A Death in Diamonds

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you suggesting my garden is an overgrown jungle, by any chance, Carole? True, it’s so full of trees and bushes we wouldn’t have seen a thing, but the chickens would have clucked the place down. They get furious if their sleep’s disturbed. And Gregory would have gone absolutely berserk.’

Gregory Peck was the name of Deborah’s cockerel, who was infamous in the Boltons for his dawn alarm. He was only kept alive by the fact that the neighbours were grateful for her little flock’s fresh eggs. Gregory was touchy and territorial, and he’d have crowed the place down if anyone had leaped over their garden wall. But that night he’d been perfectly quiet until dawn.

‘Did anyone else see anything?’ the rocket designer wondered.

‘The police have been tramping round all the gardens, looking for clues,’ Deborah said. ‘As you can imagine, Gregory didn’t approve. If someone had got in, they could’ve run down the little side passage, I suppose. I asked Mike, our chauffeur, whose house is on the street . . .’

‘Your chauffer lives there?’ the press baron’s wife asked. ‘Practically next door?’

‘Five doors down.’ Deborah and Paul were among the few residents of the Boltons who could still afford to keep the original mews house on.

‘He must know something?’ Carole said, with her lovely Californian twang. ‘Did he see the people going in? Or coming out? Were they in cahoots? Don’t you love that word? Cahoots. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’

‘Mike didn’t see a thing. Not that night. But . . .’ Deborah lowered her voice and they all leaned in. ‘He’s heard stories about other couples. Going into that very house. On other nights.’

‘The dean’s house?’

‘Uh-huh. They were always very proper,’ she added, using the British term. ‘Well dressed in their dickie bows and furs. They’d be dropped off by cab and disappear straight inside.’

‘No!’

‘Oh yes. He has it on good authority. The thing about Mike is, he’ll talk to anyone. He’s a fount of knowledge. Never talk in the car, that’s what I’ve learned. Chauffeurs say nothing, but they hear everything.’

‘So the dean’s house was a . . . knocking shop?’ Carole’s companion, a big game hunter, asked, with a sidelong glance at the Queen. She felt dreadful for poor Clement Moreton, but didn’t want to interrupt the conversation.

‘I dread to think what it was,’ Deborah said. ‘Perhaps he was running a very upmarket bedsit. Who knows?’

‘Did your man hear anything that night?’

‘Well . . . he thinks he heard a gunshot,’ Deborah admitted, with a look of innocent mischief that had been one of her calling cards in Hollywood.

There was a communal intake of breath and then the questions came thick and fast.

‘A what?’

‘Gunshot?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘That never got mentioned,’ the press baron’s wife remarked, looking peeved that her husband’s many papers had missed it.

‘Well, I know,’ Deborah agreed. ‘So maybe it was a car backfiring, but Mike swears he heard something. At around two or three in the morning, All I know is, it didn’t set Gregory off, so it wasn’t in our backyard.’

The conversation moved on to other topics and the big game hunter decided to tell the Queen in great detail about the drama of his recent visit to Tanganyika. She waited for half an hour, wondering if the subject of what had happened in the mews would come around again. Keen for more information, she eventually did the only thing she could think of, and spilled the remains of her martini on her dress.

‘Oh, how clumsy. Deborah, you wouldn’t mind helping me sponge this off, would you?’

Miss Fairdale, nominated for two Oscars, was always a good sport. They perched side by side on the edge of the bathtub, doing the best they could with a damp flannel on the satin skirt. The Queen took the opportunity to ask after Deborah’s daughter, Bridget. ‘She must be quite grown up now.’

‘Oh, she’s certainly that, ma’am. She’s seventeen and she hates me.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t!’

‘She tells me she does, in no uncertain terms. I’m bourgeois and conventional. I’m too concerned with my appearance. I don’t care about the future.’

‘Gosh, that sounds rather exhausting.’

‘Oh, she loves me to bits. You’ve got all this to come, ma’am. How are your babies?’

‘They’re very well,’ the Queen said. ‘Anne’s determined to do everything Charles can do, and better. But it’s hard if you’re six and your brother will insist on being eight and a half.’

‘I doubt she lets that get in her way.’

‘No, she certainly doesn’t. And if she thinks I’m bourgeois and conventional, she certainly hasn’t told me so. By the way, I wanted to ask you something . . . Paul’s a member of the Artemis Club, isn’t he?’

Deborah nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Did he hear any rumours about the thirty-first?’

‘About the dean and his guests, you mean?’ Deborah asked, dabbing gently at the skirt with a fresh flannel. She sounded relaxed and light, but the Queen knew what a very good actress she was.