by TP Fielden
‘I’m glad they’re safe, though the job they’ve got is a terrible snub. I just worry, stuck out there, miles from anywhere, that it’ll be the undoing of them.’
Foxy lit a cigarette. ‘I spoke to Wallis on the telephone a few weeks ago when they were in Palm Beach. She seemed pretty chipper.’
‘All the time they’re in America, yes. But they’re back in Nassau now and she’s hating it. He’s in a rage because everyone’s been ordered not to call her Your Royal Highness, while she hates the house – she told Nancy Carew “the dining room looks like a ski hut in Norway”. And she’s taken down the portrait of the King – that didn’t go down well.
‘They’ve been there for a year. They were allocated a certain amount of money to do the place up, and she spent a quarter of it on a dining table – a table, my dear! And then he keeps threatening to come back to London.’
‘I heard that,’ said Foxy, nodding. ‘Hugh says he’s making the Prime Minister’s life a misery over this HRH business, and he feels the Bahamas can govern themselves – they don’t need him, and he could do much more for the war effort back here in Britain.’
‘I like them both,’ said Betsey, ‘but they’re living in a dream world. He wants to come back and play at being a field marshal – the King’s never going to allow it.’
‘It’s more than that. He wants his status back. Five years ago he was king and emperor, the world at his feet; now he’s like the mayor of some coal-mining town up north. I definitely get the impression he believes that if Buckingham Palace is bombed again, and the King is killed, he’ll get his old job back. That’s the real reason he wants to come home. To stay close.’
‘I’d say Wallis prefers Palm Beach. No blackout, no air raids, no saluting. Plenty of champagne. And they curtsy to her.’
‘What do you think, then? She won’t come back with David?’
Betsey Cody smiled. ‘On the contrary, I think she will. She’d love to wear that crown!’
CHAPTER SIX
‘Ah, Aggie. Can you spare a moment?’
‘Will it take long, Mr Harford?’ Aggie slowly looked up from the letter she was reading. She had moved into Ed Brampton’s desk, a far more imposing affair than her modest workstation in the anteroom.
‘You never told me that Major Ed was related to Sir Topham.’
‘Everybody in this place is related to someone or other. That’s how it works here.’
‘Not me.’
‘You may not be related, Mr Harford, but somebody put in a good word for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I don’t think so. But you? You’re related?’
‘I’m below-stairs,’ came the tart response. ‘We get our jobs from the Labour Exchange.’
Aggie was wearing a luminous shade of blue which caught the light a certain way, making Guy think of the strange turbaned Englishwoman in Tangier, the one whose tame peacock came each morning to lie on her eiderdown like an exotic bedspread.
‘Come on, now – tell me about Ed Brampton and the Master . . .’
‘Like I say, everyone’s related. The fellow who had Topsy’s job before him was Sir Derek Keppel – lovely old man, he was. His brother was married to Mrs Keppel – you know, the old king’s poppet.’
‘The one who lives at The Ritz?’
‘Mrs K occasionally puts her nose round the door here at the Palace too, but Kingy doesn’t approve. Doesn’t want his grandfather’s piece of stuff lording it around the place – which she’d do, given half the chance. She treats this place like a second home – knows all the footmen, gets them running errands, earwigs all the gossip then goes and blabs it back at The Ritz. She’s a pain in the backside.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose . . .’
‘Then there’s your boss, Tommy Lascelles. His cousin’s married to the Princess Royal. And the Master of the Horse, old Beaufort, he’s got Queen Mary staying with him at Badminton – his wife’s the King’s cousin. And so on.’
‘Fascinating, Aggie, but what I actually want to know is, what was it between Ed and Sir Topham? What sort of jobs was Ed asked to do – given he wasn’t actually supposed to be working directly for the Master of the Household?’
‘Well,’ said Aggie, ‘I could tell you a thing or two, but if you want the full story, it’s in that diary of his, wherever it ended up. Why do you want to know?’
‘Orders from above,’ lied Guy.
‘I’d find the diary if I were you. Meantime here are some more orders from above – a note from Tommy about your extra duties.’
‘Extra . . . ?’
‘It may take some time to replace Major Ed, and while we’re waiting, everyone has to do their bit.’
‘Go on,’ said Guy gloomily, ‘you may as well read it out.’
‘The most important is King Haakon.’
‘Mm?’
‘He’s a hero. He was forced out of Norway last year by the Nazis and came to stay here for a bit. King George is very kind – when Haakon arrived he had only the clothes he stood up in, so HM lent him anything he needed from his own wardrobe. He’s charming, very nice to everyone.’
‘What am I supposed to do with this throneless paragon?’
‘Meet him at the Privy Purse door and give him his laundry.’
‘His . . . laundry?’
‘He likes to call round for it himself.’
Guy looked up. ‘He collects his own washing? A king?’
‘He don’t mind. Major Ed was told that it’s a security thing – His Maj doesn’t want people knowing where his laundry is sent to, it would give his address away. The Germans want him dead because he refused to abdicate, so he has to be very careful. But I don’t think it’s that – he just likes looking in, and if King George is free they have a drink together.’
‘Good Lord. And so I . . . ?’
‘Collect the laundry from Tom Jerram – that’s the King’s valet – and take it over to the Privy Purse office. Wait for King Haakon to arrive, hand it over, say something nice, escort him back to his car.’
‘And I call him . . . ?’
‘Your Majesty, obviously.’ Aggie said this with a superior tone; it was clearly her office now. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Mr Harford. Some of it can even be quite fun.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.’
‘Ah.’
‘Major Ed would look after them when they came into the Palace, which isn’t very often – Windsor’s far safer. While they’re hanging about waiting for the Queen, Princess Elizabeth likes to visit the horses in the Mews. That was Major Ed’s job.’
‘I don’t know anything about horses,’ said Guy with alarm.
‘Don’t worry, they do. Lots.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There’s a note here about the Duke of Gloucester’s car. Have you done anything about that?’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ snapped Guy irritably, ‘why doesn’t the chap take the bus like everybody else?’
‘I see you won’t be applying for that job, then. The one Major Ed was after.’ It went without saying that Aggie knew all about Ed and the Duke of Gloucester job.
‘Anything else, perchance?’
‘Just Charlotte.’
‘Charlotte?’
‘The parrot.’
This is ridiculous, thought Guy. At this moment, if things had gone differently, I could be sitting on the side of a mountain in my dusty land far away, paintbrush in hand. Instead, here I am being treated like a subaltern in a fashionable regiment with nothing better to do than please the colonel’s wife and pour the drinks. Laundry, horses, cars – and now a parrot. All this – and squaring away a murder, of course.
If that’s what it was.
‘Go on.’
‘She’s become a bit of a nuisance. Used to belong to old King George – he picked her up in a bar in Port Said, I daresay he was tipsy at the time. Anyway, Charlotte was his lifelong companion – he
loved her more than he loved Queen Mary, I reckon. She’d sit on his shoulder while he was doing his State papers, and when HM went down to Cowes for the regatta, she’d go too.’
‘And no doubt was awarded the Order of the Garter for services to His Imperial Majesty.’
Aggie pushed up the spectacles drooping on the end of her nose and looked at him sharply. ‘You won’t get very far here, Mr Harford, if you take that tone. We all push in the same direction at the Palace, ’specially in wartime.’
‘I should have thought animals came under the aegis of the Royal Mews. Anyway, what am I supposed to do with it?’
‘Not it, her. She’s currently housed with the Gloucesters, but they’re moving around rather a lot at the moment and she’s become just one thing too many. You’re to find her a new home.’
Guy rose from his desk. ‘When I took on this job,’ he said, shuffling up a few papers, ‘I had no idea that my diverse range of talents could be put to such comprehensive use. Remarkable! I’m going over to the Guards Chapel.’
The walk eased his frustration. He stepped through the traffic on to the pavement of the Victoria Memorial and then turned right in the direction of Wellington Barracks. At the far end stood the glorious Greek temple whose role for the past century was to bid farewell to old soldiers – some killed in action, most merely extinguished by old age. In another life I would be sitting at an easel painting this, he thought, the light is perfect today.
As he entered by the west door his nostrils filled with the smell of charred timbers, the result of a Luftwaffe firebomb attack the previous winter. But the interior, with its alabaster, marble, mosaics and stained glass, seemed above all conflict: immune, still, and gently glowing.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ growled an unwelcoming voice. ‘What are you doing here?’
It was the bulky Coats Mission officer, Toby Broadbent, seated in a pew towards the rear of the chancel.
‘Came to visit the padre,’ replied Guy. ‘And you?’
‘A private moment,’ said Captain Broadbent vaguely, though he didn’t look the godly type.
‘Have you seen him anywhere?’
‘He’s saying his prayers. Come outside, I want a word with you.’ Broadbent rose and took his elbow roughly.
‘I’m rather busy,’ replied Guy, irritated at being manhandled.
‘Won’t take long.’
The two men halted under the soaring Doric columns of the portico and eyed the immaculate parade ground before them.
‘Didn’t want to mention such things in a house of God,’ said Broadbent stolidly, ‘but people I’ve been talking to are expressing concern about you.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘The company you keep. You’re not really one of us, are you?’
‘If by that you mean I am not a serving soldier, you would be correct.’
The captain, a good head taller than Guy, leaned forward and fixed him with a look of distaste. ‘I know that! I’m not talking about that – I’m talking about the people you know, the people you mix with.’
Guy looked away. In the distance a small platoon of men were displaying their parade-ground skills. ‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ he replied mildly, thinking, is this about Foxy and her friend Wallis Windsor? Only the other day Tommy Lascelles had described her as ‘a shop-soiled American with a voice like a rusty saw’, though surely she couldn’t be that bad or she wouldn’t be a friend of Foxy’s.
‘Look,’ said Broadbent through gritted teeth, ‘my job is to preserve the life of the King. We don’t want people hanging round the Palace who keep the company of common criminals.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Guy.
‘People are keeping an eye on you, Harford.’
‘Evidently.’
‘You’ve been seen with a woman who is part of a gang. A gang – burglars and shoplifters, people who’d knife you soon as look at you!’
‘I don’t think that . . .’
‘If there isn’t a knife handy, they’ll just shove the glass you’re drinking from in your face.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He started to make his way back inside the church.
The captain grabbed Guy’s elbow again. ‘Yes you do! Rosemary Carrigan! She’s part of a gang who call themselves the Jellied Eel Brigade!’
‘I know nobody of that name,’ said Guy truthfully.
‘Lives at the Elephant and Castle, Gurney Street. Known associates include a smash-and-grab man called Johnny Jackson, a bare-knuckle fighter called Ruby Sparks – that’s a man by the way – and a drug dealer called Billy Chang . . . D’you want me to go on?’
‘What’s this all about?’
‘You were seen with her the other night, no point in denying it.’
‘Are you saying, Captain, that I – an assistant private secretary at Buckingham Palace – am under surveillance?’
‘Everyone’s under surveillance,’ said Broadbent grimly. ‘There’s a ruddy war on, hadn’t you noticed? You were in The Grenadier public house with her. She put her arm around you. Rosemary Carrigan.’
‘Ah. That could be somebody I know by another name. But if what you say about her . . . associates . . . is true, I have no knowledge of that.’
‘Just a pretty tart, then, eh? Out for a good time with her?’
She’s bit more than that, thought Guy, and a lot cleverer than you for a start. ‘That’s rather offensive. She’s a friend of . . . a friend.’
‘Not the way it looked. It looked like you and she were . . . having fun.’
‘No harm in having fun, Captain, even you. We may all be dead tomorrow.’
‘She’s a common thief! She’s a blackmailer! She’s a black marketeer! I daresay when she can’t steal something to sell, she sells herself – we can’t have that kind of person associating with people employed at the Palace!’
‘That’s not . . .’ Guy burst out angrily, but stopped himself.
‘A burglar. Who, in a country at war, breaks into people’s homes and steals their belongings!’
Just as well you don’t know she broke into your wretched Palace, thought Guy, as easy as blinking – so much for your protection of the sovereign when Rodie Carr can waltz in, pick the lock on my office door and leave a rose on my desk. Then wander out again without a single challenge. I expect she could have put tin tacks on the throne if she’d wanted to.
‘Well, I’m going to tell Tommy Lascelles about this,’ said Broadbent hotly. ‘He needs to know the kind of people he’s employing these days. Unless . . .’ he added.
‘Yes?’
‘Unless you tell me what’s going on over Ed Brampton. Then perhaps we can forget about your little indiscretion with that . . . tart.’
The whisky bottle was its usual near-empty self. A tepid sun wearily put itself to bed while heavy buses clanked and banged their way out of the coach station beneath.
‘So you see, Rupe, delightful though she is, I can’t see Rodie again. It’s just too complicated.’
‘Bless my buttons!’
‘I agree she’s a wonderful distraction, but it’s pretty obvious I’m being watched. Perhaps what we . . .’
‘All’s well! All’s well! Where’s the Captain?’
‘Oh, shut up!’ snapped Rupert Hardacre. ‘For heaven’s sake, Guy, how long are we going to have to put up with this?’
‘Charlotte? I rather like her, actually. Anyway, I can soon put a stop to that.’ He rose and lifted a heavy tapestry – embroidered with a fanciful coat of arms featuring an African grey parrot wearing a crown – over the cage. A muffled grunt came from within, then silence.
‘They don’t ask for much, just a little conversation now and again,’ said Guy encouragingly. ‘You’ll get used to her.’
Rupe crossed his legs aggressively. ‘I’m sure there’s something in the rental agreement about having pets on the premises.’
‘It won’t be f
or long. Sooner or later I’ll have to go down to Gloucestershire – I may be able to palm her off on someone there. Anyway, how’s everything going in the world of the General Post Office? Raided any interesting mailboxes recently?’
Rupe looked at him sharply. ‘That’s not what we do.’
‘Just joking,’ said Guy. ‘Curious though, that in this world of “Careless Talk Costs Lives”, you seem to know everything I do, while I know nothing at all about your job.’
‘Best to leave it that way.’
‘Understood,’ said Guy, slightly crossly.
‘However, I did learn something today which may be of interest,’ Rupert went on. ‘Tell me first, though – what’s the state of play with your dead body?’
‘He’s still dead. The funeral’s on Thursday.’
‘After that?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean, is that the end of the matter?’ said Rupe. ‘Or are you supposed to be investigating what actually happened? How on earth did you even get involved in this ridiculous charade of placing a dead body in an empty house and then discovering it?’
‘I’ve been told to mop things up and leave them shipshape. Quite soon, if I’ve done everything according to orders, people will have forgotten Ed Brampton ever existed.’
‘Apart from the widow and children.’
‘Oh, you know about them too,’ said Guy archly. ‘You really do know everything.’
‘QED. There were photographs of them all over the mantelpiece when we dropped in the other night.’
‘Ah. Yes.’
‘I just wondered if you’re planning to take things further.’
‘My boss says no. But Adelaide wants to know what happened – of course she does.’
Rupe got up and stretched, wandered over to the window and looked up into the darkening sky.
‘How much do you feel obliged to do her bidding?’
‘She and I have known each other since we were children. I hadn’t seen much of her in recent years but she’s a very fine person – I feel I owe it to her to find out what I can.’
