When the Devil Drives (35 page)

And once, louder than the rest: ‘Be glad when they've gone, the whole German pack of them.'

At four o'clock, still nothing apart from another queue of petitioners in the drizzle. I waited for half an hour, but knew that if my notes had reached their targets, there would have been some response by now. Back at the inn, Tabby was waiting in the stableyard, looking as tired and cast down as I felt.

‘Have you got him out?'

I believe she'd expected me to storm the castle or barracks and drag Amos out by force. I shook my head.

‘So what are we going to do then?' she said.

‘We'll have to stay here tonight. There's no point in going back to Egham.'

It infuriated me that the people who might help us were probably lounging in armchairs or gossiping over billiard tables no more than a few hundred yards away inside the castle walls, but as unreachable as if in a different country. I went inside and negotiated with a surly landlord for accommodation for Tabby, myself and the mare. Although it was only a back street inn and none too clean, Windsor prices were high. I had to pay most of our remaining store of money for a small back room, a scuttle of coals for the fire and a bread and cheese supper. The bread was stale and the cheese tasted as if mice had tried and rejected it. When we'd finished all we could eat, we put the plates on the landing, stirred up the reluctant fire and I asked Tabby about her day. As usual, she had every detail in her head.

‘I went to the barracks first. There were guards outside but they wouldn't talk to nobody. I found some boys who kept hanging about the gates there, and asked if they'd seen a carriage and prisoners going in. They hadn't.'

‘This was the main gate, I suppose?'

She nodded. ‘That's right. I thought there must be a back gate and there was. It's where deliveries go in, bread and hay and so on. There was a guard on that gate too and he wasn't talking either. So I just stood there until a big brewer's dray came along with barrels on it and I thought if I could hang on the back of it, I might get in without the guard noticing.'

‘For pity's sake, Tabby, haven't you had enough of hanging on the back of things?'

‘Anyway, it didn't work. The guard let out a holler and made a grab at my skirt. If I'd had two good hands, I might have hung on anyway, but as it was I came off.'

‘Have you hurt yourself again?'

‘Nah. Nothing to bother about. Anyway, that's not the point. When I was on the ground before they got the gates closed, I got a look inside and there was a gentleman's chariot on its own in the yard, no horses, and a soldier standing guard over it. So I thought that was the chariot Mr Legge got hold of and they'd got him in there somewhere as well.'

She was right, I was sure. Sir Francis and his men would keep the devil's chariot and its crew under guard, along with Amos as a suspected part of the crew. How much would he tell them about what he and I knew? Very little, I guessed. He'd see that information as our property and would want to discuss it with me first. So he'd just shut his mouth, jut his jaw and keep quiet. His questioners might as well bluster at the castle walls. Tabby went on with her story.

‘The guard got it into his head that I was the sweetheart of one of the soldiers and that was why I wanted to get in. Not likely, I said. If I had a sweetheart it wouldn't be a stupid boiled lobster like them. So he got mad and told me to go away or he'd call the sergeant. I said he could call the bleeding Duke of Wellington for all I cared. But I knew there was no chance now of getting in that way, so I stood across the road for a bit just to annoy him, then I went.'

I thought that was the end of the story, but there was more to come.

‘I got a bit lost on the way back from the barracks,' she said. ‘It's all over the place, this town.'

As if the town were to blame, for not being London.

‘I worried you might be back here, wondering where I'd got to. I was in this back street when I saw a gentleman coming out of a doorway, so I thought I'd go up and ask him the way back to the castle, then I could start from there.'

From her face, this was more than a simple matter of being lost.

‘He had his back to me, so I said “Excuse me, sir”, being polite. Then he turned round, and I knew him.'

‘Who?'

‘You know the morning after the fire, you gave me a note to take round to the maid at Grosvenor Street. When the maid came to the door, I noticed there was a gentleman standing behind her in the passageway. He took your note off her as soon as I put it into her hand. It was the same man as I saw this afternoon.'

I didn't bother asking if she were sure. Tabby's eye for a face was as infallible as her memory.

‘Tall, early forties, dark hair and eyes?'

‘Yes.'

Mr Clyde. It had been a shock when she said it, but when I thought about it, where would he be but at Windsor? He'd lost a piece on his chessboard with the capture of the chariot, but the game wasn't over. More than that, with rumours running wild and Prince Ernest holed up in the castle, he could still win.

‘Did he recognize you?'

‘Don't know. He looked angry when he turned round, but I don't think that was because of me. I think he was angry anyway.'

Perhaps because he'd just had news that the chariot had been captured, from whatever accomplices he'd been visiting in the back street.

‘Did he say anything?'

‘No. He just pointed and walked off quick. I was waiting for him to get round the corner then I was going to follow him and see where he went, only these two men started following him as well.'

‘What two men?'

‘Ordinary looking men. They came out of an alleyway opposite the house he'd come out of, then they waited until he'd turned the corner and went walking after him.'

‘Definitely following him?'

‘Yes. I think they were trying to look as if they weren't, only they weren't much good at it.'

Sir Francis Downton's men, I guessed. I hoped that Mr Clyde would have had too much on his mind to recognize Tabby as my messenger after one brief glimpse of her in London, but we couldn't count on it.

‘Could you take me to the house you saw him coming out of?'

‘Now?'

‘Not now, no.'

‘Tomorrow morning?'

‘No. We've got something else to do tomorrow morning.'

‘About getting Mr Legge set free?'

‘Yes.'

‘How?'

So I told her. It seemed quite a sensible scheme to her. That made me even more worried.

TWENTY-THREE

M
y time at the castle entrance had not been entirely wasted. From the gossip of sightseers and my fellow petitioners, I'd learned so much about the royal routine that Mrs Martley would have been proud of me. The habits of Little Vicky, her household and her visitors were as predictable as a clockwork toy. On Sunday mornings the Queen, visitors and courtiers walked together from the royal apartments to service in the chapel. The sightseers agreed that this was one of the best times to see the queen and her all-but-official fiancé at close quarters because St George's chapel is inside the first castle courtyard, near the gate where'd I'd waited. Anybody could walk into the courtyard. There'd be guards present, standing to attention, but this would be no more than a formality because nobody anticipated an attack on the queen.

All eyes would be on the young couple, with nobody much interested in the crowd of courtiers and assembled dignitaries walking at a respectful distance behind them. Nobody except Tabby and me. She'd been disappointed at first when she found I didn't intend to fling myself bodily on Her Majesty and demand Amos's immediate release, but soon took the point that the man we needed was Sir Francis Downton. I was depending on my hunch that he'd be at Windsor, watching developments. The plan was to pick him out in the procession and, if necessary, follow him all the way in the chapel. All I needed was a word or two with him and I hoped I could rely on a gentleman's horror of anything like a public fuss to make him listen.

‘What if he's not there?' Tabby said, as we walked towards the castle on a grey Sunday morning.

‘Then it will have to be Lord Palmerston himself.'

The Foreign Secretary would, for a certainty, be in attendance at Windsor. I didn't look forward to confronting the terror of the Foreign Office, but if all else failed, that's what I'd have to do. At least I shouldn't have to waste much time in explanations. I was sure that he knew more than most people about what was going on. More than likely, that procession walking piously to church would include an ambassador from the country that had started all this, and Palmerston would be very well aware of it. I was so sick of their diplomatic games that anger saved me from feeling nervous. Almost.

Fewer spectators than I expected were waiting in the courtyard in front of the chapel, maybe thirty or so. Perhaps other people were waiting until the afternoon, when the queen and her party walked on the terrace and a military band played. After a while, a party of guardsmen marched up and lined the route from the royal apartments to the chapel. From inside, an organ started playing. Then a murmur ran through the small crowd. The party had appeared from the royal apartments and was walking towards the chapel. They came at quite a brisk pace. A small woman in a grey cloak and bonnet walked in front, a tall man beside her. After that, a gap of a few yards and a group of women, probably the ladies-in-waiting. Then the rest of the party, mostly gentlemen, twenty or so of them.

‘That's him,' somebody near me said. ‘Second from the left.'

He was a young man, good looking but pale of face, walking rather stiffly as if not quite at ease in an occasion that was part public, part domestic. A pleased murmur went through the little crowd. Any rumours about the behaviour of elder brother Ernest didn't seem to have reflected on Prince Albert so far, but then this crowd were loyal people. The queen passed close to us, so close that we could almost have reached out and touched her. Somebody murmured, ‘God bless her.' She reached the porch, where a clergyman, the dean probably, was waiting to welcome her. She said something to him then turned back to the party behind her. For a moment, she smiled directly at Albert, an open-hearted, mischievous smile like any girl to her lover. He caught the smile and his pale face and serious expression were suddenly transformed in a beam of pride and happiness. I registered to myself, Well, perhaps a love match after all. But I hadn't much attention to spare as I was too busy looking at the gentlemen now crossing the courtyard.

No sign of Sir Francis in the sober ranks of black coats, top hats and fixed expressions of important men about to make a routine courtesy call on their deity. One man stood out for his air of scarcely contained impatience as if he'd have liked to be walking faster and get the affair over. He was tall, with bushy sideburns, hair waving out from under his hat, his jaw and forehead like squared-off timbers. I recognized him from dozens of political cartoons as Lord Palmerston and got ready to make a move.

‘Look.'

Tabby was tugging at my cloak. I tried to brush her off, angry at being distracted, but she was insistent, trying to get me to look at something behind us. I turned and there, no more than half a dozen steps away, was the man I knew as Mr Clyde. I'm sure he didn't see Tabby or me. His eyes were on somebody in the ranks of important men. Then somebody jostled him from behind and he turned quickly and walked away, across the courtyard, heading for the street outside. The man who'd jostled him walked closely beside him, with a second man falling in behind.

Tabby was saying something. ‘. . . ones I saw yesterday.'

Then, before I could say anything, she was off, trailing them. I was furious with her, because by then Lord Palmerston and the men round him had gone past us towards the chapel entrance. I started to go after them and found myself blocked by one of the soldiers.

‘Sorry, miss, royal party only.'

I think he took me for no more than an overenthusiastic spectator, but the damage was done. I was wasting my breath, trying to tell him that I had to speak to the Foreign Secretary, when the shot sounded.

It came from outside the castle walls, but not far away. The queen had disappeared inside the chapel by then and probably wouldn't have heard it. A few of the gentlemen, Palmerston included, turned their heads then walked on. Some of them must have recognized it as a gunshot and possibly concluded that it was a soldier accidentally discharging a weapon. At any event, not near enough to be any threat to the royal party. The gentlemen took off their top hats and went into the chapel. By then, I was pushing my way back through the spectators who'd bunched behind the soldier and me. Nobody else seemed worried, but then nobody else knew that Tabby had just walked out of the courtyard following a murderer. Once I was clear of the small crowd I started to run, stumbling on cobbles, out of the gateway and into the street. Signs of panic here, wide-eyed people asking each other what was happening, a group of spectators forming round something a few dozen yards from the gate. They were all looking down.

A man in shirtsleeves was kneeling on the pavement. Another man seemed to be trying to persuade the spectators to go back. As I came up to them he was saying, ‘. . . can't do anything in any case.' A figure lay flat on the ground, head and chest covered with a jacket that probably belonged to the man in shirtsleeves. The swathed head and chest were all I could see. I had to punch one of the spectators on the back to make him turn round.

‘Who is it? What's happened?'