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?
To her surprise, it was empty, but there seemed to be a bit of a party going on in the staff kitchen next door. After the focused energy of everyone upstairs, the new atmosphere was a bit of a shock.
‘Is it someone’s birthday?’ she asked.
Four heads turned to look at her. Four glasses of Prosecco paused mid-air. She felt the festive mood shift.
‘Er, sort of,’ the nearest man said, with a half-smile she couldn’t read. He was short and out of shape, Rozie saw, with a belly he could afford to lose. His suit was crumpled and his tie loosened. ‘Care to join us?’
‘I can’t, I’m afraid. I just need someone’s help with this.’
She noticed that two of the men were Mick Clements and Eric Ferguson from the Operations Team, whom she had spoken to over the summer. Now, as then, Mick, the head, seemed sullen and hostile at the sight of her, while his younger colleague tipped his head to one side, as if examining her in a glass case.
Mick put his Prosecco glass down with slow deliberation.
‘I guess I’ll be going, then.’
As Mick brushed past her, she felt his body bristle with barely contained disgust. She couldn’t imagine what she had done to deserve it, and the others were hardly less hostile. Nobody invited her to go to their office, or offered to help. Rozie stood her ground and explained her problem, resting her open laptop on a kitchen counter. As the party atmosphere fizzled out, she felt a mixture of discomfort and annoyance. It wasn’t yet five thirty and upstairs the workday was still well under way; here, they seemed to think it was over. They were not remotely interested in her problem, though they were quick to dismiss her afternoon’s work.
‘I think you’ve missed the point a bit, miss.’
The junior-looking accountant stuck his hands in his pockets and gave her a shrug. His colleague stared at the ground.
‘I don’t think I have. Can I ask who’s in charge?’
The short man in the crumpled suit grunted something and reluctantly listened as she explained again what figures she needed. He shook his head and looked at her sadly.
‘Like Andy says, you’ve got into a bit of a muddle with this one, sweetheart. You’ve got your databases mixed up.’ He reached across her and tapped on the keyboard of the laptop, breathing noisily into her shoulder. ‘This line here doesn’t relate to that one there. Don’t worry, we can sort this out for you next week.’
The air was thick and stale, and uncomfortably warm. Rozie stubbornly explained her calculations line by line, only gradually revealing – as they continued to shake their heads and contradict her – that she was as financially literate as they were, if not more so; that she was working on their boss’s most important project of the year, and that if they couldn’t help her in the next five minutes, she was going to have to report them for obstruction.
She watched their dismay, resistance and eventual capitulation. They went back to their desks reluctantly to adjust their projections in line with her new figures, and she couldn’t get out of the office and their company fast enough.
Eric Ferguson accompanied her. Tall and lanky, he’d been lounging in the doorway since his boss left and she’d almost forgotten he was there.
‘I’m going your way,’ he said. ‘Let me carry that laptop for you.’
‘I can manage,’ Rozie said.
When they were out of earshot of the accountants, he hooted.
‘Phew! That was tough. I felt for you, Captain O, I really did.’
‘They could have been more helpful.’
‘Yeah, you could say that. I thought you went pretty easy on them. Mind you, they’d just had some bloody bad news.’
‘Had they? I thought they were celebrating.’
‘Commiserating. Drowning their sorrows. Pete – he’s the fat guy – he thought he was getting this big bonus today, but it just got cancelled.’
Eric seemed to be waiting for a comment, so Rozie said, ‘Oh.’
‘He had the fizz anyway, so . . .’
‘I see.’
‘Yeah. Bad timing.’
They were back near the boiler room, big enough to power an aircraft carrier, which emitted a low, steady hum so powerful Rozie could feel it in her bones. She remembered something from her research today and nodded towards the noise.
‘They’ll be overhauling all of that before too long. I bet you can’t wait for the Reservicing.’
Eric gave her his odd sideways stare for a moment, then his face melted into a grin. ‘Loads of work for us, you mean? We’ll be at it non-stop. Can’t wait though, yeah. Tippety-top.’
With a nod, he indicated a nearby staircase and disappeared up it at a trot. Rozie shrugged to herself, thinking back to the accountants. That atmosphere had been weird. Only now did she fully take on board how unwelcome her presence had been.
Was it one of them who had sent her the notes? she wondered. Was it personal? It was hard to see how or why: she’d never met them before. ‘Like some sort of Nubian queen’, Neil Hudson had said, as if he was being complimentary. Sod him. She would not suspect everyone she encountered. She would not let the pathetic little knife-doodler drive her out of the job she loved.
But still. She picked up the pace and speed-walked back to the office with the new projections. Slightly out of breath, she accepted Sir James’s fulsome praise for ‘saving the afternoon’. Then she made her way to DCI Strong’s little incident cubbyhole on the floor above, to let him know of a couple more poison pen suspects to investigate.
Chapter 28
The Queen fitted in one more meeting at the end of the day.
After dinner, Billy MacLachlan was also shown to her private audience room. He looked around briefly, pleased to notice that almost nothing had changed in the time since he last saw it. A few photographs of grandchildren had now been joined by those of great-grandchildren. Prince Harry, meanwhile, had changed from the nervous teenager with the cheeky grin into a more confident young man, whose star quality shone out through the ginger beard.
‘It’s good to see you again, Billy,’ she said.
‘Likewise, Your Majesty.’
She thanked him for his help at Windsor at Easter, and he refrained from thanking her for tasking him with this new job. It was better if your employers thought you were doing them the favour.
‘Did you find the curator?’ she asked, inviting him to sit down.
Dogs came to sniff at his trousers, then settled at the feet of their mistress.
‘Not a curator, ma’am – a conservator,’ he said, sinking into the sofa cushions and making a mental note to brush the dog hairs off his trousers later. ‘They clean the paintings and reverse the ravages of time, but I’m sure you know that. His name was Daniel Blake, and he was hired by Sholto Harvie, the Deputy Surveyor, in 1982 to work for the Royal Collection. He was the first full-time conservator they had – now there’s a whole studio of them. Anyway, Mr Harvie made the case for a full-time employee and Blake worked alongside him out of Stable Yard House.’
The Queen pursed her lips, then shook her head. ‘I don’t remember him.’
‘No reason why you should. He was fresh out of the Courtauld. In his late twenties, with a degree in chemistry and another in the history of art. Harvie and he got on pretty well, from what my sources tell me. But you were right, ma’am – Blake had a terrible motorbike accident in 1986. It was in the summer, shortly after they’d discovered those Baroque paintings in Hampton Court Palace. He was heading out of town up the M1 to go and meet some friends. A climbing trip, something like that. The smash was pretty bad.’