A Three Dog Problem

Chapter 39

Helen Fisher sat at the kitchen window of her basement Chelsea flat, reading and rereading the letter with the red royal crest. She still couldn’t quite believe that it started with the phrase, ‘The Queen has asked me to write to you . . .’ and that the ‘you’ in that sentence was she, Helen, now linked to Queen Elizabeth II by a string of six short words.

Not many people had written to express their condolences when Cynthia died. In fact, Helen could count them on the fingers of one hand. Two by email, two by text (one with a thumbs-up emoji, which she assumed had been an unfortunate mistake) and this one, on good old-fashioned thick cream paper, typed up and signed in neat blue ink, above the words ‘Lady-in-Waiting’. Helen had always assumed, when she thought about them at all, that such ladies held long trains and ran the monarch’s bath and – actually, she had no idea what they did, but apparently one of the things was to write letters for the Queen, elegantly expressing her sympathy for Helen’s loss of a long-standing friend, and remembering what a stalwart and dedicated member of the Household Cynthia had been.

Long-standing friend . . . How did the Queen even know? She couldn’t have been getting all the police reports, surely? Helen had only talked to that one detective sergeant who’d come round. The ‘copper-headed copper’, as she liked to think of him. Nice man. Gentle. Not above sitting down for a cup of tea and letting Helen rabbit on about Cynthia’s unhappy childhood and their days as uni students in the late seventies.

He was investigating those awful letters Cynthia had got – although why he was still bothering after she was dead, Helen wasn’t sure. She’d asked, but he’d just said it was private Household business and he was sure she’d understand. Which Helen did, better than most, because Cynthia had always been a stickler for the royal family’s privacy. She never let out a peep about what went on in those grand rooms behind the gates of Buckingham Palace. Only that the Queen was a ‘darling’ and Prince Philip ‘not as bad as you’d think’, and Prince Charles likewise, and Camilla was ‘hysterical’ – in a good way.

As for the rest, well, she rarely talked about her work, and nor did Helen, who’d been a translator for most of her life after her art career fell through, as most of them do, unless you’re lucky enough or savvy enough to marry someone who’ll bankroll you. They met once every couple of months on one of Cynthia’s days off and went to galleries or concert halls together and talked about art and music, mostly. London was marvellous for culture. Worth, absolutely worth, living in a dingy one-bed basement flat, always lightly dusted in diesel particles from the passing buses on Battersea Bridge Road, instead of somewhere light and airy with a garden. Who needed a garden when you could have Tate Britain practically on your doorstep? And the V & A, and the Royal Opera House?

They had talked about that hideous campaign against Cynthia at the Palace, and Helen had spent many a Sunday afternoon in cafés at different cultural attractions offering tea and sympathy. She’d told the policeman all about this, and about Cynthia’s strange, unsettled career, from art curator for the Royal Collection at St James’s, to the Works Department that dealt with all the London palaces, to her eventual role at Buckingham Palace, where she seemed so settled, and Helen had tried to be happy for her. Though it was hard.

It was something Helen had never told anyone, because, frankly, nobody had ever asked, but she’d always felt the light had gone out of Cynthia that summer when she lost her job at the Royal Collection and set herself up with that hideous, awful man who belittled her in public (Helen had seen it with her own eyes) and ignored her at work (Cynthia said so), and quite possibly hit her. Cynthia had never admitted to it, but Helen had seen the way she shrank into herself near any man of roughly his size and weight for years. Why do it? She’d been such a confident, free-spirited girl at art school: like Helen herself. But it was the year her very good friend Daniel had died in that horrific bike smash, and she was grieving and unbalanced. That must have been part of it. Helen had tried to make her apply for other jobs in the art world. She was so good at it, and the Baroque was her passion. But Cynthia just said she was ‘done for’. Her ‘name was mud’. ‘Nobody would look at her.’ It was never clear exactly what she’d done, but overnight she’d gone from being the department’s darling to persona non grata. It was almost as if they’d caught her stealing a work of art.

Cynthia was crushed after that. She’d already lost her friend Daniel, and she spent the rest of that year, and the next, pushing most of her other friends away. Of course, Helen hadn’t told the copper-coloured copper all of this, because he just wanted to know about the poison pen campaign, but Helen always felt that summer was the start of it: the grief and loss and the inevitable shift in Cynthia’s identity. Even as her best friend, Helen couldn’t help but notice how sharp and judgemental Cynthia had become. She knew it came from a place of pain and so she’d found it easy to forgive, but others probably weren’t as generous. Helen had no idea who might have sent the letters and cut up her beautiful clothes, but she found the copper’s suggestion that Cynthia might have done it to herself offensive and bizarre. Nice though he was, this very idea had left a bitter taste in her mouth. But the lovely letter from the Queen was so wonderfully soothing.

She must write back, she decided. It would be impolite not to reply, and Her Majesty had been incredibly kind. Helen got up and went over to a wide pine dresser against the far kitchen wall, and pulled open its centre drawer. Here she kept many of the mementos of her trips with Cynthia: cards, mostly, from the gallery shops. They had beautiful pictures and she was sure she could find something appropriate.

Ah! This one. Perfect.

She sat back at the table, hovered her pen over the card’s pristine white interior for a few moments, and began to write.

Chapter 40

‘Shall we hit the road?’

It was Friday, November 18. Sir James Ellington took his coat, elegantly draped over one arm, and started to put it on. Mike Green, standing next to him in Sir Simon’s office, did likewise. Sir Simon glanced at his computer screen and was about to shut it down when an alert popped up.

‘In a moment. You two go on. I’ll meet you at the door. I’ll see if I can track down Rozie, too. She was just finishing up herself. You don’t mind if she joins us, do you?’

Sir James hesitated fractionally.

‘Do you?’

‘No, no,’ Sir James replied. ‘The more the merrier. It’s just, if we’re with a woman we can’t use the bar at the Rag. But we’ve still got the Ladies Drawing Room and the dining room.’

‘I am not,’ Mike said, quite loudly (he’d been celebrating already), ‘drinking to a bloody fantastic result in a Ladies Drawing Room. For God’s sake!’

‘The dining room will be fine,’ Sir Simon assured him, clicking on the message on his computer screen. ‘I’ve often been there. They do a reasonable house champagne, don’t they, James?’

‘They do indeed. I’ve got them to put a couple of bottles on ice. Tell Rozie to get her skates on. See you at the door.’

Sir Simon raised a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Two minutes.’

A new email had come in. Someone in the Hong Kong legislature wanted to know the Queen’s thoughts on right of public protest. At nine thirty on a Friday night, when anyone who’d studied the Queen for thirty seconds would know she didn’t make her thoughts public, whatever they were, if they might result in a war with China. But the Boss had enormous affection for Hong Kong. He’d write something conciliatory on Monday morning and, meanwhile, a holding reply would have to do. He was just finishing typing it up when there was a light tap on his office door.

‘Can I help you?’

The door opened enough to admit a portly gentleman with rumpled hair, definitely two sheets to the wind, if not all three. He was wearing dinner dress, but his bow tie was askew and his extravagant, jazzy cummerbund was hanging low. ‘Dunno,’ he said, then smiled a soft-lipped, charming smile. ‘I hope so. Have you seen Rozie Oshodi?’

‘I was about to look for her myself, actually,’ Sir Simon said. ‘Can I give her a message?’

‘No. It’s . . . No. I’ll wait.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ Sir Simon pointed out. ‘Not here. It’s the Private Office, and we’re extremely keen on security. I’m surprised you got in.’

‘I have an invitation,’ the man said, digging around unsuccessfully in his dinner jacket pockets. ‘To the party.’

He must be one of the pensioners, Sir Simon realised. They were having their reunion tonight. A big, pre-Christmas do for ex-staff, organised by the dining club they had. Sir Simon himself would be entitled to join it one day, but he probably wouldn’t. Top brass tended to put a dampener on raucous celebrations. They had their own, more exclusive, club anyway, which no one talked about. It didn’t do to make the others feel left out.

‘Whatever you’ve got, it doesn’t extend to this corridor,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll escort you out.’

The rumpled man looked slightly desperate for a moment, but he got a grip of himself and accepted the offer with good grace. Sir Simon had used the brisk end of his voice and the man knew he had no choice.

‘Just tell ’er,’ he said – and Sir Simon sensed a wave of drunken emotion that the reveller found hard to contain – ‘tell ’er I meant what I said. About visiting. She’s always welcome. I think . . . I think she might wonder. But tell her I meant it.’

They had reached the door at the far end of the corridor that led towards the Great Hall. It was manned by a footman to whom Sir Simon gave a filthy look for letting the pensioner in in the first place. The man’s minuscule nod was a promise he wouldn’t let it happen again.

‘What was your name?’

‘Just tell ’er. She’ll know.’

Sir Simon shrugged to himself and hurried back towards his office, just in time to see Rozie emerging from the ladies’ loos, looking a million dollars and giving off waves of expensive scent. She was obviously going somewhere, but it was at least worth asking.

‘We’re off to the Army and Navy Club,’ he said. ‘Want to join us?’

‘Celebrating?’ she asked. The Reservicing Programme had been passed by the Prime Minister that day, having got the nod from the Public Accounts Committee.

‘Celebrating hard,’ he assured her. ‘And for a long time. Come on, you’ve earned it as much as the rest of us.’

She grinned. ‘So I get to join the triumvirate?’

‘You do, my dear. What’s the Latin for triumvirate when it’s four people and one is a woman? Quadrangle? Tetragentes? Tetra’s Greek, isn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t a thing,’ Rozie pointed out. ‘Let’s call it a quartet.’

‘Will your friends mind? You look as if you were going somewhere lovely.’

‘They’ll deal with it.’

Only later did he think to tell her about the drunken pensioner. She was thoughtful for a moment, but didn’t seem unduly sorry to have missed him. And by the end of the night they were not necessarily any more sober than he had been themselves.

The card was at the top of the basket of hand-picked, private correspondence on Saturday morning. Nursing a sore head, but giving no sign of it, Sir Simon brought the boxes to the Queen in her study, with the basket balanced on top of them. He saw the Boss do a double take when she saw the illustration and asked if it was anything interesting. She opened it, briefly read the contents, and wondered aloud if Rozie had put it on the pile.

‘She did, ma’am. She said she thought you’d like to see it.’

‘Mmm,’ the Queen said. ‘Do you think you could ask her to ask . . .’ she peered inside the card again, ‘ . . . Miss Fisher why she chose this card particularly? I’m curious to know.’

‘Of course.’ Sir Simon smiled a courtier’s reassuring smile and made one mental note to give Rozie the message, as requested, and another to have a closer look at the card itself when he had time. It hadn’t struck him as anything particularly special: a woman playing a lute, early Baroque, by the look of it. The card was slightly nicer than average: thicker paper, nice matt finish – from the National Gallery, probably. It was the sort of thing he sent to his own siblings. Hardly the sort of thing to make the Boss excited. She normally went for horses, funny cartoons and dogs.

‘The Queen wants to know,’ he said later, in Rozie’s office, ‘why the sender chose this particular card.’ He waved it at her. ‘Can you ask?’

‘No problem.’

‘And can you tell me too? I’m curious that she’s curious.’

Rozie narrowed her eyes a bit, but agreed. When she did so, a few hours later, the answer was nothing exceptional. The featured painting was by an artist called Artemisia Gentileschi, who had worked in the seventeenth century. The Queen might have noticed because, according to Rozie, there was a painting by the same artist in the Queen’s Gallery at the moment. (Was there, by God? And how astonishing of her to remember. But the Boss really did know her own paintings.)

‘And why did the sender choose it?’ he asked.

It turned out, Rozie explained, that Miss Fisher had sent it in honour of her friend Mrs Harris, who was an expert on Artemisia Gentileschi in her day. At his slight incredulity that an elderly housekeeper could be an ‘expert’ on Baroque painting (very snobbish of him, he knew), Rozie said Miss Fisher had just explained that, as a history of art student, Cynthia Harris had done her Masters on the artist. She had hoped to write a book on Artemisia one day.

Which just showed, you should never underestimate the members of the Royal Household. He was proud of this little ship. Everyone was exceptional in their own special way, even the difficult ones like Mrs Harris. So, the woman had an artistic streak? Perhaps that explained why she had been so good at getting the best out of the Belgian Suite.

Chapter 41

On Monday, taking advantage of a rare free afternoon, the Queen found time to do something that had been on her mind for the last few days. She paid another visit to the top rooms in the East Wing, which had been fully redecorated after their late-spring drenching, when the antiquated water tank had sprung a leak.

She was attended by several people from the Operations and Property Departments and – somewhat to their surprise – accompanied them back to their offices in the South Wing to have a congratulatory word with their teams about the Reservicing Programme. ‘Lots of work for you to do, finally getting this place in a fit state for us all to live in. I’m sure you’ll do a marvellous job.’ She popped in on as many of the sub-teams as she could, catching up on their latest tasks and making encouraging noises. She even managed to make it to the property accounting unit in the windowless basement corridor.

All in all, the impromptu visit was considered a great success. The Master, who had rushed to her side as soon as he heard what she was up to, basked in her reflected glory. He let it be known this was something they’d actually been planning for a little while, in gratitude for all the hard work everyone had put in recently. By the end of the day, it was his idea. The following morning, he humbly accepted the congratulations of Sir Simon and Sir James. It had been quite a coup. He was really rather proud of himself.

Six agenda-filled days had passed since the Queen’s walk in the garden with Rozie and Billy MacLachlan. She was beginning to lose track of how many ambassadors and high commissioners she had received this busy season. With Great Britain now cast somewhat adrift in the Atlantic, keen to build on old ties to the Commonwealth, each audience mattered more and she was acutely aware of how important it was to say the right thing. The engagements were closely packed and she was already starting to think wistfully about Christmas, and the peace and calm of Sandringham.

Today, Philip was in Greenwich, visiting the National Maritime Museum, then attending a boozy lunch, no doubt, at Stationers’ Hall in the City, with the colonels commandant of various regiments. Anne would be among them, which was always nice. Like her father, she wouldn’t be drinking, because, like him, she had other engagements later on. The Queen had a brief gap to gather her forces and sort out her hair before an evening with the Royal Life Saving Society, where Philip would join her. They were celebrating 125 years, and she had been a member since she was thirteen, so for a dauntingly large chunk of its history.

Before retiring, briefly, to her private rooms, she’d observed the Household staff in action, moving furniture and bringing in glasses, setting up flowers and ensuring the lighting was right. She and Philip would greet the principal guests in the White Drawing Room before shaking hands with everyone else in the Picture Gallery and having a private word with a select few in the Ball Supper Room. Then it would be time to award the life-saving medals. She always enjoyed that moment, particularly having trained here for her own certificate. To know that someone was alive today because of something one of these brave souls had done . . . How splendid.

She needed to change and touch up her make-up first. If she was quick, she could sneak in a catch-up on the racing. But as she sat in her private sitting room, fiddling with the remote control for the small television in the corner, she found herself thinking of Cynthia Harris again. It was the life-saving that did it, of course. All those people one would celebrate tonight, and no one had been there for her.

The Queen had had no luck during her little tour of the Property, Operations and Accounts Departments yesterday. Almost everyone had said something, but no one had produced the distinctive voice she was sure she’d recognise: the one who had tasked Spike Milligan (she was certain of it) with getting Lorna Lobb to deliver the poison pen letters. It wasn’t Mick Clements, with whom she’d had a two-minute conversation. His voice was a bass, whereas the one she’d heard had been a tenor. She had hoped to listen to Eric Ferguson and a couple of the porters, but they weren’t there.

Meanwhile, Sholto Harvie’s reasons for wanting Cynthia dead were stronger than ever. That card from Helen Fisher had been remarkably informative. It was Cynthia who had found the Gentileschis – it must have been. Unearthing those paintings should have been the highlight of her life. Her career was on the brink of a major coup, and then . . . Sholto’s cruelty was worse than the Queen had imagined. She was appalled that Cynthia had been used in such a way by him.

What was it about the Surveyors of the Queen’s Pictures and their deputies? She felt certain that Sholto had killed Daniel Blake. Cynthia would have known the young conservator quite well, working alongside him at Stable Yard. She might have had light to shed on that subject, if asked. But Sholto couldn’t have killed her too.

Which left ‘Mr X’ from the Breakages Business. Rozie had established that four of the people on Billy MacLachlan’s list had been at the Palace that night, working hard to finish off the leak-induced refurbishment and prepare the state and semi-state rooms for the family’s return from Scotland. But why would one of them kill Mrs Harris, when it was Sholto who had the most to lose? If they were worried about Rozie finding out about the business in the course of her research, all they had to do was shut up the tunnel and lie low for a bit. Everyone would assume it was a historical scam, surely? And why had Sholto told Rozie about the business after all this time? He could have told someone at any point in thirty years.

There was a brief knock on the door and Philip put his head round.

‘Ready to go soon, Cabbage?’

He’d come up to get changed for the lifesavers too.

‘Quite soon. How was the lunch?’

‘Spot on. Many war stories told. We’d heard them all before, of course, but they bear repeating. D’you remember Sergeant Pun in Afghanistan, during the elections, who fought off thirty Taliban single-handed? Caught by surprise in an ambush on his post. He ended up throwing the machine gun tripod at one of ’em. We got a blow-by-blow account of it. Extraordinary fellow. Typical Gurkha. His grandfather won the Victoria Cross in Burma. Are you there? You look as if you’ve gone gaga.’

‘No. I’m quite all right. I just need to think for a minute.’

‘If you must. See you in your glad rags shortly. I’m off to have a bath.’

He left her to it, and she let her mind drift back to the walk in the garden with Rozie and MacLachlan. There had been a discussion of war stories and something had struck her at the time. What was it?

She thought of Mick Clements, who was certainly aggressive. Look at the way he had tried to intimidate Rozie in the cellars that night. He was rash and impulsive, barely in control of himself, Rozie had said. But whoever killed Cynthia – if indeed someone had – had done it subtly, with premeditation. It was a bit like the way the Breakages Business was run: criminal, but not too greedy. Always flying under the radar. Dangerous, but restrained. Not like Mick Clements at all.

According to MacLachlan, one or two people discussing Cynthia’s death over drinks after work had been ‘encyclopedic’ on the subject of battlefield injuries. Quick ways, slow ways . . . They could have been security officers, but not necessarily.

The knife on the note sent to Rozie had been quite specific. It was a type of commando knife the Queen recognised, used by the special forces. Not a kitchen knife, or a vague approximation, but an historic model that a military buff would know. So who had been talking in the pub? The same man who’d written those notes to Rozie, she felt sure.

Quick ways, slow ways . . . Perhaps that sort of man, he wouldn’t need much . . . He’d do it as a favour. Do it carefully, so as not to get caught.

And then it all fell into place.

If she was right, that sort of man might even have taken pleasure in doing damage. He was quite possibly the same sort of man who would put a filthy message on Mary van Renen’s bicycle, when no one was looking . . . just because he could. It would explain what happened to Mary and Rozie and even poor Mrs Baxter, whose suffering was just a distraction: the unnecessary cruelty, the instinct to hit where it hurt.

It wasn’t Mick Clements, who might have the interest but didn’t have the self-control. Not anyone she had spoken to yesterday, because none of them had the voice she remembered from the unfortunate episode in the attics. Someone made interesting, in fact, by his absence during her tour of the departments. Someone who took care to stay in the shadows.

But given the extreme nature of the act, when Cynthia’s death hit the news, why didn’t Sholto say something?

He had his own dirty secrets. There were the paintings. And the nobbled motorbike. Anyone who knew about the paintings would probably know about the bike.

The Queen reviewed what she knew and felt certain she had it now, but all of it was perhaps and assuming and probably. She wasn’t absolutely sure she had the right person. She ran back over the events once more in her mind, looking for something that would constitute proof of the kind the police would need.

There was nothing. She might still be wrong. She would have to tell Strong anyway. If she was right, this was as far as she could go. Also, if she was right, there was no limit to what this man might do.

There was a phone on the desk and this time she had no hesitation. She used it to ask the Palace operator for Rozie, who answered promptly.

‘Can I help, Your Majesty?’

‘Rozie, this has gone far enough. Please can you fit in an appointment for Chief Inspector Strong to see me as soon as possible? First thing tomorrow, ideally. Half an hour will do.’

‘Of course.’

‘Meanwhile, can you find out what has happened to Eric Ferguson? I’d like to be sure one knows where he is.’

‘I’ll get onto it now.’

‘Don’t, for God’s sake, go near him. Just his location – that’s all I need.’

‘I’ll be careful, I promise. Have a good evening.’

The Queen intended to. She felt much better now. She glanced at her watch. In forty-five minutes she would be appearing through the hidden doorway in the White Drawing Room, and there were a few miracles to perform with lipstick, powder, diamonds and curlers between now and then.

Rozie made a succession of phone calls, all of which were dead ends. Eric Ferguson hadn’t been at his desk for days, and he certainly wasn’t at the Palace, or his team’s second office in SJP. Sensing what the Boss might be thinking, she rang Mary van Renen’s family home in Shropshire, trying to keep any note of panic from her voice. She’s out, her mother said. You can try her mobile, but reception’s terrible in that place. Rozie asked what place and Mrs van Renen explained, rather excitedly, that Mary was on a date with a new man, someone she’d met in London, who was visiting the area and who between you and me, gave the strong impression he’d come up to see Mary specially. Isn’t that lovely?

Was it, Rozie wondered? Was it really? She felt sick.

Mary’s mother was right about the mobile reception in the restaurant. Or maybe the date was going well. Either way, Mary didn’t pick up, and the restaurant itself wasn’t answering their landline number. Rozie wrote a brief but urgent text, asking Mary to call.

Sitting at her desk, alone in her office, she racked her brains about where else to try. Then she remembered the little breeze block office in the cellars. There had been various drawers that she hadn’t had time to go through. She sensed that was where Mick Clements did his thinking. Perhaps Eric Ferguson did too. It was a very long shot, but she was really scared for Mary, and you never knew.

Chapter 42

It wasn’t yet seven o’clock and Sir Simon was preparing to knock off early for once. He wasn’t needed for the reception upstairs: that was the Master’s domain, and no doubt he had it under control. There was a drinks party at the In and Out club across the square from the Rag, and another at the Foreign Office on Whitehall, and Sir Simon was wondering whether he had time for both. His wife was deeply into a drama series on BBC One and it was the finale tonight, so she wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t back before eleven.

As usual, before tidying up for the night, he scrolled through various newsfeeds on his computer. There was more fallout from President-elect Trump’s decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Definitely drinks at the Foreign Office: they’d all be apoplectic. More reports of Mr Trump’s meeting with the press, post-election, which according to his new spokeswoman was ‘very candid and very honest’, and according to the New York Post was ‘like a f–-ing firing squad’. Drinks at the club, then, too, where one of Sir Simon’s good friends had gone to the Economist after a short career in the navy. He’d have a thing or two to say.

He slipped on his coat and popped his head round Rozie’s door to see if she was still working, and to say goodbye.

She was in her office, but not at her desk. In fact, she was standing in the middle of the room, wearing her coat and her emergency trainers. She started guiltily.

‘Where on earth are you going?’

Rozie quickly recovered her composure. ‘Just downstairs. It’s nothing.’

‘It’s clearly not nothing.’ Sir Simon gestured at her jacket and shoes.

She hesitated for a fraction. ‘It’s to do with that painting of Britannia. Just a couple of loose ends. I thought I’d look around and see if I can . . .’ She trailed off with a smile and a shrug.

‘Downstairs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Downstairs where?’

‘Just, you know, the cellars. It’s fine. I’ve been there before. I just thought I might find . . . Honestly, you go. Have you got something on?’

‘A drinks, actually. Two. Look, stop trying to distract me. You’re not going to the cellars on your own, Rozie. Definitely not at night. I saw what happened to you last time.’

‘Nothing happened,’ she said brightly. ‘Honestly. Go.’

But he was already taking off his coat. ‘You had blood on your lip and you scared the life out of me. Let’s go down and find whatever it is you need and get the hell out of here. We’ve both earned a decent drink.’

She tried to remonstrate, but he wouldn’t be moved. Sir Simon glanced at his watch: a quarter to eight. Hopefully they’d find this ruddy thing soon, whatever it was, and they could both get on with their evenings.

It was abominably cold down there. He regretted leaving his overcoat in Rozie’s office. She saw him shiver and offered him hers, but naturally he refused. It would have to be a question of hypothermia or frostbite before a gentleman accepted warm clothes from a lady, even if she was a decorated army officer.

The door ahead was clearly marked with a freshly-made sign:

DO NOT ENTER.

PROPERTY DEPARTMENT ONLY.

BY ORDER OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.

Rozie opened it and he followed. Inside, it was dark and she had to feel around for the light switch.

‘You can’t hear anything, can you?’ she asked, just before turning it on. He listened. There was nothing.

‘No. Why?’

‘Just checking.’

She flipped the switch and the lights slowly buzzed into life, illuminating an Aladdin’s cave of royal discards. They passed rack upon rack of fascinating artefacts peeping out of boxes or simply stacked on shelves. It was a bit like how he imagined the storerooms at the British Museum.

Rozie seemed to know where she was heading. Beyond the racks there was a small office with rough, unpainted walls, built into the far corner. She opened its door with some caution and poked around inside while Sir Simon waited nearby, rubbing his arms through his jacket and watching his breath form condensation in the air.

When she came out, he asked, ‘Anything?’ and she shook her head. He was about to head back, but she said she just wanted to have a quick look in the room beyond. This one had a barrel-vaulted ceiling that took him straight back to his history books. It couldn’t be Tudor, so must be late Georgian, he judged. Berating himself for not coming down here before, he followed Rozie with considerable enthusiasm now, noting the old, thin bricks peeping through where a couple of tiles were missing, and the well-worn stones of the floor.

She looked around and, following her gaze, he spotted a trio of rather nice Chinese-looking pots standing in a row in front of one of the racks. Rozie glanced towards the far end, where another door was just about visible behind a tower of trunks and boxes.

He gestured towards it. ‘I suppose that’s where the tunnels start.’

Rozie murmured her agreement. But her attention was caught by a patch of something dark on the floor ahead of them. She went over, crouched down and put her finger in it, then stood to rub whatever it was off her hand.

‘I think we should call someone,’ she said, staring back at him.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Because I think that’s blood.’

He walked over and touched the stain too. It was like the swish of a paintbrush, rust brown, mixed with dirt on the stone. Adrenaline kicked in.

‘Go and get help.’

‘The blood’s dry,’ she pointed out.

‘You’re right.’ He was overreacting. Perhaps this was an ancient storeroom injury, or rusty paint. He was just starting to relax when he happened to follow Rozie’s gaze again towards the pile of trunks and boxes. ‘Oh my God.’ There was a smear of something ominous on the side of a tea chest in front of the tunnel door. ‘D’you see that?’ he asked, pointing it out.

‘What?’

‘On the tea chest.’

‘Oh? Er, yeah.’

They went over together and Rozie lifted down the top trunk from the tower. He helped her lift down the tea chest, only to find it was nailed up.

‘We need to open this.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘It’s not nailed hard. We can easily lever the top off. I’m sure I saw a crowbar leaning against the wall in that other room. Can you get it?’

She went off in search of it and, as she did, Sir Simon’s attention strayed to the heavy trunk at the base of the tower, now sitting unencumbered. It was like the ones some of the boys had had at school. His own had been quite small, made of canvas bound with brass-studded wood. This one was similar, but larger and made of leather. Steamer trunks, they were known as. It was somewhat battered and there seemed to be a noise coming from inside it.

He bent down and listened harder. It was an unpleasant sort of scrabbling sound, reminding him of mice behind the wainscot at the cottage at Kensington Palace. With curiosity mixed with faint disgust – Sir Simon was no fan of vermin – he tested the lid. The two hinged buckles gave way easily; it was not locked. He lifted it up.

The smell hit him full on, sweet and sickly and nauseating, followed by the sight of a pair of small, frightened eyes that stared up at him, caught by the light, above a set of twitching whiskers. They belonged to a fat, filthy rat that leaped up at him suddenly, before throwing itself over the side and scuttling into the shadows. Holding his sleeve to his nose, he looked back at the hideous object the animal had been feasting on.

Inside the trunk, untidily folded, was the body of a man, face up. He had not been dead very long, Sir Simon judged – days at most – but the rat had been busy. The eyes and eyelids of the cadaver were already eaten away. Additionally, there were dark bullet holes in one marbled cheek and the opposite temple, and his navy waistcoat and white shirt were stained with blood. He’d been shot in the chest first, Sir Simon speculated, and then a lucky – or unlucky – bullet had caught his head as he turned it. Even so, enough of the face was left for him to know he had seen the man before, though he couldn’t put a name to him.

Rozie came over, clutching the redundant crowbar. ‘Shit!’ she said, reeling from the stench. She peered over his shoulder.

‘Do you know who this is?’ he asked. ‘I warn you, it’s not pleas—’

‘I met him over the summer,’ she said, oddly calm. ‘It’s Eric Ferguson.’

Chapter 43

This time, there was no avoiding it.

MURDER AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE!

QUEEN’S AIDE FINDS DEAD SERVANT

SECOND BODY PALACE HORROR!

QUEEN ELIZABETH IN MURDER QUIZ

The news was halfway round the globe by breakfast and was even picked up by astronauts on the International Space Station. Twitter went into meltdown. The first conspiracy stories hit Facebook as fast as they could be written and fed each other in a frenzy. Instagram spawned a thousand memes.

The Palace communications team worked hard to make sure at least some of the news stories bore a vague relationship to the truth. The team reported to Sir Simon, who was the hero of the hour. He firmly instructed them to keep him out of it as much as possible, but it simply wasn’t possible: everyone the world over was fascinated by the thought of the Queen’s right-hand man discovering not one body but two (this news quickly spread, too). Pictures of Sir Simon landing a helicopter on a ship’s heaving deck thirty years ago, or looking dapper in his current array of silk ties and Savile Row suits, only served to feed the fire.

LIFE STORY OF THE QUEEN’S REAL MR BOND!

YOU’LL BE AMAZED WHEN YOU SEE THE MAN BEHIND THE ROYAL BODIES!

WHO IS THE SILENT COURTIER WHO SOLVES MYSTERIES IN HIS SPARE TIME?

‘But I haven’t solved anything!’ Sir Simon pointed out, self-deprecatingly, when lightly teased by Sir James and Mike Green over lunch in the canteen. ‘If anything, I’ve only created problems for the police.’

He was working on it, though. They all were. It hadn’t taken long for Cynthia Harris’s recent, ugly death to be seen in a new light. The canteen was full of talk about how Eric Ferguson himself had been overheard talking about similar killing methods used during the Second World War. Several female members of staff had tales of times he had made them feel uncomfortable. Lots of people now reported their concerns to the Master, the Keeper, Sir Simon himself or DCI Strong – who was running a proper incident room now, based partly in Rozie’s office, while she camped with the Private Secretary.

Had Ferguson killed Mrs Harris, or given someone else the idea of how to do it? The police had found a cache of historical guns and knives at his flat. The man seemed quiet enough, but he was plainly a psycho. This was the common consensus among the staff. No one could work out exactly why he should want to kill the old housekeeper, but it was still universally agreed that she wasn’t missed.

Upstairs in her study, the Queen was slow with her boxes, which was very rare.

Suddenly, everyone around her was very sure of themselves – certain that Cynthia Harris had died violently, that Eric Ferguson had done it, and that he was therefore the person behind the poison pen campaign. Within minutes they had wrapped up the whole problem and tied it with a bow. Their very certainty made her more cautious. She had been considering this possibility far longer than they had, and saw more nuances to it than they did. For example, had Eric targeted Cynthia that way? The Queen had her own contradictory theory, but it was just a theory after all.

She picked up the phone and asked the operator to find Spike Milligan for her. They were quite miraculous in the way they could locate almost anyone at any time. Sure enough, four minutes later he was on the line, sounding slightly breathless and extremely nervous.

‘Your Majesty?’

‘I have a question for you, Mr Milligan, and I would be grateful if you would stop lying to me.’

She heard him gasp down the line. Shock and awe. Wasn’t that what the Americans called it these days? Usually, good manners were called for, but not today.

‘I-I’m sorry, I really d-don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do, Mr Milligan. Captain Oshodi asked you some questions about the poison pen letters two weeks ago and you pretended to know nothing about them. I happen to know this isn’t true.’

‘I-I don’t know what to—’

‘The problem has gone away now. At least, I assume that’s right. There’s nothing to stop you being honest at last, is there?’

He paused for a moment, clearly thinking. ‘I-I s’pose you’re right, ma’am. How did you—?’

‘That doesn’t matter. You were in cahoots with Lorna Lobb. She got the letters from you, yes?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And distributed them as you instructed?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So, tell me . . . who gave them to you?’

He was a broken man, talking to the monarch directly on the phone. He dropped the pretence and did as he was told.

‘Eric Ferguson did, ma’am.’

‘Why?’

‘He found out about Lorna and me. I think he overheard something in the canteen. Lorna’s married, and so am I. Happily married, if you want to know – or good enough. He said he’d tell my wife and I’d lose my marriage, and Lorna would too. He would have, he was the type. There was nothing he wouldn’t do.’ Milligan sounded bitter now, glad for the chance to get it off his chest. ‘Lorna didn’t like it, especially after she found out what some of the notes said. She didn’t know exactly, but the Master made it clear they were racist, ma’am. I’m very sorry about Captain Oshodi and so is she. Really we are, ma’am.’

‘Sorry isn’t good enough, is it?’ the Queen said. She had seen that letter. Seen the knife. Felt the shock. Seen poor Rozie’s distress.

‘No, ma’am,’ Milligan mumbled.

‘So. I’d like you to confirm exactly who you told Mrs Lobb to give the letters to.’

There was a silence on the line as Milligan hesitated.

‘Mr Milligan. I don’t have long.’

‘Sorry, ma’am. It was your APS, Mrs Baxter and Mary van Renen. But she didn’t do the bike, ma’am. Only the notes in the palace.’

‘Did Mrs Lobb also use social media for harassment?’

‘No, ma’am, that was Eric, like the bike. At least, I always assumed it was.’

‘And what about Mrs Harris?’

His tone shifted from shame to puzzlement. ‘I thought it was weird. She was the one person we didn’t do. Not even once, ma’am. Eric liked to laugh about that. He told Lorna to own up to it anyway, or else. Keep them guessing, he said. But on my honour—’

‘What honour, Mr Milligan?’ she demanded crisply.

‘I-I know. D-do you need me to hand in my notice, ma’am?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

She put the phone down. A tiny part of her felt a scintilla of sympathy for the man. He was being blackmailed – but with cause. At any point he could have taken some responsibility for the damage he could see he and his lover were doing, but for many months he had sacrificed the well-being of her Household for his own interests. He had let his mistress, and the entirely innocent Arabella Moore, risk their jobs and take the blame. He should go, of course. But, if she were to be brutally honest with herself, it would be very awkward indeed if he decided to explain what had precipitated his resignation. He had confirmed her assumptions about Ferguson, which was all she really needed. That was what mattered.

Eric Ferguson must have copied the style of Cynthia Harris’s notes having seen them somehow (the Queen grimly remembered how Strong had told her the HR department ‘leaked like a sieve’), but he did not target her as part of the poison pen campaign. He’d had other reasons for killing her, and the Queen was now confident that she knew what they were.

She had not yet had her proposed meeting with Chief Inspector Strong. When Sir Simon made his discovery last night, the policeman had understandably said he was very busy and had politely asked if she could postpone. Now, she wondered if she could, after all, stay behind the scenes. It was what she wanted, but was it perhaps selfish? It was her duty to tell him everything she knew. But then she would have to explain how she had worked out the historical connection between Cynthia and Eric, dating back to the nineteen eighties. That would bring Rozie in, and the awkward moment in the cupboard . . . Strong might start to wonder what else . . . It was all very difficult.

She lifted the telephone receiver again to ask to speak to him, then paused with it in her hand. She had, after all, been solving mysteries since her father was on the throne and so far, she had managed to keep it a secret. All it would take was a couple of carefully judged ‘senior moments’. One had dug oneself into an awkward hole and now one must dig oneself out of it.

Chapter 44

Instead of Strong, the Queen asked to see Sir Simon. They had spoken briefly a couple of times since his great discovery of the body, but he had been rushed off his feet managing the consequences. She was relieved to see that this time, he was perfectly compos mentis. The discovery of Cynthia Harris had briefly undone him. Was it because she was a woman, the Queen wondered? Or was it just the unexpected pool of blood? Either way, finding a man with his face half eaten off by vermin was all in a day’s work for her Private Secretary. He was, if anything, more on top of things than ever. As he entered her study in answer to her latest call, she was almost certain she detected a spring in his step.

‘Your Majesty.’ He gave the courtier’s bow, which started and ended at the neck. Otherwise they’d be up and down like cranes in a dockyard.

‘I thought I might be able to help,’ she said.

‘Oh, really?’

His face was a picture of politeness. She admired how it was almost, almost clean of disbelief.

‘Yes. I understand that now the death of Cynthia Harris is being seen in a new light.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Awful. It hardly bears thinking about.’

‘I suppose one must face up to the fact that someone working at the Palace could be responsible for . . .’

‘I know, ma’am. Dreadful. Ferguson, almost certainly.’

‘But was it? You see, I’ve always liked the man very much—’

‘Who? Ferguson?’

‘No, no. And I find it very difficult to imagine him as a – not to put too fine a point on it – a killer. But I’m sure I remember seeing something about Mrs Harris having a relationship with him.’

‘Who, ma’am?’ Sir Simon asked. He looked utterly baffled, which was much as the Queen expected.

‘Neil Hudson,’ she said, assertively.

‘Neil? At the Royal Collection? Your Surveyor of Pictures?’

‘Yes.’

‘That seems incredibly unlikely.’

‘I know. It all seems unlikely, though, doesn’t it? And we can’t forget his predecessor.’

Anthony Blunt (he had been knighted, but his knighthood subsequently revoked) was a famous Communist spy, as Sir Simon well knew.

‘But I don’t think all your art experts can be criminals, ma’am.’

‘I hope not.’

‘And surely she was too old?’

The Queen frowned. ‘I don’t mean that sort of relationship. Was she an aunt? A godparent? I forget, but I’m sure it was something. I’d just like to be reassured that he didn’t have anything to do with . . . any of this.’

Sir Simon regained his unflappable poise. ‘I’ll certainly look into it, ma’am.’

He was the consummate courtier. Eyes that refused to judge; a smile that refused to falter. Rozie couldn’t do it yet. You could always tell at a glance if she thought you were being absurd. The Queen would miss it when she, too, employed a poker face.

‘If you would be so kind.’

After he’d gone, she wondered if he would remember the little illustrated card. How fortunate that he had been the one she had mentioned it to at the time, even though she hadn’t wanted to. With any luck, Rozie would have left it at the top of the file.

‘Can you get me Bogroll’s file on Mrs Harris?’

‘Really?’

Sir Simon waited while Rozie rooted around in her desk drawer. She had had to empty the drawers before the porters shifted the desk into his office to make way for Strong and his team in hers. Inevitably, files got misplaced. Nothing was quite at her fingertips any more. It gave her a few seconds to think.

‘Is this for the Boss?’ she asked.

‘Yup. She has some idea that Cynthia was Neil Hudson’s aunt. And that therefore he killed her. Not Ferguson.’

‘What?’ Rozie popped her head up to stare at him. This was unexpected.

‘I know. I think she’s been watching too much Death In Paradise. Or what’s that one with Angela Lansbury as the writer?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Murder She Wrote. The Boss did a little binge-watch at Balmoral. It’s given her ideas.’

Rozie nodded absently, turning back to her files. Her brain was working overtime. Neil Hudson? Was there something the Queen hadn’t told her? She panicked for a moment, then realised – or thought she realised – what the Boss was up to. Sir Simon extended a hand and she adjusted some papers in the file and passed it over.

‘Neil’s aunt, you say?’

‘Or something,’ he muttered. ‘Though why that would make him want to slash her ankle, I have no clue. Could you imagine him doing it? The blood on his shoes alone . . .’

‘I’d say he was more of a poisoner,’ Rozie agreed. ‘Preferably with something used by Lucrezia Borgia.’

‘Exactly. And I wonder how long we’ll be playing the game of “favourite murder methods of fellow staff”.’

Rozie eyed him reflectively. ‘You’d use a Walther PPK, obviously, in keeping with your Bond image.’

‘I wouldn’t, actually. Barrel’s too short, calibre’s too low. You might as well just chuck it at your victim. Fleming was hopeless on guns. You’d do it with unarmed combat, no question.’

Rozie shrugged. ‘So? What would you use? If not the PPK?’

He was about to say something flippant, but the image came back to him of the face with the holes in it, and the body on the tiles. He had started this game, but he was suddenly rather tired of it. There was a knock at the door and Sir James Ellington appeared.

‘You two look like you’re having fun.’

‘Favourite murder methods,’ Rozie explained.

Sir James didn’t pause for a beat. ‘The iron staircase at the end of my office corridor. There are a couple of newspaper editors I pray I never meet at the top of it. Look, can I carve out some time with the Boss tomorrow? Bogroll and I need to update her on Eric Ferguson. God, he was a nasty piece of work. It’s pretty explosive, actually. We’re still working on it, but I can give you the gist of the thing now, if you like.’

He did, and at some points even Rozie found that she was genuinely surprised. Afterwards, Sir Simon retreated to his desk with the file she had given him, to see if he could reassure Her Majesty that, unlike the latest murder victim, her Surveyor of Pictures was not a secret vengeful psychopath.

Chapter 45

It was not until ten o’clock the following evening that the investigating team had everything ready and Sir James managed to get his meeting with the Queen in the pale blue Audience Room. He was accompanied by Sir Simon and the Master, along with Rozie, who was there to take notes. They had all had a rather exhausting day, but the Queen, as always, looked fresh as a daisy. Nevertheless, she conducted the meeting standing up, which led Sir Simon to believe she wanted it to be a short one. This wouldn’t be a problem: it would only take a few minutes for the Keeper to deliver his bombshell news.

‘Is the chief inspector not with you?’ she asked, looking somewhat surprised as the triumvirate gathered round her near the fireplace

‘No, ma’am,’ Sir James confirmed. ‘He’s away as part of the investigation. In fact, we’re expecting news from him at any moment. Sir Simon had an extraordinary—’

‘We don’t need to talk about that,’ the Private Secretary interrupted with a self-effacing flap of the hand. He’d been getting good at these recently. ‘It may come to nothing. We’ll let you know if there are any developments, ma’am.’

‘Oh, good. So why are you here?’ She looked expectantly back at Sir James.

‘Since Sir Simon found the body on Tuesday,’ the Keeper said, ‘we’ve discovered an enormous amount about Eric Ferguson. None of it good, I’m afraid.’

‘Go on.’

‘Mr Ferguson – and as the ultimate head of Operations I take full responsibility for this, ma’am – was someone who should never have been allowed to come within a mile of this place. He was a very dangerous individual, with morbid tastes. The police discovered a lot of violent material on his computer and a large cache of weapons at his flat. The walls were covered in them, like the armoury at Hampton Court. Nobody knew, because it turned out he never invited anyone home. Not from the Household, anyway. They’re all talking about it now.’

‘I’m sure they must be.’

‘But more to the point, ma’am, perhaps, is the fact that they also found half a dozen crystal tumblers in his kitchen, similar to the ones used at the Palace. His computer records showed he had ordered eighteen of them. It looks as though he’d been experimenting with making the damn things lethal.’

‘Goodness. Really? Oh dear. Is this what the police think too?’

‘It is, ma’am,’ Sir Simon agreed, stepping in. ‘They are convinced, now, as we had begun to fear, that Cynthia Harris’s death was not an accident, far from it. I’m sure the chief inspector will be able to confirm it himself very soon.’

‘And Neil Hudson? Was he involved?’ the Queen enquired meekly.

Sir Simon noted the frank humility in her clear blue eyes and shook his head gently. ‘No, ma’am, I’m afraid that was always an unlikely possibility.’

‘I see. Never mind.’

‘It did throw up a useful line of enquiry. But meanwhile, the police have uncovered some rather devastating details about Ferguson’s work life, haven’t they, James?’

‘They have indeed,’ Sir James said. ‘It’s why I wanted to talk to you, ma’am. We were rather lucky with a very talented young cyber security officer at the National Crime Agency. Digging around Ferguson’s computer files, he discovered that for at least two years Ferguson has been running a major scam at the Palace. It’s known as the Breakages Business. I believe you were aware of it.’

The Queen’s eyes widened. They caught Rozie’s for a moment, who nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘Running it? But he was quite junior, wasn’t he?’

‘Middle management, ma’am,’ Sir James said, ‘but that was the clever part. He was operating well below the radar. I must admit, I wasn’t sure about his boss – a man called Mick Clements. But I’d never suspected anything of Ferguson. We might not have discovered him for months, or years.’

‘How did he do it?’

‘We’re still piecing it together,’ Sir James admitted. The thing is, ma’am,’ and here he paused, so Her Majesty could keep up with all the revelations, ‘we think this gives him a motive for being the true person behind the poison pen campaign.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Astonishing, I know. You see, one of my secretaries was convinced there was an issue with the Reservicing Programme. We now think that what she had discovered was not a mistake, but a deliberate fraud, masterminded by Ferguson. Her name is Mary van Renen and she was one of the targets of the harassment. We believe that Ferguson mounted a successful campaign to get her to leave. Fortunately for us, her work was taken over by Rozie here, who was targeted for the same reason.’

The Queen glanced across at Rozie again, who kept her face entirely neutral. She was learning. The two of them had a lot to talk about.

‘I see,’ the Queen said. ‘How fascinating, and how awful. What about the other letters?’

‘Oh, they were pure misogyny,’ the Master said, opening his mouth for the first time. He was here because of the relevance to his staff. ‘Mrs Harris and Mrs Baxter were both highly unpopular. Ferguson may have chosen them for that reason, or he may have had his own personal motives. I imagine a psychologist would say he found strong-minded women a threat, ma’am.’

Not as much as they found him, the Queen thought to herself. She felt for Mrs Baxter, a ‘difficult woman’ who had been chosen for harm merely to cause confusion. And so far it had worked.

‘Either way, it confused us for a while,’ the Master went on, ‘because of course we were focused on Mrs Harris and not Miss van Renen, who was perhaps the victim most in danger.’

‘Except that it was Mrs Harris who died,’ the Queen said drily.

‘There is that, ma’am. There is indeed that.’ He coughed and shuffled his feet. ‘We’re still looking into it.’

‘You mean the police are?’ the Queen asked, sharply enough to make them all swallow.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Mike Green agreed swiftly. ‘When I say “we”, I mean all of us together. Now the police suspect Ferguson as a criminal and a murderer, they are re-examining all the evidence. Bog— I mean the chief inspector, has a large team working on it, reporting to his superintendent at the Met.’

‘How reassuring. But there’s still one thing I assume we don’t know – or you’d have told me.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Who killed Mr Ferguson?’

‘Ah.’ It was Sir Simon who answered. ‘On that note, I trust we will have news for you in the morning.’ His expression was bland, but inside he was as excited as the day he got his Wings. ‘Along with a full report on what we’ve already told you. We thought you’d appreciate the headlines while they were fresh.’

‘I do indeed,’ the Queen said, smiling gratefully at all of them. ‘It is always such a comfort to me to know that you have everything under control.’

Chapter 46

When the boxes came the following morning, the Queen hoped that it would be Rozie who brought them. Sir Simon’s name was in the calendar, but it was her APS she really wanted to talk to.

She beamed when it was indeed Rozie who was ushered in.

‘Well done,’ she said, without asking how the girl had done it. One came to rely on people who knew what was required and somehow made it happen. ‘That was interesting last night, wasn’t it?’

‘They missed a few things,’ Rozie said, placing the red boxes carefully on the Queen’s desk.

‘Yes, didn’t they?’

‘They didn’t seem to spot that I got my first note before I got involved in the Reservicing Programme stuff.’

‘Mmm. Or that Mrs Harris got her first one years ago. They haven’t had long though, have they? To think about it, I mean.’

‘No. And they have a lot on their minds. Chief Inspector Strong has been very busy. He’s not here today, by the way, ma’am. He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.’

‘The killer of Mr Ferguson?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The Queen didn’t press her. She was about to dismiss the girl and start on her papers, but saw that she was looking pensive.

‘Was there something else?’

‘Only . . .’ Rozie sighed and shrugged. ‘I should have got it before. Eric was always very strange. Always in the background and just a little bit creepy. I suppose I put it down to an odd personality. I thought he was holding Mick Clements back that day in the cellars. He was, but only because he knew they’d get caught.’

‘I agree,’ the Queen said. ‘Mr Ferguson was the cunning one. It wasn’t your job to catch him, Rozie. You’ve done well as it is. Whoever chose him to run the Breakages Business certainly knew what they were doing.’

‘Sir Simon’s looking into that, ma’am. He’s looking into a lot of things.’

The Queen smiled up at her from her desk.

‘Oh, good.’

Sir Simon’s wife, Sarah, who had cooked coq au vin for them both, listened that night as he explained the last three days’ proceedings to her over the dining table at Kensington Palace, while candlelight threw dancing shadows on his eager, intelligent face.

She loved him when he was like this. It made up, or at least sometimes partly made up, for all those nights he worked very late, and those weeks when he was away. There were three of them in this marriage, and the third person headed the Commonwealth and always held all the cards. But, in return, there were moments like this, when Lady Holcroft (Rah to her friends) watched as her husband held all the secrets of the realm in his capable hands, and she knew they were safe with him. He was even more of a hero than she had imagined. Not just brave but brilliantly insightful and clever. It was extraordinary the way he had made the crucial connection in absolutely record time. He was constantly checking his phone for updates, but they were of national importance, so she didn’t mind.

‘Are you really James Bond?’ she asked, later.

‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that question,’ he said, slightly breathless, in a gruff Scottish accent.

‘Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to—’

He didn’t let her finish. The last couple of months had been dark and bloody, but now he could sense the shadows lifting. Like Robert the Bruce, he felt his strength returning. He wanted to celebrate.

The news they were waiting for failed to arrive in the following hours, but the investigations continued apace. Along with several hand-picked underlings from his unit, Chief Inspector Strong returned to his temporary incident room at the Palace, whose corridor in the North Wing was vacuum-sealed against leaks. Rozie, who knew everything, was begged and bribed for whatever snippets she could share – but, like the senior men she worked with, she was incorruptible. She wouldn’t even give any hints to her sister, who both respected and mercilessly teased her for it. More to the point, she didn’t tell the Queen – who didn’t ask.

‘Are they on the right lines, would you say?’ was all she wanted to know.

‘I think so, ma’am. They’ve made the appropriate connections.’

‘Splendid! Then we shall wait.’

On Friday evening, the day after her audience with the triumvirate, the Queen found out that her friend and cousin Margaret Rhodes had died. She spent the weekend at Windsor feeling very sad, and going over old photograph albums of her girlhood, accompanied by Lady Louise, Edward’s lovely girl, which helped.

But Louise had to keep asking who everyone was. Who could she reminisce with now? All the official engagements were recorded in minute detail, but what about the unofficial ones? The private moments of hilarity and grief? First her sister, then Mummy, then Cousin Margaret, and even the dogs . . .

After dinner on Saturday, Philip spent the evening with her, instead of on his own pursuits. It was a thoughtful gesture. He presented her with the little oil painting he’d been working on in the Octagon Room in the Brunswick Tower, and then back in his study at the Palace. It was a perfect rendition of the lawn at Balmoral, seen from the castle, and in the very centre was the spot they’d picked for Holly’s grave. So that was what had been absorbing his attention. She looked up with glistening eyes.

‘You can hang it outside your bedroom at BP, if you like,’ he suggested gruffly. ‘In place of that ghastly Australian thing.’

‘If you mean the Britannia, that’s coming back soon, I hope. And I won’t replace it. But I’ll find this one a home.’

‘You can use it to eat your toast off,’ he said. ‘I don’t care.’

‘I’ll hang it in my bedroom.’

‘You don’t have to.’

And so, with gentle bickering, he took her mind off what she was feeling and made it easier to regain her normal fortitude and look to the future, as one always tried to do.

By Monday, Buckingham Palace was a hive of activity in preparation for the Diplomatic Corps Reception the following week. It would use every public room they had, to entertain a thousand guests from the ambassadorial elite to a buffet supper and dancing. The reception was a white-tie affair, dripping in decorations and diamonds, far more complicated to manage than a state banquet. The problem was that many guests came so regularly that their pet sport was to look for slights or mishaps. The Master’s job, with the help of Mrs Moore, was to make sure there were none to find.

He was at full stretch, and yet he found time to join Sir Simon to compare notes on the rapid developments in the case. With the efficiency typical of senior courtiers, the triumvirate found themselves able to assist, if not positively lead, the police at every turn. Sir Simon in particular was proving quite spectacularly good at this. There were whispers in all the corridors that he had practically solved the crime single-handed.

On the last day of November, a week after Sir Simon’s discovery of Eric Ferguson’s body, Chief Inspector Strong received the final communication he’d been waiting for. He requested an audience and asked that the Private Secretary, Sir James and his chief superintendent (who was standing at his shoulder as he typed) could be there too.

The Queen graciously accepted. Privately, she wondered how much they really understood.

Chapter 47

At Sir Simon’s request, the team met twice to rehearse in his office, as if they were preparing for a Commons committee. They each had roles and cue cards: it wouldn’t do if they all talked over each other. The chief superintendent could take the credit in public. But they were generous men and, between themselves, they accepted that privately the honours should be shared.

The Queen agreed to grant them an audience in the blush and golden splendour of the 1844 Room. On the dot of twelve on December 1, an advance party of three dogs announced her arrival, as the men stood waiting within. Sir Simon, who was so often the person introducing her to others, felt his heartbeat quicken in an unaccustomed way at her approach. Rozie, walking in behind the Boss, gave him a surreptitious thumbs up. And then the Queen was smiling hellos at all of them, and it was time to explain to Her Majesty how three of her servants had ended up dead, and how he . . . with help, obviously . . . had solved the crimes.

At her invitation, the four men sat in front of her in a little semi circle of silk-covered chairs. Sir Simon and Sir James looked elegant as usual in their pinstripe suits. DCI Strong had not tried to compete sartorially, but the Queen detected signs of a very recent haircut. The most splendiferous of all was the chief superintendent at the end of the row, who was a tall, urbane man with a sportsman’s jaw, Hollywood teeth and silver buttons on his uniform that would pass muster on Horse Guards Parade.

Rozie sat further back, with a notepad on her lap. A footman had originally positioned himself just inside the door, but the Queen informed him she would ring if she needed anything. Her equerry, likewise, was not required for this conversation. Murder among the servants . . . It was too close to home.

‘So tell me,’ she said, sitting upright on a Morel and Seddon sofa, with Willow by her side and the dorgis at her feet, ‘was it indeed Mr Ferguson who killed Mrs Harris?’

‘It was,’ Sir Simon informed her gravely.

‘And you’ve found the man who killed Mr Ferguson?’

‘We found him yesterday, ma’am,’ the chief superintendent confirmed. ‘After quite an elaborate investigation. I’m afraid it will come as a shock.’

The Queen blinked. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, pausing to adjust her handbag and looking up to give him a friendly smile. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself. Do tell me everything.’

It was, by agreement, DCI Strong who began the story. His team, after all, had worked out the details of how Eric Ferguson practised his murder technique and prepared the way for Cynthia Harris to arrive at the pool.

‘We don’t have a record of Ferguson’s contact with Mrs Harris before the fatal meeting, ma’am,’ the chief inspector said. ‘He was too clever to leave a trail – but we do know that it was he who consistently reported the internal CCTV cameras being out of action, and he, almost certainly, who had interfered with them to render them that way.’

‘It won’t be so easy with the new cameras,’ Sir James assured her from the seat beside Strong. ‘The old ones are practically museum pieces. Top of the list for change.’

‘What a relief,’ the Queen remarked. One might as well be living in the middle of a shopping centre. Although, on reflection, that would probably be better secured.

Strong returned to his theme. It was also Ferguson, they discovered, who had postponed delivery of the new carpet to the leak-damaged rooms in the East Wing, so their refurbishment ran over and there was a mad dash to get them ready in time for the family’s return from Balmoral. This meant that he had a reason to request an emergency room at the Palace for a couple of nights, to oversee the results.

‘This behaviour, along with the tumblers at his flat, leaves us in no doubt that he was the killer,’ Strong concluded. ‘We assume he lured Mrs Harris to the pool on some housekeeping pretext. Tumblers had been found there before and we think this was his doing too. She would have been tired after her journey down from Scotland, and unsuspecting. My thinking is that Ferguson had already arranged the broken glass in place. She bent down to look, he hit her over the head with something hard he’d brought with him for the purpose, and used the jagged tumbler base to cut the artery at exactly the right point on her ankle. We know from his reading material that collaborators in the Far East were killed this way in the Second World War. The blood loss would have been rapid. It’s possible she never came round again before . . .’

‘She died?’ the Queen finished for him.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘That certainly explains how he did it,’ the Queen agreed. ‘Might I ask why?’

‘Initially, as you know, we assumed it was pure misogyny connected to the poison pen campaign,’ Strong said, ‘while he targeted Mary van Renen because of a fraud he was operating here, called the Breakages Business. You’re aware of that, I understand.’

‘I am,’ the Queen agreed. In his seat, Sir James blushed faintly.

‘However, we then discovered that Mrs Harris was connected to the Breakages Business too,’ Strong went on. ‘We’ve traced the operation back to a man called Smirke in the nineteen eighties. Harris worked for him briefly at the time and they had a bit of a relationship. There were rumours of dodgy dealings, but everyone assumed they went away when he retired. In fact, he handed the business down to his successor, a man called Vesty, who handed it down to his. They kept it in the family, ma’am. It turns out they were all related. Eric Ferguson was Sidney Smirke’s second cousin once removed. Not immediately obvious, but we got there with a bit of probing. No doubt that’s how he was anointed as the new head, in his junior position, at the grand old age of thirty-two.’

‘Oh dear.’ The Queen’s tone was dry. Her courtiers swallowed. They were not enjoying this bit.

‘However,’ Strong continued, ‘we shifted our focus slightly, thanks to a suggestion by your Private Secretary. He gave us an invaluable insight.’

Strong nodded to Sir Simon, who smiled and did his self-effacing hand flap.

‘I must admit, I had a huge piece of luck.’

‘Oh, did you?’ The Queen was all polite curiosity.

‘It was your mention of Neil Hudson that started things off,’ Sir Simon informed her – pleased to share credit when he could, however small. ‘I can absolutely assure you there was no relationship of any sort between him and Mrs Harris. But in looking at her file I noticed that she had worked at the Royal Collection before working for Smirke. We were . . .’ He corrected himself. ‘The police were in the process of establishing the modus operandi of the Breakages Business. They had another look at the tunnels last week and found all sorts of evidence of activity between the palaces. We knew that they must have a man on the inside at SJP. If Mrs Harris was at the Royal Collection, she would have worked at Stable Yard. Was she the inside man, I wondered? Or woman, rather. I couldn’t quite make sense of it all, but I spotted another name in that file. Sholto Harvie, ma’am – your old Deputy Surveyor. According to the file, Mrs Harris worked directly for him. Was he the link?’

‘Oh, surely not Mr Harvie?’ the Queen said. ‘But he was so charming!’

‘It pays never to be blinded by charm, ma’am,’ the Private Secretary said wisely, crossing one pinstripe-trousered leg over the other and giving her a sad little shake of the head. ‘I asked an old-timer if Smirke and Harvie had been friends, and he remembered that they were very pally. The thing is, I happened to see Harvie outside my office a few days before I found Ferguson’s body. He was actually looking for Rozie. She told me later who he was, and that it was something to do with your old painting, which they’d discussed, I gather. Young Rozie had nothing to do with all of this, I hasten to say.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ the Queen said, with a nod to her APS, who glanced innocently up from her notes.

‘Although, to think, if it wasn’t for your little picture, ma’am, I might never have put two and two together.’

From two seats away, Strong gave the Queen a brief, inquisitive look, which she affected to ignore.

‘Goodness me. How lucky indeed. And how very sharp of you, Simon.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. Just doing my duty.’

‘And what were the two and two, exactly?’ she asked.

‘By then we were fairly sure Ferguson had killed Mrs Harris, and it seemed too coincidental that she had also known Mr Harvie, whom I had seen at the Palace on what was almost certainly the fateful night Ferguson died. It was just a feeling, ma’am. Hard to explain. Anyway, I told the chief inspector here and he agreed to visit Harvie in the Cotswolds and investigate. We still thought it was all about the Breakages Business, but then the police made a breakthrough.’

Strong took up the story again. ‘We found Harvie’s house locked up and he wasn’t answering his phone, so I got a search warrant. We didn’t find Harvie, but we did find something.’ He paused, because he had been looking forward to this bit. ‘Quite a momentous discovery, in fact, ma’am. Upstairs in the spare bedroom. Wrapped in blankets in a box under the bed.’

The Queen’s surprise was real. For a fraction of a second, her eyes met Rozie’s – whose expression read, I know! That very bed. The one she’d slept in. Like the Princess and the Pea. Except she hadn’t noticed anything.

‘Two original seventeenth-century paintings!’ Sir James announced happily, leaping in. ‘Of really quite exceptional quality, by an artist called Artemisia Gentileschi. Harvie had some good art on his walls, but nothing of that sort of value. We took them to the RCT to have them examined and it turns out they were part of a set of four, originally discovered in Hampton Court Palace.’

‘And how did this connect to Cynthia Harris?’

‘Ah.’ According to the cue cards, this was Sir Simon’s moment. The others duly turned to the Private Secretary.

‘She was the original expert on Gentileschi, ma’am,’ Sir Simon explained.

‘Can I just say,’ the chief superintendent interposed, his shiny buttons catching the light as he adjusted his pose to the benefit of his chiselled jaw, ‘that Sir Simon makes this sound quite straightforward, but it was really his extreme alertness and attention to detail that enabled us to put everything together so quickly. He’d be welcome on the force at any time.’ He hadn’t spoken for a while. He smiled and sat back.

‘Oh, please,’ Sir Simon begged. ‘Stop it. Pure luck. The Boss knows I’m just a simple sailor.’

‘I know nothing of the kind,’ the Queen said encouragingly. ‘Do go on.’

Sir Simon flapped his hand again. ‘All right, then. You see, a friend of Mrs Harris had recently written to you, using an illustrated card featuring Gentileschi, and I happened to find out – I think it was Rozie who told me – that Mrs Harris had once studied the artist.’

‘How fascinating.’

‘I asked the Surveyor about it. He’s very dependable, ma’am. And he found out that when she was working for Harvie in the eighties, part of her job was to call in on the old gentlemen and ladies who lived in grace and favour apartments at Hampton Court, and find out what goodies they might be sitting on. She used to cycle over there and see. In this case, the four portraits had been hanging in an unused dining room for decades. Mrs Harris would have instantly recognised the quality. She not only knew about these paintings . . . she discovered them.’

There was a suitably long pause.

‘Well,’ the Queen said. ‘How surprising.’

‘Astonishing, isn’t it? And Hampton Court Palace was a fire hazard in those days, so you might even say she saved them. But then they disappeared.’

The Queen looked appropriately curious, amazed and offended as the story of the theft and forgeries was explained to her, ending up with the disappointing copies she had seen. It was much as she had imagined, and the police had even managed to track down the niece of the forger himself.

‘Apparently he’d told her it was one of his greatest jobs,’ Sir James explained. ‘It was Harvie who hired him. They’d known each other since their art school days. The tricky thing was not to make the fakes too good. They had to look like contemporary copies. The forger said he imagined he was a bored countess in the court of Charles II, practising her oil technique.’

‘Harvie was known to hang out with a very louche set, ma’am,’ Strong added. ‘It was put down to youthful high spirits at the time, but apparently he never quite lost that attraction to danger.’

‘And to crime,’ the Queen pointed out.

‘Exactly, ma’am,’ Strong agreed. ‘He made around seventy thousand pounds from the sale of two of the original Gentileschis—’

‘My Gentileschis.’

‘Yes. And kept the other two. But seventy thousand was a small fortune back then. He used it as a down payment on his house. He married soon afterwards and liked to give the impression his money had come from his wife, but it didn’t. Her family always thought there was something dodgy about him.’

‘It seems everyone thought so,’ the Queen observed. ‘Except us.’

‘The one thing we don’t know,’ Strong admitted, ‘is why Mrs Harris should have reappeared in his life after thirty years. In fact, my first thought, when Sir Simon alerted us to his association with her, was that perhaps they had a love affair long ago and Harvie might have killed Ferguson to avenge her in some way. Then we discovered the Gentileschis and a very different story emerged. We suspect she may have been blackmailing him, possibly through Ferguson.’

‘Mmmm.’ The Queen glanced briefly again at Rozie, who was looking at her shoes.

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Strong went on, ‘but we do know that at some point in July, Eric Ferguson and Harvie were in touch by phone. A subsequent WhatsApp message from Ferguson said “things were hotting up re 1986”. That was the year Harvie had the Gentileschis faked, ma’am. He had caused her to leave her job that summer, presumably so she wouldn’t be around to see that the paintings she had just discovered were not the same as the “copies” he later revealed. The message from Ferguson said “it was on video”. We don’t know, but perhaps this was something Mrs Harris had made as part of a blackmail campaign. We know how difficult she was. Anyway, that’s when Harvie replied with an instruction to “keep Cynthia quiet”.’

‘How on earth would Eric Ferguson know about the Gentileschis?’ the Queen asked, with genuine interest.

It was Sir Simon’s turn to reply. ‘Ah. Well, it goes back to the family connection. He’d have heard it all from Sidney Smirke, who was running the Works Department at the time. Smirke was the person Mrs Harris had a relationship with after leaving Harvie. Given they were pals, it made me wonder whether Harvie fixed that too. Which he did, as it turns out. When that relationship went sour, she ended up making beds in Buckingham Palace. She probably felt bitter and vengeful about her treatment, even after all this time. No wonder Harvie was wary of what she might do or say.’

Difficult. Bitter. Vengeful. The Queen heard these words, nodded, and kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Anyway, what matters,’ Sir Simon continued, ‘is that Harvie had stolen four of your artworks and subsequently sold two of them, and if Mrs Harris chose to, she could easily incriminate him, even if she didn’t necessarily know the details of what he’d done. Hence, he asked Eric Ferguson to “keep her quiet”.’

‘And Mr Ferguson overreacted,’ the Queen said, ‘and decided to kill the poor woman?’

‘Exactly, ma’am. Given what we now know about him, he probably enjoyed it.’

‘It seems excessive.’

‘It was. But this was a man who stalked a secretary here for weeks, online and in person, to get her to leave.’

‘The timing was important.’ It was Strong who pointed this out. ‘Ferguson was in the middle of orchestrating his most daring move yet: the master-fraud embedded in the Reservicing Programme. Nothing must be allowed to draw attention to the Breakages Business – past, present or future. Still, to any normal person, a murder would seem, as you say, excessive. We wondered, ma’am, why Harvie said nothing when the body was discovered. He must have realised the death was highly suspicious.’

‘Precisely. Indeed I—Um, yes. I see what you mean,’ the Queen said, with a cough.

‘We have reason to believe Harvie didn’t know Ferguson’s true nature at the time, or he’d have done things differently. Afterwards, it was too late. Because not only did Ferguson know about the paintings, it turned out he also knew another dark secret of Mr Harvie’s.’

‘Dear me. More secrets?’

They told her about Daniel Blake, and it wasn’t difficult to look upset at the thought of the bike crash, because she was.

Strong explained, ‘Harvie probably got advice from one of his dodgy friends on how to nobble the brakes. Harvie liked bikes, but he was hardly a mechanic. From what we understand, he was pretty devastated by the death. They were friends. He intended the young man to be injured, perhaps with a broken bone or two. He was a fool. A murderous fool, as it turned out.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘There was a sort of Mexican stand-off,’ Strong explained. ‘That’s when—’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Oh, right. Well, Ferguson knew Harvie had effectively killed Daniel Blake, back in the day. Harvie strongly suspected Ferguson had killed Mrs Harris. But Harvie also realised, ma’am, that Ferguson wouldn’t let him live indefinitely, with the knowledge he had. He decided to kill the man before he became his next victim.’

‘You’re sure it was Sholto?’

‘Yes, ma’am. The last call to Ferguson came from a landline at the Travellers Club, where Harvie regularly stayed when he was in London. We established he had been at the club the night of the murder, which was also the night of the pensioners’ party at the Palace. He was our man, no doubt about it. He wasn’t as clever or as thorough as Ferguson. Afterwards, he hid the gun in a Chinese vase in the cellars. Assumed we wouldn’t look there, I suppose. It was practically the first place we tried.’

‘How, might I ask,’ the Queen said, ‘did he smuggle a gun into the Palace in the first place?’

The men all looked helpless. It was collectively their job to protect the Sovereign and this was a good question.

‘We don’t tend to frisk your old servants, ma’am,’ Sir James admitted. ‘Perhaps we should. We ask for photo ID, of course, and we had a bag search at the door for the party, but Sir Simon suspects that Harvie had hidden the pistol against his back, under a silk cummerbund that he was wearing.’

‘It was particularly wide and garish, ma’am,’ Sir Simon explained. ‘I remember noticing it later. Not the highest form of tailoring, for a man who was otherwise well dressed. The gun was a Colt .38 Special from the thirties. Small and powerful – the sort of thing you might choose if you’re not sure of your aim and want to stop someone at a short distance. DCI Strong here subsequently discovered that Harvie bought it as a deactivated antique and had it reactivated by one of his more disreputable friends. He had a lot of those, we now understand. It was another such person who must have sold him the fake passport he used to get to France.’

‘He was in France?’

‘That’s right. The French police found him in a hotel outside Paris yesterday.’

‘Goodness.’

The Queen looked genuinely fascinated. Sir Simon was relieved to talk more about this discovery, and less about those moments when killers had been allowed to stalk the Palace corridors uninterrupted, which was something the triumvirate and the police would rather put behind them.

‘He was in the middle of writing a letter, which was more of a confession, really.’

‘To what, exactly?’

‘To the killing of Ferguson. By then we were already pretty certain he’d done that anyway. But also to the fact that he felt indirectly responsible for the two other deaths.’

‘Three deaths,’ the Queen mused. ‘And to think I sent Rozie straight into his lair.’

‘Hardly a lair, ma’am,’ Sir Simon reassured her. ‘Harvie was obviously taken with Rozie. He was very keen to see her that night at the party. I believe he had just killed Ferguson at the time, and was tired and emotional—’

‘You mean drunk.’

‘Very drunk, actually. It must have been quite a mental and physical job to deal with the body in the cellars.’

‘Wasn’t he covered in blood?’ the Queen asked, suddenly wondering.

Sir Simon smiled. ‘It seems he had the presence of mind to put on a warehouse coat he must have found down there. I saw it stashed with the body, but stupidly assumed it belonged to Ferguson. Anyway, it looks as though he cleaned off, went back upstairs, drowned his sorrows thoroughly at the bar and decided in a maudlin fug that he wanted to assure Rozie of his affection. In fact, he left her a painting, ma’am. He mentioned it in his letter. He said it was one she had admired when she visited.’

‘I don’t understand. You say he left Rozie a picture?’ The Queen looked from one man to the other.

DCI Strong leaned forward. They had decided to leave this information until last, because of its upsetting nature.

‘I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, that when the French police found Harvie yesterday, he was dead.’

‘Oh,’ she muttered quietly, resting a hand on the back of the corgi curled up beside her. ‘I see.’

‘He’d taken a bunch of pills in a little hotel in the suburbs. It’s the kind of place they don’t clean as often as they might. They didn’t find him for two days.’

The Queen nodded slowly. ‘So that’s why you called his letter a confession. The words of a dying man.’

‘Exactly, ma’am. They were addressed to a woman called Lisa. We don’t know who she is yet, but we’re making en-quiries. It seems the Private Secretary’s quick thinking rather caught up with the man,’ Strong added. ‘Harvie mentioned that he’d hoped it would be months before anyone looked in that trunk in the cellars, and by then it would be difficult to know exactly when Ferguson died. When he heard on the news how fast Sir Simon here found the body, he knew the game was up.’

‘What did he say to Lisa, exactly?’ the Queen wanted to know.

‘Oh, nothing too specific. Only that he was sorry. Not for killing Ferguson, which he seemed quite pleased about, but for Blake, and for Mrs Harris, and for introducing Sidney Smirke to the Palace in the first place. We didn’t know this, but apparently it was Harvie who originally recommended him. Another dodgy, plausible friend from his art school days.’

‘Was he sorry about the pictures?’

‘He didn’t mention those in his letter,’ Strong said. ‘I think it was more the lives that mattered to him.’

‘Well, at least there’s that. And the Breakages Business . . . have we finally put an end to it?’

By ‘we’ the Queen meant ‘you’, and Sir James and Sir Simon knew that.

‘We have indeed,’ Sir James said firmly. ‘Ferguson was good at deleting things from his phone, but he kept a detailed record of the frauds on his computer. He assumed it was hack-proof, but thanks to the whizz-kid at the NCA, it took less than a day to give up all its secrets. Including Ferguson’s associates inside the Palace and out.’

‘We’ve arrested most of ’em,’ the chief superintendent announced, buttons twinkling. ‘Some we’re just keeping an eye on. They might lead us to more syndicates we’ve got an interest in. And meanwhile the media can feast on the fact that yes, there might have been two bodies, but with Sir Simon’s help we solved the mystery of both of them in record time. All in all, it’s been an excellent team effort, I’d say.’

On that note, the four men sat back, satisfied.

‘Well, I must congratulate you all,’ the Queen said. ‘This has been most informative.’

‘All in a day’s work,’ Sir Simon said with a grin.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ the Queen agreed, rising. ‘It’s just what I’d have expected. Very well done.’

If he did that hand flap again, she thought, he might get RSI.

Chapter 48

As they left, the Queen asked Rozie to stay behind.

They stood together quietly, both reflecting that this was the very spot where they had stared at each other, first truly considering that Mrs Harris’s death might be unnatural.

‘You did well,’ the Queen said.

‘Shall we let them go on thinking that she was blackmailing Sholto, and that’s what started everything?’ Rozie asked.

‘I think we should. It’s unfair on her, I know. She didn’t understand the power she had to bring Sholto down. However, it’s easier that way. It keeps you out of it, and I don’t want to complicate things for them unnecessarily.’

Rozie nodded. ‘Ma’am. But what if DCI Strong realises Eric targeted me before I helped out Sir James with the spreadsheets?’

‘I imagine he has realised,’ the Queen said. ‘But it would be hard for him to prove the cause. Easier, I think, for him not to probe too far. After all, the murders are solved and both murderers are dead.’

‘Yes.’ Rozie nodded again. She seemed very muted, and it occurred to the Queen that she must be thinking that she was personally responsible for all of this. Responsible, because she had alerted Eric Ferguson to danger by asking about a painting that went missing in 1986, and whose provenance she would diligently track. Eric had been right to fear that painting. It was the one mistake – the one act of reckless greed, without planning or thought for the consequences – that the Breakages Business had made. Rozie would have followed up with Cynthia Harris eventually. Even if the housekeeper didn’t yet realise how much she knew, they would have unravelled the thread all the way back to Sholto and Sidney Smirke and poor Daniel Blake, as they eventually did. But Rozie was wrong to take on this burden.

‘There was something else Sir Simon said that wasn’t entirely accurate,’ the Queen remarked. ‘It got me thinking.’

‘Oh, ma’am? What?’

‘Do you remember, he mentioned Ferguson referring to a video in a message to Sholto?’

‘I do,’ Rozie said. ‘When “things were hotting up”.’

‘Something struck me. It reminded me of a moment when I noticed Mr Ferguson, earlier this summer. He was monitoring a documentary team who were filming me when I sat for that bust.’

Rozie’s gaze sharpened. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. They were videoing me with Lavinia Hawthorne-Hopwood and I remember, quite distinctly, that I happened to remark that I’d seen a painting of mine in Portsmouth. It was around the time I asked you to look into it, but long before you would have talked to him.’

‘I don’t see how—’

‘Oh come, Rozie. Ferguson was in the room at the time. It was I who alerted him to the problem, not you. It was probably then that he contacted Sholto Harvie.’

‘But even so, ma’am, I—’

‘You just did your job,’ the Queen said with finality. ‘I started this, however inadvertently, and I count myself very fortunate indeed that it ended without more bloodshed. Although, of course, I wish poor Mrs Harris hadn’t been involved.’

‘She wasn’t the most pleasant person,’ Rozie assured her.

The Queen could see the girl thought she was being sentimental about her old housekeeper, as so many had thought. But she wasn’t. She let it go.

A week passed. All around them, the final preparations were being made for the Diplomatic Corps Reception. The Queen would soon be donning a white and silver evening gown and some of her sapphires, but in a quiet moment, she asked to be driven to St James’s Palace for a brief appointment.

In the car, her thoughts were on Sholto Harvie, who had died of a self-administered overdose of pills in a squalid hotel in a Paris banlieue that didn’t ask questions. How he would have hated his surroundings in those last days, she thought. He was a man who lived for glamour.

He had asked ‘Lisa’ for forgiveness, but he wouldn’t be getting it. Cynthia Harris had come to London as a young woman bursting with ideas and ambition, and for his own sake, Sholto had ruined her. Not only her career, but her life, by placing her in the hands of a scheming, violent man. She had soldiered on, but lost the respect of all around her. Bitter, Sir Simon had called her. Vengeful. Mrs Harris had not, in fact, been vengeful, except against herself. She had lived alone and died alone, and the Queen’s heart went out to her.

She knew forgiveness wouldn’t be forthcoming to Sholto, because she knew who ‘Lisa’ was. When he worked as the Queen’s Deputy Surveyor of Pictures, Sholto used to call one ‘Mona Lisa’. It could be short for Elisabetta, he told her . . . this expert on Leonardo, with his courtly ways. It was bumptious, bordering on rude, when it should have been ‘Your Majesty’, but he had the charm to get away with it. He must have thought charm could excuse any bad behaviour. He was wrong.

At the Royal Collection Trust, Neil Hudson accom-panied her to a light-filled conservation studio. Here, the newly rediscovered Gentileschis, rescued from under Sholto’s spare bed, were set up, side by side, on easels at eye level.

‘Two muses, ma’am. It’s a theme Artemisia addressed elsewhere. We’re not certain, but that one holding the flute looks like Euterpe, goddess of music, and the one with the garland could be the goddess of dance, Terpsichore. We’re trying to get the other two back from their current owners to join them. It may take a while. But these two would make a good centrepiece for a show we’re thinking of doing about women artists. Wouldn’t you agree?’

The Queen stood in front of these originals for a long time, remembering how quickly she had cast her eye over them before – so sure she would see them again soon, once they’d been cleaned. The copies had turned out much flatter and duller than expected. Now she knew why. These two, by contrast, were mesmerising. They were still grimy, but the faces shone out, each head thrown back at a challenging angle above an ample bosom or a half-turned shoulder. The eyes seemed to be posing a challenge: are you watching me or am I watching you? She loved their quiet subversiveness. They might be half-clothed goddesses, but in each of them she recognised a fellow soul: a woman who has more to think about than the act of being painted.

‘They’re delightful,’ she said. ‘Splendid. Didn’t everyone do a marvellous job? It’s good to have them back.’

Chapter 49

Another week went by. Rozie and her sister Fliss were up in Rozie’s set of rooms in the attics, getting ready for the staff Christmas party. Not the formal one the royal family would soon attend, but the fancy-dress shindig, where plus-ones were invited, wine flowed faster than gossip, and the bacchanalian vibe was designed to match the Caravaggios on the walls.

The bedroom smelled of tobacco, rum and rebellion. Fliss, dressed in a purple jacket and tight paisley trousers, was putting the finishing touches to her eyeliner using a magnifying mirror on the bedside table. Rozie sat cross-legged in front of the wardrobe mirror, adding a blue edge to the glittery red flash that covered half her face.

‘I wonder which hero Sir Simon will be going as,’ Fliss mused.

‘Guess,’ Rozie said.

‘Seriously, d’you think so? Which one?’

‘Sean Connery, I imagine. Or Pierce Brosnan. He’ll go for suave.’

‘Is he totally up himself these days?’

‘Actually, he’s fairly subdued,’ Rozie said. ‘He’s Mr Modest. They teach you that kind of thing at public school. But everyone’s wondering what kind of honour she’s going to give him.’

‘Ooh! Where do you go from “Sir”?’ Fliss asked. ‘Lord?’

‘She’s got loads of family medals up her sleeve that nobody’s heard of. He’ll probably go from KCVO to GCVO. It’s a big deal.’

‘OK, if you say so.’

‘She’s also given him and his wife the use of a cottage at Balmoral at Christmas so they can chillax.’

‘Nice. By the way . . .’ Fliss looked up from her finished make-up. ‘You seem a lot better. You OK now?’

‘Yeah, I am,’ Rozie admitted. ‘There are a few idiots here, but on the whole they’re a good bunch. They work as hard as we did at the bank for a fraction of the money. They’re proud of what they do. That whole . . . Gothic atmosphere seems to have vanished.’

‘Amazing what a difference just one or two people can make,’ Fliss said. ‘You think something’s endemic, but you get rid of a couple of sociopaths and . . . ewey!’’

Rozie agreed. Those little folded notes had lit a flame of fury that still flared inside her from time to time. But they had been written to scare her off because she was good at her job, as much as because of the colour of her skin. She could go back to viewing the unthinking racism of men like Neil Hudson with pity. He would be mortified if he knew that his ‘Nubian queen’ compliment came with centuries of problematic objectification. He was an academic, though. He ought to know better. It often amazed her who did and who didn’t. Sir Simon, despite his posh, white, public school, Establishment vibe, was always the perfect gentleman.

Fliss’s thoughts were elsewhere by now. ‘To think, you were heading to the house of a murderer when I called you in the car that night.’

‘Yeah. And I was about to sleep on two stolen paintings.’

‘And be given another one. By a murderer. I hope you’re not keeping it. At least you escaped the dreaded Mark.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Rozie asked, looking round sharply.

‘Whaaaat? I thought you knew. Jojo told me. It was the talk of the wedding.’

‘What talk?’

‘Mark was sleeping with Claire, no. You, know? Jojo’s sister, whose boyfriend was on a business trip?’

‘Um, no he wasn’t.’

‘He wa-as,’ Fliss assured her. ‘They got caught in flagrante by a guest who got the wrong room. He’d spent the evening chatting up one of the bridesmaids to throw everyone off the scent. It might have been you, but luckily you’d already gone.’

‘Yeah . . .’ Rozie said, shaking her head a little. Suddenly, she saw that stressful journey in the Mini in a totally new light. Sometimes bad decisions turned out to be very good ones. She studied her make-up in the mirror. The bolt of lightning was in perfect position. All she needed were her red boots. ‘Huh. Lucky for me.’

‘I never liked him,’ Fliss went on. ‘Sex on legs but . . . a total Backpfeifengesicht. Hey! Those boots look good on you. You should wear them more often.’

As they walked towards the Ballroom, among endless Wellingtons and Nelsons, Iron Men and Wonder Women heading in the same direction, they encountered Sir Simon in the Picture Gallery, accompanied by his wife. He sported a powdered wig, a cutaway red frock coat over parchment-coloured breeches and a white cravat. Lady Holcroft wore a wide silk court dress. James and one of his Bond girls they were not.

‘I don’t get it,’ Rozie admitted. ‘You’ll have to tell me.’

‘The Scarlet Pimpernel,’ he grinned. ‘It was my favourite book at prep school. I never miss a chance to dress up as Sir Percy. Rah is Marguerite St Just, my clever wife.’

‘She was always one of my heroines,’ Lady Holcroft said. ‘Lucky we found each other, really.’

‘And who’s your hero?’ Sir Simon asked, taking in Rozie’s tinted red hair, catsuit and boots. ‘Oh! Bowie! Of course. Aladdin Sane. Well done. And . . .?’ He looked enquiringly at Fliss.

‘Prince, dude. I’d have thought it was obvious.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it is. Sorry. I’m more into rock than pop.’

‘Funk, but OK. He just died, like Bowie, you know?’ Fliss said with a sigh. ‘April 21. It’s been a tough year.’

‘The Queen’s birthday,’ Sir Simon observed. ‘It was a wonderful day for us in Windsor. But how tragic for funk. Well, I must say you do him justice. Shall we go in?’

The four of them linked arms and walked past the serried ranks of Rubens and Vermeer, Van Dyke and Canaletto. Looking around, Rozie hugged the knowledge to herself that she was now the proud owner of her own Cézanne. She wouldn’t tell Fliss, but she had decided to keep her bequest. True, its last owner was a murderer and a thief, but he had come by this painting honestly at least. If Rozie didn’t take it, it would only go to auction and be bought by someone who didn’t love it as much as she did. She’d put it on her bedroom wall and take it down whenever her self-appointed moral compass came to visit. She still looked back fondly at that weekend in the Cotswolds. She shouldn’t, but she did.

As they reached the raucous laughter and thudding bass of the Ballroom, the DJ announced the Stones and the room began to rock to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’. She followed Sir Simon’s bobbing wig towards the dance floor.

Chapter 50

The maids and dressers had already started packing for Sandringham. Everyone was looking forward to a quiet Christmas. They all felt they needed it after the year they’d had.

With a couple of days to go, the Private Office received a package with an MOD stamp on it, addressed to the Queen. Rozie was the one to open it. It contained an over-bright painting of the royal yacht Britannia surrounded by little sailing ships, and a very apologetic note from the Second Sea Lord, asking forgiveness for the delay.

She took it straight to the Queen in her study.

‘I thought you might like to see this as soon as it arrived, ma’am.’

‘Oh, goodness. Thank you, Rozie.’

Rozie, sensing herself dismissed, left the Boss to it.

The Queen stood at her desk, staring at the little painting for a while. Rozie would probably want to share this moment, after everything they had been through, but the Queen wanted to be alone.

They had changed the frame. It was no longer the original gilt one, but a plain wooden border, presumably applied by that bastard mandarin in Whitehall who had stolen it from her, to disguise its provenance. Resting her fingertips either side of it she bent down carefully, almost gingerly, and examined the canvas through her bifocals, starting at the top. The Second Sea Lord had mentioned ‘restoration’. Indeed, the painting looked even brighter than she remembered it.

Would they be there? She hardly dared look.

She dragged her gaze first to the pennants waving between the masts, and then to the main deck. Her heart beat a little faster . . . But they were there. Those precious little flecks of oil paint, that had survived a theft and over fifty years.

What were they called? There was a name for them. She looked back at the handwritten message from the Second Sea Lord, which came attached to a typed note from the conservator. ‘. . . Relatively good condition. Unvarnished. Some light overpainting, assumed contemporary pentimenti by the artist . . .’

Pentimenti. That was it. It sounded like regret. A change of mind. The artist having a second go.

In fact, it had been Philip in a fury, about six months after the painting arrived.

‘You know that ghastly thing by the Australian that we haven’t worked out where to hang?’

‘The Britannia?’

‘Yes.’

‘I rather like it.’

‘I can’t stand the bloody thing. Did you see, he has no understanding of wind? All the sails on the little craft go that way, see? So the wind must be coming in hard from the other side or it makes no sense. But the pennants on Britannia are drooping as if there’s no wind at all. I don’t know how you bear it.’

‘I’m not a sailor. Or an artist. But you’re both. Why don’t you change them, if they bother you so much?’

‘I think I just might.’

And so he had. A happy afternoon spent at his study desk, with oil paints spread around him and brushes in a variety of pots. He had worked on the pennants until he was happy with them at last. She noticed little difference, but she had picked up that while he was at it, he had also added three tiny splodges of white on the deck that somehow, from a distance, very cleverly looked as if they were someone waving.

‘Is that me?’

‘Of course it’s you. Who else would it be?’

‘How lovely.’

His face had softened entirely. ‘You know, sometimes I go off fishing for the day, or whatever it is, and you’re waiting for me on deck when I get back, with your sunglasses on and your camera out, waving frantically.’

‘Hardly frantically.’

‘You are. You look so pleased to see me then. I rather look forward to that sight of your arm windmilling at me.’

And she had dipped her head to meet his, which was still smeared with blue and white, and the kiss had been full of recent happy memories on tour.

She always thought of that moment, and the other moments it brought back, whenever she saw the ‘ghastly little painting’, with its little added flecks, which she would know at a hundred paces anywhere.

It didn’t belong in Portsmouth – it belonged outside her bedroom, where she had arranged for it to be hung that day over fifty years ago. No doubt Philip would pass by and say, ‘I never did understand what you see in that thing,’ as he so often had in the years before it disappeared. He had forgotten, but he had put it there.

She saw herself. And the image of her sun-bronzed husband heading for her across the water, beaming. These were the memories that made the rest of it possible. What could be more precious than that?