There was a shocked silence.
Harland said: “But the King arrives on Tuesday . . . They wouldn’t, the French are in favour of this visit, the papers wouldn’t spoil it . . .”
But his years at the Palace had taught St Claire something about the ways of newspapers. He shook his head heavily. “They might not want to, but they’ll have to – as they see it. Each one’ll suspect that another will, and they daren’t be left behind. They’ll print it . . . But print exactly what?”
“I can’t say precisely, but all that I said and probably try to blame us for Guillet’s murder as well.”
“Was that your people?”
“No. It’ll all be one-sided and a lot of it unprovable, but people will believe it.”
St Claire said to Harland: “Could we bring a libel suit?”
The solicitor pulled a long face. “In a French court? And we could only do that after it’s been published. And we’d have to be specific. We might get them to retract some details – months later, if that’s any help.”
“Then is there nothing you can do to stop the man?”
Ranklin shrugged. “We might kill off Gorkin, but even if we did, I’m sure he’s thought of that himself and arranged that it would do more harm than good.”
Another silence, then: “Very well, then, I shall prepare a bulletin we can give to the Press once this appears in print.”
Ranklin nodded, but sighed as well. “I suppose you have to, but I doubt it’ll undo one-tenth of the damage. The French will still believe Grover is the rightful heir to the throne and that the British government and the Palace were prepared to sanction murder to do him out of his rights.”
St Claire winced and looked at Harland.
The solicitor looked grave. “I’m afraid the Captain is most likely right. For better or worse, what the public wants to believe is beyond the reach of the law. Look at Richard III: everybody knows he was a bad hat who murdered the little princes in the Tower. In fact he didn’t, and was quite a good king – probably better than Henry Tudor who rebelled against him and won. But don’t ask me how you can change public opinion after this time.”
“We’re not trying to refute Shakespeare,” St Claire said crossly, “just stopping some damned anarchist printing libels about our King – and ourselves. Can’t you get an injunction through the French courts?”
Harland steepled his hands in front of his face; a grave lawyer-esque gesture. However, he then spoiled it by looking at his hands, which made him cross-eyed. “I could try, given clear instructions from you. But couldn’t such a move be seen as yet another example of the Palace manipulating the law to protect itself?”
Near to boiling over with undirected anger, St Claire got up and strode to the window and stood there, hands clasped behind his back, staring down at the glittering Seine beyond the Quai.
Harland took out a cigar case, then decided that might cause a Diplomatic Incident, and put it away again.
It was very quiet in the apartment. The traffic looked busy on the Quai beyond the courtyard and railings, but barely a sound seeped into these high-ceilinged rooms. A good place for a king and queen to get a night’s sleep – if it weren’t for the eyes of those impossibly happy rustics on the tapestries.
Then St Claire turned from the window and began pacing the room, still with his hands clasped behind his back. His anger had gone, and when he spoke it was in firm and thoughtful tones.
“Incumbents of the British throne have had what one might most kindly describe as very individual notions of monarchy. So it is the duty of us in the royal household to maintain the ideal of monarchy, no matter who happens to occupy the throne at the time. If I may offer a very crude analogy, one might say that it is our task as minor actors to behave as if the principal player were giving a perfect performance, but not failing to point out any shortcomings . . . And we do our best.
“But just whose standards should we be applying? I think you, Ranklin, would say instinctively: your own. And you’d be right. Because you’d be talking of your own people, the yeomen and squirearchy, the very backbone of England. Those who live with and from the land, who run their villages and parishes according to real standards. Not the aristocracy; most of ’em just don’t matter. They’ve got private standards of their own that don’t mean a damn to anyone else. At worst they’re animals in a perpetual rutting season, at best they’re just aping the standards of their social inferiors, the squires and yeomanry. Your people.”
Ranklin couldn’t help but be flattered. But nowadays, he couldn’t help but be wary, too. However, he didn’t have to react; it was entirely proper for him to be tongue-tied by such compliments.
“It’s your people the monarchy rests on, your standards it should take for its own. Doesn’t always, as we know full well. So by saving the King from his youthful . . . mishap, shall we say? – you’ll be protecting your own standards.
“Now, I think that Mrs Langhorn herself is the key to this whole matter. Whatever young Langhorn himself says has to be hearsay – am I right, Harland?”
Harland nodded cautiously.
“So it’s what his mother says that matters. And if she says nothing, for whatever reason, then the rest is just Gorkin’s vapourings. The views of a man with a known anti-monarchist, anti-authority stance. We tried to settle the matter with money – as you said, to buy her silence. We may well have been misguided. But now, if we’re to leave this in your hands, I hope you’ll bear in mind that it is her silence that we want above all . . . Now, is there anything you want me to do?”
Ranklin just sat. After a time, he shook his head slowly. “Nothing. And I do mean nothing. When you get back to the hotel, stay there. Just sit in your room and work on that bulletin – oh, and don’t throw any first drafts into the wastebasket, either. Burn them and keep the only copy in a safe inside pocket.”
St Claire widened his eyes, then nodded. Ranklin went on sitting there. The man might not despise him, but he certainly wasn’t above manipulating him. However, that might just be habit. You couldn’t order kings around, so you learned manipulation. For example, he had just been inviting Ranklin to kill off Mrs Langhorn. Perhaps Ranklin was a little surprised at St Claire, but certainly not at the idea. That had occurred to him long ago.
16
The concierge intercepted Ranklin as he was going into the lodging house to tell him that O’Gilroy and the gentleman were in the cafe at the end of the street. So he plodded off there instead.
It was small and gently busy with that sense of cohesion, of customers and waiters in agreement that the place is just right, which marks a good pub or French cafe. You either try to fit in, or you go away, and O’Gilroy had clearly decided, some time ago, to fit. There was a waiter at Ranklin’s side the moment he had squeezed into the little seat-back-high booth. Almost every table had such a partition, so you could either feel private or lean over the back to chat. Like garden fences, perhaps.
“What’s going to keep me awake?” Ranklin asked.
O’Gilroy decided for him: “Un grand cafe noir et une fine.” His pronunciation was terrible, but the waiter didn’t mind, which suggested how much O’Gilroy had come to belong. Jay offered him a cigarette and then waited patiently.
Finally Ranklin said: “I didn’t learn anything new, but I hope I put the fear of God into the Palace and stopped them having any more bright ideas. Did you find Gorkin?”
O’Gilroy nodded. “He’s in that cafe I told ye of -”
“A very intellectuel place,” Jay supplemented.