by SJ Bennett
Sir Simon shook his head. ‘It wasn’t the slipknot around the neck that was the problem. It was the other end.’
‘What end?’
‘Um, do stop me if . . . you don’t want . . .’
‘Oh, get on with it, Simon.’
‘Yes, ma’am. If you’re intending to . . . tighten . . . for pleasure, or indeed otherwise, you have to attach the cord to something solid that won’t give. It looked as though Brodsky chose the handle of the cupboard door and passed the cord over the rail above his head.’
Now she was properly picturing the poor man inside this cupboard, the Queen struggled to make sense of it. ‘Surely there was no drop?’
‘Apparently you don’t need one.’ Sir Simon looked thoroughly miserable at his new-found expertise. ‘With a slipknot, you just need to bend your knees. A lot of people who . . . do it for pleasure . . . like to do it that way, I understand, because when they’ve had enough they think they can just stand up and loosen the noose, but it doesn’t always work because they lose consciousness, or they can’t loosen it after all and then . . .’
She nodded. It was what she had been imagining. Poor, poor man.
Sir Simon continued. ‘But none of that matters, ma’am, because that’s not how he died.’
There was a tiny pause.
‘What do you mean, “not how he died”?’
‘If Brodsky had died that way, intentionally or otherwise, his body weight would have pulled against the knot attaching the dressing gown cord to the door. But that knot was still fairly loose: it hadn’t been tautened by a falling weight. The pathologist has recreated the circumstances with a similar cord and it was fairly conclusive. The cord around Brodsky must have been attached to the doorknob after . . .’
A longer pause.
‘Oh.’
For a full thirty seconds the only sound in the room was the ticking of an ormolu clock.
First, she had thought it was accidental death, which was bad enough. Then deliberate suicide, which was dreadful . . . Now the Queen forced herself to entertain a new, unthinkable possibility.
‘Do they know who . . .?’
‘No, ma’am. Not at all. Obviously, I wanted to tell you as soon as possible. There’s a team setting up in the Round Tower. They’re just getting to work on it.’
*
She had her gin and Dubonnet, and they made it a strong one. She missed Philip. He’d have said something rude, and made her laugh, and known underneath how very upset she was, and cared.
Not that the staff didn’t care, or Lady Caroline Cadwallader, who was her lady-in-waiting that day, and who listened sympathetically as she relayed the whole story. The few who knew the truth had that terrible look of pity in their eyes that she simply couldn’t bear. She wasn’t unhappy for herself – that would be ridiculous: she felt for the castle, the community, and the young man who had had his life taken so brutally, so ignominiously. She was also slightly unnerved.
There was a murderer on the loose at Windsor Castle. Or at least, there had been last night.
The Queen readied herself for dinner – a small affair for friends and family this evening – and put on a brave face. The best brains in the police and any relevant government agencies would be hard at work on the case tonight, and all one could do was trust they solve it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, she might just sneak a second gin.
Chapter 4
D
own in the servants’ quarters, maids and housekeepers and butlers watched the police comings and goings with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
‘What’re they still here at night for?’ a deputy sergeant footman muttered to a passing kitchen pastry chef, who was a friend.
Mr Brodsky, as a performer and not a guest, had been housed high up in overcrowded attics near the Augusta Tower, above the Visitors’ Apartments, in the south side of the Upper Ward, overlooking the town. That attic corridor was now cordoned off, causing great annoyance to all concerned as there were hardly enough bedrooms to accommodate everyone who needed one as it was. Instead it was occupied by various people in hooded white overalls and gloves, who carried bulky bags and didn’t talk to anyone. News had spread, as it was inevitably going to do, about the way the body had been found. However, the additional information about the second knot had not.
‘They’re treating it like a bloody crime scene,’ the chef complained. ‘I mean, everybody has kinky secrets. The guy’s dead. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, know what I mean? They should just stay out of it.’
‘Kinky how?’ an under-butler asked, pausing in the corridor to listen. She had just come back from holiday and was still catching up with the gossip.
‘Well, I got it from a security guy who’s mates with one of the laundry maids who swore him to secrecy, that he was wearing ladies’ knickers, and lipstick, and had a tie wrapped around his –’
They heard fast steps, saw a senior member of the Household staff approaching and tried to look busy.
‘How would he do that under the knickers?’ the under-butler muttered, genuinely confused. The chef shrugged. This didn’t do it for the under-butler, who was a stickler for precision. ‘Nah, I think he was winding you up.’
‘No, I swear!’
‘But even if it’s true,’ the footman persisted, ‘why are they prowling around the place at’ – he slipped his phone out of his pocket and checked the time – ‘nine thirty p.m.? It’s hardly going to bring him back to life, is it?’
‘Maybe they think he was involved in a sex game with somebody else,’ the under-butler suggested. She had a quick mind and a ready imagination.
‘For God’s sake, who?’ the footman protested. ‘He’d just got here! He was only staying the one night. Have you seen those rooms? They’re like little cells.’
‘That never stopped anyone,’ the chef observed. ‘He could’ve been getting it on with one of those girls who came. Did you see them? The dancers? Those legs?’
The off-duty ballerinas, confident of their physique, had worn the skinniest of skinny jeans and cropped-est of cropped tops. It was not typical Windsor attire and had been much admired by half the staff at breakfast.
‘What – and they decided to go all-out kinky here, at Windsor?’ the footman scoffed. He paused to think. ‘It would have to be both of them,’ he added, still sceptical.
‘Oh, why?’
‘Because the girls were sharing a room. We had a rush on. I had to help Marion work out the plan to cram everyone in, and we put them in a twin. Well, two single beds shoved in a room hardly big enough for one. If one girl was out doing the do and snuck back in, the other one would’ve known about it.’
‘Maybe it was the maid of a banker’s wife,’ the under-butler speculated. ‘Or a bloke.’
‘What are you three doing huddled here?’
Three heads spun round to see the night-shift head housekeeper standing six feet away, looking like thunder. She was known for her spectacular tongue-lashings and her ability to materialise from nowhere, like the Tardis but without the warning sounds.
They pleaded their innocence, which she didn’t believe, and she sent them on their way with dire warnings about what happened to staff who gossiped and speculated, and didn’t get on with what they were paid for.
*
Another member of staff arrived back from holiday that evening. Rozie Oshodi had been in Nigeria for her cousin’s wedding, and was taking a moment to readjust. After the bright colours and funky Afrobeat of Lagos, the stones and silences of night-time Windsor seemed surreal. In the Middle Ward of the castle, not far from the rooms where Chaucer once lived, Rozie looked through the mullioned window of her bedroom at the moonlight glistening on the River Thames far below and felt like a princess in a tower. A black princess, whose childhood braids would never have been long enough to let a prince climb up and rescue her. But then, Rozie had worked hard to get her job as the Queen’s assistant private secretary; sh
e didn’t need rescuing.
Instead, she needed to find out what on earth was going on. Sir Simon had sent five messages for her to call him. Rozie had tried to as soon as her much-delayed flight had landed, but now his phone was going to voicemail. Super-smooth Sir Simon was not the sort of person to panic. And this week was supposed to have been extra quiet. It was why she’d been given the time off for cousin Fran’s wedding. (To be strictly accurate, the wedding had been organised around this potential gap in Rozie’s schedule – a fact she was too embarrassed about to linger on for long. The Royal Family always came first, and if Fran wanted Rozie there, fresh from her star new appointment at the palace, this was the week it had to happen.)
For the tenth time, Rozie checked the news on her phone. Nothing unusual. She shivered in the cold. For a brief moment she flirted with the idea of climbing into her pyjamas and collapsing into bed, knowing she would be up early tomorrow with a full day of work ahead of her and several days of partying to recover from. Sir Simon could update her in the morning, when she was fresh.
But that was the jet lag talking. Rozie knew things didn’t work that way in the Royal Household, and that’s what you signed up for when you joined: you were always prepared, always informed.
So she unpacked, humming one of the tunes they had played in every Lagos nightclub. She smiled at the plastic keyring with the bride and groom’s faces grinning at her, to which she now attached her most precious possession: the key to her Mini Cooper. Then she sat on her narrow bedstead, fully dressed and still in her coat, scrolling through her phone to favourite the best photographs of Fran and Femi from the hundreds she had taken, waiting for Sir Simon’s call.
*
It finally came at one in the morning, when his working day was over. Rozie made her way over to Sir Simon’s quarters in the castle. He had a suite of rooms in the east side of the Upper Ward, not far from the Private Apartments. They were crowded with pictures and antique furniture, yet somehow immaculately tidy. Like Sir Simon’s mind, Rozie thought.
He stared at her for a moment, having opened the door to her. She stared back.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Your hair. You’ve changed it.’
She ran a nervous hand over the new cut, which she’d agreed to on a whim in Lagos. Since the army, Rozie had always kept it short and crisp, but the new look was sharper still, with asymmetric angles. She wasn’t sure how her middle-aged, Home Counties colleagues would respond.
‘Is it OK?’
‘It’s . . . different. I . . . Gosh. It’s fine. Sorry, do come in.’
Sir Simon could be awkward with her sometimes, but at least it was friendly-awkward. Rozie made him feel old, she thought, and short (she was a good two inches taller than him in heels), while he made her feel under-informed – about the royals, the constitution, pretty much everything. They made it work. However, tonight they were both tired. As they sat facing each other on chintz-covered chairs, Sir Simon sipped from a cut-crystal tumbler of single malt to keep himself awake. Rozie, fearful that whisky would have the opposite effect on her, stuck to sparkling mineral water. She made notes on her laptop as he brought her up to speed on the new police investigation.
‘Bloody mess,’ he sighed. ‘Total nightmare. About fifty suspects and no motive. God, I pity those detectives. You can imagine the headlines when the Mail gets hold of it.’
He had outlined the basics of the case, and Rozie could indeed imagine.
RUSSIAN IN DEATH SEX ROMP AT QUEEN’S PARTY
Or words to that effect. The headline writers would slaver at the chance to create the greatest clickbait of all time.
‘Who was he, exactly?’ Rozie asked.
Sir Simon ran through his most recent update from the investigating team.
‘Maksim Brodsky. Twenty-four years old. Musician, based in London. Not a full-time professional – he was scraping a living playing in bars and hotels, teaching, doing the odd concert gig for friends in the business. It’s not completely obvious how he paid his rent, because he shared a decent flat in Covent Garden. The police are looking into that. She wants to know about his parents.’
‘Who does?’
‘The Queen. Wake up, Rozie! The Boss does. She wants to send her condolences. We’re waiting for the embassy to give us the details.’
Rozie looked sheepish. ‘Right.’
‘But so far no luck. His father’s dead. He was killed in Moscow in 1996, when Maksim was five.’ Rozie’s face flickered with surprise. ‘You were hardly born then,’ Sir Simon murmured. He gave her a lopsided smile.
‘I was ten.’
‘Lord.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, back in the nineties, murder on the Moscow streets was a daily occurrence. It was the time of Yeltsin, the Soviet Union had collapsed, capitalism was running amok. It was like Chicago in the twenties – gangs and thugs and corruption. Anyone with any money lived in fear of being bumped off by one side or another. I had friends in the City with family back in Moscow who lived in constant terror.’
‘What happened to Brodsky’s dad?’
‘Knifed outside his flat. He was a lawyer, working for a venture capital fund at the time. The authorities said it was a street gang that did it, but ten years later, when young Maksim was fifteen, he won a music scholarship to an English boarding school. The rest of the fees were paid by a company based in Bermuda. So was his holiday accommodation, according to what the police have unearthed. He spent Christmases and summers at an upmarket B and B in South Kensington.’
‘At fifteen?’
‘Apparently so. A couple of Easter holidays were spent with a schoolfriend who had a house in Mustique, but I’m more interested in Bermuda. The current hypothesis is that whoever had Brodsky’s father killed made a mint, had an attack of conscience years later and tried to save his Russian soul by giving the boy a break in the UK using money that couldn’t be traced. Maybe one of the oligarchs who came over here to avoid getting on the wrong side of Putin.’
‘Peyrovski?’
‘He made his billions at the turn of the millennium. He wasn’t one of the tough guys in the Yeltsin years.’
Rozie remembered the Queen’s potential question tomorrow morning.
‘What about Maksim’s mother?’
Sir Simon gave a snort of a sigh. ‘The embassy claim they can’t find her. She had mental health issues. Maksim was brought up by a series of relatives and neighbours until he came to England. Last they heard, she was in some sort of hospital in the Moscow suburbs, but she isn’t now.’
‘So he was effectively an orphan?’
‘Apparently.’
Sir Simon eyed his whisky tumbler ruminatively, and Rozie thought how much Maksim Brodsky’s early life resembled a classic spy biography. Did real spies actually grow up like that? She decided not to show her ignorance by asking a stupid question.
‘Possibly,’ Sir Simon said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re wondering if he’s FSB. It’s possible. He’s not on our list.’
Rozie simply nodded and tried to keep her expression neutral. But she was still new to this job, and she was thinking how incredible it was that a year ago she ran a small strategy team at a bank and now here she was, casually discussing whether or not somebody was a Russian spy with someone who knew. Or at least, was supposed to know. The Official Secrets Act was a scary thing, but she had sworn to obey it and now the secrets just seemed to tumble out on a daily basis. She was still getting used to it.
‘And what about the other killer? The one last night, I mean.’
Sir Simon took another sip of Glenmorangie. ‘That’s where the bloody nightmare begins. A team of top detectives, one nude Russian found dead in a castle surrounded by armed guards. After sundown nobody gets in or out without security verification, not even you or me. Everything is monitored and recorded. Everyone’s vetted and new visitors have to show their passports on arrival, which they all did. They thought they’d have it sorted by
teatime, and yet . . .’ He shrugged. He looked very tired. Rozie knew how relentless his job was.
‘Brodsky was brought down here by Peyrovski,’ he continued. ‘So, it seems most likely it was someone in his entourage. There’s the valet, who had the room next to Brodsky. He went up to the Peyrovskis’ room after the party at their request, which isn’t unheard of. He hardly knew Brodsky, from what the police have ascertained. There’s certainly no rumour of any relationship or quarrel. Mrs Peyrovskaya brought her ladies’ maid, who did know him quite well, but the woman is tiny, apparently. Doesn’t look as if she’d have the strength to wring out a hankie, never mind subdue and strangle a fit young man. And from the shape of the ligature it looks as though he was strangled first, lying down, then strung up afterwards. I’m sorry. Not a nice way to say it. It’s been a long day.’
Rozie looked up from her laptop. ‘Not a problem. There are other suspects, then?’
‘Well, two ballet dancers performed after the dinner. Strong as oxen I should guess, but they claim to have only met him in the car on the way down from London. The girls were sharing a room and one of them was FaceTiming her boyfriend half the night, and all of them swear neither of the girls left the room except to go to the loo or have a quick shower – neither of which would have given them enough time to have a sex romp with a stranger, kill him and stage an accidental suicide.’
He rubbed his eyes and went on. ‘At a pinch any of them could have done it, but it’s not obvious. A couple of dozen other people were sleeping in the Visitors’ Quarters that night, scattered about the castle. There were conferences and meetings and all sorts going on. It was Piccadilly bloody Circus. I mean, is there a visitors’ Tinder I know nothing about? And did I mention the two o’clock cigarette?’
Rozie looked up from her laptop, frowning. She shook her head.
Sir Simon lifted his glass to the lamplight and stared into the amber glow.
‘One of the policemen on duty found Brodsky smoking a fag on the East Terrace, practically under Her Majesty’s bedroom. He said he went out to enjoy the night air and got lost. How do you get lost at Windsor Castle with the Queen in residence? Oh, and don’t forget the hair.’