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?
The moment was bittersweet, because she and Sir Simon had discussed the proposal that this might be the last time she would perform this essential task in person. Charles could do a perfectly decent job of it for her, and really it wouldn’t do for an aged monarch to break a hip while stepping backwards on a multi level, rain-slicked stone platform in November. She understood the logistics – but her heart would always want to be there, doing the right thing, paying her respects as she was doing now.
On the balcony at the Foreign Office, overlooking the ceremony, Camilla, Catherine and Sophie stood together, all in black. For them, as for the vast majority watching on TV today, or lining the street to see the parade – or not watching at all, perhaps – most of the wars and sacrifice they were remembering today were distant stories, or an old-fashioned news report. But for the Queen and for those lined up in Whitehall they were vivid, lived experience. Though she had always been kept safe, she had lost men she had loved: friends and uncles, and ultimately her father, who smoking and the stress of the war had driven to an early grave. She had grieved with wives and girlfriends, sons and daughters, and now husbands and boyfriends in the later wars. Every military life was given in her father’s service and then hers, and she never forgot it. Each one mattered. With so many gone, it was difficult to keep one’s eyes entirely dry.
The mood was still upon her later that afternoon, when the family had gone and the Palace was quiet again. She was on her way to change out of her black dress when her Private Secretary caught up with her.
‘I just wanted to let you know about the tunnels, ma’am,’ Sir Simon said. ‘The Keeper mentioned that the Duke had asked him to get them checked out. He wants you to know that Security went down to have a look and the door’s shut tight with an outsize rusty padlock. You’d need bolt cutters to open it. We have nothing to fear from Health and Safety.’
‘Isn’t that a relief?’
She looked quizzically at the manila folder tucked under his arm.
‘I thought you might like to read this later.’ He held it out. ‘It’s the latest update from the chief inspector. I can leave it on your desk if you—’
‘Thank you. I’ll take it now.’
‘I’ve added today’s note at the top, ma’am.’ Sir Simon positively bristled with efficiency. ‘It makes very depressing reading.’
‘Oh? You’ve read it?’
‘Just a skim through, to keep myself up to speed. Strong’s sergeant has found more background on Mrs Harris. It seems she was always difficult, regularly getting into trouble and making bad decisions. She had a rough start in life, so perhaps that explains it. The chief inspector seems to think she might have written her own poison pen letters. Were you aware of that?’
‘I was, actually.’
‘I must say I find it hard to imagine, but he makes a good case for it. It’s all in the notes. I can summarise them, if you like.’
‘Thank you, Simon, but no. I’ll read them myself.’
After he’d left, she permitted herself a little sigh of frustration. It was Rozie’s day off and he was trying to help. Sir Simon hadn’t got to be as good as he was without casting a critical eye over anything he deemed important. In this, she recognised a fellow spirit, but she didn’t like the thought of him rummaging around in Rozie’s files.
The Queen continued up to her bedroom to change, but found herself increasingly absorbed by the note in the manila folder that now rested on her dressing table. This was the report on Cynthia she had been waiting for.
DS Highgate’s findings were certainly upsetting, given what had happened in the end. Cynthia Butterfield and her mother had been abandoned by Cynthia’s father, who had set up with another woman when the girl was three. A second unhappy and possibly violent marriage had ended in divorce, and her mother had then lived as a bit of a recluse. Overcoming these early obstacles, the young Cynthia had left Brighton for Edinburgh, then London to study art history, and started a strong career.
Sir Simon mentioned ‘bad decisions’. The report said that Cynthia’s work as a curator had come under scrutiny in the summer of 1986. The personnel notes were sparse, but it seemed she was accused of making ‘basic mistakes’. That summer, she had left the Royal Collection to join the Works Department. She was offered the job by Sidney Smirke, its head, now known to be occasionally violent, and a drunk. At that time, she became the only woman in a ‘very macho’ department and after a few months she transferred to Housekeeping.
Sir Simon had drawn from all of this that Cynthia Harris was ‘difficult’. But the Queen thought of the date. The Gentileschis had been discovered in 1986. She could well imagine that Sholto Harvie did not want a keen assistant looking over his shoulder. He must have been responsible for pointing out those ‘basic mistakes’.
Had Cynthia made any mistakes at all? the Queen wondered. Or had she simply been told she had, by a popular and dynamic senior member of staff? And if she protested her innocence, who would believe her?
The thing was, where Sir Simon saw ‘difficulty’ and ‘trouble’, the Queen saw strength and perseverance in the face of increasingly unpleasant odds. DS Highgate had also conducted a recent interview with the person to whom she’d left all her personal possessions in her will. This woman – a Miss Helen Fisher – described a university room-mate who had become a friend for life. The Cynthia of those first days in London was confident and chic, basing her style on Louise Brooks, the dark-haired jazz age film star. She had loved to travel and had developed an abiding passion for great art. This was the character whose hopes had been dashed, her potential lost.
Nevertheless, the enduring friendship between these two women rang out through the clipped report. The Queen made a mental note to get Lady Caroline to write to Miss Fisher and express her condolences. She had been told that Mrs Harris did not have any close family still living, but that didn’t mean that there was nobody to mourn her. Although it seemed there was nobody to mourn her here.
The Queen rose from her dressing table. Still wearing her black dress and with Willow and the dorgis at her heels, she descended the little staircase to the ground floor of the North Wing, where a corridor led to the north-west pavilion and the swimming pool. The footman who stood guarding the entrance looked very surprised to see her, but quickly hid it. She was grateful for his presence, as she realised she had absolutely no idea what the door code would be. Philip, who swam regularly, would know it, presumably.
‘Your Majesty.’ The footman bowed slightly and let her in, preceded by the dogs.
Beyond the tall, glass windows with their Georgian panes, the sky was dark, or as dark as central London ever got, bathed in its eerie orange street light glow. The pavilion itself was atmospherically lit with several spotlights just below the skylit roof, while inset bulbs under the water cast rippling reflections around the room. The dogs happily padded around on the tiles, but she called them to her. Their oblivious general curiosity seemed inappropriate somehow.
It must have been just about there, near the door to the changing rooms towards the shallow end, that the body had lain all night.
‘Exsanguination.’
The word had leaped out at her from the first police report. The process of the blood flowing out of the body. Enough to cause death. Her equerry had told her – because she asked – that it could take the loss of between half and two-thirds of a person’s blood to kill them. It was the sort of thing that soldiers knew. How heartening, in a way, that one could perhaps survive with only half one’s blood still in the body. But Cynthia Harris had not survived, of course.