Jeffrey Archer
Next In Line
To Janet
Is this a true story?
Chapter 1
An outrider from the special Escort Group swept into Scotland Yard, closely followed by a green Jaguar and an unmarked Land Rover, while two police motorcycles brought up the rear, completing the royal convoy. They all came to a halt as Big Ben chimed eleven thirty.
A close protection officer leapt out of the front seat of the Jaguar and opened the back door. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Peter Imbert, stepped forward and bowed. ‘Welcome to Scotland Yard, Your Royal Highness,’ he said, and was greeted with that warm, shy smile with which the public had become so familiar.
‘Thank you, Sir Peter,’ she replied as they shook hands. ‘It was kind of you to agree to my unusual request.’
‘My pleasure, ma’am,’ said Sir Peter, before turning to the welcoming party of senior officers who were waiting in line. ‘May I present the Deputy Commissioner...’
The Princess shook hands with each of the officers in turn until she reached the end of the line, when she was introduced to the head of the Met’s murder investigation teams.
‘Commander Hawksby is known as “Murder One”,’ the Commissioner told her. ‘And Chief Inspector William Warwick will act as your guide this morning,’ he added as a little girl stepped forward, curtsied and offered the Princess a small bouquet of pink roses. She received the broadest smile of all.
The Princess bent down and said, ‘Thank you, and what is your name?’
‘Artemisia,’ the bowed head whispered to the ground.
‘What a pretty name,’ said the Princess.
She was about to move on when Artemisia looked up and said, ‘Why aren’t you wearing a crown?’
William turned bright red, while his number two, Inspector Ross Hogan, stifled a laugh, causing Artemisia to burst into tears. The Princess leant down again, took the little girl in her arms and said, ‘Because I’m not a Queen, Artemisia, just a Princess.’
‘But you will be the Queen one day.’
‘Then I’ll wear a crown.’
This seemed to satisfy Artemisia, who smiled as her father led the Met’s royal guest into the building.
The door was held open by a young cadet, who the Princess stopped to have a word with, before William guided her towards a waiting lift. A long discussion had taken place prior to the Princess’s visit, as to whether she should walk up the stairs to the first floor or take the lift. The lift had won by five votes to four. An equally fraught decision was who should accompany her in the lift. The Commissioner, Commander Hawksby and William made the shortlist, while the Princess’s lady-in-waiting would take the second lift, along with Inspector Ross Hogan and Detective Sergeant Roycroft.
William had his script well prepared, but was immediately thrown off course by HRH’s first question.
‘Is Artemisia your daughter, by any chance?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said William, remembering that the Hawk had told him that ‘ma’am’ had to rhyme with ‘spam’, not ‘harm’. ‘But what evidence do you have?’ he asked, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t addressing one of his junior officers.
‘If she hadn’t been your daughter, you wouldn’t have blushed,’ came back the reply as they stepped into the lift.
‘I did tell her not to speak to you,’ said William, ‘and certainly not to ask you any questions.’
‘The fact she disobeyed you probably means she’ll be the most interesting person I’ll meet today,’ whispered Diana as the lift doors closed. ‘Why did you call her Artemisia?’
‘She’s named after Artemisia Gentileschi, the great Italian Baroque painter.’
‘So, you must have a love of art?’
‘A passion, ma’am. But it was my wife Beth, who’s keeper of pictures at the Fitzmolean, who chose the name.’
‘Then I’ll have another chance to meet your daughter,’ said the Princess, ‘because if I remember correctly, I’m opening the Fitzmolean’s Frans Hals exhibition next year. I’d better make sure I’m wearing at least a coronet if I’m not to be told off again,’ she added as the lift doors opened on the first floor.
‘The Crime Museum, ma’am,’ began William, returning to his script, ‘more commonly known as the Black Museum, was the brainchild of an Inspector Neame, who in 1869 felt it would assist his colleagues to solve and even prevent crimes if they could study well-known cases. He was assisted by a Constable Randall, who gathered together material from various notorious criminals and crime scenes, which made up the first exhibits in this rogues’ gallery. The museum opened five years later, in April 1874, but it still remains closed to the public.’
William glanced back to see Ross Hogan, chatting to the Princess’s lady-in-waiting. He led his guest down a long corridor towards room 101, where another door was being held open for the royal visitor. William found himself wondering if the Princess ever opened a door for herself, but quickly dismissed the thought and returned to his script.
‘I hope you won’t find the museum too disturbing, ma’am. The occasional visitor has been known to faint,’ he said. They entered a room whose dim lighting only added to the macabre atmosphere.
‘It can’t be worse than four days at Ascot,’ replied the Princess, ‘when I regularly want to faint.’
William wanted to laugh, but managed to prevent himself. ‘The first exhibit,’ he said as they approached a large glass cabinet, ‘includes the early pieces of memorabilia collected by Neame and Randall.’
The Princess looked closely at a collection of weapons used by seventeenth-century criminals to murder their victims, including a walking stick that, with a twist of its knob, became a sword, along with various flick knives, heavy wooden cudgels and knuckle-dusters. William quickly moved on to the next cabinet, which was dedicated to Jack the Ripper, and included a handwritten letter he’d sent to the London Central News Agency in 1888 at the height of his serial killings, taunting the police by predicting they would never catch him. But then, as William reminded his guest, that was before the Met had begun to use fingerprinting to identify criminals, and more than a century before the discovery of DNA.
‘I haven’t fainted yet,’ said the Princess as they moved on to the next cabinet, which contained a pair of antique binoculars. ‘What’s so special about them?’ she asked.
‘They weren’t designed for Ascot, ma’am,’ said William. ‘They were a gift from a particularly unpleasant individual to his fiancée a few days after she had jilted him. When she held them up to her eyes and adjusted the focus, two nails shot out and blinded her. At his trial the accused was asked by prosecuting counsel why he’d done such an evil thing, and he simply replied, “I didn’t want her to look at another man ever again.”’
Diana covered her eyes and William quickly moved on.
‘This next exhibit, ma’am, is particularly fascinating,’ said William, pointing to a small, plain metal box. ‘It provided the vital clue in the first case solved by the Met using fingerprints as evidence. In 1905 the brothers Alfred and Albert Stratton were arrested for the murder of a shop owner, Thomas Farrow, and his wife, Ann. They would have got away with it if Alfred hadn’t left a single thumb print on the empty cash box. They were both found guilty and hanged.’
They moved on to the next cabinet, where the Princess glanced briefly at a photograph before turning to William and saying, ‘Tell me about him.’
‘On the eighteenth of February, 1949, John Haigh killed Olive Durand-Deacon, a wealthy widow, while she was visiting his engineering workshop in Crawley. After Haigh had removed everything of value she had with her, he dissolved her body in a drum of sulphuric acid, believing that if the police were unable to produce a body, he couldn’t be charged with murder. However, he didn’t take into account the expertise of a certain Dr Keith Simpson, a pathologist who discovered three gallstones and a couple of the victim’s false teeth in a pile of rubble at the back of the workshop. Haigh was arrested, convicted and hanged.’