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.
There was a murderer on the loose at Windsor Castle. Or at least, there had been last night.
The Queen readied herself for dinner—a small affair for friends and family this evening—and put on a brave face. The best brains in the police and any relevant government agencies would be hard at work on the case tonight and all one could do was trust they would solve it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, she might just sneak a second gin.
4
Down in the servants’ quarters, maids and housekeepers and butlers watched the police comings and goings with a mixture of curiosity and frustration.
“What’re they still here at night for?” a deputy sergeant footman muttered to a passing kitchen pastry chef, who was a friend.
Mr. Brodsky, as a performer and not a guest, had been housed high up in overcrowded attics near the Augusta Tower, above the Visitors’ Apartments, in the south side of the Upper Ward overlooking the town. That attic corridor was now cordoned off, causing great annoyance to all concerned, as there were hardly enough bedrooms to accommodate everyone who needed one as it was. Instead, it was occupied by various people in hooded white overalls and gloves, who carried bulky bags and didn’t talk to anyone. News had spread, as it was inevitably going to do, about the way the body had been found. However, the additional information about the second knot had not.
“They’re treating it like a bloody crime scene,” the chef complained. “I mean, everybody has kinky secrets. The guy’s dead. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, know what I mean? They should just stay out of it.”
“Kinky how?” an underbutler asked, pausing in the corridor to listen. She had just come back from holiday and was still catching up with the gossip.
“Well, I got it from a security guy who’s mates with one of the laundry maids who swore him to secrecy that he was wearing ladies’ knickers and lipstick, and had a tie wrapped around his—”
They heard fast steps, saw a senior member of the Household staff approaching, and tried to look busy.
“How would he do that under the knickers?” the underbutler muttered, genuinely confused. The chef shrugged. This didn’t do it for the underbutler, who was a stickler for precision. “Nah, I think he was winding you up.”
“No, I swear!”
“But even if it’s true,” the footman persisted, “why are they prowling around the place at”—he slipped his phone out of his pocket and checked the time—“nine thirty p.m.? It’s hardly going to bring him back to life, is it?”
“Maybe they think he was involved in a sex game with somebody else?” the underbutler suggested. She had a quick mind and a ready imagination.
“For God’s sake, who?” the footman protested. “He’d just got here! He was only staying the one night. Have you seen those rooms? They’re like little cells.”
“That never stopped anyone,” the chef observed. “He could’ve been getting it on with one of those girls who came. Did you see them? The dancers? Those legs?”
The off-duty ballerinas, confident of their physique, had worn the skinniest of skinny jeans and cropped-est of cropped tops. It was not typical Windsor attire and had been much admired by half the staff at breakfast.
“What—and they decided to go all-out kinky here, at Windsor?” the footman scoffed. He paused to think. “It would have to be both of them,” he added, still skeptical.
“Oh, why?”
“Because the girls were sharing a room. We had a rush on. I had to help Marion work out the plan to cram everyone in, and we put them in a twin. Well, two single beds shoved in a room hardly big enough for one. If one of them was out doing the do and snuck back in, the other one would’ve known about it.”
“Maybe it was the maid of a banker’s wife,” the underbutler speculated. “Or a bloke.”
“What are you three doing huddled here?”
Three heads spun round to see the night shift head housekeeper standing six feet away, looking like thunder. She was known for her spectacular tongue-lashings and her ability to materialize from nowhere, like the TARDIS but without the warning sounds.
They pleaded their innocence, which she didn’t believe, and she sent them on their way with dire warnings about what happened to staff who gossiped and speculated and didn’t get on with what they were paid for.
Another member of staff arrived back from holiday that evening. Rozie Oshodi had been in Nigeria for her cousin’s wedding, and was taking a moment to readjust. After the bright colors and funky Afrobeat of Lagos, the stones and silences of nighttime Windsor seemed surreal. In the Middle Ward of the castle, not far from the rooms where Chaucer once lived, Rozie looked through the mullioned window of her bedroom at the moonlight glistening on the River Thames far below and felt like a princess in a tower. A black princess, whose childhood braids would never have been long enough to let a prince climb up and rescue her. But then, Rozie had worked hard to get her job as the Queen’s assistant private secretary; she didn’t need rescuing.
Instead, she needed to find out what on earth was going on. Sir Simon had sent five messages for her to call him. Rozie had tried to as soon as her much-delayed flight had landed, but now his phone was going to voice mail. Super-smooth Sir Simon was not the sort of person to panic. And this week was supposed to have been extra quiet. It was why she’d been given the time off for cousin Fran’s wedding. (To be strictly accurate, the wedding had been organized around this potential gap in Rozie’s schedule—a fact she was too embarrassed about to linger on for long. The Royal Family always came first and if Fran wanted Rozie there, fresh from her star new appointment at the palace, this was the week it had to happen.)
For the tenth time, Rozie checked the news on her phone. Nothing unusual. She shivered in the cold. For a brief moment she flirted with the idea of climbing into her pajamas and collapsing into bed, knowing she would be up early tomorrow with a full day of work ahead of her and several days of partying to recover from. Sir Simon could update her in the morning, when she was fresh.
But that was the jet lag talking. Rozie knew things didn’t work that way in the Royal Household and that’s what you signed up for when you joined: you were always prepared, always informed.
So she unpacked, humming one of the tunes they had played in every Lagos nightclub. She smiled at the plastic key ring with the bride’s and groom’s faces grinning at her, to which she now attached her most precious possession: the key to her Mini Cooper. Then she sat on her narrow bedstead, fully dressed and still in her coat, scrolling through her phone to favorite the best photographs of Fran and Femi from the hundreds she had taken, waiting for Sir Simon’s call.
It finally came at one in the morning, when his working day was over. Rozie made her way over to Sir Simon’s quarters in the castle. He had a suite of rooms in the east side of the Upper Ward, not far from the Private Apartments. They were crowded with pictures and antique furniture, yet somehow immaculately tidy. Like Sir Simon’s mind, Rozie thought.
He stared up at her for a moment, having opened the door to her. She stared back.
“Is there a problem?”
“Your hair. You’ve changed it.”
She ran a nervous hand over the new cut, which she’d agreed to on a whim in Lagos. Since the army, Rozie had always kept it short and crisp, but the new look was sharper still, with asymmetric angles. She wasn’t sure how her middle-aged, Home Counties colleagues would respond.
“Is it OK?”
“It’s . . . different. I . . . Gosh. It’s fine. Sorry, do come in.”
Sir Simon could be awkward with her sometimes, but at least it was friendly-awkward. Rozie made him feel old, she thought, and short (in heels she was a good two inches taller than him), while he made her feel underinformed—about the royals, the constitution, pretty much everything. They made it work. However, tonight, they were both tired. As they sat facing each other on chintz-covered chairs, Sir Simon sipped from a cut-crystal tumbler of single malt to keep himself awake. Rozie, fearful that whiskey would have the opposite effect on her, stuck to sparkling mineral water. She made notes on her laptop as he brought her up to speed on the new police investigation.