Malice at the Palace (25 page)

STILL NOVEMBER 8

BACK IN LONDON

It was still raining hard when I arrived back in London. On the train journey home I had carefully composed my letter to Mummy. Then I had jotted down the things I wanted to tell Sir Jeremy. That Bobo was really Kathleen Boyle from Ireland and had a mother living in Deptford. That the baby had been born near Worthing but she had said she wanted to keep it in a little house in the country. That Sir Toby had signed in an American called J. Walter Oppenheimer who had seemed out of place at Crockford's and who had upset Bobo when he spoke with her. That Sir Toby was known to have been pally with Bobo. I toyed with that. So who was the American and why was she upset by him? Had he threatened her in some way?

I went to the nearest telephone box at Waterloo Station and rang Sir Jeremy's number. Again he answered in his noncommittal manner and said he was tied up at the moment but would send a car for me in an hour. This made me realize what a dangerous implement the telephone can be. Anyone manning a switchboard could theoretically listen in on a conversation. Might it be worth talking to the girls who operated the Mayfair switchboard and would have connected Bobo's calls?

I made my way back to Kensington Palace. A maid greeted me in the front hall. “There have been some messages for you, my lady,” she said. “On the tray over there.”

My heart gave a little leap of joy. Darcy would have left me his telephone number. The first one was a telegram and I opened it with trepidation. It was from my grandfather. It said,
Lightfingers don't want to do it. Sorry.
I looked at it and had to laugh, even though I was disappointed at not being able to crack Bobo's safe. Still, the police would surely have their own contacts among safecrackers and could take it from here.

The second message was from Noel Coward.
Have set up a little soiree on Sunday, if you and the charming princess are free. Chez moi.
And he added his address.
Shall we say cocktails at six?
I read.

What a glamorous life I was leading these days. I thought back to the time of baked beans on toast and how easily one adapts to messages from luminaries like Noel Coward saying “Cocktails at six.”

But that was it. No message from Darcy. I had just gone upstairs to change my clothes, which were now rather rain-sodden, when I heard my name being called. Irmtraut came stomping out of her bedroom at the end of the hall.

“Where have you been? I do not see you all day.” It sounded more like an accusation than a friendly inquiry.

“I had to visit a sick friend,” I said. “She's in a convalescent home on the south coast.” It is so much easier when one doesn't have to lie.

“Ah so.” She nodded as if she couldn't find anything to criticize in this behavior. “So you did not go to meet a man?” She glared.

“A man?”

“I saw you with a man last night,” she said. “You were in an embrace with him outside the front door.”

“That was my intended.”

“I do not wish to hear what you intended to do,” she said.

“No, I meant that I plan to marry him.”

“He is suitable? Of the right social class?”

“Quite unsuitable in most ways,” I said. “But yes, he's of the right social class. Son of a peer.”

“A pair of what?”

“No, a peer. An aristocrat.”

“Ach so. This is good.”

“Not that it's any of your business,” I said. I had had enough of being polite to her. “And speaking of snooping, may I ask why you told the authorities that you had seen me in the courtyard when you know that wasn't true?”

Her face went red then. “Because they try to accuse me of something and they won't say what. They keep asking me why I go to the courtyard and I tell them no, I do not go to the courtyard. And they say Lady Georgiana thinks that you did. So this is why I tell them because I find it so disagreeable.”

I wanted to ask why she carried a knife in her pocket but I couldn't find a good way to do so without admitting to being in her room. But then she went straight on. “I wish that you dismiss your maid immediately.”

“My maid? What has she done?” A horrid sinking feeling came into my stomach. I had thought it would be only a matter of time before Queenie created a major disaster.

“I will tell you. She has been snooping in my room.” She pronounced it “schnooping.”

“Oh no. Surely not.” Queenie was many things, but probably the least curious person on the planet.

“Ja.”
She nodded so violently that a hairpin came loose and clattered to the stone floor. “I had her come to my room and take my washing downstairs,” she said. “I left the bundle ready to be carried. But later, when I looked in my garderobe, I saw that she had been there. I leave my shoes in neat rows on the floor of my garderobe but when I look they are in disarray. Somebody has disarranged them.”

“Good heavens,” I said. “When was this? Today?”

“No. A day or so ago.”

Oh dear. I couldn't let Queenie take the blame for my snooping in her wardrobe, could I? But I also couldn't think of a good explanation for the shoes in disarray.

“I'm sure Queenie would never do that,” I said. “Maybe something fell off a hanger and displaced your shoes.”

“Nothing fell.” Her face was stony.

“Was something missing?” I asked.

“No. Nothing was taken.”

“Then I think we have to overlook simple curiosity, don't we?” I said. “Unless you have something to hide, that is?” I smiled at her sweetly. “You haven't got the crown jewels or a body in there, have you?”

She tossed her head proudly and another hairpin bounced to the floor. “I have nothing to hide,” she said. “I do not touch your crown jewels.”

I was still dying to ask about that knife in her pocket.

“That is not the only fault of your maid,” she said. “Today I asked her to clean my shoes, since she has no work to do and I have no maid of my own here.”

“And she didn't polish them well enough for you?” I asked as the sinking feeling returned.

“Yes. She polished them.” She went ahead of me into her room and appeared with a pair of highly polished shoes. “Look at them.”

“They look very nice,” I said. “Queenie did a good job. Why are you unhappy with her?”

“Because they were green suede,” she said. “And she has polished them with black boot polish.”

Oh dear. I didn't dare laugh.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I'm afraid I have a very simple wardrobe and Queenie has not come across green suede shoes before. She meant well.”

Irmtraut snorted. “You English. You do not know how to train and discipline servants. This girl is a disgrace. Do you know what she called me?”

Oh golly. Nothing too rude, I prayed.

“She called me ‘miss,' when she is told I am a countess. Miss. Like a common shopgirl. And then she insulted me even more by telling me I had an uncle called Bob.”

This time I did laugh. “She must have said ‘bob's your uncle,'” I said. “It's an expression Londoners use to mean that everything will be taken care of.”

“How can ‘Bob is your uncle' mean that everything will be taken care of? It makes no sense. This English language is very stupid.” And she stomped back into her room and slammed the door.

I
CHANGED MY
clothes, wrote out the letter to Mummy, handed it to a servant to post and was just about to snatch a quick tea when the car arrived. Regretfully I put down my uneaten crumpet. I went to get my coat and hat and was soon being driven through rush-hour crowds as offices emptied out at five. I had no idea where we were going but it seemed to be in the general direction of Scotland Yard. However, we drove past the familiar black and white building and turned into a side street, stopping outside a row of Georgian houses like those on Downing Street not too far away.

The chauffeur helped me out, then led me to the front door. A bell sounded from within and the door was opened by Sir Jeremy himself.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he said.

“This is your house?” I asked, stepping into a deliciously warm entrance hall.

“One of the perks of being a civil servant,” he said, smiling. “Come through to the sitting room.”

This was clearly a room of a man who liked his comforts. Thick Axminster carpet with a white bearskin rug in front of a marble fireplace. There were old prints on the walls and Chinese vases on a shelf. In one corner was a drinks cabinet stacked with bottles and gleaming glasses, and a glass-topped table displayed a collection of paperweights. To my delight a low table was set with a tea tray. I realized I hadn't eaten all day (unless one counted the dry and unappetizing cheese sandwich I'd bought at Worthing Station).

“I expect you'd like some tea,” Sir Jeremy said. “Do take a seat. Beastly old day, isn't it? I don't know why anyone stays in England during November.”

I sat in one of the big red leather armchairs. It was so big and so soft that it was hard to sit upright and when Sir Jeremy handed me a cup of tea I had a moment's panic that I'd tip over backward and deposit the contents all over myself and the chair. I managed to put the cup down on the table and perched myself at the front of the chair to avoid future accidents. Sir Jeremy let me work my way through some smoked salmon sandwiches, a scone and a slice of Dundee cake before I realized that he was an important man and probably didn't want to waste his time watching me eat.

“I should probably tell you why I called you,” I said.

“No rush. I'm expecting another visitor,” he said.

Almost on cue the doorbell rang. I heard a manservant's voice say, “Good evening, sir. Sir Jeremy is in the sitting room.”

And to my surprise the visitor was Darcy.

“You made it.” Sir Jeremy held out his hand. “I believe you two know each other. Take a seat, O'Mara. Tea or are you ready to move on to whiskey?”

“Nothing right now, thank you, sir,” Darcy said. He pulled up a padded upright chair beside me and gave me a cheeky little smile, one that said, “You didn't expect to see me here, did you?”

“Lady Georgiana, I invited O'Mara to join us as he might be able to look into some aspects of this case that would not be possible for you. He had already been observing Miss Carrington's connections to drug trafficking as part of an ongoing project for my department.”

I nodded.

Sir Jeremy turned back to Darcy. “But as yet you've not found what we're looking for?”

“Not yet, sir. We know about the smaller players but we still don't know how the drugs get into the country.”

“Too bad she died when she did. She needed a regular supply. She might well have led us to the big boys.” He sighed, then got up, walked across to the drinks table and poured himself a generous amount of Scotch. He came back to his chair and sat down before he said, “Lady Georgiana has some news for us, I believe.”

“I have,” I said, and I recounted my visit to Worthing, and to Bobo's mother. I was pleased to note that both men looked impressed.

“So now you'll be able to take a look at the birth certificate and see if she listed the father,” I said. “Oh, and a servant told me that she planned to keep the child at a house outside London.”

“Well done,” Sir Jeremy said. “I don't really know where we go from here. We're still fishing around in the dark as to how she died, aren't we? Was it the father of the child? Was it to do with her drug habit? Someone had a very good reason for killing her and dumping her body at Kensington Palace.”

“And there's still Countess Irmtraut,” I said.

Sir Jeremy shook his head. “She might well be capable of violence but I don't think she's capable of lying. She was most outraged and insistent and I can usually tell when someone isn't telling the truth.”