Your Royal Hostage (11 page)

'Is it a fundamental liberty to wear a fur coat?' began Jemima. She stopped. 'Listen Rick, I'm not trying to argue the toss. If I were to be honest, I suppose like most people here, and doubtless a good many people in the States, I have to face the fact that I simply shudder away from the subject of animal experiments. Just imagine if anyone were to lay a finger on Midnight!'

'C
ats not rats,' thought Rick irrelevantl
y. 'No wonder she didn't relate to Tammy and her rat.'

'On the other hand,'-went on Jemima, 'leukaemia in children, for example, animals who surfer to save children from leukaemia, animals versus children - I just don't want to think about it. And I'm supposed to be an investigator!'

'You've never gotten around to making a programme about
it.'

Jemima smiled. 'Now that's an idea. Instead of our exclusive interview with P.A. and P.F.
, I make a programme about Inno
right. I show the famous photographs. I interview Mirabella Prey. The only problem being: where are the people behind all this? How do I lure them on to the silver screen? Any ideas?'

'This is the point, sweethea
rt. Where are they? And what are
the police doing about finding them?'

'I may as well tell you one more thing. Rick. Now this is not crazy, this is serious. Far from killing, one of them was recently actually killed. A journalist who was a member of Innoright. One of them, one of the Innoright members died recently, was killed at a conference. Treated by the police as murder. Not much publicity, not exactly covered up, just not stressed when all attention was on the royal couple.'

'Jesus!' Rick took a quick restorative swig of the Puritan champagne. 'Murder! And what are the police doing about that?'

On the subject of what the police were doing about that — that being the unacc
ide
ntal death of Jean-Pierre Schwarz-Albert — more voices than the plaintive voice of Rick Vancy were being raised. For example, Detective Superintendent John Portsmouth found his murder hunt suddenly interrupted by a series of interested enquiries concerning Animal Rights activists in general, Innoright in particular.

'Everybody keeps telling me in their panicky way that there has to be a connection,' observed Pompey stolidly to Detective Sergeant Vaillant as they sat alone, at the end of the day, in the incident room set up for the murder of Schwarz-Albcrt a.k.a. Tom, a member of the Innoright cell. 'And then they ask me will I please inform them what the connection is? The man dies. The photographs are taken. The threats are made: unless HRH speaks up -'

'Unless HRH and HH speak up -' corrected Vaillant.

'Unless they both speak up. But it's her they're after - cousin of the Monarch, member of the British Royal Family and all that. Could be seen by the ignorant - and a good many of
them
around -
as some form of royal proclamation. A balance to all that hunting by You-know-who and all th
at shooting by You-know-who-else
. Back to the connection. What I say is: if there is a connection, will those who know what it is, please inform me?'

Pompey gazed at Vaillant.

'So far as you know we've drawn a series of blanks. And not for want of trying. The photographer has an alibi, lots of witnesses that he came late, including the place of his other assignment which kept him. Still, we shan't forget him. Not us. We're having another look at him over the photographs of course. So are Special Branch. The film star — what's her name? Do you realize I know her figure better than I know her name?' Since Vaillant looked shocked, Pompey proceeded: 'She swears she can't identify him. Swears she has no idea who knew she was going there to confront the wretched bridegroom. Well, that's what she says.' He paused. 'But he allowed us to search his studio, positively offered it, so that must be clean. Then there are the two women,' Pompey added.

'The witnesses?'

Pompey pursued his train of thought. 'Odd that
two
women who made statements, apparently quite unconnected with each other - but we'll have to check that - should prove to be members of Innoright.'

'There's a lot of it about,' put in Vaillant helpfully.

'Ordinary rank and file members. All the same it's an odd coincidence. And -'

'In this office we don't believe in coincidences,' finished Vaillant.

'Charity Wadham, a teacher if I remember rightly. Meeting a friend for tea in the Republican lounge, unaware it had been blocked off for the Royal Press Conference. Friend went happily to the other lounge, Mrs Wadham strays into the wrong lounge and sees our man apparently sleeping. Friend confirms story. But Mrs Charity Wadham is a member of Innoright, a founder member, what's more. The other woman - what is her name? -something foreign, Muscovite. ...'

'Moscowitz.'

'Big woman,' went on Pompey. 'Rather gloomy. Appears to be Polish. Doesn't sound it, but looks it. Ordinary member of Innoright. She finally admitted that she popped into the Republican merely to go to the ladies for free - felt hot and tired after prolonged shopping in nearby Marks and Sparks. Subsequently rested in the empty Republican lounge. Except it wasn't empty. It contained the dead body of our friend. She didn't notice. And didn't notice Wadham's appearance cither. Doesn't know Wadham anyway.'

'Plausible?'

'Why not? Innoright is a biggish organization, the outer layer of it, in some ways not unlike Greenpeace, with lots of different causes, all aspects of innocence abused is how they put it. Or some such phrase. Security all the while was concentrated on the actual conference inside the big double doors. The murderer certainly hit on a convenient moment to do it. No other clues.' Pompey sighed. 'With this interview business on top of it all, Special Branch not being very cooperative as usual, it beats me. Except I am not paid to be beaten. A
nd nor, young fellow-me-lad, are
you.'

'A message came from on high,' Vaillant spoke delicately, 'while you were talking to Mrs Pompey about - whatever it was you were talking about.'

'Sutton's seed catalogue!' exclaimed Pompey bitterly. 'She thinks I've hidden it on purpose. Go on.'

'The Palace has said no.' 'That's the message?'

'That's the drift of it,' murmured Vaillant.

'So the interview goes ahead? And no statement? No speaking up for the poor little animals from our young couple?'

'Not a dog's bark if you'll pardon the expression,' concluded Vaillant.

Pompey presumably did pardon the expression since he did not refer to it.

'Very interesting. Very interesting indeed,' was all he said. 'Have a look in the drawer will you and see if that damn catalogue is lurking. Do you suppose I ought to be grateful that Mrs Portsmouth is into flowers not animals?'

But Vaillant knew better than to answer that one.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Courtiers

‘I
guess I'm intrigued about
her.
I mean, how do you treat a guy when you find out he's been cheating on you? If you're a princess, that is?' added Rick Vancy.

'Just the same as any other girl?' suggested Jemima. 'Unless you choose to stab him with the sharp end of your tiara.'

'But how is that?' persisted Rick. 'We have to know this.' He sounded worried. 'Susanna, do you have anything on this?'

Susanna Blanding, researcher royal to
tus
, her lap piled high with the memos, documents, notes and the various thick red books emblazoned with gold without which she seemed unable to move, was crouched in the back seat of Rick Vancy's car behind Jemima. Curt, her American colleague, whose whole role as
tus
researcher had become no more precise over the last few days, was asleep beside her. They were all four on their way to Cumberland Palace. Rick was speaking in a lull between the many telephone calls both incoming and outgoing which were deemed necessary during the comparatively short journey from Jemima's flat to the Palace.

Susanna Blanding did not answer.

'Soo-zee
, I'm talk-ing to you,' sang Rick in his melodious baritone voice, the voice which was as mu
ch part of his image as his Engl
ish-film-star looks. 'Do you have anything on the kind of emotions which could be coming into play here? And Soo-zee, would you extinguish that cigarette?'

'Emotions, Rick?' panted Susa
nna, stubbing out the cigarette
across Curt's recumbent body. Jemima wondered into what delightful reverie of eighteenth-century royal descent she had been plunged.

'Do you have anything relevant on Amy's emotional makeup? In confidence, maybe. Psyc
hological reports? Doctors? Any
thing like that? Something to help us build up the correct picture of the way this young woman will respond to the unique pressures currently being imposed upon her. I guess I'm talking about strain here, Susanna. Strain and Amy's emotional stability.'

'I could research you some nice mad royal ancestors if you like.' Susanna Blanding spoke cautiously, feeling her way. 'For example the old Russian Princess, Amy's grandmother, was always said to be absolutely bonkers. Ended up thinking she was an Alpine goat: always wore a little bell round her neck and loved climbing stairs.'

Jemima took a quick look at Rick's face and decided to intervene speedily in the interests of Anglo-American accord.

'We don't exactly know he's been cheating on her,' she pointed out. 'After all, he did have his clothes on.'

'C'mon sweetheart — where clothes are concerned -' But perhaps fortunately Rick's rejoinder was cut off by the high loud bleeping of another incoming telephone call.

As they were slowing down for the small black police post at the entrance to the Palace drive, a slight young man in horn-rim glasses walking a dog could be seen parallel to them on the pavement. The dog, which had a vaguely bulldoggish aspect, lurched silently into the centre of the road, causing Rick to brake violently. Susanna Blanding bumped her nose and lost her papers. Curt woke up.

'Noel, Noel!' came the high well-modulated voice of the dog's owner. The young man patted his cowering animal and glared at the inhabitants of the car as if dogs not cars traditionally occupied the tarmac thoroughfare.

'Dogs should be banned from urban conurbations!' exclaimed Rick; Jemima thought his unusual irritability was probably due to the ordeal ahead, something outside his usual experience of war-stained statesmen. 'Do you know the figures on city-centre animal-related disease in children?'

'Daddy won't let Sabrina - that's my sister - bring Emma — that's her dog - to London,' contributed Susanna, anxious to restore herself to Rick Vancy's favour.

Cumberland Palace had a placid air of early Georgian elegance. Its low wall abutting Regent's Park (on which Tom and Beagle had once plastered the words
amy means trouble
) was now free from any such excrescence. In its graceful sylvan setting, green lawns surrounding, the plash of oars on a lake heard nearby, this might have been a mansion in a country park; as it was its look of
rus in urbe
made the outer serenity especially delightful to behold.

The inner serenity of the Palace, in so far as it had ever existed, was however at this moment markedly disturbed.

Over the heads of the royal couple,
Ione
Quentin's ey
es met those of Major Pat Smylie
-Portcr. The Major gazed steadily back at her without visible sign of either worry or exasperation, both of which would have been amply justified by the distressing circumstances in which the urbane Major Pat currently found himself. Nevertheless the steady look that passed between the two courtiers indicated that they understood each other perfectly; the situation, in a favourite cliche passed round Cumberland Palace in recent days, was desperate but not serious. As veterans of many similar situations - if never admittedly
quite
so serious -the two of them found themselves experiencing a certain not unpleasant quickening of the pulse at the challenge to tKeir powers thus presented.

Although neither the Major not
Ione
would have dreamt of phrasing it like that, certainly not to each other, they were aware of being needed. Never more than at the present time. And
Ione
Quentin, unmarried at thirty-one, highly competent and professional at her job, which despite its old-fashioned title of 'lady-in-waiting' often called for executive qualities, as though she was in fact the manager of a popular star — Amy being the star — the efficient self-controlled
Ione
Quentin liked to be needed. She knew that about herself.