A Three Dog Problem

by S. J. Bennett

  ‘And the cut-up clothes three days before she died.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Curious, those clothes,’ Strong said in passing. ‘Did you see the descriptions? Antique stuff – what d’you call it? – vintage. Designer, some of it. Makes her sound quite . . .’

  ‘Unusual?’ Highgate suggested.

  ‘Outgoing. Extrovert. And yet, everyone says she was a self-contained—’

  ‘Superbitch,’ Highgate finished off for him, roughly quoting what they’d been told. They agreed it was odd.

  ‘Main suspects were the Simpson woman and Mrs Arabella Moore, whose husband was sacked when he failed to replace Harris successfully,’ Highgate said. ‘The Simpson woman’s out, because she wasn’t in Scotland at the right time. But from what I’ve heard around the Palace, they were practically queueing up. Do these notes strike you as a woman’s work?’

  They looked at them again, together, studying the style and content. It was hard to decide. Words such as ‘hag’ and ‘harridan’ were regularly repeated, along with ‘shrivelled-up’ (hyphenated) ‘shrew’ (alliterated). They knew from experience that on paper a woman could be as cruel to another woman as a man.

  They moved on, running through the messages received by the lady in the catering office, Leonie Baxter, who’d been up in Scotland in the second wave of servants, but had come back early to help prepare the Palace. Her harassment had started in July and included misogynist Twitter trolling as well as notes. Cynthia Harris didn’t have a social media account, which might explain the difference. The paper notes, all in stencilled capital letters, were left in similar places: bag, coat pocket, desk drawer. Mrs Baxter, too, was unpopular in certain quarters, with a reputation for being ‘difficult’. She was a junior manager on the team that dealt with the entertainment budget – but most of her time was spent advocating for women’s rights within the Household: more comfortable uniforms, more women’s toilets, better career structures. She regularly pointed out that all the senior positions were occupied by men.

  ‘Except at the very top, ha ha,’ Highgate noted.

  ‘She sounds like a bit of a pain,’ Strong muttered.

  ‘You can’t say that these days, boss,’ Highgate warned him. ‘Women’s rights are human rights. Or equal rights, same difference.’

  ‘Yep, no problem, but there’s ways and ways of asking for them.’

  ‘Politely, you mean?’ his junior suggested.

  ‘In a friendly sort of way, yes. What’s the matter with that?’

  ‘Thin ice, boss,’ Highgate said with a shrug. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Thin ice.’ He scrolled through his notes. ‘Anyway, she’s disliked, but no obvious enemies. If anything, she was quite friendly with Arabella Moore. And then there’s the van Renen girl, and everyone likes her. No enemies at all.’

  ‘Or someone who’s keeping himself well hidden.’

  ‘If he’s even a part of this. He could be what he says he is: a Tinder date from outside the Palace.’

  ‘Except van Renen says he isn’t,’ Strong pointed out. ‘When are you seeing her?’

  ‘Next week,’ Highgate said. ‘She wasn’t happy about it, but when I told her the Queen had personally asked us to sort it out, she said OK.’

  ‘Good. And when do we get the handwriting analysis back on the stencils, by the way? I’m expecting a full character analysis from how much pressure he uses to dot the i’s.’

  Highgate threw him a look. ‘God knows. Two to three weeks, they say, and I’ve pulled the whole royal thing, honestly. It’s austerity cuts. Everything has a waiting list. Same story with the tech guys looking into the social media stuff. They’re knee-deep in kiddie porn. It’s a long queue.’

  Strong grunted. ‘’Twas ever thus,’ he said. ‘Believe me, it wasn’t all exactly a bed of roses ten years ago.’

  ‘I was in sixth form then,’ Highgate said cheerfully. ‘I wouldn’t know. Of course, if Mrs Harris was murdered . . .’

  ‘We’d be at the front of the queue. Trust me, I’ve thought of that,’ Strong assured him. ‘Not that I’d wish it on her. But it would make our lives a hell of a lot easier.’

  They wound it up for the night.

  Despite his experience at Windsor Castle, Strong had somehow assumed that solving a crime at Buckingham Palace would be easier than normal. In fact, it was harder. He’d liked to have seen evidence of how Cynthia Harris was feeling the night she died. It was a shame there was no CCTV of her. The one interior camera on the ground floor of the North Wing had been on the blink for weeks. You’d think the place would be bristling with them, but apparently Prince Philip didn’t approve of ‘bloody spycams everywhere’, despite the Queen once being hassled in her own bedroom by a man who literally wandered in. She’d kept the man talking until a servant arrived, as you do with a total stranger in your bedroom. That woman was made of steel – another reason he was nervous about tomorrow. There was a plan to upgrade the security system, about thirty years too late, but it was waiting for some sort of parliamentary approval. Who’d be a royal, eh?

  Chapter 14

  S

  holto Harvie came downstairs on Monday to find Rozie surreptitiously taking pictures of his sitting room on her phone. She quickly pocketed the offending article, but he’d heard the shutter noise from the stairs. She grinned at him guiltily from the hearth.

  She was beautifully lit by the morning sun that poured through the east-facing window. She would make a wonderful model, he thought, for a man who knew how to paint. Or, rather, who could paint. Sholto knew exactly how, but what he’d gained in understanding, he almost entirely lacked in talent. He could still admire the rounded planes of her face, the strength of that short, sharp hair, counterbalanced by the sculptural quality of her smile. More than that, he liked the way she inhabited the kimono, the room, the house. She was a girl with the world at her feet and her life ahead of her. She thought she knew, but she had no idea, really, how far this job could propel her. She needed it to, he thought. She didn’t strike him as the sort to marry a man for his money, so she’d have to find a way of making it herself.

  Was it Rozie he wanted to help, or the Boss? He couldn’t really decide. One had charmed him thirty years ago, and one was doing it now. He felt guilty that she had come all the way here to talk about a painting that was obviously very dear to Her Majesty, and which must have disappeared while he was working at St James’s Palace, but he couldn’t give her the information she needed. He wasn’t sure what help he could provide – very little probably – but he’d do as much as he was able, to make amends.

  After breakfast, she asked him again about a refurbishment in the summer of 1986. He knew he’d been vague last night. It was all a very long time ago.

  ‘I’m racking my brains,’ he said, rubbing vigorously at a pot with his drying-up cloth, ‘but I didn’t have much to do with BP – beyond the objects inside it. I don’t think I even knew there was a refurbishment.’

  ‘Ah, well. It was a long shot.’ Rozie was disappointed. The Queen had seemed so optimistic.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I hate to let Her Majesty down. Absolutely hate it. I’ll keep thinking.’

  *

  Rozie thought he’d forgotten, but after lunch he suggested a walk in the woods behind the house and, as they tramped up the path, he said, ‘There’s something the Boss perhaps ought to know.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Watch out for roots and rabbit holes. They’re a terrible hazard. Oh, I forgot – you’ve done obstacle courses in the army. What was I . . .? Oh, yes. Things going missing back in the eighties. I wonder if she’s aware of the Breakages Business. I think probably not.’

  ‘The Breakages Business?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Up to the left here and over the stile. There’s the most marvellous view coming up. Where was I?’

  Rozie reminded him.

  ‘Aha! Sorry. I just love it out here, don’t you? Especially on a day like this. Turn right
along the path. We’re nearly there. You see, if you lived round here you could keep horses. I don’t ride, but I suppose you must, if you were in the Royal Horse Artillery. You do? Oh yes, sorry, sorry, the Breakages Business. I s’pose they got the name from insurance fraud. You know . . . “breakages”. There were a few of them in the gang, not more than three or four, I should say, but their racket was to offload things that weren’t needed any more. Or sometimes suppliers would be told a delivery wasn’t up to scratch and it would be replaced, without letting the finance people know. That sort of thing. Ah, here we are. If you stop right there and look through the gap in the hedge, isn’t that marvellous? I like to think you can see halfway to Bath. Just glorious, rolling countryside. It makes you glad to be in England, doesn’t it?’

  Sholto stood beside her in his battered shooting coat and country boots, puffing and grinning. His cheeks were red from exertion and he steadied himself with a hefty walking stick. Rozie dutifully admired the graded greens of hills and hedges, but she had suddenly lost interest in where they were going.

  ‘Insurance fraud?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not exactly, but that’s what it was like,’ he conceded. ‘I never got the full gist of it. Just the odd mention in the staff club, in the days when we were allowed to drink. I should have said something – and I did – but it wasn’t really my job. I was just a painting filer.’

  ‘So what exactly were they doing? As far as you knew?’

  He sighed. ‘I think it worked like this. Things were catalogued across all the royal palaces in London. If it counted as art or antique furniture, it was done by the Royal Collection. If it was standard furniture and fittings, it was done by the Works Department, I think it was. That probably doesn’t even exist now – there have been so many reorganisations.’

  ‘I know,’ Rozie agreed. ‘I found that out the hard way.’

  He looked sympathetic. ‘Anyway, some of it’s on display, but a lot is in storage. If you want to find something, you consult the catalogue. If it’s not in the catalogue, it kind of doesn’t exist. The Breakages Business was all about spiriting things away that wouldn’t be missed. Small things, weird presents that were given a hundred years ago and never seen since, slightly worn-out things. There’s an art to working out when something’s beyond repair. The Queen has always run a tight ship and they were supposed to pass things on to Balmoral or Sandringham, but it wasn’t always appropriate, or possible. And they worked out a way of – at least, this is what I think they did, from conversations in the bar, just the odd passing reference, you know – they worked out how to siphon them off. Sell them on and keep the profits. Nice little earner. Not Gainsboroughs, or Crown Jewels or anything. Plates. Rugs. Unwanted gifts. I mean, the Queen gets hundreds of gifts a year. Did you know she was given hundreds of pairs of nylon stockings for her wedding? Literally hundreds. And five hundred tins of pineapple. It mounts up. You can’t give them all to charity. Where d’you put them? The clever part was having someone who worked in the archives, who could adapt the catalogue to fit. As I say, they didn’t do it with paintings, as far as I know, or I’d have put a stop to it myself. But maybe there was one. It would make sense, if they’d been refurbishing the Queen’s bedroom. Anyway, it was decades ago and it probably won’t help you now.’

  ‘It might,’ Rozie said.

  He smiled and turned to lead the way back downhill towards the house. ‘I hope so. If it does, tell the Boss you got it from me.’

  *

  That night it was cold enough to justify a log fire. The woodsmoke reminded Rozie of the gorgeous scent in her bedroom.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  ‘My dear, you can’t afford it. A candle called “Ernesto”. It’s supposed to remind one of the cigar smoke of revolutionaries. I’ve always adored it.’

  He played Nina Simone and a French rap artist called MC Solaar – his musical tastes were broad – and they got talking about Paris, where she had spent one idyllic summer before joining the bank, and he’d spent two years studying Leonardo at the Louvre. She introduced him to Fela Kuti and some of her favourite Afrobeat stars. He was instantly into it. It was as if they’d known each other for years.

  ‘You can come here any time, you know,’ he said. ‘Just call. If I’m on a cruise, I’ll arrange for someone to give you the key. Think of it as your second home. I know you’d look after it. And the herbs could always do with cutting.’

  She could tell he meant it. Rozie wondered what it was about her that had fired this connection. She sensed they shared something that neither found very often in other people. A love of art and music and beautiful things, yes, but she knew loads of friends who had that too. It was something about this art, this music, these things. And it wasn’t in any way sexual or crude, as Lulu Arantes had suggested. She felt perfectly safe with him.

  Sholto made it easy. He understood the difficulties that normally came with her job. Most new people she met wanted the low-down on the Queen, Kate (always Kate) and the politics. Sholto asked about none of it, which was refreshing. Even the body by the pool. She’d mentioned it, but when he saw the look on her face he said, ‘I know. It must be very hard,’ and didn’t push it. He didn’t want the Queen’s inner thoughts on Brexit. ‘Let us never talk of it.’ Amen to that. She should really be driving back this evening, to be fresh for work in the morning, but he had offered another night and she couldn’t resist. She’d rise at dawn and burn up the motorway in the Mini.

  And as soon as she got to London, she’d buy that expensive candle he said she couldn’t afford.

  Chapter 15

  U

  p at dawn on Tuesday, Rozie breezed up the M4 to the sounds of Farming Today on Radio 4. It was almost a straight line due east to the Palace. She was back in London before the traffic clogged the roads, feeling fully recharged, and managed to wangle a precious parking space in the Royal Mews, so that she even had time to nip up to her room in the West Wing and change.

  Buying the candle would be a crazy extravagance. She’d looked it up online and the cheapest version was over sixty pounds. Her mother must never know. But she could imagine it now, as she fetched a skirt and jacket out of the wardrobe, filling this little room with heady scents of tobacco, leather and rum. She would have flowers by the bed: just a small posy of . . . something. She wasn’t an expert on flowers, but she was pretty sure she could do a deal with the Palace florist, and she would learn how to make coffee that fantastic if it killed her.

  Had Sholto really meant it about the spare room in The Old Haberdashery? He’d seemed sincere enough. The idea of having a bolthole to escape to whenever she needed it was . . . it was almost unimaginable for a girl from a Notting Hill housing estate. It was the kind of thing her posh friends had had at uni and in the army. ‘Oh, you must come to Shropshire this summer. My parents will be away. It’ll be just us and the dogs. It’s an absolute tip and a bugger to heat. You can have one of the spare rooms.’ And her bosses at the bank, of course, whose houses were never ‘absolute tips’, thanks to small armies of housekeepers and gardeners. The Queen had three such places: two castles and a country estate – but she was the Queen, so fair enough. For Rozie, a cosy single room with a Cézanne on the landing wall outside would do nicely.

  She put on the skirt, changed her shirt for a fresh one, and was slipping into her signature heels when she noticed something peeking out from between the pillows on the bed. It was the pale white corner of an envelope.

  For a moment she felt as if she was free-falling into an abyss, so hard and fast she almost reached out for a belay rope. Her head was full of the buzzing of bees.

  Knowing what it was, she forced herself to walk across the floor, bend down and pick up the paper that burned at her touch. In here. In her bedroom. With slightly shaking hands, she had to press hard to get the traction she needed to tear it open. The sender had gummed it closed. Would there be saliva traces? Even now she was wondering how to find him and stop him. Her c
hest was tight, her heart pumped fast. Her mouth was dry.

  The note inside was folded three times, like the last one. She pulled it out between two fingertips. Same cheap paper as before. Heart hammering, she scanned the contents. Under two lines of writing in capital letters like before, there were the same crude doodles of jungle life, and a new one, horizontal across the bottom: a knife.

  She even recognised the type. Though roughly sketched in blue biro, it was clearly a double-edged fighting knife, a Fairbairn Sykes, shaped like a dagger, as used by the Commandos in the Second World War. Those knives were legendary in the forces. She had seen a couple out in Afghanistan and been offered one as a gift. Outside the kitchen or army-sanctioned combat, knives were not her thing, though, and she had politely refused. Now, she folded the note, put it back in its envelope, and stood for a full minute, trying to numb herself to the shock.

  You thought you fitted in. You grew up within walking distance of this place. You got the grades, learned your manners, made your family proud. The army used you as a bloody poster girl – which was one of the reasons she’d left it in the end – and yet whatever you did, wherever you went, there was always someone ready to shame you, dismiss you, erase you. The hurt burned. She wanted to punch something very hard. She wanted to tear this room apart and scream until she ran out of breath.

  But she stood silently, listening to her shallow breathing, waiting for the moment to pass.

  Because it was what he wanted, this private humiliation she did not deserve. He would not get it.

  When she had decided what to do, she slid the envelope into the front pocket of her laptop bag, next to her office pass. Then she went to her wardrobe, pulled out a pile of hoodies and tracksuit trousers and retrieved a box of trainers at the bottom. From this, she took out the first envelope, which had been sitting underneath the trainers inside. She slid it into the laptop bag beside the new one.