The Blood Royal Read online

  The taxi pulled up in front of a late Georgian house on the northern side of the park-like boulevard that was Melton Square. Heavily porticoed balconies and densely planted patches of garden gave these houses an air of discreet dignity. Dedham looked about him with satisfaction at the solid grandeur, the sedate Englishness, the well-lit pavements, of what he considered to be the heart of London. Nothing truly stirring had happened, in public at least, here in the Five Fields since the Earl of Harrington’s cook had been set upon and beaten to death by highwaymen a century before. Since the arrival of the gas-lamps, the only crimes hereabouts were committed behind closed doors by the inhabitants themselves and went unrecorded unless, chiming with the spirit of the times, they gave rise to an ennoblement of some sort for the perpetrator. There were more rich, influential villains per square yard here in this genteel quarter than in Westminster, the admiral always reckoned.

  He frowned to see one of these approaching. A gent in evening dress, opera cape about his shoulders, top hat at a louche angle over his forehead, was weaving his way uncertainly along the pavement.

  ‘I say, Cassie.’ He drew his wife’s attention to the staggering figure. ‘Who’s this? Do we know him? He looks familiar.’

  ‘He is familiar! Look away at once, Oliver!’ Cassandra put up a hand, seized his chin and turned his head from the window. ‘I forget you scarcely know your own neighbours. But that’s ghastly old Chepstow. Drunk as a lord again!’

  ‘If that’s Chepstow he is a lord,’ objected Dedham, trying to turn for a better view. ‘He’s entitled, you might say.’

  ‘It’s no joke, Oliver! Stay still and give him time to move off. He’ll recognize you. And you’re the one man in London everyone – drunk or sober – wants to talk to and shake hands with. You really have no idea, have you? You’re twice a hero now, you know. He’d expect to be invited in for a nightcap. Darling, you’ve been away from me for six months! I’ve no intention of sharing you with any old toper.’ She pulled his head down into an enthusiastic kiss. ‘Ah … there he goes … Now, Oliver – the cabby’s waiting. Get on with the briefing.’

  The driver had been grinning in understanding throughout the conversation. He seemed to have a sense of humour and Dedham prepared himself for a sarcastic response to the guff he was about to spout. However, the man accepted his fare and the generous tip he usually enjoyed from the denizens of these fifteen square acres and listened, head tilted in an attitude of exaggerated attention, to the request that came with it. He nodded when the briefing was over and returned a simple ‘Understood, sir’ in response to the crisp naval tones.

  As instructed, he hooted twice and waited for thirty seconds before winking his headlights three times. He even managed to keep a straight face throughout the proceedings. ‘There we are, sir. Signal acknowledged. Light’s come on in the vestibule,’ he said, enjoying the game. ‘And the front door’s opening. Here we go! Time for the lady to make her sortie.’

  With a snort of amusement Lord Dedham understood that the man had been listening as his wife rehearsed him in his exit tactics.

  ‘Road’s clear and well lit, sir, no suspicious persons or obstacles in sight, but I’ll get out, take a quick recce and then launch the lady.’ The driver had suddenly about him the briskness and wariness of an old soldier. ‘Just in case. You never know who’s lurking in the shrubbery these days.’

  He got out and walked up the path, peering into the bushes. He kicked out at an innocent laurel or two before returning to the rear of his motor to open up for Lady Dedham.

  ‘Fire Torpedo One!’ she said with a grin for the cabby and, clutching her evening bag tightly in her right hand, she walked off quickly towards the front door the butler was holding wide in welcome. She turned on the doorstep and gave a merry wave.

  Before the driver could fire his second charge, a slight form dashed across the street and accosted him. ‘A taxi! What luck. In fact, the first stroke of luck I’ve had tonight. Park Lane please, cabby. Pink’s Hotel – do you know it? And fast if you wouldn’t mind.’ The stranger fiddled around, tugging open with nervous fingers the velvet evening bag she carried dangling from one wrist. She exclaimed with frustration as a handful of coins fell clinking to the ground, and her thanks to the cabby, who scrambled on his knees to retrieve them in the dark, were embarrassed and voluble. Her discomfort increased when she caught sight of Lord Dedham’s legs reaching for the pavement. ‘Oh, frightfully sorry! Cabby – you already have a fare?’

  ‘Don’t worry, miss!’ Dedham’s reassuring voice boomed out. ‘Leaving, not entering. It takes a while to get my two old legs working in concert. You may drive straight on, cabby. As soon as I’ve disembarked my old carcass.’

  ‘But you told me just now to wait until—’

  Lord Dedham cut him off. ‘Nonsense! The lady’s in a hurry. Take her where she wants to go.’

  He accepted an arm in support from the grateful young girl and struggled out, shaking down his uniform and straightening his sword. Very pretty, he thought, with a sideways glance at the slender figure under its satin evening coat and the pure profile set off by the head-hugging feathered hat. He wondered with amused speculation from which of his well-to-do neighbours she could be running away. Not a difficult question: it must be that bounder Ingleby Mountfitchet at number 39. She’d appeared from that direction and was casting anxious glances back towards his house. Dedham followed her gaze with chivalrous challenge. It wouldn’t be the first time a girl had fled screeching in the night from that cad’s clutches. If rumour was right he’d been kicked out of his regiment. And it would seem that in civvie street his conduct continued to be unbecoming of a gentleman. High time someone took him by the scruff of his scrawny neck and told him that sort of behaviour would not be tolerated in this part of town. Dedham resolved that neighbourly questions would be asked. By him. In the morning.

  He walked the few yards to his door, smiling, eager to share his piece of salty gossip with his wife.

  He reached the doorstep and greeted his butler with an affectionate bellow. ‘There you are, Peterson. All’s well with us, you see. We’ve survived the evening. Though it was touch and go at one point – her ladyship nearly died of boredom. During one of my own speeches!’ The expected joking sally was the last intelligible pronouncement the admiral uttered.

  Two dark-clad figures crept from the laurel bushes. One called out the admiral’s name. When he spun round, identifying himself, they took up position with professional stealth, a man on each side of the doorstep. Both men fired at the same time.

  ‘Service Webleys,’ the admiral had time to note before, caught in the cross-fire, he was struck by two bullets in the chest.

  An onlooker would have concluded, from the victim’s reaction, that the shots had missed their target. Oblivious of his wounds, he strode back outside with a roar of outrage and drew his sword from its scabbard.

  The man who had commanded the fire-power of a dozen twelve-inch guns and a crew of seven hundred aboard a battlecruiser in the North Sea now found himself fighting for his life with a dress sword, alone on his own doorstep, but he laid about him with no less relish, attacking by instinct first the larger, more menacing of the pair. He caught him a slicing blow to the cheek. A combat sword in fine fettle would have split the man’s face in two, but, despite the blunt edge, the admiral was encouraged to see he’d drawn blood. Delighted by the howl of pain he’d provoked, he went for the smaller man, chopping at his gun hand.

  A third bullet hit Dedham in the heart.

  His sword clattered to the paving and he folded at the knees, collapsing sideways into the arms of his wife. Unconcerned for her own safety, Cassandra had run back to her husband and knelt by his side, supporting him with her left arm. He opened his lips to whisper ‘Kiss me, Cassie’ as he’d often joked that he would in a playful tribute to his hero, Lord Nelson, should he be laid low and preparing for death. But no words would come. He couldn’t seem to draw breath. And Cassandra’s attenti
on was elsewhere. With a croak of astonishment, the admiral blinked to see his wife freeing her right hand from her bag. Unaccountably, the hand he’d so recently fondled in the taxi now held a small pistol which she fired off, shot after purposeful shot, at the fleeing pair. Her scream of encouragement to the butler rang in his ears: ‘After them! Stop the ruffian scum, Peterson!’

  Lord Dedham smiled admiringly up at her and his eyes closed on the sight of his wife taking careful aim down the barrel of her Beretta.

  The two gunmen raced to the taxi, firing backwards over their shoulders at Peterson who chased after them armed with nothing but fury and his bare hands. They bundled themselves into the back seat next to the shrieking woman in the feathered hat. Unsurprisingly, she rapidly made space for them and their guns on the back seat.

  Hit in the shoulder and leg and bleeding on to the pavement, the butler raised his head and watched as the motor erupted into a three-point turn. In his agitation, the driver seemed to clash his gears and the car ground to a juddering halt, its rear licence plate clearly in view in the light of the lamp. Peterson focused, stared and repeated the number to himself.

  In the distance a police whistle sounded and the boots of the beat bobby pounded along the pavement. Peterson called out faintly.

  At last, the taxi screeched off with a great deal of revving but little forward momentum.

  The turbulence in the back seat threw up a stink of sweat, the iron odour of blood and a reek of cordite. This noxious cocktail was accompanied by a gabbling argument in a language the driver could not understand. But rage soon expressed itself in plain English. ‘Stop farting about, you bastard! Drive!’ the larger of the two men snarled. ‘To Paddington station. Fast. Miss one more gear and you get it in the neck yourself. Like this.’ He pulled back his gun to point it ahead through the open window at the beat bobby who had placed himself squarely in the road in front of the taxi, one hand holding a whistle to his mouth, the other raised in the traffic-stopping gesture. This calm Colossus held his position as the taxi came on, impregnable in his authority.

  Two shots sent the imposing figure crashing on to the road.

  The cabby swerved violently and deftly mounted the pavement to avoid running over the body.

  ‘Leave it to me, sir,’ he said, apparently unperturbed by the hot gun-barrel now boring into his flesh. ‘I know these streets like the back of my hand. We’ll go the quickest way.’ And, light but reassuring: ‘Don’t you worry, sir – I’ll get you to the station all right.’

  Chapter Five

  Joe looked up from his notes and ran a hand over his bristly chin. He blinked and focused wearily on his secretary across the desk. ‘Who did you say, Jameson? Constable Wentworth? Oh, Lord! My nine o’clock interview. Didn’t I say she was to be intercepted and her appointment deferred?’

  ‘Well, she’s sitting out there now in the corridor, sir, large as life. I’ve no idea how she managed to sneak past them at Reception. I did tell them.’ Miss Jameson dabbed at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. ‘Today of all days!’ She gulped and sniffed in distress. ‘We’ve got quite enough on our plate. She’s only been summoned to hear her dismissal. I’ll tell her to go away and come back later. A week here or there can’t signify.’

  ‘No. Wait a moment.’ He pulled towards him a file bearing the constable’s name and number. It also sported an ominous red tag.

  Discharge.

  Notice of termination of employment with His Majesty’s Metropolitan Police. Announcing that an officer was surplus to requirements was always a difficult duty when not deserved and, as far as Joe was aware, none of the women did deserve dismissal. Mostly, they left with relief to get married or because their ankles swelled. When the austerity cuts demanded it, he had chosen to break the news to the men himself, rather than expose them to the abrupt, acerbic style of the Assistant Commissioner whose job it normally was, but had left the women to be dealt with by a high-ranking female officer like his cousin Margery Stewart, better acquainted with the subject and better equipped by nature with a comforting shoulder to cry on.

  The young woman waiting outside was a special case, however. And time was running short.

  The decisions arrived at in last month’s Gratton Court conference Joe now saw had been right and timely. With a grim irony, it had been Admiral Dedham himself who had argued against them and, outvoted at the time, had immediately set about dismantling the sensible schemes. After last night’s tragedy, it fell now to Joe to reinvigorate the plans without delay, before worse occurred. Before much worse occurred. His deadline was a week on Saturday. Not long enough.

  ‘Bring her in, Miss Jameson. I do need to see her. Might as well get it over and done with.’

  While Miss Jameson’s back was turned, he slipped the red marker off the file, considered throwing it away in the bin, then put it in his pocket. The outcome of this interview was by no means certain. And, whatever the result, he had an unpleasant task ahead of him, a task imposed upon him by a pincer movement from above. At Gratton he’d found the courage to make his views clear and they’d heard him out but in the end, as the youngest and least experienced of the assembled strategists, he’d been overruled. Politely, he’d been made aware that his role was one of … what had Churchill said? … implementation, not grand design.

  ‘Cat’s paw.’ Lydia had it right, as ever. If all went well, they would take the credit. If disaster followed, Sandilands would carry the can.

  Joe screwed his eyes closed and conjured up without too much difficulty the face that went with the number on the file. It had made quite an impression on him. The station platform. Smoke and noise. And in the middle of the mêlée, a pretty girl grinning in triumph. Under her bottom one of the West End’s nastiest specimens and in her hat a jaunty rose. Joe smiled as he remembered the scene. He recalled watching the tiger-like silence of the stalk, the swift pounce, the fearless attack. He hadn’t forgotten the eager rush of gratitude for his intervention, delivered in an attractive, low voice. The constable could well be the best England had to offer in the way of womanhood, he thought with a rush of sentimental pride.

  And that was something he would have to eradicate from his thinking in this job: Edwardian gallantry. There could be no place for the finer feelings in this ghastly modern world. Chivalry itself had fallen victim to bloody-handed assassins, if he read the situation aright.

  Yes, this had to be the right girl. If he were minded to preachify, he might even say that Fate had delivered her into his hands that day at Paddington.

  And the next day down in Devon, he had delivered her into the hands of three of the most ruthless men in the land.

  ‘Look no further, gentlemen,’ he’d said, after a second glass of port. ‘If this is really what you are prepared to do, I think I may I have the very girl for you.’ He’d even announced her name and number. Satisfyingly, eyebrows had been raised, grunts and nods of encouragement had broken out. Warmed by the general approval, he’d undertaken to haul her aboard.

  Joe shuddered. He’d saved her from a knifing at Paddington but had probably exposed her to a worse fate.

  He’d have to play his cards carefully. He could take nothing and no one for granted. This wasn’t the army where orders were given, received and blindly obeyed. The woman was perfectly free to reject his overtures and scoff at his suggestions. And foul up some well-laid plans.

  Lily Wentworth followed Miss Jameson into the room and looked about her. Astutely anticipating a dismissal committee, he guessed. Her eyes rested briefly on him, widened in surprise, narrowed again in distaste and slid down to her boots. Well, if she’d been expecting to see the knight-errant from Paddington, all smiles and panache, she was going to be disappointed this morning; what she’d got was a Sandilands sore and seething with rage. He realized that in his dark-jowled state he presented an unappetizing sight. With not a minute to dash to his Chelsea flat and change, he’d resorted to a quick cold splash in the gents’ washbasins an hour ago. He’d stared
back in dismay at his image in the mirror: black stubble, red eyes, and a dark tan looking unhealthily dirty in the morning light, as well as throwing sinister emphasis on the silver tracery of an old shrapnel wound across his forehead. If he’d encountered that face in Seven Dials, he’d have clapped the cuffs on and searched the owner’s pockets for a stiletto.

  The cold wash hadn’t gone far towards dispelling the night’s build-up of fatigue and filth. He glanced down at his blood-stained tie and cuffs. His attempts to dab them clean had not been entirely successful. Whose blood? It could have been from any or all of the four victims. Ah, well … she’d probably seen worse down the Mile End Road at chucking-out time on a Saturday night. No need to draw attention to it. He rose to his feet and came round his desk to greet her.

  ‘That will be all, thank you, Miss Jameson,’ he said genially enough. ‘Go and get yourself a cup of tea or something. You look as though you could do with one. Oh, and while you’re at it, remind PC Jones I haven’t had mine yet. Tell him to bring a tray. Two cups. Milk and sugar. Biscuits too – gypsy creams would be good – not that dog kibble he brought me yesterday.’

  The door closed and they were left staring at each other.

  ‘Sir, I arrived early for my appointment …’

  ‘Did you now?’

  ‘I did knock.’