by SJ Bennett
As for means, the Queen had nothing but conjecture. Her knowledge of her staff did not extend to any unusual proclivities they might have for piercing arteries on demand – so this didn’t narrow the field in any useful way. And opportunity . . . If Cynthia Harris had been murdered, it must have been by someone who knew the Palace well, was staying there that night and could avoid the internal CCTV. At the moment, three-year-old Prince George could evade that if suitably determined. About fifty servants had been at the Palace that night. She had watched MI5 put all her staff under suspicion recently and had no intention of doing so again without due cause. No, she would have to unlock the motive first, before she could consider making any headway on how it was done, or by whom.
The rose garden in November was not at its best. She called out some encouragement to the dorgis and kept moving. Traffic bowled busily along Constitution Hill beyond the wall to her right. Ahead, the path under the trees took her past the old tennis court, where she had played some great games with Papa as a teenager, and a few with a young Philip Mountbatten, when he was courting her and keen to impress. Beyond that was the ‘worm pie corner’, where he and the gardeners experimented with the latest recycling and composting techniques. Philip was always keen to stay ahead with the help of the latest science. His diary, even now, was full of visits to medical research centres and universities. In fact, he was off in Hertfordshire today, opening a new science building. He was the Prince Albert of his day, she thought: progressive, eager, indefatigable. And somewhat foreign, when he arrived. Misunderstood by many and much loved by the people who knew him best.
She dragged her attention away from her husband and back to the matter in hand. Willow had to be persuaded away from a particularly smelly set of bins. By now she was at the far end of the garden, where the diesel chug of buses and taxis from Grosvenor Place created a steady bass note under nearby birdsong and the distant sound of a leaf blower on the lawn. The path turned once more to the left. In a couple of minutes, looking back, she’d be able to see the West Terrace again behind the lake.
Somehow, in the strange way that meditative walking sometimes did, this suggested a different way to attack the problem. Turn it around. If she couldn’t persuade herself that Mrs Harris was murdered, she should try and convince herself that she wasn’t.
Very well. The Queen strode with more purpose now, counting off the arguments for an accident. First of all, Cynthia herself. It seemed unlikely that the housekeeper would have gone to the pool at night merely on the off-chance of clearing something up – but if anyone was going to behave in an odd, excessively conscientious way, it would be Cynthia. Second, it was perfectly possible she had not been killed by a poison pen letter-writer, because Lady Caroline’s theory about her writing to herself was quite compelling. Especially if there was something in her past that had made her unhappy. That was in the hands of Chief Inspector Strong now. And the stalker? The Queen was sure that was a separate business regarding Mary van Renen, and possibly Rozie. It hadn’t led to violence – yet. Thank God.
What about the Operations Team, who never mentioned Cynthia to Rozie? That was odd. Was it possible that none of them knew the history of the housekeeper – unpopular as she was – who came from the Royal Collection and used to work there when it was the Works Department, years ago? Cynthia had even been engaged to the manager, apparently. But ‘apparently’ wasn’t good enough. Perhaps the engagement was idle speculation, or a false memory. In the Queen’s experience, the Household loved nothing more than passing down Palace lore from generation to generation, but it was also possible that some details would be changed or forgotten over time. Cynthia herself might have been glad of it. Yes, she could accept the idea of collective amnesia about the housekeeper’s history, if she had to. And anyway, even if the Breakages Business was still running, and Cynthia knew about it, and Rozie was onto it, she was back to her first question: who would commit murder for the sake of a few gifts and bits of furniture that nobody had missed?
Vulcan appeared from the bushes with a disgusting tennis ball that must have been last used on a dog walk in the summer. It was green with slime, and slobbery. She told him to get rid of it and glanced to her left, where the lake was now fully visible through the trees.
What about Sholto Harvie? If Strong’s research was correct – and Rozie could check it for her – Sholto and Cynthia must have worked together closely in the mid-nineteen eighties. Was he being polite when he didn’t discuss Cynthia’s death with Rozie, beyond acknowledging that he knew she was dead? The Queen strode on, trying to fit the psychology to an innocent explanation. She remembered vividly how much he’d loved his job as Deputy Surveyor. She didn’t remember Cynthia being his assistant, but it was quite possible she simply hadn’t known.
From what Rozie had said, Sholto still thought of those days with immense fondness. It was such a pity he had left so soon. He had the makings of an excellent curator and art historian, and he was popular with the other staff at the Royal Collection. She had half expected him to run the department one day. No, it was not obvious to her why a man like Sholto would have lost interest in someone he’d been close to in those days that were so special to him. He had only been there a few years, and Cynthia must have been his assistant for at least two of them. One couldn’t help wondering why on earth she had left. And for a job that was much more menial.
The Queen slowed down and looked back at the shadowy grey-brown outline of the Palace emerging through the trees. It was so richly full of history – even if bits of it were practically falling down. The first-floor rooms had played host to a major statesman last night. They were lined with historic art and treasures that might be worth killing for, perhaps, if you were that way inclined. Sholto, indeed, had been partly in charge of looking after those treasures. But that’s not what Rozie had been asking about when she went to stay. Anyway, Sholto had been helpful. Even if he didn’t know what had happened to the ‘ghastly little painting’, he had given them the Breakages Business. She was back where she started.
Except . . .
What if it wasn’t that at all? Sholto had brought the Breakages Business up, but she began to wonder if it had been a screen for something else. In that case, the question was – what? This was all about Cynthia Harris in the end. What else could Cynthia have known about?
Picking up the pace of her walk again, the Queen cast her mind back furiously over those happy years when she had consulted him about her art collection. Try as she might, she didn’t remember anything of major interest going missing. Nothing she hadn’t subsequently resolved, anyway. There were only the Thingummies, and they were the opposite, really: they were found.
Three Renaissance paintings – no, it was four – had turned up at Hampton Court Palace having been lost in storage for centuries, and one had been really quite excited for a while, but on closer inspection they’d turned out to be copies. Wasn’t it . . .? Yes, it was Sholto who was in charge of that whole episode. He’d had the paintings cleaned and checked by experts. It had all taken an age because . . . Hmm. Yes, why had it taken so long? She racked her brains again and shouted quite harshly at Candy, who was burying her nose in something repulsive further down the path. This had all happened when Diana was around. Life had been a series of little dramas. Ah! Now she had it, and it was very sad. The young curator who was supposed to be working on the paintings had suffered a terrible accident that had set everything back by weeks or months.
What was the artist called? It was a woman, and she was famous. Sholto had been terribly excited. She was a bit later than the Renaissance. Seventeenth century. Gentileschi – that was it. Her work was worth a lot of money, quite rightly so because she was brilliant. The Queen had loved the paintings and was so disappointed to find out they weren’t originals after all.
How much money? Was it thousands, or hundreds of thousands?
A man could kill for hundreds of thousands.
She began to see a patte
rn. It was dim, and it didn’t fully fit together, but two ‘terrible accidents’ was starting to feel less like bad luck and more like a dark and sinister pattern that started and ended with Sholto Harvie.
Overhead, the clouds mirrored her thoughts and shifted from polished steel to gunmetal grey. Rain wasn’t far away. Rounding the lake, she bowed her head, called the dogs to her side and took a rapid shortcut home across the lawn.
Chapter 24
B
illy MacLachlan was FaceTiming his granddaughter in the Isle of Wight from his flat in Richmond upon Thames when a call alert flashed up on his screen. It was seven-year-old Betsy’s bedtime and he was telling her a story. The screen was filled with her pink, chubby face contradicting him and instructing him to do it differently at every turn. It was exhausting, and the best bit of the day by miles. Almost nothing short of a national emergency would drag him away from Betsy at this hour . . . But the number on his screen was in the nature of a national emergency.
‘Sorry, love, got to go.’
‘Why, Grampa? You were just getting to the good bit with the can-tank-rious fairy.’
‘The Queen of England needs my help.’
‘But Grampa—?’
Already, he was gone. Betsy would tell her parents that Grampa Billy had said the Queen of England had called again, and they would laugh and explain that that was Grampa’s little joke, because he used to work for her a long time ago. They probably suspected that this was really his code for problems with his waterworks, or maybe a secret girlfriend – who, frankly, he would be perfectly entitled to since Grandma Deidre died twenty years ago. MacLachlan didn’t really care what they thought, as long as it was not the suspicion that he might be telling his granddaughter the truth. Anyway, it wasn’t the Queen of England exactly: it was ‘Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith’. He had used a kind of shorthand: synecdoche – the part for the whole.
‘Yes, Your Majesty?’
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you this evening?’
‘I was just talking to my second-favourite Elizabeth, ma’am.’ This wasn’t entirely true – Betsy was the light of his life – but Disraeli said that when talking to royalty, flattery should be laid on with a trowel. ‘What can I do for you?’
This time it was the Queen’s turn to tell him a story. It started with some forgotten paintings found in storage at another royal palace, and ended with the body in the Buckingham Palace pool last month, which he had always thought extremely fishy, despite what the media said.
It was only a few months ago that he and the Boss had discussed another murder. After working as her protection officer, he’d risen through the ranks to chief inspector, built up a tidy pension and retired to the genteel borough of Richmond, where he was bored witless and grateful for any opportunity to stretch his brain beyond the Times crossword and the Polygon. The Queen turned to him every now and again. It was always on the QT and he was glad when she did.
‘So if I’ve got this right, four paintings were discovered, but they weren’t by the artist everyone hoped they were.’
‘Exactly. It looked as though they must have been copied from the originals. It was quite a common practice in the seventeenth century, I was told. They were quite well done, but once they were cleaned up, they weren’t nearly as impressive as we all at first thought.’
‘And you say a curator was injured, ma’am. Is that where you’d like me to start?’
‘Yes, please. It was in the mid-nineteen eighties. I don’t remember the year precisely, but I’m sure the Royal Collection Trust will be able to tell you exactly when the paintings were discovered, and it was a few weeks after that.’
‘Can’t Rozie help?’ He wasn’t trying to be difficult, but he knew the Queen’s APS had done sterling work last time and was surprised she wasn’t better suited to this particular task, being on-site, so to speak.
‘I fear she might have disturbed a hornet’s nest already. As I say, she was talking to the Surveyor shortly before Mrs Harris died. If it was someone there that she alerted . . .’
‘I get it, ma’am. New face, different story.’
‘Yes. But I don’t know how you’ll do it.’
‘Nor do I, ma’am. That’s the fun of it. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve found anything. Actually, I’ve got a few mates from my old days working in your service. I can ask around. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.’
‘And there’s one other thing.’
She asked him to look into the recent whereabouts of an ex-staff member of hers. After he put the phone down, he went over to his drinks cabinet and poured himself two fingers of Johnnie Walker Red Label. Then he sat for an hour with his laptop and a notebook and pen, researching, writing, thinking. He hadn’t felt this energised for weeks.
Maybe she and Betsy were his joint-favourite Elizabeths. Was that really bad? One was named after the other, so perhaps that made it OK.
Chapter 25
R
ozie came out of the Queen’s study the next morning feeling relieved and anxious in equal measure. The Boss had made it clear that she’d been doing a lot of thinking. She’d found a potential motive for the killing of Mrs Harris, but it was still tenuous. She didn’t go into detail; they were so busy discussing next year’s schedule there was hardly time for murder.
Nevertheless, she could sense the Queen was making progress. It was unnerving to think that if she was right, she, Rozie, was the cause of Cynthia Harris’s demise. Meanwhile, as requested, she had made a handwritten list of all the people she had spoken to about the Britannia painting over the summer. She had written each name with thought and care, knowing it might lead to a killer. She was off to double-check Mrs Harris’s records with HR.
Reaching her office corridor, she encountered Sir James, who looked like thunder and didn’t say hello. She popped her head round Sir Simon’s door to see what the matter was.
‘Don’t worry,’ the Private Secretary said, waving a hand at her without looking up. ‘It’s under control.’
‘Are you sure?’ Rozie asked. Sir Simon’s eager-beagle face looked just as miserable as his friend’s.
‘It’s fine,’ he insisted. He was still cross with her about the unnecessary policemen. ‘It’s just the final Reservicing figures. They don’t quite add up and it’s got to go to print first thing tomorrow. Mary van Renen was working on it and the temp . . . Well, the less said about the temp the better.’
‘Can I do anything?’
He raised his head to gazed at her wearily. ‘D’you know of an Excel wizard who understands databases and the ins and outs of BP refurbishment issues and has a free morning? Because I don’t.’
Rozie smiled. ‘I worked at an investment bank, don’t forget. They made me go on courses.’
‘But it’s . . .’
‘What?’
‘Secretarial.’ He looked apologetic.
She shrugged. The old ‘secretaries-who-aren’t-secretaries’ thing.
‘This is important,’ she said. ‘If you show me where to look for problems, I’ll probably find them faster than anyone else who might be available.’ Mrs Harris’s HR records could wait an hour or two.
‘Really?’
Sir Simon’s features rearranged themselves, as if by magic, into their traditional combination of intelligent, curious hopefulness and Rozie made her way to the outer office in the South Wing where the Keeper’s harassed assistants worked. Here, she acquainted herself with the issues and made herself comfortable at a free desk, which happened to be the one where Mary used to sit. She was the first person to think to call Mary herself, who talked her through the numbers. Then she delved deeper into the databases to understand the discrepancies and lost all track of time.
*
The Queen was in her study when Philip popped his head round the door in passing to tell her some hair-raisi
ng stories about the US election that she would rather not have heard.
‘I suppose the spooks have told you it’s all being run by Russia and Facebook?’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Don’t count on it. I got a sit-rep from someone at the Guinea Pig Club memorial thing.’
For a moment the Queen had a vision of Peggy Thornicroft’s poor creature in the outhouses at her boarding school, but this was a club for aviators who had been guinea pigs in quite a different way. They were the men who had been shot down in their planes in the Second World War and suffered horrific disfigurement through burns. A surgeon called Archibald McIndoe had put them back together as best he could, feeding them barrels of beer to keep their hydration and their spirits up. He was a pioneer of plastic surgery and one of Philip’s wartime heroes – and hers too – as were the young men (old men, now) who had been in the surgeon’s care.
She had been entertaining Mr and Mrs Santos at the time, but in a perfect world she would also have liked to go with Philip and to spend an hour or two with the few pilots who remained. They were of one’s own generation, they had been to hell and back and nothing could faze them. No doubt the visit would have been full of off-colour jokes and bonhomie. Her own events were never like that. There was something about the way men relaxed in each other’s company . . .
She sighed briefly. ‘How many of them are left?’
‘Seventeen,’ he said.
‘Out of how many?’
‘Six hundred and forty-three.’
But even seventeen still alive today wasn’t so bad, she considered, given that Philip was ninety-five and most of them would have been the same age as him. She remembered so well the dances they’d held at Windsor Castle, and how bright and charming all the young men were who came, and how so very many of them never came back. One after the other, after the other. It was dizzying, sometimes, to think of those names and handsome faces, and how one had twirled around the floor with them. And then the telegram.