A Death in Diamonds

‘Anyway, there are bridges to rebuild,’ he acknowledged. ‘And Her Majesty is Mr Macmillan’s secret weapon. To be deployed with deadly accuracy and devastating effect. She must dazzle.’

‘Do they want to be dazzled?’

‘In my experience, everybody does. A few inverted snobs think they don’t, but they end up being the most dazzled of all. We have the advantage that she is an attractive young woman. And a dutiful one. The Queen may lack the education of her courtiers, but her instincts are good.’

Yes, they are, Joan thought. Possibly better than yours. She said nothing.

‘She seems to like you, so I imagine you’ll spend plenty of time in her company when we get back. If any issues arise, I want you to bring them to me directly. May I have your assurance on that?’

‘Absolutely,’ Joan lied.

‘Excellent. Good luck. And let me know if there are any problems with Dolphin Square meanwhile. Her Majesty wouldn’t have raised the issue if she didn’t want it solved, so I’ll assume you’ll say yes? You can move in at the weekend.’

‘Dolphin Square?’ Joan asked.

Sir Hugh frowned. ‘Didn’t I say? Your new address. Large block of flats near the river. It’s several blocks, in fact. A few MPs use it as their London pad. My aunt used to live there for a while. It’s perfectly respectable, and above all, safe. Ah, Dilys. Yes?’

His secretary had arrived to announce that his next visitor was waiting to see him.

Back at her desk, Joan wondered if Sir Hugh thought he had just bought her complicity with the offer of a posh address. He certainly wanted to know what she – and Her Majesty – were up to. But Joan didn’t really blame him for that. If she had been in charge of the Private Office, she’d have wanted to know too.

If the private secretary was working against the Crown, he was covering his tracks extremely well. It was hard to imagine sounding more dedicated to supporting it. But equally, that meant he understood what the stakes were. If he did want to undermine the Queen, he’d know exactly how to do it.

Could he be in the pay of a foreign state? Joan wondered. Had the Soviets managed to recruit him in the thirties, like Burgess and Maclean? Surrounded by Georgian architecture and antiques, it was hard to imagine anyone more British. But, if they wanted a spy, wasn’t that precisely the sort of person they would pick?

Chapter 12

Back in London after his brief trip to Essex, Inspector Darbishire was happy to be on home turf again. It was accidental that Cresswell Place happened to be so close to where he lived with his wife and daughters. However, it had turned out to be quite useful in this case because he was still trying to speak to a couple of key witnesses, and they were turning out to be stubbornly difficult to get hold of, except by telephone in one case, which had thrown up more problems than it solved.

They were never in during working hours, so he had taken to popping round to their houses in the mews first thing in the morning, or after tea, to see if he could go over their statements. Still no joy. Now it was nearly ten o’clock at night and every self-respecting Londoner – those that didn’t go gadding about in gentlemen’s clubs, or serve the ones who did – was on his way to bed. Would Mrs Gregson from number 23 be at home? Darbishire was increasingly curious to find out.

He was still working on the theory that the murdered couple were lured to their deaths because of something in Mr Perez’s murky business dealings. Darbishire and his men had interviewed all Miss White and Miss Fonteyn’s recent clients, who were a motley selection of financiers and playboys, expatriates and industrialists. In Miss Fonteyn’s case, there was even a lovesick poet who couldn’t afford her, like something out of the opera. Most were acutely embarrassed to be questioned, but none looked the type to garrotte a man, or had any discernible reason to do so. Perez, on the other hand . . . Perez was travelling on forged documents and Darbishire was still waiting for information about where they came from. There lay his answers, he felt sure.

The why of the murders would surface any minute; the how they already knew. But the exact when continued to elude him – and how it was done without anyone else in the street noticing. The answer surely lay with Mrs Gregson, the key witness, who lived almost directly opposite the dean’s house. She must have made a mistake about who went in and out, missing the murderers entirely, but she swore blind at the time that she was completely accurate.

Mrs Gregson was a young mother who had been nursing a restive baby at her living room window that night, and was probably sleep-deprived. She spoke to a couple of detective sergeants from his team the day after the bodies were discovered. She had a remarkable memory for timings, and claimed it was because she was desperate to get the tot to nod off, and kept looking at the clock.