by SJ Bennett
Thoroughly relaxed, the remaining party had gone to the Crimson Drawing Room to listen to extracts from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. This was one of her favourite rooms for entertaining, with its red silk walls, the portraits of Mummy and Papa looking glamorous in their coronation robes either side of the fireplace, its vista of the park by daylight and extravagant chandelier by night, and the elegant view of the Green Drawing Room beyond. It was one of the rooms gutted by the fire in 1992 – though you would never know it now. Restored to perfection, it was the ideal backdrop for evenings such as this.
The young pianist had been, as promised, quite magnificent. Did Simon say he was called Brodsky? In his early twenties, the Queen thought, but with the musical sensibility of a man much older. He seemed borne away by the passion of the piece, while she found herself reliving scenes from Brief Encounter. And he was so good-looking. All the women had been entranced.
Afterwards the ballerinas had done their solos – very nicely. Margaret would have enjoyed them. One secretly found them rather clip-cloppety, but that was probably just their shoes. And then, somehow, young Mr Brodsky was back at the piano and playing dance tunes from the thirties. How did he know them? And she agreed the furniture could be moved back for dancing.
It all started out quite decorously, then someone else had sat at the piano. Who? The professor’s husband, she seemed to remember, and he was surprisingly good too. The young Russian was freed to join the assembled company. With impeccable manners he had clicked his heels and bowed down to his hostess, with a look of real supplication in his eyes.
‘Your Majesty. Would you care to dance?’
Well, as a matter of fact, she would. And the next thing she knew, she was foxtrotting across the floor with no thought for sciatica. She was wearing a light silk chiffon gown that evening, with plenty of swing in the skirts. Mr Brodsky was an expert partner, reminding her of steps she had forgotten she knew. His timing was flawless. He managed to make one feel like Ginger Rogers.
By now, most of the party were joining in. The music was louder and bolder. An Argentine tango struck up. Was it still the professor’s husband at the piano? Even the Archbishop of Canterbury was tempted to cut a rug, much to everyone’s amusement. A few other couples gave it a go, but nobody could begin to match the Russian and his latest partner – one of the ballerinas – striding majestically across the floor.
She had retired soon afterwards, leaving the guests with the reassurance that they could continue for as long as they liked. In her day, the Queen could outlast half the Foreign Office, but now she tended to droop after half past ten. However, that was no reason to cut short a good party. Her dresser, who got it from one of the under-butlers, informed her it had gone on until well after midnight.
That was the last she had seen of him: dancing around the drawing room floor floor with a beautiful young ballerina in his arms. Looking magnificent, happy . . . and so intensely alive.
*
Philip was full of the news when he arrived to share a coffee with her after lunch.
‘Lilibet, did you hear the man was nude?’
‘Yes, actually, I did.’
‘Strung up like a Tory MP. There’s a word for it. What is it? Auto-sex-something?
‘Autoerotic asphyxiation,’ the Queen said grimly. She had googled it on her iPad.
‘That’s the bugger. D’you remember Buffy?’
One did indeed recall the seventh Earl of Wandle, an old friend who had been rather partial to the practice in the fifties, by all accounts. Back then it had seemed practically de rigueur among a certain set.
‘What the butler saw, eh?’ Philip said. ‘Had to rescue the blighter on many an occasion, apparently. Buffy was hardly an oil painting, even with his clothes on.’
‘What was he thinking?’ she wondered.
‘My dear, I try not to imagine Buffy’s sex life.’
‘No. I mean the young Russian. Brodsky.’
‘Well, that’s obvious,’ Philip said, gesturing around him. ‘You know what people are like in this place. They come here, decide it’s the pinnacle of their bloody existence and need to let off steam. The high jinks that go on when they think we’re not looking . . . Poor bastard.’ He dropped his voice sympathetically. ‘Didn’t think it through. Last thing you want is to be discovered in a royal palace with your goolies out.’
‘Philip!’
‘No, I mean it. No wonder everyone’s keeping it hush-hush. That, and protecting your fragile nerves.’
The Queen threw him a look. ‘They forget. I’ve lived through a world war, that Ferguson girl and you in the Navy.’
‘And yet they think you’ll need smelling salts if they so much as hint at anything fruity. All they see is a little old lady in a hat.’ He grinned as she frowned. That last remark was true, and very useful, and rather sad. ‘Don’t worry, Cabbage, they love that little old lady.’ He rose stiffly from his chair. ‘Don’t forget, I’m off to Scotland later. The salmon’s spectacular this year, Dickie says. Need anything? Fudge? Nicola Sturgeon’s head on a platter?’
‘No, thank you. When will you be back?’
‘A week or so – I’ll be in good time for your birthday. Dickie’s going to stuff up the atmosphere and fly me in his jet.’
The Queen nodded. Philip tended to run his own diary these days. Years ago, she had found it rather heartbreaking when he disappeared off, with who-knew-who, to do God-knew-what, leaving her in charge. A part of her was jealous, too, of the freedom, the self-determination. But he always came back, bringing with him a burst of energy that cut through the corridors of power like a brisk sea breeze. She had learned to be grateful.
‘Actually,’ she said, as he bent arthritically to drop a kiss on her forehead, ‘I wouldn’t mind some fudge.’
‘Your wish is my command.’ He grinned, making her heart melt with clockwork precision, and strode to the door.
Chapter 3
M
eredith Gostelow hobbled out of the black cab that had brought her from Windsor to west London – at an extortionate fee – and stood catching her breath while the driver fetched her case from the space beside him.
She looked up at the pale pink stucco of her house and felt that she would never be the same again. Something had shifted, and she was terrified, and ashamed, and something else she couldn’t name. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but a tear made its tentative way through the powder on her right cheek. Since the menopause had hit her like a freight train, moisture of any sort was hard-won these days. She was a young woman in an old woman’s body, creaking and enfolded in a carnal carapace she could not control. Last night had made it worse.
And then, this morning . . . She would have sunk to her knees, if she hadn’t known it would be impossible to rise up again.
‘That it, missus?’
She glanced round, checking for her case and her handbag, and nodded. She had already paid him by card in the cab. Two hundred pounds! What had she been thinking? But then, who orders an Uber to pick them up from Windsor Castle? She should have gone to the station, of course, and caught the train to central London like any sensible human who didn’t drive – but at Windsor one thinks differently. Surrounded by liveried staff, one is expansive. One is there because one is successful. One did in fact spend twenty minutes last night talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury about a potential commission for a twenty-first-century church building in Southwark. And so, one orders a cab and hang the expense . . . and says goodbye to the price of a large tub of Crème de la Mer for the sake of getting stuck in terrible, utterly predictable traffic on the M4.
One was . . . She was . . . She must stop thinking as if she were a tight-fisted version of the Queen. Mind you, HMQ herself was known to mind the purse strings. Anyway, she, Meredith Gostelow, was alone.
A partner would have had the train idea. A partner would have given her a moment to think. A partner would have prevented . . . whatever ha
ppened last night. A partner might have driven her here in a nice big car. And would now be carrying her case for her up the small flight of steps to the front door.
And talking to her, and telling her what to do, and needing food cooked and beds made and attention paid, which would be a nightmare. Meredith had been through this mental rigmarole a thousand times and cursed herself for repeating it now.
But something had changed last night. Something deep inside.
Talking of which, she needed the loo, rather badly. She grabbed her case by the handle with one hand, holding her capacious bag to her chest with the other, and hauled herself up the steps. By the time she’d found her keys, opened the door, dumped the bags and run down the hall, she made it to the loo seat with microseconds to spare.
Old ladies. No moisture when and where you need it. Gallons of it without warning when you don’t.
*
Masha Peyrovskaya sat in the back of the Mercedes Maybach, listening to the musical, rhythmical sound of Italian phrases as the car inched its way home. Her hands were folded in her lap and she watched the glimmering light show created by the facets of the yellow diamond the size of a gull’s egg on her wedding ring finger. Across the seat, Yuri barked Russian obscenities into his phone. A muscle twitched in his neck.
It is astonishing how quickly the best day of your life can become simply another thing you did.
In Masha’s earbuds, her Italian language app said something about the pleasure of being outside. Or was it wall paintings? She tuned out.
Yuri had been quick to tell her how crass she had been, how common. How she ruined breakfast for him by mentioning Disney. How she’d ruined it for everyone.
But wasn’t it he who had asked to bring his own chef (he couldn’t), refused to eat anything that wasn’t alkali, and had insisted on applying his own Himalayan pink salt from a rock crystal pillbox at breakfast? The ex-ambassador’s wife had been watching at the time and Masha had seen the look she gave him.
The problem with Windsor Castle is that it is a dream. Real people only ruin it.
Today a trade war was brewing. The markets were down. Yuri was incandescent that certain stocks hadn’t been traded yesterday, when he had given the order. Eventually he ran out of bile and ended the call with a vicious stab of his thumb.
‘Five hundred thousand. You can say goodbye to your gallery.’
He glared at his wife, furious, wounded. At the word ‘gallery’, she finally looked him in the face. Good, he thought. It was why he had said it. The things it took to get Masha’s attention! God forbid she should support him while he was fighting to keep everything together for her, for them, for the future. All she cared about was art – collecting it, showing it off and mixing with people who made her feel clever because she knew the word post-Impressionism. That and being worshipped like a goddess. Well, he’d tried that for years, since he’d found her, aged seventeen, when she was a goddess in her tiny T-shirt and dirty jeans, and it was wearing him out. And it wasn’t exactly as if he was the only one.
‘By the way,’ he said, casually, the way he’d rehearsed. ‘Maksim’s dead.’
‘Uh?’
He watched her face freeze.
‘Died this morning. Heart attack, probably. You liked him, didn’t you?’
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. When she did, her voice was barely there. ‘A little.’
‘All those piano lessons. So many. You must play me some of those pieces you learned.’
He observed the way she stared at him, as if he was being shocking. As if he was doing something outrageous. The way she so often looked at him, saying nothing, from her high goddess pedestal, up in the stratosphere somewhere. When all he wanted was for her to step down and reach out to him. He wanted her to burn with shame and come to him, soft and humble, and hold him. Why couldn’t she understand? She was the villain here. Why did she always make it all his fault? His head was still pounding. Why had she let him drink so much? Had she known what would happen next?
She took out her earbuds. The silence enfolded them like a shroud as she worked out what to say.
‘I will play you something,’ she mumbled at last. ‘When we get home.’ Tears threatened to spill from those heavenly, glistening eyes, but she held them in.
She was made of ice, he thought. But one day he would melt her.
*
At the castle, the Queen tried vainly to distract herself from thoughts of the poor misguided young man in the cupboard. She had spent the afternoon with her racing manager, going through her upcoming entries at Ascot. With the public safely shooed off the premises, she was on her way to inspect one of the tapestries in the Grand Reception Room, which was due for minor restoration, when a warder intercepted her to say Sir Simon needed to see her urgently.
‘Did he say why?’
The warder tapped his two-way radio. ‘He said to tell you there’s been a development, ma’am,’ he said impassively. She approved of his lack of curiosity. The last thing one needed were staff who practically nodded and winked as they passed on news. Such people never lasted long.
With a sigh she turned on her heel and headed back to her office. If Sir Simon was tracking her down this way it must be important. She retraced her steps through the Semi-State Apartments, where she had entertained the guests at the dine and sleep, heading back towards the Grand Corridor, where her private apartments were. As she reached the Lantern Lobby, she bumped into a small group of people coming the other way. This was where the fire had started, and although it looked splendid these days with its new ceiling, the timbers spreading out like fans, she still felt the occasional shiver walking through it. The group, meanwhile, seemed quite astonished to see her here.
They were headed by a distinguished, square-jawed middle-aged man in a broad-breasted pinstriped suit and a tie.
‘Governor!’
‘Your Majesty.’ General Sir Peter Venn clicked his heels and bowed at the neck briefly. He alone didn’t look surprised, because he wasn’t. As the current Governor of Windsor Castle, he lived in a grace and favour apartment in the Norman Tower at the gate to the Upper Ward, and she knew him well. In fact, she could have named, in order, all his postings around the world and quoted from his commendations in half of them. She had known his uncle, too, whom she’d first met as a slip of a lieutenant at a party in Hong Kong aboard Britannia, and to whom she had awarded various medals for operations too secret to name. The Venns were a strong military family. If there ever was a revolution, she would want Peter at her back. Or, ideally, just a few paces out in front.
‘You look busy,’ she said, as they drew close.
‘Actually, we’re just finishing up, ma’am. Very useful meeting. I was about to give a quick tour.’
She smiled with vague approval at the group, most of whom she had briefly met yesterday. She was about to go on her way, but Sir Peter had a look about him. If he wasn’t a diehard general, built to withstand all eventualities, she might almost have called it excitement. She paused for a fraction and, seizing his chance, he said, ‘May I introduce you to Kelvin Lo? He’s doing some interesting work for us in Djibouti.’
‘Interesting work’ meant foreign intelligence. Sir Peter had been hosting a meeting on behalf of MI6 and the Foreign Office. A young man with Asian features, wearing some sort of dark hoodie over – were they? Yes! Tracksuit trousers! – stepped forward and bowed shyly. He looked utterly overwhelmed by the honour of meeting her. She wished one didn’t have this effect. It was really quite trying, although obviously chatterboxes and oversharers (Harry had taught her the term – a very useful modern description for bores) were worse.
‘Were you here last night?’ she asked.
‘No, Your Maj— er . . . madam.’
‘Oh?’
He looked up from his trainers long enough to see that she was still staring at him.
‘My plane was late,’ he managed to mumble.
She gave up. There was only so much t
ime one could devote to the inarticulate youth of today, however brilliant. The other members of the group hadn’t been much better last night, and nor were they today. One of the men trembled like an aspen in the Berkshire breeze and the young woman next to him looked positively unwell. She bade them goodbye. She wanted to know what Sir Simon had to say and hurried on to her office, where he was waiting.
*
Outside, the lamps were coming on, casting an opalescent glow across the lawns and paths leading down to the Long Walk. She was glad they hadn’t closed the curtains yet. Inside, it was warm and bright, and time for gin.
But first, work.
‘Yes, Simon – what is it?’
Sir Simon waited until she had sat down at her desk.
‘It’s the young Russian, ma’am. Mr Brodsky.’
‘I rather assumed as much.’
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
She frowned. ‘Oh dear. Poor man. How could they tell?’
‘The knot, ma’am. The pathologist felt something wasn’t right. The hyoid bone was broken. That’s a bone in the neck, ma’am—’
‘I know about hyoid bones.’ She’d read a lot of Dick Francis novels. Hyoid bones were breaking all the time. Never a good sign.
‘Ah. The fracture doesn’t necessarily prove anything because it can happen anyway, with hangings. But also the mark of the ligature round the neck was unusual. Even that wasn’t conclusive. The pathologist has been working on the case all afternoon, because we wanted some reassurance. Anyway, she had a look at the photographs from the scene and . . . well, they’re not very reassuring. There’s a problem with the knot.’
‘Did he tie it incorrectly?’ The Queen was alarmed. She imagined the poor pianist grasping at the cord with those elegant hands. Perhaps he meant to save himself and then couldn’t. How awful.