Goodnight Sweet Prince (15 page)

‘Well done, Corporal! Well done, indeed.’ Major Edwin Dawnay was proud of his man.

‘Tell me,’ said Powerscourt, ‘did you find anything while you were up there? Anything unusual?’

‘Funny you should mention that, Your Lordship. I don’t know how long it had been there, or if it means anything to you gentlemen. But I found this.’ He paused to rummage in his
pockets, which were, Powerscourt noted with interest, even more capacious than those of William McKenzie. He drew out a small piece of rope ladder with one of the grappling hooks at the top
missing. It was only two inches long, but its purpose was very clear.

Bateman and McKenzie disappeared into a private conversation of their own about makes of rope ladder, strength of line, chances of fracture.

‘Do you think the murderer left this up there, Powerscourt?’ Dawnay sounded alarmed, as if the murderer had suddenly taken shape and was liable to emerge at any moment from
Sandringham Woods or peer down at them from the rooftops above.

‘It’s perfectly possible,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Then again, the fire brigade might have used those things when they were putting in the ladders.’

My God, he plays it very close to his chest, thought Dawnay. Pound to a penny Powerscourt or one of his friends will be round to the local fire brigade within the next twenty-four hours asking
about bits of rope ladder left on the roof.

But Powerscourt hadn’t finished yet. Not by any means. He was coming to what was, for him, the most important question of all.

‘Tell me, Dawnay,’ he said nonchalantly, as though it were a mere trifle, ‘did anybody in the house hear anything? Anything at all?’

‘Of our friend Bateman’s activities, do you mean? That’s the curious thing, Powerscourt. Nobody heard a thing. Not even the dogs barked during the night.’

‘Nobody heard a thing?’ Powerscourt looked very thoughtful indeed. ‘How very interesting.’

Powerscourt was sleeping heavily. There was the light touch of a hand on his shoulder. He turned. There was an urgent whisper in his ear.

‘Lord Francis. Lord Francis.’

Powerscourt wondered if some strange new dream had come to haunt him, the hand on his shoulder shaking, shaking, shaking.

‘Lord Francis. Please wake up. Please wake up. Please.’

With a groan, Powerscourt suddenly shot up in his bed. ‘William, what on earth are you doing here? What time is it, for God’s sake?’

‘I will tell you all outside,’ whispered William McKenzie. ‘You must get dressed at once and come with me. Don’t put your boots on till we get away from the
house.’

With his boots in his left hand, Powerscourt tiptoed out of his room, down a corridor he had never seen and down stairs he had never climbed. How had William McKenzie, his trusty tracker, found
him in the dark? What was going on now? Where was he taking him?

They passed out of a small door at the side of the house. Powerscourt put his boots on and followed McKenzie out into the night. Their feet crunched heavily on the snow. The sound was magnified
as they passed between a clump of trees. Surely somebody in the house must have heard them, thought Powerscourt, looking back in alarm. They sounded like the Blues and Royals changing the
guard.

‘William, please tell me what’s going on.’ Even a whisper sounded like a sergeant major on the parade ground.

‘There’s another body, my lord. I found it an hour ago when I was having a wee patrol round the grounds. I met one of Major Dawnay’s men doing the same thing. The Major is
there now. It’s about a mile from here.’

Admirably succinct, thought Powerscourt. Another body. God in heaven. When would it stop?

The cold seemed to start at the ears. Then it made an orderly progression downwards, tip of nose, lips, hands, fingers, toes. Those were the first bits that fell off the Athenians in the great
plague in Thucydides, Powerscourt suddenly remembered, wishing he could keep his memories in better order. A different sort of plague seemed to have struck the coast of Norfolk. Two bodies in four
days were enough for a tennis match in hell or heaven.

They were deep in the forest now. McKenzie moved so silently that at times Powerscourt thought he had lost him. Perhaps, he thought, this is the darkest hour before the dawn. And there really is
a dawn chorus, he realised, as a ragged burst of birdsong broke through above the trees.

‘Nearly there.’ McKenzie was still whispering even though Sandringham House was over a mile behind.

In a small clearing ahead, Major Dawnay had a torch of sorts that cast fantastic shadows on the trees.

‘Powerscourt, my dear Lord Powerscourt. Thank God you have come.’

He turned his guttering candle to his left. The body of a man was lying on the ground. He was wearing the full dress uniform of the Coldstream Guards. He looked as though he had fallen over
unexpectedly. The ground was covered with blood, and with bits of light grey and brown matter that Powerscourt presumed must have been his brains. The porridge-like material had also fallen all
over his shoulder and made terrible stains on his epaulettes. Lord Henry Lancaster, the equerry who had found the body of Prince Eddy, had joined his master in death.

‘I think he shot himself through the head. Or somebody else shot him through the head. The doctor will be here presently. Do you think it is murder or suicide, Powerscourt?’

‘God knows. God knows.’ Suddenly Powerscourt wished he were at home in Rokesley, inspecting the sales catalogues of the great auction houses, or walking through his grounds.
‘We mustn’t move anything until the doctor comes. May I?’ He borrowed the makeshift torch from Major Dawnay and walked slowly around the body.

‘There’s no sign of anybody else coming this way, my lord.’ McKenzie, as ever, seemed able to read his thoughts. ‘I checked it all out before anyone else got here.
There’s only one set of footprints in the snow. No traces of a horse. Unless somebody was swinging through the trees like some African ape, Lord Lancaster was the only person to come
here.’

It wasn’t surprising that he was the only person to come here. They were one or two hundred yards off the main road between Wolferton and Sandringham, a road designed to show off the size
of his estate and the splendour of his grounds to the Prince of Wales’ visitors. Some estate, some sights to be shown to the new arrivals now, thought Powerscourt. One corpse, restored to
some sort of life, was waiting in an upstairs attic. Another was lying awkwardly on the ground, the brains staining the dark Sandringham earth.

There was another set of rustling, like animals moving through the trees. Two more faces peered up into the light of the torch.

‘Dr Spencer.’ Dawnay greeted his man. His guide, presumably McKenzie’s colleague on night patrol, was carrying a makeshift stretcher.

‘When bodies come, they come not single one, but in battalions.’ Dr Spencer prided himself on his knowledge of the classics. ‘Let me have this torch just now.’

The doctor peered intently at the dead man’s head. He looked particularly closely at the right temple. He glanced distastefully at the ground. He handed a standard Colt pistol to Major
Dawnay. ‘I can’t give you a proper opinion about anything much at present. No doubt you gentlemen will be wanting something to occupy your thoughts at a time like this. I think –
but I will not be held to it until later – that the man killed himself. The gun to the right temple is quite a popular form of suicide these days.’

Dr Spencer paused and looked around. Faint, very faint, from over the sea at Snettisham came the first intimations of dawn. ‘We must move the body. Now.’ The doctor spoke with all
the authority of the medical profession, used to handling the living and the dead.

‘Great God, Powerscourt,’ Dawnay sounded more alarmed than Powerscourt had ever heard him, ‘where are we going to take the body? This morning, this morning of all mornings. In
a few hours’ time, the Royal Family, the whole lot of them, are going to file into Eddy’s bedroom to say their last farewells. At nine o’clock Shepstone is going to post the
notice on the Norwich Gates, saying that Prince Eddy is dead from the influenza. We can’t . . .’ His voice trailed away as he thought of the horror of it all. ‘We can’t have
another body lying in the hallway or hidden in the drawing-room while Death by Influenza is played out upstairs.’

‘Take him to Shepstone’s house. It’s not that far from here. We can keep him away from the main house for the time being.’ Powerscourt felt that the arrival of another
corpse would bring on hysteria, or worse, in Sandringham House. You were welcome there when you were alive, he said mentally to Lancaster, now being loaded on to his temporary bier, you’re
not wanted when you are dead. You’re too embarrassing. We’d rather not think about you today.

There was a whispered dialogue between Powerscourt and Dawnay. McKenzie and his colleague had raised the temporary stretcher. As they marched slowly through the wood Powerscourt could hear the
Dead March from
Saul
booming in his head. As the pall bearers passed over fallen branches their boots sounded like pistol shots in the dark.

‘Do you think he was murdered, Lord Francis?’ said Dawnay, walking through a dark glade.

‘There are a number of possibilities.’ Powerscourt was always amazed to find his analytical powers still operating, however bizarre the circumstances. ‘Possibility Number
One,’ he groped for a frozen finger in the gloom, ‘is that the murderer of Prince Eddy decided to kill Lancaster too. For reasons unknown. Perhaps relating to the conversations the
equerries must have had among each other after the death. Perhaps relating to the conversations they had with me. But I doubt it. William McKenzie was the best tracker of man or animal the British
Army ever possessed. He tells me only one set of footsteps went to Lancaster’s last resting place. I believe him absolutely. So it may be suicide.

‘Possibility Number Two,’ he continued, noting with alarm that the stretcher ahead had nearly lost its load, ‘is that Lancaster was the murderer. He was, you will recall, the
man on guard for most of the night Prince Eddy was killed. He had the time. He had ample opportunity. Overcome with remorse, he takes his own life. Our job is over. We know the murderer. We can all
go home.’

‘Do you really believe that, Lord Francis?’ Dawnay sounded highly dubious about Possibility Number Two.

‘Possibility Number Three is that he killed himself because he knew too much. Maybe he knew who the murderer was. Maybe he couldn’t bear to tell us. Maybe he couldn’t bear to
betray a friend.’

The light was getting brighter now. Shepstone’s house suddenly loomed out of the faint morning mist.

‘How do you think we should get in? Ring the front door? Good morning, we’ve brought a corpse for breakfast. Have you got any porridge?’ Powerscourt felt flippancy spreading
over him, like a disease.

‘I fancy we may have to rely on the talents of your friend McKenzie,’ said Dawnay, smiling despite himself at the thought of porridge. ‘If he can bring you out of the main
house with only the vaguest idea of how to get in or out, a Shepstone burglary should be easy enough.’

An hour and a half later, Sir Bartle Shepstone came downstairs in his best Paisley dressing-gown, a Christmas present from his sister some years before, to meet the most unusual collection of
guests. One was obviously dead and was lying on the kitchen table, the blood on his face and jacket drying into strange patterns. Working round the body was Dr Spencer, talking to himself
occasionally and writing frequent notes in a small black pocketbook. Powerscourt and Dawnay were drinking tea from his best china cups. There was a smell of burning toast in the air.

‘Sir Bartle,’ Powerscourt began after one moment of shock and silence, perhaps in tribute to the dead man, ‘may I apologise for our early arrival. Major Dawnay, you know. This
is Dr Spencer whom I presume you also know. This was Lord Lancaster.’ He pointed to the kitchen table. ‘We found him in the forest a few hours ago. Dr Spencer is carrying out the normal
medical inquiries at a time like this. We think he may have committed suicide.’

Sir Bartle Shepstone gathered his dressing-gown around him and surveyed the field of battle.

‘Quite so, Lord Powerscourt, quite so. Good morning, gentlemen. I presume you have brought Lord Lancaster here because you felt the main house was out of bounds.’

‘On this of all days, we did,’ Powerscourt replied, wondering precisely how Shepstone had won his Victoria Cross. ‘Major Dawnay and I felt the house with all its sorrow was not
the place for another cadaver.’

‘Quite so. Quite so,’ said Sir Bartle. ‘I think I shall get dressed now. Any chance of a cup of tea?’

Suter called them to attention in Sandringham House two hours later, Sir Bartle Shepstone looking completely unperturbed by the strange invasion of his house earlier that day,
Dawnay looking elegant in a discreet tweed suit. Rosebery had reappeared from London in a dark blue pinstripe. A footman brought an envelope for Powerscourt, who stuffed it absent-mindedly into his
pocket.

Powerscourt was peering idly out of the great windows where rain, sometimes sleet, was washing away the snow of previous days. Occasional parcels of snow and ice from the roof were tumbling on
to the Sandringham lawns. Some of the evidence might be washed away on the roof. The rest would melt on the grass.

‘I think we should begin with a short moment of silence for Lord Lancaster,’ said Suter at his most sanctimonious. ‘If he had not come to this house, from friendship and from
duty, maybe death would not have called him away.’

Suter bowed his head. Shepstone crossed himself slowly and mouthed what looked to Powerscourt like the Lord’s Prayer. Dawnay looked resolutely at the carpet, eyes open, lips not moving.
Maybe he’s lost his faith, thought Powerscourt, fresh interest developing in the efficient Major. Rosebery looked impassive. Powerscourt himself scurried through the Nunc Dimittis.

‘I turn now to the arrangements for this morning.’ Suter returned to Private Secretary mode. ‘At 8.30 I propose to bring the members of the family into Prince Eddy’s
room. This will be for what could be described as the last vigil. Those present will be described in their positions in tomorrow morning’s newspapers. All those involved have given their
consent.’