by SJ Bennett
Along the way, she passed various chambermaids, footmen and a fendersmith, all busy with a task or on their way to one. One footman, carrying a covered tray, was rudely assaulted by the dogs but took it well, nimbly twisting out of reach with barely a break in stride. The head housekeeper, Mrs Dilley, was waiting for her in the section of the corridor containing Mr Brodsky’s room. To her left there was a door with a sign indicating a shower room. Behind her, the Queen could hear the sound of convivial chatter coming from another room. She was glad that whoever was inside was unaware of her presence: wherever she went all conversation stopped, and sometimes it was nice to hear the staff just being themselves.
‘This is the room, ma’am,’ Mrs Dilley announced, leading the way. She inserted a small key to open the door with a push. It was a perfectly plain door, varnished a rather horrible fake-mahogany colour, and sporting the number ‘24’ etched into a small brass plaque. There was a laminated paper notice on the front, saying something about ‘DO NOT ENTER’. The last time the Queen had visited, she was sure such rooms were locked from within using an old-fashioned bolt, if so desired, but many of the doors had stood open. The castle of old used to assume that the inhabitants would respect each other’s person and possessions, and it was rather cosy that way. Now, everyone assumed the worst, and doors closed with the click of a latch; valuables were safe, but the air of informality had gone.
Brodsky had probably known his killer, she reflected as she entered the room. Unless he left the door on the latch, he would have had to open it to him. Why do so in the middle of the night to a stranger?
Mrs Dilley went to stand near the head of the single bed, waiting patiently while the Queen looked round. There wasn’t much to see. A small window to the right of Mrs Dilley’s head showed only a thin grey patch of sky between open purple curtains. All the bedding and any extraneous objects had been stripped out. There was a bare mattress on a wooden base to her left, against the wall beside the door. Next came the wall with the window, under which sat a side table and a hard-backed chair. They faced a wall with a small chest of drawers missing half the handles (one must get that fixed). And in between, against the wall opposite where she was standing, was a narrow, modern wardrobe that stood open to reveal . . . nothing. There were no stains, no sign of life or death, no sense that anything important had happened in this place at all.
The Queen stole a closer look at the open wardrobe door, whose D-shaped handle had housed the second knot. The whole thing looked flimsy – hardly strong enough to hold a man, never mind hang him. What sort of person would look at such a thing and think, instrument of murder?
She cleared her throat. ‘It must have been very difficult for the housekeeper who found him.’
Mrs Dilley looked up. ‘Mrs Cobbold? Yes, awful, ma’am. She couldn’t get in at first. She had to go to the office and get the master key. Then she opened the door and there he was, right ahead of her with that cupboard door open and his legs sticking out. She nearly fainted. But she’s much better now, ma’am.’
Everyone always sought to reassure one. Except Philip: he was the only person she could trust to be perfectly straight. Back tomorrow, Sir Simon had told her. And not a moment too soon.
‘I’m glad to hear it. Is she back at work already?’
‘Oh no, ma’am. Next week, possibly.’ But Mrs Dilley looked doubtful.
So, not as much better as all that. Well, not surprising.
‘Thank you, Mrs Dilley.’
‘Ma’am.’
‘I hope it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience, with the police here at all hours?’
‘No, ma’am. Just rather dreadful. For all of us.’
Mrs Dilley caught the Queen’s eye and held it, woman to woman, and there was huge sympathy there. She knew how much it must mean to her, this tragedy so close to home. The Queen looked away and called to the dogs, who had been milling about in the corridor. They padded in now, circling her legs and giving the room a brief semblance of normality.
‘Candy, Vulcan – time to go.’
The walk downstairs and back along the Grand Corridor seemed twice as long this time. She took it slowly. She was unprepared for the shock she felt, not by what had been in the room, but what hadn’t been, which was any sense of the life that was lost. Brodsky had vanished from the world, it seemed, without a trace, and one felt somehow responsible.
Sir Simon would have told her not to go, had she consulted him, which was of course partly why she hadn’t. He would have said it wasn’t necessary, which was quite untrue, and that it might be upsetting, which was so infuriatingly right. The thought of it pricked her, even though she had not given him the chance to say it. She batted it away. As Queen Mary had always insisted to her as a little girl, it did not do to dwell.
Instead she thought about the door that could not be opened from the corridor without a key. Brodsky had been away until the early hours of the morning, so whoever he let in, or whoever came in with him, must have lingered until late to do him harm. A spy could have had a master key cut, she supposed. All part of this big plan Humphreys insisted on imagining. And yet, the failure to tighten the second knot suggested it was an improvised attack. It couldn’t be part of a long-running feud, as Brodsky didn’t know anyone here. Nor did it seem likely to be based on sex. The young man had had enough of that downstairs and there were only so many unorthodox lovers one could take at Windsor Castle in one night. Even Philip would think so, surely?
And so . . . who had done it?
Not Putin. Gavin Humphreys was an imbecile with an obsession, and every bone in her body told her so.
Not Charles, who had gone back to Highgrove that night with Camilla. (She was trying to be objective and consider all possibilities, and Charles had after all arranged the evening.) Similarly, the Provost of Eton had gone back to his house at the school, half a mile away. But Brodsky’s adventures with the architect woman had proved that, with a little ingenuity, it was possible to move between staff and guest quarters without impediment. At this point the suspect list became almost comic, including as it did Sir David Attenborough and the Archbishop of Canterbury. No – honestly, no. If one could not trust these men, one might as well give up.
Nevertheless, even excluding them, the range of possibilities remained disconcertingly wide. There was no reason to suspect the ex-ambassador, but it was not impossible that his life in Russia had created links to young Brodsky that she was not aware of. The police had uncovered no connection between the young man and the novelist, or the professor – but Blunt had been an academic. Of course, most of them were pillars of the Establishment, but one never quite knew . . . Then there was the architect herself – the woman who had danced the last tango. The Queen pondered for a minute, trying to create some kind of motive from what she knew from Rozie’s account, but everything in the tragic story suggested quite the opposite. The poor woman had been besotted. That left Peyrovski, his wife, his hedge-fund manager friend and their servants. This was where the police should be focusing, surely?
At this point in her walk, she passed a policeman guarding the entrance to the Private Apartments, and in nodding to him the Queen was reminded of the madness of this location. If you were in day-to-day contact with a man you hated, for whatever reason, why choose the castle for his murder? True, within its perimeter tight security – apart from around herself – was not normally an area of concern. Once inside, what guests chose to do with their staff, or each other, after hours was up to them. True too, the perpetrator had got away with it so far. But it was the highest-risk strategy there was. Once foul play was discovered, every high-ranking detective and spymaster in the land was bound to descend on the case. Why strike here, when an enemy could do it so very much more easily in Mayfair, or Covent Garden?
In that case, it made sense for the murderer to be someone who didn’t know Brodsky well – and that opened the list of suspects back up to everyone in and around the Upper Ward that night.
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br /> She had reached her own rooms at last, and sensed she had made little progress in her thinking at all. If anything, she had gone backwards, with more uncertainties than ever.
Something odd had happened the evening of the dine and sleep. Not during the event, but beforehand. A memory lurked in the corner of her brain and tugged at it occasionally. As the dogs preceded her into her sitting room, it almost came back, but was lost.
She made a mental note to ask Rozie for a full list of last Monday’s overnight visitors throughout the castle. And to chase the Russian Embassy for more news of Brodsky’s family. It pained her to think that he had disappeared so completely from this life, having been so fully engaged in it – and had nobody to mourn him.
Sir Simon was waiting for her with a slim sheaf of papers to sign. At his elbow was a footman with a tray containing a tumbler, ice and lemon, a bottle of Gordon’s and another of Dubonnet. She glanced at one with brisk efficiency and the other with a little longing. Five minutes more and then, for a little while at least, one could relax.
Chapter 13
‘M
orning, Cabbage. Everything under control?’
Sitting at the breakfast table on Thursday morning, Philip looked as if he had never been away.
‘I thought you were arriving this morning.’
‘Got in last night. Quick dinner with some friends in Bray. God, you look ghastly. Have you been sleeping?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
She tried to say it crossly, but he had such a grin on his face. There was always the hint of a joke in his eyes, unless he was furious with someone. He was perfectly dressed for the day, as always, in a checked shirt and knotted tie. The radio was on, there was toast on the table again and already it felt as if the place had come back to life. She couldn’t help smiling.
‘Did you bring me the fudge?’
‘Damn. Forgot. Have you seen the pictures of William and Catherine in the papers? Cover to cover, practically. I told William he’d enjoy India. Did you see them at that safari park with the elephants and rhinos? Lucky buggers. Beats sticking medals on breast pockets.’
The Queen refused to rise to the bait. ‘How was the salmon?’
‘Bloody impressive. Caught four. I brought them down with me in an icebox. Thought the chef could do something with them for your birthday.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Mind you, they probably decided the menu six months ago.’
They had.
‘But they can always change it,’ he mused.
‘Mmmm.’
That wasn’t going to happen, but she would think of something. She was really very touched that he had been thinking of her birthday. And that he had thought four large fish an appropriate present – which they absolutely were. Salmon was always being recommended for one’s diet. Good for the brain, apparently. And it was a nice reminder of days out by a fast-flowing river.
Companionable silence reigned for a while, apart from the radio in the background, until he looked up from his toast and said, ‘That bloody Russian. Tom said it was foul play.’
Philip’s equerry, Lieutenant Commander Tom Trender-Watson, was good friends with Sir Simon and usually up to speed on all the details of the castle. He was also reliably discreet, thank goodness.
‘Have they found the bugger that did it yet?’ Philip asked. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’
‘No, they haven’t,’ she said. ‘The Security Service think it was Putin.’
‘What? In person?’
‘No. In the guise of a royal servant.’
‘Bloody idiots.’
‘That’s rather what I thought.’
‘Have you got someone in mind?’
She stared into her tea and sighed. ‘Not exactly. The place was full that night, but I can’t see why anybody here would want to kill him.’
‘Half the ladies would have wanted quite the opposite, from what I heard.’
‘Mmmm. Yes.’ She was tempted to tell him about Brodsky’s after-midnight shenanigans with the architect, but she knew he would love the story and share it widely with his staff who, equerry excepted, were bound to spread it like wildfire. At the moment even she wasn’t supposed to know about it, so she kept her counsel.
‘Well, they need to sort it out sharpish,’ Philip observed. ‘Does nobody any good, worrying about consorting with murderers. And by God, it needs to be fixed before the press get their hands on it. They’d have a field day.’
The Queen, who knew all of this, merely obliged him with another ‘Mmmm’.
‘You should have a word with whatever police johnnie is in charge of it. Ignore Box. Putin! Pah!’
With that, he pushed back his chair and opened the paper. The Queen was, in equal measure, mildly infuriated by being told to do what she had been about to do anyway, and relieved that he was home, so she could be reassured by words like ‘Putin! Pah!’
He honestly kept her sane.
*
Ravi Singh was reminded, more than anything, of the time he won the Year Nine debating competition at school. His hands trembled slightly in exactly the same way, and he could feel his blood pulsing in his head. It was the only time he had been called in to see Mrs Winckless, the headmistress, who lurked in a panelled office down a long, tiled corridor at the posh end of his grammar school’s rambling site. She had a bowl of flowers on her desk, he remembered: pale, mop-headed things he had subsequently learned to recognise as hydrangeas. And an electric-blue dress that encased a larger expanse of bosom than a teenage boy was entirely comfortable with.
The Oak Room, where the Queen had granted him an audience, was not the same as that panelled room, of course. It was bigger, and oddly shaped, owing to its position in a sort of tower. It had white walls, comfortable sofas and a roaring fire, alongside unexpected details such as one of Her Majesty’s TVs. But the sense of meeting a powerful woman whom one was, without knowing exactly why, slightly afraid of, and feeling guilty, even though he had as far as he knew done something good, was identical.
I am the Met Police Commissioner, he reminded himself as he sat down. I have reached the top of my profession. She is not going to tell me off.
The Queen sat opposite him on a small sofa near a large, elaborate window overlooking the Quadrangle he’d just come from. She was indeed all smiles and the offer of a biscuit to go with his tea. The dogs made themselves at home near his feet. He wasn’t in trouble.
He thought of the sharp look Humphreys had given him when he’d heard about the requested meeting. ‘Make sure you tell me everything. Word for word. We need to know what she’s thinking.’ But the Queen, blandly polite, just seemed to want to catch up with the investigation in general terms. Which was only fair – it was her castle.
‘Obviously, MI5 have their specialist checks going on, but the overall suspect list remains long, I’m afraid, ma’am. A lot of people had access to that corridor that night. Oh, you’ve seen it, have you? We’ve conducted interviews with all of them. Obviously, it’s difficult when you don’t want to let them know it’s a definite murder investigation. It also makes it harder to do a DNA match with the hair we found on the body. Obviously, once we have a firm suspect, we will.’
He realised he had said ‘obviously’ three times. And he was perspiring under his jacket. Her Majesty was a lovely woman who hadn’t asked a single difficult question, but this was worse than doing the Today programme on Radio 4.
‘I’m sure you’re doing everything you can.’
‘Of course, ma’am. Obv— I mean, we’re clearly focusing on the people who knew Brodsky, or had Russian links. The manservant, who had the room next door, the maid, the ballerinas, though their computer records suggest their FaceTime alibi checks out. There’s a librarian who’s an expert on Russian history, but she lives in rooms halfway across the site. The archivist – well, Mr Humphreys can tell you more about him, I imagine.’
‘And Mr Robertson? Is there any news of him?’
‘Nothing yet, ma’am. Nothing certain. It turns out he does have an explanation for some payments that were of concern, but the investigation is ongoing.’
‘I see. And is that all? Who else have you talked to?’
The commissioner consulted his notes. ‘The communications team were having a bit of a conference, ma’am, so there were about five of them visiting from the palace, plus those who already work here. Various staff who stay on a regular basis. A group of guests of the governor.’
‘And my guests on the floor below.’
‘They’re out of the picture, ma’am. You can’t get between the guest suites and the visiting staff quarters without passing two sets of security, and they didn’t see anything.’
The Queen gave him a smile which, if it hadn’t come from Her Majesty, he would have called playful. ‘Oh, there have been some rather surprising stories over the years, Commissioner. Philip was reminding me only this morning about a famous time when the French ambassador managed to smuggle a cabaret artiste up to his suite, disguised as a housemaid, for a bet.’
‘Not this time, ma’am,’ Singh assured her, making a mental note to share that one with the lads back at New Scotland Yard.
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
The Queen knew that at this point it was her duty to tell him what Rozie had learned from Meredith Gostelow and Masha Peyrovski – but equally, Rozie had promised secrecy. The Queen felt this had been unwise. One never knew what one might be required to do or say. However, telling Mr Singh anything would bring Rozie into the story – and ultimately herself – which of course one must avoid at all costs. If the commissioner was primed with the possibility of staff and guest shenanigans, perhaps he could find out for himself. For now, she graciously accepted his reassurance. ‘And is there any news from the embassy?’