Malice at the Palace (9 page)

Bobo Carrington. Now that I thought about it I had heard the name before. One of the glamorous young women who was always photographed at nightclubs or at the races. But what on earth was she doing here, trying to get into Kensington Palace?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5

KENSINGTON PALACE

I was in a deep sleep when I began to be shaken violently. I started and sat up with a gasp to see a strange young woman, dressed in servant's garb, standing over me. It was still dark outside.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “What time is it?”

“Five thirty, my lady, and I didn't mean to startle you,” she whispered, “and sorry to wake you so early, but the major is downstairs and he wants to talk to you right away. I've no idea what it's about but he said it was urgent and I should go and wake you.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and my feet sought my slippers. It was horribly cold. The maid took down my dressing gown from the back of the door. “Should I go and wake your maid, my lady?”

“No. Let her sleep,” I said, thinking that by the time Queenie could be roused and ready it would be broad daylight. “I'll go down to the major in my robe and slippers.”

I tied the dressing gown firmly at my waist and then made my way down the stairs. The major was waiting in the foyer, already dressed and looking military and ready for action.

“Lady Georgiana,” he said. “I'm so sorry to get you up at this ungodly hour, but I wonder if you'd be good enough to come with me.”

“Uh—yes. Of course,” I said, conscious of the maid still standing behind me.

He looked at my attire. “I think you might need proper shoes and an overcoat. I'm afraid we need to go outside for a moment.”

“Oh, right. Very well.”

The major turned to the maid. “Perhaps you would make sure there is hot tea for Lady Georgiana when she returns in a few minutes.”

“Very good, sir.” The maid bobbed a little curtsy and fled. I went back upstairs and put on shoes and an overcoat. The major was waiting by the front door and I followed him. When we reached the archway under the clock tower I saw that the body had already been taken away and there was no sign she had ever been there.

“Did you get permission to move the body?” I whispered even though we were alone and my whisper hissed back at me from the vaulted roof of the arch above our heads.

“Yes. The Home Office had some chappies here within the hour last night. They took photographs and examined the area well before the poor young woman was carted off to the mortuary. There wasn't actually anything to see. In fact one of the chaps suggested that the girl had been killed somewhere else and the body dumped here.”

“Why would anyone do that?” I asked. “If you wanted to dispose of a body surely you'd drive out to a wooded park or throw it into the Thames.”

“Unless you wanted it to be found,” he said, turning back to look at me. He opened a door at the far end of the courtyard and we stepped into an austere, white-painted hallway. There was no form of adornment on the walls, but the carpet underfoot was rich and thick and the place was delightfully warm.

“Through this way, if you don't mind.” Major B-C opened a door and stood aside for me to enter first. I stepped into a small sitting room, definitely a man's room with leather armchairs and the lingering smell of pipe tobacco. Two men had been sitting in the chairs facing the fire. Both rose to their feet as I came in. I hadn't been expecting to face strangers and was horribly conscious that I was in my nightclothes under the overcoat, with my hair still tousled. This put me at an awful disadvantage.

“Lady Georgiana, I'm so sorry to have to disturb you at this hour,” one of the men said. He was dressed impeccably in a dark gray pin-striped suit and had silver gray hair smoothed back to perfection. What's more, I recognized him at the same moment that he said, “We have met before. Jeremy Danville of the Home Office. We are forever grateful for the way you helped us with a difficult situation in Scotland a couple of years ago.”

“Sir Jeremy, of course.” I shook his hand. When I had last encountered him it had been on a case involving royal security and I suspected that his job was not that of the usual civil servant.

“I'm sorry we meet again under such difficult circumstances,” Sir Jeremy said. “A tricky situation indeed.”

I nodded as my gaze went to the other man. At first glance he seemed more nondescript and unassuming but he was examining me with a keen gaze and my brain said
policeman
at the same time that Sir Jeremy said, “And this is Detective Chief Inspector Pelham from the Special Branch, Scotland Yard. He has plenty of experience handling difficult situations like this.” I caught a flicker of annoyance and realized of course that if Sir Jeremy was really in some kind of secret service the last person he'd want to work with would be someone from Special Branch. It was rumored that both departments thought the other was superfluous.

“How do you do, Lady Georgiana.” Chief Inspector Pelham nodded to me but didn't shake hands. His voice betrayed a trace of a northern accent and I noticed he didn't smile. Special Branch, I thought. Usually handles matters of national security. The royal family was certainly taking every precaution to make sure this news did not leak out.

“Please do take a seat, Lady Georgiana.” Sir Jeremy indicated the armchair by the fire where he had been sitting, then drew up a wooden chair from the desk in the corner for himself. “So you were the one who actually found the body, I understand?”

“That's right,” I said.

“What time was this?” the chief inspector asked.

“I would say about ten thirty last night. We left Buckingham Palace a little after ten, that much I know.”

“And how did you happen to come upon this body, Lady Georgiana?” the chief inspector continued. “Since the place where she was lying was nowhere near the door to the apartment where you are staying?”

“Well, there was a puddle outside the front door,” I said, “so the chauffeur had to stop the car quite a way farther along, so we didn't get our feet wet. Princess Marina got out of the motor first and walked straight to the door. I was about to follow but as I got out of the car I thought I saw something under the archway and went to look closer.” I had been going to say that I saw a strange sort of glow and I wanted to see if it was the ghostly light, but that would have sounded silly.

“But surely the body wasn't visible from where the car stopped?” the inspector asked sharply. “And I don't know how you could spot a body in that kind of darkness.”

“I'm not quite sure what made me go and look,” I said. “I thought I saw some kind of light first and it was only when I came close to the archway that I saw something lying there.”

“Some kind of light? Like a torch shining, you mean?”

“No.” I shook my head. “More like a gentle glow.”

“I suppose a light could have been shining out from a window,” the major said. He was still standing beside my chair, ramrod straight, a military man to the core. “There are a couple of windows that look onto that courtyard. Lady Georgiana's room, for example. And my own bathroom.”

“And you didn't hear or see anything, Major?” Detective Chief Inspector Pelham asked.

“I'm afraid I'd been out all evening—our usual monthly regimental dinner in mess. Can't miss that, you know, even for a visiting princess.” He gave an apologetic smile. “I had literally just come in when I was given a note from Lady Georgiana. And frankly even if I'd been here, one hears plenty of strange noises in an old building like this.”

“If there were windows without the curtains drawn then someone might have seen something,” Sir Jeremy suggested, looking up at the major.

“Hardly likely. The suite next to mine is unoccupied. I believe the rooms at the back of Princess Louise's suite are not in normal use, and the only room with a window facing the courtyard that is currently occupied is Lady Georgiana's own.”

“Did you ask your maid if she saw anything?” the major asked me.

“She did,” I replied. There was an intake of breath. “She said she saw something going on under the archway, but I think it must have been Major Beauchamp-Chough with his torch when I brought him to see the body.” I looked up at them. “I can ask her again exactly what she saw, if you like, but she is rather an impressionable girl and has heard the stories about ghosts in the palace.”

“Ghosts?” Chief Inspector Pelham looked amused.

“Yes, apparently the palace has more than its fair share of ghosts,” I replied. I didn't add that I had seen one of them.

“That may be useful.” The men exchanged a glance.

Sir Jeremy leaned toward me. “Lady Georgiana, I do hope that Major Beauchamp-Chough has impressed upon you the sticky situation in which we find ourselves. We are weeks away from a royal wedding. The eyes of the world are already on London. Photographers are crawling out of the woodwork. And now this young woman—rumored to have been a . . . well, rumored to be a close friend of the groom—is found dead a few yards from his future wife.”

Detective Chief Inspector Pelham cleared his throat. “You can thank your lucky stars that you and the princess were out all evening at the palace,” he said, “otherwise suspicion could have fallen upon the bride. Jealously is a powerful motive.”

“That is absurd,” I said angrily. “Have you met Princess Marina? She is not the type at all.”

“Oh, I think most women have a streak of jealousy running through them.” The DCI gave the hint of a smirk. “More deadly than the male, isn't that what they say?”

“Then, as you say, it was lucky we both have a perfect alibi all evening,” I said calmly. “Has the time of death been established?”

“An autopsy is being performed at this moment,” Sir Jeremy said. “Presumably we'll be able to know whether it was murder or suicide.”

“Suicide?” I said. “Why would anyone come to Kensington Palace to commit suicide?”

“Suicide or even accidental death,” Sir Jeremy went on, looking across me at the other men. “I understand you were not acquainted with the young woman. So let me tell you she was known in fashionable circles as ‘the girl with the silver syringe.' She was a drug addict: cocaine and morphine. So it's possible she took her own life.”

“And she came here to do it to punish Prince George for getting married,” Chief Inspector Pelham said, nodding agreement. “Killed herself while of unsound mind in a moment of despair.”

I realized, as I looked from one to the other, that they were writing a plausible scenario, just in case word ever got out. Unstable Young Woman, Known Drug Addict, Kills Self at Royal Palace. They were determined to make this a suicide.

“So you are not going to investigate this further?” I asked. “You're already writing it off as a suicide?”

“Of course not,” Chief Inspector Pelham said. “If it is proven to be murder then naturally we will investigate to the fullest. But let's just hope she died of a mixture of drugs and booze, shall we?”

And the three men nodded.

“So nothing was found at the scene to indicate that someone else had been there with her?” I asked.

“My men examined the scene thoroughly,” Chief Inspector Pelham said. “There was no sign of a struggle or of foul play. No obvious wounds on the body. The sequins on her dress were intact, so were the long strings of beads around her neck. They probably wouldn't have lasted through any kind of assault. And surely someone in one of the apartments would have heard her scream if she had been attacked.”

“I believe it was suggested that maybe she was killed elsewhere and her body was dumped here,” I said.

“If she was murdered,” Chief Inspector Pelham said. “But then the sound of a motorcar in this private area behind the palace would have made somebody look out of a window.”

“All this speculation is worthless at the moment. Let's just wait for the autopsy results, shall we?” Sir Jeremy said. “Because if the results indicate murder we have the most difficult of tasks ahead of us, keeping the investigation entirely out of the public eye.” He turned to me. “The newspapers have been remarkably cooperative about turning a blind eye to royal scandals, but I don't think they could be persuaded to stay mum about a murder. This is where you can be of help to us, Lady Georgiana. You are one of their inner circle. You can ask seemingly innocent questions.”

“Their inner circle?” I asked in surprise. “Surely you don't think that anyone connected with the royal family is involved?”

“Of course not, but given the young woman's tenuous connection . . .” He left the rest of the sentence hanging. “And there are the servants. I don't want to raise any alarms by questioning any of them officially yet. You could find out if anyone here saw anything strange last night.” He got to his feet. “I know we can count on you. You did a stellar job for us last time. Absolutely stellar.”

Detective Chief Inspector Pelham raised an eyebrow as if he found this hard to believe. “And we don't need to impress upon you the complete need for discretion,” he said. “Not a word of this conversation is to go beyond these four walls. You do understand that, don't you?”