Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9)

 

 

“Very well.” I nodded, my brain still racing as I tried to process everything he’d told me. “But surely one of the first things to do is to find out where she gave birth and if she named the father on the birth certificate,” I said.

 

“Yes, we’ll certainly try to do that. It wouldn’t have been a public hospital, obviously. She couldn’t risk being recognized even if she checked in under a phony name. One of those fancy private clinics where ladies go for vague and undetermined female illnesses, nervous cures, and no questions asked.”

 

“It could have been abroad,” I said. “I hear some women go to France or Switzerland for such things.”

 

“It’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure,” he said.

 

“What about her maid?” I asked as the thought occurred to me. “What does she have to say? She must know where her mistress went. She may have been sworn to secrecy but she can be frightened into telling the police.”

 

He gave a long and heavy sigh, stroking at his fawn-colored mustache. “The young lady was apparently one of the modern set who has no maid. There is a woman who comes in to clean but I’m sure she’ll know nothing.”

 

“And her family? Do we know anything about them? Did she go home to give birth, maybe?”

 

“There doesn’t seem to be a family. Of course, Carrington might not be her real name.” He looked glum. “But she had friends. She was always photographed in the middle of a group of people. She attended parties and nightclubs with her chums. She would have told at least one of them the truth. Women always find someone to confide in, in my experience. She might well have told the father.” He paused, sucking air in through his teeth. “Again, it’s going to be tricky questioning people who knew her and finding out what they knew without giving away that she’s dead.”

 

I nodded agreement.

 

“We certainly have a good motive for murder,” he went on. “Whoever the father was might have a lot to lose if the news was made public.”

 

“Gosh, you’re not suggesting that Prince George might have been involved in her murder?” I stammered out the words, because it was impossible to think of my likeable cousin as a murderer.

 

“He’s a royal, isn’t he? They get someone else to do their dirty work.”

 

My thoughts went instantly to Major Beauchamp-Chough. The prince’s private secretary. A military man. A trained killer. Would he have been willing to do what it took to make sure the prince was not involved in scandal and the wedding took place? And yet he had been away all evening, at a regimental dinner, arriving home around the same time as us. And surely plenty of fellow officers could verify his attendance. And he had seemed genuinely shocked to discover the body, and recognize who it was.

 

“Someone will have to tell Prince George,” I said. “But please don’t look at me. That’s something I absolutely shouldn’t undertake. And couldn’t.”

 

“I agree. If Sir Jeremy wants to play puppet master and pull the strings, I’ll suggest he is the one to face the prince.”

 

“Of course, he could have a word with Major Beauchamp-Chough first,” I said. “He’s the prince’s private secretary, after all. He’d probably know many of the prince’s dark secrets. He’d certainly have known if Bobo Carrington had told the prince she was expecting his child.”

 

“The major was with us this morning. Why did he not mention any of this if he was privy to the prince’s secrets? He seems like an upright sort of bloke. Straight as a die. He wouldn’t have approved of such goings-on.”

 

“Perhaps he was hoping it would never come out. Perhaps he thought Miss Carrington’s death was a suicide, an overdose of drugs.” I looked up. “That is our biggest weapon in guarding the palace, you know. That she was a drug addict. People who take drugs have to obtain them from somewhere. This murder could have nothing at all to do with her liaison with the prince, or with her illegitimate child. She might have fallen foul of a drug kingpin and they are known to mete out their brand of justice swiftly and ruthlessly, aren’t they?”

 

“That’s definitely another angle we’ll follow up on,” he said. “I have my contacts in the underworld. But I’d still like to start off with her closest friends. They would know if she was scared, worried, and also what she did with the baby.”