by SJ Bennett
From the moment the first note had arrived, she had tried to suppress her feelings. Then the death of Cynthia Harris a few days later had given her other things to think about. But it wasn’t that easy. The shock was still raw.
Soon she would go downstairs and deal with this. Her regimental specialism had been ‘find, strike, destroy, suppress’. She wasn’t going to let herself get derailed by some words and doodles on a scrap of paper. First, she needed to sit on the edge of the bed for a moment. Breathe, and count to twenty. Count to twenty again, get up and move on.
*
The Queen emerged from under the hairdryer hood and sat quietly as Ellie, her hairdresser, removed the rollers at her dressing table. She noticed Ellie squinting at the results and looked more closely herself.
‘Oh dear. What did we do?’
Their eyes met in the glass.
‘I don’t know, ma’am. I could swear I put them in exactly the same as always.’
Ellie looked mortified. But the Queen could have sworn to it too. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary as each roller was systematically applied – and yet here were two curls, far too tight and entirely out of place, making her look like an elderly Shirley Temple (Wallis Simpson used to call one Shirley, not out of any kindness), and resisting all Ellie’s attempt to tame them.
‘More lacquer?’ the Queen suggested.
‘I’ll do what I can, ma’am. Do you have a quiet day?’
Her voice was hopeful, but the answer was sadly no, unless you counted the Patriarch of Moscow and various other religious potentates in the morning, and the combined medallists of the British Olympic and Paralympic teams in the evening as ‘quiet’. Half the family would be there to attend the reception. She needed to look, if not her very best, then at least presentable.
‘Let’s try again after lunch,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Very good, ma’am. I’ll have everything ready.’
*
Half an hour later, when Rozie entered her study, she could have sworn the girl did a double take. The Queen would have liked to say something about the wayward curls and laugh it off, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to this morning. Hair was too important. It shouldn’t be, but it was, and that was that.
‘Did you have a successful time in the Cotswolds?’ she asked, hoping to be cheered up by news of Sholto Harvie’s famous hospitality.
‘Yes, Your Majesty. In a way. Very.’
The young woman’s bleak tone entirely belied the words she spoke. The poor thing sounded if anything more edgy than before. This was not about curls. The Queen peered at her from over her bifocals.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You’re not.’
‘No, ma’am. Not really.’
‘We can talk about the Cotswolds in a minute. What is it?’
Whatever her APS had been holding back – and the Queen now realised there had been something for a while – the time had come for her to share it. Rozie took out a folded piece of paper from the folder she was holding, opened it up and handed it over. The Queen read it.
‘Oh,’ she said, her voice crisp and icy. She turned it face down and placed it on the desk in front of her. ‘When did you get it?’
‘This morning. But I should have said something earlier. It’s the second one.’
‘The second?’
‘Yes. I got the first three days before you came back from Scotland.’
The Queen was silent. That explained it. She should have paid more attention. One should have known. Then she roused herself and said, with feeling, ‘I’m so sorry, Rozie. This is inexcusable. We must tell the chief inspector straight away.’
Rozie was nervous, but firm. ‘I know what you mean, ma’am. But I want him to keep it private. If he can.’
‘You mean, not tell the Master?’
‘Or anyone at the Palace.’
‘Why?’
‘Because . . .’ Rozie, so articulate in university debates and tutorials, in presentations at the bank or preparing speeches for national events, found it hard to vocalise what she was feeling. The notes were classic racist nonsense. They were designed to subdue and hurt – and Rozie didn’t ever want to be seen as a victim, or singled out for being anything other than brilliant at her job. That was how she’d always identified with herself. ‘I’d just rather . . . keep it to myself, if you don’t mind, ma’am.’
The Queen gave Rozie a long, unblinking look. She saw how much her APS was struggling, and although she didn’t fully understand why, she trusted the girl’s judgement. ‘All right. If you say so.’ Carefully, holding the grubby little piece of paper by one edge, she handed it back.
‘I’ll tell the chief inspector this morning,’ Rozie promised. ‘Meanwhile, would you like me to update you on what Mr Harvie told me? He was very forthcoming yesterday, though I don’t know how helpful we’ll find what he had to say.’
They moved on to a discussion of Rozie’s recent visit. The Queen thoroughly appreciated the girl’s professionalism and poise. It was just such a shame that a trip she had so obviously enjoyed – once she started talking about it – had been torpedoed by the despicable note awaiting her return. For both their sakes, she focused on the matter in hand. And it seemed Sholto had not let them down with his disclosure about the Breakages Business.
‘Do you think that could be how your painting disappeared?’ Rozie asked.
‘Yes. That’s exactly what must have happened. If it was left lying around while I was away . . . If someone saw it and thought it wouldn’t be missed . . . If they didn’t realise where it had come from . . .’
‘Would you like me to find out who was in the Works Department in the eighties, and if any of them are still here now?’
‘Yes please, if you can. And I think it might be useful if someone started a little rumour about the Breakages Business and Sir James were somehow alerted to it. It would fall within his purview.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.’
‘Naturally, you wouldn’t be the one starting the rumour, Rozie.’
‘Of course. I can mention to Sir Simon that I heard something in the canteen. He’s bound to tell Sir James. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t.’
‘Absolutely. They’re thick as thieves, those two.’
Rozie went back to her office and the Queen was left deep in thought. The Breakages Business issue she would deal with later. For now, there was the more immediate problem of the poison pen letter-writer.
If Rozie, too, had been targeted by vicious notes, were there still others they didn’t know about? This had worried her from the start. Meanwhile, the drawing of the knife was a huge concern: if this was the same person who had stalked Mary, then did that mean Rozie was in real danger?
The Queen tried to concentrate on the day’s agenda and the religious leaders who would soon be lining up to meet her. But her mind kept wandering.
Was he a racist, or a woman-hater, or both? Was it even a man? Or, rather, men. Ah, yes! That was one of the things that had bothered her about Rozie’s account. ‘Three days before you came back from Scotland.’ Until now, the Queen had assumed that one person was behind it all. Someone who had gone from London to Scotland with the second wave of staff who had arrived early in September and targeted Mrs Harris there. All the attacks were consistent with such an idea – except that whoever cut up all of Cynthia Harris’s beautiful, treasured clothes in Balmoral (who would do such a thing?) could not, the same day, have been targeting Rozie with a racist note at Buckingham Palace.
She distinctly remembered the chief inspector telling her about that last attack on the housekeeper’s possessions, and she remembered specifically because it coincided with the horrible afternoon they had buried Holly. If Rozie’s note had also been delivered three days before the family left Balmoral, then the note and the attack must have happened only a few hours apart, and though she herself could have managed such a task
if so inclined, not everyone had ready access to a helicopter.
The Queen had watched a lot of detective programmes with her mother in her later years and knew all about copycat crime. Was that what this was? Had someone learned from what was happening to Mrs Harris, Mrs Baxter and Mary van Thingy, and adapted it for Rozie? Or had more than one person been targeting Cynthia Harris? The housekeeper was really very unpopular. The Household had been more intrigued than devastated by her death. The Queen, as a woman not in the first flush of youth herself, found the general lack of interest somewhat alarming.
At least Mary van Blank – she really must learn the girl’s name – was out of harm’s way in Shropshire now. Or one hoped she was. She wouldn’t be fully safe until this was all resolved. There was a pattern to all of the attacks, the Queen felt certain, though it eluded her every time she tried to fix on it. A hatred of women, certainly – but something more.
A memory jolted into place. Hiding in the cedar-lined wardrobe and that male/female voice saying ‘Do you think I give a rat’s arse about her feelings?’ And he, or she, was giving something that was to be distributed later. Was it notes?
If so, they were given to Spike Milligan, who was to pass them on. Spike Milligan, who had come up to Balmoral with the second wave of servants. He couldn’t have given Rozie her note – but he might know who did.
She made a mental note to let the chief inspector know – as soon as she thought of a way of doing it without explaining where she had been when she found out.
Chapter 16
T
he army had taught Rozie how to strip and reassemble an assault rifle in under sixty seconds without looking; how to avoid blisters while running twenty miles in boots; how to survive in the Arctic wilderness and the Brecon Beacons – and how to deal with regular, low-level racism and misogyny and come up smiling. You don’t get through years in the armed forces as a black woman without developing a few coping strategies. So she refused to let a couple of doodled notes get to her, even if one of them featured a fixed-blade fighting knife.
But her brain wouldn’t always obey her. It kept throwing up memories of odd glances she’d received from Palace servants: Mrs Harris’s clumsy failure to shake her hand, the woman who took one look at her in the canteen and said, ‘Of course, I have several friends in Africa. They’re all so intelligent.’ The time she’d encountered Neil Hudson, the Queen’s Surveyor, coming out of the pool this summer, and he’d said, ‘My God, you look magnificent. Like some sort of Nubian queen.’
Did he have any idea how racist that was? How it sounded? She had tried to shrug it off at the time. Could Neil Hudson – he of the yellow waistcoat and the quill pen mentality – be the sort of person who would draw a fighting knife? Wouldn’t he have chosen a cutlass, or a sabre?
Would he even have written that note at all, Rozie?
She was in danger of going crazy if she didn’t just bury the whole thing again and carry on. She couldn’t even bear to tell her sister about it: her sister who was a trained counsellor. If she told Fliss, it would make it more real – and that was the last thing Rozie needed right now.
*
A week passed. After a moderately busy day, the Queen was relaxing in her private sitting room, watching the late-evening news with her lady-in-waiting and the usual gin and Dubonnet. The news itself was far from cheerful. Theresa May had not exactly been feted in Brussels, despite assurances afterwards that it had gone very well. In newsreels of the visit, she reminded the Queen rather of the girl at a party that none of the others wants to play with, left by herself in a corner and pretending she likes it. In America, Donald Trump had called Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ in a debate. Was this really what statesmanship had come to? Where was the oratory of Kennedy, or Lyndon B. Johnson? Mrs Clinton seemed to be doing well, but the Queen didn’t envy her the exhausting rounds of constant scrutiny. The whole tone of the election descended almost daily, in the Queen’s opinion.
But one’s opinion was not called for in these circumstances. One could only watch and wait.
Her attention briefly strayed to the lamp behind the television set. It was an old silk shade on a utilitarian wooden stand from the war and was flickering slightly, which was always a little unnerving. One never knew quite what the electrics were going to do in this place. In ten years, it would all be fixed. She would have to move out of these rooms briefly – to Windsor or the East Wing. And the workmen would move in. She was still waiting to hear back from Sir James about the Breakages Business. Would everything be returned, or would little objects be ‘damaged’ and ‘lost’ – and if they were, could she completely trust the person who came with the bad news? Up to now, she would have done so implicitly, but Rozie’s chat with Sholto Harvie had cast a different light on things.
Mind you, by then she would be a hundred. Perhaps she would be past caring.
She sensed not. One had always cared. And at a hundred Mummy was still going strong. She’d have been furious if something of sentimental value was gone.
‘Want another?’
The Queen came back to the present. Sitting in a nearby armchair, Lady Caroline Cadwallader was waving her empty glass of gin and tonic. The Queen looked at her own glass, which was still half-full.
‘Not yet. I was distracted.’
‘Yes, I can see that. Are you worried about the body? Or the notes?’
She hadn’t been thinking precisely about either, but the Queen felt guilty to suggest it had been the electrics. She nodded vaguely. ‘Mmmm.’
‘Too dreadful. How is that nice policeman getting on?’ Lady Caroline asked. ‘Strong, isn’t it? I gather he’s quite popular with the staff. Polite and discreet.’
‘Oh, good. That’s what I asked,’ the Queen said, glad to be talking about something that approximated progress. ‘He’s very diligent. He has a lot to keep him busy.’
‘How encouraging!’
Reluctantly, the Queen said, ‘Not quite. His latest line of enquiry came to nothing.’ She wasn’t going to explain that she herself had suggested it. She had had high hopes for the questioning of Spike Milligan, but apparently the footman had furiously denied everything.
‘Oh dear.’ Lady Caroline stared glumly into her empty glass. The Queen rang for her page and got it refilled. Lady Caroline remained thoughtful.
‘You know, this nastiness takes me right back to my schooldays.’
‘Does it?’ The Queen was surprised.
‘Oh yes. I’ve been thinking about it since you told me. We had the most awful scenes. They lasted about a year. I was at St Mary’s, and we were in the first form or second form – I can’t quite remember – but we were little squibs, eleven or twelve, and missing our ponies and our mummies and trying to be brave about it. And mostly, we were. I had quite a decent time, actually, but some girls were floored by it. And there was this one girl, Peggy Thornicroft, who just had the most dreadful, horrible time.’
‘Oh dear,’ the Queen said, hoping to bring this topic of conversation to a halt, because it was really quite depressing and there was already enough to test one’s good spirits at the moment, surely? But Lady Caroline was too involved in her story to notice the tone. The Queen sipped her gin and stuck it out.
‘It was too, too bad. We all suffered. Because of course, we all came under suspicion. And we felt so sorry for her.’
‘Why? What was going on?’ the Queen asked.
Lady Caroline thought back. ‘It started with an apple-pie bed, I seem to recall. Something very innocuous – you know, when you try and get in but the sheet’s folded back on itself and you can only get halfway down. Or perhaps she got in and the bed was wet and we helped her change it. But then her letters from home went missing. Peggy was quite distraught about it. Her mother was very good and wrote at least once a week, but the letters were stolen – the old and the new – and she was practically beside herself. We all had our lockers inspected, and I think eventually they were discovered stuffed down one of
the loos.’
‘The poor girl. What was she like, by the way?’
‘Peggy?’ Lady Caroline made a moue with her lips. ‘Well, you know, not the most likeable. I don’t remember her very clearly. She left after a couple of years. She wasn’t particularly clever, or stupid. She had a perfectly nice face and brown hair in plaits, but didn’t we all? She was an early developer, I do remember that. The poor thing got her monthlies early, she smelled of . . . you know . . . body odour. She got spots. Nothing too dreadful, but I think she found it hard. She was very good at drama, but nobody really cared about drama at St Mary’s, so it didn’t help.’
‘And what happened? Did they find the letter-stealer?’
‘Oh, it got much worse. That’s what reminded me about Cynthia Harris. Peggy got anonymous letters, hidden in her bed and her locker and even her blazer pocket. I never knew exactly what they said, but we were led to believe they were pretty frightful. The police were brought in at one stage and we had to give examples of our handwriting. They questioned us and the staff. It was very serious and frightening. And then her bunny, or teddy or whatever she had on her bed, went missing and it was found a few days later, cut up and partially burned on the gardeners’ bonfire.’
‘No!’
‘I know. Very personal. Just like Mrs Harris. One of the groundsmen came under a lot of suspicion after that. We all thought it must be someone in her dorm. And then, worst of all, there was the guinea pig.’
The Queen felt her heart drop. ‘What about it?’
‘We were allowed little pets from home, you know – things you could keep in cages. They were all in a converted stable behind the sixth-form block that we could visit before and after school. Peggy was very attached to her guinea pig, as you can imagine, with everything that was going on. I remember it was a sweet, fluffy little thing. Not so little, actually. And then one day it was found at the bottom of its cage with its neck snapped.’