Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9)
By: Rhys Bowen
He smiled. “You’ve led a sheltered life, my lady. If a man can kill, then besmirching a good name means nothing to him. Especially if he is desperate. It might even be the work of communists or fascists using this as a means to bring down the British monarchy.”
“You said ‘he.’ We are assuming the killer was a man, are we?” I said and noticed his eyebrows rise. He had big bushy brows and the effect was startling. “If Miss Carrington had been knocked out then it wouldn’t have taken much strength to suffocate her.”
“Yes, I suppose we have to consider that a woman could have been capable of killing her, but it would take a strong woman to haul her out of a motorcar and deposit her under the arch.”
There was a silence punctuated only by the ticking of the clock on the wall and the cooing of a pigeon outside the window. Then he cleared his throat. “There is something else that you should know. The doctor states that the young woman had recently been pregnant.”
I stared at him, trying to digest this. “She’d had a baby? When?”
“Within the last three months, the doctor thinks.”
I remembered Belinda saying that she hadn’t seen Bobo at the nightclubs. That would explain it. I swallowed back the desire to say “Golly.”
“Do you know what happened to the child?” I asked. “Was it a live birth, or did she perhaps have an abortion?” It was hard to bring myself to say the word to a strange man.
“The doctor says it was a full-term baby. And no, we have no idea where the child is now.”
“Not at Miss Carrington’s flat in any case?” I said. “I take it you have searched her flat?”
“We’ve made a preliminary search, but no sign of a child there.” He paused, then took a deep breath. “You can see our dilemma, can’t you, Lady Georgiana?” CDI Pelham said.
I nodded. “It would depend on whether the Duke of Kent was the father of the child.”
“Precisely. We need to know whether he was involved with the young woman within the last year, and whether she had told him about the child.”
He leaned even closer to me. “Normally in a case like this I’d have a team of men already questioning everyone in Kensington Palace, in Miss Carrington’s block of flats, everyone in her address book. But I’ve been given orders from the top brass to lay off. Frankly I think their feeling is that they don’t care why this girl was murdered or who did it as long as nothing appears in the press. I didn’t become a policeman to sweep dirty crimes under the rug, Lady Georgiana. Whoever this woman was, whatever her lifestyle, she deserves justice. But any move I make has to be sanctioned by Sir Jeremy. I am not allowed to question the prince, nor anyone at Kensington Palace. Sir Jeremy is adamant that Princess Marina hears nothing about this.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “She might call off the wedding and cause great embarrassment to the royal family.”
“Precisely. That’s where I hope you might come in.” He sat up straight again and toyed with the fountain pen in his right hand. “You’re one of them, Lady Georgiana, and Sir Jeremy thinks highly of your abilities. You could ask questions. Not directly interrogate, of course, but in a subtle way. You could find out if anyone at the palace saw or heard anything.”
“I already started to do that this morning,” I said. “And I could certainly question the servants.”
“And the elderly princesses?” he said. “They are your aunts, aren’t they?”
“Great-aunts. Yes, I could ask them too, but it wouldn’t be easy if I’m not to mention that somebody died outside their door. They’d certainly be curious why I wanted to know whether anyone had heard or seen anything strange outside their windows.”
“Maybe we could invent some sort of crime or incident that did not involve them in any way.” He frowned. “Something that didn’t make anybody put two and two together and come up with four.”
“What sort of crime would not involve any of us and not raise suspicions?” I asked.
“A robbery, maybe? We found a thief trying to hide out in the courtyard?”
“Possible,” I said. “What if one of the servants actually spotted the body but has said nothing so far?”
“Or vagrants,” he said. “There are quite a few homeless men sleeping rough in the London parks these days, aren’t there? A falling-out among vagrants? A vagrant taking shelter at the palace on a stormy night, who died of natural causes?”
“I don’t think anyone would mistake the body of a silk-clad young woman for a vagrant,” I said.
“That’s presupposing anyone saw her body. Ghosts,” he said, suddenly animated and wagging a finger at me. “You said the whole place is haunted. How about asking everyone if they saw the ghost of a white lady going through the courtyard?”
“That’s a better sort of idea,” I said. “Servants are very susceptible to the palace ghosts, particularly those who don’t normally work there. If one of them saw her, at least we’ll know what sort of time she came there and whether she actually went into the courtyard, and for what reason.”