white and pink lay abandoned on the floor like confetti after a wedding. As she looked at the other couples, Lady Lucy thought that love was everywhere. It was all around her, in the smiles of the young women clinging tightly to their partner’s hand, in the arms of the young men pulling their girls ever closer, in the stolen embraces that took place from time to time at the edges of the ballroom. Lady Lucy looked across at the beautiful ladies from the Grosvenor past on the walls, who seemed to her to have left their places in their picture frames and joined the crowd on the dance floor, a countess painted underneath one of Gainsborough’s trees with the leaves shimmering in some invisible breeze, a duchess in pale green with feathers in her hat and long white gloves fastened at the wrist with glittering diamonds, the current Duchess painted by Whistler years before, a glittering pageant of blues and greens by the edge of a lake. Lady Lucy had risen above the ballroom glories of Grosvenor House and was floating over Mayfair, greeting three or four other Peter Pans as they drifted across the night skies of London. She never wanted to go home. She wanted this dance, this ‘Emperor’ waltz, to last for ever. Her very own one, Emperor Francis, bent down every now and to give her a gentle kiss on her neck. She wanted to stay in Francis’s arms until time itself ended, being whirled across the dance floor to the music of Johann Strauss.
The first hints of dawn were appearing across the gardens when the music finally stopped.
‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, coming back to earth with a smile and squeezing her husband’s hand, ‘that was a wonderful evening. Just wonderful. I think we’d better go home now.’
16
Powerscourt dropped his drawings in to the National Gallery at nine thirty on the Monday morning. The director’s office suggested he return at midday by which time, they told him, they would have had a preliminary search through whatever materials they thought relevant. On his return he was shown up to the director’s office where a very slim young man was sitting beside the director.
‘Good morning, Powerscourt,’ said Sir Charles Holroyd. ‘May I introduce one of my assistants, Orlando Thomas?’
As Powerscourt shook the young man’s hand, Sir Charles added, ‘Orlando is one of our foremost experts on paintings of battles, principally since eighteen hundred. You’d be surprised how many of those we have here. Military men often leave us their paintings in their wills. Young Orlando has been down in the basement where most of our holdings are stored.’
‘When I looked at those markings, Lord Powerscourt,’ Orlando Thomas began, ‘I wondered if they might have come from a weapon used in some forgotten war. I thought I’d seen something very like it before. I’ve brought you up a present.’
He rose from his chair and placed a small rectangular painting, about four feet by two, on an easel behind him. Powerscourt saw what looked like a mountain in the background, the upper sections rising up to a grey cliff on the right. All the action was taking place on the ground in front of it. British redcoats seemed to be conducting a desperate defence. On the attack were large numbers of black warriors who seemed to have the British surrounded. A number of redcoats were lying on the ground, the warriors stabbing them furiously. A lone British colour was still aloft inside a circle of defenders.
‘Do you know the painting, Lord Powerscourt? Do you know what’s going on?’
‘I don’t know the painting at all. I don’t think I’d like to have been there. It looks as if our men are going to be wiped out.’
‘I’m afraid they were,’ said Orlando Thomas. ‘It’s one of the worst defeats suffered by the British in the whole of the nineteenth century. Painting’s the work of a man called Fripp, C. E. Fripp. The battle and the picture took their name from the hill in the background, called Isandlwana, in Zululand in South Africa. The black warriors are Zulus who outnumbered our men by about ten to one.’
‘If you look closely, my friend,’ Sir Charles wasn’t going to let all the glory accrue to his colleague, ‘you will see that most of the Zulus have short stabbing spears called assegais. Their idea of battle was to close with their enemies and rip their guts out with these spears. But some of the others have a short stick with a kind of pimpled knot at the end. They are striking faster than their colleagues with the assegais because it is so much shorter. You can’t see any of the marks they leave in the painting but if you look at the end of the weapon through a glass you can see all the bits sticking out rather like a thistle.’
Powerscourt took the glass and peered at the weapon. Was this the answer to the riddle of the strange marks on the victims’ bodies? Did it end here? In this painting of a dreadful massacre?
‘It’s called a knobkerrie, Lord Powerscourt.’ Orlando Thomas seemed to have picked up a lot of military information on his travels round the gallery basement. ‘It was one of the Zulus’ favourite weapons.’
‘Why haven’t we heard more about this battle? How many men were killed, do we know?’
‘Over a thousand lost their lives.’ Orlando was now checking his facts in a little notebook. Very few got away.
‘There are a number of theories as to why we know so little about it, Lord Powerscourt,’ Orlando carried on. ‘The first is that it happened on the same day as Rorke’s Drift where a small band of British soldiers held off repeated attacks from an enormous band of Zulus many times their number. We must have ten or twelve large paintings of Rorke’s Drift compared with this one little chap of Isandlwana.’
‘Didn’t the general commanding the whole British force secure lots of Victoria Crosses for the Rorke’s Drift people? I seem to remember being told by some veteran that they were flying around like chocolate bars at a children’s party.’
‘If you were of a cynical disposition, Lord Powerscourt,’ Orlando Thomas was looking as innocent as the day is long at this point, ‘you could say that Lord Chelmsford, officer commanding, used the success at Rorke’s Drift to conceal the earlier catastrophe. And you’d have to admit that he has been more or less successful.’
‘How long have you had the painting, Sir Charles?’
The director of the National Gallery smiled. ‘That’s a curious tale, Lord Powerscourt. It used to belong to a man called Smith Dorrien, Horace Smith Dorrien. He was actually present at the battle of Isandlwana and one of the very few to get away. The painting used to hang on the wall of his drawing room. But he found people looked at him very strangely when they asked about the battle and were told he’d survived. They all thought he must have run away, which he didn’t do at all. He was only obeying orders when he left. The last straw, he told us, was when he was entertaining some French military man as part of the Entente Cordiale, and the Frenchman actually said to him, “Run away then, did you? Probably best thing you ever did. Means you’re still here. Discretion better part of valour, c’est vrai, n’est ce pas?” So he packed the thing up and sent it off to us. He said he hoped we’d look after it. Which we have.’
‘And where is this Smith Dorrien person to be found now?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘Very much so,’ said Sir Charles, ‘He’s still with the army but he’s now General Officer Commanding, Aldershot. I took the liberty of telephoning him before you came. He’ll be more than happy to see you this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Then he has to go to Sandhurst for a few days.’
‘Did you tell him about the marks?’ Powerscourt asked.
‘I just told the general there was something of a mystery involved and that he should be able to help.’
Powerscourt rose to take his leave. ‘Thank you very much indeed, Sir Charles. I cannot say how grateful I am for this news. I feel a whole new shaft of light is opening up in my investigation. Quite where it’s going to take me I have no idea, but without your help I couldn’t even start. Thank you again.’
‘I think you may have forgotten something, Powerscourt. Lunch at the Savoy when your investigations are complete? I think we should add young Orlando to our party as he’s done this excellent research, don’t you? They tell me the chef at the Savoy Grill has found a miraculous new source for oysters.’
Inspector Grime had brought the Lewis brothers to Inspector Devereux’s police station. When questioned again about their whereabouts on the day and night of the murder in Fakenham they had stuck to their story about the chess, even though their accounts of the result were incompatible. They had tried to laugh off their inconsistencies by saying it was easy to forget such a thing. Could Inspector Grime, Montague Lewis asked, remember what he had to drink the last time he was in a pub? Well, the results of chess matches were like that for him and his brother. Inspector Grime was not impressed. The two men were now locked up in the cell where a person next door could hear every word that was said.
