Death and the Jubilee Read Online Free Page A

up the stairs to
the first or the second or even the third floor?
    Lord Francis Powerscourt was one of the most successful detectives in England. He had learned his craft in Army Intelligence in India and transferred the skills learnt there to solving murders
and mysteries at home. He was in his forties now, the black curly hair still intact, the blue eyes continuing to inspect the world with the same detachment and irony as before.
    ‘Hold on tight, hold on very tight,’ said Powerscourt, as he began a slow ascent of the stairs. He could feel two small hands hanging on very tightly to his collar. Thomas
Powerscourt was four years old, born a year after his parents’ wedding in 1892. Wandering about upstairs was Thomas’s sister, Olivia, who could now tell the world that she was two.
    On the wide first-floor landing Powerscourt broke into a trot.
    ‘Faster, Papa, faster!’ cried the little boy, beating on his shoulder with a small determined fist. ‘Faster, horse, faster!’
    The horse was growing weary now and anxious for the human consolations of tea and biscuits downstairs. Coming down, Powerscourt remembered, was always a more dangerous manoeuvre than going up.
His passenger was in danger of falling down right over his head and tumbling head over heels to the marble floor below. After a slow, almost funereal trot down the stairs, Powerscourt speeded up
along the hall just as the doorbell rang. The maid opened the door before he could resume his human form. He found himself staring into a pair of very brightly polished black boots. Above the boots
were sharply pressed trousers. Above the trousers was a uniform jacket resplendent with shining buttons. Above the jacket were a pair of enormous moustaches and a helmet. A policeman’s
helmet.
    ‘Good morning, sir. Would you be Lord Francis Powerscourt?’ said the thin slit underneath the moustaches.
    ‘I would, Constable, I would.’ Powerscourt laughed happily. ‘Forgive me while I return to human form.’
    Thomas Powerscourt began to cry, quietly at first and then with huge quaking sobs that racked his little frame.
    ‘What’s the matter, Thomas?’ said his father, smiling an apologetic parental smile at the constable. ‘What’s the matter?’
    Thomas was not telling. His face was wet with tears and a small wet hand rubbed against his father’s trousers.
    ‘They can take on for no reason at all,’ began the constable, about to relate the story of the three children of his wife’s sister who bolted the minute he entered the
room.
    ‘He’s a p’liceman,’ said Thomas accurately, pointing a grubby finger at the representative of law and order.
    ‘That’s right, Thomas. The gentleman here is a policeman.’
    ‘P’licemen catch bad people and put them in prison,’ sobbed the boy.
    Suddenly Powerscourt could sense the anxiety, but before he could speak his son was holding desperately on to his trousers and shouting as loud as he could.
    ‘P’liceman won’t take my Papa away!’ He held on as if his life, or Powerscourt’s life, depended on it.
    Powerscourt bent down and picked him up. The constable coughed apologetically. ‘I have a message from the Commissioner,’ he began.
    The little boy clung ever tighter to his father’s neck, tears trickling down a collar that had been immaculate but a few minutes before. The Commissioner seemed to Thomas to be an even
bigger, even more hostile form of policeman trying to take his Papa away to the cells or to prison. He didn’t know what a Commissioner was, but it sounded pretty frightening to Thomas.
    The constable ploughed bravely on. ‘He would like to see you at once, sir,’ he said. ‘He would like to give you a cup of tea and then he will send you straight back again. I
think he wants to take your advice.’
    Powerscourt smiled. ‘Thank you, Constable. I have often met with the Commissioner, or rather with his predecessor. I should be delighted to come with you.’
    Lady Lucy appeared