Honourable Intentions (15 page)

“Not that one,” Quinton said briskly. “That’s mostly concerned with putting the House of Hanover on the throne and keeping Roman Catholics off it. No, it must go back earlier than that, but this isn’t a question that crops up every day, you know. I’d need to look up a few things.”

Since this was all a ploy to make Quinton feel important, Ranklin tried to keep him going by saying: “As I recall from my schooldays, when the Tudors were feuding about religion, both Mary and Elizabeth were declaring each other illegitimate and having Parliament re-legitimise themselves.”

Quinton nodded. “The very point being that illegitimacy would have kept them off the throne – so we have to look back even further than the Tudors. We’ll probably end up in common law.”

“Surely not
common
law?” Jay said, reverting to his usual self and getting a sharp look from the Commander.

“The common law of England,” Quinton said firmly, “is a sight more sensible and reliable than many of the half-baked measures dreamed up by Parliament these days.”

The Commander could agree on that. “Self-serving tradesmen,” he said in a cloud of pipe-smoke.

“And under common law principles of inheritance, neither property nor titles of honour can pass down an illegitimate line. Perhaps monarchy comes under ‘titles of honour’.”

The Commander sniffed loudly. “Let’s assume it does. After
all, history’s full of royal bastards and none of them acceded to the throne. Now—”

But now Quinton had got the taste for exposition. “You know, this has interesting echoes of the Mylius case three years ago.”

Form his expression, the Commander could have managed without Mylius, but said politely: “Do tell us.”

“It was a criminal libel case. I believe the Palace wanted to ignore the whole thing, but the Home Secretary – then Winston Churchill – took a more aggressive line. Mylius – he was writing in an English-language paper published in Paris but distributed over here – claimed the King had secretly married a daughter of Admiral Culme-Seymour in Malta in eighteen-ninety. What he was really attacking was the supposed doctrine that the monarch can do no wrong.”

He paused and Ranklin asked: “Does that still hold?” He got a look from the Commander for encouraging the man.

“What Mylius wrote, and I quote –” he had even brought a paper to quote from “– was: ‘The King is above the law and can do no wrong. He may commit murder, rape, arson or any other crime, yet the law cannot try him.’ Of course, he could have pointed out that any diplomatist enjoys as much immunity, possibly more. However, the doctrine that the King can do no wrong is thought to obtain, for a constitutional monarch, only so long as the King does not act except upon the advice of his ministers. So unless one can envisage a minister
advising
the King to commit murder, rape or arson–”

“Lloyd George?” Jay suggested.

The chuckles threw Quinton off his stride and the Commander took the opportunity to say: “Most instructive. Now can—”

“Mylius got a year in jail,” Quinton muttered.

“Richly deserved. But if we can get back to the present day . . . We haven’t established that this anarchist puppy
is
the King’s son—”

“Probably impossible to do so.” Quinton bounced back fast;
probably lawyers had to. “Presumably his birth certificate – have you dug that up yet?”

“He may have been born in America,” the Commander said. “What weight does a birth certificate have in court?”

“It’s accepted as proof unless it’s challenged. And even then, you can only show that the father named couldn’t be the real one – by reason of impotence, say, or that he was discovering the North Pole at the required time. But that tells us nothing of who the real father is. So, assuming that the birth certificate says the father is Langhorn senior, I’d say the King was not liable in law. But have you found out whether he did . . . ah,
know
the boy’s mother?”

“Dammit,
of course
he was poking her,” the Commander growled. “Every lieutenant who could afford it had a loose woman in Portsmouth. Place was stuffed with them. That’s not the point. It’s what the foreign newspapers will make of the lad’s claim to be a royal bastard if they get to hear of it. Now: is there any legal way of stopping that?”

“You – or rather, the Palace – could take out an injunction. That can be done secretly–but in the end, all it could do is bring the wrath of the law on Langhorn’s head if he spoke out. And if he wants to shout it out the next time he’s in court . . . well, I’ve advised him not to, but in the end I can’t stop him. And what he says in court is privileged, and could be reported even here.”

O’Gilroy said: “If he ups and says he’s the next king, surely everybody’ll laugh and say why not Julius Caesar or Napoleon?”

The Commander nodded firmly. “Yes, we should be concentrating on what the mother may say about the King – the Prince, in those days.”

Quinton asked: “Did he write her any letters?”

It was as if a sudden ice age had struck the room. Everybody held their breath and went quite still. Then it passed, leaving only shivers behind.

“God, I hope not,” the Commander said fervently.

In an even, reasonable voice, O’Gilroy said: “She didn’t pick
this road until jest recent. She could’ve started causing this ruckus twenty-four years ago, when she found she was going to have a baby. But she didn’t. She married the American feller and started a new life in America. If she had any letters and such, probly she burned them then. Never thought she’d want to look back.”

“Thank you for that touch of common sense, O’G—Gorman,” the Commander said. “I just hope you’re right.”

Quietly, Ranklin got up, fetched the whisky decanter, and refilled the Commander’s glass. O’Gilroy and Jay shook their heads, and Quinton had taken only a couple of sips at his brandy.

“Do we know,” Quinton asked, “what the mother wants out of all this?”

“We haven’t had a peep out of her since that letter you saw,” the Commander grumbled. “But it seems to have been assumed by . . . certain others, that she’ll settle for a pension. They’ve put an advertisement in this afternoon’s Paris papers asking her to come in and get some good news from our consulate, which we take to mean money. Naturally enough, this has got the French police up in arms.”

“You know,” Ranklin said thoughtfully, “I don’t think we should necessarily assume that the woman
will
settle for a pension. She might just be taking this my-son’s-the-next-king stuff seriously and sees herself as the Queen Mother.”

Quinton said: “I’ve explained—”

“Not to her.”

“Well, I certainly have trouble envisaging Ma’mselle Collomb as our next queen.”

Ranklin shut his eyes and shuddered.

The Commander, who hadn’t met Berenice, smiled automatically. O’Gilroy looked disapproving on behalf of all fairy-tale milkmaids who reach the throne.

The telephone rang in the drawing-room and Ranklin got up to answer it. Behind him, Quinton was saying: “I’m sure Mrs Langhorn’s position will be explained to her . . .”

“I have a call from a Mrs Finn,” the office switchboard girl
told Ranklin. “She says it’s very urgent. Should I connect her?”

“Please do,” and he listened as she wrestled with the “instant” communication that was going to change the world.

At last a very distant Corinna came on: “Matt? Matt? Get over here, Berenice has been kidnapped.”

10

Rolls-Royces might not zoom, either, but this one certainly
surged
when the Commander put his foot down. Ranklin felt the clenching of mechanical muscle like a horse preparing to leap, then the release as it soared off. But unlike a horse, it soared on and on as the Commander kept accelerator and horn depressed. Ranklin got the (fleeting) impression that other motorists turned angrily to see what frightful bounder was making that din, saw two tons of speeding Rolls-Royce behind, and chose to live long enough to write to
The Times
about it.

Looked at coolly, it was an odd way for the Secret Service Bureau to cross London, but by now Ranklin was praying that the Commander was at least looking, never mind coolly. They were all armed: Ranklin and O’Gilroy with their own pistols, Jay and the Commander with weapons grabbed from his collection in the inner office.

The steel-on-steel brakes screeched like escaping steam as they swung out of the Mall and up past St James’s Palace, barged into the traffic of Pall Mall, up St James’s, swerved into Piccadilly, and finally up Clarges Street. Corinna was waving energetically from the pavement.

“That Sackfield bitch from Bloomsbury Gardens called,” she panted, “and wanted to take Berenice for a walk and I couldn’t exactly stop them but I could go along, and your young guy following
incognito.
And near Hyde Park Corner an automobile pulled over and they shouted for Berenice to jump in and she did, and the Sackfield woman stopped me interfering but I stopped
her
getting in and her eye won’t be the same in
weeks,
and your guy came running but the automobile got away, and I
think he may have got a taxi round in Constitution Hill, but I got one back here to telephone you.”

“What motor-car?” Ranklin asked.

“Dark red and a landau body.” The Yard might have felt inhibited about offending that car’s owner, but not so the Bureau.

“Go up and telephone the office,” the Commander told Ranklin. “See if P’s called in.”

Ranklin bounded up the stairs, leaving Corinna and her skirt plodding after. He had already rung the bell, rushed in and grabbed the telephone by the time she caught up.

“What happened to the Sackfield woman?” he asked.

“God knows. I wanted to get back here.”

“And you obviously didn’t have your pistol with you.”

Corinna travelled with an outdated but still handy Colt Pocket Pistol in her “purse” but: “In daylight in Mayfair?”

Then the office switchboard answered: yes, Lieutenant P had just called, he’d lost the red Simplex but it had been going up Shaftesbury Avenue and he’d called from the post office there.
Damn –
P wasn’t properly briefed, he didn’t know the Bloomsbury Gardens address.

“If he calls again,” Ranklin said, “tell him to get back to the office to act as co-ordinator.” Then he ran.

“What do I do?” Corinna yelled after him.

“Guard the telephone.”

“Don’t you want another automobile?”

Ranklin stopped.

In the street, the Commander was talking to two men, one in a sober suit and bowler hat, the other a derelict loafer – obviously Superintendent Mockford’s men.

O’Gilroy intercepted him and confirmed: “Coppers. Was watching the motor, but scared it off, more like. Drove away an hour and more ago. And of course the coppers didn’t have their own motor to follow in.”

Ranklin nodded and pushed straight into the Commander’s conversation. “He lost it heading north-east, it could have gone to Bloomsbury Gardens.”

The Commander abandoned the policemen in mid-sentence. “Right, all aboard!”

The more respectable looking one said: “I think I’d better come along, too, sir.”

“Sorry, no room.” The Rolls-Royce, an open tourer, could have carried a platoon. And a policeman could add legitimacy to what might otherwise be an outright brawl.

“Mrs Finn’s having her own motor-car brought round,” Ranklin said. “O’Gilroy and I could go in that. Then we can split up if Berenice isn’t at Bloomsbury Gardens.”

The Sherring Daimler appeared at the end of the street at the same time that Corinna shot out of the apartment house.

The Commander waved a hand impatiently. “Oh, all right. Get in the back, Inspector or Sergeant or whatever you are.”

By the time the Rolls-Royce surged away, Corinna had talked the chauffeur out and taken his place. Whatever she promised or threatened, Ranklin didn’t hear, but they left the man looking pretty bewildered.

“Bloomsbury Gardens?”

“Please. But if it looks like getting at all rough, you stay in the motor-car. And if anybody starts shooting, get out and hide behind the engine . . . That’s at the front.”

“I know where the
engine
is!”

“It’s solid enough to stop anything.”

She turned her head to look at him. “Why this sudden concern? You’ve had me loading
artillery
guns for you.”

“That just happened. I don’t want your luck running out—
Please
watch the road!”

The Simplex wasn’t parked outside 14 Bloomsbury Gardens, nor anywhere else in the square or within a hundred yards down any of the streets off it. By the time the Daimler had finished its reconnaissance, the others were inside the house. The Commander was only just inside; he’d found a chair and was letting things develop around him.

Venetia Sackfield, with a rip down the front of her pale violet
dress and a wet towel held to her left eye, was in full protest: “You’ve got no right at all to come charging into this house! This is sheer oppression!”

The bowler-hatted policeman said: “A complaint has been made, madam, that—”

Corinna pointed melodramatically: “I want that woman arrested for assault and kidnapping!”

“Berenice got into that car willingly!”

“Do you agree, madam, that you were present—?”

“Are you saying you didn’t assault—?”

“Berenice is within her rights—”

Ranklin and O’Gilroy left them to it and went to help Jay search the house. A kidnapping charge might even make that legal, though the Bureau wasn’t too expert on legality.

They met Jay coming downstairs escorting a young man in shirt-sleeves who looked pale, just woken, and hungover. “Meet Rupert Peverell,” Jay said cheerfully. “The owner of a dark red Simplex landau.”

“Ah, the chap the police say helped murder the French meat porter,” Ranklin said loudly.

Peverell got several degrees more sober. “They say . . . I didn’t . . .
What?”

“ ’T was yer motor they used,” O’Gilroy said. “That makes it for yeself to prove yer innocence.” His law was as twisted as his grin, but the grin was indisputable. It possibly reminded Peverell of a shark halfway through a good meal.