A Royal Pain

by Rhys Bowen

  He looked up at me, his big, bearded face red with effort. “My dear young lady. I am considered by most to be the premier surgeon in England, although a young pup from St. Thomas’s would no doubt dispute that fact. I just need to check whether—ah, good. Yes.”

  He looked up at the crowd that had now gathered around us. “My car and driver are waiting outside. Be good enough to summon them, my man.” This to one of the palace staff who stood nearby, wide-eyed. “And you, bring towels. We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Then he stood up with some difficulty. “Westminster is closest, I suppose, but Thomas’s is bigger and, as an old University College Hospital man, I regret to say probably better in an emergency situation. That’s it then. Carry him out to my car. We’ll go to Thomas’s.”

  I touched his arm. “Is he going to be all right? Is he going to live?”

  He looked down at me and smiled. “He’s a lucky devil. The bullet went through his right shoulder, appears to have missed his lung, and came out the other side. So no need to dig around to locate it. All he needs is cleaning and sewing up, and I can do those myself. He’s going to be devilishly sore for a while, of course, but unless he insists on throwing himself into the path of bullets on a regular basis, I can safely say that he’ll lead a long and happy life.”

  Tears flooded into my eyes. I turned away and headed back to the gardens because I didn’t want the staff to see me crying. Outside in the bright sunlight I was immediately accosted by plainclothes security men, who were now very interested to hear what I had to say. So I had to go through the story, from the arrival of the mock-princess to the episode after the communist rally the night before. They took notes, painfully slowly, and asked me the same questions over and over, while all the time all I wanted to do was be with Darcy.

  At last they let me go. I took a taxi to St. Thomas’s Hospital across the Thames. In usual infuriating hospital fashion they wouldn’t let me see Darcy for what seemed like ages. I sat in that dismal waiting room with its brown linoleum and drab green walls plastered with cheerful notices, ranging from Coughs and sneezes spread disease to You can’t catch venereal disease from lavatory seats.

  When I had badgered a passing nurse for the umpteenth time I was finally permitted to see him. He was tucked into white starched sheets and his face looked as pale as the pillow behind him. His eyes were closed and I couldn’t detect any breathing. I must have let out a little gasp because his eyes opened, then focused on me and he smiled.

  “Hello,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “How are you feeling?”

  “Floating, actually. I think they must have given me something. It’s rather nice.”

  “You knew, didn’t you?” I said, perching on the edge of his bed. “You knew she was going to do something like that?”

  “Suspected it, yes. We were tipped off that they planned to send agents over here by someone within the party in Germany, so I kept a close eye on that young lady.”

  “That’s why you were playing up to her and being so friendly?” Relief flooded through me.

  “It wasn’t exactly a hard assignment,” he said. “Now if they’d asked me to shadow the baroness—well, the poor old thing might still be alive, but it would have been a harder job.”

  I looked at him until he said, “What?”

  “Darcy—who are you?”

  “You know who I am. The Honorable Darcy O’Mara, heir to the now landless Lord Kilhenny.”

  “I meant what are you?”

  “A wild Irish boy who enjoys the occasional bit of fun and excitement,” he said, with the ghost of his usual wicked grin.

  “You’re not going to tell me any more, are you?”

  “They told me not to talk.”

  “You’re infuriating, do you know that?” I said more vehemently than I intended, in the way that one does after a shock. “You scared the daylights out of me. Don’t ever do something like that again.”

  “But if it takes something like this to get you to come willingly to my bed, then it was worth it. And I haven’t forgotten your promise.”

  “What promise?”

  “That you’d do anything if I didn’t die.”

  “You just get yourself strong enough first,” I said. I leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

  “Oh, believe me, I fully intend to be strong enough.” He reached up to touch my face.

  “There will be no more of that,” said the ward sister firmly. “In fact it’s time you went.”

  Darcy’s hand remained touching my cheek.

  “Come back soon, won’t you?” he whispered. “Don’t leave me to the mercies of that dragon.”

  “I heard that,” said the sister.

  Rannoch House

  Monday, June 27, 1932

  Diary,

  Eventful day ahead.

  Mildred arrived back in London last night and announced her intention to leave me. It seems Lady Cromer-Strode has made her an offer she can’t refuse. I tried not to smile when she imparted this sad news to me.

  Darcy will be released from hospital later today.

  Oh, and the queen has summoned me.

  “What an extraordinary thing to have happened, wasn’t it, Georgiana?” the queen said. It was several days later and order had been restored to Buckingham Palace. The press had had a field day with headlines about anarchists and assassins in our midst and the outpouring of love for the royal family had been most touching. So Hanni and her misguided friends had achieved quite the opposite of their objective.

  “Most extraordinary, ma’am.”

  “That young woman duped all of us. I still can’t imagine how she got away with it.”

  “She seized the opportunity, ma’am. From what we have been told, they had a communist agent working inside the Bavarian court. They were hoping to create instability in Germany and topple the current German government. When the real Princess Hannelore fell ill suddenly and the king wrote a letter to tell you that she could not accept your kind invitation after all, that letter was intercepted. The royal party departed for their yacht and a long cruise and the communists sent this girl in Hannelore’s place. She’s an actress, you know, and she has worked bit-parts in Hollywood. She realized that her English would sound American, hence she pretended to be a fan of American films. I must admit she played her part very well. She only slipped up once that I could tell.”

  “When was that?”

  “She said the Jungfrau was in Bavaria. Of course it’s in Switzerland. What Bavarian would not know the names of her own mountains?”

  “She was really German?”

  “Yes, but not Bavarian.”

  “So the girl was really the ringleader? She seemed so sweet and innocent.”

  “As I said, she played her part remarkably well. She’s older than eighteen, of course, but she looks remarkably young for her age. But she wasn’t the ringleader, as you put it. The maid—Irmgardt—she was the agent sent from Russia to oversee the whole thing. She was the one whose voice I heard that night in the bookshop. They caught her at Dover, trying to escape.”

  “And the baroness—was she part of their plot?”

  “Absolutely not. She was a real baroness. She hadn’t seen Hannelore for some time so she was easily deceived, but obviously her presence was becoming a threat to them. First they managed to banish her to the Dowager Countess Sophia’s, but then, when they were together again, she threatened to telephone the princess’s father. Of course that would have upset the whole apple cart. It was the maid Irmgardt who put the drug in her tea to produce a heart attack. Hanni and Edward Fotheringay had a perfect alibi, in a car with me.”

  “Horrible, utterly horrible.” The queen shuddered. “And who did kill that poor young man at the bookshop?”

  “Sidney Roberts? Hanni did it herself, of course. She was, after all, a trained assassin. One gathers that the knife had a folding blade, so she was able to hide it quite easily. You’re very lucky to be alive, ma’am. She was constantly loo
king for opportunities to kill you. She kept pestering me to take her to the palace, then to take her to see you at Sandringham.”

  “Goodness.” The queen had to take a sip of tea. “One doesn’t expect such threats in the English countryside, does one?”

  “Or from the English nobility,” I added. “I’m so glad they finally caught Edward Fotheringay trying to flee the country.”

  “Of course that boy was only half English, so one understands,” the queen said. “He had a Russian mother, didn’t he?”

  “An aristocrat, which makes it even more strange that he was seduced by communism.”

  “Young people are so strange,” the queen said. “Except you, of course. You’ve done splendidly, Georgiana. The king and I are most grateful.” She paused, looked at me and sighed.

  “And all this leaves my son no nearer to making a good match, does it?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

  “I worry what will happen to the empire when the king dies, Georgiana, if the boy can’t even choose a bride for the good of his country. There are so many suitable girls to choose from—you, for example.”

  “Oh no, ma’am,” I said. “I could never compete with Mrs. Simpson.” Besides, I thought but didn’t say out loud, my interests lie elsewhere.