‘Quite sure,’ he said.
‘What about the Americans? Not the president – I know he’s an ally, and you worked with him in the war – but America is a big country.’
Macmillan gave her a warm, paternal smile and a look that suggested if he could have patted her on the hand, he would have.
‘I’m not sure what troubles you, but I might remind you that my mother was from that great country. I speak as half American when I say that they are in awe of you too.’
‘Surely not “in awe”, Prime Minister?’ He thought he was helping, but he wasn’t.
He shrugged. ‘You’ll see. And you know how much faith I have in you, ma’am. I hope for great things from this trip. Since the flight of Burgess and Maclean . . .’
‘I know all about Burgess and Maclean.’
‘The ripples of their treachery still reverberate across the pond. I need hardly remind you, we’re locked out of their atomic programme, we’ve lost the trust of the CIA . . .’
He did hardly need to remind her. She knew all of this. After the disaster of that flight to Moscow six years ago, and MI6’s inability to do anything about it, the Americans were convinced that Burgess and Maclean weren’t the only communist sympathisers at Cambridge to have been recruited by the KGB. It made her next state visit even more freighted with consequence. And she must do it without being able to trust the food she ate, the people she travelled with, or even the contents of her vanity case.
‘. . . But I have great hope for the future,’ he continued. ‘I enjoyed my time working with General Eisenhower. He was tough on us during Suez, but he did warn us, and we didn’t listen. Now we must. But we have a lot to offer the Americans. Our day is coming . . .’
‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Prime Minister. When I travel round the country, of course I’m opening new buildings and celebrating great history, but I hear so much anxiety. From farmers to factory workers . . .They don’t understand our place in the world. They’re worried about inflation. They don’t know what’s coming next.’
Was it an internal plot against her? she wondered suddenly. If so, why focus on her foreign visits? Did they want the country to be taken over?
Macmillan smiled at her again. ‘I hear the same things in the party. They do like to worry there – it’s something of a religion. But as I like to point out, part of the problem is that we’re growing. We’re making things and selling them like never before. We like to grumble, ma’am, but I remind them we’re heading for a state of prosperity we’ve never seen before. Most people have never had it so good.’
For the first time, she smiled back.
‘Really?’
He nodded, clearly pleased with his response and its effect on her. ‘Take courage, ma’am. This is the new Elizabethan Age. Whatever warning signs you see, I wouldn’t worry.’
The Queen normally liked to follow her prime minister’s advice, but this time it would have been helpful if he had pointed out some nation or person in particular to worry about. Nevertheless, she found his words comforting, for the country at least. Ten years ago, the very dark days of the war had given way to the giddy optimism of peace. Perhaps that was around the corner again, though it was hard to imagine it.
Chapter 28
‘It strikes me, sir,’ DS Woolgar said, ‘that somebody needs to go to Monaco in person. Get people talking. Find out exactly what Rodriguez was doing there. What he was buying or selling. Who he hung around with.’
Since the breakthrough from Buenos Aires, there had been talk of little else in the Chelsea police station beyond the activities of the nefarious Rodriguez around the edge of the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea.
‘And that would be you, Sergeant, would it?’ Darbishire asked, as straight-faced as he could manage.
‘I don’t see why not, sir,’ Woolgar told him, stoutly.
He was looking tanned and fit – fitter than usual – after a successful few days on the river. Woolgar had been absent with leave quite a bit in May, and the Metropolitan Police Athletic Club rowing eight had just come second in some sort of regatta challenge cup. They had stormed past the Australians and were pipped at the post – or ‘beaten by a canvas’, whatever that was – by the team from Harvard University. The young sergeant was very full of himself. And now he wanted to go to Monte Carlo on the investigation’s budget.
‘Speak French, do you?’ Darbishire asked.
‘I did it for my school certificate. Besides, they all speak English down there, don’t they, sir? The thing is, I know the case inside out. I could ask all the right questions.’
‘Do you picture yourself in a dinner jacket, by any chance?’ Darbishire asked. ‘With a gun in your pocket? And a large pile of chips and a wilting woman at the table? Are you by any chance James Bond?’
‘Who, sir?’
‘The spy. He gambles in French casinos. And why not go to Tangier, while you’re about it? Rodriguez went there, too.’
‘It has to be Monaco, sir. There was a man in the Harvard boat . . .’
‘Oh Christ! Not the Harvard bloody boat again.’
‘. . . And we were drinking together afterwards,’ Woolgar persisted. ‘They got very friendly after the third or fourth pint. He was talking about the Chelsea murders . . .’
Darbishire groaned. ‘They’re not talking about this in New York, are they?’
‘Boston, sir. And yes, they are. It’s in the papers because of the tart in the tiara. Diamonds always make the papers. So do—’
‘I don’t want to hear the theories of a Boston newspaper editor!’
Woolgar looked slightly hurt. ‘He’s not a newspaper editor. He’s the number eight in the crew.’
‘I don’t care if he’s the number fifty!’ Darbishire realised he was sounding touchy about Woolgar’s posh new friends, and about his own recent lack of progress, since the unexpected dead end with Billy Hill. ‘I’m sorry. Go on.’
‘His name’s O’Donnell and his dad owns a boatbuilding company,’ Woolgar explained. ‘They travel a lot. Fancy places. And his dad was saying that last summer he ran into Lord Seymour at a spa in Switzerland. He goes there every year for a health cure, sir. He met his wife there . . .’
‘And?’
‘Lord Seymour was putting it about that he’d recently won a million francs on blackjack in a casino in Monte Carlo. So, O’Donnell – the father, but the son agrees – thinks that maybe he wanted to relive his big night when he got back to London. Seymour asks for a girl who looks like Grace Kelly, Princess Grace, as she now is. He gives her the tiara; there’s no way it was stolen from that safe of his. He was the client, not Rodriguez – but he has some hold over the agency, so he gets them to tell us it was the victim who booked the girl, in the name of Perez, and they get Beryl White to lie about it too. I mean, it’s obvious she wasn’t telling the whole truth, sir.’
‘I know that, Woolgar. But you’re forgetting, Seymour didn’t have time for any of this. He didn’t leave the Houses of Parliament until after Rodriguez arrived in Cresswell Place.’
‘Ah. That’s what you’re supposed to think, sir. But we only have one witness’s word for it. Bear with me.’
Darbishire raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘Anyway,’ Woolgar continued, ‘Seymour meets with Gina Fonteyn, and somehow Rodriguez gets in and it all goes pear-shaped. He was fuzzy on the details, but O’Donnell – the son, not the father – pointed out that Rodriguez gambled in Monte Carlo, too. That’s all over the papers now. He might have lost money to Seymour there, or won it off him, or maybe Seymour needed a favour, something dark and dirty, and they fell out, and that’s why Rodriguez followed them in Chelsea. And Seymour turned on him. He was a commando in the war, sir, so—’