Lucie’s eyes were wide. ‘She was mad! He was Gestapo! He was good at it! Ginette thought she was grown up, but she was still a child. It’s why I truly didn’t believe her craziness until it was too late.’
‘How did you know where to follow her?’ the Queen asked.
‘She left a note under my pillow. It gave the address, so I’d know where to find her if she didn’t contact me in the morning. For some strange reason she thought I wouldn’t look for her until then. She was dingue, dingue . . . I wasn’t supposed to see the note until I went to bed, but she’d left my pillow crooked.’ Lucie smiled again, fondly, her face blotchy under her makeup, her lipstick smudged, mascara running. ‘Ginette always, how do you say it, faisait à la va-vite.’
‘She was slapdash? I think that’s it.’
‘Yes!’ Lucie nodded. ‘Except about her appearance. So I noticed the pillow straightaway. As soon as I read the note, I realised why she had really come to see me.’
‘Oh? It wasn’t the diamonds, was it? They just happened to be there.’
Lucie nodded. ‘It was in part to say goodbye, just in case. And she knew I kept a flick knife in a jewellery roll in my dressing table. A memento from Arisaig. One of the trainers gave it to me – a trophy he’d picked up from a German soldier in the desert. It was quite small and easy to hide, but well made. Deadly – in the right hands. I looked. It was gone.’
‘But your sister’s weren’t the right hands,’ the Queen said, pursuing the thought she’d originally had. ‘You no longer had the knife, so you armed yourself with cheese wire.’
‘I know how to kill a man. Ginette thought she did, but it’s different when he’s fighting for his life. It wasn’t cheese wire, ma’am, it was flower arranging wire. I used bamboo struts for the handles.’
‘Does that work?’
‘It did,’ Lucie said, flatly.
‘And so you disguised yourself and went after her, to Cresswell Place.’
Lucie’s face was taut with pain. ‘You make it sound easy. It seemed to take forever. I pulled a pair of Stephen’s trousers over my dress and took his boots and driving gloves, and a spare mackintosh and hat. I thought I’d save Ginette and we’d get away looking like a couple, a man and a woman. Nobody would guess it was us. I just wanted her to be alive and free, that’s all I was thinking. But I’d need to get into the house, so I had to find something to pick the lock. And I needed a cosh to knock him out.’
‘Did you have one of those at home?’
‘In a way. I stole one of Stephen’s shooting socks and put a paperweight in the toe. Once I’d stuffed the coat pockets with what I needed, I caught a cab to the Old Brompton Road and ran from there.’ Lucie winced with frustration. ‘I laced up the boots as tight as I could, but they still slowed me down.’
‘How did you know how to find the address?’
She looked surprised. ‘I looked it up in the A to Z.’
‘Oh,’ said the Queen. This was not something she had ever needed to do, though she knew of the book of London maps that Lucie was referring to. She quietly decided to get Joan to show her how one worked.
‘And you happened to get there at eleven fifteen, or thereabouts – half an hour after Ginette, and ten minutes after Minot joined her.’
‘Did I? I lost track of time.’
At this point, the bedroom door opened without ceremony.
‘Darling, what do you think of this . . . Oh!’
Philip stood in the doorway in a white dress shirt with a wing collar, evening trousers and white braces, staring at the two women in their armchairs by the window.
‘Having a chat? I hardly think we have time. Hello, have we met?’
Lucie stood up and curtseyed.
‘Your Royal Highness,’ she said with a smile that seemed polite, but, from close to, had a touch of hysteria about it.
‘This is Lady Seymour,’ the Queen told him.
‘Bloody hell. Your husband’s been in hot water, hasn’t he? Is he here tonight?’
‘He is,’ Lucie said.
‘Brave man. I’ll look out for him. Don’t keep Her Majesty too long,’ he added cheerfully. ‘She’s got a ballroom full of people waiting for her downstairs in . . .’ He checked his watch. ‘Twenty-seven minutes.’
‘I won’t, sir.’
‘Anyway, Lilibet, what d’you think of this bow tie? Chap gave it to me in Washington. Says it’s the new American style – much softer, see? But my valet hates it. Shall I go Yankee this evening?’
The Queen peered critically at his neckwear. ‘I think we should look as British as we can,’ she said. ‘That’s what they’ve come to see.’
‘Oh, all right then, dammit. If you think so. Aren’t you going to have a bath? Shall I call for Bobo?’
‘I’m just sorting something out with Lucie.’
‘Can I help?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She gave a little grimace to put him off. ‘Women’s business.’
‘Oh God! Count me out. See you later. Cheerio.’
He went out, banging the door behind him.
The Queen caught Lucie’s eye. The blonde woman’s perfectly sculpted lips wobbled. Then her shoulders shook. She laughed raggedly for about ten seconds as the hysteria found its way to the surface, after which the shaking turned to sobbing. This was, all round, a difficult evening.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the Queen said. ‘Awful timing. You were about to go to the mews house. But you got there too late, I think.’
Lucie glanced out of the window, where the lights were coming on and New York was turning from day to night. She sighed.
‘All that time I had spent looking for something to pick the lock, and I didn’t need it after all. My sister must have left the door on the latch for that . . . monster. All I had to do was push, but I made sure the door locked behind me. I couldn’t hear anything, so I thought perhaps everything was fine. That she’d changed her mind. I tiptoed upstairs so that if she was . . . doing what he came for . . . then I wouldn’t disturb them. But . . .’
‘She hadn’t changed her mind,’ the Queen prompted gently.
‘No. Ginette was lying face up on the bed and he was bent over her, with his back to me. I could see she’d tried to surprise him with my knife. It was still sticking out of his side. He was strangling her with one of her own stockings and he didn’t hear me come up behind him. When he started to turn round, I swung the cosh.’
The Queen turned pale, but gestured to Lucie to carry on.
‘With practice, you can do a lot of damage,’ Lucie said, ‘but I hadn’t practised for years. He collapsed on top of Ginette, but I didn’t trust him. Men like that get up again and again, so I rolled him onto the floor. I got out the garrotte and did what I had to do. Then I went to Ginette. The nylon stocking was still there because he’d pulled it so tight around her neck. I took it off but it took time. I kept hoping . . . I tried to save her, but it was too late . . .’ Lucie shut her eyes. ‘She squeezed my hand. I kissed her. She breathed her last breath.’
‘You didn’t call a doctor.’
‘She was dead within a minute. What was the point? They would have put her in a bag and taken her away.’
Lucie gave the Queen a look that was both devastated and cold. This was a woman who knew how to kill a man with an improvised weapon, and didn’t hesitate to do it. She was tough and unsentimental, grief-stricken and worn out.
‘You washed your sister as an act of love,’ the Queen said.
‘Oui. I didn’t want that bastard’s blood on her. It was on the silk jarretière – what’s that word?’
‘Garter?’
‘Garter, yes, that I think she used to hide the knife under her dress, so I took it. The dress was torn and dirty, so I took that off her too. Then I used the other stocking on him, because I wanted him to know how it felt.’