Stealing the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery)

by TP Fielden

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perfectly true. General Sikorski saw him only the other day – I get all this from Aggie by the way, nobody else tells me anything – and he made him the offer.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘And then Princess Marina wouldn’t mind a leg up. Never forget that she’s more royal than anyone in the Palace – both her grandfathers were kings, which can’t be said of any of the present lot at Buck House. Aggie says the Queen’s jealous of her – hates the fact that she’s blue-blooded and knows how to wear her clothes. And so Marina has no sympathy for the Queen and, I think, would love to upstage her.’

  ‘Well, that’s all very fascinating, but the truth is that Princess Elizabeth will be the next sovereign.’

  ‘I wouldn’t absolutely count on that.’

  Across the room there was a mild flurry as a large lady rose from a table and vaguely wandered off into the main lobby followed by a gaggle of anxious-looking women. Despite her dowdy clothes she carried a surprising air of authority.

  ‘Poor old Queen Wilhelmina,’ said Guy. ‘How she must miss Holland.’

  ‘There are worse places to be when you’ve been kicked out of your country. She came down to dinner in her dressing gown the other night,’ said Foxy, ‘so she obviously feels quite at home. Prince Bernhard is proving a bit of a handful though – up in his suite, in the blackout, he saw someone on the opposite side of the street had left a light burning. Instead of telling someone, he took out a tommy gun and fired through the window. I don’t think he’ll be doing that again after the talking-to he got.’

  Guy smothered a laugh. ‘For an American you seem to know an awful lot.’

  ‘Hugh tells me.’

  ‘You ought to write a gossip column.’

  ‘Ted Rochester’s your man for that. You should have seen the vicious swipe he had at Noël Coward the other day – just for lunching here with a few friends. All boys of course – but no call for writing it the way he did.’

  ‘We ought to go. Tommy Lascelles doesn’t take kindly to his staff eating lunch.’

  ‘Is that the time? I have a meeting of friends of the American Red Cross. Just in case we come into the war, we gels want to be prepared.’ She gave the word an upper-class inflection as a joke against herself. ‘We’ve got a committee – Betsey Cody’s the chairman, naturally, since she’s going to pay for it all – and we’ve got our eye on some premises near Trafalgar Square. I want you to come and meet her, she could be a good friend to you.’

  ‘I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘Find the time. Bye!’

  They said their goodbyes in the doorway of the restaurant, but as Foxy gave him a fleeting embrace, over her shoulder Guy spotted a figure dressed in aquamarine silk, the tiniest of straw hats balanced on the back of her urchin haircut. She was sitting in the lobby with a startling blonde who was applying scarlet lipstick as if rationing had never been invented.

  ‘Oh God,’ he groaned, scuttling sideways like a spider towards the side entrance. But it was no good – Rodie had spotted him.

  ‘Guy.’ More a statement than a greeting.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘This is my friend Claudia.’

  Guy nodded but made no attempt to shake her hand. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated. ‘In Claridge’s?’

  ‘It’s a free country, ain’t it? My money’s as good as anybody’s round here. And unlike some’ – she nodded at an ancient dowager walking past – ‘I pays my bills.’

  She looks different when she’s not dressed in her work outfit, thought Guy. She may have an effortless ease in these clothes, but she still looks better in burglar’s dungarees.

  And all of a sudden he realised he had to paint her.

  ‘Must go,’ he said. ‘Extremely busy.’

  ‘See you in The Grenadier, then,’ said Rodie sarcastically. ‘The pub. You won’t mind talking to me in there, will you – you snob!’

  ‘It’s not that. I . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Rodie. ‘Lem and me are extremely busy havin’ a cup of tea – and then we’re going shopping.’ There was a ravenous look in her eye as she said that, and then she started laughing.

  ‘Shopping?’ said Guy, baffled.

  ‘’Sright – the kind where you don’t spend no money.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ hissed Guy, ‘shoplifting. You’re a disgrace!’

  ‘You didn’t say that the other night when . . .’ She gave him a sidelong smile.

  At this, Claudia suddenly looked at Guy with new interest. Her initial once-over had been perfunctory – here was a man who clearly had to work for a living, no private income, however handsome. Now Rodie was talking about an evening out with Guy – maybe there was something there after all. But before Claudia could switch her headlights on, her friend swiftly changed the subject.

  ‘I hear you got a parrot for company. Does it tuck you up warm at night and make you a nice breakfast?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Pretty queer companion if you ask me. You should try harder, get out more.’ She was clearly still nettled about the Hammersmith Palais. She turned to Claudia. ‘Guy’s an arty type, you know. Paints pictures. Quite good, so they say.’

  ‘What are you doing in a place like this, then?’ asked her friend insolently. ‘You don’t look much like a painter to me, right shabby most of ’em are. Shouldn’t you be in a smock, daubing away somewhere?’

  Guy looked with dismay down at his formal clothes, then back at her. ‘Well, I have a day job. So I’m not doing much at the moment, and anyway, I don’t have a studio.’

  Claudia snorted. ‘A painter without a studio? Like a pianist without a pianna!’ she jeered. ‘Why don’t you get one?’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Rodie. ‘Why don’t you get one?’

  Why not indeed, thought Guy. Because I’m too busy covering up crimes, at the same time risking my career trying to uncover them again. I’m busy making my neck ache by bowing to the eminences I meet at the Palace, even if they’re just there to collect their laundry. I’m busy trying to persuade an ex-Patou model not to marry a belted earl because I don’t think it will work, and anyway, I might want to marry her myself. I’m busy trying to think how I can make a proper contribution to the war effort, instead of turning up to an office each day in a jacket and pinstripe trousers.

  ‘They’re rather difficult to find just now, and besides, I don’t think I can afford one.’

  ‘You seem to be doing all right,’ said Claudia, nodding towards the restaurant. ‘Who was that you was lunching with?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rodie, eyes narrowing. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Someone I knew in Paris. Look, I really have to go.’ He paused in thought for a moment, then said, ‘A word, Rodie.’

  ‘Yes?’ She smiled a dazzling smile and got up.

  Turning his back on Claudia, Guy whispered, ‘I know you’re having fun, but you ought to be careful in this place. It’s full of the crowned heads of Europe who have nowhere else to go now the Nazis have kicked them out. The security is tight – there are police and . . . others . . . everywhere. Watching. You want to be careful what you’re doing or you’ll find yourself in jail.’

  ‘We just come for a look round,’ said Rodie, all innocence. ‘Coming to The Grenadier tomorrow?’

  ‘I really . . . I don’t know how to say this, but . . .’

  ‘Then don’t say it. Just come – nine o’clock. And don’t be late.’

  She looked hard at him.

  ‘Then we’ll go dancin’.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘You see, the camera never lies. You look so . . . distinguée.’

  ‘So I should,’ said Foxy, squinting slightly in concentration. ‘D’you know how much that dress cost?’

  ‘Not something that should ever worry you,’ laughed Ted Rochester. He’d brought round a sheaf of black-and-white prints for the future countess to choose before his articl
e appeared in The Tatler.

  ‘I’ll leave the rest if you’d like to keep them. What a star you were back in the Paris days, modelling with Monsieur Patou.’

  ‘You can drop the soft soap, Ted. What do you want?’

  The journalist coughed. ‘I heard your friends Wallis and the Duke set the cat among the pigeons in Palm Beach when they were there.’

  ‘Did you now.’ Unencouragingly.

  ‘They’ve hooked themselves up with someone decidedly iffy – Mrs Donahue, who inherited F. W. Woolworth’s millions. Not one of us, I think.’

  ‘Ted, you’re a journalist – nobody’s one of you. You’re the least trusted profession in the world.’

  ‘Ha ha. But do you know this woman? She’s been trying to buy her way into society for years, but the old guard won’t have it. She has this colossal mansion on South Ocean Boulevard and a hundred servants, but the harder she pushes at society’s door, the more it remains firmly shut.’

  This got a frosty reception. ‘As a matter of fact, it was my future husband who introduced Wallis and the Duke to Mrs Donahue. She’s a very generous host. And has a rather fine singing voice, so there! What a terrible snob you are!’

  The journalist stepped back uneasily. ‘Just trying to find an angle, Foxy. The Windsors always make good copy, but there has to be an angle.’

  ‘They’re back in Nassau now. Why don’t you write about Wallis working tirelessly for the Red Cross?’

  He smiled and shook his head wearily. ‘That’s not what people want to read. Since the Abdication there’s no point in trying to write nice things about them; readers only want to hear they’ve grown horns and will soon disappear through the gates of Hades, never to return. The Duke’s sucking up to known Nazi supporters in Nassau – and now, when he’s allowed to escape to the mainland, he ends up the prisoner of a woman whose fortune comes from a five-and-dime store.’

  ‘Woolworths? I shop there myself.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re just saying that.’

  ‘Well, I might.’

  ‘Anyway, the Palm Beach we know, Foxy – the old families – the Amorys and the Munns, the Phippses and the Stotesburys, are all in a tizz. Of course they want Wallis and the Duke as guests in their house – but does it mean they have to invite that old witch Jessie Donahue along too?’

  ‘I imagine it does. Good for Wallis, I say. I’m fed up with people looking down their noses at her.’

  Rochester picked up the photographs and put them in an envelope. ‘It’s not just the English. Joe Kennedy told the Queen – I have this on the highest authority – that when he was invited to dinner with Wallis, he refused to go, saying, “I know of no job that I could occupy that might force my wife to dine with a tart.”’

  ‘Tart? From a Kennedy? That’s rich!’

  ‘If you’ll permit me to say so, Foxy, your country’s ambassadors don’t know the meaning of diplomacy. After the Paris man, Bullitt, came here, he said all sorts of rude things – he sent off a note to President Roosevelt saying “The King is a moron, and the Queen is an excessively ambitious woman who’s ready to sacrifice every other country in the world in order that she might remain Queen Elizabeth of England.”’

  ‘Outrageous!’

  ‘He said it, not me – I don’t know what Her Majesty can have done wrong. Bullitt himself described the King as a rather frightened boy and likened the Queen to one of his golf caddies up in Scotland. And he talked about “her cheap public smile”.’

  ‘I think somebody else said that.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her sister-in-law. Not everybody adores her.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but she’s the only queen we’ve got and she’s doing a grand job,’ said Rochester. ‘Your people ought to leave her alone. Anyway, let’s talk about Guy.’

  ‘What about him?’ Foxy instinctively felt that, with Ted Rochester, every conversational gambit was a leading question. He had snakelike charm and ratlike cunning and didn’t mind if it showed.

  ‘This business about Ed Brampton seems to be taking up a lot of his time.’

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t think so,’ followed by a silence. ‘I think he’s just generally busy. War work, you know.’

  ‘Look,’ said Rochester, suddenly urgent. ‘Word gets about. Guy has been toiling round the clock on getting the Brampton business squared away. There seems to be a lot more effort going into giving Ed a big final send-off than should be accorded a chap who, after all, should know one end of a pistol from the other.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Ed was a fine . . .’

  ‘The preparations – the whole buzz around Major Brampton’s funeral – seem disproportionate, Foxy. I’m a journalist, it’s our job to sniff the wind.’

  ‘And what can you smell?’

  ‘I find it hard to believe his death was an accident. And if it wasn’t, what was it? Brampton was close to the Queen, we know that. Could he really have killed himself – if so, why? Or was it something else – something to do with Her Majesty?’ He looked fiercely at Foxy. ‘Because if it wasn’t an accident or suicide, something very strange has occurred. And even in the midst of war, we have a right to know.’

  ‘Don’t you have anything else to write about?’

  ‘That’s what people always say when you’re close to uncovering the truth.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be uncovering it from me. Even if I knew the answer to your questions – which I don’t – I wouldn’t tell you, Ted, are you mad?’

  ‘You’re close to Guy . . .’

  ‘He’s a friend of yours, too.’

  ‘Not like you, though. After all, in Paris you and he . . . you know . . .’

  Foxy stood up and glared. ‘That’s the trouble with you journalists!’ she snapped. ‘You hear something and want to believe it’s true, so in your minds it becomes true. There was nothing between me and Guy in Paris – not like that, anyway. We were very close and he’s, well . . .’ Her voice drifted off.

  ‘Too poor, is that it?’ said Rochester wickedly.

  ‘That’s enough!’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that.’ He did. ‘But, you know, Edgar Brampton was a good man, decorated war hero and all that. A great support to the Queen. As such we should know what happened – I gather there isn’t even going to be an inquest.’

  ‘Why can’t you be satisfied that it was just an accident?’

  ‘Because when Guy called to tell me Brampton had died, he didn’t make a very good job of it, frankly. Of course I ran the story in my newspaper more or less as he’d dictated it – but, you know, I didn’t believe him. He was anxious and upset, it didn’t ring true.’

  ‘As it happens I remember that night very well. We’d just sat through a blitzkrieg, bombs falling everywhere, you’re thinking all the time “Is it me next? Is it my turn now?” Nobody’s in a right frame of mind after something like that.’

  ‘Have it your way,’ said Ted. ‘I just have a feeling he wasn’t telling me the truth – not the whole truth, anyway. If I knew where Brampton’s widow was now, I’d go and see her.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do . . .’ started Foxy, and then stopped herself.

  The journalist said nothing but looked at her. Then: ‘London may be crumbling and tumbling, our way of life may be in shreds and tatters, we may not be here tomorrow. Even if we are, who knows who’ll be in charge, Churchill or the Führer, or Vera Lynn maybe? But while we struggle on and don’t give up, there’s such a thing as law and order.’

  He picked up a pen and began to spin it between his fingers.

  ‘If Edgar Brampton didn’t die by accident – and what seasoned army officer who went through the whole of the First War with pistol in hand would possibly allow it to go off next to his brain – then it can only be one of two things. Suicide or murder. If it’s murder, the public has a right to know. Even in the midst of war, we can’t allow people to be bumped off – whether they live in a palace or in the Old Kent Road.’

  Foxy thou
ght about this for a moment. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Talk to Guy. Maybe I can help. He has this terrible job at the Palace, so I imagine he’s been given the responsibility of sweeping it all under the carpet. He’s only been back in Britain five minutes and knows next to nobody. On the other hand, I have a large number of contacts in the police and . . .’ – he paused – ‘elsewhere . . . and maybe I can help him with whatever it is he’s got to do.’

  ‘I can tell you, Ted, that all he’s got to do is make sure the funeral goes off OK.’

  ‘You say that. I somehow don’t think it ends there.’

  Guy stood at the back of the Guards Chapel, watching. From long experience he’d learned that the congregation at a funeral says more about the recently deceased than any number of fine words launched from the pulpit.

  The choir – boys only, the tenors and basses were away at war – sang ‘The Strife is O’er, the Battle Done’, and Ed Brampton was finally consigned to his maker.

  The front of the chancel was filled with Adelaide’s sizeable family, and a respectable cross-section of the Buckingham Palace hierarchy including Tommy Lascelles, Topsy Dighton, and the Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Ulick Alexander. Further back were a few dog-eared survivors of the First War, a pall-bearer detail from his old regiment, and a couple of officers from the Coats Mission including the tiresome Toby Broadbent.

  But Guy’s eyes were scanning the crowd’s less obvious figures, guessing at their identity, watching their body language, hopelessly looking for clues.

  I’m not much good as a detective, he thought; to be successful surely you must first learn the trade, and I haven’t. I don’t know who I’m looking for and I don’t know how to look.

  As the congregation filed out he caught Adelaide’s eye but, as she was surrounded by family, all he received in return was a perfunctory nod. There’d be time to talk at the drinks party she’d arranged – but what had he got to tell her?

  That her husband had been associating with a traitor?

  ‘Did Foxy give you my message?’