‘What can we do, Dr Tony? Everybody in this house wants Francis alive.’ The thought of the twins with no father struck Lady Lucy yet again and she had to turn away for a moment.
‘I believe there is a great deal you can do, Lady Powerscourt, believe me. Many of my colleagues would have taken your husband to hospital. I thought of that and rejected it. If he had gone to hospital he would have been placed in a ward full of people as seriously injured as he is, or worse. Death would call every day if not every hour and constantly reduce the numbers. Here your husband is surrounded by love and his loved ones. I think we should keep him quiet tomorrow and the next day but after that your children should go and talk to him, whether he is awake or not. Maybe they could read to him. Other people could read to him, talk to him. The more activity, the better I believe it will be for your husband. If all is quiet people could think they have gone to that eternal silence before their time is due.’
‘So there is hope, doctor?’ Lady Lucy was looking at him very closely.
‘Oh yes, Lady Powerscourt. Of course there’s hope. Let us not forget that. Let us never forget that. There is always hope.’
Lady Lucy felt a small, but definite, onset not of hope but of resolve, of determination. Maybe it was courage. She thought of her love for Francis, she thought of all her ancestors who had marched and sailed and fought and died for their country across the centuries. Maybe some small portion of their bravery would come to help her in her ordeal. If she was not brave, she knew, Francis would surely die.
Those first two days seemed to most of the inhabitants of 8 Manchester Square to be like a dream. Thomas and Olivia refused to believe their father was seriously ill until Lady Lucy took them in to see him. Thomas turned white and stared at his father for a very long time. Olivia rushed off to her room to pray for her Papa’s recovery. Dr Tony came at regular intervals. The nurses changed over every eight hours, keeping endless watch over their patient, making him comfortable, washing his face, taking his pulse, entering their findings into a large black notebook. Lady Lucy kept vigil when she could. She had made a private arrangement with Johnny that one of them should be awake when the other was asleep and vice versa. The staff tiptoed about, popping in every now and then to look at Powerscourt. The flowers began arriving late the first morning. William Burke sent an enormous bunch. Lady Lucy thought how amused Francis would have been as the bouquets began arriving from her relations, dozens and dozens of them, enough to open a bloody flower shop, she could hear him saying. Soon a whole wall in the Powerscourt bedroom was lined with flowers. Only the twins were immune to the change of lifestyle, Lady Lucy convinced that it would take the Second Coming to make the slightest dent in Nurse Mary Muriel’s routine.
On the third day the atmosphere in the sick room was very different. Gone was the silence that had held the sick bay in its grip, broken only by the whispered conclaves between the nurses and Dr Tony. For a good section of the morning the twins were now placed on chairs close to the bed in their Moses baskets. Occasional wails punctuated the morning conversations between Dr Tony and the nurses. They took great interest in the twins, the nurses, peering into their faces and talking a great variety of nonsense to them. Thomas came in his most grown-up mode and read to Powerscourt from the sports section of the newspapers. Olivia tried to make up stories of her own for him. As these were largely based on stories her father had invented for her, it was, as Lady Lucy said, rather like hearing the brain of Francis come back in the voice of Olivia. When they got tired of stories, the children would talk to him, saying whatever came into their heads usually, and the nurses found that even more captivating than looking into the faces of the twins.
Just before lunch Detective Chief Inspector Beecham arrived. He had felt he would be intruding if he called on the Powerscourt household. Only after he had met Edward and Sarah in front of Queen’s Inn and learned that they were going to call at 8 Manchester Square very soon, did he change his mind.
‘Lady Powerscourt, Johnny Fitzgerald, how is Lord Powerscourt? Is he making good progress?’
Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy looked at each other.
‘He’s not getting any better, Chief Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘but he’s not getting any worse.’
‘I would like to see him and pay my respects, before I leave, if I may, Lady Powerscourt. This has been truly terrible for you all. I do have some fresh intelligence which fills in some of the final details of the case your husband so ably solved, Lady Powerscourt. But I would not want to keep you from your duties here.’
Lady Lucy smiled. ‘It sounds to me, Chief Inspector, as though Francis would want to hear your news at some point quite soon after he recovers consciousness.’ Beecham thought he could hear a repressed ‘if’ in that last sentence.
‘I shall be brief,’ he said. ‘Let me begin with the villain who shot your husband.’
‘The fellow at the bottom of the stairs?’ asked Johnny.
‘The same, Johnny. Lord Powerscourt is an excellent shot but his bullet landed a couple of inches too low. Had it been a fraction higher, the bullet would have killed him. It nearly did for him, the rogue is still in hospital. But he is alive.’
‘Has he spoken?’ said Johnny. ‘Has he told you what was going on, Chief Inspector?’
‘He certainly has. I regret to say I tricked him into making a confession he might not have made otherwise.’
‘How was that?’ asked Johnny.
‘I didn’t get to see him until early this morning. The man was unconscious in the Marylebone Hospital round the corner from here. The Hippocratic oath is a wonderful thing but I don’t think you receive the fastest treatment in the world if you’re brought in as an attempted murderer. Anyway, I told him he had half an hour left to live and that he should speak up at once. It wasn’t true, of course, but he wasn’t to know that. It seems he had a very religious education from his mother when he was little. He began muttering bits of prayers and hymns at me. I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I told him St Peter would be pleased with him if he told the truth before his departure from this vale of tears. So he did, or I think he did.’
The Chief Inspector pulled a notebook out of his pocket and checked a couple of entries halfway through.
‘It seems Somerville defended him some years ago on a charge of grievous bodily harm. Tompkins, Dennis Tompkins, that’s the fellow’s name, admitted the other man had been beaten almost to a pulp. Sentence likely to be ten years minimum, probably more. But Somerville gets him off, Tompkins is pathetically grateful, says he would do anything for Somerville as a result. Three weeks ago he gets a note from Somerville asking Tompkins to meet him in the gardens of Hampton Court. Bloody enormous grounds they are, as you know, my lady, you could plot anything in there without anybody being the wiser. Anyway, Somerville gives him an envelope with five hundred pounds in Treasury notes. Says there’s another five hundred when the job’s done. The job is to kill Lord Powerscourt, description and address to be supplied. Somerville told Tompkins Lord Powerscourt was coming to see him at the Inn three days ago. He followed him from there to the Wallace Collection. Tompkins said it was pure chance they both got locked in there together. He had no idea what the building was, he was only planning to see where Powerscourt lived and make his attempt later.’
‘That would explain the funny looks and the whispers I was getting about Francis when I went to check out the underworld,’ said Johnny. ‘Did he say why Somerville wanted Francis dead?’