A Death in Diamonds

‘Yes, very good ones.’ He gave her a knowing grin, before frowning slightly. ‘I didn’t think you liked them, though. Did you eat ’em?’

‘No, I didn’t. Actually, I’m quite fond of oysters.’ She returned his grin. ‘But I simply can’t eat them abroad.’

‘I think we can trust the Frogs, on this occasion. They’ll hardly try to poison you. And they do oysters better than anyone. Always did.’

‘I don’t doubt that. It’s not the French, it’s the oysters themselves. One never knows. And an upset tummy would be a disaster.’

‘I suppose it would. Pity. They were top-hole.’

The Queen adjusted her fur around her shoulders and glanced out at the twinkling lights on the Place de la Concorde. They would be back at the embassy soon. She loved this grand square by the river, with a backdrop provided by the classical Crillon Hotel, a central ancient obelisk, topped with gold, and a general air of panache. But it did not escape her memory that a king and his family had literally lost their heads here.

Should she tell Philip what she was really thinking?

The limousine traced the edges of the square and drove down the Rue Royale. The last time she and her husband were here in ’48, she had been secretly pregnant with Charles. Oh, to be twenty-two, newly married and hopelessly in love, in Paris for the first time, while everyone went wild all around them, still carrying the joy of Liberation. What a trip that had been.

She didn’t think, before they arrived two days ago, that they could possibly repeat that experience – not now she was the grand old age of thirty, with two children at home and all the cares of state, and the endless unfounded marital rumours one had to endure. But tonight, the Parisians thronged the streets as enthusiastically as ever. She was touched beyond measure. Philip was right: she doubted very much indeed that they had tried to poison her, or undermine her with a dodgy huître.

And yet . . .

The Queen asked for little when she went abroad. She had a strong constitution and decent stamina, was happy to work to a punishing schedule and ate almost anything that was put in front of her. However, shellfish were a rare but firm exception. One simply couldn’t fulfil one’s duties if one was doubled over with stomach cramps; her Private Office always made that clear. Nevertheless, last night she had been served six oysters à la sauce mignonette avec fraises et champagne, as if nothing had been said.

It would be easy to put it down to a simple muddle. Inevitably, little things were always going wrong and usually it was terribly funny. But there had also been the question of the missing speech.

Twenty-four hours ago, her reply to the toast from the President of France was set to be the pièce de résistance of her first day in France. It was a reminder that she spoke fluent French and a hymn of praise to the Entente Cordiale that bound two nations whose joint sacrifices had won a war against terrible odds. The text wasn’t long, but it had been weeks in the making and she had practised it endlessly.

Then, an hour before she was due leave for the Élysée Palace to deliver it, her private secretary had approached her, pale as death, and announced that both it and all copies and carbons had gone missing. He and the ambassador were desperately scrabbling to put something new together, but she knew it wouldn’t be the same. There was a high risk that speaking unfamiliar phrases in her second language would lose most of the speech’s power.

By a stroke of luck, she had remembered that one of the later drafts of the original had come back from the typing pool at Buckingham Palace with a couple of excellent suggestions, in perfect, idiomatic French. It had occurred to the Queen that the secretary in question might have kept a carbon of her own, and she must have done, because fifty minutes later she was dictating it down the telephone to the private secretary himself. Disaster was averted.

That temporary loss of the original, on its own, one might have put down to misfortune. But all copies and carbons? Really?

And now, on top of those near disasters, the unguarded look of disgust directed at the pressing crowd around her at the Louvre shed a new light on everything. Someone most definitely did not want this visit to succeed. Someone in her own circle. Someone she had always trusted implicitly until tonight.

The Queen recognised that on this evidence of missing carbons and unexpected shellfish and sour expressions, it would be easy to say she had a young mother’s overactive imagination, or that she was tired and emotional after two busy days abroad and developing an unhealthy complex of some sort. None of which she dared be accused of, when this visit was so important.

Anyway, at this moment what could she or Philip do? As the car turned left into the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, she kept her thoughts to herself.

Chapter 2