The only calming note came from the Surete Generale, but one editorial suggested this was just sour grapes. In effect, although presumably not intention, Paris had two competing police forces: the Prefecture and the Surete, and when it came to catching anarchists, real or alleged, alive or dead, the competition was no-holds-barred.
“Did you form an opinion on the case?” he asked.
“Jest from the newspapers. And guessing, mebbe.”
“We’re not lawyers; let’s have it.”
“Then sure enough the boy could’ve done it – and he could’ve shot the President and cabinet jest as easy. I mean he’s a real anarchist, drunk on the stuff like he’s never tasted that bottle before. Left a good job on an ocean liner -” Ranklin hadn’t noticed that that detail, so carefully kept out of the Bow Street court by Noah Quinton, was available to any Parisian reader. The law, he reflected, was like a fixed telescope: it magnified what it saw, but it missed an awful lot; “- to work in a stinking shebeen. I mean a real hell’s kitchen of a place.”
“You’ve seen this Deux Chevaliers cafe? Been into it?”
“Went down there this lunchtime. But not in. Yer not paying me enough to get meself knifed for a police spy.” He sounded offended to have found a place too disreputable even for himself; after all, among the toffs of the Bureau, his forte was knowing the underside of life.
“Did you look at the police station where-?”
“I did.”
Ranklin thought. Then he gathered together O’Gilroy’s notes and handed them back. “Here, you make a report to the Commander tomorrow. Give him the full a la carte and he should invite you to join our charmed circle and we can do this properly.”
O’Gilroy put on his lopsided smile that, once you knew him, could have so many variants; this time it was rueful cynicism. “Nice of ye to say so . . . Only I wisht it was a real job and not hauling the King’s wild oats out of a fire.”
5
Major Alfred St Claire looked correct, but also as if he hadn’t been born that way. You could well imagine his stocky, broad-shouldered figure leaning on a farm gate and being knowledgeable about turnips. Instead, a service career and then the Royal Household had smoothed him. His dark hair was now sleek, his long face pink and shiny, even his wide cavalry moustache (he hadn’t actually been in the cavalry; he was nominally a Marine) looked sleekly dashing.
And by now he had a courtier’s or woman’s ability to wear anything and make it seem natural. On him, a frock coat wasn’t awkward or old-fashioned; indeed, it made Ranklin in his severe dark lounge suit feel like a tradesman. Perhaps he should have worn uniform, like the Commander, only that wouldn’t have been correct because he had thankfully got rid of the regulation moustache which, on him, refused to grow to more than a schoolboy wisp. And the Palace was, after all, the fountain-head of correctness.
With old-fashioned courtesy, St Claire did his best to make them feel at home, coming out from behind his writing-desk and joining them in the elegantly uncomfortable chairs crowded around the tiny fireplace. The room was small, with a view over the inside courtyard, and true to the Palace’s reputation, cold even when it was unseasonably warm outside.
When the Commander had been given permission to smoke and stuck his pipe in his mouth, he began: “There’s a lad, an American citizen, now in Brixton jail because the French want us to extradite him for setting fire to a police station in Paris.”
He paused, and St Claire said: “Yes, I read about the case in this morning’s papers. He’s an anarchist, isn’t he?”
Ranklin said: “Yes, but it’s legally important to keep that out of court – according to the lad’s lawyer.”
The Commander resumed: “It appears that if he is extradited, he’ll claim publicly that he’s the son of the King.”
Perhaps Ranklin was disappointed when St Claire merely nodded.
“His mother was an English girl called Enid Bowman. She wrote the American consulate here a letter that can be read as endorsing the boy’s claim. We think she’s in Paris – France, anyway – and probably in hiding.”
When the Commander didn’t go on, St Claire asked: “Is that all you can tell me, Commander?”
“We know more about the crime itself, but what seems to matter most is what the mother may claim. Even if we could go direct to her, it might be a mistake to do so – but an indirect approach is difficult and slow to do secretly. For example, we don’t want to involve the police.”
“How far have you gone with investigating this?”
“Hardly anywhere. We only heard the exact nature of the threat yesterday evening. I thought it best to come to you before going any further.”
St Claire tried to put his coffee cup down on a small table already overloaded with the tray, then put it on the floor instead. “Do you expect me to ask His Majesty if there could be any truth in this?”
The Commander took it evenly. “It would short-cut our investigations. And however careful we are, just asking questions endangers secrecy.”
St Claire shifted in his seat. “You do remember that We are going to Paris next week?” There was a definite capital letter on that “We”.
The Commander nodded.
“Is this just a coincidence?”
“With what little we know, we simply can’t tell,” the Commander said blandly.
St Claire gazed out of the window, stroked his moustache, and then, staring at the merely smouldering fire in the grate, began to speak. “His father would simply have brazened this out; sworn it couldn’t be true in the highest court and on any bible you cared to hand him. On the grounds that the honour of a British king was far more important than any truth – possibly more important than perjuring his immortal soul. But at least that would have been a matter between him and his God, and not involved us of the Household.” He sighed. “I suppose that the upbringing of royal children must always be a problem, but I doubt the answer is to shunt them off into the Navy at the age of twelve. Whatever is said about Queen Victoria not letting Prince Edward see state papers and the like, at least he was around. He met people, knew who was who in Europe. Whereas chugging around the Cannibal Isles shaking hands . . . hardly the best preparation for the subtleties of a modern state. The one thing one can say about His Majesty is that he sets an example to us all as a husband and family man . . .” His voice dwindled into silent thought. Then he said, almost to himself: “I certainly find it difficult to accept that a British king is for no more than that . . . Nevertheless, it is virtually the only strong card in his hand.”
“And you’d like to keep it that way,” the Commander nodded. “I quite understand that. But if His Majesty would say if this could be true-”
“Forgive me, but you may have missed my point. His Majesty is learning what being King of Great Britain means. That said, if he were now told that he might have fathered a bastard, he may well, given his inexperience except in the naval tradition of accepting personal responsibility, admit it openly. And where would we all be then?”
The Commander and Ranklin looked at each other. After a while, the Commander said: “So it may be a matter of saving the King from himself?”
“I don’t need to tell you that the British monarchy is going through a difficult patch. In his first four years on the throne, the King has faced the Prime Minister’s blackmail – it was nothing less – about reforming the Lords, radicalism, socialism, republicanism, women’s suffrage – and now the Irish Home Rule Bill and the likelihood of civil war in either North or South. A successful visit to Paris could make all the difference. It happens to be of particular political importance: the French loved the late King Edward and were rather annoyed that King George chose to visit Germany first – although it was, for a family wedding, quite unavoidable.