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 Queen nodded slowly. ‘So that’s why you called his letter a confession. The words of a dying man.’
‘Exactly, ma’am. They were addressed to a woman called Lisa. We don’t know who she is yet, but we’re making en-quiries. It seems the Private Secretary’s quick thinking rather caught up with the man,’ Strong added. ‘Harvie mentioned that he’d hoped it would be months before anyone looked in that trunk in the cellars, and by then it would be difficult to know exactly when Ferguson died. When he heard on the news how fast Sir Simon here found the body, he knew the game was up.’
‘What did he say to Lisa, exactly?’ the Queen wanted to know.
‘Oh, nothing too specific. Only that he was sorry. Not for killing Ferguson, which he seemed quite pleased about, but for Blake, and for Mrs Harris, and for introducing Sidney Smirke to the Palace in the first place. We didn’t know this, but apparently it was Harvie who originally recommended him. Another dodgy, plausible friend from his art school days.’
‘Was he sorry about the pictures?’
‘He didn’t mention those in his letter,’ Strong said. ‘I think it was more the lives that mattered to him.’
‘Well, at least there’s that. And the Breakages Business . . . have we finally put an end to it?’
By ‘we’ the Queen meant ‘you’, and Sir James and Sir Simon knew that.
‘We have indeed,’ Sir James said firmly. ‘Ferguson was good at deleting things from his phone, but he kept a detailed record of the frauds on his computer. He assumed it was hack-proof, but thanks to the whizz-kid at the NCA, it took less than a day to give up all its secrets. Including Ferguson’s associates inside the Palace and out.’
‘We’ve arrested most of ’em,’ the chief superintendent announced, buttons twinkling. ‘Some we’re just keeping an eye on. They might lead us to more syndicates we’ve got an interest in. And meanwhile the media can feast on the fact that yes, there might have been two bodies, but with Sir Simon’s help we solved the mystery of both of them in record time. All in all, it’s been an excellent team effort, I’d say.’
On that note, the four men sat back, satisfied.
‘Well, I must congratulate you all,’ the Queen said. ‘This has been most informative.’
‘All in a day’s work,’ Sir Simon said with a grin.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ the Queen agreed, rising. ‘It’s just what I’d have expected. Very well done.’
If he did that hand flap again, she thought, he might get RSI.
Chapter 48
As they left, the Queen asked Rozie to stay behind.
They stood together quietly, both reflecting that this was the very spot where they had stared at each other, first truly considering that Mrs Harris’s death might be unnatural.
‘You did well,’ the Queen said.
‘Shall we let them go on thinking that she was blackmailing Sholto, and that’s what started everything?’ Rozie asked.
‘I think we should. It’s unfair on her, I know. She didn’t understand the power she had to bring Sholto down. However, it’s easier that way. It keeps you out of it, and I don’t want to complicate things for them unnecessarily.’
Rozie nodded. ‘Ma’am. But what if DCI Strong realises Eric targeted me before I helped out Sir James with the spreadsheets?’
‘I imagine he has realised,’ the Queen said. ‘But it would be hard for him to prove the cause. Easier, I think, for him not to probe too far. After all, the murders are solved and both murderers are dead.’
‘Yes.’ Rozie nodded again. She seemed very muted, and it occurred to the Queen that she must be thinking that she was personally responsible for all of this. Responsible, because she had alerted Eric Ferguson to danger by asking about a painting that went missing in 1986, and whose provenance she would diligently track. Eric had been right to fear that painting. It was the one mistake – the one act of reckless greed, without planning or thought for the consequences – that the Breakages Business had made. Rozie would have followed up with Cynthia Harris eventually. Even if the housekeeper didn’t yet realise how much she knew, they would have unravelled the thread all the way back to Sholto and Sidney Smirke and poor Daniel Blake, as they eventually did. But Rozie was wrong to take on this burden.
‘There was something else Sir Simon said that wasn’t entirely accurate,’ the Queen remarked. ‘It got me thinking.’
‘Oh, ma’am? What?’
‘Do you remember, he mentioned Ferguson referring to a video in a message to Sholto?’
‘I do,’ Rozie said. ‘When “things were hotting up”.’
‘Something struck me. It reminded me of a moment when I noticed Mr Ferguson, earlier this summer. He was monitoring a documentary team who were filming me when I sat for that bust.’
Rozie’s gaze sharpened. ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes. They were videoing me with Lavinia Hawthorne-Hopwood and I remember, quite distinctly, that I happened to remark that I’d seen a painting of mine in Portsmouth. It was around the time I asked you to look into it, but long before you would have talked to him.’
‘I don’t see how—’
‘Oh come, Rozie. Ferguson was in the room at the time. It was I who alerted him to the problem, not you. It was probably then that he contacted Sholto Harvie.’
‘But even so, ma’am, I—’
‘You just did your job,’ the Queen said with finality. ‘I started this, however inadvertently, and I count myself very fortunate indeed that it ended without more bloodshed. Although, of course, I wish poor Mrs Harris hadn’t been involved.’
‘She wasn’t the most pleasant person,’ Rozie assured her.
The Queen could see the girl thought she was being sentimental about her old housekeeper, as so many had thought. But she wasn’t. She let it go.
A week passed. All around them, the final preparations were being made for the Diplomatic Corps Reception. The Queen would soon be donning a white and silver evening gown and some of her sapphires, but in a quiet moment, she asked to be driven to St James’s Palace for a brief appointment.
In the car, her thoughts were on Sholto Harvie, who had died of a self-administered overdose of pills in a squalid hotel in a Paris banlieue that didn’t ask questions. How he would have hated his surroundings in those last days, she thought. He was a man who lived for glamour.
He had asked ‘Lisa’ for forgiveness, but he wouldn’t be getting it. Cynthia Harris had come to London as a young woman bursting with ideas and ambition, and for his own sake, Sholto had ruined her. Not only her career, but her life, by placing her in the hands of a scheming, violent man. She had soldiered on, but lost the respect of all around her. Bitter, Sir Simon had called her. Vengeful. Mrs Harris had not, in fact, been vengeful, except against herself. She had lived alone and died alone, and the Queen’s heart went out to her.
She knew forgiveness wouldn’t be forthcoming to Sholto, because she knew who ‘Lisa’ was. When he worked as the Queen’s Deputy Surveyor of Pictures, Sholto used to call one ‘Mona Lisa’. It could be short for Elisabetta, he told her . . . this expert on Leonardo, with his courtly ways. It was bumptious, bordering on rude, when it should have been ‘Your Majesty’, but he had the charm to get away with it. He must have thought charm could excuse any bad behaviour. He was wrong.
At the Royal Collection Trust, Neil Hudson accom-panied her to a light-filled conservation studio. Here, the newly rediscovered Gentileschis, rescued from under Sholto’s spare bed, were set up, side by side, on easels at eye level.