Death and the Princess (2 page)

‘Yes, Your Royal Highness,’ I said. ‘I am generally considered too much of a good thing.’

She giggled again, delightedly. ‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Not at all. You’re not a bit like your predecessor, you know.’

‘My predecessor, Ma’am?’

‘My personal bodyguard. I’ve had several of them, and some have been perfectly lovely. But McPhail was awfully dour.’

She pronounced it ‘dower’, but I knew what she meant. Inspector McPhail always looked as if he’d only spoken twelve words in the last week, and bitterly regretted six of them.

‘Yes, McPhail does seem to take the idea of the Silent Service a bit far,’ I said. ‘Ma’am.’

She giggled again. ‘I’m glad you’re not like him. Because I like somebody to talk to. My lady-in-waiting is perfectly sweet, of course, but terribly quiet. I like somebody with something to say for himself. I say, though, you’re not an intellectual, are you?’

‘No, Ma’am. I hardly have two ideas to rub together, most of the time.’

‘Oh, I’m glad. Because I’m awfully stupid, really. I sometimes have dreadful difficulty with the speeches they give me.’

‘Oh, does somebody write them for you, Ma’am?’ I said.

‘Of course. What did you think?’

I was leading up to saying that I thought royal speeches were written by computer, but instinct told me that would be going too far in the first five minutes of our acquaintanceship. Couth of you, Perry old chap! And the fact is, there was something about her, in spite of the
giggling and the girlishness, that warned me off, told me there were borders not to be strayed over.

So I merely said: ‘Silly of me, Ma’am. I should have realized.’

‘They’re all written out. Otherwise I should just stand up there and gape at them. I say, you wouldn’t like to hear me say my speech for this afternoon, would you? I’m having lunch with Aid for the Elderly, and then I have to address the Annual General Meeting. And I
know
they’ll have put some frightfully long words in it.’

‘Of course, Ma’am, if you think it would help.’

‘Oh, I
do,’
she said, looking at me with those eyes, those enormous eyes — dark, inviting, appealing eyes which had everything except intelligence. She blinked them with conscious provocation, then danced over to the desk.

‘If you’re with me for a long time,’ she said, ‘you’ll get awfully used to speeches about the Old. The Old are rather my thing.’

Come to think about it, I had seen an awful lot of pictures of her visiting Twilight Homes — pictures of toothless old men mumbling speeches of loyalty and gratitude as they shook the royal paw. So the Royals specialized, did they? It seemed incongruous, at first, loading the delectable Helena with the burden of the national old age. On the other hand, she must obviously have brought dim, warm stirrings to innumerable aged loins the length and breadth of the country, happy reminders of remembered pleasures, vain hopes that all was not lost. So no doubt there was a grain of sense in it, and she did a lot of good in her way.

She picked up a couple of sheets of paper, on which I saw some very widely-spaced typing — to minimize the peering at a script, I supposed.

‘It’s awful bosh,’ she said gaily, ‘but you have to read it as if you
know
what it meant, even if you can’t pretend you do actually
mean
it. Well, here goes.’ She swallowed,
and dived into the shallow waters of royal prose.

‘It is a great pleasure to me to be present this afternoon at the Annual General Meeting of Aid for the Elderly. As your Patron, I have seen, in my travels up and down the country, the splendid work you do in providing retirement homes and special comforts for the not so young, those dignified and independent citizens who are in too many ways the forgotten members of our community. In their twilight years, old people need above all to maintain their independence and self-respect, and in this context the motto of our Society is both significant and inspiring: “Self-reliance where possible, help where necessary.” We are all committed to this common gaol —’

‘Goal,’ I said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She raised her eyes from her script with more than a touch of hauteur.
Not
a young lady, definitely, to step over the border with.

‘I think, Ma’am, it should be “goal”: “We are all committed to this common goal.” ’

She thought for a few seconds, and then giggled.

‘Oh yes, I suppose it should. The way I said it sounds like some of the Old People’s Homes I’ve visited. Aren’t you clever! And you couldn’t even see the script.’

She went back to her text and droned her way through it. It sounded like the collective wisdom of a Sunday School class from a particularly dim suburb of Bournemouth. Occasionally, however, it got more technical, and I was able to advise her on the pronunciation of ‘gerontology’. She was awfully grateful, she said, because she must have been getting it wrong for years and no one had told her. At the end she was quite effusive.

‘I can see we’re going to get on
awfully
well,’ she said. ‘Most of the other policemen have been just that bit
stuffy.
I mean, always trying to
stop
one. I do think at my age you’ve got to have just a bit of freedom, don’t you?’

She opened those enormous eyes still wider, in appeal.

‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘Now, in that connection, Ma’am — ’

But we were interrupted by the lady-in-waiting. She knocked discreetly and entered in what must have been her characteristic way: silent, thin-lipped, fussy, disapproving.

‘The car leaves in ten minutes, Your Royal Highness,’ she drawled. ‘One doesn’t want to be late.’

One didn’t mind in the least being late, I suspected, if one was the Princess Helena. There was something almost of petulance in her reaction.

‘Oh dear, what a shame! Just when we were beginning to be friends. You’re not coming with us, I suppose.’

‘No, Ma’am. Sergeant Joplin will be with you today.’

‘Is he nice?’ She caught a look from her lady-in-waiting, and pouted still more. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll have
lots
of opportunities in the future. I must fly!’

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.’