Stealing the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery)

by TP Fielden

  ‘No time for tea – when the Master calls, you go. Quick-smart!’ She looked at the expression on his face. ‘What’s the matter, Mr Harford, aren’t you enjoying it here?’

  The answer is no but I won’t give you the satisfaction, thought Guy. If only the doctors would pass me fit, I’d be off like a shot.

  He picked up his notebook and trudged his way over to the Master’s office.

  ‘Aha! The Tanja Man!’

  ‘Harford, Sir Topham,’ insisted Guy.

  ‘Where on earth have you been? I asked you to come yesterday.’

  ‘Badminton, to talk to Queen Mary.’

  ‘How is Her Majesty?’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t see her. Mr Lascelles made the appointment but she must have forgotten. I think she’s in London.’

  ‘Shopping. Or begging no doubt. Now, pay attention – I asked for a constant stream of information from you on the matter of Major Brampton, but I’m not hearing anything.’

  ‘Nothing more to say, sir. As far as Tommy Lascelles is concerned, the matter’s closed. I hope his widow will be receiving a pension?’

  ‘Talk to Privy Purse about that. I’m interested to know what you’ve discovered.’

  ‘I rather think it’s a job for the coroner, sir – they know all the right questions to ask – if there’s going to be an inquest. I’ve merely asked around to see whether Major Brampton had been unhappy or depressed before his death. The general impression is he seemed perfectly fine, though of course very disappointed at not getting the appointment with the Duke of Gloucester. Why was that, by the way?’

  ‘Not suited.’

  ‘But he’d been more or less told . . .’

  ‘Not by me!’ roared the Master. His sudden burst of anger filled the high-ceilinged room. Guy glanced away, into the palace courtyard.

  ‘Temperamentally unsuited to such a demanding role. Less than diligent. Eye often off the ball. Shall I go on?’

  ‘That does seem so strange, sir, given that he . . .’

  ‘Gloucester didn’t like him,’ said Dighton, closing down Guy’s probing, though the way he said it didn’t sound particularly convincing. ‘What else have you in mind with your investigation?’

  ‘I’m taking a day off. I’ll probably go and stay with Mrs Brampton – so if you have any message for her . . .’

  ‘Talk to Privy Purse, if that’s what you mean,’ huffed Dighton. ‘And be careful what you say to her. At the same time you might get something more out of her, if you’re clever.’

  ‘Not quite sure I know what you mean, sir. What am I supposed to get out of her?’

  ‘I think she knows a lot more about Brampton’s last days than she’s let on so far.’ It was clear there were unanswered questions in the courtier’s mind that he was straining to articulate. ‘Give her a good grilling, don’t pull your punches.’

  This is no family matter, thought Guy, it’s a crude attempt to discover what’s known about Ed’s last days, and their link to Sir Topham himself. The mysterious errands Ed had been sent on, the missing notebook, the sinister connection with Suzy Easthampton – the Master of the Household clearly knew much more than he was letting on.

  Aggie had the kettle on when he got back. She seemed in a sweeter frame of mind.

  ‘How was Badminton? Her Majesty?’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’

  The clerk’s gaze flickered. It said, in a momentary flash: Couldn’t you even do a simple job like deliver a message? I arranged the travel warrants, telephoned ahead to the queen’s secretary to alert her of your arrival, fixed up the transport, sorted out the train ticket – and then you couldn’t even manage to do what you’d been sent to do?

  ‘I don’t think Mr Lascelles will be thrilled to hear that.’

  ‘Dammit, Aggie, the woman ran out on me!’

  ‘We don’t use language like that, Mr Harford. Nor do we refer to majesties as “the woman”. Remember the words of her old friend Lady Pembroke: ‘We never speak ill of a crowned head in this house.’ It’s time you learned to bite your tongue, otherwise it’ll get you a reputation. Some people round here’ – she gestured with a backward movement of her head – ‘get very bitter working in the Palace, but really it’s all a question of mind over matter. Don’t let anybody else hear you talk like that.’

  Guy sat down moodily at his desk.

  ‘Speaking of Pembrokes,’ went on Aggie, ‘the King and Queen are down at Wilton now, having a couple of days’ rest with Lord and Lady P. Pressure’s off.’

  ‘Really? The royal standard’s still flapping away on the roof. I always look to see whether they’re in – along with the rest of London.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve started doing that,’ confided Aggie, who loved to show her superior knowledge. ‘A bit of a white lie, of course, since everyone believes if the royal standard flies over the Palace, the King must be in residence.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s to fool the Germans – a good thing.’

  ‘I wonder if the Germans can see all the way from Berlin. It fools the British public, too – not so good.’

  ‘It keeps up morale, Mr Harford. I see,’ she said, picking her moment, ‘you haven’t had any more floral tributes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just wonder how it got in here, that rose. And the chalk cross on your desk. I locked up the office that night, good and proper.’

  ‘I have no idea, I told you. It’s really of no importance.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t throw it away, did you?’

  ‘I pressed it in our copy of Burke’s Peerage – nice and heavy. On the shelf behind you. It’ll have dried out in a fortnight or so.’

  Guy suddenly awoke to the realisation Rodie’s rose had turned into a guilty secret, a weapon Aggie could use against him at some future date. Now, even talking to Rodie – as he had in Claridge’s the other day – could be grounds for instant dismissal, particularly if Topham Dighton got to hear of it.

  But was Aggie, too, now spying on him – or was he imagining things? Was the pressure of work at the Palace getting on his nerves?

  ‘Thank you. Do you happen to know if there are any empty rooms in the Mews that I might use as a studio? I’m thinking of doing some painting again.’

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ said Aggie. ‘Will you be painting the rose?’

  Guy suppressed his irritation. ‘No, I’ve been asked to paint a portrait or two. I don’t know how successful an experiment it’ll be – I’ve only ever done one before – so I thought it would be wasteful to take on a studio with all the cost involved.’

  ‘Who are you going to do,’ asked Aggie, suddenly interested. ‘Man or woman? Is it a nudie you’ll be doing? I like a nice nude.’

  ‘Not at all. I may be going to paint someone quite famous, but I’m going to have to experiment on someone else first. Perhaps you’d like to volunteer.’

  ‘Never volunteer!’ Aggie rapped out the age-old service motto.

  ‘Well, I might do one of the kitchen maids then.’ Guy could tell what a mistake he’d made, equating Aggie with the lowliest of palace servants, and quickly changed the subject.

  ‘I’ve decided to go down and see Mrs Brampton. Do you think you could get me a petrol chit?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are you going back to see Queen Mary again, make it a round trip? That would make the requisition easier.’

  ‘Not necessary, I think she’s got the message – I had a long talk with Sir Stretford. But seeing Mrs Brampton is business, too.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Aggie had her nose in a book. Guy had been dismissed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was at night, in summer, that London really came alive. No matter the deadly danger from above, nothing could rob the young of their high spirits and their headlong rush into love.

  As dusk fell, Guy walked along the long tree-lined avenue in Hyde Park, the metalled path echoing with the sounds of soldiers’ boots and the squeals of their newly acquired girlfrie
nds. At the park gates, military police in their red-topped caps stood moodily about, waiting for trouble, longing to throw their weight about.

  ‘Feeling lonely, dearie?’ said a voice out of the shadows, and though in truth Guy was, he waved and smiled without looking at the painfully thin blonde a step or two away. Reaching the gates he halted and lingered, waiting for a bus to take him down to Chelsea.

  About Ed Brampton’s death, he realised, he felt entirely neutral. They’d shared an office, but Ed had been distant, polite, at no stage offering friendship to Guy. Maybe that was because Guy had known Adelaide since childhood – and probably knew more about her than Ed did.

  In addition, Ed may have suspected – as people engaged in subterfuge often do – that Guy was watching him, ready to report back to Adelaide in the country. It would help explain why he kept their conversations so short, so distant.

  The traffic on Park Lane was busy, but the buses were few and the queue was getting longer. Guy was sunk deep in thought – why, he asked himself, was he pursuing this? Was it to appease Adelaide? To right a wrong? To prove that despite the Master of the Household’s cynicism he was perfectly capable of solving a mystery?

  Am I convinced that Ed was murdered? If not, why carry on this fruitless task?

  If he was murdered, who pulled the trigger, and was Lady Easthampton involved? If her plan all along was to get close to the Duke of Gloucester, did she kill Ed out of frustration that he didn’t get that private secretary job? It didn’t make sense – there had to be something more to it than that.

  Since he was no longer in residence at his Chelsea home – that much Guy had established – could it be that by this time Ed had been living with Suzy Easthampton? Guy had got from her pathetic husband that she’d packed her bags about the time Adelaide moved to the country and Ed locked up his Markham Street house for the last time. Where did they both disappear to?

  ‘Got a light, mate?’

  ‘So sorry, I don’t smoke.’ That bus was never going to come.

  ‘That don’t matter, neither do I.’ The young man edged closer, smiling up at Guy, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Guy, smiling back.

  Abandoning his previous plan, he stepped off the pavement and was nearly run down by two cyclists, panting as they made the lengthy climb up to Marble Arch. Crossing the road, he strode past the Dorchester Hotel – where, he reflected without malice, people carried on as though war had never been declared – and plunged forward into the streets of Mayfair.

  A few minutes’ easy walking brought him to Chesterfield Gardens and the orderly if anonymous block of service flats he was seeking. The doorman was burly and bored.

  ‘Good evening. I’ve come to see Lady Easthampton.’

  ‘No you ’aven’t.’

  ‘Er . . . yes . . . Viscountess Easthampton,’ Guy insisted.

  ‘Nobody ’ere of that name,’ said the man gruffly.

  ‘Flat 12A,’ insisted Guy.

  ‘I told you, mate. You must ha’ got the wrong block.’

  Knowing my luck I probably have, thought Guy, but I do hate people being rude.

  ‘No, no. Lady Easthampton sometimes stays here, even if it isn’t her flat.’

  ‘Look, mate,’ said the man. ‘There’s enough goes on ’ere without my letting disappointed boyfriends in to cause trouble with those as has other fish to fry.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Guy, shaking his head. ‘It’s not like that at all. I’ve come with a message from Lord Easthampton.’

  ‘How many more times? Nobody ’ere of that name.’

  Guy reached for his notecase.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said the man witheringly, looking him up and down. ‘You can’t afford what I cost, mate.’

  ‘May I leave a written message, then?’

  ‘I tole you,’ said the man, squaring his shoulders. ‘Nobody ’ere of that name. Now shove off or I’ll call the law.’

  ‘Well, thank you, and sorry for troubling you.’ Guy turned on his heel and retraced his steps back to Park Lane. While waiting in the bus queue he’d almost decided to let the Ed Brampton business go – so what had made him suddenly change his mind and trail all the way over here? Was it a sense of duty, or more a deep-seated curiosity to see what a real-life Mata Hari looked like in the flesh?

  And then he realised it – he’d never seen her photograph, never heard her voice, but her story, her reputation, told him that he had to paint her.

  The bus, when it finally came, took him south to a hidden-away pub called The Surprise, lost in the jumble of tiny streets crowding the bottom end of Chelsea. It was untidy, not particularly clean, awash with beer and fogged with cigarette smoke, but it offered succour of a kind no smart West End establishment ever could.

  ‘’Ello, lovely!’ said the barmaid with a bright smile. ‘’Aven’t seen you before.’

  ‘Looking for Mr Amberley. Painter.’

  ‘Over there in the corner. Big red beard.’

  Guy tossed a half-crown on to the bar. ‘What’s he having?’

  ‘Nelson’s Blood, dear. “Pour the brandy in first,” he says, “then slow with the red stuff.”’

  ‘Make it quick with the red stuff,’ laughed Guy. ‘He’ll never know the difference.’

  He walked round the bar to where the old fellow was sitting. ‘Guy Harford,’ he said. ‘Am I addressing Adrian Amberley?’

  ‘Was it poured slowly?’ The words escaped from the beard in a whisper.

  ‘Took an age,’ lied Guy with a wink. He liked the man already. ‘I think you know Nina Hamnett,’ he went on. ‘We worked together in Paris in ’31.’

  ‘The Queen of Bohemia!’ rasped Amberley, his voice as colourful as the blotches on his cheeks. ‘I fancy she found Paris a little too fast for her taste. But perhaps it’s more your speed?’

  ‘Tangier,’ said Guy. ‘That’s my speed – when there isn’t a wretched war going on. I heard you had a spare room in your studio.’

  ‘Do you drink here often? I haven’t seen you before,’ came the cautious response. Amberley, for all Guy could tell, was thinking he might be opening his door to a Nazi spy.

  ‘Not recently. I haven’t lived in Britain for nearly ten years.’

  ‘And what do you do now?’ asked Amberley, looking askance at Guy’s appearance. ‘Looks like you have an office job.’

  ‘I work for the government.’

  ‘As an artist?’

  ‘Not exactly. I have the chance to do an exhibition but I need to do some more portraits to fill out the portfolio. In Tangier I was concentrating mostly on land and seascapes.’

  ‘A pretty rough lot in Tangier as I recall,’ said Amberley, balancing the two glasses of port and brandy in his hands, the old and the new, as if weighing one against the other. ‘They’re a pretty rough lot down here as well.’

  ‘Home from home then, you might say.’

  Amberley gave a wheezy laugh. He looked at Guy, sizing him up.

  ‘Ten bob a week,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m not supposed to sub-let, so you’ll pay me in cash and say you’re just there for the day if anyone asks. A week’s trial and if we get on then you can stay. A contribution to the gas and light can be paid in here any time after six p.m. And if you need a bed,’ he added, nodding his head firmly, ‘there’s a small room at the back. Don’t make too much noise.’

  ‘No, no, I . . .’ said Guy. ‘There’s someone I’m hoping to . . . I don’t think she . . .’

  ‘Dear fellow,’ said Amberley, ‘I can tell you haven’t done much portraiture. They get cold sitting about, poor lambs, and need a little warming up from time to time.’

  Adelaide lay quite still in the hammock, a book in her lap. Bees buzzed, the air was still; across the other side of the meadow a small herd of deer chewed lazily at the hot grass.

  ‘I wonder if you’ve ever noticed,’ she said.

  ‘Mm?’ Guy was sketching her face, half-hidden by a straw hat.

  ‘We we
re talking earlier about Ed and the Queen. You’re drawing my face, but I wonder how you’d cope with hers – she has two, you know. The lower half is all smiles and compliments, sweet words and what-have-you. But the upper half, with those hard, calculating eyes which miss nothing – I’ve never seen another face like it.’

  ‘I rarely see her,’ said Guy. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That smile moves strong men to tears – no, really, Guy, it does! It wasn’t just Ed – the charm she has, she uses it like a lethal weapon, but behind it the steel. And the ruthlessness. Without her the King wouldn’t last a day.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s brittle, bad-tempered, always seeking to find a way to belittle people. Ed told me he was inspecting the Coats Mission people up at Sandringham – you know, his little private army – and for want of something better to say he complained about the state of their cap badges.’ She laughed sardonically. ‘Trivial, petty, just trying to score a point, while there they are, ready to die for him!’

  ‘Maybe it’s her they’re ready to die for. Like poor old Ed.’

  ‘Poor chap. Poor chap.’

  Guy was thinking about the discarded portrait on the floor of Adelaide’s Chelsea house.

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘I may have done. But in the end, no, I came too late to do him any good.’

  ‘You did a rather fine picture of him, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Oh, that! I hated it. I did it to please him and he liked to see it hanging on the wall, but it’s going on the bonfire.’

  ‘Never do that with a painting. Stick it in the attic.’

  ‘The flames might do me good.’ She turned over a page of her book.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something about him which you might find painful. Do you mind?’

  ‘That he was a secret pansy?’

  ‘I think, far from it. Have you ever heard the name Suzy Easthampton?’

  She put her book down and looked at him. ‘You know, Guy, that’s exactly how one’s best friend starts a conversation when she’s about to tell you your husband is in love with another woman.’

  Guy looked at her with a steady gaze.

  ‘Oh,’ said Adelaide. ‘Oh!’