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?
He was cut off by the arrival of Rozie with the boxes, which she placed on a marble-topped console table by the door, ready for collection by the Cabinet Office later.
‘All good?’ Sir Simon asked her.
‘Mostly. How do I find out if we loaned the Ministry of Defence one of the Queen’s private paintings back in the nineties?’
At this question of negligible interest, Sir James stood up and took his leave.
Rozie observed his departure with curiosity. Leaning forward, meanwhile, Sir Simon steepled his fingers and focused on the matter in hand. He was good at leaping from one problem to another – like a gymnast on the asymmetric bars, Rozie had often thought, or a squirrel on an obstacle course.
‘Hmm. Talk to the Royal Collection Trust,’ he suggested. ‘They look after her private art as well as Crown stuff, I think. Why do we care?’
‘The Boss saw it in Portsmouth,’ Rozie explained. ‘The MOD say it’s theirs. The thing is, she says it was a personal gift from the artist. You’d think she’d know.’
‘She tends to. What’s the MOD’s excuse?’
‘They’re suggesting there must be two of them.’
Sir Simon whistled to himself. ‘Brave move on their part. Can you ask the artist?’
‘No, he’s dead, I checked. His name’s Vernon Hooker. He died in 1997.’
‘Did he paint a lot of boats?’
‘Hundreds. If you google him, you’ll see.’
Rozie waited while Sir Simon duly typed in the artist’s name to Google Images on his computer and instinctively recoiled.
‘By God! Did the man ever sail?’
Rozie was no expert on maritime paintings, but Sir Simon’s reaction didn’t surprise her. Vernon Hooker liked to depict his subjects in bright colours, with exuberant disregard for light and shade. The images featured more emerald green, electric blue and lilac than you might expect for scenes that were largely sea and sky. But then, one of the Queen’s favourite artists was Terence Cuneo, whose paintings of trains and battle scenes were hardly monochrome. And to Rozie’s surprise, when she looked up Hooker online yesterday, it turned out that his work generally sold for thousands. He was quite collectable.
‘They’re probably right, aren’t they?’ Sir Simon concluded, peering back at his screen. ‘The Ministry, I mean. There are dozens of the bloody things. I bet this Hooker would get more money for a Day-Glo royal yacht than a bog-standard seascape. He probably did loads of them.’
‘She’s adamant. And actually, he didn’t do any others of Britannia that I could find.’
‘As I say, talk to Neil Hudson at the RCT. See if we loaned it. Twenty years is long enough for the MOD to hang onto it.’
‘OK.’ Rozie changed the subject. ‘Why did Sir James look so uncomfortable just now? I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.’
‘Only existential despair. It’s the bloody Reservicing Programme. His secretary’s leaving, and they’ve discovered vulcanisation or something. Dodgy electrics, anyway. The Palace is a deathtrap, apparently.’
‘Good to know,’ she remarked breezily, heading for the door. ‘It sounds expensive.’
‘It will be. The budget has sailed past three hundred and fifty million already. We need Parliament to sign it off in November, and they can’t even give themselves a pay rise.’
She paused at the threshold. ‘Yeah, but this is the second most famous house in the world.’
‘But . . . three hundred and fifty million.’ Sir Simon folded his shirtsleeved arms and stared despondently at his computer. ‘When it was only three hundred it didn’t sound so bad, somehow.’
‘Over ten years,’ she reminded him. ‘And it’ll come in ahead of time and under budget, like Windsor Castle did. And the bill for the Houses of Parliament refit was four billion, the last I heard.’
The Private Secretary brightened slightly. ‘You’re absolutely right, Rozie. Ignore me, I need a holiday. How d’you stay so chipper?’
‘Fresh air and exercise,’ she said decisively. ‘You should try it some time.’
‘Do not cheek your elders, young lady. I’m very fit for my age.’
Rozie, who was very fit regardless of age – hers happened to be thirty – threw him a friendly grin before heading back to her office next door.
He tried not to show it, but her remark rankled with Sir Simon. She was a tall, attractive young woman, with a short, precision-cut Afro, an athletic physique and a fitness level that had hardly dropped since she left the Royal Horse Artillery. He, meanwhile, was a quarter-century older, and his knees were not what they were. Nor was his back. As a young helicopter pilot and then a diplomat at the Foreign Office, he had been reasonably athletic: an ex-college rower who was handy on the rugby pitch and a demon at the wicket. But over the years, his consumption of good claret had increased in inverse proportion to the time spent wielding an oar, a ball or a cricket bat. He really ought to do something about it.
Chapter 3
Back at her desk, Rosie clicked on a series of images stored on her laptop. She had asked the facilities manager at the naval base in Portsmouth to send her a photo of the Britannia painting, so she would have some idea of what she was talking about. The image he’d sent showed the royal yacht, flags fluttering, surrounded by smaller boats with a flat blob of land in the background. She wondered briefly why the Boss was so attached to it. This was a woman who owned Leonardos and Turners, and a small, very lovely Rembrandt at Windsor Castle that Rozie would have cheerfully sold her Mini for.
The facilities manager had been quite firm. The Second Sea Lord – a vice admiral in charge of all ‘people’ matters in the navy – had a variety of paintings in his office, all legitimately sourced from the Ministry of Defence. Any loans from other places were quite clearly recorded and always returned shipshape and Bristol fashion. This wasn’t one of them. There must simply be two paintings.
And yet the Boss was equally certain there were not.
Rozie made a phone call. The artist’s dealer in Mayfair wasn’t aware of any other paintings of Britannia by his late client, but suggested she talk to the son.
‘Don’s the expert on his father’s stuff. He’s in his late sixties, sharp as a tack. He lives in Tasmania. It’ll be evening there now, of course, but I’m sure he won’t mind talking to you.’
Rozie considered what a generous offer that was, then remembered on whose behalf she was calling. No – the artist’s son probably wouldn’t mind talking to her about the Queen’s little problem. People were usually fine with it.
Don Hooker was everything the dealer had promised.
‘The royal yacht in Hobart, for the regatta? Oh yeah, I know the one. It was 1962 or ’63 – something like that, and Her Majesty was on one of her tours. I remember Dad telling me the story. He was so proud of that painting! He was a big monarchist, was Dad, and there she was, this beautiful lady, travelling the world on her boat. He followed her on all the news broadcasts and made us listen too – even though, to be perfectly honest with you, Rozie, I was a callow youth at the time and I didn’t really care. But Dad loved the whole thing. He had a map on the wall and he marked off where she went with little green pins. Collected postcards, mugs, the lot. He said she looked so happy on that trip, and he wanted her to have something to remember it by. “A piece of that joy”, that’s what he said. He copied the picture from a newspaper photo, added the colours, you know . . . And he got a proper Pommie thank you on Palace notepaper, with a big red crest. It said the Queen had never seen Britannia look so colourful. It was the only one he did. We’ve probably still got that letter in Dad’s archive somewhere. I can look it out if you want . . .?’