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?
‘Don’t worry,’ the Private Secretary said, waving a hand at her without looking up. ‘It’s under control.’
‘Are you sure?’ Rozie asked. Sir Simon’s eager-beagle face looked just as miserable as his friend’s.
‘It’s fine,’ he insisted. He was still cross with her about the unnecessary policemen. ‘It’s just the final Reservicing figures. They don’t quite add up and it’s got to go to print first thing tomorrow. Mary van Renen was working on it and the temp . . . Well, the less said about the temp the better.’
‘Can I do anything?’
He raised his head to gazed at her wearily. ‘D’you know of an Excel wizard who understands databases and the ins and outs of BP refurbishment issues and has a free morning? Because I don’t.’
Rozie smiled. ‘I worked at an investment bank, don’t forget. They made me go on courses.’
‘But it’s . . .’
‘What?’
‘Secretarial.’ He looked apologetic.
She shrugged. The old ‘secretaries-who-aren’t-secretaries’ thing.
‘This is important,’ she said. ‘If you show me where to look for problems, I’ll probably find them faster than anyone else who might be available.’ Mrs Harris’s HR records could wait an hour or two.
‘Really?’
Sir Simon’s features rearranged themselves, as if by magic, into their traditional combination of intelligent, curious hopefulness and Rozie made her way to the outer office in the South Wing where the Keeper’s harassed assistants worked. Here, she acquainted herself with the issues and made herself comfortable at a free desk, which happened to be the one where Mary used to sit. She was the first person to think to call Mary herself, who talked her through the numbers. Then she delved deeper into the databases to understand the discrepancies and lost all track of time.
The Queen was in her study when Philip popped his head round the door in passing to tell her some hair-raising stories about the US election that she would rather not have heard.
‘I suppose the spooks have told you it’s all being run by Russia and Facebook?’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Don’t count on it. I got a sit-rep from someone at the Guinea Pig Club memorial thing.’
For a moment the Queen had a vision of Peggy Thornicroft’s poor creature in the outhouses at her boarding school, but this was a club for aviators who had been guinea pigs in quite a different way. They were the men who had been shot down in their planes in the Second World War and suffered horrific disfigurement through burns. A surgeon called Archibald McIndoe had put them back together as best he could, feeding them barrels of beer to keep their hydration and their spirits up. He was a pioneer of plastic surgery and one of Philip’s wartime heroes – and hers too – as were the young men (old men, now) who had been in the surgeon’s care.
She had been entertaining Mr and Mrs Santos at the time, but in a perfect world she would also have liked to go with Philip and to spend an hour or two with the few pilots who remained. They were of one’s own generation, they had been to hell and back and nothing could faze them. No doubt the visit would have been full of off-colour jokes and bonhomie. Her own events were never like that. There was something about the way men relaxed in each other’s company . . .
She sighed briefly. ‘How many of them are left?’
‘Seventeen,’ he said.
‘Out of how many?’
‘Six hundred and forty-three.’
But even seventeen still alive today wasn’t so bad, she considered, given that Philip was ninety-five and most of them would have been the same age as him. She remembered so well the dances they’d held at Windsor Castle, and how bright and charming all the young men were who came, and how so very many of them never came back. One after the other, after the other. It was dizzying, sometimes, to think of those names and handsome faces, and how one had twirled around the floor with them. And then the telegram.
These men must have believed, as their flaming machines plunged towards Earth, that their time had come. How many might have guessed they would live to their hundredth year, and some beyond it?
Sir Simon and Sir James arrived, to talk her through the Reservicing Programme proposal for the last time before it was submitted. The Keeper happened to mention that Rozie was busy sorting out a last-minute issue with the numbers.
The Queen smiled. ‘She’s a woman of many parts, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ Sir Simon gruffly admitted. ‘And she offered to help – she didn’t have to.’
This pleased the Queen even more. She liked people who pitched in and got on with things. One of her pet hates were the other kind: the prissy ones who stood on their dignity and watched chaos swirl around their ankles while they did nothing to avoid it. But it was awkward not to have Rozie here just now. She would have understood the following request and obeyed it without question. Sir Simon, on the other hand . . . Oh, well. One was the Boss, after all.
‘Simon, before you go, I’d like you to find the young woman who’s curating the Canaletto exhibition for the Queen’s Gallery next year. I particularly want to speak to her.’
‘Today, ma’am?’
‘Yes.’
Her look was firm. His half-raised eyebrow descended obediently to its natural plane.
‘Of course. But I’m sure Neil Hudson would be more than happy to come over if you wanted to discuss anything. He’s in overall control and he—’
‘There’s no need to disturb my Surveyor.’ Neil Hudson’s name was on Rozie’s handwritten list, which was folded in the top drawer of her desk. ‘The curator will do perfectly well. You know my schedule. If you could fit in half an hour this afternoon, that would be very kind.’
Sir Simon nodded. That would be very kind translated as Shut up and get on with it. He had learned this early, and did both.
Chapter 26
By sheer luck, the Queen’s next appointment quite naturally provided plenty of opportunity to talk about what was on her mind. With her page in attendance, she made her way to the Yellow Drawing Room again, where plastic sheeting had been liberally spread out on the carpet and Lavinia Hawthorne-Hopwood was waiting for her, along with the documentary crew. Over the summer, Lavinia had created a clay bust from her drawings. Unlike many other portrait artists, Lavinia didn’t like to work from photographs. ‘They kill the image for me,’ she explained the first time they worked together. ‘If I can’t capture it with my hand in the moment, then it doesn’t feel part of the process.’
This part of the process was something the Queen always marvelled at. A damp clay sculpture, built around a metal armature, had been somehow manhandled from Lavinia’s studio in Surrey to this room in the Palace, where it stood on a rotating modelling stand, draped in wet muslin. Nearby, a velvet-lined box displayed the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, ready for the dresser to help her put it on. She had chosen this particular piece for the portrait because it somehow managed to be delicate and dazzling at the same time. This was ‘Granny’s tiara’. Her beloved grandmother, Queen Mary, had given it to her as a wedding gift and she had worn it so often since that it was an old friend. It had not escaped her notice that she thought of her tiaras the way other women might think of their hats or – what? in these more modern times – their favourite handbags, perhaps.
Lavinia chatted as the Queen applied the diamonds, checked herself briefly in a mirror and made herself comfortable in the designated chair. When she was ready, the artist carefully unveiled the work in progress and the Queen was delighted to see that, once again, Lavinia had done a splendid job. One looked like oneself, but ten years younger. She had indeed captured some sort of sparkle about the eyes, as she had promised, and how she could do that in rough clay the Queen couldn’t begin to understand.