The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!
‘Ouch!’ Lily muttered as she leafed through the details. ‘Bet there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.’
They were dealing with a national hero but also a victim who had enemies running into the hundreds if not thousands. Enemies with powerful, armed and ruthless forces behind them to do their bidding. ‘A crazed and driven foe’ might have been Kipling’s verdict.
It had been Dedham’s first day back in London when he’d been ambushed. A crucial moment of imbalance, well judged by the assassins, Lily thought. And yet something had gone disastrously wrong for them. The gunmen, both Irish by birth, it was surmised, had been caught almost immediately after the killing. They’d been arrested and interrogated initially in the Gerard Street police station only two streets away from the admiral’s doorstep.
Rustling her way through the sheets Lily began to pull together a story of remarkable courage. The cabby whose taxi the killers had commandeered had driven off in the direction of Paddington station but had almost immediately taken a turn off the main road into Gerard Street. There he’d swerved at the last minute and driven his vehicle at speed in through the gates of the police station, hooting his horn. The duty sergeant at the gates had instantly slammed them shut, trapping the taxi and its occupants in the courtyard. A squad of coppers just coming off duty in the West End had surged out and arrested everyone.
Their bag consisted of four persons: two gunmen, both injured. At the moment of arrest, one had a slash across the left cheek and a.22 bullet embedded in the muscle of his back, the other had a broken wrist.