Death and the Princess Read online

  And she danced out, followed by her grey shadow. Within a matter of seconds a secretarial flunkey came in to show me out. I had the feeling of being caught up in an infinitely smooth-running piece of machinery, the ultimate in unobtrusive efficiency. Inside the Palace, the Princess was cocooned. But I did not get the impression she was a young lady who would be happy for long in a cocoon.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Loyal Subject

  After my interview with the Princess Helena amid the tatty splendours of Kensington Palace, I mortified the flesh with a lunch of sausage and mash in the Scotland Yard canteen. I smothered the sausages with tomato ketchup and read the Daily Grub, and that way brought myself sufficiently down to earth for my interview with Joe Grierley. Joe may appreciate my couthness on occasion, but he can sniff out uppitiness like a monomaniacal beagle.

  As I pushed back my chair to go up to Joe’s office, I caught sight of the Princess herself on the Grub’s back page. She was in the rear of a gaggle of royals trooping in to a Royal film show — but she was the one the Grub pictured. She was looking very demure. The film sounded dire.

  When I had settled myself comfortably into an armchair in Joe’s office, prepared for a long talk, he looked at me roguishly.

  ‘Enjoy yourself?’ he said, in his gravelly, cockles-and-mussels voice.

  ‘So-so,’ I said. ‘Not really my scene, however difficult you may find that to believe. Contrary to the received opinion around here, I did not have duchesses cooing over my cradle, or exiled royalty showering me with monogrammed christening-spoons.’

  ‘You disappoint me,’ said Joe, with a fruity chuckle. Joe has the figure for fruity chuckles, being a square, genial cockney who has run very much to tummy. He was born in Stepney, has one of the sharpest and fastest brains in the business, and a sense of humour too, though rather one of the breasts and buttocks variety. We get on well, but I know he thinks me cold and ‘sarky’. It’s true I never went much on seaside postcards.

  ‘And what’s your opinion of the young lady?’ Joe asked.

  ‘A corker,’ I said. ‘Which should be obvious to the bleariest old eye. Beyond that, I’m saying nothing till I have the whole story out of you. I presume something’s in the air.’

  ‘We’re sniffing,’ he admitted, ‘and faintly rotten smells are being wafted to us over the winds. Otherwise, as I said, we wouldn’t have landed this in your lap.’

  ‘So I should hope,’ I said, for I was not yet mollified. ‘So I should bloody hope.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Joe, settling down in his desk, the way he had when getting ready for a good old natter; ‘it’s a compliment in a way that we think you’re up to it. Well now, do you remember old Snobby Driscoll?’

  I let out a great burst of laughter, and immediately sat easier in my chair. ‘Now you’re getting more into my line of country! Do I remember Snobby Driscoll! Matter of fact, I sent him up for his most recent term.’

  ‘Did you now? Get to know him at all?’

  ‘Socially? Only the sort of acquaintanceship that is forged on a journey from Curzon Street to the Yard. Him not having the full use of his hands. We talked about the world situation, as far as I remember. He spent the time lamenting the fact that the country was no longer run by gentlemen.’

  ‘That’s old Snobby. Tory to the backbone.’

  ‘A good old nineteenth-century patriot, that much I did gather. He’d do anything for his country except stop robbing the richer members of it. Said things had gone to the dogs since they abolished hanging. It gave the whole trip a weird sense of unreality. They don’t breed ’em like that anymore — a real character, in a ghastly sort of way. What in God’s name has Snobby got to do with all this? You said did I remember? . . .’

  ‘Right. Gone to meet the Eternal Lord Chief Justice. Died in Brixton, matter of three weeks ago.’

  ‘And thereby, I suppose, hangs a tale.’

  ‘Maybe. And there again, maybe not. But one thing’s for sure, we can’t take any-chances over this one. Well now, he may not have got on to it during your little drive, but among his other foibles he was devoted to the Royal Family.’

  ‘Figures.’

  ‘Yes — but this was a real passionate thing. Dated from the war. He was an East Ender, of course, and they were bombed . . .’

  ‘I get you. The Queen Mum came visiting and flapped a friendly boa in his direction.’

  ‘You’ve got it in one. She was Queen then, of course. She took a cuppa with his old mum, and had a cosy jaw about her sons in Parkhurst, Broadmoor and the Colchester glasshouse. Since then Snobby was to be seen at any Royal occasion he happened to be out for, cheering like crazy and waving five or six Union Jacks.’

  ‘They don’t,’ I said again, ‘make ’em like that anymore. Well, what’s the score? Don’t tell me he left his hoard of upper-crust loot to little Princess Helena.’

  ‘I don’t think Snobby would have thought that quite the thing. No, what happened was that as he was dying — it was cancer, by the by, and he was drugged, but as far as we can gather he was entirely compos mentis — he sent for the Governor, told the orderlies he wanted to give him an important message.’

  ‘I’m getting the same sense of unreality I had on that car ride back to the Yard.’

  ‘Point taken. I had the same reaction myself. Well, what old Snobby said was: “Tell them to take care of Princess Helena. There’s something up. Something nasty. Tell them they’ve got to keep an eye on her.” ’

  ‘End of message? Normal service will not be resumed?’

  ‘Pretty much so. The Governor tried to get more out of him, but it was no go. Snobby wasn’t one to grass as a general rule, and they don’t trust the governors these days like they used to trust the old brigade. They know they’re just Home Office stooges.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, not overly impressed, ‘it’s a pretty thin tale as it stands. What was it supposed to be about? Some kind of terrorist plot?’

  ‘That was our first thought: the IRA, or one of the People’s Armies for the liberation of the suffering masses, whether they like it or not. And naturally we doubled the security, as unobtrusively as we could. Still, when we came to think it over, it didn’t seem likely. What kind of connection could there have been between the IRA and old Snobby Driscoll? If he’d had his way the buggers would never have been given Home Rule. Same with your Red Army mob. Snobby wouldn’t have let one of them so much as mind his jemmy. He had firm principles about mixing politics and crime — especially their politics. We’ve been chewing it over, and I’ve had a bit of a natter with the Commissioner, and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s something else. In other words, it’s got to be something much closer to Snobby’s line of country.’

  I relaxed a bit in my chair again. ‘Well, at least that takes the heat off us a bit, doesn’t it? If it’s not a question of a death threat.’

  ‘I didn’t quite say that.’

  ‘Oh God. You mean I’m there to prevent someone being killed?’

  ‘I think someone may already have been.’

  I sighed. ‘OK, give me the gen.’

  But Joe didn’t seem to want to come straight out with the story. He settled himself over his desk in a Buddha-like pose, not looking too happy, like most Buddhas. ‘In good time, Perry. But first of all, what’s your impression of the little lady herself?’

  ‘Come off it, Joe. I only saw her for a quarter of an hour or so. She read me her speech for Save the Senile, or some such bunch of do-gooders. What sort of impression of Her Madge do you get when you see her reading the Speech from the Throne?’

  ‘Knowing you, Perry, you formed a judgement, snap or otherwise. What was it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Gorgeous to look at. Gorgeous body. Knows it. Probably uses it. Do you know a word that the French have, or used to have: “une cocktease”?’

  ‘Does that mean what it sounds like?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that what you think she is?’

 
‘Yes. Whether wittingly or unwittingly I wouldn’t like to say.’

  ‘Would you think she sleeps around?’

  I considered. ‘Well, hazarding a guess, I’d say no. Sleeps with, now and again, yes. But sleeps around, no. She’s got a fair sense of her position. Why don’t you ask McPhail?’

  ‘You’re not suggesting — ?’

  ‘No, of course not. That would have been offering rump steak to a vegetarian. I merely meant he ought to know.’

  ‘Well, I did ask. In so far as I got anything out of him at all, he agreed with you. Now and again, without a doubt, and perhaps fairly regularly with one or two, but certainly no nympho. Still, the fact is, she’s got any number of young men sniffing round her skirts.’

  ‘So the newspapers imply.’

  ‘If she had been sleeping regularly with any one of them, that might have been as good a point of departure for us as any. Blackmail, sensational serials in the Sunday Gutter — you know the kind of stuff. Then we might conceivably have found some kind of criminal connection that led us back to Snobby Driscoll. But the fact is, we can’t pick on any one of them. It’s a nightmare, because there are so many. As far as collecting casual companions is concerned, the young lady is not discriminating. In fact, she’s bloody unwise.’

  ‘Oh? Who is there, then?’

  ‘Well, for a start, there’s an MP.’

  ‘That shouldn’t matter, surely, provided he’s of the right party?’

  ‘He’s of the wrong party. And he’s way to the left of it — used to be a cheer-leader for Wedgwood-Benn, now branching out with ambitions of his own. Even worse, the man used to be a card-carrying Communist.’

  I never understand why to people of Joe’s generation Communists are always card-carrying. Do they go around with them clutched in their little hot hands?

  ‘When was that?’ I asked.

  ‘At Oxford.’

  ‘Everyone at Oxford joins the Communist Party. I believe you sign up when you join the Oxford Union. Denis Healey was a Communist at Oxford. If it had been Cambridge we might have got worried.’

  Joe grunted. ‘Then there’s another of her escorts, if that’s the word, who’s an actor. Name of Jeremy Styles.’

  ‘I know him. Of him, at least. Opened in the new Simeon Black play last week.’

  ‘That’s the boy. Done a lot of television work as well — used in those classic serials because he looks well in costume. But not, as far as we can see, safe. And then there’s the Honourable Edwin Robert Montague Frere.’

  ‘At least it sounds as if he’s the right class.’

  ‘Hmmm. He’s that all right. He’s pretty as a puma, and about as safe. His father is the Earl of Leamington. The Honourable Edwin (who the hell thought up that title?) is to be seen most nights hanging around the tables at the Wellington Casino, in Park Lane. In dire need of the necessary, that lad.’

  ‘Like most younger sons of peers. Like most of the elder ones too, come to that. I’d have thought you’d only hang around casinos if you had money to lose rather than if you were in need.’

  ‘He’s in need because he loses money. Very often he watches more than plays. Fascinated. And he leeches on to people.’

  ‘Charming. Is that the lot?’

  ‘By no means. I’ll give you the list, with what notes we’ve been able to get together on them. It’s quite a collection. Even, God help us, a footballer.’

  ‘Not George B — ’

  ‘I said a footballer. Anyway, he’s a bit out of her age-range. She mostly goes for men in their twenties. Now, the fact is, there are limits to how far we can fence the young lady in.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘No, I’m not being snide, Perry. She’s a young thing, and naturally she wants her fling. Works hard for it too, as far as I can gather: does a lot of the fairly depressing jobs the other Royals won’t touch. She’s got to have her fun, and her freedom, and we’ve got to make sure she has hundred per cent protection. And that’s the devil of it: the two just don’t go together.’

  ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘The only thing I can think of is to go to her, put it to her: tell her what I’ve told you, tell her to keep her eyes open, tell her to report to us everything, but everything, that happens that’s just that bit out of the ordinary. Tell us where she’s going, so we can case it in advance. Tell us who she’s going with, where she might possibly go on afterwards. In other words, rely on her good sense and get her co-operation, down to the last detail.’

  I thought for a bit: ‘There’s just one thing you haven’t taken account of in that scenario of yours.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘She hasn’t got a brain in her head.’

  Joe looked disappointed. ‘Think not?’

  ‘Not on the surface, anyway. Unless it’s a front, part of the cocktease act. If it was for real, she could blab the whole thing to any of those young men she goes with. And I imagine absolute discretion is the first order of the day?’

  ‘Oh absolutely,’ Joe said, worried stiff. ‘You think it might be more danger than it’s worth?’

  ‘I do. Now, come on, Joe: you’re still holding out on me. What was that about a death?’

  ‘Ah yes. You’ll have to know about that. But it’s all pretty nebulous. The fact is, while we’ve been doing this double-quick investigation of her young men these last few weeks, we’ve turned up the name of William Tredgold a couple of times. Bill Tredgold everyone knew him as.’

  I wrinkled my forehead. ‘Never heard of him. Should I have?’

  ‘No. He was a reporter. Unwise again, you see. He worked for the Birmingham Standard. Was up for a job with the Guardian. Roly-poly sort of chap, from his pictures, but attractive in a scruffy-puppy sort of a way. She went around with him for two or three weeks. Went to several rather dubious parties with him while she was doing a round of charity openings and suchlike in the Midlands. Very possibly slept with him, in his flat in Solihull.’

  ‘I like the idea of Royalty getting to know how the other half sleeps.’

  ‘You won’t by the time you’ve finished this job. Anyway, the affair seems to have fizzled out, if it ever was much of one. But the fact is, the young man died . . .’

  ‘I see. How?’

  ‘He was staying at one of these genuine Elizabethan bash-your-head-on-a-beam kind of inns, at a place called Knightley, in Shropshire. Rooms heated by gas. Seems he left the fire on when he went to bed. There must have been a fault in it: flame went out, gas stayed on, consequences just what you’d guess. Verdict of accidental death.’

  ‘Hmmm. I see.’

  ‘Windows shut tight. Nothing against that. It was early December. But his mother says he never slept with the window shut.’

  ‘Yes. Go on.’

  ‘He’d been drinking before he went to sleep. Bottle of white wine. Nothing against that. But there were white wine glasses there, and a tray. And yet the hotel had no record of any order for it.’

  ‘I see. Fixed in any way?’

  ‘By the time we got around to looking into it, the case was dead. Evidence destroyed.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Anything else?’

  ‘One thing. He wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him.’

  ‘She died too?’

  ‘Oh yes. Both of them dead as doornails in the morning. The trouble is — ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, there was nothing close, you understand, but the fact is, that this girl . . . just vaguely . . . rather resembled the Princess Helena. Get me?’

  I got him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Flunkeydom

  So there it was. We sat about for some time, Joe and I, talking over the various alternative possibilities. They amounted, in essence, to these: that the deaths were indeed accidental, as the inquest had decided; that someone had wanted to kill either Bill Tredgold, or his girl-friend, or both; or that someone had intended to kill the Princess Helena. We had to admit that, abstractly considered, the
last seemed by far the most likely.

  In the end we got down to brass tacks, and I made various suggestions about security: that my job should be duplicated, so that when I was busy on the case, the Princess Helena’s routine security would be in good hands. I suggested a chief inspector who was both competent and personable, to keep the Princess happy as well as safe. I suggested doubling Joplin’s position too, and said I’d say more about routine security at the Palace when I knew more about the current arrangements. Then I went off with the dossier Joe and his men had made about the affair so far.

  I settled down to it in my own office, feet up amid its rather bleak but familiar comforts. What the dossier amounted to, in fact, was a record of the Princess’s ‘off-duty’ engagements, with details of, and an assessment of, the young men she had recently been going around with. I felt she had been getting more private life than we are usually told royalty is able to manage, but of course, for all I knew, much of what I was learning would have been commonplace to readers of Nigel Dempster or Lady Olga Maitland. My own family had provided too much fodder for gossip columnists for me to get much enjoyment out of them. I felt rather shabby, going through all this intimate stuff, like some sort of dating-service adviser, or a second-degree pimp. No doubt the feeling was going to grow in the course of the case. For as long as there seemed to be a threat against the Princess, the poor girl was going to have no private life, whether she knew it or not. Unless, of course, she twigged, and outwitted us. Quite dim-witted people can be very sharp in matters that affect them personally, and it was on the cards that she would get wise to any additional security we devised, and give it the slip. If she did, she could well sign her own death-warrant.

  Anyway, they were a right bunch, her boy-friends, to my way of thinking. I’ll give you the details on them when you meet them, but there was hardly a one of them I’d trust with my old granny’s last sixpence, apart from Bill Tredgold, and he was dead. All of them would have to be talked to, sized up, thoroughly gone into. The question at the moment was, what approach was I to use? If I was completely open and interviewed them in my official capacity, then the case was wide open, with newspaper headlines — the lot. With ten or twelve names on my dossier, you could be quite certain one of them would pocket Fleet Street Danegeld and blab. One thing I’ve had more than enough of is cases that hit the headlines.