The Royal Secret

by Lucinda Riley

  Joanna shrugged and watched as Simon headed to the bar, then came back with another round. She sipped her gin and stared at him.

  “I know what it was all about, Simon.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Not that it matters anymore. The letter I discovered is presumably at the bottom of the sea with Ian. And if it isn’t, then it’s gone to a place where I’ll never be able to find it.”

  “I retrieved the letter, actually, for what use it was. A soggy, pulpy mess.”

  “Is this Simon, Jo’s oldest friend, speaking, or Simon, crack secret-service agent?” Joanna eyed him.

  “Both.” Simon fished in his pocket and drew out a plastic envelope. “I knew you’d ask, so I brought the remains for you to see.”

  Joanna took the envelope and glanced inside at the pieces of disintegrated, water-marked paper it contained.

  “Take a closer look,” Simon urged her. “It’s important you believe me.”

  “What’s the point? It would be easy to fake.” She waved the envelope at Simon. “So all the fuss, Marcus’s life . . . for this?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said quietly. “To be fair, it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had a crazed renegade agent on the rampage. At least it’s made those above me sit up and take notice. They forget the psychological toll a career like this can take. Agents can’t simply be spat out at the other end and told their services are no longer required. I know you won’t want to hear it, but when I joined the service, I looked up to Ian. He was a brilliant agent in his time—one of the best.”

  “I know that. Even in his crazed state, standing in a choppy sea, he managed to take perfect shots. And took Marcus’s life with it,” Joanna muttered. “So, will you end up like that?”

  “Christ, I hope not. This whole episode has made me think very hard about my future, I can tell you.”

  “Good. At least that’s one positive out of all of this.”

  “I’m just glad that you’re alive at least, and that it’s over. Now, let’s get you something to eat, you’re skin and bones.”

  He ordered them both a lamb hotpot. Simon devoured his while Joanna hardly touched hers.

  “Not hungry?”

  “No.” Joanna stood up, wincing at the still-nagging pain in her ribs. “Let’s get out of here. I want to know once and for all if I’ve got my facts right, and I’m so paranoid, I want to do it somewhere I’m positive no one is listening in. Then, maybe, I can start putting my life back on track.”

  They walked slowly up the hill, Joanna hanging on to Simon for support, past Haworth church and up onto the moors behind the village.

  “I have to sit down,” she panted, lowering herself gingerly onto the coarse grass. She lay back and tried to relax and still her breathing. “There’s a lot that doesn’t fit,” she said after some time, “but I reckon I’ve got most of the gist.” Joanna took a deep breath. “My little old lady with the tea chests was in the employ of the royal household. She was a lady-in-waiting called Rose Fitzgerald, who had met and fallen in love with an Irish actor called Michael O’Connell. Or as we know him now, Sir James Harrison. Their relationship was clandestine, because of her high birth. The letter she sent to me was from her to him, but if I’m right, that was the ‘red herring,’ because it certainly wasn’t the letter you lot were after, was it?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “What if Michael—when he visited his relatives in Ireland—heard that there was an English gentleman staying at the coastguard’s house nearby and having an affair with a local girl, and had recognized him?”

  “And who was the gentleman, Joanna?”

  “Ciara Deasy told me. She’d seen his photograph on the front of the Irish Times, the day of his coronation ten years later.” Joanna glanced into the distance. “It was the Duke of York. The man who would, when his brother abdicated, become the king of England.”

  “Yes.” He nodded slowly. “Well done.”

  “Michael then finds out the girl is pregnant. And that is really as far as I’ve managed to get. Could you . . . would you fill in the details? How you knew about the letter Niamh Deasy had written, which must have spilled the beans on the duke’s affair with her. And of course, her pregnancy. I can only presume Michael O’Connell knew of its existence and used it as blackmail to safeguard himself and his family until he died? It would have caused an unbelievable scandal if it had got out, especially after the duke became the king.”

  “Yes. The deal was, the letter was to be returned to us on Michael/James’s death. When that didn’t happen, mass panic broke out.”

  “So, why didn’t you lot look in the coastguard’s house where Niamh had died? Surely it was the most obvious place?”

  “Sometimes people don’t see the things that are right under their noses, Jo. Everyone assumed that Michael would have kept it close, in his immediate possession.” Simon regarded her with pride. “Well done! Do you want my job?”

  “Not in a million years.” Joanna gave Simon a weak smile. “Ciara told me the baby died. Can you imagine if it had lived? After all, it was the child of the future king of England. Half sibling to our queen!”

  “Yes.” Simon paused for a moment. “I can imagine.”

  “And poor Ciara Deasy was told she was mad. I must write to her, maybe go and see her to tell her the letter is gone, that it’s all finally over.”

  Simon covered Joanna’s hand with his own and squeezed it. “I’m afraid Ciara died that night, too, Jo. At Ian’s hands.”

  “Oh God, no!” Joanna shook her head, wondering if she could cope with more horror. “This is all so ghastly. Something that happened over seventy years ago destroying so many people.”

  “I know, and I agree. But as you just said, if it had leaked out, it would have caused an enormous scandal, even seventy years on.”

  “Still . . .” Joanna took a deep breath, feeling her lungs laboring from all the speaking. “There are things that still don’t seem right. For example, why on earth would the palace send the Duke of York over to Ireland just after Partition? I mean, the English were hated, and the son of the sovereign must have been a prime target for the IRA. Why not Switzerland? Or at least somewhere warm?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Possibly because it really was the last place anyone would think of looking for him. He was sick, and needed time to recover in complete peace. Whatever,” Simon sighed, “it’s time to close the book now.”

  “Something is still not right.” Joanna ground a tuft of grass with her boot. “However, you’ll be glad to know I’m officially giving up. I feel so . . . so bitter, and angry.”

  “You have a right to feel that. But it will pass—the grief, the anger . . . One day you’ll wake up and it won’t control you,” he reassured her. “And I do have one bit of good news for you.” Simon fished in his jacket pocket and handed her a letter. “Go on, open it.”

  She did so. The letter was from the editor of her newspaper offering her her job back on the news desk with Alec, as soon as she was fit enough to return. She looked at Simon, her mouth open in surprise. “How did you get hold of this?”

  “It was passed on to me to give to you. Obviously the situation was explained to those who needed to know and has been rectified. Personally, I’m only sorry you can’t go back in a blaze of glory with the scoop of the century. After all, it was you who beat us lot to the pot of gold. Right, let’s go. I don’t want you getting a chill.” He helped her gently to standing and gave her a careful hug. “I’ve missed you, you know. I hated it when we weren’t friends.”

  “So did I.”

  They walked back down the hill arm in arm.

  “Simon, there’s one last thing I wanted to ask you about that night.”

  “What?”

  “Well, this sounds very silly, and you know I’m not a believer in any of this kind of thing, but . . . did you hear a woman’s scream coming from the house?”

  “I did. I thought it was you, to be ho
nest. That’s what alerted me to where you were.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me, but I think Ian heard it too. He had my head underwater, then all of a sudden he let me go and put his hands over his ears, like he was hearing something unbearable. You . . . didn’t see a woman’s face at an upstairs window, did you?”

  “No, Jo, I didn’t.” Simon grinned at her. “I reckon you were hallucinating, sweetheart.”

  “Maybe,” Joanna acknowledged as she stepped into the car. She sighed as she saw the woman’s face as clear as day in her mind’s eye. “Maybe.”

  An hour later, Simon pulled his car away from the farmhouse, giving a last wave to Joanna and her parents. Before he headed back to his own parents’ house across the lane, he had to make a telephone call.

  “Sir? It’s Warburton.”

  “How did it go?”

  “She came close, but not close enough for any panic.”

  “Thank God. You’ve encouraged her to drop the whole thing, have you?”

  “I didn’t need to,” Simon reassured him. “She’s finished with it. Although she did tell me something that I think you should know. Something that William Fielding told Zoe Harrison before he died.”

  “What?”

  “The full name of our ‘lady’s’ emissary. I think we may have got our wires crossed there.”

  “Not over the phone, Warburton. Use the usual protocol and I’ll see you in the office at nine tomorrow.”

  “Right, sir. Goodbye.”

  35

  The day before Joanna was leaving to return to London to pick up the pieces of her life, she drove over to see Dora, her paternal grandmother, in nearby Keighley. In her mid-eighties, but with her wits as sharp as a knife, Dora lived in a comfortable apartment in a housing development for senior citizens.

  As she was hugged and welcomed inside to great delight and a plate of freshly made scones, Joanna immediately felt guilty that she did not visit more regularly. Dora had always been a constant in her life, having lived only four miles down the road from her son and his family up until five years ago. Joanna had treated her cozy cottage as a second home, her granny as a second mother.

  “So, young lady, tell me exactly how you landed yourself in hospital, will you?” Dora smiled as she poured tea into two fine bone-china teacups. “And I’m ever so sorry about your young man.” Her warm brown eyes were full of concern. “You know your grandpa died at thirty-two in the war. Broke my heart, it did.”

  Joanna provided the cursory explanation she’d been drilled by Simon to give everyone who asked.

  “That’s what your dad told me. That you almost drowned.” Dora’s intelligent eyes studied Joanna. “But you can’t fool me. I remember all them badges and shields you won at school for swimming, even if they don’t. Dora, I thought to myself when I heard, there’s more to this than meets the eye. So, love”—she took a sip of her tea and eyed her granddaughter—“who tried to drown you?”

  Joanna could not help but give a weak smile—her grandmother was such a wily old bird. “It’s a long, long story, Granny,” she murmured as she polished off her second scone.

  “I love a good story. And the longer the better,” she said encouragingly. “Sadly, time is something I have in spades these days.”

  Joanna weighed the situation up in her mind. Then, thinking that there was no one on earth whom she trusted more, and eager to put her still-confused thoughts into words, she began to talk. Dora was the perfect listener. She rarely interrupted, stopping Joanna only if there was something her failing left ear had missed.

  “So, that’s it, really,” Joanna concluded. “Mum and Dad know nothing, of course. I didn’t want to worry them.”

  Dora clasped Joanna’s hands in hers. “Oh, love . . .” She shook her head, a mixture of anger and sympathy in her eyes. “I’m proud of you for pulling through as well as you have. What a dreadful thing to happen. But, my, what a tale! The best I’ve heard for years. Takes me back to the war and Bletchley Park. I spent two years there on the Morse code machines during the war.”

  This was a story Joanna had heard many times before. If one was to believe Dora, her decoding skills were what had won the Second World War. “It must have been an amazing time.”

  “The things I could tell you that went on behind closed doors, love, but I signed the Official Secrets Act and they’ll stay with me until the grave. However, it made me believe that anything is possible, that Joe Public’ll never know the half of it. More tea?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “I’ll help.”

  The two of them wandered into the immaculate kitchen. Joanna put on the kettle as Dora rinsed the teapot under the tap.

  “So, what’ll you do?” Dora asked her.

  “About what?”

  “Your story. You haven’t signed any Secrets Act. You could go public and make a pretty penny.”

  “I don’t have enough proof, Granny. Besides, this is a secret that those in high places are prepared to kill people to protect, as I know to my cost. Too many people have died already.”

  “What do you have in the way of proof?”

  “Rose’s original letter to me, a photocopy of the love letter she wrote to Michael O’Connell, and a theater program from the Hackney Empire that seems to have little relevance to the story, apart from showing James Harrison using another name.”

  “You got them with you?”

  “Yes. They’re in my rucksack and they go under my pillow at night. I’m still looking behind me to see if someone’s lurking in the shadows. They’re no use to me anymore. Maybe you’d like them to put with the rest of your royal memorabilia?”

  Dora’s collection of old newspaper clippings and photos, betraying her status as an ardent monarchist, was a family joke.

  “Let’s have a look-see then.” Dora walked back into the sitting room with the teapot, poured them each a fresh cup, and settled herself in her favorite armchair.

  “I’m surprised you’d allow yourself to think that one of your precious kings might have had a fling outside the marital bed, especially one that was married to your favorite royal,” Joanna commented as she dug inside her rucksack for the brown envelope.

  “Men will be men,” countered Dora. “Besides, up until recently, it was the done thing for kings and queens to have mistresses and lovers. It’s a well-known fact there were a good few monarchs whose parentage was questionable. No birth control in those days, you know, love. I had a friend at Bletchley Park whose mother had been an undermaid at Windsor. The things she told me about that Edward VII. He had a string of mistresses, and according to her, he put at least two of them in the family way. Thanks, love.” Dora reached out for the envelope and removed its contents. “Now, what have we here?”

  Joanna watched as Dora studied the two letters, then opened the theater program.

  “I saw Sir James a good few times in the theater. Looks different here, though, doesn’t he? I thought he was a dark-haired fellow. He’s blond in this picture.”

  “He dyed it black and added a moustache when he became James Harrison and assumed his new identity.”

  “What’s this?” Dora was studying the photograph Joanna had found in the attic of Haycroft House.

  “That’s James Harrison, Noël Coward, and Gertrude Lawrence. Given their evening dress, at some kind of first-night party, I’d imagine.”

  Dora studied the photo intently, then glanced at the other photo of James Harrison in the theater program. “Good Lord!” She let out a sigh and shook her head in wonderment. “Oh no, it’s not!”

  “Not what?”

  “That man standing next to Noël Coward is definitely not James Harrison. You wait here a minute and I’ll prove it to you.”

  Dora rose and left the room. Joanna heard the sound of a drawer opening, then a scuffling, papery noise before Dora arrived back, her eyes glinting in triumph. She sat down, laid a heap of yellowing newspaper cuttings on the table, and beckoned Joanna to her. She pointed at one
faded, grainy photograph and then at the others. Then she put Joanna’s photograph next to them.

  “See? It’s one and the same person. No doubt about it at all. A case of mistaken identity there, love.”

  “But . . .” Joanna felt breathless and slightly sick as her brain tried to make sense of what she saw. She pointed to the face in the program, the face of the young Michael O’Connell. “Surely that can’t be him too?”

  Dora took her glasses off her nose and looked at Joanna intently. “I doubt that the then-second in line to the throne would be performing in a play at the Hackney Empire, don’t you?”

  “You’re saying the man standing next to Noël Coward is the Duke of York?”

  “Compare that photo of him with these: on his wedding day, in his navy officer’s uniform, on his coronation . . .” Dora stabbed her finger at the face. “I’m telling you, it’s him.”

  “But the photograph of Michael O’Connell in the theater program . . . I mean, they look like one and the same person.”

  “Seems like we’re seeing double, dear, doesn’t it? Oh, and I brought you something else to look at too.” Dora pulled out another cutting. “I thought it sounded odd when you mentioned the ‘visitor’ arriving in Ireland in early January 1926. See, this shows the duke and duchess on a visit to York Minster in January 1926. My parents went to wave in the crowd. So it’s very doubtful the duke could have been in southern Ireland around the same time, it was a long way to travel in those days. And besides, the duchess was six months along with her first pregnancy. Far as I know, the pair of them didn’t leave England’s shores until their tour of Australia the following year.”

  Joanna’s hands went to her head as her brain struggled to compute it all. “So, I . . . then it couldn’t have been the Duke of York in Ireland after all?”

  “You know,” Dora said slowly, “in those days, a lot of famous people used doubles. Monty was known for it, and Hitler, of course. That’s why they couldn’t get him. They’d never know whether they’d killed the right man.”