‘Precisely!’ said Tom Garth. ‘That’s how George FitzClarence saw it.‘
‘But the whole thing, the whole elaborate fraud, depended on the life – or the death – of the Princess Victoria,’ I said, with a severity I sincerely felt.
‘What whole thing?’ he asked, with pretended innocence.
‘The supposed movement to get the FitzClarences legitimised. It would never happen while the Princess Victoria was alive.’
He shrugged.
‘Probably not. Frankly it was never going to happen if she did die, but we managed to convince George otherwise. Anyway, you should ask him about that. I only supplied him with documents.’
‘No, no, you can’t get away with that,’ said Lord Howe, standing over him sternly. ‘You knew where the documents might lead.’
He was still absurdly cocky.
‘Where the documents might lead was no responsibility of mine.’
‘It most certainly was. And I’m sure you are aware that it has already led to an attempt on the life of the Princess.’
His jaw dropped open.
‘Is that what you think?’
‘It is.’
‘Oh dear, I think you’ve really got hold of the wrong end of the stick there.’
I decided I had to step in.
‘A death took place at the castle on the Princess’s first day there,’ I said.
He shrugged.
‘Deaths do, don’t they? I got a whiff of something up from overhearing footmen talk, and I’ve been nosing around a bit here and in London. I don’t see there’s any evidence for an attempt on the life of the Princess.’
‘While the Duke of Cumberland was shooting in the air on the terraces poison was put in one of the glasses of the guests. Popper went round while everyone was crowded round the windows and drank down the unfinished glasses.’
Tom Garth thought for a moment, then leaned forward in his chair.
‘And was the Princess’s a wine glass?’
‘Yes. The King had just pressed a glass of claret on her.’
‘And was there the slightest possibility of her drinking the glass down?’
I was dumbfounded. The thought hadn’t occurred to me.
‘Well no, but … he couldn’t know that …’
‘Of course he could know that. What little girl of eleven downs a whole glass of claret? She sips it – if that – and puts it quickly aside.’
‘But—’
‘Another thing: on Friday, when the Princess came to the castle, George FitzClarence hadn’t even got his hands on the supposed marriage certificate. He wouldn’t have attempted the life of the Princess before he’d got that.’
‘Are you suggesting that someone else attempted to kill her?’ asked Lord Howe.
‘No, I’m not. I’m suggesting that no one did.’
‘And the man who died?’
There was a moment’s silence in the room.
‘Funny chap, George FitzClarence,’ said Tom Garth, meditatively, or with a show of it. ‘So fiery and precipitate in some ways, but with an odd vein of caution that makes him hold back.’
‘He talked to me about not taking any steps that hadn’t been thought out beforehand,’ I admitted.
‘He talked to me about making no moves with regard to the Princess before the ground had been well and truly prepared,’ said Tom Garth, with a casualness that chilled the blood. ‘He also talked about people who could be dispensed with, people no one would miss, no one would bother with.’ He shot a sharply satirical eye in my direction. ‘I think he was thinking of old people, people of no constitutional importance – theatrical people, for example, Mr Mozart. I’d say you had a lucky escape!’
I could hardly take it in.
‘You mean Popper was the intended victim the whole time? That the poison was put in his glass?’ I remembered something else that FitzClarence had said. ‘That this was a sort of rehearsal for the real attempt?’
‘That’s what I’d guess. I put it down to his mother – that’s where he got the instinct from: to try things out in advance. He wanted to prepare the ground, make sure he could get away with sending someone to a better world without too many questions being asked. You all obliged by hushing up the matter entirely. At the theatre they don’t seem to know where he died, let alone how. Of course the same would probably not have happened when he came to “take steps” about the Princess Victoria. But he was preparing the ground for an attempt on her that would leave him entirely in the clear.’
‘Monstrous!’ said Lord Howe. ‘I can hardly believe it, even of him.’
I suspect he was thinking of the projected attempt on the Princess’s life, rather than the actual murder of a theatre manager. Poor Mr Popper! To be thought of as one so insignificant as to be totally expendable. But Tom Garth was quite right: the most appalling thought was that it could have been ME. Possibly I was only protected by the fact that the King was showing me conspicuous favour.
I pondered, trying to avoid Lord Howe’s eye, because I thought he was wanting to leave. But there were surely things, important things, to be sorted out first. The sense Tom Garth’s explanation made was mad sense, but it was sense of a kind: the sort that a madman’s brain might conceive. But George FitzClarence did not conceive this hideous plan in the madness of his jealous grievances. He was the tool, the man who did the things conceived in the brains of others. And this grubby scoundrel before us was only another tool. He could not have set these events in motion merely to gain a few pounds for forged documents. If George FitzClarence was the Othello, this man was the Rodrigo. Somewhere there was an lago. Thinking upon the sequence of events, the happenings on the fatal day, the person who stood to gain, I thought there could be only one answer as to who that Iago was. I looked at Tom Garth.
‘Up and down,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’ said Garth, frowning.
‘You said in the Fox and Newt you needed contacts up and down, and you said you would never be the initiator, never the one who sets things in motion.’ I stood up and looked down at him. ‘Who was your contact up? Who was the person who put you up to this, paid you to make contact with George FitzClarence, fed his obsession, drove him to murder?’
‘Now that,’ said Tom Garth, ‘is not in the contract.’
‘It most certainly is,’ said Lord Howe, now alert to what had to be done. ‘We have to know the whole truth, or the contract is void, and you will have talked for no reward.’
Garth’s eyes went here and there, but I sensed there was-an amused glint in them, as if he was playing with us.
‘He’s a dangerous cove. Not to be crossed,’ he said.
‘The danger will be … neutralised,’ Lord Howe promised. ‘There must be no danger to the Princess, and there will be none to you. You, in any case, will be far away.’
‘Not far enough,’ grumbled Tom Garth. But then I saw the glint again. ‘But I suppose for ten thousand I’ll have to tell you. In fact it really is the cream of the jest.’
‘The jest!’ exploded Lord Howe.
‘Yes – damned funny when you think about it.’
‘Funny!’
‘In the circumstances. Ironic I think they call it. In view of that letter we made up from the Duke of Wellington.’
Lord Howe still had not got it.
‘Come on, man! I am not a man to be played with. Who was the instigator of this treasonable plot?’
Tom Garth leaned back in his chair and laughed loud and long. Finally he recovered his breath and faced us both.
‘The instigator of this treason? Someone I should think you know very well, My Lord. It was the Duke of Cumberland. My father.’
18. Finale
I did not talk to the King again until some ten days later. He was occupied with politicians on the evening of our interview with Tom Garth, and thinking he was unlikely to be in a good mood afterwards I withdrew from the castle, back to London and the humble peace of my rooms in Henrietta Street where,
to tell you the truth, I felt much happier. It was a week later, when I was busy on a new commission, that I had a stiff little letter from Lord Howe telling me that the King would be at Buckingham Palace on the following Thursday and was anxious to talk to me.
I was not very anxious to talk to him. How was I to tell him part but not the whole truth about the affair which he had entrusted to me? For I was determined to shield his son, for his father’s sake – for the King’s, that is, and perhaps also a little for the man to whom he bore so close a resemblance, my dear old friend da Ponte, librettist extraordinary, philanderer supreme.
Was he in fact his son? Who can tell our paternities – life’s greatest mystery? I can only say that in the early months of his stay in England dear Lorenzo was obsessed with the beauty and charm of Mrs Jordan, and those were the months in which George FitzClarence must have been conceived. No, I was determined: George FitzClarence I would leave to Lord Howe, who could be relied upon to deliver a warning as stern and cold as warning could be, along with a catalogue of what we knew about his misdeeds. Royalty are different from us: they are not accountable for their misdeeds. George FitzClarence was royalty, at least for the moment, because he was beloved of the King (as I am beloved of God in my name, and in my genius!).
So I went to my interview with the King apprehensive because I did not know how far I would be able to skirt around the truth. As it turned out the King had other things on his mind. It was his first visit to what we must learn to call Buckingham Palace, and his dislike of the place when it was Buckingham House had intensified to loathing since his brother’s extravagant refurbishment of it to make the Sovereign’s London home.
‘What does it look like, eh?’ he demanded of me the moment I was shown into the Presence. ‘A high-class whore-house, that’s what it reminds me of.’
‘I defer to Your Majesty’s experience of such places,’ I said daringly. The King let out a little bark of laughter, his pineapple head bobbing. ‘It’s difficult for me to imagine a brothel with so much gilt and plush. It puts me in mind of a very grand hotel – too grand for anyone to feel comfortable staying in.’
‘That’s what I shall treat it as,’ said the King, looking around him with contempt. ‘Stay the night and then leave. Maybe I can turn it into a barracks for the Foot Guards – they need a new one urgently. Or give it to the government for a new Houses of Parliament. But what a place, eh? What a nasty place. People don’t want to live in all this sort of show-off finery, not these days. I tell you, I was happier at Bushey than I’ll ever be in any of my palaces …’ A faraway look came into his eye, then the suspicion of a tear. But after a moment he pulled himself together. ‘Ah well – what’s past is past. Best get down to business, eh, Mr Mozart? What have you got to report?’
He gestured to one of the gilded chairs that so disgusted him, and it received me in a fat embrace. I cleared my throat, collected my thoughts, and began very tentatively.
‘We have, I believe, got to the bottom of this business of Mr Popper’s death.’
‘Mr who?’
‘Mr Popper, the theatrical manager.’
The King scratched his pineapple head.
‘Oh yes, of course. I remember. I just think of it as the attempt on m’poor niece’s life.’
‘Naturally, Your Majesty. I’m afraid I have to tell you that the instigating force behind the whole scheme was your brother, the Duke of Cumberland.’
The veins in his forehead swelled alarmingly.
‘Ernest! M’brother Ernest! I believe you. I would believe anything of that man. He’s mad. What was it they said of that poet chappie? “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know”? That’s m’brother Ernest to a tee.’ He calmed down a little and sat there, thoughtful. At length he said, ‘What do we do, eh? Eh?’
‘There is no evidence against him that would stand up in a court of law.’
‘Pity. They’d have had to hang him with a silken rope. I’d’ve enjoyed that. Shouldn’t think it’d make it any nicer, would you?’ He was getting warm again and took out his handkerchief. ‘Still, frightful scandal, eh? Don’t know that we could have survived one as bad as that. But he’ll have to be kept away from little Victoria, eh?’
I nodded vigorously.
‘Certainly, sir. It seems to me that the best thing would be for you to order him abroad for the duration of your reign. He will in any event become the King of Hanover on your death, if he outlives you.’
‘Glad you added that. I’ll do my best to see he doesn’t. I can order him abroad, of course. But would he go? Never does anything anybody wants him to do.’ He was puzzled, and rambled off the point. ‘You know, they quite like him in Germany. Isn’t that extraordinary. They know the type. What a vicious clown he is. That performance on the terraces! … I suppose that was some kind of blind, a distraction?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. Of course there was no question of the Duke being directly implicated himself.’
‘Of course there wasn’t. Too damned cunning. Gets other people to do his dirty work for him.’
‘Lord Howe has ensured that one of his agents, the man Tom Garth—’
The King looked comically penitent. I think he was used to that.
‘Oh dear – Garth! Too kind there, was I? Misplaced charity?’
‘I’m afraid so, sir. Lord Howe has paid him money to leave the country. Otherwise he certainly would have implicated Your Majesty’s family.’
‘Damned scoundrel!’ said the King, missing the ambiguity in my words. I felt I should pass on some information I had received by post that morning.
‘Unfortunately Lord Howe in the written agreement specified that he should leave England.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘I heard this morning that he has in fact gone to Scotland. My correspondent – a fine musician in Edinburgh – tells me that he is in the city, is spending money lavishly and making great play with his … connection with the royal family. Some are shocked, but others are thrilled and receive him with open arms, even good families, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s the Scots,’ said the King. ‘Mad about royalty, even though they mistreated their own when they had them. The scoundrel! To talk about his mother … Ah well. That’s the world, the modern world … So that’s that then?’
I got up. No one was ever gladder at the end of an audience.
‘Yes, that’s that, sir.’ I paused. ‘About the Princess – I fear Your Majesties are not likely to see much of the little girl. I know how much you and the Queen would like to. But the Duchess is intensely jealous.’
‘Pity, pity.’
‘I wonder if you could put someone in the household, sir – someone young, who could both supply you with information, and perhaps be something of a playmate for the little girl. She very much needs one. There was a young footman at Windsor Castle who helped us greatly with Tom Garth. He would fit the bill excellently.’
‘Capital idea! I’ll put Lord Howe on to it. What about the mother and that scoundrel Conroy?’
‘A tendresse, I suspect—’
‘A what?’
‘A sentimental affection, Your Majesty, but I do not believe there is a criminal connection.’
‘Hmmm. Pity. Pity in a way. It would have made it easier to get rid of him.’ He rummaged in his pocket, my eyes on him (I fear) greedily, and he finally came up with a promising-looking bag that clinked. ‘Mr Mozart, I am grateful to you. Indebted too. The Queen and I will hope to see you again at Windsor. Hear you play some of your pieces.’ I took the bag, bowed, and began the process of bowing myself out. He stopped me with a roar as I was half-way out. ‘I say, Mr Mozart, when I’m gone, what a time the nation will have when she’s Queen! Reconciles one to popping off, eh? Walk out like a man, Mr Mozart – don’t bother with all that nonsense.’
So I turned and walked out. But at the door I paused and looked back. The King had resumed his disgusted tour of the Palace, but the expression on his face was a happy one too.
I wondered to what extent the interview had gone well because the King wanted to keep some things hidden – at some deep level of his mind he was hardly conscious of, where suspicions of his son probably lurked. I had a sudden vision of the years that remained for him: all the disappointments and disillusions that lay ahead, all the family crises and quarrels, all the unreasonable demands, all the political storms he would have to weather, all the personal quagmires he would have to skirt. I felt so sorry for the poor old booby, whom I’d really come to like, that I felt glad I had not given him, at the beginning of his reign, what would have been the greatest disillusion of all: the truth about his son.
As luck would have it that afternoon was to see my first lesson with the Princess since her visit to the castle. I dined at a chop-house in Kensington, and, thinking we would probably not be able to talk, scribbled one of those little notes for her that I knew she would enjoy receiving.
M.D.
The King was enchanted by the success of your visit to Windsor, which was a popular triumph. Do nothing about the matter we talked of. Knowledge unused is future power.
Your friend.
I thought she would like that last apophthegm – would ponder its wisdom before going to sleep at night. I finished my wine and walked to the palace. The scruffy footman, Ned Dorkle, actually seemed pleased to see me.
‘’Ear you’ve’ad exciting times up at the castle,’ he said, winking. ‘Maybe we should’ave a drink and you can tell me all about them.’
‘And have them passed on to the illustrated magazines of Paris?’ I said, with mock horror. ‘A confidential royal servant has to be able to keep secrets better than that.’
He smirked. It was interesting, I thought, that there was a servant network that apparently kept royal secrets perpetually in circulation.
The Princess, who was brought into the music room by Lehzen, was much too circumspect to bubble on about her Windsor visit, or give any indication that she was intoxicated by the splendour of the social set she had mingled with there. She gave me her little hand as usual, and then sat down demurely, saying, ‘Now I am really going to have to play better if people are to be forced to listen to me play in public.’ Before she launched into her first piece of Clementi fiddle-faddle I was able to slip her my note, which she tucked into her dress. She played moderately well, confirming my view that there was real musicality there. However, at the end of the piece Lehzen got up.
Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart Page 19