‘But—’
This time he tapped his fingertips together – a sure sign of exasperation. ‘I know you want to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing – for the country – is not to do anything. Please trust me on this.’
She didn’t trust him.
But nor could she be absolutely certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t right. If she overruled him, or went behind his back, and talk about Philip got out as a result, true or otherwise, the consequences could be catastrophic. With her visit to North America coming up, the last thing any of them needed were unfounded rumours. She would be doing the traitors’ job for them, and doing it better than they ever could.
At this moment, she felt certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t in concert with those men in any way. He was trying so very hard to protect her. She trusted that.
‘All right,’ she agreed with a heavy heart. ‘At least until I’m back from America.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. We can certainly discuss it then.’
‘And thank you, Hugh, for looking after me.’
Her private secretary smiled gravely. ‘Your best interests are all I ever seek to serve. Shall I take the boxes with me, ma’am?’
‘Joan can pick them up later,’ she said lightly.
The Queen pictured Inspector Darbishire at his desk, hamstrung by his ignorance of the slim manila folder sitting in the bottom box, like an unexploded bomb. For now, he was on his own. And so was she.
PART 4
THE SINGLE PETAL OF A ROSE
Chapter 51
In the privacy of the little filing room, Joan extracted the folder from the top of the second red box, where the Queen had strategically placed it, and read it in the ladies’ lavatories while most people were at lunch.
One of the advantages of Joan’s memory was that she didn’t need to take notes. She read rapidly, and could picture every word on every page if necessary. So she was able to return the folder to Sir Hugh’s office and then think about its consequences while sitting on her new bed after work, up high in one of Buckingham Palace’s attic rooms.
The timings were important. If somebody had got into number 44 Cresswell Place without being noticed by the surveillance team, they must have done so between 11.08 p.m. and 11.20. That was when the A4 team got instructions from their office at MI5 to give the codename ‘Hamlet’ to the person they had observed and maintain a watching brief.
The report didn’t make it clear what they had been doing in the meantime, but they had made at least three calls to HQ. Joan knew from her war experience that it was all too easy to make a small mistake when you were tired, confused and dealing with the unexpected. It only took one minute’s lapse in concentration, but if it happened to be the right minute . . .
She mapped those timings against what they knew about the people mentioned in Darbishire’s reports. Of these, the dean and his guests were still at the Artemis Club, getting ready to order a couple of taxis to take them to Chelsea. The notorious Billy Hill was at a theatre performance from seven thirty until ten. His whereabouts after that weren’t corroborated by anyone outside his gang, but in the last report Joan had access to, the inspector noted that the killings weren’t typical of the way he operated.
Lord Seymour was about to leave the Houses of Parliament, to walk to his home in Westminster. There was simply no way the minister could have got to Cresswell Place in that brief window of time. Either he was in the clear, or he had commissioned somebody else to commit murder for him, and that person had had the luck of the gods when they arrived at the scene.
Joan explained all this to Her Majesty the following morning.
The Queen nodded gravely. ‘I think we should add the Duke of Maidstone and Tony Radnor-Milne to the list.’
‘Should we, ma’am?’
‘It might sound fanciful, but at least one of them almost certainly tried to kill you.’
Joan was confused. ‘Yes, but that was over something entirely different.’
‘I know,’ the Queen said. ‘But I have reason to believe they might be involved in this, too. I wonder whether the duke has a stake in the Raffles escort agency.’
‘Really, ma’am?’
‘Yes. He was the first person to talk to me about it and it felt as if he was showing off. Then there’s the agency’s name itself. I know the duke’s family used to stay in the Raffles hotel in Singapore. It’s the sort of word he would use.’
‘I see.’
‘And I’ve been thinking. The police established that the same company had stakes in Raffles and the Chamberlain nightclub in Tangier. At first, I thought of Neville Chamberlain, who seemed very unlikely as an inspiration. Then I realised it must be named after Joseph Chamberlain, who was a great advocate of imperial unity. I’ve had more than one long conversation about him with Maidstone.’
‘Oh!’ Joan thought about it. ‘And if he owns the Raffles agency, or at least some of it, he might own the mews house, too. The police reports suggest they’re probably run by the same people.’
‘He might. So he should certainly be on our list.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Although, if he or Tony were going to do anything, they’d probably pay someone else and make sure they had an alibi.’
The Queen sighed briefly. ‘True.’
‘And what would their motive be?’
At this, the Queen’s eyes seemed to shine a brighter blue than usual. She picked up her pen and played with it absently.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I don’t know what they had to do with the murders, but I think I know what they have to do with me. They both seem to have stakes in companies based in Singapore and Malaya. I wonder if their profits are bound up with traditional trade routes to the Far East and the West Indies. With goods such as rubber, for example. But our days running an empire are over. We need to cooperate with our old dominions, but the prime minister equally wants us to build relationships with the rest of Europe and the United States. We need to. The USA is a superpower now. They don’t trust us and I can see why Mr Macmillan wants me to build bridges . . .’
‘But what if the duke and his friends didn’t want that to happen?’ Joan suggested, following the line of thought.
‘Exactly.’
‘And you’re very good at building bridges.’
‘I wouldn’t say that . . .’
‘You are, ma’am. That’s the point.’
‘Well, the thing is, I try. I happen to agree with the prime minister, and anyway, it’s my constitutional duty to do as he suggests. I’d do it even if I thought it was a terrible idea. But my uncle, the Duke of Windsor . . .’ The Queen paused at the very thought of her uncle.
‘He doesn’t play the game,’ Joan said.
‘No, he doesn’t. I can imagine him wanting to hark back to the past, when we didn’t need Europe and America in the same way. He could easily be persuaded that way, certainly. And he wants to be relevant, even if he can’t be king. I don’t think it would be difficult to suggest to him that if I was incapacitated in some way, he might be the best person to replace me.’
Joan looked horrified. ‘As king?’
‘No. I don’t think even he would go that far. As some sort of roving ambassador.’
‘But no one would have him! He abdicated! It’s a terrible idea!’ Joan objected.
The Queen smiled grimly. ‘I’m afraid the Duke of Maidstone is the sort of man to have ghastly ideas and think they’re wonderful. He’s been told all his life how brilliant he is, even if, as I told you, that’s not entirely true.’