A Death in Diamonds

Chapter 38

It wasn’t that the Queen didn’t trust the members of her own household: it was just a simple fact that it was possible for someone to listen in to conversations over the internal palace telephone system without the caller knowing. She assumed that the operators didn’t, but it wasn’t a chance worth taking, so she and Philip had worked out a sort of code between them (‘The Oaks’ meant ‘I need to talk to you urgently in private’ and ‘Pall Mall’ meant ‘I love you’ and . . . other things).

Now that she knew not to trust someone in her Private Office, the Queen needed a written code for working with Joan too. With her APS back in London, she couldn’t be absolutely sure that her written memos wouldn’t be read by someone else.

The answer hadn’t taken them long to come up with: private messages were included in instructions about frocks and gloves. Any of the men in moustaches would run a mile at the details of waist measurements and corsetry. The Queen handwrote her notes and put them in envelopes casually paper-clipped to a memo about her wardrobe, as if they contained scraps of fabric or suggestions for embroidery.

The note in front of her was difficult to write. Not because of the content, which was straightforward, but because it meant doing something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager – trusting someone outside her inner circle with her most personal thoughts about a crime and its possible solution. And when she was a teenager, that hadn’t gone to plan. Not at all. She had learned self-reliance the hard way.

It was talking to Daphne after the ridiculous game of Nebuchadnezzar that had made her change her mind this time. She carved out ten minutes before tackling the remains of her boxes after breakfast to put her thoughts on paper. If Joan wasn’t already helping her out with the matter of the sabotage, she didn’t know what she would have done. The next steps weren’t ones she could take for herself. Little girls, picturing one as Queen, often assumed one had infinite powers, and would be horrified, she judged, to discover how very much she could not do. Talking to prostitutes and their associates, to take one example. Questioning a police inquiry, for another. She could do it, but the consequences would be severe.

The thing about the sabotage of her state visits was that it was an act against her job. It was a job she had sworn to do for the rest of her life, in Westminster Abbey, surrounded by the great and the good and watched by millions on television and, more importantly, God, and nobody on earth could take it more seriously than she did.

But it was a job.

And this was different. Being used as an alibi in the case of the Chelsea murders was personal. If anything went wrong, it would affect her marriage . . . Her role as head of state, too, in consequence, but it went deeper than that. As she crafted each line, she was careful not to mention exactly why she was so concerned about what happened to the couple in Cresswell Place – but she was writing to Joan in part because her APS was the most perceptive, quick-thinking woman she knew right now, and it wouldn’t take her long to work it out.

It would be so much easier just to sit back, go for some lovely dog walks and picnics, and let Inspector Darbishire deal with this. But he wasn’t dealing with it. Or rather, he was making glacially slow progress. And why was he in charge of such a high-profile case at all? What about Chief Inspector Venables? The Queen hadn’t forgotten that Chelsea’s police division had failed to roll out its star.

With this in mind, she was struck by what Daphne had said about women and history, and by William being so shockingly bad at imitating Althea Gibson. Men were not good at telling women’s stories.

What if this was a woman’s story?

Darbishire was focusing on Nico Rodriguez. It was understandable, given his gambling, his dirty trading, his possible involvement with London gangs. But what about the girl? The poor ‘tart in the tiara’, laid out on the bed in her underwear? Having failed to prove that she was involved with Lord Seymour, who owned the diamonds in question, the inspector seemed to have lost interest in her. She had become a footnote.

The Queen found women endlessly interesting. She found women who dressed as princesses and were then murdered within walking distance of Buckingham Palace worthy of her full attention. Then there was the other thing Daphne had said about misdirection. There was something about the way Gina Fonteyn was lying on that bed that Darbishire hadn’t fully understood yet, she felt sure of it. She also knew that women talked to other women in ways they didn’t talk to men. If senior police officers could be female . . . just imagine what they might uncover. It was certainly a novel idea.

At last, she felt there was something she could do.

She wrote her list of instructions to Joan and knew she had taken one of the biggest risks of her reign so far. With a deep breath and a sense of purpose, she folded the note in half and slid it into its envelope, which she labelled ‘US and Canada accessories, etc.’, and put with the rest of her correspondence, to go to London that afternoon.

Chapter 39

Joan took the note out of its envelope while sitting on the lavatory in the ladies’ bathroom in the North Wing corridor. It was the once place she could be assured of privacy.

The first page was a discussion of gloves and covered buttons. The second, written in pencil in the same confident hand, was very different.

Joan sat quietly for several minutes. On first reading, the note made no sense to her. It was written as if she knew exactly what the Queen would be talking about, but she certainly did not. Who was ‘D’? What about ‘Chelsea’? And which of the many, many princesses Joan had recently read about in the course of her new job was the Queen referring to? That was all odd enough, but the last lines were simply wrong. ‘Diana’ had never come up in their brief conversations. What was Joan supposed to be mistaken about?

However, it didn’t take long for her to switch into Bletchley mode. Don’t focus on what you don’t know, look at what leaps out at you. Joan let the words swim in front of her, and her mind relax. Her instinct soon told her that the first paragraph was in fact familiar. The ‘first speech’ must be the first one they had talked about together: the one that went missing in France. The Queen hoped Joan was making progress with the men in moustaches. Yes, she was.

The second was familiar too, though in a way that didn’t fit. She had never discussed Chelsea with the Queen, but it had been in the newspapers a lot recently. Could Her Majesty be referring to the murders? Surely, they weren’t connected to her? . . . But she had requested the police reports. Joan had overheard Sir Hugh expostulating to Miles Urquhart about them. She’s getting involved where she has no business to be. Sympathy for the lady victim, no doubt. Sometimes, I think we need to rescue her from her better nature.

The reports would be in the windowless office next to Sir Hugh’s, which contained several filing cabinets of sensitive documents and was always kept locked. Joan, as the ‘filing fairy’, as Urquhart had somewhat horrifically named her, was one of the few people with a key. Finding the documents would be the least of her problems. The latest updates would be missing, because the Queen would still have them in Balmoral, but Her Majesty knew that, and so must mean that Joan could get what she needed from the ones that were still in London.

After that, other details settled roughly into place. ‘D’ would make sense once she read the reports, presumably. Was that connected to ‘Diana’, below? Perhaps. The ‘princess’ might just be – and Joan realised it had been her very first thought, which she had automatically dismissed as too unlikely – the prostitute, or the ‘tart in the tiara’ as everyone called her. Newspaper speculation was that she might have been dressed as Grace Kelly, who was now Princess Grace of Monaco. Or perhaps just the fact of the diamonds made her look princess-like. The ‘woman’s touch’ might involve talking to her friends or fellow workers. And yes, Joan could imagine them talking more easily to a woman than a man.

All of this would be easy to prove or disprove once Joan unearthed the paperwork. But it didn’t help with those last lines.

Joan racked her brain, even though her memory was excellent and she knew she wasn’t missing anything. She and the Queen had never discussed a Diana – not in literature or art, nor as a friend or relative of Her Majesty, or of Joan herself. They might easily have done in any of those guises, which was why she felt Her Majesty was clever to use it. If asked, Joan could make up a dozen false explanations without thinking. But they had not done so. She couldn’t have been mistaken about something that never came up.

And why ‘the Diana’, and not just ‘Diana’? Nothing in this note was accidental.

Joan closed her eyes and trusted to her subconscious again, but this time, it had nothing to offer.

Never mind. She tucked the note into her handbag, refreshed her lipstick in the mirror at the basins and went back to her office. On the way, she paused at the low bookshelf in the corridor containing a full, leatherbound set of the latest Encyclopaedia Britannica. She picked out the volume ‘DAMASCUS TO EDUC’ and took it with her. Once back at her desk, she flipped to the page on ‘Diana’ and skimmed through the entries.

It didn’t take long.

One of the descriptions ran ‘in the Roman religion, goddess of wild animals and the hunt, identified with the Greek goddess Artemis’.

There it was. The Artemis Club had been in the newspapers a lot recently. It was regularly mentioned in the Private Office. That would explain the ‘the’ before the name. But she and the Queen had never discussed the Artemis Club either. That was Prince Philip’s domain. He attended often, the newspapers liked to speculate what he and his friends did there, and he had even been there the night of the . . .

Oh God.

He had been there the night of the Chelsea murders, as had the suspects in the case. But he had come back to the palace before the murders were committed. That was what the papers said.

Oh God, oh God.

She wasn’t mistaken. They were.

Joan watched as her skin formed goosebumps. This would call for more than the ‘diplomacy’ the Queen had so lightly mentioned. It was as delicate and dangerous as anything she had done at Bletchley.

She was terrified at the level of trust and responsibility.

And her body thrilled with it.

Chapter 40

The woman in the black silk cocktail dress and matching opera coat looked as if she would be more at home in Mayfair than the run-down streets behind Clapham Common in South London. She was looking for one of the Victorian houses that had long since been converted into flats. When she found the right number, she negotiated the cracked basement steps carefully in her patent heels, dodging the coal sacks and the line of empty milk bottles by the bottom door. She rapped on the knocker and waited.

Eventually, it was opened by a younger blonde, with the bone structure of a movie star and her hair in curlers. She was in the middle of doing her makeup: one lid a perfect cat’s eye, the other bare.

The visitor smiled politely. ‘Are you Beryl? Beryl White?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘I’m here on behalf of a friend.’

The blonde looked the other woman up and down. ‘Oh, you are, are you? Anyway, she’s out. Can I take a message?’

The woman in black knew that she was talking to Beryl herself. The other woman’s inability to lie convincingly had been noted. ‘It’s about Gina,’ she said.

Beryl went rigid with fear and suspicion.

‘Look,’ she said, catching her breath, ‘I don’t know anything about anything, OK? I haven’t talked – I know how to keep my mouth shut.’ She made to shut the door. ‘So, whoever you’re from, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

The woman in black planted her patent shoe firmly inside the door frame. She talked fast and low.

‘I’m not from whoever you think. In the press, everywhere, Gina’s just been “the tart in the tiara”. I think she deserves more, don’t you? I know she does. This . . . person I’m working with thinks they can help. It can’t bring her back, but it might get justice for her.’

Beryl kept up the pressure on the door. ‘Gina’s dead. There’s no justice for girls like her.’

‘Like us,’ the woman in black said. She held Beryl’s gaze.

Beryl seemed surprised and looked her up and down. Suspicion turned to curiosity.

‘Well, there’s no accounting for taste.’

‘I assure you, I work in the highest circles.’

‘Do you, now? So, your “friend” was a friend of Gina’s, too?’ she asked.

‘Like I say, I have friends in high places. So did she.’

The door opened a fraction wider. ‘Come in.’

Joan walked down the small, cold, dark corridor behind Beryl with a mixture of pride and irony. If Tony Radnor-Milne could take her for a woman of easy virtue, then so, it seemed, could one of the star escorts of the Raffles agency. It had its uses.

The flat smelled of damp and fried bacon. They passed a tiny kitchenette that wasn’t much more than a gas ring and a cupboard, and a dining area piled high with boxes and lined with racks of hanging clothes. After these, when Beryl opened the door to the room at the back, it reminded Joan of the attic in A Little Princess.

The bedroom was unexpectedly large, and festooned with colourful silks. It was lit by lamps draped with sari fabric and the walls were a patchwork of pasted pages from fashion magazines. A two-bar fire took off the worst of the chill. Joan perched against a chest of drawers stuffed with towels, clothes and makeup boxes, while Beryl indicated the little bathroom opposite the open door.

‘I’m busy. I’ve got to be out of here in fifteen minutes. But we can talk.’

She worked on her makeup in the bathroom mirror. Joan didn’t mind at all. It was easier to talk if they weren’t facing each other anyway.

‘I already told that stuffed shirt from the police what I know,’ Beryl said. ‘But he didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t. I’m just a tart, aren’t I?’

‘What did you tell him?’ Joan asked. Beryl mustn’t know that she had access to the reports – which by the way included her address, which Joan was absolutely certain she wasn’t allowed to use for encounters like this. If she was ever caught, ‘gross insubordination’ would be the least of it.

‘Well, I made up a little white lie that I had a headache and I asked Gina to stand in for me,’ Beryl admitted. ‘But it was true that she didn’t mind. She wanted to. That policeman had it in his head that I set her up, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t listen.’

‘They never do,’ Joan called out. She was enjoying her new persona. It was liberating.

‘I told him I only went to my sister’s because I was in a panic and missing my friend. He was positive I’d arranged the whole thing on behalf of the Billy Hill gang or something,’ Beryl said. ‘I got the idea that maybe a gang was involved, and they’d come after me. I s’pose just now I thought you were one of them, maybe. But I’ve been thinking. Gina wasn’t mixed up in anything dodgy like that. She wouldn’t. Nor would I. So, that policeman can go hang himself.’

Joan was struck by something Beryl had said earlier. ‘You told him Gina wanted to stand in for you. So it was her idea to swap places?’

Beryl popped her head round the door. The other eye was done now. She looked magnificent.

‘Definitely. She asked, and it was no skin off my nose. I pointed out he needed a blonde, and she said she’d dye her hair. It wasn’t a bad idea. She could make more money that way. Gentlemen prefer them, et cetera.’

‘Don’t they just!’ Joan rolled her eyes.

‘I warned her Perez . . . Rodriguez . . . whoever the papers say he was . . . had a reputation for not being kindly, shall we say? Gina said she knew.’

‘Why did she do it? Choose him, I mean. Did she, um, like that sort of thing?’

The woman in black had a much broader imagination than the original Joan, she realised, to her own surprise. She was developing a persona for herself. ‘Elaine’, who was worldly-wise, well travelled and largely unshockable.

‘What? Are you joking?’ Beryl scoffed. ‘Gina liked champagne and roses. She liked to go dancing. Blokes like him? You grit your teeth and get on with it. Maybe she just wanted to go blonde and this was the start of it. He was some sort of VIP. Not like the posh ones, but he got what he wanted. She was always very ambitious, was Gina. I mean, really ambitious. She wanted to hook a prince or something. She seemed to think she could get one, too.’ Beryl turned back to the bathroom. ‘And look what happened.’ She went back to her bathroom mirror.

‘Weren’t you worried when you didn’t hear from her afterwards?’

‘Of course! I was going spare with it. I called the hotel where they were supposed to go, but they didn’t know anything. I thought he might’ve actually taken her to the Dorchester, and maybe he’d paid for more time with her, but those posh hotels pretend nothing like that would ever happen. Nothing under their snooty roof. They wouldn’t talk to me.’

‘You had no idea she’d gone to Cresswell Place?’

‘Why would I? I didn’t even know she had a key.’

‘Where was she supposed to go?’

‘A cheap place in Earl’s Court. I’m not surprised she changed her mind. She’d been to Cresswell Place before. A few of us had. It was nicer. She’d probably kept the key from back then.’

‘Wouldn’t the agency have noticed?’ Joan asked.

‘I doubt it. We lose keys all the time. They just get replacements made. It’s not a problem.’

Joan pushed from her mind the sympathy for the poor tenants who knew nothing about the free use of their front doors. ‘Elaine’ didn’t care about such details.

‘And it was definitely Gina’s idea to go there, not his?’

Beryl looked in and now her eyelashes were twice as long. Her cheeks were brighter too. ‘I s’pose. If the agency didn’t send them, that brute wouldn’t’ve thought to go. He wasn’t a real VIP, however much he liked to think he was. He got mates rates for some reason, but he was nobody special.’ She disappeared again.

‘Why didn’t you tell the police? About Gina coming to you in the first place? Why say you had a headache?’

‘Because she had a secret, didn’t she?’ Beryl said in slightly muffled tones. ‘Why else would she want to swap for a slimeball like Perez? There was something she didn’t want anyone to know, not even me. I wasn’t going to tell them that.’

‘Why not?’

Beryl snorted derisively. ‘Wouldn’t trust those bedbugs as far as I could throw ’em.’

So the Queen had been right. Women talked to women more easily than they talked to men.

‘I saw the inspector on the news,’ Joan called out, truthfully. ‘He looked all right.’

‘He means well enough, but . . . he’s one of them, isn’t he?’

Beryl popped back again, lipstick done. Her face had more definition, but it had lost a certain softness that Joan actually preferred. She wondered if ‘Elaine’ swung both ways. Goodness.

‘“One of them”?’ she repeated.

‘They make it pretty clear what side they’re on. You go to them ’cause someone’s roughed you up, or not paid up, and next thing you know, you’re the one in the clink. Why bother?’ Beryl shuddered ‘Take that weasel, Willis, he’s a right one.’

‘Willis?’

‘Copper from the Vice Squad. Looks like a Boy Scout. You must know him.’

‘Oh, him!’ Joan said, nodding as if she did.

Beryl warmed to her theme. ‘Makes out he’s like your big brother in public. He’s all, “Can I help you, miss? What seems to be the problem?” And the minute you’re in private, he’s all over you like a wet cloth. He’s got cold fingers and all. Lets you know there’s nothing he couldn’t do to you if he was minded. Evil sod.’

‘Bastards,’ Joan said, with relish.

Beryl shrugged and looked briefly wistful. She started expertly removing the curlers from her hair, untwisting them by feel and depositing them in a heap on the chest of drawers beside Joan.

‘They’re not all like that, to be fair. There’s one I met. Tall bloke. A sergeant, I think. Very kindly-looking, but strong, too. Massive shoulders. I wouldn’t’ve minded him taking care of me.’ She laughed. ‘But his guvnor hardly let him say a word. He was too busy telling me about “dangerous characters” who wanted to cut me up. I was so scared I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t going to get involved. Besides, it was too late for Gina.’ She bit her lip and welled up, reaching for a tissue so she could carefully remove tears before they did any damage.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why? It’s hardly your fault. Anyway, it’s not me you need if you want to know what she was up to. It’s Rita, her flatmate. Best buddies, those two. If anyone knows anything, she would.’

Joan remembered the reference to an interview with the flatmate in Darbishire’s report. It didn’t contain any useful information, other than confirming what Beryl had already told them and adding a little bit about Gina’s background. But it also mentioned that Rita had been arrested twice when the club where she worked was raided, which made Joan wonder how cooperative she would have been.

‘Where would I find her?’ she asked.

Beryl looked at her watch.

‘She’ll be onstage at The Cat’s Pyjamas in a couple of hours. In Soho. She’s a dancer. Rita Gollanz. The best legs in the West End. Say I said hello.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And . . . Bed of Roses,’ Beryl said firmly, peering at Joan again.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’re wearing the wrong lipstick. Bed of Roses by Helena Rubinstein. It’s more subtle, less orange. It’ll suit your hair better. And get someone to show you how to do your eyebrows. If you’re ever this way again, I can.’

Joan grinned. ‘Thanks. I will.’

The Cat’s Pyjamas in Brewer Street was a doorway between a Soho pub and an ice-cream shop, leading down to a dim-lit room where bored-looking girls with beautiful bodies gyrated for tired-looking men nursing their drinks at little tables. The music, provided by a trio consisting of piano, double bass and drums, was surprisingly good. Joan knew she looked out of place as she sat alone at a corner table in her evening dress, drinking bitter lemon. She had half expected to be accosted, but she didn’t even attract a second glance. Given recent experience, she felt safer here than at the Ritz.

‘Rita the Cheetah’ came on as the third act, and did indeed have impressively shapely legs. She danced with rhythm and a sly smile that made her much more popular with the punters than the other girls. Over the course of the number she shed a scarf, a pair of animal-print shorts and a little top, ending up in fishnets and robust black satin underwear.

Outside, Joan waited at the performers’ entrance for her to appear. Under the harsher street lights, Rita’s bright red lipstick and kohl-dark eyes made her look unwell. She was also painfully thin under her cotton jacket. She eyed Joan suspiciously.

‘I saw you inside. What do you want?’

‘Beryl sent me,’ Joan said. ‘I’ve got some questions about Gina if you—’

‘Well, you can sod right off,’ Rita retorted, clacking rapidly down the street in high heels.

Joan chased after her. ‘I’m not from the papers.’

‘That’s what they all say.’

‘I’m . . . I work for one of her gentlemen,’ Joan said. She had been coy about it with Beryl, but ‘Elaine’ was getting more confident.

‘And Beryl sent you?’

‘She said to say hello.’

Rita paused. ‘Look, I’ve got twenty minutes. D’you want to grab a drink? There’s a jazz club that’ll let us in. I know the doorman.’

The club was perfect: busy and loud, making it hard for other customers to hear their conversation. Joan paid for gin-and-it cocktails for them both and they settled into a red velvet banquette together.

Rita narrowed her eyes. ‘Swear you’re not just writing more tosh about those bloody diamonds?’

‘Guide’s honour,’ Joan said, holding up her hand in the salute, with thumb and little finger touching. ‘I promise I’m not wasting your time. My “friend” is somebody influential. A private detective, you might say.’

‘Like Hercule Poirot?’

Joan grinned. ‘If you like.’

‘And he wants justice for Ginette? Ha! That never happens.’

‘It’s worth a try though, isn’t it?’ Joan frowned. ‘Ginette, did you say?’

Rita nodded. ‘Nobody called her that, though, except me. Ginette Fleury, she was, really.’

‘I thought she was Italian.’

‘Most people did,’ Rita said with a shrug, ‘so she went along with it. She was from Normandy, really. But one of her boyfriends called her Gina years ago and she thought it sounded nice. Like Gina Lollobrigida. So, it became her stage name, while she danced. She made out she was from Napoli.’

‘What about the accent?’ Joan asked. ‘Wasn’t it all wrong?’

Rita laughed. ‘You think anyone noticed? In our line of work? She could’ve been Portuguese. It was French, really, very saucy, but she spaghetti’d it up, you might say. You are-a so incred-i-bee-lay. Tee ar-mow. Ginette used to listen to Italian songs and watch their movies. And if she had an Italian gentleman, she’d just say she grew up in France. They didn’t care. As long as she jiggled.’

Joan pictured the sticky, dim-lit stage where Rita had just performed. ‘How did she end up dancing?’

Rita cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘She started dancing. Don’t look at me like that. And don’t pretend you weren’t. How’d you get into it?’

Joan looked as ‘Elaine’ as she could. A hint of Marlene Dietrich. ‘Long story.’

‘Well. Ginette was a very good dancer. She worked hard, and she knew what she wanted.’

‘Which was?’ Joan asked.

‘A leg up. Via whatever means worked.’ Rita gave Joan a knowing look and took a sip of her cocktail. ‘When Raffles said they’d take her, she was made up. It was the next step for her. Meeting classy gentlemen.’

‘Mmm,’ Joan agreed. ‘The money’s better.’

Rita looked unimpressed. ‘It wasn’t the money. She wanted to meet people. Important people. The agency had the best, and she gave them what they wanted.’ She looked down at the table. ‘They were lucky to have her,’ she muttered.

Joan reached across and placed her hand over Rita’s. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ They sat like that, for a while. ‘And yet, she asked for Perez,’ Joan prompted gently. ‘I wouldn’t have said he was classy.’

‘No.’ Rita shook her head. ‘Not from what they said in the papers afterwards. Ginette just said she’d seen this man at the agency when she was popping in to sort out some cash. And she was going to see him again and she needed to dye her hair. I helped her do it.’ Rita looked stricken. ‘If I hadn’t . . .’

‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ Joan soothed. ‘Gina sounds like a very determined lady. Ginette,’ she corrected herself.

‘Short for Genevieve,’ Rita explained. ‘Her sister called her Ginette.’

‘Oh? She had a sister? Is she in London too?’

‘No. She’s dead. Marianne, she was called. She was a Resistance fighter in Paris in the war. She was caught and tortured by the Gestapo. She died in a camp somewhere – I don’t remember the name. One of those . . . you know. People didn’t come back. Ginette was fifteen at the time.’

‘Oh my God. Were they close?’

‘Marianne was like a mother to Ginette. She said there was nothing in Paris for her after that. She came to England as soon as she could find a way.’

‘How?’ Joan asked.

Rita shrugged. ‘I don’t know how, exactly. She didn’t talk about it.’ She gave Joan a sideways look. ‘I should imagine gentlemen were involved, knowing Ginette. She was a grown-up girl. She knew how to look after herself.’

And yet, she hadn’t.

Which brought Joan back to that night in the mews house.

‘Beryl said Gina . . . Ginette . . . asked to swap with her. Do you know why?’

‘No. She seemed excited. Like something really good was going to happen, you know?’

‘How did it show?

‘It was just her mood. When we were dyeing her hair. Sort of feverish, if you know what I mean.’

Joan thought she did. She was reminded of fellow Wrens from her wartime digs again. Sometimes, going to meet a new man, they’d had a certain look about them. It was a heady mixture of anticipation, uncertainty and bravado. They were about to do something they would never get away with in peacetime. Fun, with a hint of danger. But those wartime girls had been going to meet lovers. And Rita had been clear, Rodriguez wasn’t that.

‘Did she talk about him? Rodriguez, I mean? Perez, as he called himself.’

‘No. Just her hair. That it had to be perfectly “princess” and very blonde. She looked a dream.’

‘Did she say where they were meeting?’

‘No, the silly pet. If she’d told me about that mews place, I could’ve told the police as soon as I started to worry. She normally did tell me, too, in case anything went wrong, you know. She’d leave a note next to the kettle. But not this time. The police assumed I was the person who rang up, but it wasn’t me. I kept telling the sergeant who talked to me, but he wasn’t listening.’

‘And what about the diamonds? Do you know why she was wearing those particular ones?’ Joan saw Rita’s eyes narrow. ‘I’m not from the papers, I promise! But I have to ask.’

‘No,’ Rita said harshly. Joan sensed she didn’t want to think of her friend being reduced to the ‘tart in the tiara’. ‘I never saw them. She went on about her hair, and about the dress. It was a beautiful white chiffon thing she found in Debenhams. She looked like a goddess. But her hair was just in a chignon. She never even mentioned diamonds. When I heard about . . . what happened . . . I never thought of Ginette. I was sure it must be someone else . . .’

‘Did she know Lord Seymour?’ Joan asked.

‘N-no,’ Rita said. ‘The copper asked me that too. She didn’t.’

Joan caught her hesitation. ‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘Oh, I am. It’s just that he asked for her once. He went for Jean Harlow types. Really old-fashioned blondes, you know, so she didn’t fit back then, being brunette as she was, but he’d heard good things about Ginette. This is ages ago. Anyway, she said no way. She was very fierce about it when she told me, but laughing too. I don’t know what it was, but she didn’t want anything to do with him. He’s the last person who could’ve given them to her.’

And yet, someone had. And for some reason, Gina – or Ginette – had worn them to an assignation in a place she’d told no one about, with a man she knew to be violent, whom she seemed excited to meet. Joan couldn’t make sense of any of it, but she had a lot to tell Her Majesty.

Chapter 41

Joan’s letter to the Queen was marked ‘Hartnell embroidery: notes for Canadian state visit’ and contained several sketches of maple leaves . . . followed by a detailed account of her conversations with Beryl and Rita. She left out the bit about pretending to be an escort herself. Some things weren’t meant for royal ears, or eyes. But she thought Her Majesty might be amused if she knew.

The Queen tucked the sealed envelope containing the letter into the pocket of her tweed jacket, and announced that she was off to visit her mother’s fishing lodge on the estate.

‘It may well need repairs. I want to give it a thorough inspection,’ she told the page who fetched her wellingtons.

She took three of the corgis with her, loaded into the back of a sturdy Land Rover that she drove herself, headscarf knotted firmly under her chin, with her two protection officers travelling at a respectful distance behind her on the winding, pine-clad road through the estate.

The lodge was built as a log cabin with a long porch along the front, facing a deep, salmon-friendly pool in the river, and it looked as if it would be perfectly at home in Canada, amidst forests, snows and bears. This thought briefly made the Queen wince as she pulled up outside, remembering the live, televised, bilingual speech she had agreed to give there in less than a month. What a fool she had been!

She put on the handbrake and took a deep breath before getting out to let the corgis out of the back. They were thrilled to be in this smorgasbord of new smells and quickly set about examining as many of them as they could. Watching them fondly, the Queen found she was leaning against the Land Rover and was reminded that she had learned to fix the engine of one of these workhorses when she was a teenager at Windsor. She was proud of her achievement then, and still proud now. If she could master a Land Rover, she could certainly say a few words in front of a television camera. It would just take practice and patience, and practice and patience were both things she was good at.

Feeling better, and calling the dogs to her, she had a brief poke around inside the cabin, and then sat down on the porch. Her protection officers had parked their vehicle at a suitable distance and were only just visible through the trees. The sound of doggy snuffles and the splashes of river water running over rocks and stones provided the perfect backdrop for concentration. She took Joan’s letter out of her pocket and read it, undisturbed.

So, Gina was in fact Ginette, and she was the one who set up the assignation at Cresswell Place. Her fellow escort had always said as much, but the policemen never believed her story. The Queen did, especially given the new detail that Ginette might have chosen the dean’s house because she happened to have the key.

The more she looked over the letter, the more she was convinced that Ginette Fleury was not some poor unfortunate, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time: she had wanted to be there. She had made it happen. Just as the Queen suspected, she was at the heart of everything.

Ginette knew that Dino Perez (or Nico Rodriguez, as the more recent police reports referred to him) could be violent, and yet she was excited to meet him. She had gone to the house willingly, and gone to great lengths to be the sort of girl he was looking for. The Queen searched for proof in Joan’s account that this person was Princess Grace, but to her nagging concern, the proof wasn’t there. Beryl White and Rita Gollanz only knew for certain that he had specified ‘a princess’. Having been one herself, and with a sister who was the most famous princess in the world at the moment, the Queen found this disturbing. But something else nagged at her, like a cross-current in the stream.

Despite her concerns, the princess theme, the diamonds, the torn white dress from Debenhams, all felt like distractions – a means to an end. Everyone went on and on about what one wore oneself all the time, but to the Queen, it was just about being appropriate for the occasion. Her favourite outfit was the one she was wearing now: tweed breeches tucked into ancient wellies, a comfortable tweed jacket she’d had since she was twenty-one, and a scarf to keep her hair in check. She’d wear it every day if she could. Her diamonds were precious to her because each piece was a treasure trove of family stories, but in themselves, they were only stones, heavy to wear and difficult to keep clean. Daphne had talked about misdirection. What if the girl was important, but the diamonds weren’t the point? What was the other nagging thing?

The Queen sat quietly for several minutes, listening to the running water. A face was hovering in her mind – an old man’s face, and as she thought about it she saw that it was contorted into fury. And something about Argentina. And . . . Paris.

Ah yes! Paris! Ginette was French, so perhaps that explained it.

But the face she saw was that of the Comte de Longchamp, who had been scowling at the German ambassador that fateful evening at the Louvre. It was a glare of pure hatred – understandable, she thought, given what had happened to his Jewish wife and his family. The war might have ended twelve years ago, but by no means everyone had forgiven and forgotten. Some tragedies were too hard to bear.

Ginette had an older sister who worked in the Resistance, who was captured and tortured by the Nazis, and sent off to a concentration camp. Perhaps it was Ravensbrück, near Berlin. The Queen had heard of many Frenchwomen – and brave women from Great Britain too, sent by the Special Operations Executive to help the Resistance – who had suffered and died there.

What was it about Argentina? Something recent, something connected . . . something she had read not long ago. Then she remembered. It was a top secret memorandum from the Foreign Office, informing her that a senior Nazi officer was known to be living in Buenos Aires, and many others – quite possibly hundreds, or even thousands – were thought to have taken refuge in South America.

Could Rodriguez have been one of these men, who escaped across the Atlantic and reinvented himself?

There was something else . . . He liked to gamble in places like Monaco and Tangier, where French was a common language. Was he a Frenchman, perhaps? One who had worked for the Gestapo? That might explain how Ginette knew him.

If he had tortured Marianne Fleury, and if Ginette had somehow recognised him in London, her desire to see him, to be alone with him somewhere quiet, would make perfect sense.

She would have wanted to kill him.

Perhaps she had tried, and failed. Or did she succeed? Was she the one who used the garotte on him? Was she knifing him in the eye when somebody else came in and . . . what? What happened then? How did Ginette end up a victim too? The Queen couldn’t picture it. She was missing something important.

Anyway, all of this was absolute conjecture, made up of Ginette’s last known movements, her family history, Rodriguez’s reputation for physical violence, a face in the crowd, a secret memorandum in her red boxes and . . . little more.

As she had done in the limousine on the Place de la Concorde, the Queen reflected that she would seem quite unhinged if she shared this half-formed theory with any of the men in moustaches. They would think her mad, and interfering in ways that were quite possibly dangerous to the Constitution. They would want to know why she cared so much in the first place. It wasn’t as if she tried to solve every violent crime in London. And then they would wonder what else had gone on in Cresswell Place that night, and even though she didn’t exactly know herself, that was the last thing she wanted them to think about.

She needed to talk to Joan. And she needed to do it privately and face to face.

It was now the second week of September. They would be back in London in less than a fortnight, at which point Charles was going off to boarding school at Cheam, as his father had done. What a lucky boy, the Queen thought, to be surrounded by pals his own age, running about outside and learning Latin together, not stuck in a stuffy schoolroom, as she had been with her sister, and every heir to the throne before her. She would miss him terribly, and her heart ached at the thought. But then again, she and Philip were off on their next state visits soon, and wouldn’t he have more fun with his new friends than moping about the palace?

Once she’d safely delivered him, she could focus properly on the contents of this letter and decide what to do about it. Another week wouldn’t make much difference, would it, after all these months? She would have to be patient. Which, fortunately, was one of those things she was good at.

Meanwhile, there had been more to her original instructions to her APS. Had Joan understood the reference to Diana? It was rather recherché. Joan hadn’t mentioned any progress in that sensitive direction in her letter. As the Queen got up and dusted off her breeches, she wondered how she was getting on.

Chapter 42

Standing at the end of the little cobbled street, Joan could see why the Dean of Bath might have chosen Cresswell Place for his London pad. Given what had happened there, she had pictured the mews as somewhere gloomy and unsettling, but in the late summer sun, it looked like one of the jolliest streets in London.

The low rows of houses were the colours of sugared almonds, except for a few that were hung with red tiles. Joan liked the look of these the best. They were slightly larger than the others. One had a pair of new-ish windows set into its roof and, glancing up and shielding her eyes from the sun, she wondered who had put them there. For an instant, she thought she saw the figure of someone behind the glass, looking down on her. She realised she might seem rude for staring, and looked away.

She was here to see if she could make any more sense of the witness reports from the police file. The Queen had said she wanted ‘D’ to make progress in Chelsea. Having read the reports, which she had fished out of a cabinet in the Private Office filing room, Joan didn’t think that Inspector Darbishire was particularly slow. Nevertheless, he was stumped, and had been for months. Despite all the male victim’s nefarious activities, there was still no evidence of anyone entering the house other than the victims themselves, the dean and his friends; and Darbishire was still convinced none of them could have done it. Nor did he have a robust theory that threw a spotlight on Lord Seymour, or one of the London gangsters on his list.

Joan had the feeling of anyone coming fresh to an inquiry that her quick mind might solve the case. She looked for the house numbers. Number 44, the dean’s house, looked unremarkable but rather sad. The curtains were drawn at the dusty windows. A little bay tree in a pot outside was brown and dead. The dean, presumably, didn’t want to live there any more and the landlords must have decided not to try and find anyone else. Darbishire still hadn’t managed to find out who owned the building, exactly. He had the company name, but had made no progress on who owned the company.

Number 43, by contrast, was bright and clean, with open windows, fresh gingham curtains and a young rose plant being trained around the door. It had lain empty back in March, but it was cheerfully occupied now. To its right was the house where Mrs Pinder and her husband had been living. A witness further down the street had guessed that the supposed gunshot might have come from here, or the once empty house beside it.

Joan couldn’t tell if the Pinders were still in residence at number 42. A large Rover saloon was parked in front of it, obscuring much of the view. Darbishire’s report mentioned that there had been a falling-out with the academics who lived opposite at number 22, but gave no reason for it. Joan turned to see that this was the red-tiled house with the new-ish windows. The academics had left, according to the report, but someone was in there now. Meanwhile, the house to the right of that one, where the suspicious ‘Gregsons’ had lived, sat with windows and front door wide open. The ground floor had been gutted and a pair of plasterers were working on the inside, whistling loudly.

A low-slung Jaguar sports car came rumbling up the street and Joan stood out of the way to let it go by. She took one more look at all the houses, waiting to see if she could spot what the police had missed, but right now, the mews looked an impossible place for murder.

A walk around the nearby stucco villas of the Boltons taught her only that this was where she would want to live if she ever married a very, very rich man, and that it would be easy to escape from their gardens into the lovely square where she was standing via one of the side passages that ran from front to back.

Yes, getting away wouldn’t have been particularly difficult for whoever had done it. It was getting in that was the trouble.

Back at home, Joan considered her next task, which was to find out about what really happened at the Artemis Club. She felt disloyal doing it, but knew that the Queen wouldn’t have asked unless she was absolutely certain it needed to be done. Presumably, if Prince Philip hadn’t come home from the club when he claimed, the Queen must have known this for months. Joan had a strong feeling Her Majesty needed an innocent explanation. But what if she couldn’t provide one?

She would cross that bridge when she came to it. First, she had to find someone who would talk. She spent several days researching the club as discreetly as she could, collecting various items that Auntie Eva had sourced for her from a theatrical costumier friend, and watching the staff going in and out of the back entrance after dark.

The following Saturday, under glowering skies over Piccadilly, a forgettable pot-washer showed up with mud-brown hair, thick glasses and hands rubbed red raw from washing dishes. She entered the club at seven thirty behind a couple of sous-chefs, back from a ciggie break, wound her way up the sticky, badly lit servants’ stairs, and found the manager’s office without too much trouble.

‘The agency sent me,’ she said, staring down at the cracked lino floor. The club rooms, she imagined, were lavishly carpeted and lit with crystal lamps, but here, every expense was spared.

‘What? Trumptons? Just now? Why?’

The harried manager barely looked up from the paperwork he was doing.

‘I dunno why,’ Joan said. ‘Only that you were three down and could I make it, sharpish, time and a half?’

The manager looked up properly at this. ‘Ha! Time and a half? You must be joking. We’re two down, not three, but . . . Normal agency wages. Tonight and tomorrow, yes? Give your name to Mr Holland in Accounts. No going past the baize door.’ This suited Joan. ‘You know where the aprons are?’

‘I’ll manage,’ she said.

She shut the office door and looked down the dingy corridor towards the sound of shouting and clanging pans coming from the club kitchen. She had no idea where the aprons were, but she would work it out. At the palace, they were always having trouble finding enough kitchen staff for big occasions. Joan had rightly guessed that on a Saturday night the club would be keen for whatever help it could get. And it would give her sore hands (she had rubbed salt into them at length) the weekend to recover. In the school holidays, she had occasionally helped out in the college kitchens at Cambridge. It was hot, busy, hard-going and thankless work: ideal for her purposes.

She headed down the corridor and into the kitchen.

‘I’m ’ere from the agency,’ she said again, in her best Cockney accent.

A tall, aggressive-looking man in chef’s whites looked at her through a gap in several piles of unwashed plates.

‘Thank God.’

He gestured towards a door that turned out to be the cupboard with the aprons. Joan put one on, wrapped her hair in a scarf and set to work, humming cheerfully to herself. The pressure-cooker atmosphere of the kitchen at peak service time took her back to her days in Cambridge. Soon she had reduced the teetering piles of dirty plates to neat stacks of clean ones, ready to go. She was quick at buffing glasses to a shine and good at taking on new greasy piles without complaint. The chefs de partie and even the front of house manager were grateful for her ability to get on with things without making a fuss.

Joan felt no need to ask questions at this point. As the evening wore on and service slowed a little, she joined in whatever kitchen chat there was. Her job tonight was all about teamwork, being amenable, suggesting she had a bit of money in her pocket and making friends.

Towards the end of service, when they were all looking forward to clearing up and clearing out, a harried house manager pointed at her.

‘You – wassyourname?’

‘Jennie, sir. Can I help?’

‘You certainly can. There’s been an incident outside the second floor lavatories. Somebody overindulged. Massive spew, all over the floor tiles. He didn’t make it to the porcelain in time. I’ve got Frank on it, but he needs a hand. Grab a mop and bucket and—’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. Get on it, woman!’

‘I’m not supposed to go beyond the—’

‘Now! I’m not asking!’

She didn’t have a choice. She found the required equipment, filled the bucket with hot water and asked one of the waitresses in the corridor where to go. With her backside, she pushed at the heavy baize door, insulated against the noise of the busy kitchen, that marked the entry to the carpeted quiet of the members’ side of the club. She hadn’t expected to come this far, but as long as she kept her head down, it couldn’t do any harm.

Upstairs, the scene that met her was disgusting. The smell of it assaulted her from several feet away. Her stomach lurched. Frank, one of the dogsbodies like her, was doing his best, but he clearly needed help.

‘Do what you can,’ he said gratefully. ‘I’ll get another bucket.’

He disappeared upstairs, where Joan assumed there must be a service cupboard with access to running water. Sure enough, he came down a couple of minutes later, his bucket freshly filled, just as she needed fresh water of her own.

She took her bucket to the top of the third floor stairs and glanced around to find the cupboard. It wasn’t easy in the dim light. There were two figures in evening dress, deep in conversation at the end of the corridor, slightly silhouetted by a Lalique lamp behind them. Joan started down the corridor trying each door in turn, hoping to find the door before she reached them, and not to put them off with the stinking contents of her bucket.

But before she found it, the taller of the two looked round with a wrinkle of nausea on his face.

‘I’m sorry, sir!’ Joan called out.

He continued to stare at her. She indicated the doors.

‘I’m just looking for . . .’ Oh.

She managed not to say the last word aloud.

The tall man looking at her was Tony Radnor-Milne. Dammit! Of all the people! Her wig was not a world-class disguise, because she had fully expected to stay on the servants’ side of the baize door. Her bare-faced look was designed to stand up to the scrutiny of strangers, not men she had spent a long and traumatic evening with. But the corridor was dim and this was the last place he’d expect to see her. For the second time, she beat a quick retreat from his company.

‘Excuse me,’ she muttered, heading swiftly back the way she’d come. She went all the way back to the kitchen and left poor Frank to finish the mopping on his own.

A couple of hours later, Joan left with the last of the staff. While mucking in with the dirty jobs, she had nevertheless let it be known to Frank and others that she was a little bit unusual for an agency temp: a bit older, with a nice wage as a shopgirl, just doing this for extra pin money. So when she said afterwards that she was stopping off at the café on the corner – one that stayed open all day and night to cater for people like them who worked all hours to be at the disposal of the toffs – Frank half-jokingly asked if she’d be paying. She assured him she was. Instantly a tired sous-chef and two waitresses showed eager interest. Joan bought a round of tea and toast with margarine for everyone.

They’d been through a long, hard Saturday night together, which formed bonds that might not last long, but felt real enough right now. There was plenty of sympathy for Joan, Frank and the ‘sea of sick’ outside the lavatory, and much gossip about the stripper who had allegedly been brought in for a private birthday party on the second floor, although none of those present had actually seen her. Joan let the conversation run its course before she glanced across the street and said,

‘Ooh, the Reform Club. I was working there the night of those murders. Could ’ave sworn I’d seen that man, wot’s ’is name? Perez—’

‘No, Rodriguez, they say it is now,’ the sous-chef said.

‘Oh, is it? ’Im, then. I could’ve sworn I’d seen ’im at the club the night before. Sworn blind. Gave me the shivers.’

‘Not that you can really tell, I suppose,’ the waitress sitting opposite her said, ‘when he’d had his throat cut and a knife in his eye.’

‘Well, no,’ Joan agreed. ‘But there were the pictures of ’im before, you know. ’E looked exactly like this gentleman I saw in the street outside. Right there. ’Ave they found who did it yet? I ’aven’t seen anything.’

‘No, they ’aven’t,’ Frank said gloomily. ‘And they won’t. One of ’is criminal associates, no doubt. Fled the country. Surprised they’re still bothered looking.’

A thought seemed to strike Joan. ‘Oo! Weren’t you lot in the papers too? The club, I mean. Wasn’t it some of your members that probably did it?’

‘They couldn’t have,’ the waitress beside Joan said with a shrug. ‘The police don’t seem to think so, anyway. Nobody was arrested. They’ve all been in since.’

Joan lowered her voice. ‘But do you think . . . ?’ she asked, eyes wide. ‘I mean, between us, did one of them . . . ?’

‘No!’ the first waitress responded firmly. ‘I mean, there’s a few I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them, fair enough, but I know all those three, and the dean too, and if anyone thinks they could have stabbed a man in the eye, they need their head examined.’

Joan kept her voice low, and her eyes as wide as they’d go, as if she was a fiend for gossip. ‘I heard a rumour. That same night . . .’ She let the line dangle in the air. If she was right, they’d all know what she was referring to. But she didn’t want to be the one to say it.

The first waitress sighed. ‘Oh, that! Give it up! That’s old hat now. You mean the D of E?’

‘Shh!’ the sous-chef said, obviously worried about even this subtle reference to the Duke of Edinburgh. He raised a hand to his lips, but the waitress beside him batted it away.

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Bill. We all know what he was up to.’ She rolled her eyes towards her female friend, who rolled them back.

‘No! What?’ Joan said breathily, leaning forward.

‘Shh!’ the sous-chef said again, drawing more attention to them as a group than anything else he could have done. But nevertheless, they all instinctively drew together across the table. They kept their voices down and spoke quickly, talking over each other.

‘It’s only a rumour.’

‘No, it isn’t! I saw it with my own eyes.’

‘You did not!’

‘Well, I heard it from Abel, who was right there on the street, putting the empties in the bins.’

‘And what did ’e say?’

‘He saw the coppers coming back round, circling, trying to see where the hell the duke was. They did it for twenty minutes.’

‘Was Abel out there all that time?’

‘No, he saw them the first time, and Jake or someone saw them twenty minutes later. Abel fell about laughing when he heard. Good on the duke! Job well done!’

‘Hmph.’ The women folded their arms in disapproval.

‘What job?’ Joan asked.

‘Giving his security the slip, of course,’ Frank said. ‘Not the first time. He ’ates having them looking over his shoulder all the time. One minute ’e was in the lobby, calling loudly for his coat, and the next ’e was . . .’ He imitated a puff of smoke with his hand. ‘Pouf. Ha!’

‘How?’ Joan asked.

‘With one of his friends,’ the sous-chef explained. ‘He’d parked his car round the corner. Prin— the D of E slipped out down our back stairs and roared off into the night with him. The security coppers were left standing outside the front door, looking like lemons.’

‘And where did he go with his friend?’ Joan asked.

Four pairs of eyebrows were raised sceptically at her.

‘Where d’you think?’

She shrugged.

‘Who knows?’ the waitress beside Joan said. ‘Somewhere he didn’t want to be seen in public, anyway.’

‘And nobody told the police about it?’

‘Why would they?’

The sceptical expressions turned to puzzled frowns. Joan had an answer, which was that Prince Philip had disappeared the night of the murders, and wasn’t where he said he was. She certainly wasn’t going to say that aloud though.

‘I dunno,’ she offered instead, with a smile and a shrug.

The others looked serious. It was interesting how they were working as a unit suddenly, even though the men and women obviously felt differently about the getaway, as those folded arms still showed.

‘What he does is his business,’ the waitress opposite said fiercely.

‘We’d never breathe a word,’ said her friend, looking shocked at the very idea of it.

The others nodded. Joan could tell from their pointed gaze and the pause that followed that they expected something from her.

‘Oh, right. Me too, Scout’s honour,’ she said, thinking they little knew how dependable she was. With one exception. And what on earth would they think if they knew who she intended to share their secret with?

She spent Sunday relaxing in the flat and rubbing her hands with Pond’s Cold Cream to get rid of the worst of the redness. On Monday morning, she got ready for the office while trying to work out the wording of her message to the Queen. Joan could see why Her Majesty was anxious: not only did Prince Philip not really have an alibi for the night, but a worryingly large number of people knew about it. Despite their protestations of loyalty, surely it was only a matter of time before somebody talked to someone in the press. And then . . .

It was a cold, damp day with a hint of autumn in it. Joan unearthed a heavy waterproof coat she hadn’t used since May and armed herself with an umbrella, just in case. Outside, the streets still shone from an overnight downpour. Schoolchildren filed along the streets in their fresh September uniforms. Avoiding puddles, she left Dolphin Square, crossed over Lupus Street into the heart of Pimlico, and headed towards Warwick Square.

Just as she reached the corner with Denbigh Street and started to cross, a black van came careering round the square at high speed. Joan spotted it just in time and stepped back towards the pavement to get out of its way. And yet, in slow motion, still it seemed to come towards her. Suddenly it was filling her vision and she could see it was going to hit her fair and square. There was something missing . . . something she should have . . . She was shocked and still trying hopelessly to avoid it when she felt a thump in her side. It knocked her clean off her feet and her head was about to hit the cold, hard ground. She flung out her left arm to save herself, hoping that her hat might somehow cushion her skull.

Then there was an almighty crack and the world went dark.

Chapter 43

‘Where is she now?’ the Queen asked faintly.

‘In bed, ma’am. With concussion,’ Miles Urquhart explained.

‘And Sir Hugh telephoned you just now?’

‘He did. I don’t have all the details. It was a terrible accident. Wet road . . . hard to stop. I’m not sure she looked before she tried to cross.’

‘Do they know who did it?’

The DPS saw that Her Majesty looked white as a sheet. But it wasn’t as if the girl was dead. Just a broken wrist and a sore head. Urquhart sought to be reassuring.

‘I don’t think so, ma’am. As I say, it was an accident. But a very helpful passer-by saw what happened and took her to hospital in a cab. She’s at St George’s, but she should be out tomorrow.’

‘I . . . Goodness me.’

The Queen was normally good with bad news, Urquhart reflected. She generally took it better than some men, remarkably. But not today.

‘She’ll be right as rain in no time,’ he added cheerfully. ‘And I’m sure we’ll manage without her. We did before. Fiona may be ready to come back soon . . .’

He saw Her Majesty frown. The Queen liked this new girl, for some reason. Even if she couldn’t cross a road without mucking it up.

‘Thank you, Miles. Let me know if you hear anything else, will you?’

He had done what he could. Urquhart bowed and left.

Alone in her study at Balmoral, the Queen felt a pang of guilt so sharp it was as if someone had stabbed her. She went to the window and put a hand against the cool glass, waiting while it subsided.

She had sent Joan that note. She had made it clear the job might be difficult, and she knew it might even be dangerous, but she had never imagined they would go so far – whoever they were. Now, here she was, five hundred miles away and Joan could have died, and she was powerless to do anything about it. The more Urquhart assured her it was an accident, the more she felt certain that it wasn’t.

Joan’s head hurt like hell. She felt woozy, and dizzy whenever she opened her right eye enough to see out of it. A hank of hair obscured the view from her left eye. When she tried to lift her hand to push the hair away, she found it unaccountably heavy. When she looked down, the plaster cast on her left wrist caught her by surprise. She knew it was there, but kept forgetting.

‘Nurse!’ she called croakily. ‘Nurse!’

The door opened and a head popped round. A male head, with short hair. She could hardly see him through her double vision.

‘Please could you get someone to find my painkillers, doctor? I have a god-awful headache.’

‘And you’re blind!’ he said, in a Scottish burr.

There was a hint of humour in his voice. He didn’t mean she was really blind. She knew that voice.

‘Hector!’

‘You’re not in St George’s now, remember? You came home three hours ago. Your pills are on the side table, here.’ He pointed somewhere, but she couldn’t pay attention. ‘Don’t take them all at once.’

‘No . . . I . . .’

He saw how out of it she was and took pity on her.

‘Look, here you go.’

She took two pills from his proffered hand and he passed her a glass of water.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she mumbled.

‘Ha! So you don’t know where you are, you can’t see through that shiner on your eye, but you’re worried about my job at the ministry.’

‘It’s not the ministry,’ she said, closing her eyes. That much she knew.

‘Yes it is,’ he insisted.

She was quiet for a while, letting her closed eyes rest, but she didn’t hear the sound of him leaving her room. He was hovering.

‘There was a van,’ she said eventually. ‘Something . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Something not . . . something missing. I—’

‘Yes? What?’

He sounded genuinely concerned, not as if she was going mad. Joan tried to remember her last thoughts before she blacked out. The walk came back to her in shards and fragments. Crossing Lupus Street. The trees in Warwick Square ahead of her. The clouds overhead. Her hat. The road rising up to meet her . . . She jerked up, opened her eyes and winced.

‘There, there,’ that gentle Scottish burr intoned. ‘Take it easy, girl.’

But she wanted to remember – not all of it – but the bit that had confused her. There was something wrong . . . something that made her frightened . . . And then something else didn’t make sense. Too much.

‘They said I was hit by a van,’ she said, ‘in hospital.’

‘Mmm,’ Hector agreed.

But no. She remembered now, being thumped from the side, like a rough hockey tackle. When it should have been head-on.

‘I was on the street . . . and the van was . . .’ She closed her eyes at the flash of memory. ‘And someone pushed me out of the way. Didn’t they? I don’t see how I could have . . . The van was . . .’

‘Did they?’ Hector asked. ‘I don’t know about that. How very fortunate.’

‘The person who came with me, to hospital. The nurses said they didn’t leave their name.’

‘Good Samaritans like to be anonymous.’

‘I suppose . . .’ Joan mumbled groggily.

‘Go to sleep, girl,’ he encouraged, leaning over her to adjust her pillows.

It seemed a good idea, so she did.

Joan’s sleep was fitful, plagued by nightmares and disturbed by headaches. Her arm ached too, and her back and thighs. When she needed the lavatory, she had to stagger to the bathroom. She would have crawled but for her broken wrist. She lost another day to pain and confusion. But by evening, she was starting to feel less lost and brittle.

She was aware that Hector had been there for some of the time, tempting her with thin broth and cups of tea. He had even given her his arm to lean on when she decided she was well enough to sit in the living room – and again when she felt woozy and agreed that perhaps, after all, she wasn’t.

When he wasn’t popping his head round the bedroom door to check on her, she could hear him padding round the flat. His presence was reassuring, if surprising. It wasn’t the weekend, was it? Meanwhile, as the fuzziness in her brain slowly receded, she worked on putting together what had happened.

A van had come speeding towards her. By extraordinary good fortune, someone had pushed her out of the way, just in time. Somehow – she couldn’t imagine how – they had avoided being hit themselves. They had taken her to hospital and quietly disappeared. She remembered a lightning bolt of pain in her wrist as she put her hand out to protect her head from the worst of the fall.

The pain had distracted her from something. Not something that was there, but something that wasn’t . . .

She thought about the van again, though she really didn’t want to, and tried to picture the situation from above. It was a technique they had taught at Trent Park. She saw herself standing at the corner of the square and starting to cross the road, the van appearing from nowhere and heading for her, almost as if it was deliberate. No, not from nowhere. If she had paid attention, she might have seen it coming down the long side of the square, but she would never have imagined it to be travelling so fast. If the driver had been paying attention, he should have seen her too, but he obviously didn’t, because . . .

Because . . . why? Why was she so sure he didn’t?

Because she didn’t hear the brakes.

Yes! That was what was missing as the van’s metal grille blocked out the light, in the moments before she was shoved out of its path. There should have been the shocking squeal of brake pads and the hiss of tyres trying to grip the slick, wet road, but the engine noise didn’t change.

He was heading straight for her. He meant to do it. He could easily have killed her if it wasn’t for her Good Samaritan.

Joan juddered at the thought.

Oh, God. Her poor father. He’d never have got over it. And what about Her Majesty, if something had happened? Who else could she turn to? Joan had so much to tell her, not that all of it made sense at the moment. But if the driver had come for her once, he could do it again. She suddenly wondered what would happen if she didn’t get the chance.

Hector Ross had been moving quietly round the flat, trying not to disturb his tenant while she slept. He was good at being quiet and unobtrusive. He’d had a lot of practice. However, when he put his head around the door an hour later, he found her sitting on the bed, half dressed, struggling to put on a shoe one-handed, and making a bad job of it.

‘What are you doing, girl?’ he berated her. ‘You can’t leave the flat! You need to rest! Och, your brain’s gone completely doolally. Here, let me help you put your feet up.’

Joan put her good arm out to send him back. ‘No! I need to go.’

‘You really can’t! You won’t last ten minutes. Honestly, Joan, trust me. I wish you would.’

She sat there, pink in the face from the effort and regarding him fiercely.

‘I have to get to my desk. There are things I need to do. I may not have much time . . .’

That knock to her head was worse than he thought. She was being silly. He folded his arms. ‘Don’t be so dramatic. I won’t let you go.’

‘You can’t keep me here!’

‘I will if I have to.’

‘Look!’ she said, rising to stand, swaying, and sitting back down, hard. ‘I was nearly killed. Maybe you don’t take it seriously, but don’t tell me not to be dramatic.’

He put his hands up. ‘I know. You’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry. But someone needs to take care of you at the moment. I . . . What?’

Joan’s glare had become a puzzled frown. There was a spark of suspicion in her lovely, intelligent hazel eyes. Hector realised he’d made a rare mistake, but these were emotional times. He hadn’t slept much recently.

‘I told you I was nearly killed,’ she said slowly, ‘and you said, “I know.”’

‘Well, of course you were!’ he expostulated. ‘A van nearly ran you over.’

‘You said it was an accident.’

‘Exactly.’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t . . .’ She was staring at him again. ‘And I don’t think you think so, either.’

Her lips were tight. He should have told her not to be silly. The trouble was, he agreed with her and he hadn’t thought she’d work it out so quickly, if at all. She had caught him off guard.

The frown line between her eyebrows deepened.

‘What do you know, Hector?’

‘Nothing!’ he protested, with a well-practised look of innocence that didn’t seem to assuage her at all.

‘Were you there? No. Did someone call in? Were you having me followed?’

‘Of course not! I’m not some sort of mad obsessive, Joan. I’m just your concerned landlord, that’s all. And I’m worried about those pills of yours. Perhaps you ought to halve the dose.’

Her voice was cold.

‘What do you know?’ she repeated.

‘What is there to know?’

She shook her head and winced at the pain of it, and it was worse than the coldness because now there were tears in her eyes.

Her voice broke as she said, ‘Stop lying, please. I don’t have the energy. Someone’s trying to kill me, and you know it. And you know about the suitcase. I saw you glance at it just now. And I know about the Secret Service. Or, what do you call it?’ She frowned, trying to remember the official name that was rarely spoken. ‘MI5. So cut the bullshit, Hector. Did you have me followed?’

He sighed. This hadn’t gone the way he expected at all. He should be the one asking questions.

‘I’ll bring you a tray,’ he offered. ‘I’ve been warming up some soup.’

Chapter 44

There was more than soup. To Hector’s frank amazement, a footman had delivered a hamper from the palace that morning, containing two large Thermos flasks of cock-a-leekie, a loaf of fresh bread, a glass jar filled with handmade chocolates and a box of heather-scented shortbread. There was also a large bouquet of tasteful white flowers from the Queen’s favoured florist, and a handwritten note in calligraphic script, saying ‘Get well soon’.

Hector showed Joan the message and put the flowers, roughly arranged in a water jug, among the scattered kirby grips and photograph frames on her nightstand. He plumped her pillows and put the soup tray on her lap. She seemed somewhat mollified, but not as much as he had hoped.

‘Somebody is concerned about you,’ he observed. ‘Do you recognise the handwriting?’

She looked at the note blankly and shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Not Sir Hugh, then? I wondered.’

She raised half an eyebrow. ‘Not him. A clerk, I think.’

She knew he was fishing, and she wasn’t giving anything away, this girl. Hmm. He badly needed information from her, but even in her weakened state, it wasn’t going to be easy to get her to talk.

‘Come on, girl, eat.’

Joan did as she was told. He had tried the soup and knew it was perfectly seasoned and quite delicious. Goodness knew, she needed it. In a brief pause between spoonfuls, she looked up at where he stood between the nightstand and the doorway and said flatly, ‘So, you had me followed.’

She was understandably miffed.

‘You may think that,’ he said, ‘but you’ve been in a serious accident. I’m not surprised your brain’s all over the place. And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident. But who on earth would want to hurt you? I don’t understand.’

Joan didn’t even look at him. She finished the soup, ate some of the bread, put the tray to one side, and said, ‘No.’

‘No, what?’

‘No, I’m not answering your questions until you answer mine.’

‘I’m only trying to help.’

Joan closed her eyes and settled back against her pillows.

‘Shut the door on your way out.’

Dammit. If only her brain was all over the place. He needed to know who had targeted her. It mattered for her own safety as much as anything else. And yet she wouldn’t cooperate. Hector could understand why not: she didn’t approve of being tailed.

‘Even if you were followed, I could never admit it,’ he offered. It was the best he could do. Surely she could understand?

Joan opened one eye.

‘Why?’

‘Why can’t I admit it?’

‘Why did you have me followed?’

This was very delicate. ‘You have to trust me. There’s only so much I can say.’

He saw her hackles rise as the other eye opened.

‘Trust you?’ she retorted. ‘You’re spying on me. You think I’m some sort of enemy agent . . .’

‘I promise you, it’s not—’

There were practically sparks coming off her now. ‘You had no right to do this, Major Ross!’

‘I assure you, it was for your own g—’

‘Get out!’

She found a small, embroidered cushion on the bed and flung it at him with force.

Hector withstood the cushion, but not her fury and refusal to cooperate. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get anything out of her if he kept feigning innocence. Besides, the whole situation was so odd he really didn’t know quite how to handle it. Hostile forces and deep-cover sleeper agents he could manage, but complicated women in sensitive positions who suddenly started dressing up . . .

‘I don’t think you’re an enemy agent,’ he said quietly. ‘You were seen somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. Questions were raised. The simplest thing was to get someone to check what you were up to. He had no idea he’d end up saving your life.’

Joan glared at him furiously. ‘He was tracking me! Don’t make it sound as if I should be grateful!’

Hector shrugged. ‘When he started following you, it was more out of curiosity than anything. But you must admit, a junior secretary at the palace who hides wigs in a suitcase and dresses up as a little old lady in the ladies’ lavatories at Victoria Station . . .’

‘What do you mean, “junior secretary”?’ Joan cut in. ‘I’m Her Majesty’s assistant private secretary! It’s a totally different thing!’

Hector sighed. This perhaps hadn’t been the moment for a throwaway remark. It wasn’t at all relevant to what they were talking about.

‘Ignore me.’

‘No! What do you mean?’

It was a detail, but he sensed he’d get nothing out of her if he kept on avoiding her questions. And this one was at least easy to answer. He held up his hands. ‘Your new title may be a different thing, but one wouldn’t know. You look like a typist, you go to every length to be treated as one, and then you’re angry when you are.’

‘No, I don’t!’

‘You wear dowdy serge suits and sensible shoes.’ He’d been brooding on this for a while. ‘You have a typewriter on your desk, for God’s sake! You told me so yourself. You type up memos and do the filing. You take work from the real secretaries and are surprised when they treat you with suspicion. No wonder they’re confused. I would be.’

‘I . . . I’m just . . .’ Joan struggled for words, and he saw how white-faced she was again. She was still in physical pain, which he’d forgotten momentarily, and he suddenly felt an absolute heel.

‘Anyway, that’s beside the point,’ he amended. ‘The fact is, you work with classified information, and you’re currently running around London in fancy dress, and going to highly sensitive places. Who are you doing it for? And who—’ he was relieved to come back to the nub of the issue at last ‘—is trying to kill you?’

Joan looked dazed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, quiet again. She shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

Finally. At least they could have a proper conversation.

‘What were you doing at the Artemis Club?’ he asked more gently.

She gave him a sardonic smile. ‘If I was doing something I shouldn’t, I couldn’t possibly admit it.’

Touché.

‘Who are you working for?’

She raised an eyebrow, gathering her forces. ‘Well, officially it’s the Queen.’

He waved her response away. ‘Yes, we know that, but who really? Who asked you to go to the club?’

Joan smiled. ‘You have to trust me. There’s only so much I can say.’

Hector reluctantly admired her loyalty. Whoever she was protecting, it was someone important. Someone in a hole.

‘The part about where someone tried to kill you . . .’ he reminded her. ‘You really do have to trust me a little too.’

She regarded him for a long time, thinking.

‘All right,’ she said at last, ‘there’s an individual at the palace who’s concerned about what happened on the night of the Chelsea murders. I was trying to find out what the staff at the Artemis knew, but it didn’t amount to much.’

‘You mean what they knew about the movements of the suspects?’

‘Yes.’

‘And another individual?’ he suggested. It was starting to make sense now.

‘I can’t say.’ Her frank stare was a silent admission.

Hector sighed. Was that all? ‘It doesn’t explain why—’

‘I know!’ she said, interrupting him. ‘I mean, I didn’t find out anything more than you must already be aware of. The staff were bandying it about pretty freely. Why go for me the next day? Why not any of them? I assume they haven’t been threatened?’

‘Not to my knowledge, no,’ Hector agreed. ‘There must be something else.’

Joan put a hand over her eyes. He was about to ask her another question, but she motioned him away. It wasn’t rude this time: he could tell she was thinking. So he fussed around her quietly, removing the soup tray and straightening her blankets. He was as invested in her progress as she was.

Meanwhile, it was a relief to know that at least one of the young Queen’s courtiers was looking out for Her Majesty’s best interests. She was right about him working for MI5. It would make his own job a bit more difficult if there was to be interference from the palace, but Hector had been deeply worried for some time about a huge potential royal scandal and it did not bode well that nobody in the Queen’s close circle seemed to be aware of it. Now he knew better. Joan might not admit who it was, but Hector had a couple of likely candidates in mind.

He dumped the tray in the kitchen. On his return, Joan looked up and said, ‘There was one thing. I saw Tony.’

‘Radnor-Milne?’

‘Yes, in a corridor at the top of the club. I didn’t think much of it. He’s a member of the Artemis, I assume, so I wasn’t surprised to see him – just worried that he’d recognise me.’

‘And did he?’

‘I wasn’t sure, but I think he did. That must have been a bit of a surprise.’

‘No doubt,’ Hector agreed. ‘Who was he with?’

Joan cocked her head. ‘That’s the interesting thing. I paid no attention at the time. I was focusing on Tony. But it was the Duke of Maidstone.’

‘That idiot?’ Hector was astonished – not that the duke would be there, but that Joan seeing him there could have had such consequences. ‘How d’you know him?’

‘I don’t, really,’ Joan said. ‘I happened to meet him a couple of times in the war, because we used the dower house of his home as accommodation when I was training for . . . something I was doing at the time.’

That would have been her work at Trent Park, Hector surmised. She didn’t know he knew about that, but he had requisitioned her file from the palace after he recognised her from Longmeadow Hall. He was surprised they had employed her after that blot on her copybook, but Sir Hugh was obviously more liberal and forgiving than his stiff military bearing suggested.

Hector didn’t press for confirmation about Trent Park. He liked Joan’s tendency to give away no more than was strictly necessary – even now, with her life in danger. He liked a lot about Miss Joan McGraw, he admitted ruefully to himself. He would sleep well at last tonight, knowing she was here, safe, and would start worrying as soon as she left Dolphin Square again, knowing that she wasn’t.

‘You’re certain it was Maidstone?’ he asked. ‘The light would have been dim.’

‘It was, but I am,’ she said.

‘They were in private conversation?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did they react when they saw you?’

‘Only Tony really looked at me. He seemed, confused. I turned away quickly and didn’t see what he did afterwards.’

‘Do you have any idea what they were talking about?’

‘Absolutely none. Honestly.’

He believed her.

‘Well, if you or your mysterious partner in crime come up with any conclusions, let me know.’

She nodded.

‘I take it you’ll be going to the office tomorrow,’ he added.

‘Of course. I must.’

He sighed. ‘I’ll order you a taxi. Only get in if the driver mentions my name.’

This time, she agreed without creating difficulties.

Chapter 45

The Joan McGraw who got into the taxi the following morning did not resemble the one who had come home from the palace the week before in several ways. First, her arm was in a sling, which was perhaps the most obvious thing, but also, her lipstick was a stronger shade. Her hair was styled loose in careful waves; soon she would have it cut in a more flattering style. Her shoes were patent courts with a noticeable heel. The skirt suit she wore was her Sunday best. As soon as she could commission her aunt to make a couple more, in the style of Pierre Balmain, she would, and possibly some belted dresses to show off her waist . . .

Joan had always thought of women at work who dressed to impress as flirts. However, she had also seen, without really paying attention, that the women who reached senior positions in the Wrens were happy to stand out from the other ranks. She liked it when they did; she had just never thought of herself as one of them. But Hector was right. How much more senior did you get than ‘Assistant Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen’, as she had said to him so stuffily yesterday? It might make her uncomfortable, but she’d better get used to it.

The taxi deposited her safely outside the gates to the forecourt of the palace and Joan strode as confidently as she could in her heels and pencil skirt to the Privy Purse door on the right, which led to the North Wing corridor. Despite the bruising under her eye, and her arm being in a sling, the sentry in his bearskin gave her as much of an up and down as his sideways glance would let him. His facial muscles didn’t flicker, but there was something about the way he stood taller to attention. She stood taller, too.

On reaching the secretaries’ shared office, she asked one of them to collect her typewriter, and said they could probably make better use of it than she could. They clucked over her bruises and her broken wrist and they asked if she’d want the typewriter back when her hand was better. She told them she wouldn’t.

One of the women offered to get Joan a cup of coffee and she accepted as if it was her due. When they asked what had happened to her, she gave them a two-line answer, avoiding all follow-up questions. No attempt at chattiness. Sir Hugh wouldn’t chat. Miles Urquhart didn’t know how. Jeremy Radnor-Milne only did it when he wanted something. Then she retreated to her desk.

Alone at last, she sat down and smiled to herself. That wasn’t so bad.

Meanwhile, Urquhart wouldn’t be back from Scotland with the Queen until tomorrow and the peace and silence of the deputy private secretary’s office – broken only by the removal of the typewriter and delivery of the coffee – gave Joan the opportunity to think.

She was less worried about Tony Radnor-Milne and his co-conspirators now that she knew MI5 was watching out for her, but when and why exactly did Hector and his friends take notice of her? This had been her first thought when he had talked to her last night, but she knew he would never tell her, so there was no point asking.

It must have been before she started visiting the Artemis Club. He mentioned the ‘little old lady’ disguise, and she had only used that the first time she visited Piccadilly to stake the club out, so her follower must have already been on her trail at Victoria Station, where she changed and left her suitcase at the left-luggage desk. Ironically, she had used the station to avoid Hector himself encountering her quick change at home. Fat lot of use that had been.

Had they spotted her when she had visited Beryl? Joan thought that was a distinct possibility. She’d been wearing her posh black outfit, which would have looked odd in the circumstances to anyone who knew her. Why would MI5 be watching Beryl’s flat? The police might be, she supposed, but would they recognise her? Beyond the senior people she had met through the Private Office, she didn’t know anyone in the police.

The same applied to MI5 as the police, surely, when she thought about it: she wasn’t famous in any way, and anyone who didn’t know her personally was unlikely to clock her face. So either she had just been very unlucky, or she must have been somewhere that made them so nervous they did some research to discover her identity.

Where? After joining the Private Office, Joan’s social life had dwindled significantly, even when the Queen was away. Since her return from Balmoral in mid-August, three weeks ago, she had met a couple of old friends for tea in a coffee bar in Soho and gone to the flicks with another to see the latest Dirk Bogarde. One of Prince Philip’s equerries had taken her to the Café Royal on what he hoped would be a romantic encounter, but though she enjoyed his company, she had sadly disappointed him – or rather, he had disappointed her. Other than that, there had only been a couple of perfectly unexceptional shopping trips and the abortive visit to Cresswell Place.

She breathed deeply, and took a contemplative sip of coffee.

Cresswell Place: the street where the murders took place. The murders that happened the night Prince Philip went AWOL without an alibi. Joan didn’t know what the men in the Security Service looked into specifically – she’d assumed it was mostly Russian spies these days – but the activities of the royals, extra-curricular and otherwise, were certainly a matter of security.

And there she was, a member of the Queen’s Private Office, standing literally opposite the scene of the crime, looking around like some sort of foreign tourist. What an absolute fool she had been.

Chapter 46

On the journey to Windsor from Balmoral the Queen told Miles Urquhart that she needed to practise her Canada speech with her APS after church the next day, and that he was to let Joan know, so she could travel from the palace, and set aside an hour in her diary.

His eyebrows shot up halfway to the ceiling. ‘On a Sunday, ma’am? After a long journey? I hardly think—’

‘I need it, Miles,’ she said grimly. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right.’ And the problem was, she did need the practice, but she had no intention of getting it with Joan tomorrow. Since the last time they saw each other, Joan had done some dangerous investigating and the Queen had done quite a lot of thinking. They had far too much else to talk about.

Joan arrived at the Oak Room at Windsor Castle at the appointed time, and the Queen made it clear to the footman at the door that under no circumstances were they to be disturbed. In the light of Joan’s accident, she invited the poor young woman to sit down on one of the comfortable sofas.

The rain fell steadily outside, but the room was warmed by a small electric fire. One of the corgis made herself at home at Joan’s feet, and the Queen took this as a good sign. Corgis were an excellent judge of character. They tended to nip the ankles of people they didn’t approve of.

Joan brushed off the Queen’s solicitous enquiries about her wrist, just as she brushed off Joan’s thanks for the soup and flowers. The Queen had wanted to discuss her theories about Ginette Fleury first but, looking at Joan’s bright face, she decided it could wait. There was something different about her APS today. It wasn’t the fading bruise under her right eye. Was it her new hairstyle or her recent adventures? Whatever it was, it suited her.

‘I can see you have news,’ she said. She was glad she had decided not to wait any longer. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘First of all,’ Joan said, ‘there’s something I wanted to tell you last month, but I felt I had to do it face to face. I didn’t trust it to a letter, even in code.’

This was alarming. ‘What?’

Joan took a deep breath. ‘I think the press secretary might be working with your uncle.’

The Queen had been fearing all sorts of developments, but not this.

‘The Duke of Windsor?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Impossible. He has no role here any more. He knows that.’

Joan held her ground. ‘I saw a letter. The contents included the words “plan” and “delay” and “Washington”. The letterhead was his. There were two sheets of paper, handwritten, and Jeremy didn’t want me to see them. I don’t think he knows I did see them, by the way.’

‘That certainly puts things in a new light,’ the Queen said, stiffening.

Her uncle meant trouble, and had done all his adult life. He was a very self-indulgent man, who had chosen his love life over the Crown. It was difficult to forgive the burden he had placed on her father as a result of his decision not to remain as king. Although, given the warmth Uncle David and his wife had showed to Hitler before the war, she had to admit the abdication wasn’t altogether a bad thing. She would deal with that thought later.

‘Was there anything else?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Joan said readily. ‘Tony Radnor-Milne is working with the Duke of Maidstone. I saw them together at the Artemis Club. That’s why I was run over.’

The revelations were coming thick and fast. Bunny?

The Queen remembered the glee with which he’d told her about the girls at the Raffles agency. She’d been thinking about him in vague relation to the murders, and here he was again . . . but in the context of the plot against her.

‘You look surprised, ma’am.’

The Queen sighed. ‘Not entirely. Nothing Maidstone does will ever surprise me. He once “hid” a hundred sheep in Canterbury Cathedral for a bet. I’m quite surprised that someone like Tony Radnor-Milne would be interested in him, though. They have shooting in common, I suppose.’

‘I don’t think they were talking about shooting.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Could it be something to do with industry, or trade, or finance?’ Joan suggested. ‘I know Tony’s a big investor in rubber. And plastics and aviation.’

‘I can’t see the duke taking an interest in aviation. But rubber . . . Thank you. I’ll think about it.’ Joan had obviously had a very educational time at the Artemis. But that wasn’t why one had sent her there. Hesitantly, the Queen asked, ‘Did you find out anything else at the club?’

She hoped Joan didn’t think she had been hinting at anything more than simply oddness in her note. She felt certain the explanation would be utterly benign. Reasonably benign anyway. She just needed to hear it.

‘I did, ma’am.’ Joan shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘On the night of the murders, the um . . . the person in question . . . left with a friend after dinner and lost his security detail. His whereabouts are unclear after that. That’s all I know for sure. But I should add, quite a lot of people know about it.’

The Queen’s heart sank. She knew Philip’s alibi for that night couldn’t be perfectly legitimate, but still, every chink in it hurt a little. At least she was sure of one thing: the friend wouldn’t be Bunny. Philip couldn’t stand the man.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘And when you say, “lost his security detail” . . . ?’

‘He did it deliberately, ma’am.’

‘Ah. And you don’t know where he went?’

‘Actually, I think I do,’ Joan said.

She explained about her visit to Cresswell Place and her subsequent chat with Hector Ross. Yet again, this came out of the blue. The Queen knew of Major Ross through the papers in her boxes, the ones marked ‘Top Secret’. He was responsible for several of them. Thanks to Sir Hugh’s well-meaning interference – possibly at the suggestion of Tony Radnor-Milne – he had become Joan’s landlord. Given his solicitousness with the provisions from the palace, the Queen was alarmed to infer that they seemed to be sharing a flat. Not because of any prudishness, but because it could be extremely awkward if news of it ever leaked to the sorts of people who liked to stir up trouble.

The Queen sighed to herself. This whole business seemed to involve men and women being together in places they shouldn’t be.

‘What made you connect the duke’s private visit with Cresswell Place?’ she asked.

‘I sensed from your note that you did,’ Joan admitted. ‘And by the way, I think MI5 are still watching it.’ She explained her thought process for when they started following her. ‘Hector . . . Major Ross . . . said I’d been in “sensitive places”. It’s possible they were watching Beryl White’s flat, but I can’t see why that would be sensitive. At first, when I thought about it, I was furious with myself for going to Cresswell Place at all, but then I wondered why on earth anyone was still watching it five months after the murders. And yet it seems they are.’

The Queen nodded slowly.

‘It might explain why Inspector Darbishire hasn’t been making progress. I find that when different services accidentally collide, they tend to tread on each other’s toes.’

‘I can ask for the MI5 file on your behalf,’ Joan began. ‘If we’re right—’

‘No, don’t.’ The Queen raised a hand. ‘I don’t want you involved in this. It’s easier if you aren’t. Everything must go through Sir Hugh. Just . . .’ She caught Joan’s eye. ‘Make sure you do the filing.’

Joan nodded. ‘Do you want me to find out any more about Tony Radnor-Milne?’

‘No. Leave that to me, too. And on that subject, ask the Master of the Household if he can find you a room in the palace, just for now. We have plenty of accommodation. I’m sure there’s something you can use.’

‘I assure you, I’m perfectly all right, ma’am,’ Joan protested. ‘There’s no need—’

‘There’s every need. You’re not safe,’ the Queen pointed out. Not from potential murderers nor, it seemed, the head of D Branch at MI5, who fed her soup.

Joan didn’t look happy. She shook her head, which people rarely did when the Queen told them something in her ‘this is final’ voice.

‘I can’t stay walled up there, ma’am. I’m sorry. There’s too much to do.’

She should try being me for a few days, the Queen thought.

‘I’m not asking you to stay indoors all the time. Merely to work and sleep there. I’m sure you have errands and visits you need to make. I would say, “Be careful”, but I’m sure I don’t need to remind you.’

Joan smiled briefly. ‘No, ma’am. I’ll ask about a room. But, going back to Beryl White . . . My letter about Gina Fonteyn really being Ginette Fleury . . . Was it any help? It doesn’t explain the presence of MI5, does it?’

It didn’t, but at last the Queen could talk about what had been on her mind since she’d read Joan’s letter in August. She had almost lost sight of it, with all this talk of her uncle and MI5 surveillance.

She summarised the idea she had about the possible connection between the victims, going back to the capture of Ginette’s sister in the war.

‘So Ginette organised the whole thing for revenge?’ Joan asked.

‘That’s what seems to make sense. She had seen the man known as Perez, or Rodriguez, by chance at the agency a few days before. She could have recognised him then from Paris. She happened to have the key to the mews house, which would make a private place to confront him – or so she assumed. She would hardly have known about the dean’s dental appointment the next day. She went to great lengths to make sure she, not Beryl, was the one to meet the client, looking the way he had requested, so as not to put him on guard.’

‘Did she have any training, though? It seems a crazy thing to do.’

The Queen frowned. ‘Doesn’t it? If I’m right, she took an enormous risk. That’s why I thought of her sister. What you told me about Marianne Fleury being sent to the camps . . . It might drive a desperate young woman to do whatever it took to get justice. Or what she saw as justice. It seems a powerful motive – if he was the man she blamed.’

Joan shook her head.

‘You don’t agree?’ the Queen asked.

‘I do. But . . . I’m still adjusting. “Nico Rodriguez”. I didn’t know that about Argentina. That it’s a hideaway for old Nazis, I mean.’

‘We assumed that most of the worst offenders saw justice at the Nuremberg Trials, but I’m not sure that’s the case. My red boxes are rather useful. I do learn a lot of things.’

‘Yes, ma’am. But even if Ginette wanted to kill him,’ Joan said, ‘that doesn’t explain how she died too.’

The Queen sighed. ‘That’s the problem. They couldn’t have killed each other and cleaned up the scene. Someone must have followed them there. Someone who wanted one or other of them dead.’

‘Someone who MI5 were following? Lord Seymour?’ Joan suggested. ‘His story about the tiara theft doesn’t ring true.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ the Queen agreed. ‘But I don’t know why MI5 would be following a Government minister. I haven’t heard any rumours about him and I’ve been listening out for them. However, I note what you told me about Ginette refusing him as a client. She was certainly aware of him.’

‘Yes, she was. Could she have been . . . oh, I don’t know . . . his daughter? From a secret liaison in France? And he gave her the tiara? That would explain why she was cleaned up. Though not exactly how they died.’

‘I dearly hope not,’ the Queen said with feeling. What an awful thing that would be. ‘But it’s the sort of thing the police could investigate, if they knew the truth about her.’

‘Then he could be the father of Marianne, too,’ Joan added. ‘He’s old enough. Or they could have been half-sisters, I suppose.’

‘Wasn’t Lord Seymour at the House the following morning?’ the Queen reminded her. ‘How could anyone sit in a technology briefing after . . . after what he would have endured?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am. But I’ve seen people do the most extraordinary things after a traumatic experience. It only hits you later, sometimes.’

The Queen shook her head sadly. ‘I hope it’s not Stephen Seymour. He’s always struck me as a decent man. Anyway, it’s really not for us to find out.’ She straightened up and became more businesslike. ‘Inspector Darbishire should be doing it. All he needs is a little prod to connect the victims. Once he knows where to look I’m sure he can ask all the questions we can’t.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You did very well while I was away. I trust you can find a way of getting him back in the saddle.’

‘I’m sure I can.’

‘Without knowing how he got there.’

Joan smiled. ‘I think I can manage that. If Major Ross’s reaction is anything to go by, it will never cross his mind who’s helping him.’

The Queen was pleased. ‘Good. That suits us rather well.’

Chapter 47

After Joan left, the Queen walked across to a table by one of the windows to examine the photographs in silver frames displayed there: her mother and sister at the races, her beloved father on his coronation day, Philip looking suave in sunglasses and a natty blazer, Charles, who would be off to school the day after tomorrow, Anne on her little pony . . .

These were the people who mattered to her. She didn’t know the victims in Cresswell Place, didn’t know their families, and feared now, more than ever, that finding out what happened to them would open a Pandora’s box of secrets that she would rather not discover.

She closed her eyes. What were MI5 doing there? Given what Joan had told her, it was almost certainly something to do with her uncle or her husband. And most probably the latter, though she still longed for it not to be.

Better to find out now, than be told by Sir Hugh at the start of a national scandal over which she had no control. And those victims deserved the truth, whatever the cost.

As always, the Queen thought of her grandmother, Queen Mary, who had taught her humility and self-discipline. This job was not about her wants, her weaknesses or her feelings: it was about the country and the Commonwealth, and from the age of twenty-one, she had devoted herself to their service. It might seem priggish to some, but she had better get on with it.

She lifted the heavy receiver from the Bakelite phone on the table and played absently with the cord while she waited.

‘Sir Hugh Masson, please.’

‘Putting you through, ma’am.’

After ten seconds, the line crackled.

‘I’m very sorry, ma’am, Hugh’s away from his desk. Can I help?’ It was the voice of her DPS.

‘Yes, Miles, you can. I’d like to see a file,’ the Queen said. ‘From the Security Service. On Cresswell Place.’

She sounded slightly more confident than she felt that the file in question existed. Joan had suggested that Beryl White’s flat was another possible location. But the odds were shorter on the mews. And she had never lost sight of Philip’s reaction when it was first mentioned.

‘Are you sure, ma’am?’

‘Quite sure,’ the Queen insisted.

‘How, if I might ask, did you hear about it?’

She smiled to herself. Urquhart’s voice was so light with casual curiosity it was almost a squeak. He knew exactly what she was talking about. And if he did, Sir Hugh did, and they’d been discussing it among themselves. Joan was right. She could only pray they hadn’t mentioned it to Jeremy.

‘Oh, I hear things,’ she said calmly. ‘And Miles, you might enquire as to why I wasn’t given sight of this report in the first place.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Of course, ma’am. I’ll see what I can do.’

Three days later, with young Charles safely ensconced in his new boarding school, the Queen was back at her desk at Buckingham Palace when the red boxes of paperwork were delivered for her to review.

Having dealt with the first one efficiently, she found the second to be unusually full. True, the wheels of Government were turning faster again now that September was nearly over, but some of the papers in this box were appendices that didn’t really need to be there. Suspicious, she did what her father had taught her, and lifted everything out, to see what Sir Hugh and the minions in the Cabinet Office had buried at the bottom. She was grateful that was where they still put anything they didn’t want her to see. It made it much easier to find it.

Nestling under a sheaf of minor memoranda was a slim manila folder marked ‘Top secret. For your eyes only’, with the familiar markings of MI5. Pinned to the cover was a small handwritten note from Sir Hugh that read, ‘Your Majesty, I believe this is the file you requested. I strongly advise you not to read it. I would be more than happy to apprise you of its contents.’

She looked up with a smile. One of her ladies-in-waiting had gone to a convent boarding school where, she said, there was a leatherbound volume in the library in which the nuns had made a note on the title page, forbidding girls to read ‘pages 63, 72 and 147’. Needless to say, these pages were heavily thumbed, and the rest of the book was pristine. Catholic schoolgirls were no fools.

Poor Sir Hugh. He was honour-bound as her private secretary to provide the file that she had asked for, and equally desperate for her not to see it. She unpinned his note and saw that the file was precisely what she had hoped: the record of a stakeout in Cresswell Place covering the night of 31 March. She read through the opening pages with a churning mixture of relief and high anxiety.

Chapter 48

The same morning, an envelope addressed to ‘The Man In Charge Of The Chelsea Murders’ arrived at the police station in Lucan Place.

Darbishire stared at the letter in front of him for the hundredth time. He picked it up, sniffed it and handed it to DS Woolgar, who was currently taking up most of the space in his office.

‘What do you think? Can you smell something on the paper? I’m sure I—’

‘L’Air du Temps, sir,’ Woolgar said happily. ‘Nina Ricci. My mother likes it, sir.’

Darbishire’s forehead crinkled. ‘Did they spray the letter with it? Why on earth . . . ?’

‘Smells nice, sir, doesn’t it? I wish more women would think of it.’

‘When writing to a detective inspector at the CID? About a murder?’

Woolgar shrugged. ‘At least it tells us something, sir.’

‘What’s that, Sergeant? Do explain.’

Woolgar was still keen as a puppy, even after the Seymour debacle, which had kept him down for about fifteen minutes. If hard police work was required, he was less interested, but if it was just a matter of ‘the little grey cells’, he was all over it like a rash.

‘She’s a tart with good taste. And we know she’s not stupid. No fingerprints on the notepaper. And she can type.’ Woolgar nodded approvingly.

‘I give up,’ Darbishire sighed. He had been niggled by the Seymour incident because he had actually listened to his sergeant’s lurid fantasies, and now he felt a fool. ‘No, Woolgar, we don’t know she’s a tart. Your suggestion she has good taste is subjective. She might even be a “he”.’

‘Oh, no, sir,’ Woolgar said confidently. ‘Definitely a “she”. And what she says about DS Willis at the end, sir, well . . .’

His confidence was, in the inspector’s considered opinion, misplaced. For now, all they knew was that someone had written them a typed, anonymous, scented letter consisting of three short paragraphs, on the sort of cheap paper you can buy for half a shilling in Woolworths, and they’d posted it near the sorting office in Oxford Street, which means it could be any one of ten thousand people. (Darbishire gave Woolgar one thing: whoever it was wasn’t stupid.) And that person knew Gina Fonteyn.

Or Ginette Fleury, as he must now think of her. Everyone who spoke of her had been so confident that she was Italian. Darbishire served in Italy, and he recognised how different the languages were. It made him despair.

‘It may all be pie in the sky,’ he said, ‘but we can’t ignore it. I’ll contact my friend at the Sûreté, and see if they’ve got a record of Ginette and Marianne Fleury in Paris. If Marianne was captured and sent away, they should know about it. And if “Rodriguez” worked for the Gestapo, they might have a record of him.’

‘Bound to, sir.’

Darbishire tapped his pen on the letter. ‘Don’t forget, Sergeant. A critical eye.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Woolgar said, with a grin that made it clear he already believed all of it. ‘So they knew each other! Fleury and Rodriguez.’

He’d learned nothing. Absolutely nothing.

‘Perhaps they did.’

‘They could have been lovers, and he let her down. Or ran away, sir.’

‘She was fifteen at the time, according to this letter!’

Woolgar shrugged. ‘You never know.’

Darbishire had little girls at home and shuddered at the thought. ‘Surely if her sister was in the Resistance, it’s more likely that he betrayed them somehow? If anything, they were mortal enemies.’

Woolgar seemed pleased by this response. ‘You see? Not pie in the sky at all, sir. She killed him, and then one of his old mates came in somehow and found them there, and killed her.’

Darbishire leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘And washed her, and laid her out all neatly? Because . . . ?’

‘Because he was secretly in love with her. Which is why he’d followed them there in the first place. To save her from herself. Or because he was jealous. Maybe both.’

Darbishire didn’t know that there was a comparison to be made between himself and Her Majesty, but he was less tolerant of his subordinate’s speculations than she was. He had learned his lesson. This sounded to him very much like romantic tosh.

‘Can I ask, Woolgar, are you a secret devotee of Mills & Boon? Georgette Heyer?’

‘I quite like Barbara Cartland, sir. My mother has a collection.’

‘It follows.’

‘Is that all, sir?’

‘No. You can get in touch with whoever has the archive for Ravensbrück concentration camp. No, I don’t know how. Just work it out.’

But Woolgar didn’t move.

‘Yes?’

‘Can I just ask, sir, are you going to do anything about what she said about DS Willis? About him scaring women, I mean. And touching them up and . . .’

‘No, Woolgar, I’m not.’

‘Right. Because you don’t believe her, or . . . ?’

‘Because that person, who may be male or female, has chosen to remain anonymous,’ Darbishire pointed out wearily. ‘Because they may well be lying, or have a private grudge. Because to the best of our knowledge, Willis is a highly regarded officer in the Met, with a spotless record, and I don’t want to be the one to tarnish it unless I’m absolutely, rock-solid certain that it’s fully deserved.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If you tarnish one man, you tarnish us all, Woolgar.’

‘Right, sir.’

Privately, Darbishire thought he might in fact have a little word with DS Willis, let him know there had been talk. That should be enough to clear things up, he judged. Put the wind up the man if any wind, indeed, needed to be put. Darbishire had his doubts about a few senior people, but on the whole the officers of the Metropolitan Police were fine, upstanding men. He was proud to be one of them. It made him sad to think that DS Woolgar – the fan of trashy female fiction – might be so easily persuaded to imagine otherwise.

Chapter 49

The Queen closed the file on her desk, got up and walked to the window of her office. A detachment of the Life Guards was riding down Constitution Hill on glossy black horses. She observed the plumes of their helmets swaying in time to the horses’ tails without really taking them in.

Now she knew what she had long suspected, and everything was better, and worse.

According to the report from MI5, a team of officers from their surveillance department, known as A4, had indeed been watching a house in Cresswell Place on the night of the murders – just as Joan assumed. It wasn’t the dean’s house at number 44, but a place two doors down, rented by a certain William Pinder. He was a civil servant who worked for MI5 itself at a fairly senior level.

And possibly the Russians. That’s what they wanted to find out.

The Queen hadn’t known about this particular investigation. Usually they waited until they discovered something of note before telling her. The fact that they hadn’t done so for several months suggested this one wasn’t going well. It must still be active, if Joan was right that they had spotted her in the street ten days ago.

William Pinder was suspected of being the Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring, which had been uncovered so ignominiously after Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow. Another man from MI6, Kim Philby, had also been accused of spying for the Russians. He had robustly and publicly denied it, but a cloud of suspicion still hung over him in some quarters.

Like her father, the Queen occasionally wondered whether she was harbouring yet another of them. More rumours swirled around her Surveyor of Pictures, Anthony Blunt. In his current role, he was well regarded as an expert on the Baroque. It was less well known that, as a British spy, he had done useful work for the family at the end of the war, when her uncle – now the Duke of Windsor – had created some awkward paperwork that needed to be retrieved in a hurry. Erudite and useful as Blunt was, the Queen still wasn’t sure about him. He had been a Cambridge man, too. If MI5 told her tomorrow that he was the Third Man, or the Fourth or Fifth, she wouldn’t be entirely surprised. However, they assured her at regular intervals that he wasn’t.

Perhaps it was this William Pinder. The team from A4 were particularly worried about him that night because he had been acting strangely. A footnote in the report referenced lateness at work, increased alcohol consumption and a ‘furtive attitude’. The Queen thought that being watched by your own employer might do that to a man, if he was good enough at his job to have caught them at it, but they thought he might be preparing to leave the country.

Instead, what happened that night was that shortly after eleven, an Aston Martin DB2 sports car drew up outside, driven by a man later identified as a gallerist and member of the Artemis Club called Roly Hill, who had beeped his horn once. The front door was opened by William Pinder’s sister Abigail, who was staying with him at the time, at which point a second man, referred to as ‘Hamlet’, got out of the car’s passenger seat and strode inside as quickly as he could. The sports car then drove off.

‘Hamlet’. The Danish prince. Honestly.

The Queen had a headache. Despite one of her study windows being slightly open to let in the cool September air, she found it difficult to breathe. She didn’t know William Pinder, but she knew his sister Abigail, who was still considered a great catch at the age of twenty-seven. She was a lively, attractive, intelligent young woman – the only deb of her year to go to university – popular at polo matches and famously good at bridge.

‘Hamlet’ was inside the house until well after four in the morning. Like the dean’s, this house had two upstairs bedrooms and a living room downstairs. The living room had a window with thin curtains and one person was seen moving around behind them for a few hours, believed to be William Pinder. There was no sign of the other two.

The Queen’s head throbbed.

‘Hamlet’ left, alone, at 4.15 a.m., when he was picked up by a man later identified as Captain John Macbride of the Grenadier Guards in his E-type Jaguar. Abigail Pinder was seen tearfully waving him goodbye through the window.

What the report did not suggest at any point was that ‘Hamlet’ ever visited the dean’s house, two doors down. Perhaps he or William Pinder could have done so round the back, past the empty house, via the little yards these places had. But the report made no reference to it and the Queen remembered Darbishire’s note that the dog at number 41 hadn’t barked that night, suggesting that nobody had exited the house that way.

That was not what A4 were worried about. It was the simple fact of ‘Hamlet’s presence on this street for several hours, with the attractive blonde who was a close relative of a man they suspected of being a national traitor.

Which, quite honestly, was probably enough.

Even so, not all the Queen’s worst fears were realised – not that she had ever really articulated them to herself. She had never thought for an instant that her husband was directly involved with what happened at number 44, or even knowingly mixed up with anyone who was. And yet . . . the coincidence had preyed on her mind for six months. But perhaps that was all it was: coincidence.

She looked across at Constitution Hill and saw that the Life Guards had ridden out of sight. As her breath returned to normal and her headache abated slightly, she glanced round for the corgis, two of whom had been dozing in their baskets. She called them to her and spent a minute crouched at ground level, ruffling their warm coats.

Coincidence! Coincidences happen all the time. But what a strange accident of timing. ‘Hamlet’ arrived at number 42 less than ten minutes after the watchers had noticed the man who turned out to be ‘Nico Rodriguez’ being let into number 44.

The surveillance officers, as she suspected, had turned out to be the most important witnesses to the goings-on at the dean’s house that night. To Darbishire, these witnesses were the elusive ‘Gregsons’, who remained a question mark in his reports. There were in fact three of them – two young men and a young woman. They had been positioned in number 22, not number 23 as they suggested (they were also the mysterious ‘academics’), and they hadn’t been watching the dean’s house deliberately: they had simply recorded whatever they saw in the street, which at the time didn’t strike them as important or unusual.

What did strike them as very unusual indeed, however, was the arrival of ‘Hamlet’ that night, at the house they were watching, and they spent some time double-checking with each other that it was really him, and telephoning the planner from A1 to ask what to do.

It was easy to imagine that these people had wanted to be helpful a week later, when they realised a double murder had taken place and knew they might have important evidence to share. They had done so, but for the sake of national security they must have decided to get two of them to pretend to be a local couple, to place them in the conveniently unoccupied house next door, and to distract police attention away from what they were really up to. No wonder Inspector Darbishire had been frustrated when he tried to follow up with them.

It certainly was important evidence, the Queen thought, walking up and down her study now, thinking hard. It gave the precise times both victims entered the house and corroborated the alibis of the dean’s guests from the Artemis Club – who must have left the club together about half an hour after ‘Hamlet’ did. But the team didn’t seem to consider that for a crucial five or ten minutes, they hadn’t been concentrating.

Perhaps ‘Hamlet’s arrival was important after all: he had inadvertently distracted the key witnesses.

If Darbishire could interview them properly, using whatever techniques the police were trained in these days, he might be able to get them to remember something they’d missed. But he wasn’t allowed anywhere near them.

She could see why. There was a lot of national security at stake in all sorts of different ways.

But murder was murder, and the secret of the report on her desk was that it was a muddle. It wasn’t good enough. She had to do something about it.

Chapter 50

Sir Hugh was intransigent.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. We can’t.’

‘We must, Hugh.’

Her private secretary looked at her dolefully from behind his thick spectacles. ‘I admire your commitment to truth and justice, but I’m not sure you’ve fully understood the possible repercussions . . .’

‘It might be difficult for us, yes, but the police need to know—’

‘You do understand to whom “Hamlet” refers, ma’am?’

‘Of course I do!’ she said, irritably.

‘The news will leak. It always does. The Met police are the worst. Whatever the truth turns out to be, there will be rumours, there always are. People will say there’s no smoke without fire. You may never live it down.’

‘I’m sure he had his reasons for being there. Have you asked him?’

‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Have you?’

There was a short silence.

‘Not in so many words,’ the Queen admitted. ‘But I raised it in Scotland. Before I knew where he’d gone.’

‘And did he explain himself?’

‘No.’

‘Ah. There we are.’

‘But—’

‘Ma’am, if I may say so, it’s better not to ask. Not to know. Your . . . ahem, “Hamlet” might be aware of that. If asked subsequently, we have plausible deniability. We—’

‘What on earth’s that, Hugh?’

‘Plausible deniability? It was developed by President Truman, ma’am, for covert operations. The idea is that if anyone asks awkward questions, you can honestly say you didn’t know.’

‘But I want to know!’

Her private secretary raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, ma’am. What you want and what’s good for the country are two different things. I think you might find that if you did know, you may wish you’d never asked.’

She regarded him bleakly. What would her grandmother think? What was dutiful and what was selfish? She no longer knew.

He took pity. ‘I’m not saying you would regret it, ma’am, but it’s possible you might. And that if we do nothing, this might all go away in time, and we’ll be grateful for stones unturned. You never know what you’ll find underneath them.’

‘But—’

This time he tapped his fingertips together – a sure sign of exasperation. ‘I know you want to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing – for the country – is not to do anything. Please trust me on this.’

She didn’t trust him.

But nor could she be absolutely certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t right. If she overruled him, or went behind his back, and talk about Philip got out as a result, true or otherwise, the consequences could be catastrophic. With her visit to North America coming up, the last thing any of them needed were unfounded rumours. She would be doing the traitors’ job for them, and doing it better than they ever could.

At this moment, she felt certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t in concert with those men in any way. He was trying so very hard to protect her. She trusted that.

‘All right,’ she agreed with a heavy heart. ‘At least until I’m back from America.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. We can certainly discuss it then.’

‘And thank you, Hugh, for looking after me.’

Her private secretary smiled gravely. ‘Your best interests are all I ever seek to serve. Shall I take the boxes with me, ma’am?’

‘Joan can pick them up later,’ she said lightly.

The Queen pictured Inspector Darbishire at his desk, hamstrung by his ignorance of the slim manila folder sitting in the bottom box, like an unexploded bomb. For now, he was on his own. And so was she.