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?
‘So I’m told.’
Rozie looked up again. ‘Does this mean the Queen thinks she was killed?’
‘No more than you do. Do you?’
‘No,’ Rozie said. Then, a little less confidently, ‘No.’
‘I mean, I’ve looked at the pathologist’s report. It does happen. Grisly way to die, but everything’s consistent with her having tripped and dropped the glass, then fallen onto it with the jagged edge piercing the artery as she landed. Really bad luck. You can bleed out in minutes if you’re not careful. Misadventure, he says. As far as he can tell.’
Rozie tried not to look as relieved as she felt. Of course it wasn’t murder.
‘But Her Majesty isn’t entirely happy with the internal investigation into the letters,’ Strong said. ‘Thank you.’ He smiled up at the assistant, who was back with his coffee.
Rozie tried not to criticise the Master in front of other staff, so she changed the subject. ‘I’m amazed that it’s you who came, though,’ she said. ‘Do you work at all the royal palaces?’
Strong laughed. ‘If only. No, the Queen asked for me specifically, apparently. You tell me why. First and last time we met was at Windsor, and I didn’t exactly come out of that one smelling of roses.’
‘You solved the case.’
‘I didn’t.’ He smiled wryly and took a sip of coffee. ‘Other people did it for me, and how they put all the pieces together I’ll never be quite sure. But apparently I didn’t blot my copybook too badly. I s’pose I know people here already, like you and Sir Simon. That helps. And I’ve got the support of my team in SCD11.’
‘Remind me . . .?’ Rozie asked. She knew that ‘SCD’ stood for Serious Crimes Directorate, but hadn’t mastered its administrative intricacies. Sir Simon would know, of course.
‘Mine’s a little unit for some of the more interesting stuff,’ Strong said. ‘We’re the SIS of the police, you might say. They like to call us the Shadowy Investigation Service. It’s “Specialist” really, but I prefer “shadowy”.’
He downed his coffee and Rozie offered to take him to the Master. A short corridor led to a set of double doors that brought them suddenly into the gilded splendour of the Marble Hall. Strong looked up and around at the moulded ceiling and neoclassical pillars, craning his neck as if he couldn’t quite believe he was really here. Rozie, who was used to it by now, carried on talking.
‘Are you bringing a lot of people with you?’ she asked, remembering Sir Simon’s tetchy comment about the Ballroom.
‘Nope,’ Strong said, dragging his eyes away from a priceless sculpture and striding out so as to keep up with her. ‘In fact, until I see the need to operate otherwise, it’s just me and my sergeant. We’ll just be asking a few judicious questions, you know. Nothing too scary. Make Sir Mike Green feel I’m not stepping on his toes too much.’
Rozie grinned at him. ‘Thank you for that.’
Strong gave her a sideways look. His sharp brown eyes belied those soft, rosy cheeks. ‘Might I suppose it was you, then, who spilled the beans to Her Majesty about the letters?’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Rozie said. ‘And it’s Mike Green, by the way, not Sir Mike.’
‘Ha! I bet he loves that.’
‘Knighthoods aren’t automatic and he’s fairly new. He’ll get one eventually.’
‘You’ll have to talk me through the ins and outs of it one day,’ Strong suggested.
‘Not my speciality. That’s for the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.’
‘And what d’you call him?’
‘Lord Peel.’
Strong giggled to himself, in a way that was not entirely respectful.
Rozie maintained her pace as she guided him along more red carpet, past gilded mahogany doors and life-size portraits of the Boss’s ancestors, until they reached the end of the corridor, where the gilding abruptly ended and the carpet switched from crimson to a more hard-wearing industrial brown.
She turned left, and he had to jog a little to stay alongside her.
‘I hate to ask, but are we nearly there yet?’
‘Almost. This is the South Wing.’
‘Do you do this every day?’
‘Several times, if I need to. But the Queen’s private rooms are above ours in the other wing, so that makes it easier.’
He looked at her heels. ‘I mean, how?’
She smiled. ‘You get used to it. Here we are. Let me introduce you to the Master. I hope he’s expecting us.’
The utterly sour expression on Mike Green’s face as he greeted them suggested he was.
Chapter 11
It had been a full day and the Queen was grateful for a quick gin and Dubonnet before supper. This evening she was accompanied by Lady Caroline Cadwallader, one of her ladies-in-waiting. They watched the news on television with the sound down and the Queen wondered how the Master would be coping with the chief inspector’s arrival.
Just as the thought was crossing her mind, the façade of Buckingham Palace appeared on the screen, alongside an aerial shot of the pavilion that contained the pool.
‘Oh goodness, look!’ said Lady Caroline. ‘That’s us! Isn’t it dreadful? Shall I turn the sound up? By the way, the gossip in the servants’ hall is that there’s a policeman at work here now. Is it true?’
The Queen merely nodded and glanced at the unused remote control at her lady-in-waiting’s side.
‘He doesn’t think there was any skulduggery, does he?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past anyone, mind you,’ Lady Caroline observed chattily. ‘Mrs Harris was an absolute pill, apparently. There was such a to-do when she was brought in from retirement. Everyone was muttering about it.’
‘Not to me,’ the Queen said grimly.
‘Oh, ma’am, of course not! You have much more important things to think about. I’m sure the Master was sorting it out. He—’
She was interrupted by a knock on the door and the appearance of the Duke of Edinburgh, who strode into the room and said, ‘Are you watching this lunacy? Did you hear what they just said?’
‘No, actually,’ the Queen told him with a little sigh. ‘Caroline was talking to me about it.’
‘They’ve made up some story about Beatrice and Eugenie leaving champagne glasses in the pool. They’re speculating the woman fell on a broken bottle of Dom Perignon.’
‘What imaginations they have!’ Lady Caroline said. ‘You almost have to admire them.’
‘I bloody don’t.’
‘So is that what the policeman is investigating?’ she asked. ‘Broken glass?’
‘Health and safety gone bloody insane,’ the Duke grumbled.
‘No, actually,’ the Queen said in reply to her lady-in-waiting. She told them about the poison pen campaign and the Master’s failure, so far, to make any headway with it.
Philip made a ptcha! noise. ‘I’ve been wondering about Mike Green. Promoted to the level of his incompetence. Typical crab. Not the first balls-up on his watch.’
‘Is it really so bad?’ Lady Caroline asked. ‘This poison pen thing, I mean?’
The Queen ruminated on the aspects that particularly disturbed her.
‘One of the secretaries found a rather disgusting note on her bicycle seat. Some of Mrs Harris’s clothes were cut up.’
Philip made a face. ‘If it’s all frocks and bicycles I’ll leave you girls to it. And someone needs to tell the Tristrams at the BBC that we don’t all sit around by the damned pool all day drinking bloody Dom Perignon in our pyjamas.’
Once they were alone again, Lady Caroline asked about the note on the bicycle seat.