The Windsor Knot
- Автор: Беннет Си Джей
- Серия: Her Majesty the Queen Investigates #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-305002-0
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Windsor Knot». Краткое содержание книги:
It is the early spring of 2016 and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals—until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction.
Unhappy at the mishandling of the case and concerned for her staff’s morale, the monarch decides to discreetly take matters into her own hands. With help from her Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, a British Nigerian and recent officer in the Royal Horse Artillery, the Queen secretly begins making inquiries. As she carries out her royal duties with her usual aplomb, no one in the Royal Household, the government, or the public knows that the resolute Elizabeth will use her keen eye, quick mind, and steady nerve to bring a murderer to justice.
SJ Bennett captures Queen Elizabeth’s voice with skill, nuance, wit, and genuine charm in this imaginative and engaging mystery that portrays Her Majesty as she’s rarely seen: kind yet worldly, decisive, shrewd, and most importantly a great judge of character.
“Actually,” she said, as he bent arthritically to drop a kiss on her forehead, “I wouldn’t mind some fudge.”
“Your wish is my command.” He grinned, making her heart melt with clockwork precision, and strode to the door.
3
Meredith Gostelow hobbled out of the black cab that had brought her from Windsor to West London—at an extortionate fee—and stood catching her breath while the cabbie fetched her case from the space beside him.
She looked up at the pale pink stucco of her house and felt that she would never be the same again. Something had shifted, and she was terrified, and ashamed, and something she couldn’t name. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but a tear made its tentative way through the powder on her right cheek. Since the menopause had hit her like a freight train, moisture of any sort was hard-won these days. She was a young woman in an old woman’s body, creaking and enfolded in a carnal carapace she could not control. Last night had made it worse.
And then, this morning . . . She would have sunk to her knees, if she hadn’t known it would be impossible to rise up again.
“That it, missus?”
She glanced round, checking for her case and her handbag, and nodded. She had already paid him by card in the cab. Two hundred pounds! What had she been thinking? But then, who orders an Uber to pick them up from Windsor Castle? She should have gone to the station, of course, and caught the train to Central London like any sensible human who didn’t drive—but at Windsor one thinks differently. Surrounded by liveried staff, one is expansive. One is there because one is successful. One did in fact spend twenty minutes last night talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury about a potential commission for a twenty-first-century church building in Southwark. And so, one orders a cab and hang the expense . . . and says goodbye to the price of a large tub of Crème de la Mer for the sake of getting stuck in terrible, utterly predictable traffic on the M4.
One was . . . She was . . . She must stop thinking as if she were a tightfisted version of the Queen. Mind you, HMQ herself was known to mind the purse strings. Anyway, she, Meredith Gostelow, was alone.
A partner would have had the train idea. A partner would have given her a moment to think. A partner would have prevented . . . whatever happened last night. A partner might have driven her here in a nice, big car. And would now be carrying her case for her up the small flight of steps to the front door.
And talking to her, and telling her what to do, and needing food cooked and beds made and attention paid, which would be a nightmare. Meredith had been through this mental rigmarole a thousand times and cursed herself for repeating it now.
But something had changed last night. Something deep inside.
Talking of which, she needed the loo, rather badly. She grabbed her case by the handle with one hand, holding her capacious bag to her chest with the other, and hauled herself up the steps. By the time she’d found her keys, opened the door, dumped the bags, and run down the hall, she made it to the loo seat with microseconds to spare.
Old ladies. No moisture when and where you need it. Gallons of it without warning when you don’t.
Masha Peyrovskaya sat in the back of the Mercedes-Maybach, listening to the musical, rhythmical sound of Italian phrases as the car inched its way home. Her hands were folded in her lap and she watched the glimmering light show created by the facets of the yellow diamond, the size of a gull’s egg, on her wedding ring finger. Across the seat, Yuri barked Russian obscenities into his phone. A muscle twitched in his neck.
It is astonishing how quickly the best day of your life can become simply another thing you did.
In her earbuds, Masha’s Italian language app said something about the pleasure of being outside. Or was it wall paintings? She tuned it out.
Yuri had been quick to tell her how crass she had been, how common. How she ruined breakfast for him by mentioning Disney. How she’d ruined it for everyone.
But wasn’t it he who had asked to bring his own chef (he couldn’t), refused to eat anything that wasn’t alkaline, and had insisted on applying his own Himalayan pink salt from a rock crystal pillbox at breakfast? The ambassador’s wife had been watching at the time and Masha had seen the look she gave him.
The problem with Windsor Castle is that it is a dream. Real people only ruin it.
Today a trade war was brewing. The markets were down. Yuri was incandescent that certain stocks hadn’t been traded yesterday, when he had given the order. Eventually he ran out of bile and ended the call with a vicious stab of his thumb.
“Five hundred thousand. You can say goodbye to your gallery.”
He glared at his wife, furious, wounded. At the word “gallery,” she finally looked him in the face. Good. It was why he had said it. The things it took to get Masha’s attention! God forbid she should support him while he was fighting to keep everything together for her, for them, for the future. All she cared about was art—collecting it, showing it off, and mixing with people who made her feel clever because she knew the word “Postimpressionism.” That and being worshipped like a goddess. Well, he’d tried that for years, since he’d found her, aged seventeen, when she was a goddess in her tiny T-shirt and dirty jeans, and it was wearing him out. And it wasn’t exactly as if he was the only one.
“By the way,” he said casually, the way he’d rehearsed. “Maksim’s dead.”
“Uh?”
He watched her face freeze.
“Died this morning. Heart attack, probably. You liked him, didn’t you?”
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. When she did, her voice was barely there. “A little.”
“All those piano lessons. So many. You must play me some of those pieces you learned.”
He observed the way she stared at him, as if he was being shocking. As if he was doing something outrageous. The way she so often looked at him, saying nothing, from her high goddess pedestal, up in the stratosphere somewhere. When all he wanted was for her to step down and reach out to him. He wanted her to burn with shame and come to him, soft and humble, and hold him. Why couldn’t she understand? She was the villain here. Why did she always make it all his fault? His head was still pounding. Why had she let him drink so much? Had she known what would happen next?
She took out her earbuds. The silence enfolded them like a shroud as she worked out what to say.
“I will play you something,” she mumbled at last. “When we get home.” Tears threatened to spill from those heavenly, glistening eyes, but she held them in.
She was made of ice, he thought. But one day he would melt her.
At the castle, the Queen tried vainly to distract herself from thoughts of the poor misguided young man in the cupboard. She had spent the afternoon with her racing manager, going through her upcoming entries at Ascot. With the public safely shooed off the premises, she was on her way to inspect one of the tapestries in the Grand Reception Room, which was due for minor restoration, when a warder intercepted her to say Sir Simon needed to see her urgently.
“Did he say why?”
The warder tapped his two-way radio. “He said to tell you there’s been a development, ma’am,” he said impassively. She approved of his lack of curiosity. The last thing one needed was staff who practically nodded and winked as they passed on news. Such people never lasted long.