A Three Dog Problem

Sir Simon Holcroft was not a swimmer. As a trainee pilot in the Royal Navy, about a thousand years ago, the Queen’s Private Secretary had endured being dunked in the water on various training exercises. He could, if necessary, escape from a sinking helicopter in the Atlantic Ocean, but ploughing up and down an indoor pool held no allure for him. However, as he approached the grand old age of fifty-four, his trouser waistline was two inches larger than it should be and the palace GP was making noises about cholesterol levels. Something needed to give, and it wasn’t just the button above his flies.

Sir Simon felt tired. He felt flabby. On yesterday’s long, uncomfortable car journey back from Scotland he had come to the conclusion that here was a man who had eaten too much Dundee cake and not offered to accompany the Queen on enough cross-country walks. His first thought on arriving back at his cottage in Kensington Palace was that he needed to jolt himself out of this slump.

Those last few weeks in Balmoral had been bloody. It was as if the midges had been staging a Highland Games of their own. He had been busy most mornings with Prince Philip, discussing the details of the impending Reservicing Programme, and then up most nights on the phone, conferring with fellow courtiers about the Duke’s latest suggestions and questions, as well as adding several of his own. If they hadn’t done all their homework by the time they presented it to Parliament, the proverbial ordure would hit the fan like a fireworks display.

Vigour was what he needed. And freshness. Despite his lack of enthusiasm, the Buckingham Palace swimming pool seemed like the best solution. Staff tended to avoid it when the royals were in residence. The problem was, when the family were away, he tended to be so too, and vice versa. However, catching sight of himself in an ill-advised full-length mirror in the bedroom at KP that night, he made the decision to take a risk and nip in early. He prayed that, with his midge-bitten body stretching the seams of his Vilebrequin trunks, he wouldn’t encounter a super-keen young equerry in peak physical condition or, worse, the Duke himself, fresh from a royal dip.

Sir Simon walked across Hyde Park and down through Green Park – one of the few forty-minute commutes you could make through central London that was entirely green – in time to arrive the Palace by 6.30 a.m. He had stupidly put his trunks on under his trousers, which made both uncomfortable. He parked his briefcase on his office desk, hung his suit jacket on a wooden hanger on a hat stand, and took off his brogues. Neatly rolling his silk tie, which today featured tiny pink koalas, he placed it safely in the left shoe. Then, shouldering the backpack containing his swimming towel, he walked the short distance to the north-west pavilion in his socks. By now it was 6.45.

The pavilion, attached to the North Wing that overlooked Green Park, had originally been designed as a conservatory by John Nash. Sir Simon always thought they should have kept it that way. His mother had been a plantswoman and he saw conservatories as paeans to the natural world, whereas heated swimming pools were a little bit naff. Nevertheless, the Queen’s father had decided to convert this one in the thirties for his little princesses to swim in, so there it was, with its Grecian pillars outside, and its somewhat-the-worse-for-wear art deco tiles within, as much in need of updating as so many nooks and crannies of the Palace that the public didn’t see.

The pool area was reached from inside the main building through a door papered with instructions for what to do in case of fire and reminders that nobody should swim solo, which he ignored. The corridor beyond was already uncomfortably humid. He was glad he’d left his tie behind. In the men’s changing room, he divested himself of his shirt, socks and trousers and draped his towel across his arm. He noticed a cut-crystal tumbler abandoned on one of the benches. Odd, since the family had only arrived back from the Highlands last night. There must have been a homecoming celebration among the younger generation. All glass was banned in the pool area, but you didn’t tell princes and princesses what they could and couldn’t do in their granny’s home. Sir Simon made a mental note to tell Housekeeping so they could deal with it.

He showered quickly and walked through into the pool area, with its windows overlooking the kissing plane trees in the garden, bracing himself for the shock of coolish water lapping against this too, too solid flesh.

But the shock he got was quite different.

At first his brain refused to register what it was seeing. Was it a blanket? A trick of the light? There was so much red. So much dark red against the green tiled floor. In the centre of the stain was a leg, bare to the knee, female. The image imprinted itself onto his retina. He blinked.

His breath came short and punchy as he took two steps towards it. Another two, and he was standing in the gore itself and staring down at the full horror of it.

A woman in a pale dress lay curled on her side in a puddle of darkness. Her lips were blue, her eyes open and unseeing. Her right arm reached towards her feet, palm-up. All were soaked and stained with congealed blood. Her left arm was stretched towards the water’s edge, where the dark puddle finally stopped. Sir Simon felt his own blood pulse, pounding a one-two, one-two rhythm in his ears.

Gingerly, he knelt down and placed reluctant fingers against the neck. There was no pulse, and how could there be, with eyes like that? He longed to close the lids, but thought he probably shouldn’t. Her hair lay fanned around her head, a halo soaked in red. She looked surprised. Or was that his imagination? And so fragile that, had she been alive, he could have easily scooped her up and carried her to safety.

Rising, he felt a sharp pain in his knee. As he tried to wipe some of the sticky blood from his skin, his fingertips encountered grit. Examining it, he could just make out small shards of thick glass. Now his own blood, freshly seeping from a cut on his leg, was mingling with hers. He saw it then – the remains of a shattered tumbler, sitting like a crystal ruin in the crimson sea.

He knew the face, knew the hair. What was she doing here, with a whisky tumbler? His body didn’t want to move, but he forced it back outside to seek help. Though he knew it was too late for any help worth having.