He lit his own cigarette. “So : may I try to explain?”
Another sullen nod.
“Maitre Quinton hopes the meat porter will not be believed and Grover set free. But also, if he can show that Grover has not been proved to be an anarchist, the arson may be seen as a political act – and again he will be freed.”
“But he did not set fire to the police barracks.”
“Yes, yes, but Maitre Quinton will not be admitting that he did. The act itself, whoever did it, should be accepted as political as long as Grover has not been proved to be an anarchist.” Even as he was saying it, he realised that, logically, that was sheer balls. Surely whether an act is political or not must depend on the motive of whoever commits it, and thus on knowing who that person is. Oh well, probably a lawyer could talk his way out of that.
Berenice wasn’t impressed, either. “Then they will let him go if he is not an anarchist but send him back to Paris if he is? So being an anarchist is against the law?”
“No, you can be and say what you like here in England – er, within the law, of course.”
“But he must pretend not to be an anarchist to be set free?”
“It more-or-less seems that way,” Ranklin said, getting annoyed with himself, the law and anything else within reach.
She shrugged vigorously, almost toppling her hat. “The law, the law, the law. It is hypocrisy . . . And you ask why we do not believe in it?”
Ranklin hadn’t asked, but was tempted to lean over and clout her across the chops as a demonstration of what a world without law was like; however, he knew that was – mostly – just his annoyance. He confined himself to saying: “You could have stayed in Paris. But tell me, if Grover is returned for trial in France, what does he fear?”
She pouted at his innocence. “The flics paid that meat porter to lie. Naturally, they will pay him again.” When he looked appropriately gloomy, she went on: “I know where he stays – at the Dieudonne at R-y-d-”
“Ryder Street, I know. French hotel.”
“Last night I tried to see him, to ask him why he has sold another worker to the police, but they would not let me.” A threadbare and probably angry female . . . even a French hotel would draw the line somewhere.
“Terrible.” Ranklin shook his head. “But something I don’t understand: the American Consul who saw M’sieu Langhorn said that he claimed to know of some royal scandal . . .”
Berenice suddenly smiled. It didn’t make her pretty, but for a moment she looked more gamine then poisson. “Oh, that stupidity. Him and his silly mother with her fairy tales.”
“Oh?”
“She told him he is the son of your English King and so he is the next king.”
“Well, that’s what she said,” Ranklin reported into a stunned silence. They had gathered in the Commander’s office: the Commander himself and Lieutenant Jay, who was there because Ranklin had insisted they needed another pair of hands, and particularly feet. Right now, however, Jay was coming out of his concussion into delighted but stifled laughter.
The Commander, not in the least delighted, said: “The boy must be barmy.”
To distract attention from young Jay, Ranklin said: “Of course, I suppose you can’t be sure who your father really is; by definition, you aren’t around at the time. It’s the mother’s word that matters, and this could tie up with the letter she sent to the consulate. And her being English originally, I suppose.”
“Any chance of getting hold of a birth certificate?” the Commander growled.
“What’s the betting that it doesn’t say the Ki – no, Prince George in those days – is the father?” Jay asked cheerfully.
Ignoring that, Ranklin said: “The boy must have been brought up in America, but I don’t know where he was born.”
There was another long silence. The Commander broke it again by growling: “But he’s such a bloody dull king.”
“But equipped with all the normal urges,” Lieutenant Jay smiled. He had a pleasant smile, along with slimness, dashing, clean-cut good looks, longish fair hair – all refined through a line of ancestors able to afford the most beautiful women of their day. He could no more pass for a coal-miner than a kingfisher could, but then, the secrets of Europe weren’t kept in coal-mines but in chancelleries and drawing-rooms. And in such settings, it was difficult to see where Jay ended and the Louis Quinze furniture began.
But that was only the half of Jay that you saw. The other half, which should include concepts of honour, scruples, honesty, was unseen because, Ranklin suspected, it didn’t exist. He would trust Jay with his life, but not much else.
The Commander added: “You didn’t get much out of this French floozie, did you?”
Ranklin wasn’t standing for that. “Damn it all, if I’d started cross-examining her, she’d have seen I was taking it seriously and then she’d take it seriously. And God knows what she’d do or say to get her lover out of jail.” He stared defiantly at the Commander.
“All right, all right,” the Commander soothed – but then another thought struck him. “If this girl told you, what’s to stop her babbling to anybody else?”
“Me,” Ranklin said, still belligerently, “telling her she was likely to make Grover more enemies than friends over here if she did.”
“Good. Excellent . . . Then I suppose we have to look into the chances of this being true.”
Jay stared. “That this lad’s the next king?”
“Of course he’s not. He’s an American citizen.”
“Oh, that can’t be any bar. We took William and Mary off the shelf from Holland, and the Hanovers from Germany and the present House of Saxe-Coburg from . . . well, Saxe-Coburg, I suppose.” The long-established British families could regard the Royal Family as very much johnny-come-latelies.
“The first thing,” the Commander said firmly, “is to discover whether there might be anything in what the lad says about his father. What’s his age again?”
“Twenty-three,” Ranklin said. “And his birthday was given in court as November the twenty-first, so his date of conception must have been in February 1890.”
There was a pause while they checked his arithmetic.
Ranklin went on: “If the mother met and married an American merchant sailor in this country, that could be Southampton, American passenger ships come in there. And it’s just round the corner from Portsmouth, where quite likely Prince George was stationed in the Navy.”
The Commander made an expression of distaste; things were fitting together too well. He nodded at Jay. “Get down to Somerset House first thing tomorrow and look for a marriage certificate from Southampton or Portsmouth for Langhorn-Bowman . . . But that apart, it must be easier to trace the movements of the King – Prince George, as you say – than the woman.”
“Not all that easy,” Ranklin warned. “At the time he was doing mostly just normal naval things -” now the Commander’s expression turned sour; after all, he should know what “normal naval things” included, “- not worth reporting. But someone can try going through the Court pages of The Times for that spring-”
“Never mind that,” Jay said, “what we need is my old nanny.”
The Commander stared, then exploded. “Are you suggesting we include HER in this . . . this gathering?”
“No, of course not, sir. But she was – still is, I’m sure – a terrific monarchist. She followed the doings of the Little Princes, as she called them, almost day-to-day. Used to fill dozens of scrapbooks with bits cut out of newspapers and magazines. My father thought she was potty and she thought he was bound for hell-fire.
“Both right, I dare say,” he added thoughtfully.