by SJ Bennett
‘I mean, I’ve looked at the pathologist’s report. It does happen. Grisly way to die, but everything’s consistent with her having tripped and dropped the glass, then fallen onto it with the jagged edge piercing the artery as she landed. Really bad luck. You can bleed out in minutes if you’re not careful. Misadventure, he says. As far as he can tell.’
Rozie tried not to look as relieved as she felt. Of course it wasn’t murder.
‘But Her Majesty isn’t entirely happy with the internal investigation into the letters,’ Strong said. ‘Thank you.’ He smiled up at the assistant, who was back with his coffee.
Rozie tried not to criticise the Master in front of other staff, so she changed the subject. ‘I’m amazed that it’s you who came, though,’ she said. ‘Do you work at all the royal palaces?’
Strong laughed. ‘If only. No, the Queen asked for me specifically, apparently. You tell me why. First and last time we met was at Windsor, and I didn’t exactly come out of that one smelling of roses.’
‘You solved the case.’
‘I didn’t.’ He smiled wryly and took a sip of coffee. ‘Other people did it for me, and how they put all the pieces together I’ll never be quite sure. But apparently I didn’t blot my copybook too badly. I s’pose I know people here already, like you and Sir Simon. That helps. And I’ve got the support of my team in SCD11.’
‘Remind me . . .?’ Rozie asked. She knew that ‘SCD’ stood for Serious Crimes Directorate, but hadn’t mastered its administrative intricacies. Sir Simon would know, of course.
‘Mine’s a little unit for some of the more interesting stuff,’ Strong said. ‘We’re the SIS of the police, you might say. They like to call us the Shadowy Investigation Service. It’s “Specialist” really, but I prefer “shadowy”.’
He downed his coffee and Rozie offered to take him to the Master. A short corridor led to a set of double doors that brought them suddenly into the gilded splendour of the Marble Hall. Strong looked up and around at the moulded ceiling and neoclassical pillars, craning his neck as if he couldn’t quite believe he was really here. Rozie, who was used to it by now, carried on talking.
‘Are you bringing a lot of people with you?’ she asked, remembering Sir Simon’s tetchy comment about the Ballroom.
‘Nope,’ Strong said, dragging his eyes away from a priceless sculpture and striding out so as to keep up with her. ‘In fact, until I see the need to operate otherwise, it’s just me and my sergeant. We’ll just be asking a few judicious questions, you know. Nothing too scary. Make Sir Mike Green feel I’m not stepping on his toes too much.’
Rozie grinned at him. ‘Thank you for that.’
Strong gave her a sideways look. His sharp brown eyes belied those soft, rosy cheeks. ‘Might I suppose it was you, then, who spilled the beans to Her Majesty about the letters?’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Rozie said. ‘And it’s Mike Green, by the way, not Sir Mike.’
‘Ha! I bet he loves that.’
‘Knighthoods aren’t automatic and he’s fairly new. He’ll get one eventually.’
‘You’ll have to talk me through the ins and outs of it one day,’ Strong suggested.
‘Not my speciality. That’s for the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.’
‘And what d’you call him?’
‘Lord Peel.’
Strong giggled to himself, in a way that was not entirely respectful.
Rozie maintained her pace as she guided him along more red carpet, past gilded mahogany doors and life-size portraits of the Boss’s ancestors, until they reached the end of the corridor, where the gilding abruptly ended and the carpet switched from crimson to a more hard-wearing industrial brown.
She turned left, and he had to jog a little to stay alongside her.
‘I hate to ask, but are we nearly there yet?’
‘Almost. This is the South Wing.’
‘Do you do this every day?’
‘Several times, if I need to. But the Queen’s private rooms are above ours in the other wing, so that makes it easier.’
He looked at her heels. ‘I mean, how?’
She smiled. ‘You get used to it. Here we are. Let me introduce you to the Master. I hope he’s expecting us.’
The utterly sour expression on Mike Green’s face as he greeted them suggested he was.
Chapter 11
I
t had been a full day and the Queen was grateful for a quick gin and Dubonnet before supper. This evening she was accompanied by Lady Caroline Cadwallader, one of her ladies-in-waiting. They watched the news on television with the sound down and the Queen wondered how the Master would be coping with the chief inspector’s arrival.
Just as the thought was crossing her mind, the façade of Buckingham Palace appeared on the screen, alongside an aerial shot of the pavilion that contained the pool.
‘Oh goodness, look!’ said Lady Caroline. ‘That’s us! Isn’t it dreadful? Shall I turn the sound up? By the way, the gossip in the servants’ hall is that there’s a policeman at work here now. Is it true?’
The Queen merely nodded and glanced at the unused remote control at her lady-in-waiting’s side.
‘He doesn’t think there was any skulduggery, does he?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past anyone, mind you,’ Lady Caroline observed chattily. ‘Mrs Harris was an absolute pill, apparently. There was such a to-do when she was brought in from retirement. Everyone was muttering about it.’
‘Not to me,’ the Queen said grimly.
‘Oh, ma’am, of course not! You have much more important things to think about. I’m sure the Master was sorting it out. He—’
She was interrupted by a knock on the door and the appearance of the Duke of Edinburgh, who strode into the room and said, ‘Are you watching this lunacy? Did you hear what they just said?’
‘No, actually,’ the Queen told him with a little sigh. ‘Caroline was talking to me about it.’
‘They’ve made up some story about Beatrice and Eugenie leaving champagne glasses in the pool. They’re speculating the woman fell on a broken bottle of Dom Perignon.’
‘What imaginations they have!’ Lady Caroline said. ‘You almost have to admire them.’
‘I bloody don’t.’
‘So is that what the policeman is investigating?’ she asked. ‘Broken glass?’
‘Health and safety gone bloody insane,’ the Duke grumbled.
‘No, actually,’ the Queen said in reply to her lady-in-waiting. She told them about the poison pen campaign and the Master’s failure, so far, to make any headway with it.
Philip made a ptcha! noise. ‘I’ve been wondering about Mike Green. Promoted to the level of his incompetence. Typical crab. Not the first balls-up on his watch.’
‘Is it really so bad?’ Lady Caroline asked. ‘This poison pen thing, I mean?’
The Queen ruminated on the aspects that particularly disturbed her.
‘One of the secretaries found a rather disgusting note on her bicycle seat. Some of Mrs Harris’s clothes were cut up.’
Philip made a face. ‘If it’s all frocks and bicycles I’ll leave you girls to it. And someone needs to tell the Tristrams at the BBC that we don’t all sit around by the damned pool all day drinking bloody Dom Perignon in our pyjamas.’
Once they were alone again, Lady Caroline asked about the note on the bicycle seat.
The Queen explained. ‘The poor young woman – Mary van Something – was distraught. I spoke to the Master about it, and he tried to reassure me that he’d discussed it with her and it was nothing more than a “date gone wrong” and some ruffled feathers. He didn’t see it as relevant.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Exactly. The poor thing was being stalked. The man stood outside her house. Those aren’t “ruffled feathers”.’
‘Indeed they aren’t. Have you discussed it with the Duchess of Cornwall?’
The Queen had not, but sh
e knew Camilla would be as alarmed as she was. Indeed, it was Camilla who worked with charities in the field and who had explained the extent and the dangers of domestic violence. She cared very deeply about this sort of thing. Did it count as domestic violence if the woman didn’t claim to know the man? The Queen wasn’t sure, and frankly didn’t care. Whatever it was, it was out of the Master’s purview, and he should have known it.
She sighed. The previous Master would have got it instantly. Blessed with tact and sensitivity to match his unquestioned authority, he’d been a real rock. It was why her family had always tended to go for senior officers for such positions. They generally combined an essential esprit de corps with the subtle but ruthless efficiency she required from her courtiers. Philip was right. As a man who considered the navy the Senior Service, he was never going to give an RAF officer his due, even an ex-fighter pilot like Mike Green, but in this case he had a point.
*
The following morning, at her desk, the Queen was reminded of the competence of senior officers who did, happily, live up to expectations. Along with the boxes was a letter from the Second Sea Lord in Portsmouth. She had written to him from Balmoral about the oil painting of Britannia, the ‘ghastly little painting’, as Philip always called it. The Duke had never quite understood why she was so attached to it.
As it happened, the Second Sea Lord, now an admiral, had been one of Philip’s equerries many years ago, and the Queen knew him well enough to dictate a note. Sometimes, it took the personal touch. She had explained politely but firmly that the painting was hers and had gone missing in the mid-eighties. She knew it was not the Second Sea Lord’s fault that it had ended up in his possession: he’d only been in the job since last summer, while the painting had been in his office for at least a decade. However, one would be grateful if he could facilitate its return.
His reply was apologetic. He explained that he had recently returned from holiday himself, hence the slight delay, but as soon as he had read her note he had put a very able young lieutenant on the case of establishing how on earth he could have inadvertently acquired the Queen’s private property. He had also examined the painting in person, realised it was filthy (more apologies) and arranged to have it cleaned at the Royal Navy’s expense.
The Queen sighed hard at this. No! Really? Was it too late to change his mind about that? She wondered what excuse she could make.
Anyway, unlike Rozie’s more laissez-faire contact in facilities at the MOD, the very able young lieutenant had rapidly discovered that the painting had been personally chosen by the Second Sea Lord of ten years ago and:
I contacted him myself, living in happy retirement in the New Forest, and fortunately for us both he’s not gaga yet. Daily crosswords, he tells me, and watching Pointless on the BBC. He remembered the painting well, and says he originally saw it in the MOD building in Whitehall back in the nineties, in the corner office of a procurement mandarin of some sort. Years later, when he got the 2SL posting, he asked if the painting happened to be available. He assumed it wouldn’t be, but it never hurts to ask. In this case they found it languishing in central storage. He had it installed at the office in 2004. It’s been on the wall opposite my desk ever since.
The MOD’s records had been better kept than her own, she mused. Although that was probably a little unfair. These days there were teams of archivists and conservators who could lay their hands on a hatpin at a moment’s notice, whereas early in her reign, you could lose a framed Caravaggio and be lucky to track it down in the bowels of one of the palaces. The eighties was the decade when all that had changed, in fact. It was around the time Sholto Harvie had arrived. She remembered the old Deputy Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures fondly. Such a forward-thinker and planner, after the disaster of Anthony Blunt, and such good company. He was an expert on Leonardo, and he’d taught her more about art in a week than his predecessors had in a lifetime. It was a shame he’d stayed for so short a tenure.
Anyway, the ‘ghastly little painting’ was on its way home at last – though she wondered what state it would be in when the navy finally let go of it. However, that still left the troubling question of how the picture had ended up in the office of a Whitehall civil servant in the first place, when it should have been rehung in its usual place in her bedroom suite in 1986, while she was on her way back from China. If six decades of reigning had taught the Queen anything, it was that it was often the small things one should worry about. Big problems were obvious, with ministers and courtiers falling over themselves to fix them. Small ones were often a sign that someone wasn’t paying attention. Had that happened in this case? If so, what else had they missed?
She was musing on this thought when Sir Simon came back to retrieve the boxes and discuss the royal diary for the day.
‘The President of Croatia will be accompanied by her husband.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘She’ll meet the Prime Minister in the afternoon, and no doubt Brexit will be on the agenda. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall met her seven months ago, and so I’m sure you’ll want to pass on their good wishes. I have a printed copy of the briefing notes for you here.’
He opened the slim leather folder he’d been carrying, looked horrified for an instant, recovered himself and said, ‘I’m so sorry, ma’am. I appear to have left them on my desk. I can just go and get them if you’d like me to—’
‘Are you all right, Simon?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Perfectly. Absolutely.’
‘You look distracted.’
‘Not at all, ma’am.’ He adjusted his tie, while she watched him silently. ‘If you mean the incident in the pool, I can assure you, ma’am, I’m perfectly recovered.’
He was ‘ma’aming’ her like mad. He often did that when something was bothering him. He had seemed to recover well after finding the body last week, as she would have expected from a former naval officer, but perhaps she was wrong. ‘Are you sure?’
The piercing blue gaze made him stiffen with alarm. Sir Simon was not, it was true, feeling at his best. Normally he would have brazened it out, but he was appalled at the idea that the Boss should think he couldn’t handle the sight of a dead woman in a congealed puddle of her own blood. He was terribly sorry about the whole thing, of course, but absolutely fine. The problem was Rozie, and though the Queen seemed to be developing quite a bond with her and this would not go down well, he might as well be honest.
‘Just a few little wrinkles with the APS. I’m sure she’ll learn, but she’s created some local difficulties recently. We’re sorting them out. It’s all—’
Under control, the Queen thought, a microsecond before he said it. Yes, it would be.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Nothing I can help with?’
‘Nothing at all, ma’am.’
It would be the chief inspector’s arrival, the Queen reflected. The Master was probably ranting in his office even as they spoke. Poor Rozie: she had merely done as requested, in explaining about the letters. Sir Simon had confused ideas about where the young woman’s loyalties lay.
‘I’m sure you’ll deal with it,’ she said with a practised smile, at which he visibly relaxed. ‘Now if you can just get me the briefing notes, that would be very kind.’
While he was away, she considered what to do. Her Private Secretary was clearly still discombobulated by his discovery of the body, and even a man of his immense capability was not above taking the stress out on a more junior staff member who didn’t deserve it. She felt slightly guilty for giving him such a ready target in her APS. It was she who had encouraged Rozie to spill the beans about Mrs Harris, and then undermined the Master by calling in the police.
Three women had been targeted by the poison pen campaign. The Keeper’s secretary had resigned, the woman in the catering office was on sick leave with stress, and the housekeeper was dead – in the most extraordinary manner. No one else seemed unduly concerned, but the Queen made no apology whatsoever for her response. She had asked the chief inspec
tor to be as diplomatic as possible, but no doubt it grated.
Meanwhile, Rozie was having to take the flak. It might be best if she wasn’t around for a few days. Sir Simon and the Master would have a chance to settle down and it would give the girl a little break from this atmosphere.
She looked through the printout of today’s engagements. After the visit from the President of Croatia, she had audiences lined up with three senior members of the Armed Forces. William was holding the day’s investiture in the Ballroom. Philip was hosting dairy farmers to a meeting in the Bow Room and heart and lung researchers to lunch afterwards in the 1844 Room. There were a couple of private audiences in the afternoon, and the evening called for silk and sparkles at a reception at the Royal Academy. However, one could squeeze in a few spare minutes between walking the dogs and getting changed, if one was careful. She made a note.
*
At the appropriate time, Rozie arrived at Her Majesty’s private sitting room for a chat. The room was cosy and comfortable, with plump cushions on upholstered chairs, family photographs on most surfaces and a series of lamps to cast a gentle glow. But the setting did nothing, it seemed, to put Rozie at her ease. The poor girl was trying to hide it, but the Queen had never seen her look so alarmed. She stood rigidly in the middle of the room, as if bracing herself for bad news. Whatever Sir Simon had been saying to her, it wasn’t reassuring.
‘I have a slightly unusual proposition for you, Rozie,’ the Queen said from the sofa.
‘Ma’am?’
‘I’d like you to pay a visit to someone who used to work for me.’
‘Yes?’ Rozie’s eyes widened. This was not what she’d been anticipating.
‘A man called Sholto Harvie. He’s an art historian. He used to work here in the nineteen eighties, and he might be able to shed some light on how my little painting ended up in the archives of the Ministry of Defence.’
‘I understood you were getting that back.’
‘I am,’ the Queen acknowledged, ‘but I still don’t understand why I should need to. There’s something not quite right.’