The Queen's Secret: A Novel of England's World War II Queen

by Karen Harper

  He spoke a bit more, answered a few questions, then they capered off to dance a waltz—in hold, as she had said, twirling about, both looking breathlessly rapt. At least it then devolved into some line dance called the Lindy Hop to a rather jazzy melody I barely recognized as “In the Mood.” At first I was relieved to see that Lilibet and Philip sat that dance out with its kicks and gyrations—whoever gave the musicians permission for that?—but it was only because they huddled off in a corner, talking.

  Margot came over, looking rather bouncy and hoppy herself.

  “I have to learn that dance, but there’s no one here I want to learn it from, if you know what I mean,” she said rolling her eyes. “And the boys my age I have met are just too, well, jumpy. Boring. But I thought we’d best play something in style, so these guests think we’re not a lot of tiresome stodgies here at the castle.”

  “You ordered that music and dance?” her father asked. “Isn’t a foxtrot modern enough?”

  “Papa . . . really,” she said and flounced off.

  “I’d hate to see Margot’s seventeenth birthday party,” Bertie muttered. “In war or peace. When was it Lilibet began to like young men her age?”

  “When she first laid eyes on Philip, and he’s not her age. He’s a good five years older, but look at them.”

  “I thought he spoke well and was most appreciative. My darling, he’s heading back to sea soon, and who knows what may happen.”

  “I don’t want her to get her heart broken one way or the other.”

  He turned his entire body to look at me. “It happens, but, I think, never for you. And I can understand how much a young man from a broken, distant family enjoys our family and home. I know that was what first attracted me to you and your family despite the fact David said you would never like me.”

  “Did he? How . . . how unfair and how wrong of him!”

  I realized I had almost shouted. Several other chaperones nearby turned our way.

  “Shall we dance, now that the hopscotch is over?” Bertie asked.

  I had to smile at his butchering of the name of the dance, but I looked over his shoulder each time we turned to keep a good eye on the hostess of the party and her beau.

  * * *

  I ran myself ragged, visiting troops, especially bomber commands, that spring. With Lilibet, I toured South Wales. The family managed a week at Sandringham, the royal estate on which Bertie had grown up, though to my chagrin, he talked too much of memories of his early days there with David.

  Although it was top secret, we knew our soldiers and the Allies, under General Eisenhower, were preparing a massive assault on the German-held lands across the Channel. But somehow, life went on.

  Both Bertie and Winston had wished to accompany our troops into battle in the huge but dangerous assault being planned. Winston had, evidently, easily been discouraged and realized the danger of that, but at first Bertie would not budge from the idea. I rather thought, if Bertie stayed back of the initial attacks, it would hearten our men and him. So I was upset that Alan Lascelles, his secretary, had somehow changed Bertie’s mind.

  “Alan!” I said as I cornered him in Bertie’s office when I knew Bertie was elsewhere, “did you talk the king out of being a part of this attack—at least at the rear of it?”

  “Oh, Your Majesty,” he said, looking up, quite startled. “Yes. Yes, I did. This nation and international alliance cannot allow our king and—or—our prime minister to put themselves in such danger. Both of them admit the casualties will be high. The Germans are dug in over there and will fight back like bloody he— Well, that is my opinion, ma’am, and I could not bear to lose the king.”

  “Neither could I, but some of his happiest days inspiring our troops and countrymen have been with our fighting forces. Granted, he would stay far back.”

  “He asked me to speak my piece, ma’am, and I did. He and the P.M. have time to reconsider, though I am certain now Mr. Churchill is not going. Besides, we must keep a close secret when the attack will be launched. Let that hellhound Hitler wonder, especially if the P.M. and the king do not budge from here.”

  “Do you know, Alan,” I said, calming down a bit, “that Adolf Hitler once called me the most dangerous woman in Europe?”

  “I had heard so. I may just be an aide and secretary to His Majesty, but, for once, I agree with Hitler—and thank the Lord he believes you are a danger to him.”

  “So if I am dangerous to Hitler, His Majesty should be encouraged to go in at least behind his troops, for he would be far more of a danger than I ever could be. At Malta, he was an inspiration to the common people. They pelted him with flowers, and he cherishes that.”

  “I too have seen that flower-stained uniform more than once, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry I took you to task, Alan. The king will do what he will do. Of course, I would rather keep him out of harm’s way, but I have seen how much being with our fighting men has invigorated him.”

  “I believe you would go in with your troops, if you were queen in deed, ma’am. As the first Queen Elizabeth said of herself facing battle against the Spanish Armada, ‘I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England, too.’”

  “Thank you, Alan,” I told him as I headed for the door. I turned back with my hand on the knob. “You serve us both well, and you may be right. You have persuaded me. If either of them consult me, I shall counsel His Majesty and Winst—the P.M.—not to rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  * * *

  In early July of 1943, with no invasion of Europe yet, though the forces and armaments were piling up on our soil, I took our daughters and went to visit my elderly father at Glamis. He had been ailing off and on, missing my dear mother as did I. He insisted we have some friends in to lighten the mood for the girls, and one of our guests, Lady Cranborne, brought with her a new gramophone, now called a record player, and still all the craze, war or not.

  Both Lilibet and Margot hung over the machine as it played one popular song after the other. “But it is wartime, and you must listen to this one,” Lady Cranborne insisted. She put the needle down on the record. The song, she said, was “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer.”

  Its lyrics were supposedly from some of our pilots trying to make it back to their bases after being in battle, hoping, praying they would make it down safely with a full crew aboard and their trust in the Lord despite a damaged aeroplane.

  Lilibet came over to where I sat near my father and linked her arm through mine and put her other hand on her grandfather’s shoulder.

  “I’m keen for that song,” she said as Margot played it over and over. “Not for the tune or how scary it is for our boys to fly into danger. It’s because it’s true for all of us: When we’ve been hurt or wounded, we pray like the very dickens we will make it safely home to try another day, even if we are only flying with one wing.”

  “I am proud of you, my dear,” her grandfather told her, his voice raspy. “Remember that when times are tough, yes, Elizabeth?” he said, turning his eyes slowly to me. “Sometimes we hear things that set us back, but we go on. We go on to greatness and beyond.”

  I knew he was thinking of the time he and Mother—the mother of my heart—had told me about my French heritage. Had that made me desperate to earn approval from others? Even the elite, the royals? And so, had I overstepped with David?

  “Yes, Papa” was all I could manage as my eyes filled with tears, and Lilibet made it even harder by dropping a quick kiss on my cheek before dashing back to the gramophone. “Yes, Papa,” I repeated, “in all our wars, little ones and big, we must find a way to carry on to greatness and beyond.”

  * * *

  Shortly thereafter, I was summoned from our little gathering to take a call from Bertie. I did not worry, for he had phoned every night. But I could tell he was on edge—no, nearly panicked when he spoke my name and asked if I was alone to hear some news.

  “Yes, dearest, go ahead. Whatever is it?”

 
; I thought Queen Mary might have died, but his rush of words showed it wasn’t that.

  “It’s David. He’s made another mess—a scandal. Catastrophe!”

  “In little Nassau? He hasn’t gone to the States? And don’t invite him back here!”

  “In Nassau, but he’s making it go international, a scandal. Murder, maybe worse?”

  “Murder? Of whom?” I cried and pressed the earpiece harder to my ear.

  “No one we know. Details later. We must squelch all this. Can you come back directly, at least on the morrow early? Have someone else take the girls to Windsor and return first thing, because Winston’s coming to the palace with all the details right after noon. I’m afraid David and the duchess will be demanding things of us, may say some things.”

  Was David dunning us for money again as he had before? And did Bertie know of what things David could possibly say to coerce things from us? And who was dead on Nassau?

  “Send the aeroplane to the nearest airfield, and I’ll be there,” I promised as he rang off.

  I put the receiver back on the hook and stared at it. I prayed I would not go down, that I would not crash in Bertie’s affections if a desperate David started to demand help or funds. Yes, as Lilibet had said, I was coming in on a wing and a prayer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Red Stains

  The next afternoon in Bertie’s office, Churchill arrived and an elite, emergency gathering took place to discuss the latest upheaval involving the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It was four of us, for Bertie had wanted Alan Lascelles there to take notes.

  “You might know,” Winston began, “even distant, quiet Nassau could not keep him—them!—out of trouble.”

  I perched on the edge of my chair, gripping my hands in my lap. I was terrified what might come out, considering how desperate David must be to have royal support. We knew he wanted it for his finances and his marriage—that is, to have his wife recognized as Her Royal Highness instead of her title of duchess.

  “I’ll try to start at the beginning,” Winston went on, his voice tense and his fingers nearly crushing his cigar. “Obviously, the Windsors have not been happy there. A hellhole, she called it and urged him to desert his post as governor and go to the States for the cooler temperatures and nightlife. She insisted a beauty parlor be built near the governor’s residence—a building she hates, calling it a dump, on and on. They hobnob with both the social elite and the wealthy, though, of course, that was his lifestyle here.”

  Winston expelled a strong breath then sucked one in. No one dared question him yet, for it was obvious more was coming.

  “The duke spends hours on the golf course, often in the company of a gold mine billionaire named Sir Harry Oakes and a Swedish-born German sympathizer, Axel Wenner-Gren, who evidently has a real talent for money laundering in Mexico. Wenner-Gren has worked for the German armament Krupp family and, according to J. Edgar Hoover of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, may well be a Nazi spy.”

  “Bloody hell!” Bertie exploded. “The Americans are in on this investigation? Can’t David steer clear of Hitler’s bedfellow Germans? He’s always asking for more funds. Money laundering? Perhaps he decided to get wealth his own way.”

  After Winston took another breath and then a puff of the cigar, he said, “Actually, the duke’s money grubbing may be the least of the scandal erupting since this Sir Harry Oakes has been brutally murdered.”

  I had meant to keep silent, but I had to know if David had tried to blackmail his way out of this mess. I asked, “So David has been demanding help with this investigation, pulling our government or his—his royal family—into this mess?”

  Winston shook his head so hard his jowls bounced. “Damn the man. He took it upon himself to solve the murder—which made some wonder what he was covering up—and he is making a sordid muddle into an international scandal. Fortunately, the king and I had agreed to secretly plant someone with him who would keep us informed, in this case, his aide, Major Gray Phillips. So I’m reading from Major Phillips’s latest communiqué to me.” He flourished a wrinkled piece of paper.

  “Phillips informs me that the Duke of Windsor has imposed press censorship about Sir Harry’s death. A blackout of news is supposed to be in effect. But it came too late. The people who discovered the body had already notified authorities.

  “Ah, let’s see what else is pertinent here. I skip a few details, ma’am, for the murder scene was gruesome—bullet wounds, private parts of the body burned.”

  Wide-eyed, I nodded. How strange that in wartime, such a simple description seemed so dreadful. And yet the mention of private parts brought back such terrible, vivid images, ones tied to David too.

  While Bertie leaned intently forward and Lascelles scribbled notes, Winston read on, “The duke called two Miami policemen he evidently knew or who had been recommended. They flew over quickly and managed to botch the investigation. Major Gray notes that the native police force was not trusted and only assigned to scrub blood off the walls. The Miami detectives did not have a camera and made a mess of whatever bloody fingerprints were there in Sir Harry’s bedroom.”

  I was starting to feel nauseous, but I knew I had to stay, not only to hear what happened but to be certain there was no hint of David trying to pressure us for help. Surely, he would not use his knowledge of his and my—our—skirmish to blackmail or force me or Bertie to help. And he could threaten to use the damning information about my French cook mother, for Bertie had never indicated he knew of that either. Oh, how did it ever happen that I had kept so many momentous secrets from my husband, now king?

  Bertie said, “Winston, you mentioned the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the States. So are they in on the case now?”

  “That’s where things get sticky,” Winston said, looking up from glaring at the paper. “It seems the FBI—and their man in charge is a real bulldog—has had a file. A dossier,” he added with a pointed glance at me, “on the duke’s activities, dating from his and the duchess’s rather cozy visit to Hitler in Germany. Also the assistant secretary of state in the U.S. believes the Windsors are Nazi collaborators and has been keeping an eye on them. I have been informed that the duke could be charged with something called the Trading with the Enemy Act.”

  Bertie gasped and looked at me. “But that sounds like traitorous activity,” he said. “Could he be dragged into a public U.S. or British court?”

  As if I were assuring him—or, despite how I hated David, was indulging in wishful thinking—I bit my lip and shook my head, but I wanted to burst into tears. Whatever came from this awful situation, David had shamed himself and his country as he had once shamed me. Thank God he had abdicated and left the Empire in the hands of a good man.

  “It seems, Major Phillips reports,” Winston went on, “that the duke has deposited two million American dollars in a Banco Continental in Mexico where the funds will be what they call ‘laundered’—that is, the ownership and trail obscured by this shady Wenner-Gren who could blow all this sky high.”

  “Or if David is somehow in with the Nazis,” Bertie said, lighting another cigarette with shaking hands, “could he be blackmailed to cooperate with them—perhaps more than he has already?”

  I decided I would dare to ask another question, hoping my voice did not tremble. “So the duke has undertaken this murder investigation but botched it somehow and that makes him look, if not guilty, as if he’s hiding something related to Sir Harry?”

  “Exactly,” Winston said, glowering at the paper. “Yes to all your questions. Let me see here. Besides hauling in two Miami detectives who made a mess of the murder scene, he has dared to suggest the death might have been suicide.”

  Lascelles spoke for the first time. “After a man puts multiple bullets in himself, then sets himself on fire? Blood all over. A suicide?”

  Winston frowned even more deeply. “Frankly, I believe the duke is hiding something, hopefully that he is just strapped for money, but who knows
what else. And I wonder if he thinks we’ll not cause an uproar over this because of . . . of a sort of blackmail he holds over someone. But what can he know that would come up to that level?”

  I was certain I would be sick to my stomach.

  “Such as what?” Bertie demanded. “I didn’t give him those funds he’s hiding. He dare not try to smear the throne in all this.”

  It would look bad if I fled the room to vomit. How I had tried to convey a brave front in the war, and if I crumpled at this, surely Bertie and Winston would wonder why. They knew I had been at odds with David, spoken bitterly against his ever coming back to England again, especially with that woman. But I was certain they thought it was Wallis Simpson’s sins I was appalled at, not my own stupidity, however young and naïve I was then.

  “So here’s the worst of it,” Winston said with a sigh as he crumpled the paper in his lap. “There was an almost immediate arrest of Sir Harry’s son-in-law for the murder, and on flimsy evidence. The American newspapers and beyond have picked up this story. I’ve heard from Hoover that this scandal has knocked the war off the front newspaper page in New York City and other places, so there is no way of squelching it here, though I’ve pulled a few strings so our reporters would tone it down. And, you might know, the duke and duchess have fled to New York City, evidently to avoid questioning in this mess he’s made of the investigation.”

  Reaching over to take my hand, Bertie said, “Here we are, making military progress in this bloody war, and now we have this! Sorry you sat in to hear it all, darling.”

  My fingers ached from gripping them together so hard. I clung to him. But would he cling to me if David became so distressed he tried to blackmail us—me? If so, my reputation, my position, perhaps my marriage, my whole life might as well be shot up and its private parts burned.

  * * *

  I hardly slept that night, but near morning I must have slipped into the exhaustion of nightmare. I was a soldier in the tall-tree forest, fighting with a blond German man, shooting at him. Oh, not a German, but David, looking young as when we were briefly an item, long before that other woman.