The Windsor Knot

Outside the lamps were coming on, casting an opalescent glow across the lawns and paths leading down to the Long Walk. She was glad they hadn’t closed the curtains yet. Inside it was warm and bright, and time for gin.

But first, work.

“Yes, Simon—what is it?”

Sir Simon waited until she had sat down at her desk.

“It’s the young Russian, ma’am. Mr. Brodsky.”

“I rather assumed as much.”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

She frowned. “Oh dear. Poor man. How could they tell?”

“The knot, ma’am. The pathologist felt something wasn’t right. The hyoid bone was broken. That’s a bone in the neck, ma’am—”

“I know about hyoid bones.” She’d read a lot of Dick Francis novels. Hyoid bones were breaking all the time. Never a good sign.

“Ah. The fracture doesn’t necessarily prove anything because it can happen anyway, with hangings. But also the mark of the ligature round the neck was unusual. Even that wasn’t conclusive. The pathologist has been working on the case all afternoon, because we wanted some reassurance. Anyway, she had a look at the photographs from the scene and . . . well, they’re not very reassuring. There’s a problem with the knot.”

“Did he tie it incorrectly?” The Queen was alarmed. She imagined the poor pianist grasping at the cord with those elegant hands. Perhaps he meant to save himself and then couldn’t. How awful.

Sir Simon shook his head. “It wasn’t the slipknot around the neck that was the problem. It was the other end.”

“What end?”

“Um, do stop me if . . . you don’t want . . .”

“Oh, get on with it, Simon.”

“Yes, ma’am. If you’re intending to . . . tighten . . . for pleasure, or indeed otherwise, you have to attach the cord to something solid that won’t give. It looked as though Brodsky chose the handle of the cupboard door and passed the cord over the rail above his head.”

Now she was properly picturing the poor man inside this cupboard, the Queen struggled to make sense of it. “Surely there was no drop?”

“Apparently you don’t need one.” Sir Simon looked thoroughly miserable at his newfound expertise. “With a slipknot, you just need to bend your knees. A lot of people who . . . do it for pleasure . . . like to do it that way, I understand, because when they’ve had enough they think they can just stand up and loosen the noose, but it doesn’t always work because they lose consciousness, or they can’t loosen it after all and then . . .”

She nodded. It was what she had been imagining. Poor, poor man.

Sir Simon continued. “But none of that matters, ma’am, because that’s not how he died.”

There was a tiny pause.

“What do you mean, ‘not how he died’?”

“If Brodsky had died that way, intentionally or otherwise, his body weight would have pulled against the knot attaching the dressing gown cord to the door. But that knot was still fairly loose: it hadn’t been tautened by a falling weight. The pathologist has re-created the circumstances with a similar cord and it was fairly conclusive. The cord around Brodsky must have been attached to the doorknob after . . .”

A longer pause.

“Oh.”

For a full thirty seconds the only sound in the room was the ticking of an ormolu clock.

First, she had thought it was accidental death, which was bad enough. Then deliberate suicide, which was dreadful . . . Now the Queen forced herself to entertain a new, unthinkable possibility.

“Do they know who . . . ?”

“No, ma’am. Not at all. Obviously, I wanted to tell you as soon as possible. There’s a team setting up in the Round Tower. They’re just getting to work on it.”