King and Joker (15 page)

“Yes, I know,” she said earnestly. “I felt pretty stupid sneaking about like that. I wasn't asked to the reception and I wasn't really dressed for it, you see. But I wanted to listen to my Mother's speech. I can talk Spanish, but I've never made a speech in Spanish, and I'm bound to have to one day, so I thought it might be useful. I could have arranged to listen in a more sensible way, but I only thought of it while I was doing my homework, you see?”

“Ah, homework. Now, my daughter Eileen … erhump! And at what stage did you see the deceased? It must have been pretty dark behind those curtains.”

“Pitch, at first. I felt my way and sat on my Mother's throne. I think I shut my eyes. Then when the speech started I happened to look round … No, I stretched out and touched his hand. That came first. Then of course I looked. I suppose my eyes had got used to the dark, but even then I could only just see … just see …”

“Take it easy. Take it easy. It's all over now.”

“I'm all right. I thought it was my father. I could just see his moustache, you see, and McGivan usually wore his twisted into points …”

Mr d'Arcy turned a grunt into a sigh.

“If I could understand why a terrorist organisation should go mucking around with dead men's moustaches I'd be a happier man,” he said.

Sitting with his back to the door he hadn't noticed the face peering round it, identical to the one he was fretting about.

“They thought they'd got me, I daresay,” said Father. The Superintendent jumped, sank back into his chair, and then remembered he was supposed to rise anyway. Louise could see how he longed to swear his surprise away and had to bite the words back.

“Good Lord,” he eventually managed to say. “That would account for their disappearance, and the apparent absence of bombs. Good Lord. I should have thought of that. But in that case Constable McGivan's moustache …”

“No problem,” said Father. “He was a Rightful King. Sorry, Superintendent—I mean there are about twenty or so pretenders to my throne and poor McGivan was one of them. He wasn't exactly unbalanced, but leave him alone in the throne room and he'd be quite capable of combing down his moustache and pretending to be me for a bit.”

“Good Lord,” said Mr d'Arcy. He relieved his feelings by making a note.

“The Nursery clock's twenty-five minutes fast,” said Father, sounding pleased about it.

“Ah, that's more like it,” said Mr d'Arcy. “Glad it wasn't any more.”

“What do you mean?” said Father.

“Well, Sir, whoever did this job must have had inside help. Five thirty was the time at which a number of people involved in the reception reported for duty. The Palace security staff, for instance—until five thirty they'd been split up to check the premises, but then they assembled for a briefing on the guests. That was when McGivan's absence was first noticed.”

Father looked as though he was going to argue about something, but changed his mind and swung suddenly to Louise.

“Durdy's OK,” he said. “A bit fretful—if I believed in telepathy I'd say she'd sensed that something like this was going to happen. I put her to sleep. Have you finished in here, Superintendent?”

“Not yet, sir. I want to ask Her Royal Highness about her meeting with Sergeant McGivan in the Nursery, now we've got a better check on the time.”

“I'll wait,” said Father.

There wasn't much to it once Louise had decided to carry on with the lie she'd half begun. She'd heard the clock strike, thought it was later than it really was, and rushed off to start her homework and tell Kinunu to give Miss Durdon her green pill. McGivan had been talking to Kinunu in the Night Nursery but they'd stopped when she came in. She didn't know how long McGivan had stayed after that. He'd seemed normal—a bit shy perhaps, but he was often like that.”

“You'll want to talk to Kinunu next,” said Father when Mr d'Arcy looked up from his notebook.

“I gather there's a language problem, Sir.”

“Yes. She's only got a smattering of English. She gets along in Malay, but her own language is a hill dialect. There's a woman who lives out beyond Maidenhead who's come up a couple of times to interpret for us, a retired missionary—could it wait till the morning?”

“I think so, Sir.”

“Fine. Of course if Kinunu knows anything you've got to get it out of her, Superintendent, but you'll have to handle her very gently. This is the one place in the country where we really can't afford to seem to be picking on a coloured girl.”

“I quite understand, Sir,” said Mr d'Arcy a little stiffly.

They began to move towards the door.

“Father,” said Louise in a feeble voice. “I'm feeling a bit … I mean could you …”

He turned and glared at her.

“You'll have to find your own way down, Superintendent,” he said. “I'll just check this out—she's had a pretty traumatic evening. If you see Sir Savile tell him I'll be down in ten minutes.”

Mr d'Arcy was half way gone when the thought must have struck him that he was supposed to retire backwards from the royal presence. He got himself through the door somehow. Father turned to Louise with raised eyebrows.

“D'you really feel ill?” he said. “I'm going to give you a sedative anyway. You
have
had a shock, though no one would know it to look at you.”

“I'm all right. I get sudden waves as though I was dropping into a black hole, but they go quite quickly. But listen. It's important. I didn't know what to tell him until I'd talked to you. I didn't find McGivan in the Night Nursery—I found him in Kinunu's bedroom—they'd been making love.”

“Good God!”

“But that isn't the really important thing. They'd had the monitor on in there all the time. McGivan could have heard everything I said to Durdy. And he could have listened before. He could have known about me, you see. That means he must have been the joker!”

“Might have been, not must,” said Father.

“So perhaps somebody killed him because of that,” said Louise.

“Wait a bit. Let's take one thing at a time. Tell me what really happened in the Night Nursery.”

He managed to keep a straight face as he listened but his hand crept towards his moustache. Irritation at his inner amusement made her almost bark the last words at him.

“… so don't you see, he'd have known all about Nonny being my mother,
and
about your obsession with your loo.”

He glared at her, then nodded.

“Yes. OK. I'd had my eye on him before, as a matter of fact. D'you mind telling me why you didn't tell d'Arcy the truth, straight out?”

“I don't know. Honestly I don't. I was a bit ashamed, I suppose … and I'd promised him I wouldn't … and I suppose it's almost instinctive not to come out with things like that except when we're among ourselves … I wanted to ask you first. I could easily tell him if you think I ought to …”

“Mmm. No doubt about that. You ought to. But I don't want you to. You probably don't realise quite how close Durdy is to death. She might go tomorrow or she might last another six months, but she's teetering on the edge all the time. One of the things that keeps her here is the funny relationship she's struck up with Kinunu. I don't understand it at all, except apparently Kinunu reminds her of somebody she knew before any of us were born. She won't talk about it. Now, if the police start badgering Kinunu about her sex-life there's every chance she'll crack up and have to go, and that would kill Durdy. You see …”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Before the police see her I'll try to explain to Kinunu what you've told them. The point is I don't think any of this is relevant. I don't see how it can have anything to do with McGivan's death.”

“Perhaps somebody else was in love with her. Perhaps they were jealous of McGivan.” He shook his head.

“But you can't
know
. You didn't know about Kinunu and McGivan, even!”

“I had an inkling. I didn't realise they'd got that far … Look, Lulu, let's leave it for a while, and see how they get on with the Venezuelan line …”

“But if McGivan was the joker.”

“I'm coming to that. We've got to step a bit careful there, too, you see. Your crucial bit of evidence won't do, because it would mean telling d'Arcy about your birth, and I'm not having that. I'll tell him about the frog in my bog—God, that I should see the day!—but that's not so significant. I mean, a number of people could have known I have bother with my bowels without having to listen to Kinunu's monitor … so we'll lay it on the line about the jokes, except the one in this room. I'll say that I was beginning to think McGivan might be the joker—I'll explain that he was the only one of the security staff who wasn't in the clear when the joker rang up about sending my mother those pianos. And we'll leave it at that. OK?”

“I suppose so,” said Louise.

He had settled onto the edge of the bed while he was speaking and leaned forward, tense and solemn. Louise was conscious of pent urgency behind his low, hypnotic monotone. She'd been hoping that he would tell her to go straight to Mr d'Arcy and change her story to the truth, but now she saw that she was stuck with the lie she'd begun. At least he thought she'd done the right thing.

“There's another point,” he said. “Apart from d'Arcy I'm not going to tell anyone, not even Bella or Nonny, about McGivan and Kinunu or the possibility of his being the joker. Because we know about it you and I are going to have to watch our step, and lie when the questions come anywhere near the danger areas. I don't want to drag them into the same mess. I don't like it for you and I don't like it for me, but at least we can let them off. Do you agree?”

“Yes. Of course. I suppose if we could prove McGivan was the joker … I've still got the scribble in my book…couldn't a hand-writing expert … ?”

She opened the Tolkien and showed him the scrawl across the type. He looked at it for a while, then shook his head.

“It's the same thing all over again,” he said. “In fact it's an exact parable of the bind we're in., Don't you see? Suppose we could prove McGivan wrote those letters—so far so good. But the letters make a word, and somebody'd be bound to ask what the word meant.”

“I suppose so.”

“Let's hope to God these Venezuelans …”

“Do you believe in them, Father?”

“I think they're the main chance. No time to thresh all that out now. If McGivan was the joker, that's only the sort of coincidence which really does sometimes happen. Now listen, Lulu, I want to know what the hell you were up to in the Throne Room.”

“I wanted to listen to Mother's speech.”

“I don't really buy that,” he said after a pause. “Oh, don't be a fool, Lulu. A couple of days ago I told you a lot of my personal secrets because I thought it might make life a bit easier for you. Can't you see that now I'm trying to protect you and a few other people, and to do that I must know as much as I can about what's been going on? I'm on a real tightrope, Lulu. I can't afford any more areas of uncertainty than I must.”

“Sorry. It's only that it sounds so silly when you say it out loud. I don't even know if 1 can explain. You remember you told me about Nonny not wanting to be Queen, and you couldn't understand it? I think it's obvious. I feel just the same about princessing. Not all the time, but sometimes. Only of course I'm landed with it, and Nonny wasn't. Well, now I've found out that there's really an official me and an unofficial me I can treat them as two different people …”

“You're playing with fire, Lulu. Honestly. That's how psychoses begin. Just think … no, we haven't time now. I think we'd better have a long talk about that when the dust's settled a bit. Go on.”

“I think it's all right. It's only a
game
, Father. Oh, well, I call the official me the story princess, and she'd done my homework for me when the unofficial me was acting up rather—I haven't got a name for
her
yet—so I thought I'd give the story princess a treat by letting her go and sit on Mother's throne and pretend that all you behind the curtain were courtiers and so on. That's all. Honestly, Father! Don't look at me like that. It's really only putting on a show, except that I'm putting it on for myself. I know what I'm doing!”

He sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Provided you promise to try and keep it at that level until we've had a chance to thrash the whole thing out. Now, anything else before I go?”

“You said you'd got your eye on McGivan already. What did you mean?”

“It started with that business about the pianos. Because I knew Theale at least was in the clear for that I got him to start eliminating anybody who couldn't have been responsible for that or any of the other jokes. It's surprising how that sort of process cuts the suspects down. There were still about a dozen possibles left, and as I told you McGivan was one of them. Then, do you remember that night when I came back and found you and Nonny hopped to the eyeballs on my best Heidsieck? While I was watching you I started wondering what kind of nut could have done that to someone like you. It wasn't quite in key with the other jokes …”

“But it was!”

“Only superficially. It was an outburst. The others were quirks. Now, I said, who would mind so much about your being what you are? Who might have a real bee in his bonnet about illegitimacy, and royal blood? When I thought about it I saw that the other jokes might be milder expressions of a grievance at not belonging … I mean, either they were aimed at unsettling the private workings of the Family—my bog, our breakfast—or at people who were allowed to play a rather grand part at functions. I think he might have had a practical motive too—you remember how he tried to frame Theale about my Mother's Pianos? They've all got the jitters about losing their jobs in the reorganisation, so you see the jokes not only gave McGivan something to investigate, and prove his usefulness, but a reason for seeing that it was somebody else who got the sack.”