Funny to think of you as a great grown man reading this. I simply cannot picture it, or picture me having to drop a curtsey to my own darlingest King Wills. So you must pardon me there in the future as you read this for addressing you as a nine-year-old boy, but that is what you are as I write this. You and Harry have gone pony-trekking with the Phillips children, so I shall be quite alone for hours to write. It will take hours, as I’ve never been much of a hand at composition, so do bear with me if I ramble. I’m not clever, you know. Not with books. I daresay I’m clever enough in other ways.
Your Auntie Fergie (the Duchess of York) was always said to be the clever one, but it was me that she came to two summers ago when she found the papers and wondered what it all meant. It was here at Balmoral that it happened, as a matter of fact. Things weren’t so dreary here then, because she was such a lot of fun. Sarah and I had each other to talk to, and once we even took the family cars and raced each other round the back roads of the estate. We got a proper ticking off for it, too! It was a bit after that-I was in my rooms doing ballet exercises-when Sarah turned up, with that impish grin she always has. She was wearing a heavy green woolen jumper and fawn corduroy trousers-good colors to offset her red hair, but not flattering for her rather bulky figure. Inwardly I shuddered, but I was too glad of her company to risk offending her with well-meaning criticism. She was raw from having got too much of the other kind.
“Hullo-ullo,” she said, waggling her fingers at me. “Stop trying to get a flatter tummy. You’ll only make me look worse in the tabloids.”
I made a face at her, and went on doing pliés. “You’re welcome to join me,” I said. “It wouldn’t kill you, you know.”
“No, but look, do stop for a bit. I’ve found something,” said Sarah. “Something actually interesting. Come and see.”
I thought it was a ploy to get me to stop practicing, but she seemed so earnest that I left off, and plopped beside her on the sofa. “What is it now? Did you come upon a stash of wine gums?”
Sarah shook her red curls, and her eyes glowed with that look that always means mischief. “I’ve been snooping!” she whispered, glancing about to make sure that no one was hovering.
“All clear,” I told her. “We’re off-duty at Balmoral, so there aren’t so many servants underfoot. If you want guaranteed privacy for hours, though, try ordering a sandwich. Now, what have you been up to?”
“I’ve been poking around. You know how dreary it gets, waiting for teatime. And I happened to go into the box room that holds junk-old vases, spare fishing rods-and I came across a trunk labeled Mary R, and I thought I’d have a look inside, to see why they stashed it. I could guess, of course.”
“I can guess, too,” I said, stifling a yawn. “You mean Queen Mary, Her Majesty’s grandmother, I take it, not the ancient Tudor one? Then it’s hats. I’ve seen pictures of her wearing them. Dreadful! Was that it? A trunk full of ghastly hats?”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “You mean you haven’t heard about old Queen Mary? The old guard still whispers about it. Diana, she took things!”
“Oh, I knew that. It was common knowledge. Once in my grandfather’s time she came to Althorp, and the servants had spent hours packing away every little objet d’art and knickknack in the house. She didn’t pocket them, though. She asked for them and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so of course one always knew whether one’s treasures had gone, but the gifts were not cheerfully given.”
“And they dare to call me Freebie Fergie,” Sarah said, scowling. “At least people give me things because they want to. Nice tax deductible dresses and trips. I don’t go to people’s houses and nick the bric-a-brac!”
“One mustn’t be too hard on her, Sarah. She grew up terribly poor, in a grace-and-favor apartment at Kensington Palace with bill collectors forever trying to dun her father, Prince Francis, Duke of Teck. I suppose she became rather mercenary. Her little hobby does make life awkward for the rest of us, even though she’s been dead for forty years. Has anyone asked you about the teapot yet?”
Sarah was rooting around in our fruit basket, hoping that you and Harry had overlooked a banana. You hadn’t. “What teapot?”
“The one from Badminton House in Gloucestershire. Queen Mary spent the war there, and when she left, a few of the Duchess of Beaufort’s possessions went with her. The Beauforts are always trying to corner one of us and ask us to have a look round for the family trinkets. They’re particularly keen to get back a silver teakettle on silver gates that belonged to the Duchess, but I know you didn’t find that in the trunk.”
“No.” Sarah had settled for an orange and was peeling it with a look of intense concentration.
“That particular teapot is on the Queen Mum’s breakfast tray every morning. Hard luck to the Beauforts. What did you find in the trunk, then?”
“Oh, the usual array. Old silver brushes, and gloves, and yellowed handkerchiefs, but there were a few jade carvings that looked quite old, and one of those carved wooden puzzle boxes. I had one as a child.”
“A jewelry box?”
“It could be,” said Sarah. “There is a brass plate on the top that says DUNGAVEL HOUSE. The box is about eight inches long, made of different kinds of wood, inlaid in strips, and it opens to reveal a compartment that you can put things in. But the trick is that if you push a certain slot on the side, a hidden compartment opens up beneath the first one.”
“And did you find any jewelry?” I asked. I wish Sarah wouldn’t wear rubies. They clash dreadfully with her coloring.
She shook her head. “No. Just some papers.”
“How tiresome for you.” I yawned. “Did you bother to read them?”
“Of course I did. They were addressed to the Duke of Hamilton at Dungavel House.”
“Oh, a Scottish peer. Surely you don’t mean that he and Queen Mary-”
“Lord, no!” squealed Sarah. “They weren’t love letters, Diana. They were an official communiqué to the Duke from the Third Reich, dated 1941.”
I lost interest at once. I always found history quite stupendously boring. “I daresay Oxford might like to see them, or the British Museum for one of their moldy collections.”
Sarah’s eyes danced. “Oh no,” she whispered. “Not these papers! I’d rank this lot as yet another unexploded bomb from the war. They contain an offer from Adolf Hitler, proposing to put Edward VIII on the throne of Russia.”
Sarah insisted on explaining it all to me, as if I wouldn’t know that Edward VIII was Queen Mary’s eldest son, the family’s “Uncle David,” the one who abdicated to marry that woman from Baltimore and sent the Crown into such a tizzy that the word divorce still gives them palpitations. It cost poor Margo her romance with Peter Townsend in the Fifties, and pretty well ruined her life. People were always muttering about Edward VIII whenever Charles and I had a row, so I should jolly well know who he was by now. He left off being King in 1936, and went to France, leaving his younger brother Bertie to take the throne of England. I couldn’t see why Adolf Hitler would want to offer Uncle David another throne, though. Rather uncharacteristically thoughtful of him, I said. Still, nothing came of it, because the Russians kept their communist leaders for years and years, and Uncle David and Wallis Simpson kept on knocking about the world partying and staying in expensive hotels for decades until they both went gaga, so I couldn’t see what Sarah was looking so fluffed up for.
“What difference does an old letter make?”
“Quite amazingly dim.” Sarah sighed, tapping her head, and looking at me in a sorrowful way. The sort of look I got from Charles when I asked if one of his modern paintings was done by Pablo Casals.
“Rubbish,” I said. “The letter was written fifty years ago by a now-defunct government. Uncle David’s dead. The Soviet Union is a hodgepodge of little states. The Nazis are just a bunch of old war movies now. The Great Escape. The Dirty Dozen. So what?” Another thought occurred to me. “Why did they address the message to the Duke of Hamilton, anyhow? Why not to the King?”