Death and the Jubilee (46 page)

Powerscourt too was straining his ears towards the sea front. He knew the music should be well under way by now. He hoped Lucy could hear it.

Then Lucy knew. She knew the music. She knew when she had first heard it with Francis. She knew it was a message. She knew who it was from. She remembered that she had been crying softly in the
Albert Hall when she had first heard this movement. She had cried till the end. I mustn’t cry now, or they’ll know something has happened, she said to herself. She wanted to sing, to
shout, to perform once more her own Ode to Joy as she had wanted to in that darkened box opposite Kensington Gardens those five years ago when Francis asked her to marry him.

Francis has found me, she whispered to herself, blinking back the tears once more. Francis has found me. Francis is coming.

With a supreme effort of will, Lady Lucy Powerscourt turned slightly in her chair and pretended to fall asleep.

Francis is coming. Francis is coming.

‘What about my directors? What about my shareholders?’ said Albert Hudson, manager of the King George the Fourth, defiantly. ‘You are going to cause enormous
damage to my hotel if you proceed with this madcap scheme. Who is going to pay for the repairs?’

As he looked round the room Albert Hudson thought this should have been his trump card. But he sensed that he was going to be proved wrong.

The man in the fisherman’s jersey spoke to him very gently. ‘All that has been taken care of, Mr Hudson. Mr McDonnell here has come specially from London. He is the private secretary
to the Prime Minister.’

McDonnell too was gentle, trying to ease the pain of the old man whose hotel was to be sacrificed to the flames and the national interest.

‘I have a letter here from the Prime Minister, Mr Hudson. He says that Her Majesty’s Government will pay for any necessary repairs to any hotels in Brighton that follow any
operations mounted by Lord Francis Powerscourt and the Chief Constable of Sussex. Here, you may read it.’

This was the result of Powerscourt’s one word telegraph to Whitehall. He had explained the likely position in an earlier message. ‘Schomberg’ simply asked for McDonnell to come
in person.

Hudson stared hard at the notepaper, as if he suspected that it might be a forgery.

‘I too have had a message from the Prime Minister.’ The Chief Constable was moving in for the kill. ‘It gives me powers to take over any hotels I think fit in the Brighton area
for the next forty-eight hours. Of course, I have no wish to use these powers. Co-operation will be much more satisfactory than coercion. If we can all work together then the final outcome is much
more likely to succeed.’

Powerscourt wondered briefly what a hotel run by the police force would be like. Lots of minor rules and regulations, he suspected. Proper dress to be worn at all times. Drunkenness punished by
a quick visit to the cells. Meals served exactly on time.

Albert Hudson looked round the room once more. Joe Hardy thought he might burst into tears, so sad had his face become as he thought of the flames and the smoke ruining the building he had
tended for nearly fifty years.

‘Very good, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘With great reluctance, great reluctance, I place the King George the Fourth at your disposal. If anything should go wrong with this operation
I shall tell my directors that the blame cannot be laid at my door. I presume that I may evacuate all my guests in the course of this evening.’

The Chief Constable looked at Powerscourt.

‘I’m afraid that would not fit in with our plans, Mr Hudson.’ Powerscourt spoke in his most emollient voice. He was wondering if Lucy had got the message, sent up to her
through the windows of the hotel. ‘Most of this fire will take place on the upper floors of the west wing. The people we are concerned with are in Rooms 607 and 608 on the top floor, as you
know. Mr Hardy here is a fire expert from London. He and Chief Fire Officer Matthews beside him from your local brigade will work out later this evening exactly how they intend to achieve the
conflagration. But it is very important that the rest of the guests are evacuated at the time of the fire. It will make things look more convincing. With any luck – from our point of view,
that is – there will be a certain amount of confusion. Maybe some of the women will scream. Maybe some of the children will cry. That is regrettable but it helps our purpose. These noises
will carry up to the sixth floor. I hope they will help convince the two villains holding my wife that they have no alternative but to evacuate their rooms. Otherwise, they must feel, they will be
burnt to a cinder.’

Chief Inspector Tait made a note in his book. Powerscourt wondered if he was going to hire some actresses for the evening to scream to police orders. Brighton had always been well supplied with
actresses.

Albert Hudson knew when he was beaten. ‘I see,’ he said looking mournfully at his perfectly polished shoes. ‘I see.’

‘Now,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the more closely you are involved in the planning of the business, Mr Hudson, the greater our chances of victory. The police and the fire department
here both need to return with you to your hotel for the detailed planning of this operation. I suggest this should happen at once.’

‘I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt,’ Chief Inspector Tait sounded apologetic, ‘that I should ask you and Lord Fitzgerald to wait here. Until it is dark, at least. I know it is
unlikely that either of the two villains will come down into the body of the hotel but that is a risk we dare not take.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘Of course. We shall wait for the dark, Chief Inspector. We have often done it before.’

As Albert Hudson led his party of arsonists and police officers back to the King George the Fourth, Powerscourt saw Joseph Hardy showing his colleague a long list of calculations. Powerscourt
thought they were talking about tar and pitch and other inflammatory substances. As they went down the stairs he heard Hardy talking about some other fiery potion whose name he did not catch.
‘That stuff,’ Hardy said with a laugh, ‘it goes up like the fires of hell themselves. It’s terrific!’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald sat waiting for another battle, as they had waited together so many times in the past. Powerscourt remembered the terrible strain, waiting hour after
hour in the roasting Indian sun for the enemy to unleash their gaudy cavalry on the thin lines of redcoats and their guns. He remembered waiting in the Piazza San Marco in Venice for Lord Edward
Gresham to come to a fateful rendezvous in an upstairs room of Florian’s restaurant. He remembered another Indian battle when he and Johnny had been surrounded in an ancient fortress near the
Khyber Pass waiting for the Afghans to climb the slope and die in their thousands from the artillery.

‘Francis,’ said Johnny, I think I might take a little nap. Wake me in a couple of hours.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In six hours’ time, I can have a bloody great
drink. I hope that hotel man can open his bar for the celebrations.’

‘One thing, Johnny, just one, before you go to sleep.’ Powerscourt sounded very solemn. ‘I realize that now may not be the best time to ask this question. It is after all a
very personal matter. Forgive me for asking it. Feel free not to respond if you so wish.’

‘Get on with it, Francis!’ said Fitzgerald, draping himself neatly into the sofa.

‘It’s this, Johnny. What did you tell your customers when you were being Mystic Merlin on the West Pier?’

Fitzgerald laughed. ‘It’s terribly easy, really. Most of the customers are young girls. “Are you married, my child?” I would say, stroking their hands. “No,
sir,” they would reply. I would pause for a bit and start talking about lines of the hand meeting in particular places. Then I would say I saw a little house with a garden and three children
playing and a husband just coming home from work. Some of them would give me extra money for that.’

Powerscourt thought of legions of Lydia Bennets, asking for confirmation that the perfect officer was just around the corner, waiting at the ball in scarlet uniform.

‘Did you give anyone bad news, Johnny?’

‘No.’ Fitzgerald was yawning now. ‘Only one very pompous man. He looked very rich to me. God knows why he wanted to have his fortune told.’

‘Maybe he too wanted a little house with three children,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Well, I thought he had plenty of houses already. I told him I saw a mountain, a very long time ago, and a great crowd on the slopes gathered to hear a preacher man.’

‘What did the preacher man say, Johnny?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘The preacher man said,’ Fitzgerald was laughing now, ‘that the meek shall inherit the earth.’

Lady Lucy ate very little that evening. She wanted to stay alert for whatever the night might bring. She told her captors she had a very bad headache and needed to be left in
peace. As she pretended to doze in her armchair she could almost hear her heart beating.

Francis has found me. Francis is coming.

Her husband spent much of the evening staring out of his window towards the West Pier. Various emissaries came from the King George with details of the plans. Chief Inspector
Tait came with news that everything was going splendidly. He explained to Powerscourt that the police had evolved a system of sending each other messages by whistles for use in the smoke. They
sounded very complicated. Powerscourt only remembered one. One long continuous blast meant that the fire could be stopped, the smoke engines turned off.

Joe Hardy came, looking very excited about the night ahead.

‘We’re going to have a proper fire in the rooms on the two floors underneath. Proper fire,’ he went on gleefully, ‘not just smoke like everywhere else. It should help
them get hot in Rooms 607 and 608.’

He saw Powerscourt looking alarmed.

‘Don’t worry, sir. It won’t be too hot. And we’ll be able to put it out when we want to. It’s going to be tremendous!’

With that, Joe Hardy departed into the night, whistling happily to himself as he went. As darkness fell over Brighton the Chief Constable himself appeared.

‘I’m feeling rather nervous,’ he announced. ‘But I hope everything is under control. The inferno, as that charming young man from London keeps referring to it, is to
start a few minutes after one o’clock.’

Shortly after midnight Lord Francis Powerscourt crept down to the front. There was a crescent moon and the stars were shining brightly over the sea. A slight wind came in from
the English Channel. Powerscourt heard whispered greetings from the shadows and the doorways as he passed. ‘Good evening, sir.’ ‘Good luck, sir.’ Chief Inspector Tait must
have his men posted everywhere tonight, he thought, as he saw a further posse of policemen lying on the beach behind the fishing boats. On the West Pier the moonlight was glinting off the girders,
faint shadows reflected in the dark waters beneath. The great hotels lay sleeping on the sea front, like beached liners waiting for another voyage. A stray drunk was being escorted to a place of
safety by yet more of Tait’s policemen. A stray dog, watched by twenty pairs of eyes, trotted slowly along the front in the direction of the Royal Pavilion to guard the ghosts of the Prince
Regent and Mrs Fitzherbert.

By a quarter to one Powerscourt and Fitzgerald were waiting in a room on the second floor of the west wing of the King George the Fourth. There were no lights. Hardy crept in
and gave them both a collection of dampened handkerchiefs. ‘Might be useful in the smoke,’ he whispered cheerfully before departing to tend his flames.

Powerscourt knew the plan. He felt like a theatre producer who has given the stage directions for his final act but does not know what the actors are going to say. The smoke was to be increased step by step. The fire in the
rooms below 607 and 608 was to burn very fast, helped by some of Joe Hardy’s inflammatory liquids. The balconies were the key to the smoke. Each room in the west wing and in the section next
to it had a small balcony overlooking the sea. All the guests in this part of the building had been transferred to another section of the hotel. They were told there was a temporary problem with
the water supply. Tonight the balconies were occupied by barrels filled with a mixture of oil, tar and pitch, combined in a deadly recipe to produce the maximum amount of smoke. When the three
residents of Rooms 607 and 608 finally came out a platoon of six was to take care of them. Two each for the kidnappers. Two for Lady Lucy, Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald. Tait had tried to deter
him, fearing that his personal involvement might make him hesitate when rapid action was called for. ‘I’m the only one who will recognize her,’ Powerscourt had said defensively.
‘In all that smoke, sir,’ Tait had said, ‘you wouldn’t recognize Queen Victoria herself.’ Powerscourt had prevailed.

The Town Hall clock struck one. Powerscourt peered out at the sea front and the West Pier. Nothing moved. There was only the low murmur of the English Channel, small waves rolling in along the
pebbles of the beach. Then it started. It started very slowly. Two floors beneath him the first of Joe Hardy’s barrels began to pour a thick stream of smoke up the side of the building.
That’s nothing at all, Powerscourt thought, it’s a drop in the ocean. Then other barrels began to join the chorus. Soon there were five, then ten, then fifteen, then twenty, then
thirty, then Powerscourt couldn’t see very much at all.

The front of the hotel was wreathed in smoke, the west wing almost invisible. The breeze from the sea was keeping the smoke close to the side of the building. Then the flames started. Two great
sheets of flame leapt upward into the night sky from the floors above. Powerscourt learned later that the flames came from blankets soaked in Joe Hardy’s most inflammable liquids. At thirteen
minutes past one the hotel fire alarm went off. Hotel staff, supplemented by Tait’s policemen, were running round the building, knocking on doors, shouting to the people inside.

‘Fire! Fire! You must leave now!’ Outside the first fire engine had arrived and hosepipes were being dragged into position. ‘Ladders,’ one of the firemen shouted,
‘we need some bloody ladders. Now!’