A Three Dog Problem
- Автор: Беннет Си Джей
- Серия: Her Majesty the Queen Investigates #2
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Zaffre - Bonnier Publishing Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1-83877-485-1
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «A Three Dog Problem». Краткое содержание книги:
When a body is found in the Palace swimming pool, she finds herself once again in the middle of an investigation which has more twists and turns than she could ever have suspected. With her trusted secretary Rozie by her side, the Queen is determined to solve the case. But will she be able to do it before the murderer strikes again?
The Queen took off her bifocals and fiddled with her fountain pen. She felt a mix of guilt and frustration. If Cynthia Harris had been causing problems, someone should have said. One could live with the occasional poor choice of flowers in the Belgian Suite if it meant the Household as a whole was happy. Was that the sort of thing the housekeeper hadn’t mentioned in her handover notes? The Queen wished people didn’t always assume that obeying one’s every whim was the be-all and end-all. It was more than a whim to desire the staff to get on with each other. That mattered too, surely?
Even so. Mrs Harris’s reliability and flair were a rare mix and the Queen would miss her. The poor woman had been receiving poison pen letters and now she was dead.
And there was something else.
She thought hard for a moment, gazing into the middle distance. Rozie had said something she had meant to follow up on. What was it?
A spate of poison pen letters. Mrs Harris was not the only victim.
She reached swiftly for the phone on her desk and asked to be put through to the Master.
‘Good morning. I’d like to see you in my study immediately. If you would be so kind.’
Chapter 10
‘You what?’
Sir Simon, back at his desk and, it seemed, fully recovered from the shock, was incandescent.
Rozie stood her ground. ‘I told her about the letters. I had to.’
‘Oh, you had to, did you? Why, exactly?’
‘She asked.’
‘Asked if there were any letters, specifically? Any damaged items?’
‘No. She asked if I knew whether Mrs Harris was in any trouble. What damaged items?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I told you about the letters in confidence. God, Rozie! The Master told me in confidence. Can’t I trust you?’
He was standing at the carved marble mantelpiece in his office, flexing his hands into fists while she stood facing him. This was not a sit-down conversation. In fact, it was abutting the borders of a rollicking bollocking, Sir Simon-style.
‘Yes, of course you can,’ she said.
‘How? How?’
‘I can’t lie to the Queen!’ Rozie raised her voice to match his, which then became icy.
‘I never ask you to lie, simply to let the right person tell their own story. Is that so difficult?’
Rozie stood in silence. She understood, up to a point. But since her arrival late last year, she had developed a bond with Her Majesty that Sir Simon couldn’t even guess at. She had lied to him, when the Queen needed her to. If he even half suspected how much, she would become one of those people like Cynthia Harris who other staff hated for their privileged access to the Boss.
She kept her head held high. It was easy to know what to do: lie again. Brazenly. And as often as it took.
‘Of course, Sir Simon. It won’t happen again.’
She only called him ‘Sir Simon’ when he was shouting at her, which was rare. She saw from the tick in his cheek that he was slightly ashamed of himself. It was his tell. Breathing hard, she took advantage by withdrawing from the room and closing the door with infinite care behind her.
He wouldn’t know what she was thinking. It would drive him mad. Serve him right. And thank God he didn’t know what she was holding back, because if he did, he’d be even more furious with her than he already was.
When she was alone, Rozie messaged her sister in Frankfurt to let off steam. It was rare for a day to go by without an exchange of some sort between them – often accompanied by a meme, a few jokes and a selection of emojis. She didn’t tell Fliss what was happening, and Fliss knew enough not to ask. It was good just to make some stupid faces and apply the cheesiest filters she could find. Fliss, as usual, tried to teach her a new word in German. Today, it was Backpfeifengesicht: ‘someone who you feel needs a slap in the face’.
Rozie’s list of approving emojis went on for two lines.
The Queen spent the weekend visiting friends. On Monday morning, Sir Simon’s mood plummeted from chilly to glacial. He called Rozie into his office again.
‘Can I help?’
‘You certainly can. We’ve got the Met in. A detective chief inspector is arriving this morning. You can look after him. I have things to do. You can imagine how the press are slavering for details on the body.’
Rozie, who also had a full diary, simply nodded. ‘Of course. What’s he—’
‘He’s here about the letters. Well done. You can introduce him to the Master. That’ll be an interesting conversation. “We didn’t trust you to take care of it. We told Her Majesty and she’s called in the police”.’
Rozie peered to see if she could see actual steam coming out of his ears. ‘I’ll introduce the man, certainly. Do you know where he’s going to work?’
‘I know practically nothing. She organised this from her weekend jolly, God knows how. He may come with a hundred officers, for all I know. Put them in the Ballroom. Order up some computers and a whiteboard. Let’s make it an incident room.’
‘Yes, Sir Simon.’
He glared at her and left.
Soon afterwards, Rozie received a phone call to say that her visitor had arrived. She went to the entrance at the front of the North Wing in time to see the policeman striding across the Palace forecourt as the last of the scarlet tunics of the Foot Guards disappeared in the direction of St James’s Palace. As she approached, she was astonished to see that she recognised him.
The man nodding to the sentry at the gate was DCI David Strong, whom she’d met at Windsor Castle. He had been part of the team in charge of solving the murder there. He was short and squat, wearing a fringed woollen scarf over his suit to keep out the autumn chill. His salt-and-pepper hair had grown slightly greyer since the spring, she thought, but there was a gentle babyishness to his round, pink cheeks that made him look disarmingly cheerful. She greeted him at the door with a smile and a handshake.
‘David! Good to see you again.’
‘You too, Rozie. Sorry, I’d have been earlier, but I lingered to watch the Changing of the Guard. Haven’t seen it since I was a kid. All those soldiers in their busbies. What d’you call them?’
‘Bearskins.’
‘Do they actually make them out of bearskins?’
‘You don’t want to know. Come on through.’
She escorted him to her office and got an assistant to make him a coffee (she still remembered Baba Samuel’s slightly mind-boggled expression when she explained that, as Assistant Private Secretary she was not a secretary, and nor was the Private Secretary, but that they shared two assistants, who were). The chief inspector made himself comfortable in an antique wing-back chair between the fireplace and a tall Georgian window flanked by silk curtains and masked from the world outside by heavy netting.
‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
‘I like to think so,’ she agreed.
Strong guessed the netting was blast-proof, in the sense that it was designed to catch shattered glass and protect the room’s occupants in case of an explosion. Antiques and bomb threats. Swings and roundabouts. Still nice, though.
‘Did Her Majesty explain why I’m here?’
‘I think I got a fair idea from Sir Simon,’ Rozie said. ‘You’ve been asked to look into the poison pen letters received by one of our housekeepers, who died a few days ago.’
‘That’s about it. And the others too. She wasn’t alone, I gather.’
Rozie nodded as she bent down to fiddle with something on her desk. ‘Yes, there are a couple of others. A secretary and a catering manager. Mrs Harris wasn’t very popular.’