‘Did she talk about him? Rodriguez, I mean? Perez, as he called himself.’
‘No. Just her hair. That it had to be perfectly “princess” and very blonde. She looked a dream.’
‘Did she say where they were meeting?’
‘No, the silly pet. If she’d told me about that mews place, I could’ve told the police as soon as I started to worry. She normally did tell me, too, in case anything went wrong, you know. She’d leave a note next to the kettle. But not this time. The police assumed I was the person who rang up, but it wasn’t me. I kept telling the sergeant who talked to me, but he wasn’t listening.’
‘And what about the diamonds? Do you know why she was wearing those particular ones?’ Joan saw Rita’s eyes narrow. ‘I’m not from the papers, I promise! But I have to ask.’
‘No,’ Rita said harshly. Joan sensed she didn’t want to think of her friend being reduced to the ‘tart in the tiara’. ‘I never saw them. She went on about her hair, and about the dress. It was a beautiful white chiffon thing she found in Debenhams. She looked like a goddess. But her hair was just in a chignon. She never even mentioned diamonds. When I heard about . . . what happened . . . I never thought of Ginette. I was sure it must be someone else . . .’
‘Did she know Lord Seymour?’ Joan asked.
‘N-no,’ Rita said. ‘The copper asked me that too. She didn’t.’
Joan caught her hesitation. ‘You don’t sound sure.’
‘Oh, I am. It’s just that he asked for her once. He went for Jean Harlow types. Really old-fashioned blondes, you know, so she didn’t fit back then, being brunette as she was, but he’d heard good things about Ginette. This is ages ago. Anyway, she said no way. She was very fierce about it when she told me, but laughing too. I don’t know what it was, but she didn’t want anything to do with him. He’s the last person who could’ve given them to her.’
And yet, someone had. And for some reason, Gina – or Ginette – had worn them to an assignation in a place she’d told no one about, with a man she knew to be violent, whom she seemed excited to meet. Joan couldn’t make sense of any of it, but she had a lot to tell Her Majesty.
Chapter 41
Joan’s letter to the Queen was marked ‘Hartnell embroidery: notes for Canadian state visit’ and contained several sketches of maple leaves . . . followed by a detailed account of her conversations with Beryl and Rita. She left out the bit about pretending to be an escort herself. Some things weren’t meant for royal ears, or eyes. But she thought Her Majesty might be amused if she knew.
The Queen tucked the sealed envelope containing the letter into the pocket of her tweed jacket, and announced that she was off to visit her mother’s fishing lodge on the estate.
‘It may well need repairs. I want to give it a thorough inspection,’ she told the page who fetched her wellingtons.
She took three of the corgis with her, loaded into the back of a sturdy Land Rover that she drove herself, headscarf knotted firmly under her chin, with her two protection officers travelling at a respectful distance behind her on the winding, pine-clad road through the estate.
The lodge was built as a log cabin with a long porch along the front, facing a deep, salmon-friendly pool in the river, and it looked as if it would be perfectly at home in Canada, amidst forests, snows and bears. This thought briefly made the Queen wince as she pulled up outside, remembering the live, televised, bilingual speech she had agreed to give there in less than a month. What a fool she had been!
She put on the handbrake and took a deep breath before getting out to let the corgis out of the back. They were thrilled to be in this smorgasbord of new smells and quickly set about examining as many of them as they could. Watching them fondly, the Queen found she was leaning against the Land Rover and was reminded that she had learned to fix the engine of one of these workhorses when she was a teenager at Windsor. She was proud of her achievement then, and still proud now. If she could master a Land Rover, she could certainly say a few words in front of a television camera. It would just take practice and patience, and practice and patience were both things she was good at.
Feeling better, and calling the dogs to her, she had a brief poke around inside the cabin, and then sat down on the porch. Her protection officers had parked their vehicle at a suitable distance and were only just visible through the trees. The sound of doggy snuffles and the splashes of river water running over rocks and stones provided the perfect backdrop for concentration. She took Joan’s letter out of her pocket and read it, undisturbed.
So, Gina was in fact Ginette, and she was the one who set up the assignation at Cresswell Place. Her fellow escort had always said as much, but the policemen never believed her story. The Queen did, especially given the new detail that Ginette might have chosen the dean’s house because she happened to have the key.
The more she looked over the letter, the more she was convinced that Ginette Fleury was not some poor unfortunate, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time: she had wanted to be there. She had made it happen. Just as the Queen suspected, she was at the heart of everything.
Ginette knew that Dino Perez (or Nico Rodriguez, as the more recent police reports referred to him) could be violent, and yet she was excited to meet him. She had gone to the house willingly, and gone to great lengths to be the sort of girl he was looking for. The Queen searched for proof in Joan’s account that this person was Princess Grace, but to her nagging concern, the proof wasn’t there. Beryl White and Rita Gollanz only knew for certain that he had specified ‘a princess’. Having been one herself, and with a sister who was the most famous princess in the world at the moment, the Queen found this disturbing. But something else nagged at her, like a cross-current in the stream.
Despite her concerns, the princess theme, the diamonds, the torn white dress from Debenhams, all felt like distractions – a means to an end. Everyone went on and on about what one wore oneself all the time, but to the Queen, it was just about being appropriate for the occasion. Her favourite outfit was the one she was wearing now: tweed breeches tucked into ancient wellies, a comfortable tweed jacket she’d had since she was twenty-one, and a scarf to keep her hair in check. She’d wear it every day if she could. Her diamonds were precious to her because each piece was a treasure trove of family stories, but in themselves, they were only stones, heavy to wear and difficult to keep clean. Daphne had talked about misdirection. What if the girl was important, but the diamonds weren’t the point? What was the other nagging thing?
The Queen sat quietly for several minutes, listening to the running water. A face was hovering in her mind – an old man’s face, and as she thought about it she saw that it was contorted into fury. And something about Argentina. And . . . Paris.
Ah yes! Paris! Ginette was French, so perhaps that explained it.
But the face she saw was that of the Comte de Longchamp, who had been scowling at the German ambassador that fateful evening at the Louvre. It was a glare of pure hatred – understandable, she thought, given what had happened to his Jewish wife and his family. The war might have ended twelve years ago, but by no means everyone had forgiven and forgotten. Some tragedies were too hard to bear.