Goodnight Sweet Prince (28 page)

‘Lord Powerscourt. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Please sit down.’

An imperious nod indicated that he was to retrace his steps with her to the seat by the window, the journey long, the stiff frozen lawn outside beckoning them on.

‘Lord Rosebery wrote to me about you. Do you know Rosebery well?’ The question was almost a command.

‘He is one of my greatest friends, Lady Gresham. I have known him for many years. And I have a letter for you from the Prime Minister as well. I did not like to entrust it to the postal
services.’

Lady Blanche was tall and slim. Powerscourt thought she must have been in her early sixties, probably born in the reign of William IV. She was wearing a long black skirt and a silk shirt of deep
red. Round her neck was a string of pearls which she fingered from time to time as if checking they were still there.

‘Rosebery I knew as a young man. This Salisbury I don’t know at all.’ The Prime Minister was dismissed as though he came from poor stock or had made his money in trade.
‘Rosebery was quite charming. He came here to a house party many years ago. I think Disraeli was here that weekend.’

Powerscourt wondered how Disraeli had gained admittance if Salisbury was
persona non grata
. Charm and flattery, he supposed, the usual Disraeli tricks.

‘He was most amusing, Rosebery I mean. He kept us all quite entertained for the days he was here. Such elegant manners.’ Her voice was high. It cracked from time to time, like glass
in a mirror. ‘But you haven’t come here to reminisce about Thorpe Hall in the days of its glory, Lord Powerscourt. How can I be of assistance to you in your business?’

There was something very special about the way she said Thorpe Hall, as if it were sacred, something to be kept safe from strangers.

‘I wanted to ask you a few questions about your son, Lady Gresham.’

‘My son? My son?’ Lady Blanche Gresham sat ever straighter in her chair, her back stiff, her eyes haughty.

‘The first thing you have to remember about my son, Lord Powerscourt, is that he is a Gresham. A Gresham.’

That emphasis again. Earlier Greshams, Greshams in uniform, Greshams in repose, seemed to nod their approval, staring down from their family seats on the walls of the long long room.

‘Greshams have played their part in the history of England for over six hundred years, Lord Powerscourt. They may have come over with William the Conqueror. We cannot be sure. One of my
ancestors was burnt at the stake in the reign of that dreadful Queen Mary, burnt to death for his beliefs. They say that the other Protestants who perished with him cried out as the flames took
hold. They repented. They said they were sorry, they hadn’t meant it. The Gresham spoke not a word, Lord Powerscourt. Greshams don’t cry.

‘I have looked at the records of the time, our family records somewhere in the attics of this house where we sit. The priests were corrupt, Lord Powerscourt. The abbots were greedy. They
took from the rich. They took from the poor. The friars were more interested in the sins of the flesh than the redemption of souls. Those indulgences! Sold to indulge the whims of a Pope in Rome
who wanted to glorify his city with the buildings of this world, not with the blessings of the next.’

Powerscourt could see that an alliance with a Catholic family might present a few problems here in Thorpe Hall.

‘My family,’ she went on, ‘have been active in the business of this county or this country for centuries. We have hunted across these fields beyond these windows for
generations. Generations, Lord Powerscourt. The Gresham stirrup cup, the hunt has always said, is the best in the county, if not in the country.’

She stopped briefly. This woman’s spirit would never be broken, thought Powerscourt. They could tie her to the stake for her beliefs. She wouldn’t make a sound. Greshams don’t
cry.

‘Edward is the latest in the line. The long line, Lord Powerscourt.’

Something softened in her voice as she talked of her son. Suddenly Powerscourt could see them, Edward and his mother, rowing round the lake in the summer, the sun caressing the golden curls of
the pretty boy, the power of a mother’s love caressing his heart. Then the softness went away.

‘I expect you want to ask me about his marriage, Lord Powerscourt. I will spare you the trouble of framing what might be an embarrassing question. I expect you have heard the gossip, what
they are saying down there in London.’

She made London sound like Sodom, thought Powerscourt, keeping still and silent in his chair, his eyes flickering outside to the frozen landscape.

‘I never met the girl. I did not attend the wedding. I did not attend the funeral, dare I say it, a happier event for me. I believe she was called Louisa. Such a common name. Shopgirls are
called Louisa, I believe. So are grocers’ daughters. The marriage was simply impossible. Greshams don’t marry shopgirls. They don’t marry Catholics. They never have.’

But they did. They had, thought Powerscourt, wondering how he could steer the conversation in the direction he wanted.

‘Did Edward ever bring Prince Eddy here? To Thorpe Hall?’

‘Prince Eddy? That one who has just died? Yes, he did. He came on a number of occasions. Very feeble young man, I thought. Bad blood, thin blood. Something wrong there. Fancy being carried
off by something so mundane as influenza at his age. It just proved there was something wrong with his breeding.’

‘Did Prince Eddy know Louisa at all?’ Powerscourt tossed it in lightly, like a hat into a ring.

‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, do you expect me to know the answer to that question? I have told you. I did not attend the wedding. I did not attend the funeral. I was hardly likely to pop
over to that place where they lived for grocer’s tea.’

‘Forgive me for asking, but do you know anything of the circumstances of her death?’

‘I do not. I did not ask. I did not inquire. I did not regard it as any of my business. I was merely glad that Edward was rid of her.’

Powerscourt wondered if a mother’s love was strong enough to send Lady Blanche over to the little house, bought by the grocer father, and push a daughter-in-law she had never seen down the
steps to her death. He didn’t think so. Nearly, but not quite. But he felt she was not telling him all she knew. But then, she never would, even if he waited until the frosts had thawed and
the lake could welcome rowing boats once more.

‘And where is Edward now, Lady Gresham?’

‘Edward? Oh, he went away after his time at Sandringham. He came back looking quite pale, terribly pale. I expect it was the weather up there in Norfolk. Some people say he was still upset
about the death of that girl.’

She couldn’t say Louisa, thought Powerscourt. Not again. Once, or was it twice, was all she could manage. Greshams, some Greshams at any rate, don’t say Louisa.

‘And where did he go? When he went away?’

‘He said he was going to Italy, Lord Powerscourt. He only left last week. Edward said he had to make a journey to Rome. I never asked him what he meant by that. Maybe it had something to
do with that ghastly religion. Do you know Italy at all, Lord Powerscourt?’

She made Italy sound like a next-door neighbour, the nearest county family perhaps.

‘I do, Lady Gresham. I know it quite well. Did he say if he was going straight to Rome?’ He’s gone straight to Rome already, thought Powerscourt, like Newman and Manning and
all those other converts to Catholicism, hundreds, if not thousands of them in his lifetime. But he felt it wiser not to mention that.

‘He did say something about that. I think he said he was going to Venice first.’

There were two fires burning in the long long room. All the time he sat there Powerscourt had felt cold. The room was cold. Maybe it would never be warm again.

‘I took him to Venice for his first visit when he was sixteen years old, Lord Powerscourt. Just the two of us.’

Powerscourt could see the two of them, not in a rowing boat, but in a gondola edging its way down the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.

‘Edward adored Venice. He always said it was the whole business of being there that made it so attractive. He loved walking round some of the poorer quarters, you know, Lord Powerscourt,
rotting palazzos falling into the street, washing hanging out above the windows.’

‘I know exactly what you mean, Lady Gresham. I do indeed. How well you put it.’

She smiled a condescending smile. Powerscourt had a great urge for train timetables. Trains across Europe. The fastest way to get to Venice before Lord Edward Gresham, one-time equerry to the
late Duke of Clarence and Avondale, moved off on his journey to Rome. Maybe he could telegraph to Rosebery’s butler from the railway station.

At least Lady Blanche didn’t offer me any fruit cake, Powerscourt said to himself as he left, the rich mixtures of Shapston coming back. In fact she didn’t offer me anything at all.
Maybe she found the whole business pretty distasteful.

He saw her watching from the windows of her long long room as his carriage skidded across her frozen park towards the station, an old woman, icy with pride, watching her last visitor depart from
the Gresham home at Thorpe Hall. She was alone again in that huge cold house with its baroque ceilings, alone with memories of her long-departed husband and her wayward son, memories of the
Greshams of old haunting her from the walls of her salon, greeting her from their cold marble tombs in the family vault when she went to worship. Maybe she’s not all that lonely, he
reflected. Maybe she lives through today by living in the past.

Greshams don’t cry. Not then. Not now.

Anyway, he thought, you couldn’t see Lady Blanche Gresham making a fruit cake. She’d have to send out to the shop for one.

To the grocer’s shop.

‘Seven o’clock train to Dover, my lord. Connects with the boat to Calais. Quickest route, my lord.’

A note from William Leith, Rosebery’s butler, waited for Powerscourt back in St James’s Square in reply to his telegram. He hasn’t wasted much time, Powerscourt thought. Then
he reflected that for a man with Leith’s resources, shelves and shelves of timetables, this was probably child’s play. Calcutta might prove a challenge, or the twin cities of
Minneapolis and St Paul.

‘Express to Paris. Arrives at 4.30. Gare du Nord, my lord. Would suggest Parisian taxi to Gare de Lyons. Night train to Milan, my lord. Departs at 7.30. Breakfast in the station. Very fine
rolls in the Milan station buffet for breakfast, my lord. Connections to Venice every hour on the hour from 8 o’clock. Could reach Venice by lunchtime or early afternoon, my lord. Have taken
the liberty of making you reservations on all these conveyances. Except the taxi, My Lord. Prior booking difficult if not impossible. Rooms reserved at the Danieli. Central location. Recommended by
My Lordship.’

How on earth, wondered Powerscourt, did the man know about the rolls in the buffet? Maybe his customers reported back, to add to the encyclopedias of railway knowledge in his little eyrie
half-way down Rosebery’s basement stairs.

As the train rolled southwards from Paris the following evening, past the ten crus of Beaujolais and alongside the waters of the Rhone, Powerscourt was counting his dead.

Prince Eddy, in that charnel house of a room in Sandringham. Lancaster, suicide in the woods. Forever Faithful. Semper Fidelis. Simon John Robinson of Dorchester on Thames, place of death
unknown. Lord forgive them for they know not what they do. The two gentlemen from the homosexual club in Chiswick. Lady Louisa Gresham, interred in some Catholic chapel in the Midlands, unmourned
and unloved by her mother-in-law.

Six of them now. Six corpses. What was the thread that held them together? Was there indeed one single thread? Was the answer in Venice or in London? Or neither?

As his train turned eastwards and began its long ascent into the Alps, Powerscourt fell asleep. He did not dream. Clarence hath murdered dreams, he thought to himself, as the roar of the great
steam engine met the deep silence of the mountains.

Santa Lucia railway station is one third of the way down Venice’s Grand Canal. Santa Lucia, thought Powerscourt happily. They’ve even named a railway station after
Lady Lucy. How nice of them. I think she’s got a church just round the corner too, maybe a palazzo. But he wasn’t sure about the palazzo.

An aged gondolier, wiry moustache and that red beret they always seemed to wear, secured Powerscourt’s passage to his hotel. As they pushed off from the bank, the gondolier took a deep
breath and filled his lungs with the dank Venetian air.

‘Please,’ said Powerscourt, holding up his hand just in time. ‘Please,
per favore
, no singing.
Niente opera
,’ he went on desperately. ‘
Silenzio.
Per favore. Niente aria
. No singing.’

The gondolier looked dumbstruck. ‘No arias? Not one, signor? Not even a little one? Drinking song from
Traviata
perhaps?’

‘No arias.’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Not one. Not even that damned drinking song.’

The gondolier gave one of those special shrugs reserved for foreigners and resolved to add yet more lira to his bill. Powerscourt felt he had had a narrow escape. Singing Italians, usually out
of tune in his view, on the way down the most romantic street in the world were an abomination not to be borne.

Palazzos drifted by on either side. When he was a boy Powerscourt had a map with all the great ones marked, their dates of construction, the famous and the infamous who had lived there. When he
was nine or ten, he could remember most of them. The names, he thought, such poetry in the names.

Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings in Italy. Palazzo Giovanelli where they had bribed their way into the aristocracy with 100,000 golden ducats. Ca’
Rezzonico, home of yet another Venetian Pope. Palazzo Falier, home to the traitor who tried to become king and lost his head for his pains, cut off on the top of his own staircase. The vengeful
aristocrats, Powerscourt remembered, had given him one hour’s notice of his execution. Palazzos built for the great families with their names in the Golden Book.