The Lord Francis Powerscourt Omnibus

by David Dickinson

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Goodnight, Sweet Prince Mystery surrounds the death of Queen Victoria's grandson England, 1892. Victoria, Queen and Empress, is in the 54th year of her reign, when her grandson Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, is found slaughtered in his bed at Sandringham. Terrified of more royal scandal, the Prince of Wales and his spindoctors decide to cover up the facts and the murder is disguised as death by influenza. Lord Francis Powerscourt, an Irish investigator, is privately asked to find the killer. His quest takes him on a journey through the prince's debauched and dissolute past, across Europe to the misty waterways of Venice where, amidst scandal and suicide, Powerscourt finally unravels themystery of the sweet prince's last goodnight. Death and the Jubilee The discovery of a headless corpse jeopardises Queen Victoria's glittering Diamond Jubilee! In this second Lord Francis Powerscourt mystery, London is preparing for the 1897 Diamond Jubilee. But one morning a man's corpse with no head or hands is dragged out of the Thames. He is old, but not destitute. With no clues to his identity, the police ask for Powerscourt's assistance. His investigation leads to a mysterious mansion in Oxfordshire, with classical temples in the gardens and in the house a second corpse, killed in a fire. On the track of the murderer, Powerscourt soon realises that both he and his family are in great danger - and so is the Queen's Jubilee . . . Death of an Old Master In May 1901 the Salisbury Galleries announce the biggest exhibition of the Old Master Paintings ever seen in Europe. Excitement is intense. But before it opens, one of Britain's leading art experts, Christopher Montague, is found murdered in his study. When Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate he finds every book, notepad and scrap of paper has been removed from the scene of the crime. Montague had been working on something that would have rocked the art world. Did his article that claimed a number of the Old Masters had been painted recently by a single hand have anything to do with his death? Powerscourt embarks on an odyssey through a treacherous world of art dealers and picture restorers in pursuit of a master forger. He travels to Sicily where the trail goes cold, but, after the thrills and danger of that wild, lawless isalnd, in a remopte corer of England, the truth is finally revealed. Death of a Chancellor Compton Minster is preparing to celebrate a very special anniversary in the year 1901 - a thousand years of Christian worship. But a few weeks before the main ceremonies, a high official of the cathedral, the chancellor, dies in mysterious circumstances, and no on except the doctor and the undertaker is allowed to view the corpse. It then transpires that the chancellor was one of England's richest men. When his sister suspects foul play, Lord Francis Powerscourt is asked to investigate. As Powerscourt paces the ancient cloisters and listens to evensong from the choir stalls, he begins to suspect that a terrible secret lies hidden in the cathedral, one that may have someting to do with the anniversary. Then a chorister is strangles, his body found turning on the great spit in the Vicars Hall kitchen. Powerscourt himself escpaes death by a whisker, as does his wife, Lady Lucy, before he uncovers the astonishing secret of Compton Minster and unmasks a murderer.

Release date: December 19, 2013

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘Come, Powerscourt, come. I have a great secret to tell you.’

Lord Rosebery was waiting impatiently outside his front door as Powerscourt’s luggage was taken into the house. Dalmeny, near Edinburgh, was one of Rosebery’s many mansions.

‘I’ve only just arrived. Why can’t you tell me inside Dalmeny, rather than rushing me off like this?’ Lord Francis Powerscourt sounded petulant.

‘There are too many people in my house just now. I am taking you to Barnbougle, my little castle by the sea. Nobody will disturb us there.’

Rosebery led the way down the little path that led into the woods. A pair of magpies, predatory and delinquent, flew off ahead of them on some malevolent mission.

‘I will tell you the most important part now, Francis,’ said Rosebery, peering melodramatically around him as though spies or enemy agents might have been lurking in his woods. He
drew his cloak tightly around him and whispered into Powerscourt’s ear. ‘Someone is blackmailing the Prince of Wales. The Princess of Wales fears for the life of her eldest son Prince
Eddy.’

Rosebery stepped back with the special satisfaction of those who pass on secrets. Powerscourt was already mentally shifting through his previous cases. He had investigated murders in Simla and
in Delhi, in London and in Wiltshire. Only once before had he encountered blackmail.

He had known Rosebery since Eton, and they had remained friends though they were so dissimilar. Rosebery was slightly below average height with the face of a cherub maturing slowly into a
statesman. He was very rich and much of his wealth was consumed in his annual, unfulfilled quest to win the Derby. Rosebery had been Foreign Secretary and was widely spoken of as a future Prime
Minister. Powerscourt was a head taller than his friend, a head crowned with unruly black curls. Beneath them a pair of blue eyes inspected the world with detachment and irony, the lines of his
smiles turning imperceptibly into wrinkles by the sides of his mouth and his eyes. He had served with distinction in India and Africa as Chief Intelligence Officer for various armies of the Crown.
His skills in collecting and evaluating information had given him a second career as a solver of murders and mysteries at home and abroad.

‘There it is!’ said Rosebery, pointing proudly at a small castle right on the shore. ‘Barnbougle. My ancestors were swept out to sea here, along with the bricks and mortar.
I’ve had it restored.’

All around the little castle the waves were beating steadily, cascades of spray thrown against the walls. Far out in the Firth of Forth a coal packet was beating its way towards the North Sea,
black smoke marking the afternoon sky.

Rosebery led the way through a large hall to his library on the first floor.

‘Now then, Rosebery, tell me more about this blackmail.’

Rosebery sat by his fireplace, the lines of his bookshelves marching symmetrically towards the windows. ‘There isn’t a great deal more to say. The blackmail letters arrive at
irregular intervals. They threaten to expose the Prince of Wales for his adulterous lifestyle.’

‘Surely,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the mystery is that nobody has tried to blackmail the Prince of Wales before. His life is one long debauch. He keeps or has kept strings of
mistresses rather like you keep your racehorses on Epsom Downs.’

‘I sincerely hope that he has more success with his mistresses than I do with my racehorses,’ said Rosebery ruefully. ‘I should think that of the two, mistresses, if properly
bred and trained, should be the cheaper option to maintain.’

‘Do you know how the letters are written? Block capitals, disguised handwriting, that sort of thing?’

‘Oddly enough, that is one of the few details the Prince of Wales’ Private Secretary, Sir William Suter, chose to impart. They are made up of letters cut out of newspapers, believed
to be The Times and the Illustrated London News, and pasted on to a sheet of plain paper.’

‘Are they delivered by hand?’

‘No, they come by post, usually on Tuesdays. They are always posted in Central London on Mondays.’

Powerscourt turned to gaze out at the sea. Faint sounds of the angry waves carried up into the library. Rosebery was looking at his rare and valuable books.

‘And the Princess of Wales, Rosebery? You said she was worried about the life of Prince Eddy.’

‘She is, she is,’ said Rosebery, picking out an ancient Bible from his shelves and blowing a small cloud of dust from the spine. ‘Sir William did not say whether this was a
mother’s anxiety or if there was some other deeper reason for it.’

‘Does Prince Eddy share his father’s tastes? A life entirely devoted to pleasure with occasional breaks for opening new buildings and laying foundation stones?’

‘I don’t think the aphrodisiac of adultery has quite the same appeal for Prince Eddy as it does for the father. They say he likes men as well as women.’

‘Dear God, Rosebery, what a collection.’

‘They are all we have, Francis, God help us. They may live on the edge of scandal all the time, the Prince of Wales and his set, but they are the Royal Family and we must do what we can.
But Francis, you will not be surprised to hear that they want you to investigate this blackmail. I told Suter I would send him a wire today, to say that you were on board, that you had accepted the
commission.’

Powerscourt stared intently at his friend. ‘It will be very difficult, Rosebery, almost impossible. No crime has been committed, apart from pasting up a few letters and sticking them in
the post. There are never any witnesses with blackmail, as you know. There is nobody to question. Any correspondence that might have a bearing on the matter will be out of bounds. Payments from
banks and bankers to blackmailers with or without scissors and paste and back copies of The Times are rather hard to trace. Messrs Finch’s & Co., you know as well as I do,
Rosebery, do not share their secrets with any passing lord.’

‘I know, Francis, I know.’ Rosebery had adopted the tone he used in the House of Lords with dim-witted and elderly peers. ‘But you must do it. There have been far too many
scandals involving the Prince of Wales and his family. One more could do untold damage to the stability of the constitution and the coherence of the Empire.’

‘Those of us who have accepted the Queen’s Commission in the past cannot refuse it now,’ said Powerscourt sadly. ‘I accept. But you will help me, won’t you? You
know these people far better than I do.’

‘Of course I’ll help you, Francis,’ said Rosebery, rising to his feet and clasping Powerscourt’s hand firmly in his own. ‘I will help you in any way I can as long
as your investigation lasts. But come, I must send that wire.’

Darkness was falling as the two men made their way back to Dalmeny, their boots crunching through the late autumn leaves.

‘You and I have an appointment at the Prince of Wales’ London residence at Marlborough House at nine o’clock in the morning on Tuesday. Five days from now.’

Lord Johnny Fitzgerald, Powerscourt’s friend and companion in detection, was perched precariously on top of Slaughter, nearly one hundred feet above the ground. To his
left were Conquest, Famine and Death, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. To his right, more shadowy in the dusty shafts of light that fell into the bell tower, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gave
silent testimony to the gentler thoughts of the bell wrights who had cast these monsters two hundred years before.

Round his neck there hung a pair of the finest field glasses the Prussian Army could purchase. Up here, in the tower of his friend Powerscourt’s Rokesley church, Lord Johnny could indulge
his passion for bird-watching. There was a splendid view of Powerscourt’s house Rokesley Hall just beneath him. To the south, beyond the hill, was the pleasant market town of Oundle with its
fine eighteenth-century buildings and its architecturally less distinguished public school. To the east lay Fotheringhay with its square church tower, evoking memories of the incarceration of Mary
Queen of Scots. To the west and the north lay the broad expanse of Rockingham Forest which ran for some ten miles before petering out at Kings Cliffe.

Above the forest great hunting birds would circle, rising impossibly slowly in great rhythmic sweeps up the air currents before hurtling down towards their invisible prey. In his lair,
surrounded by the four evangelists and the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Fitzgerald would sit for hours at a time, watching the hunt, waiting for the kill.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was walking home from Oundle station. The boys from the school were playing a rugby match, the treble cheers of their supporters echoing shrilly back into the town.
Powerscourt was thinking about Latin unseens, passages of Pliny, speeches from Livy, rhetoric from Cicero staring up at you from a page you had never seen before. You might recognize a couple of
words the first time you read it through. The rest was a mystery to be unravelled. All his life Powerscourt had been fascinated by mysteries: puzzles as a small child, sitting by his mother’s
chair, a great fire burning in the hearth, the flow of Irish conversation passing literally over his head: codes and cryptograms during his time in the army in India, struggling in some stifling
tent to decipher the messages of Her Majesty’s enemies.

Each new investigation now seemed to him like another Latin unseen. You began with a few words, a few pieces of knowledge to be amplified and translated as the case went on. He remembered the
satisfaction he found at school, as the meaning of the Latin slowly became apparent, revealed like invisible ink under the solvent of his brain.

Some noise from above reached Powerscourt, walking briskly down the hill. Fitzgerald must be here, watching his birds from the top of the tower.

‘Johnny!’ shouted Powerscourt. ‘Johnny! Johnny!’

His cries had no effect on the bird-watcher up above. Powerscourt hurried across the drive to meet his friend in the churchyard.

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald had known each other growing up in Ireland. They had the special closeness of those who have fought side by side in battle. Fitzgerald was rash and impetuous and had
been saved more than once by the cooler head and accurate shooting of his friend. They still served together on Powerscourt’s detective missions. And on two occasions, as Powerscourt
sometimes reminded himself, Lord Johnny had saved his sanity.

Over twenty years before Powerscourt and his three younger sisters had been devastated by the sudden death of their parents and three of their grandparents in the great influenza epidemic that
decimated the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in and around Dublin. They were left in their huge mausoleum of a house, drenched in memories they could not escape. Two of Powerscourt’s three sisters
grew thin and pale and looked as though they would waste away. Powerscourt himself felt sick with the responsibility of unexpectedly becoming head of his family.

Uninvited and unannounced, Lord Johnny Fitzgerald and his mother came to stay. Quite what kind Lady Fitzgerald said to his sisters, Powerscourt never knew. But they began to get better. Johnny
Fitzgerald took Powerscourt off for five days in which they walked right round the Wicklow Mountains, staying at country inns, rising early, exhausted by nightfall. And at the end of their march,
Lord Johnny spoke harshly to his friend.

‘Look here, Francis, forgive me if I give you some advice.’ They were standing on top of the great marble staircase of Powerscourt House that looked out on to the fountain in the
lake and the faint blue of the Wicklow Mountains beyond the gardens. ‘You’re all going to hell in a handcart if you stay in this house any longer. You must get away. All of you. You
must begin again while you’re all young enough to do it and before those lovely girls turn into old maids of mourning. I know a man who will give you a tremendous price for that house and for
as much of the estate as you want to sell. A tremendous price.’ Lord Johnny nodded his head vigorously in admiration of the tremendous price he had negotiated with a Dublin coal magnate
before his visit. ‘You should move to London. You’ll get your sisters married off in no time at all over there.’

Reluctantly, then with increasing energy and vigour, Powerscourt followed his advice. They had all moved to London, the three sisters, possibly taking to heart the advice of Lady Fitzgerald,
enthusiastic for new friends and a different society. The lovely girls were indeed all married now, producing nephews and one niece with a speed that sometimes alarmed their uncle as the intervals
between birthdays grew shorter and shorter, the names of new babies harder and harder to remember. Soon he would have a cricket team composed entirely of Powerscourts if his sisters continued
breeding like this.

‘Johnny, I’m so glad to see you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think we have a new case. A real puzzle of a case. Come and have some tea and I’ll tell you all about
it.’

Fitzgerald had saved Powerscourt once in his twenties. He was to save him again at the end of his thirties.

At the age of thirty-six, in St George’s Hanover Square, Lord Francis Powerscourt had married Caroline Stone, eldest daughter of Albert Stone, a wealthy landowner in Dorset. One year later
their first child, Thomas, was born. Two years after that, mother and son were drowned when the SS Amelia, a passenger ship on the Dublin to Liverpool route, went down with all hands. One
hundred and sixty-seven people died. For Powerscourt, it was as though death came for him once a decade. Parents, wife, child, all had gone. This time Fitzgerald carried him off to Italy for three
months, hoping that Powerscourt’s love of classical antiquity and the masterpieces of the Renaissance would cure him of the terrible grief.

On their return to England once again Lord Johnny suggested flight. ‘You must get away, Francis, away to somewhere where you never knew Caroline, somewhere out of London. You don’t
need to be in London any more now. But if you stay you’ll end up withered and shrunk like that old Queen Victoria and her forty years of mourning.’

So Powerscourt had moved again and now he was pouring tea in Rokesley Hall for his friend in the little sitting-room that looked out over the lawns to the churchyard and Lord Johnny’s
bells.

‘I have been closeted with Lord Rosebery in his Dark Tower by the sea at Barnbougle. Somebody is trying to blackmail the Prince of Wales. The Princess is fearful for the life of their
eldest son. They say, God help us all, that he likes men as well as women. I am bidden to a great conference with Private Secretary Suter in Pall Mall two days from now. That’s it in a
nutshell.’

Outside a couple of very small birds were performing a slow dance across the lawn.

‘Bloody hell! Some shell. Some nut.’ Lord Johnny Fitzgerald looked closely at his friend. ‘That would be the very devil to crack. I’m not sure it can be done.
Nobody’s going to talk.’

‘We can’t give up at this stage, Johnny. We haven’t started yet. I think I am going to make some inquiries about the Prince of Wales’ finances.’

Fitzgerald helped himself to a couple of crumpets and a small mountain of butter. ‘And I could make some inquiries into what the rich and discreet homosexuals of London get up to. Prince
Eddy must be known in that world, if what they say is true.’

‘Do you think we could get a man on the inside, Johnny? Blackmailers usually have inside knowledge from somewhere. The most likely place is from the servants at Marlborough House or
Sandringham. I wonder if they’d let us put one of our own people in there, a senior footman or underbutler, somebody like that.’

‘You could try it, Francis. I think I know a man who went to school with that Private Secretary Sir William Suter. He was a mean little sod then. I don’t suppose he’s
changed.’

For two hours the two men talked until the fire had gone out and darkness had fallen over the Powerscourt estate beyond the windows. As they went off to dinner in Oundle’s finest hotel,
Lord Johnny had cheered up sufficiently to order a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet with the fish.

‘We’re celebrating,’ he told the wine waiter. ‘I saw three kestrels and a hawk today.’

The blinds were tightly drawn. The door was locked and bolted. Two lamps cast fitful light over the long table. At one end was a large pile of newspapers and magazines. Lined
up along the table, in four untidy rows, were the letters of the alphabet, cut loosely from their pages. The hands moved awkwardly with the paste as they composed a new message. Quite often the
hands spilt paste on to the table or on to the floor. The hands had always been bad at art at school, always bottom of the class. This Sunday afternoon another message was almost complete, capital
letters used in the middle of words, full stops in the wrong place, the letters themselves set at irregular angles on the page. The artist began to giggle, quietly at first, then almost
hysterically as the message was completed. Tomorrow the message would go to London. There it would be posted in an obscure West End postbox. As the hands tidied up the letters and opened the blinds
once more, the giggling stopped.

‘I’ve always thought London is much more interesting at this time of the morning,’ said Rosebery to Powerscourt as the two men set off to walk from
Rosebery’s house in Berkeley Square to their meeting with Private Secretary Suter at Marlborough House. A thin rain was falling, dusting the hats of the wealthy and the caps of the poor. At a
quarter to nine the streets were jammed, not with the carriages of the rich, but with the deliveries that made their life possible: hams, geese, truffles, oysters, cases of claret and champagne.
Carts laden with coal rubbed up against the lighter vehicles of the window-cleaners; local bakers’ boys were handing over great sheaves of loaves to undercooks on the pavements. Here and
there an anxious butler or senior footman could be seen hovering around a furniture van with instructions to beware of the Queen Anne table in the hall and not to hit any of the banisters on the
way up the great staircases.

The aristocrats of the early morning round were the liveried carriages of the great shops of London, the pale green of Fortnum and Mason, the dark green of Harrods, the dark blue of Berry
Brothers and Rudd. At the bottom of Berkeley Street, just where it joined the fashionable artery of Piccadilly, three coalmen were locked in furious argument with a young Turk from Justerini and
Brooks who refused to give way.

‘I don’t expect this will be an easy meeting,’ said Lord Rosebery, picking his way delicately past a grocer’s van that had drawn up on the pavement. ‘Anyone dealing
with the Royal Family has first to negotiate between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two Private Secretaries. Sir George Trevelyan, the keeper of Victoria’s chamber, and Sir William Suter,
the guardian for the Prince of Wales, have raised procrastination to an art form and obfuscation to depths undreamt of by Niccolo Machiavelli. They rarely say yes. They seldom say no. But between
those two extremes they have made all negotiations into a perilous voyage, with many squalls for the unwary and little prospect of a safe arrival at the final destination. It is one thing to decide
to send for you, my dear Powerscourt. It may be quite another to do something about any proposals you may have. I presume you have some crumbs of thought to bring to our humble table this
morning?’

‘I have indeed.’ Powerscourt smiled, pausing only to look at the arsenal of weaponry on display in the windows of London’s most exclusive and most expensive gun shop in St
James’s Street.

‘I have spent much time reading in the London Library. I have spent even more time talking to my two sisters who move about on the fringes of the Marlborough House set.’

A junior footman showed them up to the Private Secretary’s office on the second floor. It was a large well-proportioned room with high ceilings and tall windows that looked out over the
gardens to St James’s Park.

‘May I introduce the Treasurer and Comptroller of His Royal Highness’s Household, General Sir Bartle Shepstone?’ Sir William had the impeccable manners of the well-tempered
courtier.

The four men sat down round a table next to the window. To the right was a huge desk, cluttered with papers and correspondence, the raw material, Powerscourt presumed, of Suter’s world. A
full-length portrait of the Princess of Wales, standing by the lake at Sandringham, looked out at them from its command post above the fireplace.

‘Let me say first of all how grateful we are for your presence here this morning,’ Suter began, blessing each of them in turn with a wintry smile.

Sir William was tall, slightly stooped, with a high forehead and a well-tended moustache. His face, as Powerscourt observed it over the months ahead, was one of the most unusual he had ever
seen. Years of dealing with the scandals of the Prince of Wales, scandals he knew about, scandals he could only suspect, had trained him to lock all expression out of his face. The grey eyes were
always opaque. Neither smile nor grimace touched his lips. Sir William’s face betrayed no emotions at all. Suter was a Sphinx.

‘I presume, Lord Rosebery, that you have acquainted Lord Powerscourt with the information I imparted to you at our last meeting about the extortionate demands made of the Prince of Wales
and the method of delivery?’

Rosebery nodded gravely. Extortionate demands, thought Powerscourt, that’s not bad as a circumlocution for blackmail.

‘We at our end of Pall Mall have naturally been giving thought to what might lie behind such unreasonable behaviour. We have been trying to identify the circumstances in which an
extortionist could feel that a Prince of the Crown might prefer to offer some pecuniary obviation to prevent unfortunate outbreaks of publicity.’

‘They ought to be controlled by law, these damned newspapers and magazines.’ Sir Bartle Shepstone appeared to have turned red even thinking about them. ‘Ought to be controlled
by the laws of England.’

Powerscourt noticed that Shepstone was still wearing full military dress as if he was on parade. He looked as though he might have been an adjutant. Looking at his almost manic neatness,
Powerscourt felt that this was a man who could have organized the transport of supplies through the Khyber Pass or a fleet of artillery down the more dangerous passages of the Nile.

Forty miles north of Pall Mall the station platform was invisible by the time the train pulled out of the station, billows of smoke drifting back to envelop the chaos it had
left behind. The platform had disappeared beneath a miscellany of trunks, portmanteaux, valises, cabin trunks, shooting gear, hatboxes, shoeboxes, walking sticks and grips. Trying unsuccessfully to
bring order to this sea of baggage were the accompanying staff who had decamped off the train, shouting at each other: two valets, two footmen, one groom, two loaders and an underbutler.

The station was Dunmow Halt not far from Bishop’s Stortford. The arriving guest, with his large retinue of retainers, was the Prince of Wales. The hostess was Daisy Brooke, mistress of
Easton Lodge in the County of Essex and adjacent lands that ranged over five counties. Daisy was also the current mistress of the Prince of Wales. When he was eighteen years old, the Prince of
Wales had been stationed in Ireland with his regiment. Some of his fellow officers had introduced a Dublin actress called Nellie Clifden into his bed. His conversion in that camp at the Curragh was
as sudden and as whole-hearted as that of Paul on the Damascus road. That long night the Prince of Wales found his mission in life. His calling was to have as many women as possible. Beautiful
women, willing women, reluctant women, women in Ireland, women in England, women in France, women in Germany.

Daisy was the latest.

As the luggage chaos on the platform slowly struggled into order, Daisy and her Prince were riding merrily away, through the ornate red brick gates of Easton Lodge and into her estate. The late
October sun blest the flat acres of Daisy’s domain and Daisy’s birds were singing the songs of autumn.

‘Our conclusion was that there was one series of events which might have given rise to the feeling that money might be extracted in return for silence.’ Suter
coughed slightly, as if embarrassed at what he had to say. But he did not hesitate. ‘I have taken the liberty of summarizing these events in the form of a memorandum. I felt it would be
simpler to communicate in this fashion. I would ask you both to read it in turn and then return the paper to me. However distinguished our guests,’ here came that wintry smile again,
‘we do not feel it appropriate that any piece of paper should leave this room.’

There, thought Powerscourt. There was a glimpse of cold steel within the scabbard.

‘But before you read that, I felt I should acquaint you with some of the blackmail documents themselves.’

Suter looked as if he had just stepped into a very disagreeable gutter. He took a small key from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked a drawer in his desk. He extracted a plain envelope and handed
the contents round to his guests.

Powerscourt looked through them quickly. Then he looked through them again. He observed that the blackmailer had never mastered the art of cutting out letters or pasting them on to a page. The
cutting was rough, there was always too much paste round the edges, as if the blackmailer was worried his messages would not stick. There was no proper punctuation as letters in upper and lower
case, usually taken from different publications, sprawled their untidy way across the page.

The messages were usually brief. ‘You were at Lady Manchester’s with Lady Brooke. You are a disgrace. Unless you pay up, all of Britain will know of your deeds.’ ‘You
were at a house party in Norfolk with Lady Brooke. The working people of this country will not stand for this behaviour. You will have to pay.’ Powerscourt thought he could detect The
Times and the Morning Post typefaces but there were another two he did not recognize.

‘Does anything occur to you after your inspection?’ Suter’s voice called Powerscourt back to the meeting.

‘Fellow seems to think he speaks for England. One of those damned radicals, I shouldn’t wonder!’ Sir Bartle Shepstone did not have a high opinion of radicals.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Powerscourt, handing back the venomous bundle, ‘that it is virtually impossible to deduce anything at all. The messy pasting, the untidy letters, could
all be designed to throw us off the scent. I’m afraid,’ he looked enigmatically at Sir Bartle, ‘that they could as easily have come from a duke living in Piccadilly as a labourer
in Peckham.’ Privately, he thought the duke the more likely of the two.

Shepstone made a noise that might have been a grunt and might have been a cough. Suter hurried the business forward. ‘The memorandum, gentlemen. Our memorandum.’

He handed a document to Rosebery. As he read it, Powerscourt became aware of the ticking of a clock in the corner. Buckler and Sons, the legend on its face said, Clockmakers, By Appointment to
Her Majesty the Queen. Shepstone was peering at his shoes as if they too were on parade. Suter was looking out across St James’s Park. Far off in the distance the chimes of Big Ben could be
heard, tolling the half-hour.

‘Most interesting. Most interesting. Thank you,’ said Rosebery in his most pompous voice as he handed the document to his friend.

Powerscourt paused slightly before he began to read, his brows furrowed in intense concentration.

Frances Maynard, Lady Brooke, was twenty-nine years old. She claimed descent from Charles II and Nell Gwyn. She became an heiress at the age of three and had over
£30,000 a year of her own. On her marriage to Lord Brooke, son and heir of Lord Warwick, she attained a magnificent position in society. Her marriage liberated her to pursue her own affairs
while her compliant husband pursued his normal routine of hunting and shooting and very occasional forays to the House of Commons. Lady Brooke was certainly beautiful. She had in her eye the look
of one who would not be deprived of her prey, be it man or fox.

‘You know my station has just opened,’ Daisy began, ‘so we can now run special trains direct from London right to my front door.’

‘Indeed I do,’ said the Prince. ‘It is a better station than the one I have at Sandringham. I suppose it must be more up to date.’

‘Well,’ said Lady Brooke, ‘I’m going to have a party in the spring. And it’s going to last a week. I’m going to have chess in the garden, with live actors
from the London theatres dressed as pawns and castles and kings and queens. I’m going to have an orchestra that will play every night. I’m going to have the food brought over from
Paris. I want you to help me with the invitations.’

The Prince of Wales’ knowledge of society