by SJ Bennett
The latest addition to the Sunday table was a student called Yeshi Choen, a visitor from Bhutan studying for a masters in political history at the London School of Economics. The new guest barely glanced up from her food when Grace introduced ‘my daughter Rosemary’, which suited Rozie nicely. It meant she could catch up with her cousins as she loaded her plate with rice and beef stew, squeezing into a corner seat and patiently asserting her right to what little elbow room there was to be had.
‘So, are you still seeing Janette?’ she asked Mikey, to her right, secretly high-fiving herself for remembering the girlfriend’s name.
‘Uh-huh,’ he grunted, through a mouthful of stew. He swallowed. ‘And are you still tragically single?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Don’t tease the girl!’ Grace implored good-naturedly.
‘Don’t wha-at? You do know that is what she was put on this good Earth for? If we can’t have a go at her, what’s the point? Anyway, aren’t you always telling her you had two kids by now?’
‘I’m sure I’d never mention such a thing,’ Grace said primly, to general laughter round the table.
Rozie settled in as the mountains of beef and jollof rice, stewed beans and fried plantain disappeared into hungry mouths. Gradually, stomachs were filled, the frenetic pace of eating began to slow, and even Ralph, who was famous for how much rice he could put away, turned down a fourth helping and slumped back in his chair.
‘So, Rozie,’ he asked, ‘wassup at the Palace, girl? You got any news we oughta know?’
‘Not really,’ Rozie said lightly. ‘Same old, same old.’
‘You’re famous now, you know?’ Ralph said it like it was a challenge.
‘I am not,’ she assured him firmly.
‘You’re on Wikipedia. You’ve got your own goddam page. I looked you up.’
‘I—’
‘I beg your pardon, what is this? Where does Rosemary work? I do not understand.’ Yeshi had finished her stew and was looking at them with an expression of polite confusion.
‘She works for the Queen,’ Grace explained. ‘At Buckingham Palace. And Windsor Castle. And wherever else the Queen goes.’
‘I see. And what is the nature of the work she performs?’
Yeshi addressed her question to Grace, who explained as best she could. Rozie left her mother to it. She just wanted this topic of conversation to be over.
‘I see. She is a very senior person. I congratulate you, Miss Rosemary.’ Yeshi bowed gently in her direction. She leaned forward. Her gaze was very intense now. ‘And so, tell me please, what does your Queen think about the United Kingdom leaving the European Union in this Brexit situation?’
Rozie’s heart sank. She would be studying for a masters in political history, wouldn’t she? Not marine biology, or fine art.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Her Royal Majesty’s opinion is important, no?’
‘The Queen is neutral,’ Rozie explained. ‘She’s above that sort of politics. It’s important that she—’
‘I heard,’ Auntie Bea said, leaning into the table too, ‘that she was super-thrilled. Like, she’s a total Brexiter because of Commonwealth countries like Nigeria. I read it on Facebook.’
‘How would they know?’ Grace said hotly to her sister. ‘Did she make a speech about it?’
‘She didn’t have to. One of her friends said.’
‘What friend?’ Grace’s voice was raised. Her eyes blazed. She was a passionate Remainer and an equally passionate royalist – more than ever since Rozie started her new job – and in her mind, the two things went together.
‘I don’t know!’ Auntie Bea countered just as loudly. ‘They were anonymous!’
‘Ha! Tell her, Rozie!’ Grace turned to her daughter in smug expectation.
‘I can’t!’ Rozie said, uncomfortably. ‘The Queen will follow whatever people voted for in the Referendum.’
‘But it was rigged!’ Grace expostulated. ‘And anyway, I’m not asking you what she’ll do, I’m asking what she thinks.’
Rozie held her breath for a moment. She couldn’t bear to argue with her own mother about this, and she’d explained often enough that she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, answer for the Queen on anything. This was the first time her mum had challenged her.
‘Oh, Rosemary doesn’t know.’
Everyone turned to look at Joe, who had the air of a wise old owl at the other end of the table. He smiled knowingly at them all. Rozie mouthed ‘Thanks,’ at him, but he wasn’t being kind.
‘The Queen plays her cards close to her chest. She wouldn’t trust a girl like our Rosemary with her deepest thoughts. You just take in the boxes, don’t you?’
‘Well, I—’
‘She does not!’ Grace insisted, affronted. ‘She’s one of the inner circle now. Did you know . . .?’ She turned back to her sister. ‘Rozie went on holiday to St Barts with some aristos she made friends with at the Palace?’
‘Ha! You might have mentioned it,’ Auntie Bea said with a sarcastic grin. ‘About forty thousand times.’
‘I did not!’
‘You did. And you said she played catch with Prince George at Easter, and lent Kate her shoes when there was a crisis.’
‘Mu-ummy!’
But Grace ignored her daughter’s protest. ‘Well, you seemed interested enough at the time, my dear. You were all, “Oh, I remember that picture. I saw it on What Kate Wore”. You stalk that poor girl online.’
‘I do not!’
And so the conversation degenerated into speculation about the Duchess of Cambridge, whom Rozie now thought of as ‘Catherine’ – not that she said as much here – and how great she looked in Canada, when she would get pregnant again, and whether she was feuding with some of her inner circle, and why she never seemed to have any ‘best friends’. And Rozie, who knew the answers to some of these questions, and thought the others absurd, and all of them uncomfortable for the woman in question, was grateful to be left out of the chat. Instead, she silently helped Mikey and Ralph clear the table, carefully stacking the dishes on the minimal counter space in the kitchen, as she’d done since childhood.
Mikey turned to her as she finished balancing a pile of plates on the still-warm cooker. There was a look in his eye that made her wary.
‘You went to St Barts?’
She nodded.
‘You never said.’
‘No need.’
He grinned. ‘Yass, queen. Classy. I like your style.’
She smiled back, breathing a bit more deeply, enjoying the relative peace.
‘What’s it like, though? The island?’ Mikey asked.
‘Incredible. French. Laid-back. Good food. So expensive that it makes your eyes water. It’s how very, very rich people imagine what it’s like to relax.’
‘Did you relax?’
‘Actually, I did,’ she laughed. ‘They did this dish with fresh fish that was . . .’ She gave a chef’s kiss. ‘Yeah, I kinda liked it.’
He shook his head with mock seriousness. ‘We’re losing you, Captain Oshodi.’
She moved in for a cousin hug. Her voice was low and she was suddenly very serious. ‘You’ll never lose me, Mikey.’
He sensed something inside her and hugged her back. ‘It’s OK,’ he murmured. ‘I was joking. We got you.’
He didn’t understand why his cousin, officially the toughest woman he knew, was holding him tight. ‘Hey, let it out, girl,’ he said gently, patting the back of her head with gentle hands. Her shoulders heaved a couple of times. ‘It’s OK,’ he repeated. ‘I got you.’
She took a breath and stood back. He hadn’t seen streaks of tears on that beautiful face since she was about fourteen and Patrick Stryker, the Year 10 football captain, broke her heart in assembly.
Taking his hands in hers, she asked him, ‘What do you see, Mikey?’
He didn’t know what he was supposed to answer. He shook his head. But she was firm.
; ‘What do you see?’
In confusion, he said, ‘I see you, Zee. What else am I supposed to see?’
She squeezed him close again and murmured, ‘Nothing,’ just as Ralph came through the door, armed with a dangerously tall pile of serving bowls and said, ‘Hey? Wassup, guys? Spill the tea.’
Rozie needed a moment to herself, and Mikey steered his brother back out of the little kitchen and shut the door behind them. Staring out of the narrow window, at kids playing ball in the communal yard, Rozie thought of the notes and the drawing of the knife, and promised herself she would not let the bastard do this to her.
He was trying to take her apart. He had chosen the wrong target and he would live to regret it. Meanwhile, she wrapped the love of her family around her like a force field. Mum arguing with Auntie Bea, Dad not quite getting what she did, Ralph eternally teasing, Fliss listening from Frankfurt, all of it. She had better things to do than let him into her head. He wanted her out of the Palace? She would insert herself ever more closely into it. She would find him and get under his skin. Let’s see how he likes it.
Chapter 19
I
t was dark early. Tomorrow would be Hallowe’en. The bus back to the Palace passed little shops selling masks and tridents. Rozie noticed how many rubber masks were of politicians’ faces these days. If you wanted to scare your friends, you went as a prime minister, or a European bureaucrat, or a would-be president.
She showed her security pass to the guard at the forecourt and made her way straight to her office. One of her jobs was to keep the file of all Chief Inspector Strong’s reports to the Boss. This included copies of the notes that Cynthia Harris had been sent – or sent herself – and a biographical note that his sergeant, DS Highgate, had put together after talking to HR.
Rozie checked through the notes first. Two of them mentioned Mrs Harris’s early demotions. ‘YOU USED TO BE SO HIGH AND MIGHTY NOW YOU’RE JUST A DIRTY LITTLE SCRUBBER’; ‘THEY DIDN’T WANT YOU AT SJP AND THEY DON’T WANT YOU HERE YOU VICIOUS SHREW. NOBODY WANTS YOU. **** OFF AND KILL YOURSELF’
Following these up, DS Highgate had traced her career in a stark, printed note.
BIO
Cynthia Harris, née Butterfield
b.1953, Brighton, E. Sussex
MA Art Hist, Uni of Edinburgh
Joined 1982, age 29. Asst curator, R. Collection. SJP.
Promoted Asst to D Surveyor QP 1983
Moved Works Department 1986
Moved Housekeeping 1987. Housemaid?
Promoted senior hk 1992
Promoted Head of N Shift 1996
Windsor C 1998–2002
Senior hk BP 2002–2016
Rozie stared at the notes for some time, standing at her desk with her coat still on. Just as Lulu’s Uncle Max had said, Cynthia had joined the Household as an assistant curator of the Royal Collection. And she’d gone from that to a housemaid? Really? It was Cinderella in reverse. What DS Highgate didn’t seem to have learned, but Uncle Max had remembered, was that when she moved to the Works Department she got engaged to its head. That had obviously gone sour: if a ‘Mr Harris’ had been head of the department, somebody would have said. Then promotion, promotion . . . then moved away to Windsor Castle. Was she already making waves by then?
But all that was incidental. What mattered were the dates, and they were exactly what had caused the bugs under Rozie’s skin. Cynthia Harris had been working for the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures in the early to mid-eighties. She had been assistant to the Deputy Surveyor himself, for goodness’ sake. She must have moved from the Royal Collection to the Works Department around the time the Queen’s oil painting went missing. She was, it turned out, the person who could, quite possibly, have shed more light than anyone else on Rozie’s enquiries over the summer.
Except nobody Rozie spoke to had ever mentioned her.
Of course, even if she’d known, Rozie couldn’t have talked to the housekeeper directly in the summer months, because she’d been in London while Rozie was in Balmoral and vice versa. Rozie would have had to wait until Cynthia came back to work at the Palace in October, but by that time . . .
This is what the bugs were all about. She pictured Cynthia on her first night back, losing her balance and the crystal tumbler dropping, the glass smashing, the jagged edge fatally piercing the skin as she fell, then the artery. She im-agined her lying stretched out on the green tiles, as the reports had described her (Sir Simon would never discuss his discovery in detail), and the blood pouring from the wound.
Had Cynthia simply slipped in her bare feet on those tiles? Rozie had never truly been convinced, and the Queen obviously wasn’t either. She had called in a senior policeman within days of the housekeeper dying. She knew, intuitively or otherwise, that there was something more.
Rozie knew she was adding two and two and making about two hundred and fifty, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.
Why did nobody tell me?
In the morning, she would talk to Her Majesty.
Part 3
A Three Dog Problem
Chapter 20
I
t was to be a month of diplomacy and death.
Back from a refreshing weekend at Windsor, the Queen was on her way downstairs to have lunch with Philip, Charles and Anne, to talk over a few issues surrounding the wider family. It was agreed that when Charles took over, the Firm would be slimmed down, for public purposes at least. Fewer faces on the balcony overlooking the Birthday Cake, fewer close protection officers required; more work for those that remained visibly royal. But the senior royals – her own children and Charles’s boys – were ready for that. It was the lesser family members who would kick up a fuss. They liked being seen to be useful – and all the jollies that went with it. One had to let them down gently, and Charles still had a list of details to discuss.
Her equerry interrupted her at the foot of the stairs with the news that her APS would like a word, and it was rather urgent.
‘She said it’s to do with the enamel box, ma’am.’
The Queen sighed briefly.
‘Tell them to keep the soup hot. I’ll be as quick as I can. I’ll see her in the 1844 Room.’
She walked swiftly towards the nearest unoccupied room where they could shut the door with the certainty of not being overheard. Willow, Candy and Vulcan padded happily at her heels. As she strode past portraits of ancestors clad in velvet and ermine, she vividly remembered the day she had given Rozie the box the girl was referring to, at the end of the first mystery Rozie had helped with, as a token of her gratitude. If Rozie had mentioned the box, then it would be with good reason.
The Queen reached the 1844 Room, which sat among the semi-state apartments on the ground floor. This was where she held audiences with her most important visitors. Its peach-pink walls were calming to nervous guests, but there was a formal grandeur to its twenty golden marble pillars, its malachite candelabras and the blue and gold Regency furniture. Like many of the public rooms in the Palace, it was multi purpose. She thought of them as stage sets, ready to be transformed as the occasion required. Yesterday, Philip had used this one to host a lunch and today the furniture was arranged along one side as the porters readied it for a reception. Fortunately, it was empty for now.
‘Make sure we’re not disturbed, will you?’
The equerry took this as confirmation that his presence wasn’t required and remained in the corridor outside. Rozie arrived a couple of minutes later.
‘You’ll have to be quick. I only have a minute.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. It’s about Cynthia Harris.’
‘Oh?’
Rozie rapidly explained about her brief discussion yesterday with Uncle Max.
‘I looked up Mrs Harris’s employment record,’ she went on, ‘and it turns out she was almost certainly at the Works Department, as it was called then, in 1986 when the refurbishment was done. The current team in Operations pointed me towards a man called Joe Flow
ers who used to work there as a superintendent. But he’s struggling with Alzheimer’s. I went to talk to him at his care home when I got back from Balmoral, but I couldn’t get any sense out of him.’
‘They may well not have known about Mrs Harris.’
‘True,’ Rozie said, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice. ‘But before that, she was assistant to the Deputy Surveyor at the Royal Collection, ma’am, and at the time, that would have been Sholto Harvie.’
‘Sholto? Gracious!’
‘If a painting had gone missing, surely she would have known about it, and she’d remember? I know it seems minor, but you said you were surprised I couldn’t find the right link in the picture’s journey, and it seems to me that Mrs Harris could have been that link. If we now think there was a racket going on . . .’
‘The Breakages Business. I see.’
‘Perhaps Cynthia knew about that. Perhaps they suspected she did. I just find it . . .’ Rozie searched for a reasonable description of her state of mind. ‘Of concern,’ she said, though the feeling was stronger, ‘that there was somebody right here all along, who was on the spot at the time, and nobody mentioned her to me. We were in separate places over the summer because I was in Scotland when she wasn’t, and vice versa. When you came back from Balmoral, I would have had the opportunity to talk to her face to face at last – if I’d only known how useful she could be. But of course, that never happened.’
‘Yes, I see,’ the Queen said.
‘Your staff tend to stay a long time. Everyone tells stories. I can’t believe Uncle Max was the only person who knew about her previous jobs. And afterwards, Mr Harvie saying nothing about her death? It just doesn’t make sense. At the time I thought he was being reserved and diplomatic, but if she worked for him directly – well, it’s just weird. He was very conversational most of the time.’
The Queen pursed her lips. She looked very grim indeed. ‘You do know what you’re suggesting, don’t you?’
Rozie said quietly, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She swallowed.
There was the sound of snuffling and the pattering of doggy paws on the carpet as the two women stood quietly, considering the body lying in a pool of blood.