The Hawk Is Dead

44

Thursday 23 November 2023

The huge vault, formerly used as a cold store in the days before fridges and freezers, was accessed past a wall of fuse boxes, and through a series of whitewashed interconnected arches, deep in the basement of Buckingham Palace. Now, instead of being kept cold it was being kept dry, by a battery of dehumidifiers.

It was temporary home to a different kind of perishable from the food that would once have been stored here: oil paintings, some of which were here for safe keeping while the rooms where they normally hung were being renovated and redecorated. And others that were particularly old and delicate were occasionally rested here to protect them from too much exposure to light.

In addition to paintings, a large number of ornaments and items of glassware were also being stored down here for safety during the renovations.

But it was a picture that Sir Jason Finch, dressed as always in his three-piece chalk-stripes, had come down here to find. A black and white dog — a Newfoundland — painted by Sir Edwin Landseer in 1867. A similar size and subject had recently sold at auction for £1.1 million.

He looked around with greedy eyes, bewildered, at the racks and racks of paintings, all in protective wrapping. Every single package worth tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions.

‘Sir Jason!’

Startled, he turned at the sound of the haughty voice, to see the tall, elegant Director of the Royal Collection Trust, Lorraine McKnight, standing right behind him.

‘Lorraine — ah — hello — yes.’

‘Can I help you with anything, Sir Jason?’

‘Well — actually — ah — I was wondering — about — a Landseer — black and white — a Newfoundland dog — I... I wanted — to have a look at it.’

She was giving him a strange look. ‘He was a fine painter,’ she said. ‘So talented with animals. Dogs, horses, stags.’ She was still looking at him oddly.

‘Yes, gosh yes, indeed. Animals. Landseer. Terrific painter.’

‘It’s rather coincidental,’ she said. ‘The Landseer Newfoundland dog — that’s the reason I’ve come down here — to try to locate it.’

45

Friday 24 November 2023

Polly Sweeney rang the bell at the St James’s Palace residence of Lady Greaves and wondered what lay in store for her here today. She knew from long experience as a Family Liaison Officer that there were generally five stages of grief that a bereaved person went through — the times between each stage varying considerably, from days to weeks to months.

The stages, although not necessarily linear, were defined as: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance.

After the reception she and Roy Grace had had from Lady Greaves just two days ago, Sweeney was surprised when the door opened and she was greeted as if the very recent widow was actually pleased to see her. As if she had fast-tracked all the stages to reach acceptance.

Lady Greaves was similarly dressed to before, in black: ‘widow’s weeds’, Sweeney thought, the old phrase sounding a bit irreverent in her mind. But it was often these little snippets of gallows humour that helped get her through the grim tasks her role demanded.

Lady Greaves’ grey hair was styled as the last time, as if she had just come from the hairdresser, and she wore make-up that was heavily applied. But Sweeney took it as a positive sign she was taking care of her appearance. She followed her through into the drawing room they had been in two days earlier. The roll-top desk in the corner was now opened up and she saw a pile of letters, all, judging by the ones she could see from the opened envelopes, handwritten. Letters of condolence.

After instructing the maid to get coffee for two, when they were settled on facing sofas, Lady Greaves quizzed Sweeney on the police progress in the investigation.

‘We have one very good witness, Lady Greaves,’ she answered.

‘I hope your team are not pursuing the theory of Peregrine being the target?’

‘Well, the thing is, a murder enquiry is partly a process of elimination,’ Polly Sweeney said with her usual tact.

The maid appeared with the coffee and they waited in silence until she had departed. Then Lady Greaves said, ‘Quite so.’

Sweeney, remaining pleasant, said, ‘I’d like you to help me in every way you can. I plan to interview you now and will record the details on my laptop on a statement form, which I will ask you to read and sign as an accurate record. This information needs to be accurate to the best of your knowledge as you may be asked to give evidence at any subsequent trial.’

After a moment’s hesitation, the widow nodded.

Polly gave her a reassuring smile before continuing. ‘Lady Greaves, what I need to know from you is more about your husband’s background. He was in the Navy, correct?’

‘He was, on a Short Service Commission. He spent much of his career there in Navy Intelligence.’

‘Could he ever in his service career have fallen out badly with someone? For instance, was he ever involved in any courts martial where someone might have held a grudge against him?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘No — absolutely not — nothing of that—’

Then she stopped in mid-sentence. And for the first time Sweeney spotted a chink of self-doubt.

‘He did spend some time on attachment with the Government Communications HQ. Would that make him a spy?’ she asked, jokingly. ‘Perry loved codes — and cryptic puzzles. He would do the Times crossword every day and got annoyed if it took him more than ten minutes.’ She laughed, drily. ‘He kept a notebook — well, more of a diary — and he wrote everything in that in code — codes were a bit of a hobby of his.’ She fell silent for a moment, as though she was struggling with a thought she couldn’t process. Then she said, ‘I don’t know if I should even tell you this as it is only going to feed your misplaced theory.’

Sweeney said nothing. Lady Greaves picked up her dainty bone china coffee cup and sipped. Then she said, ‘It was about two weeks ago, Peregrine came home in a very disturbed frame of mind. He told me that he’d heard something astonishing. Utterly astonishing. So astonishing he just did not want to believe it — could not believe it.’ She fell silent again.

After some moments, Sweeney prompted her. ‘Did he tell you anything more?’

‘He said he was going to his study to write it up in his diary. In code, of course. I asked him to tell me what it was, but he said that if it was true, it would be utterly explosive. Then he said he could not believe it was true and he didn’t want to set off any kind of rumour mill.’

‘And he still wouldn’t tell you?’

‘You need to understand that Peregrine was a principled man, honoured to serve the late Queen and now their current Majesties. As well as being a very private man. He’d often get a bee in his bonnet about one thing or another in the Royal Household, but he never liked to talk about issues until after they were resolved. I used to beg him to share things with me, but it simply wasn’t his nature. He always used to quote that old Royal Navy maxim: Loose lips sink ships.’

‘You have his diary?’ Sweeney asked.

‘It’s in his study.’

‘Would you let us borrow it?’

Margot Greaves shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not. But you’d need a damned good code-breaker to read it. I’ve had a go — I enjoy a bit of Sudoku, all that stuff. But I’ve never been able to finish a Times crossword, let alone decipher a page of his diary.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘He could have recorded all kinds of affairs in it. And I wouldn’t have had a clue!’

‘Let’s hope he didn’t,’ Polly Sweeney said, and smiled back as she continued the interview.

‘He wasn’t that kind of a man,’ Margot Greaves retorted. ‘Trust me. All he cared about was his duty to The King and The Queen. He was that rarest of people — a truly good human being.’