Stealing the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery)

by TP Fielden

  Betsey looked round for the manservant but he had not returned.

  I wonder if he’s part of it, thought Guy, and by now he’s running for his life across Trafalgar Square.

  ‘The difficulty you faced was getting close to the Gloucesters. You managed to get the Duke of Kent to come to your table and, by the sound of it, a whole lot more than that – but it was Gloucester you wanted. That’s when you heard that Guy here might become his private secretary. So you wooed Guy with the offer of an art exhibition. And you very nearly got that invitation to Barnwell Manor. But not now, Mrs Cody, not now. Now, I’m sorry to say, a slightly less palatial establishment is waiting to welcome you. We have some people outside the front door just to make sure you get there safely.’

  ‘I . . . want . . . Granville,’ gasped Betsey, looking agitatedly round for her manservant.

  ‘He’ll find you, once we’ve had a chance to have a proper chat,’ said Rupert. ‘I just counsel you to tell the truth and tell all you know, easily and quickly, and you’ll be treated gently.’ What might happen otherwise he left unsaid, but the threat hung in the air.

  ‘And now,’ Rupert went on, ‘it’s Guy’s turn.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cody, this is about something else,’ said Guy. ‘While you were trying every avenue you could to get close to the Gloucesters, you befriended a Guards officer. His name is Toby Broadbent, he’s part of the King’s private bodyguard. You had an affair. Broadbent is a bit of a do-or-die merchant, all or nothing, and he fell for you.’

  Guy shifted his chair closer to Betsey. ‘He fell for you so much he even agreed to have an affair with Adelaide Brampton, just so he could find out more about what Ed was up to.’

  She thrust out her chin in response, refusing to be intimidated.

  ‘I’ve thought long and hard about this, and now I believe you got Broadbent to murder Edgar Brampton because Brampton had discovered your connection with the Bund. He was sent a memo – we don’t know who by – about the Bund. Pencilled in at the bottom was a list of half a dozen names with question marks against them. I didn’t see them first time round because the paper was crumpled up – but one of them was yours. He knew Broadbent was one of your young men – Broadbent couldn’t resist boasting about how chummy you were – and Ed took him to one side and warned him you were probably a Nazi spy. From that moment his days were numbered.’

  ‘I really won’t say anything,’ replied Betsey, ‘until I have Granville here.’

  ‘Will Granville want to hear about your affair with Toby Broadbent? Or all the others you’ve had since you’ve been here in London? Can he actually help you with this particular inquiry?’

  She looked round the room, seeing perhaps for the first time that the riches she’d married into, the luxurious lifestyle, the servants, were over.

  ‘Guy . . .’ she said.

  ‘You ordered Ed Brampton to be killed. I thought it was someone else, but it was you. He was a good man, he’d done nothing, and you had him killed. That is a capital offence, Betsey, which means if you are found guilty you’ll go to the scaffold. What I suggest you do is help Rupert here as much as you can, and maybe the penalty won’t be quite so final. That’s up to you.’

  Betsey Cody got up, smoothed her skirt, looked round for a hat.

  ‘It’s war,’ she said bleakly. ‘You take what comes. No point in complaining.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Why? I look at you, Mr Harford, and I wonder if you could ever know what love is, what love does – I don’t think you do. Max Kuhn is the most extraordinary man I have ever met. By now he should be a president or a prime minister, but he believes in achieving things a different way. Germany will win the war, and there is every chance the Duke of Gloucester will become Regent under Adolf Hitler – nothing you can do to stop it! He’s the right man at the right time! All I set out to do is help in my small way for that to happen, with the least unhappiness and disruption to all concerned.’

  ‘You think the Duke of Gloucester would do it? Betray his country, betray the very family he comes from?’

  ‘All men want power. If they smell it, they reach for it – grab it. I know this. They can’t resist!’

  ‘And you think that the “least unhappiness” includes the murder of an innocent bystander? He was a decent man, Betsey!’

  ‘He should have kept out of the way.’

  She paused imperiously for a moment.

  ‘Now, where’s my carriage?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘YOU STUPID BLOODY TANJA MAN!’

  They finally caught up with Sir Topham Dighton in the Centre Room, the ornate barn at the front end of the Palace decorated with rare chinoiserie, tapestries, and carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The ceiling-height casement doors were open, and beyond was the famous balcony where generations of royals had pledged themselves to their people with languid waves of the hand.

  The Master of the Household had not been warned of their approach, and when Guy introduced Rupe, his response was to flick at his lapel as if swatting away a fly. Topsy did not deal with people he did not know.

  All too soon, though, he was to learn the purpose of their mission. Marooned in this empty place, miles from his office, the all-powerful Master suddenly looked vulnerable. But he fought like a tiger.

  ‘You stupid bloody Tanja Man!’ he repeated, spitting the words out. ‘You come here into this Palace, you’re incompetent, can’t even do the simplest jobs properly, and you dare to question what I do!’

  ‘If you recall, Sir Topham, it was you who started it. With the constant stream of questions about how the inquiry was going. You never let up, and for a time to me it seemed you really did want an answer to Ed Brampton’s death.

  ‘Well, now I’ve got it, and later this morning Captain Broadbent will be arrested for murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ spluttered the old man. ‘Murder? You can’t go accusing trusted royal servants of murder without any evidence!’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I wonder,’ bristled Dighton, ‘how you’re going to convince someone in authority that anybody killed anybody. You were given the task of investigating Brampton’s death and you came up with no evidence – no evidence whatever! – to point to anything other than suicide. That’s you, Harford – the official investigator! Nobody’s said anything about murder! And frankly it’s a bit late in the day to be changing your mind and saying it was!’

  You’re a wily old man, thought Guy – no wonder you’ve lasted so long at the top. No wonder successive kings have put their faith in you, what with your aristocratic bearing, your ancient family lineage, and your military grip on their palaces. But you stepped over the line.

  ‘It was on your instructions that when Major Brampton was found, his body was taken away before a doctor had attended the scene.’

  ‘We can’t have unfortunate deaths like that within the Royal Verge.’

  ‘The weapon that killed him was taken away, the walls washed down, everything put back in its place. Did you never think that this was a police matter? I understand the palace force wasn’t informed until thirty-six hours after Ed died, and by that stage all the evidence had been cleared away. Is that a right and proper procedure, war or no war?’

  ‘I refer you to my previous answer.’ Dighton was unbending.

  ‘Toby Broadbent was working for you, was he not?’

  ‘He’s a soldier. Attached to the Coats Mission. Not part of the Royal Household. That’s who works for me, Harford – royal servants, not Guardsmen!’

  ‘But he came to your office daily. What were you talking about?’

  ‘You know the Mission has organised three safe houses for Their Majesties to withdraw to in the event of an invasion. The Mission guards the houses as well as Their Majesties – what d’you suppose they eat? Who gives them dinner? Puts sheets on their beds? Makes sure the telephones work? And that the secret hidey-holes have been prepared? That’s my job, Harford, my job. Broadbent
is the liaison officer between the Mission and the Household. We talk about these things. Does that answer your question?’

  Good, thought Guy, very good. But not good enough.

  ‘Is that all you talk about, Sir Topham?’

  The old man strode towards the balcony and turned. Behind him was the backcloth of the Victoria Memorial and beyond it the long straight stretch of The Mall. As he stood in the window, he did indeed look like the master of all he surveyed.

  ‘I command an army of my own here,’ he said. ‘There are secretaries and clerks and typists. There are telephonists, carpenters and plumbers. There are gardeners, chauffeurs and coachmen, upholsterers, seamstresses, mechanics, engineers – shall I go on?’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘These are the people who occupy my time. Not a man with a pistol creeping down a corridor to do away with a has-been army officer who’s only employed here as a kindness.’

  ‘So you do think Ed Brampton was murdered.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense! What bloody rot!’ said the old man, but as he spoke he was backing away through the window on to the balcony. Guy and Rupert followed him.

  ‘Let’s put to one side whether Broadbent is a murderer,’ said Rupe, ‘and talk about the Mistery. There’s quite a lot you can tell us about that, I think.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Dighton grimly.

  ‘The Mistery believe the country, as it’s being run, is going to the dogs. They sneer at Churchill’s failures, and see a better way of running things. They are a powerful chain of like-minded individuals who believe in using their underground network to force change. And they would probably prefer to see the Duke of Gloucester on the throne than the present incumbent because he better suits their taste. Am I right?’

  The old man glowered. ‘So far as I know, the English Mistery disbanded before the war. Whatever arguments they may have had have been packed away for the duration. They’re a spent force.’

  ‘They would be, were it not for you, Sir Topham. You’ve been rallying them, drawing them back together. You’re an educated man and you know the meaning of the word “sedition” – but in case you need reminding, it is “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch”. And that is what you’ve been doing. Drawing together and encouraging a group of people whose idea is to dismantle the state apparatus and run things to their advantage and according to their own doctrine. Sir Topham, we have many enemies just the other side of the English Channel. It’s 1941, and we are at war. Britain doesn’t need an enemy within.’

  ‘You . . . whatever your name is . . . you, and this Tanja Man, have absolutely no idea what’s going on,’ sneered Dighton. ‘You’re outsiders, you don’t know how things work.’

  ‘Does making things “work” include blackmailing needy royal servants into illegal acts?’ burst in Guy. ‘You got Ed Brampton a job just so you could use him for your secret activities. You saved him from being a door-to-door salesman. But you told him he was there on sufferance and if he didn’t do your bidding – running round after these Mistery characters – he’d be out again.’

  ‘He was a very weak fellow. Not really suited to palace work.’

  ‘He was devoted to the job. Devoted to Her Majesty. And you couldn’t care less that one of your underlings killed him.’

  ‘You have no proof,’ insisted the old man, turning his back on them. He occupied the position normally reserved for the sovereign on royal occasions, right in the centre of the balcony, and appeared to be gazing across the park towards a bandstand in the far distance.

  ‘Leave me alone for a moment,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I am collecting my thoughts. Go back inside and I will have something to say when I come back in.’

  Guy and Rupert looked at each other and nodded. They went inside through the window and turned to look back.

  Sir Topham Dighton, the 13th baronet of Baxendale Parva, Master of the Royal Household, a man whose family had served the nation with distinction for a thousand years, was no longer there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Honestly, Guy, you’re bloomin’ amazing!’

  They were sitting in Guy’s studio in Tite Street. The last of the summer sun had saved itself for this moment and now it was pouring in through the vast artist’s window.

  ‘Not really, it was Rupe,’ said Guy modestly.

  ‘It was Rodie,’ said Rupert.

  Instead of whisky there was wine and a picnic of wartime remnants. It was Saturday afternoon, and for once the capital city was at peace with itself and the world. Down below on the Embankment, young couples walked hand in hand and the occasional motorboat whizzed upriver in pursuit of pleasure.

  On the easel by the window were the first outlines of Rodie’s portrait – sure, strong, promising. Rodie was worried that anything more Guy did to the canvas might spoil the magic of this ghostly silhouette, but Guy knew it would work; the magic of Tangier had not deserted him.

  ‘What’ll happen to Betsey?’ he asked. ‘Just for a moment I thought she was fun, a bit of an adornment to the social scene. How easy to get it so wrong!’

  ‘Not what you’d expect,’ replied Rupe. ‘No announcements, no handcuffs, no publicity. We desperately want America to come into this war. We can’t suddenly have a show trial accusing one of its citizens of ordering the killing of a trusted Buckingham Palace courtier. And of trying to murder the King.’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . did you say murder the King?’

  ‘Oh, Guy . . . ! Did you think these people were going to hang around on the off chance that His Majesty might fall under a London bus one day? Not ruddy likely – they wanted to win the war, and quickly!’

  ‘But how?’

  Rupert shrugged. ‘It was Betsey’s brilliant plan to get one of the King’s own personal bodyguards to murder him – and that’s when she set out to seduce Toby Broadbent. It couldn’t have been easier. Broadbent fell head over heels – for her money, for the glamour and the prestige. He’s a Guards officer, which to most people seems like being top of the tree, socially, but the people Betsey mixes with are way, way above that. He was bowled over by the introductions she made, the doors she opened.’

  Guy looked in astonishment at his flatmate. ‘But . . . murder King George VI? Surely the outfit he belongs to is pledged to defend the King’s life to the last round, the last man?’

  Rupert nodded. ‘You’re right. And that’s where Betsey came unstuck. Broadbent didn’t mind a bit of skulduggery – didn’t even mind engineering Gloucester on to the throne if the circumstances were right – but kill his own sovereign? It went against everything he’d been trained to do, and I think he just told Betsey he couldn’t do it.’

  Guy bit his lip. ‘He was still prepared to do in old Ed, though.’

  ‘He had to. Brampton knew too much.’

  ‘Poor man. So what’ll happen to Betsey now?’

  ‘She’ll be sent back to the States and someone high up will have to make a decision about what’s to be done with her. Her ex-husband Max Kuhn has been arrested, and he’ll probably join his brother in Sing Sing. I have the feeling the German-American Bund is on the way out.’

  ‘Toby Broadbent?’

  ‘By rights he should be tried for murder. And for treason, too – after all, he knew about the plot to kill the King and did nothing to stop it – but again it’s tricky . . . Just think of the court case – King’s bodyguard plans to assassinate the sovereign. What d’you think that would do to public morale?’

  Guy nodded. ‘I talked to Tommy Lascelles on the telephone just now. Broadbent was whisked away from his duties with the Coats Mission first thing this morning. My guess is within twenty-four hours he’ll be chosen for a dangerous mission somewhere where the chances of survival are slim.’

  ‘No more than he deserves,’ said Rupert bleakly, finishing his glass and getting up.

  ‘One last thing – what about the Eng
lish Mistery? Such a weird bunch of people, but clearly still a terrible danger in wartime.’

  ‘Without Dighton to corral them together I think they’ll quickly fizzle out,’ said Rupert. ‘We’re keeping an eye on them obviously. But let’s hear it for Rodie – if it hadn’t been for her, who knows what would have happened?’

  She wasn’t listening.

  ‘Are we going dancin’ later?’ she said, looking down from the window on to the young lovers strolling the Embankment beneath. ‘They’ve got Joe Loss at the Paramount!’

  ‘I want to do some more work on your picture,’ said Guy. ‘You go with Rupe.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Rupe. ‘Busy.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you then,’ said Rodie happily, pouring wine.

  Guy looked across the room at his flatmate. ‘How would you feel if I said I was moving out?’ he asked. ‘Adrian Amberley, my landlord here, is joining the exodus to the country and I can have this place for the duration. Leave you with a bit more space in Victoria. Unless you’re still spying on me.’

  ‘It was never that. You needed looking after when you came back from Tangier. I think you can manage on your own now. Only one thing, Guy.’

  ‘What’s that?

  ‘Take the ruddy parrot with you.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This work of fiction is based on fact. During the Second World War, two of King George VI’s brothers, David Windsor and Harry Gloucester, both believed that in the event of the King’s death or infirmity, they had the best right to the throne.

  In the wake of the 1936 Abdication, the third brother, George Kent, was sounded out on the possibility of taking the throne. He had every expectation that offer would be renewed.

  The English Mistery, an aristocratic revivalist group with political ambitions, supported the monarchy but were vehemently misogynistic. They would have viewed the prospect of Princess Elizabeth taking the throne with dismay.

  The German-American Bund, the largest group of Nazis outside the European mainland, had supporters on the British mainland.