Who Guards a Prince?

by Reginald Hill

“We’ll pick up my gear on the way to the airport.”

  Her heart jumped, but she kept her face blank. “You’re coming with me?”

  “Part of the way,” he said.

  She set the chair in motion and started to sort out some papers from her bureau.

  “McHarg,” she said, face averted, concentrating hard on her papers. “You needn’t come because of me, you know that.”

  “I know it and I’m not,” he said.

  “Why then?”

  “I don’t want to be around when they open 97 either,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got family business.”

  “Family business?”

  “Which means my business. Which means I move at my speed. So for God’s sake, woman, stop your havering and get a move on!”

  CHAPTER 10

  The Preceptor sat and looked at the phone impatiently. The Tyler had promised to ring more than an hour before and he was usually a man to rely on.

  Things had seemed to be going so smoothly the previous night. The Entered Apprentice had been summoned to the Lodge in Shepherd Market for a final briefing and the Preceptor had been in expansive mood and encouraged his questions.

  “What I don’t understand is why you—we—should be so concerned about this liaison,” he had asked.

  The Preceptor smiled. “Surely, Edward, you don’t approve of it?”

  Captain Jopley shook his head.

  “No, of course not. I believe the Prince’s first responsibility is to his family and his country. And I’m sure he thinks so too.”

  “If you could reassure us of that beyond all doubt, then we could forget the whole business,” invited the Preceptor.

  Jopley had looked uncomfortable.

  “There, you see. No, from what you’ve told us, Edward, it’s quite clear he has not forgotten her. We know they haven’t met for some time. We also know that this Canadian visit provides an ideal opportunity for an encounter, and all we want from you is clear warning if any such encounter seems to have been arranged. In which case it will be prevented.

  “Without any risk to His Highness, of course,” the Preceptor added in response to Jopley’s frown.

  “But I still don’t quite see…” began Jopley.

  “You know what these Connollys are,” interrupted the Preceptor sternly. “You surely can see what a triumph for the IRA such a marriage would be?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry,” said Jopley.

  “So, you know how to get in touch. Goodnight then, Edward.”

  Jopley accepted his dismissal like a good soldier and left.

  “That man bothers me a bit,”’ said Grossmith. “I like the people working for me to be motivated by fear and by greed.”

  “To each according to his need,” said the Preceptor. “And I think after seeing you operate on his old school chum, Morrison, he certainly knows all about fear. The old Protestant loyalty should be quite enough if we simply decide to get rid of the girl.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” said Grossmith.

  “The Americans think so. I’ll decide when I get there. But of course Edward might need some closer attention if there was any threat to the Prince himself.”

  “You’d do that?” said Grossmith, showing a rare surprise.

  “There’s been a great deal of time, money and effort put into the Connolly project,” said the Preceptor sternly. “It cost a small fortune to arrange for that brother of his to be blown up for a start, but it was necessary to clear the way for Conal. Besides, it got him a lot of sympathy support. And it’s never easy or cheap to protect and promote a man at the same time as you’re corrupting and compromising him. If Conal gets disinherited, all this could come to nothing. So of course I’d write young Arthur off if it came down to it. But there’s no reason why it should. Everything’s under control at both ends.”

  “Don’t tempt fate, Preceptor,” grunted Grossmith.

  But fate had already been tempted.

  The Preceptor heard of Partington’s acquittal on the lunchtime news and smiled. It was always nice to have certainties confirmed.

  But early in the afternoon the smiling stopped.

  The Tyler rang. The Preceptor listened in growing disbelief.

  “Partington was screwing his secretary in the Lodge?”

  “In the upstairs room,” corrected the Tyler. “The safe house.”

  “It’s the same thing. That man can be quite a menace.”

  “He’s widely regarded as your possible successor, Preceptor,” said the Tyler mildly.

  “I am not anticipating a need for a successor,” said the Preceptor. “In any case our American friends might have something to say. Partington had better take a holiday over there. I’ll talk to him in Boston, safer than here. Meanwhile there’s an even bigger menace. McHarg. ’Impotent’ I think you called him?”

  “I underestimated him. But not again,” said the Tyler. “It’s my guess he’ll make round to the Woodstock woman’s flat.”

  “Another underestimation, her. But you said she wasn’t there?”

  “No. But he can get in. I managed easy enough and anything I can open, Doug McHarg can walk through. I’m going round myself.”

  “Be careful,” urged the Preceptor.

  The Tyler had laughed.

  “He’s got older,” he said. “I’ve just got better. I’ll ring you by five at the latest.”

  But five had come and passed. Finally at six o’clock, the Preceptor rang Scotland Yard.

  “No, he’s not back,” said Chief Inspector Elkin. “Trouble?”

  “Go round to Betty Woodstock’s flat. See what’s happened.”

  Half an hour later the phone rang.

  “It looks like there may have been a fight,” said Elkin. “But there’s no one there. Not a trace. What shall I do?”

  “Do? Nothing. Nothing at all,” said the Preceptor and replaced the phone and sat deep in thought for a long, long time.

  PART THREE

  THE UPLIFTED HAND

  CHAPTER 1

  Prince Arthur had seen a lot of airports and knew how hard it was to make them look festive, but Dorval at Montreal was hitting a new low. A gusty east wind was hurling handfuls of sleet around like wet rice at a punk wedding, lines of bunting flapped soggily like signals of abject surrender and the guard of honor slouched like a chronic dole queue.

  “How long have they had those poor devils standing there?” the Prince murmured to Jopley as he peered through the window of his plane. “Let’s get to it, Edward,” he added, with a sigh.

  Moments later, looking merely braced and invigorated by the wind, which was the only thing showing any real animation at his arrival, he ran lightly down the steps and another official duty had begun.

  How many left? he asked himself mentally with mingled glee and trepidation.

  The official welcoming party were (not altogether altruistically) keen to get him under cover as quickly as possible, but Arthur had done his share of military parading and knew what it meant in terms of effort and preparation. Smiling, he ignored the channelling arms which were directing him towards the terminal and strode purposefully towards the double line of men.

  “My compliments,” he said in his loudest voice to the officer in charge. “A splendid turn-out. I would esteem it a favor if you and your men would have a large Scotch on me in the airport bar as soon as you can. Edward, will you see to that?”

  “Certainly, sir,” said Jopley, used by now to this kind of irregular commission. And he had learned the hard way that whatever the Prince commanded, he expected to be carried out to the letter.

  Back on the official conveyor-belt, Arthur went through all the inevitable rigmarole, bringing to it that charm and alert interest which removed much of the stiffness and gave meaning to many of the platitudes.

  The weather had reduced the public attendance to a relative handful and this made the security presence stand out even more than usual. The Prince counted up those he felt certain were
there to keep an eye on him and gave up at thirty.

  “They seem to have me well protected,” he murmured to Inspector Dewhurst, who was never far away. “Are the Mohawks restless, do you think?”

  Dewhurst smiled dutifully, but the Prince’s little jokes fell on stony ground, particularly when they concerned security. He liked and admired the young man, but sometimes felt that he might take his job (i.e., Dewhurst’s job) a little more seriously.

  In fact, the Prince was taking it all very seriously indeed.

  Several hours, introductions, exchanges of compliments and expressions of delight later, the Prince at last found himself alone. Stretching out on his bed, he closed his eyes, but a moment later opened them at a tap on his door.

  Jopley stood there.

  “Edward, please, I said no interruptions. Not for anything.”

  “Except for Mr Emerson, sir,” corrected Jopley.

  “Chris? Is he on the phone?” demanded Arthur, leaping up eagerly.

  “No. I’m through here wondering where you keep the bourbon.”

  Pushing past Jopley, the Prince went into the next room where a craggily handsome man of his own age looked up from the drinks cabinet with a smile on his face. He was dressed in a suede jacket over a tartan mohair shirt and faded denim jeans, held up by a broad leather belt with a huge solid-silver buckle.

  “Chris! How are you?”

  “Just fine, Art. Just fine. And you?”

  “Just fine!”

  The two men shook hands. They had first met several years earlier when the teenage prince had been sent to do a year’s schooling in Canada. They had rapidly become firm friends, a friendship which the Prince had been careful to maintain and nurture after his return to the UK. Long ago a senior member of his family had advised him vehemently, “When you find a friend, a real friend, grapple him to your bosom.” The language had seemed rather florid at the time, but in manhood he had soon come to understand the source of the vehemence. It was very easy for a prince to end up with favorites rather than friends.

  “My God, Chris, but you look the part!” said Arthur.

  Emerson had inherited his father’s huge lumber and mining concern while still in his early twenties and was surprising everybody with his success in running the business.

  Now he struck an exaggerated tough-guy pose, sticking his thumbs in his belt, drumming his fingers against the buckle, and drawling, “Shot the elk and mined the silver with my own hands, yes, sir!”

  They laughed together, more at the pleasure of reunion than at the joke.

  Arthur said: “Is there really no bourbon there?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Scotch is fine.”

  “No. They really shouldn’t cater only for my imagined tastes. Edward, see if you can drum up a bottle without hurting anyone’s feelings, there’s a good chap. Chris, come and sit down.”

  As Jopley left, the two men sank into the huge chintzy armchairs which fronted a large empty fireplace made superfluous by the over-efficient air-conditioning.

  “I had a hell of a job getting in here,” said Emerson. “I had a gang of goons, one at each corner, till they drummed up your groom, or ostler, and he okayed me.”

  “Equerry,” smiled Arthur. “As you well know. Yes, I seem to be very precious in the eyes of your government. Is it going to cause difficulties?”

  “Less of the English polite disinterest, you randy bastard!” grinned Emerson. “Admit it, you’re bursting at the seams.”

  For a minute Arthur looked offended, an expression which placed him very firmly in his family context. Then he smiled and relaxed again.

  “Of course I am,” he said. “But my intentions are honorable, Chris.”

  “I never doubted it. You’ve made your mind up then?”

  Prince Arthur nodded, slowly, hesitantly.

  “You don’t seem too sure. Have you told anyone?”

  “No! I haven’t really told myself yet. Not till now anyway.”

  It was the truth, more or less. The inward debate which had been raging for these last nine months had frequently seemed to have a quite inevitable conclusion—except that different conclusions seemed inevitable at different times. There were times when he saw quite clearly that he was the victim of a self-indulgent infatuation, others when he felt he was an actor in one of the great love tragedies whose climax must be his noble renunciation of personal happiness pro bono publico. Then he would swing to the other extreme and feel that in fact his current contribution to the public weal was so little that if you rolled up a whole lifetime of it into a single ball, it wouldn’t weigh much against the nine days’ pleasure the public would get out of reading about his romantic defection in the popular dailies.

  The truth was, he had been trained to be everything except selfish. Or rather, he had been brought up to think of himself so much in public terms that he was at an even greater loss than young men normally are when trying to worry out what really lies at their core. That was perhaps why friends were so important for him. Family were different—though even there he always had a slight sense of hierarchy. But to unbutton, to be at ease, to be unsuspicious, to be unoffendable—these were the delights he sought in the company of the very few like Chris Emerson. And among that very few there was only one woman. Others he had shared the delights of sex and merriment with, but Deirdre was the only one who relaxed his mind as well as his body.

  Perhaps he was being selfish. Or perhaps it was all a form of daydream and when he met her again, the image he had created in his mind would prove to be illusory.

  Some of this he tried to explain to Emerson who, when he had finished, or rather stuttered to a stop, said quietly, “And she may have decided against you too.”

  “What?” said Arthur in alarm. “Has she said anything?”

  “No!” laughed Emerson. “I’m just reminding you, it takes two to make a decision. Listen, I know a lot about Old Pat Connolly and I’ll tell you something, Art: I’d rather be in your shoes than hers.”

  “Oh God, you’re right,” cried the Prince. “I need people like you, Chris, otherwise it’s so easy to start thinking the sun really does shine out of my bum. And I need Deirdre, need her, love her and if she won’t have me, I may just kidnap her and imprison her till she changes her mind.”

  “You’ve got the family history for it,” murmured Emerson. “OK. Here’s the plan. Your schedule’s still the same, I take it.”

  “Yes. If I don’t make jokes about Rose Marie, get all my French subjunctives right, and refrain from scalping too many Indians, I get my usual two days’ remittance which I am spending with my old friend and thoroughly respectable capitalist, Chris Emerson, in his log-cabin in the Notre Dame mountains. I must say I like ’log-cabin,’ Chris.”

  “Yes,” Emerson laughed. “So do the newsmen. It really is made of logs. But we’ve got some pretty fancy kinds of moss tucked into the chinks.”

  “And is that where we’ll meet?” asked Arthur eagerly.

  “No way! Shake a pine there and if a mountie doesn’t drop out, a newsman will. Listen, here’s what happens. Wednesday morning we go out hunting. Only you don’t come back. No, it’s OK, I’ll have you covered. You’re heading south across the border…”

  “Across the border?” interrupted the Prince. “Isn’t that taking a bit of a chance?”

  “It’s not the Berlin Wall,” said Emerson. “Up there, there’s any number of tracks that four-wheel drive can just eat up. I had thought of a chopper, but that’s more conspicuous, and it’s been such a mild winter, the going should be easy enough even for a soft limey to manage. You’ll join the highway on the U.S. side and after that it’s only a short step to meeting your colleen in another remote primitive log-cabin with a deep-freeze and a charcoal grill!”

  “I still don’t like it,” said the Prince. “I would be illegally in America, would I not?”

  “Technically, but so what? Listen, Art,” said Emerson seriously. “You want this meeting to be private, y
ou want to have some time alone together, right? It’d be easy to invite her to my place and put you next door to each other. Only everyone in the Western world would know the next day. Even if the reporters missed it, our security men are there to protect your person, not your reputation. A story like this would be worth a generous pay-off from any paper. But they won’t be wandering around the US of A. One way or another, this is going to be a big moment in your life, Art. Believe me, this is the best arrangement we could make. Trust your Uncle Pander!”

  “All right, all right, I’m in your hands,” said Arthur. “This other log-cabin. Does that belong to you too?”

  Emerson began to laugh.

  “Oh no. That girl of yours isn’t stupid. Up till now you’ve always had the advantage, I reckon. She’s gone into your world to meet you. This time she’s on home ground!”

  There was a discreet tap on the door and Captain Jopley came in bearing a fifth of bourbon. The Prince ignored him.

  “I’m sorry, Chris,” he said. “Surely you don’t mean…”

  “That’s it, Art,” replied Emerson in a conspiratorial whisper. “It belongs to Old Pat Connolly. And to cap it all, it’ll be St Patrick’s Day!”

  CHAPTER 2

  Flora McHarg was in the kitchen of her apartment making coffee when the bell rang. She glanced at the wall clock and frowned. It was only 8 A.M.

  Drawing the short travelling robe which was her only garment tightly round her body she went to the door and opened it on the safety chain.

  “Yes?” she said to the man who stood outside.

  “Flora,” he said.

  “Yes?” she repeated; then, “Oh Christ,” she said.

  She closed the door, unhooked the chain, and opened it again.

  “You’d better come in,” she said.

  McHarg and his daughter regarded each other warily. She saw a grey-haired man with a rock-hard face scratched but not undermined by fatigue, who might have been ten years older than his true forty-five except that in movement or repose some positive quality in his bearing gave him the physical presence, and menace, of a much younger man.