with the skill of a butcher? Had one of these worshippers a
collection of bloodied clothes, hidden away at the back of a cupboard, or thrown into a pit in the woods?

Sir George Trevelyan, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, was waiting in Rosebery’s drawing-room in Berkeley Square. The fire had been lit, the carpet swept, the chairs
and ornaments dusted. Rosebery’s houses ran like clockwork, whether he was in them or not.

‘Sir George, thank you for taking the trouble of coming all the way up from Osborne. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’

‘Indeed, I did, Lord Rosebery. There are times, as I am sure you know as well as I do, when it can be a relief to get away, especially when there are a lot of relations in the
house.’

Trevelyan had been in his position for over twenty years. Contemporaries said that he knew how to manage the Queen better than any man since Disraeli – and Disraeli had used outrageous
ladlefuls of flattery. Trevelyan didn’t. His management techniques were more oblique: patient campaigns by letter, subtle delaying tactics until the Queen’s wrath had subsided,
reminders of how matters had been managed in the past. On at least one occasion, to Rosebery’s certain knowledge, Trevelyan had invented fictitious chapters of English constitutional history
to get his way and persuade the Queen onto the proper course. This usually involved sending for Gladstone to form the next Government.

‘The relations,’ Rosebery sighed. ‘Ah, yes. I can imagine how you must feel about those relations. But, come, Sir George, I have a terrible tale to relate. When is the man from
The Times
coming?’

‘Barrington should be here in about half an hour. I thought we might need some time together beforehand. He is bringing one of his people with him. Barrington says his own shorthand is
completely unintelligible. He can’t even read it himself.’

Briefly Rosebery related the terrible events at Sandringham. He left nothing out, the deep wounds, the blood sprayed around the room, the prostration of Alexandra and the cold fury of her
husband.

‘The point is, Trevelyan, the point is this. They want to conceal the nature of the death. They propose to announce on Thursday, this coming Thursday, four days from now, that he died of
influenza. My purpose is to warn
The Times
, to soften them up, if you like, to prepare them for the blow.’

‘Good God!’ said Trevelyan. ‘Dear God in heaven. The poor family.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer. ‘Do you think they are right, Rosebery,
to conceal the murder from the world?’

‘The time is past when one could speak of right or wrong. They have taken their decision. It is a perilous course. But they were prompted, as you can well imagine, by the fear of scandal
and the newspapers prying into all their lives.’

‘What should we tell the Queen?’ Trevelyan’s first loyalty was always to his royal mistress, happily surrounded by other members of her family and the waters of the English
Channel on the Isle of Wight.

‘What should we tell the Queen, indeed.’ Rosebery looked troubled. He paused to stare into the fire. ‘I can only relate the views of the Prince of Wales. He explained his
position very clearly to me as I was leaving Sandringham.’

Prince Edward, wrapped in a dark green cape, had marched Rosebery up and down the little platform at Wolferton station, talking passionately of his fears, the lampposts, adorned with a premature
crown for the Prince of Wales, shining bravely against the winter air, the engine already fired up, sending impatient clouds of smoke into the night.

‘The Prince of Wales is frightened of his mother. I think he is more frightened of her than of anybody else on earth. He doesn’t want to tell her. He fears her wrath. He fears for
her health. Worst of all, he fears that she might not be able to keep such a secret to herself, that the scandal of Eddy’s murder would somehow find its way into public gossip.’

‘My God, Rosebery, you could well be right there. The Queen would be bound to tell somebody, probably her favourite daughter in Berlin. In half an hour the thing could be all around the
Wihelmstrasse and the Unter den Linden. I don’t think Prime Minister Salisbury would thank for us that.’

Footsteps could be heard, echoing across one of Rosebery’s marble halls. There was a knock on the door.

‘My lord. Sir George. The gentlemen from
The Times
are here. Mr Barrington. His chief reporter, Mr Johnston.’

‘Barrington, how good to see you again! Thank you for coming.’ It was certainly true, thought Rosebery, that Trevelyan was on excellent terms with the man from Printing House
Square.

‘Please sit down, gentlemen, please.’ Rosebery placed his visitors side by side on a great leather sofa.

‘I fear,’ Trevelyan began, ‘that we have some serious news concerning the Duke of Clarence and Avondale.’

‘I hope you will have no objections, gentlemen,’ the editor of
The Times
was at his most charming, ‘if my colleague here makes a shorthand record of our conversation? It
helps us to get our facts straight.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Trevelyan volleyed back some courtier’s charm of his own. ‘The Duke has contracted a most severe bout of the influenza. Most severe.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Barrington, assuming already his air of mourning, planning perhaps the black-edged columns around his leader page which would greet a royal death. ‘So
many of our great men are suffering from it at present.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘The influenza is raging all across the Continent of Europe. The Bishop of Southwark is in crisis with
it. They say that Cardinal Manning is at death’s door.’

So far so good, thought Rosebery. The ground here is fertile. ‘May I just fill in with a few more details, Mr Barrington? I have come this very evening from Sandringham.’

‘Please do, Lord Rosebery, please do. We are most grateful to you.’

‘The doctors believe that the illness took serious hold on Friday evening. The most serious development is that the influenza is accompanied by pneumonia. Dr Broadbent, who attended on the
recent illness of Prince George, is in attendance. Dr Manby, the local man, a most capable physician, is also on call. I believe that Dr Laking may be summoned over the next twenty-four hours, if
he is not already there.’

Doctors’ names, Rosebery had always felt, would give the lie some serious substance. One man might not be telling the truth, but a trinity of doctors?

‘Let me tell you what the proposals are for the dissemination of further information. From tomorrow, regular bulletins about his progress will be posted on the Norwich Gates at Sandringham
and at Marlborough House.’

‘Who else is in residence at Sandringham House at the moment?’ Barrington leaned forward. Rosebery kept thinking of him as a bloodhound hot on the scent of death. His colleague took
shorthand at a prodigious speed, his pen coming to rest a few seconds after the speaker had finished.

‘Duke and Duchess of Fife, Duke and Duchess of Teck and their children, Prince and Princess of Wales obviously, Prince George, Princess Maud, Princess Victoria, a number of friends and
equerries who had come to celebrate the Prince’s birthday on Friday.’ Rosebery took great care, on Powerscourt’s instructions, not to give the names of any of the equerries. The
shorthand pen hurtled across the page, the scratching of the nib filling in the silences as Rosebery spoke.

‘We feel,’ Rosebery nodded gravely at Sir George Trevelyan, ‘that the first announcement in the newspapers should confine itself to a bald announcement of the illness,
accompanied, if you feel appropriate, by a list of those in residence at Sandringham.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Barrington nodded gravely in his turn. If the newspapers were as tame and as docile as this all the time, Rosebery felt, we would not be in such
difficulties.

‘However, there is some background information about the possible origins of the disease which could, perhaps, be included on the following day, should the illness persist, of
course.’

‘
The Times
would be most grateful to you, Lord Rosebery, Sir George.’ Trevelyan thought that Barrington sounded like the Ambassador from a major power proposing the terms of a
treaty at the Foreign Office.

‘On Monday of last week the Duke felt unwell as he attended the funeral of Prince Victor of Hohenhoe. On Tuesday he remained at Sandringham. On Wednesday he went shooting – and that,
as I am sure you will remember, even in the warmth of London, was a very cold day. On Thursday he felt unwell again and on Friday he felt ill again on his birthday.’

Suddenly Rosebery felt completely blank. He had forgotten something. Like an actor, he had lost his lines. But there was no prompter, only Trevelyan, and he hadn’t yet read the whole
script. Had Eddy attended his birthday dinner party or not? Had he stayed in his room, according to the legend he and Suter and Shepstone had concocted earlier that day? Or had he attended and had
to leave early? He simply could not remember.

He pressed on regardless. ‘And that, gentlemen, is about as much as we can tell you at present.’

Silence fell on the room, the shorthand nib quiet at last. Barrington looked at his watch.

‘Lord Rosebery, Sir George, please forgive me. Time waits for no man, not even
The Times
.’

Trevelyan wondered how often he had used that quip in the past twenty years. ‘I must return to my offices. We must include this story in the first editions. We should be on our way. We are
most grateful to you. I shall despatch a reporter to Sandringham at once.’

Times
present turned into
Times
past as the two men were ushered from the room.

‘I think that went as well as might have been expected, Lord Rosebery. We need to co-ordinate further plans.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’ Rosebery was staring at his empty sofa.

‘Do you think Barrington brings that other chap with him everywhere he goes? A silent amanuensis? I don’t believe he spoke a single word all the time he was here.’

‘Perhaps he is the Official Scribe,’ said Trevelyan, ‘like those characters with tablets who used to follow Eastern potentates around their palaces, writing down every
word.’

Rosebery laughed suddenly, the tension draining away. ‘Do you suppose he tastes Barrington’s food as well?’

Snow had turned into slush in the ancient streets of King’s Lynn, seven miles south west of Sandringham. Powaerscourt splashed his way through the entrance hall of the
King’s Head hotel and found Lord Johnny Fitzgerald drinking beer and William McKenzie drinking tea in a private sitting-room on the first floor. His reinforcements had arrived.

‘Powerscourt! At last!’ Fitzgerald eased his tall frame out of the best chair and shook his friend warmly by the hand.

‘It’s turning into a gathering of the clans here tonight.’ McKenzie was a small, silent man in his early thirties. He was what they had called in India a tracker. Trained in
his native Scotland in the complicated arts of stalking stags, he had transferred his skills to tracking humans. In India, as in his homeland, they spoke of him with awe.

‘I am so glad you are both here.’ Powerscourt sank into a chair by the fire and looked at his companions. ‘Let me tell you what this business is about.’

Powerscourt left nothing out, the great slit across the throat, the other arteries slashed, the pools of blood on the floor. He told them of the plan to conceal the death from the public and the
authorities. He filled them in on the activities of Major Dawnay and his band of mysterious experts with their arcane skills, military and civilian.

‘Do they expect us to find out who did it? I suppose they do.’ Fitzgerald took a long draught from an enormous tankard of ale. ‘How in God’s name are we supposed to do
that, Francis? Blood in puddles all over the floor. It’s like a butcher’s shop on slaughter day.’

‘All we can do,’ Powerscourt surveyed his small forces, ‘is to begin from the beginning. That’s what we have always done in India or in London. In Wiltshire, you will
remember, we had even less to go on than we do here. I think . . .’ He paused to gaze with horror at an extremely sentimental picture of the Scottish Highlands hanging on the wall. ‘I
think we have to start by trying to eliminate the outsiders.

‘Johnny.’ Fitzgerald had just completed his tankard and was eyeing it curiously, as if amazed that it could be empty so soon. ‘There have been reports of Russians in the
vicinity. Reports have reached the Sandringham servants that there are Russians at Dersingham, at Hunstanton, at Fakenham even. There are also reports of Irishmen in the neighbourhood.’

‘Where the hell is Fakenham?’ Fitzgerald was notorious for his total ignorance of geography, even of countries he had lived in for years.

‘It’s north and east of Sandringham. This map on the wall should help you. The Prince of Wales is convinced that one or more of these Russians, if they exist, killed his son. Myself,
I rather doubt it but I intend to keep the Russian ball in play for as long as possible. I don’t think I want them to know just yet where my suspicions lie.

‘And you, William McKenzie, I need your skills as never before. I need to know if you can tell if anybody has been trying to break into or out of Sandringham. There are great walls all
around the estate and the gates are locked at night. It will be very very difficult with all this snow about.’