Your Royal Hostage (26 page)

Spike, like the Dragon of Drury Lane, was in his own way more than equal to the occasion. He swung his came
ra neatly
away from Jemima's seat, pausing only to file away the notion of further financial claims against
tus
for services beyond the call of contract (Spike Thompson's claims in this respect being a legend in his lifetime, held by many of the mean-hearted to be at least partly responsible for the recent coup at Megalith). A minute later he had his camera unerringly focused on the resplendent figure of Curt, already installed, be
-
microphoned and be-earplugged in Jemima's place. So now there were two 'anchors' on the
tus
desk again, if you preferred the more exciting American phrase to the calmer British notion of presenters.

The rest, as many at
tus
(but not Rick Vancy and not Susanna Blanding) would murmur with awe afterwards, was history: British history. Where, oh where, had the somnolent Curt acquired that intimate knowledge of every detail of the wedding ceremony, that intimate command of anecdote about every royal personage, that intimacy - one had to use the word since a sense of intimacy combined with pageantry subsequently became his trademark as a broadcaster - with every facet of British history from the Conquest onwards? By the time Curt's dazzling reputation had been established, outclassing coast to coast and rating for rating the laid-back style so sedulously cultivated by Rick Vancy during his weeks in Britain, it was far too late for Susanna Blanding's indignant cry from the depths: 'None of this is in my notes. I do believe he's making it all up.' A star had been born. For this at least Rick Vancy would always blame Jemima Shore.

Jemima Shore on the other hand would always blame herself for not being more emphatically direct to Pompey in their last conversation about
Ione
Quentin's responsibility for the murder of Schwarz-Albert at the Republican Hotel. Notions of opportunity came to her: she remembered seeing
Ione
Quentin leave the stage where Major Pat
was holding forth at rather an
odd moment in the proceedings, given her role in it all. She must have had the note delivered then, the note which drew Schwarz-Albert out of the Press Conference. Then she boldly took advantage of the royal arrival and the royal question-and-answer session for the killing itself, knowing full well how absorbed the general attention would be in the inner room. She had only to remember to remove the note from the body, and of course
Ione
had easy access to the 'Royal' paper-knives, besides knowing in advance how sharp they were.

Notions of motive also passed through Jemima's mind. Who but
Ione
Quentin, who would, in her own phrase, 'do anything' for her sister, had such a strong motive to eliminate the inquisitive Schwarz-Albert? The other members of Innoright could merely have ejected him, but Lydia's terrifying personal vulnerability, to say nothing of her royal connection, made her a soft target for Schwarz-Albert's machinations. Did he plan to use her for further information against her comrades? If so,
Ione
, who regularly went through her sister's things and even followed her, as she told Jemima, would have known. As Jemima had pointed out intuitively to Pompey, the Republican Hotel represented an opportunity for
Ione
— who had the list of attendances at her command — an opportunity which might not come again.

With
Ione
, whatever her normal feelings outside the influence of madness towards Princess Amy, Lydia always came first. (Not that Lydia herself reciprocated those feelings: she had shown the total self-absorption of the mad - or the fanatic - throughout, using her sister's royal position shamelessly without regard to the consequences for
Ione
. She would never even have known of Ione's daring deed on her behalf... for
Ione
, as ever solicitous of Lydia's welfare, would have kept her own counsel on that.) It was Lydia towards whom Ione's thoughts turned, not her royal mistress, at the moment of the abduction. That amazing conversation had given Jemima the vital clue; just as Ione's conduct at the siege, pondered over later, had brought Jemima to a full realization of the cold-blooded indifference
Ione
showed to Princess Amy's fate within the shuttered shop - compared to that of her sister. So Jemima's enforced passivity on that occasion had not been wasted after all. It had enabled her to see that someone capable of such indifference was in the final analysis ruthless: in
Ione
Quentin's case, a ruthless killer.

Perhaps Pompey was right and like the tortoise he was, he would have reached
Ione
sooner or later: after all he had his creative-writing witness from the Underground who described the woman with 'burning eyes' threatening Schwarz-Albert. (Only the burning eyes in question belonged of course to
Ione
, not Lydia Quentin, as Jemima had surmised.) But by that time Princess Amy might have been dead; like Taplow, the photographer, and Lydia Quentin herself. As for the latter, Pompey had a few old-fashioned remarks concerning those who permitted, or at least had not prevented, her from committing suicide. The macabre detail that it was a Jong sharp pin, originally part of the Quentin tiara worn at the fatal Gala, which Lydia had secreted about her and with which she performed the opening of her veins at the wrist, did not make things any better in Pompey's opinion.

At least
Ione
, driven finally to craziness by her beloved sister's death, had failed in her last mad rash attempt.

'It would never have worked,' Pompey comfortingly assured Jemima. 'Though I grant you she shouldn't have been there in the first place - our failure entirely, so much police presence needed elsewhere, that was the trouble '

He patted her knee. They were seated in the Groucho Club again, Pompey confessing himself to have taken quite a fancy to the place, especially since Mrs Pompey had recently approved all late home-comings from this particular quarter; the literary gleanings were to be her reward. Detective Sergeant Vaillant had dropped his superior there with some reluctance, or rather he had left him there with some reluctance; he meditated some off-the-record conferences with Jemima Shore himself one day - starting at the Groucho Club.

'There was a good deal of focus on the other one, of course,' continued Pompey. 'The big woman with the model daughter. But do you know all she did? Munched her way through a box of chocolate biscuits, then cried with happiness along with all the rest of them at the sight of the bride coming out of the Cathedral. Finally queued up to see the wedding flowers inside the Cathedral after the ceremony. Even then they kept a pretty close eye, naturally. But what should she do then? Never looked at the flowers but went and lit a candle to some statue or other. Harmless as you please — if you call the saints and all that sort of thing harmless which, I have to admit,' conclud
ed Pompey generously, 'many do.’

It was true. Pussy had not lit a candle since her own violent rejection of the Catholic religion years ago; but some kind of cathartic experience had happened to her as she watched Princess Amy, married at last, on the arm of her handsome husband, standing on the steps of the Cathedral, laughing and waving as the bells began to peal out overhead, joined, so it seemed, by all the bells of London. Not rage and bitterness but overwhelming sorrow swept over her; she wept not for happiness as her covert watchers had supposed but for loss, a loss which no anger could hope to assuage.

So Pussy lit a candle for her daughter Caro in front of the statue of St Francis in Westminster Cathedral. Unaware of Lamb's suicide and thinking of her held in prison, she lit a candle for her too, another gesture of reconciliation towards those young women who could not really be held responsible for the death of her own daughter.

'You did very well, my dear, very well,' Pompey conceded.

'And my instinct? What you call my woman's instinct and I call my rational good sense. Did that do well?' demanded Jemima; but she knew she would never win this particular argument with Pompey. A team ... long might they remain so.

As for
Ione
Quentin: 'A cool customer,' was Pompey's final verdict. 'But she'll probably end up in Broadmoor. Given the circumstances.'

'You mean — she shouldn't.'

'No, no, that's the solution all right. She's totally deranged according to the prison doctor. By the way, it seems the mother, the Quentin mother, committed suicide. Started Lydia off on her particular course. Something very unstable in that family.'

'And the famous father - Colonel Q, you remember him - was obviously a monster, at least where Lydia Quentin was concerned. What a recipe for disaster! Martinet for a father, depressive for a mother.
Ione
told me that Lydia wanted to have her father put down in revenge for the death of a pet dog that
he
put down, when she was quite small!'

'Now we know it was
a
recipe for disaster for both of them,' pointed out Pompey. 'Even if it took this particular crisis to bring out the craziness in the elder girl. But when she did go off her rocker, she still had all that lethal courage she must have got from the war-hero father. Talk about the female of the species —' But that did not seem a particularly profitable line of conversation to pursue with Jemima, so Pompey sighed and returned to the subject of
Ione
Quentin's future.

' "Given the circumstances" just meant being
a
lady-in-waiting — serving, servitude, perpetual attendance. Might begin to give you some funny ideas, I suppose.'

'I have to say that the rest of them seem all right,' murmured Jemima. But perhaps Pompey was merely ruminating on his own servitude, in horticultural terms at least, to Mrs Pompey.

Others would have sweeter memories of the Royal Wedding than Jemima Shore. Major Pat Smylie-Porter, for example, had some sweet memories, while shuddering away from what-might-have-been in every sense of the word, not only the demise of his royal mistress, but those secret hopes concerning
Ione
... but these were now repressed deep into his unconscious, as only Major Pat knew how to repress inconvenient and strong emotions. His sweet memories included not only arrangements perfectly carried out - and God knew what a triumph that was under the circumstances - but the particular way young Amanda Macpherson-Wynne, acting lady-in-waiting to Princess Amy, had carried out her new role, staunchly and discreetly. Major Pat intended to keep a fatherly, well a not entirely fatherly, eye upon young Amanda in the future.

The sweetest moment for Jemima herself came on her return to her flat from the Groucho Club following her drink with Pompey. She saw from the red light on her answering machine that there had been at least one call, and from the number registered on the machine itself, she discovered that there had in fact been a positive host of callers - or calls. The telephone rang again as she patted the purring Midnight, draping himself round her legs and arching his tail as one who had been unfed for weeks
(a
gross libel on Jemima's cleaning lady Mrs B). Jemima decided to ignore the noise.

'A telephone that rings but who's to answer-' she hummed. But the lyricist did not know about the 1980s' solution of the answerphone. The noise stopped as the machine began to click.

Around Jemima literature concerning Royal Weddings, past and present, still proliferated while Princess Amy's radiant face, veil flung back, gazed up at her - in full colour - from the heap of morning papers. Most of the papers had chosen for their front page the balcony shot in which Prince Ferdinand - crafty foreign bugger or romantic hero according to taste - held Amy's hand to his lips and implanted upon it a deep deep kiss while gazing romantically - or craftily - into her eyes. It was a specially popular picture since the lip-readers, not present at the Royal Gala, had been out in force on this occasion.

What Prince Ferdinand said, looking so soulfully at Amy, was: 'A dream come true.'

A minute later Princess Amy, who could do no wrong, won even more hearts by exclaiming in rather a different mode: 'Hey, Prince Charming, you're treading on my train!' And then she added, surely roguishly: 'This is your wife speaking.'

A good deal of pictorial attention was also paid to little Jamie Beauregard, who had revenged his defeat over the kilt, by concealing his dirk in the beribboned tie of his page's knee breeches. He brandished it aloft in triumph on the balcony where his furious mother could not reach him; but for once this was a weapon which caused no one (other than the aforesaid mother, who would make him pay later), any anxiety.

Prince Ferdel's own comment: 'I'd like to wring that boy's neck,' although dutifully translated by the lip-readers was ignored on grounds of taste by all papers except the
Daily Clueless.

'Marriage!' thought Jemima. 'I wish them the joy of it.' She picked up the papers and the notes and the family trees - all Susanna Blanding's patient work - and began to stuff them into the wastepaper basket. (She had an awful feeling that some of the numerous calls on her machine must have come from a sobbing Susanna, Rick having departed that morning for the Middle East.)