The Corpse of St James's Page 9

  ‘She’s a troublemaker, that one,’ said Joe. ‘Anyone’ll say the same. She’s got a kid needs a good smack on the bottom. Ran away from a tour one time, right through the palace, and her mum never stopped her. Could’ve run into one of the family, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I ventured to put in. ‘You can’t have that sort of thing, can you?’

  ‘Too right we can’t! If it happens again, the woman will be out on her ear, I can tell you that. And not many tears left behind, either.’

  ‘She doesn’t have friends?’ Alan took up the conversation again.

  ‘One or two. She doesn’t mix much.’ Joe applied himself to his beer. ‘If you’re going to report back to your friend, you can tell him I said she’s a good worker. She can put on a smile for visitors, butter up the mucky-mucks when she has to. I’ll give her that. And she knows a lot about the art that’s all over the place. Wants to get into that side of it, as I hear. Curator, something like that. But she’s nervy, short-tempered with anybody she thinks beneath her. And that’s most of us. No, nobody’ll be very sorry, or surprised, when she gets the sack.’

  He put down his glass with a thump. ‘Ta very much. Time to take the darling puppies for their walkies.’

  And he was gone.

  ‘Well, I must say that wasn’t very much help,’ I said as I finished my glass. ‘Can’t we find one single person who’s willing to gossip about what goes on inside those gilded halls?’

  ‘We’ve only tried one so far,’ Alan reminded me. ‘You’re cross because you’re hungry.’

  ‘The crisps didn’t do much for me,’ I admitted.

  ‘Very well, let’s find some sustenance and plan our next moves.’

  THIRTEEN

  We found tea at one of the many small hotels that dot the area around Victoria Station and the palace. It wasn’t the Ritz, but there was good strong tea and enough carbohydrates to keep me happy for a while. Alan, as usual, was right. My mood improved markedly after my third scone.

  ‘There are really only two courses open to us at this point,’ said Alan, tenting his fingers in his familiar lecturing pose. ‘We’ve exhausted our one resource at the palace. Obviously the employees are well-trained and loyal. No one’s going to talk to us, unofficial as we are. So –’ he ticked off our options on his fingers – ‘we can go to the police with what we know, or we can go to Jemima and demand some answers.’

  ‘I’m in favour of the latter,’ I said, wiping strawberry jam off my fingers. ‘I don’t know if we’ll get anything out of her, because she’s bound to be in a pretty fragile state, but we’re not getting anywhere. If she can’t, or won’t, give us any information, we’ll have to go to Carstairs and let the chips fall where they may.’

  ‘And I don’t mind telling you,’ said Alan as he stood and fished out his wallet, ‘that I’ll feel mightily relieved when we’ve done that. This business of acting ex officio is not my cup of tea.’

  ‘It’s as bad as that time back in Indiana, isn’t it?’ We had visited my hometown on a memorable occasion when we wound up investigating the death of one of my dear old friends, and Alan was frustrated by his lack of police powers.

  ‘Worse, because there I didn’t have to worry particularly about stepping on anyone’s toes. Here in London the toes are thick on the ground.’

  ‘And some of them,’ I added grimly, ‘might even be able to boot us off to the Tower.’

  ‘They don’t imprison people there any more, as you very well know.’

  ‘I was using the term metaphorically.’

  We had headed up Buckingham Palace Road, and when the palace came into sight, my stomach began to clench, and I regretted that last scone. ‘Do you have her phone number?’

  ‘No.’ Alan pulled out his mobile. A quick call to Letty produced Jemima’s number. He punched it in while I waited anxiously.

  ‘Yes, good afternoon. My name is Alan Nesbitt. We met a few days ago at the Investiture; I was with your cousin Jonathan. It’s quite urgent I speak with you.’ He had spoken rapidly, probably fearing she would hang up. Now there was a brief pause. ‘Now, if it’s at all possible. I’m just outside the Forecourt.’ Pause. ‘Yes. Five minutes? Oh, and my wife is with me.’ He pocketed the phone.

  ‘That sounded hopeful.’

  ‘She wants to meet at the Canada Gate. Shall we?’ He gave me his arm as we negotiated the busy crossing.

  The Canada Gate is one of those pieces of useless decoration that I so love in London. It isn’t really the gate to anything, since there is no fence on either side. You go around it, not through it, to get into Green Park. But it’s perfectly gorgeous, gilded everywhere the designers could think to put gold, and quintessentially ‘royal’ in impact. It does not, however, have any handy benches nearby, and my feet and knees were beginning to complain. I hoped Jemima wouldn’t keep us waiting long.

  She did not. She came striding towards us within seconds after we arrived at the gate, and every movement of her body showed us she was furious.

  ‘How dare you!’ she said the moment she was near enough to be heard. Her tone was low and menacing. Plainly she would have preferred to scream at us. ‘You wait days to tell me my only child is dead, and now you have something “urgent” to tell me? Well, I have something to tell you, both of you. You can both go and—’

  ‘Jemima.’ I laid a hand on her arm. She had ignored me until then, but she whirled and shook off my hand.

  ‘No, but just listen a minute,’ I said in my most soothing tones. ‘If you’re still angry after you hear what we have to say, you can shout, scream, whatever you want, but let’s go sit down and talk about this like reasonable people.’

  ‘I don’t feel like sitting down!’

  ‘No, but I’m a great deal older than you are, and I do need to sit, so please.’ I gestured to a nearby set of steps and smiled. It took an effort, but I smiled, and it helped. With a grimace, Jemima marched off to the steps and sat, arms folded, chin out. I dare you to change my mind. She didn’t say it aloud. She didn’t need to.

  I sat down next to Jemima. Alan stepped back and let me take over. ‘I think, Jemima, that you may not quite understand what’s happening here.’ She opened her mouth, but I shook my head. ‘No, you promised to listen.’ She hadn’t, but she closed her mouth again. ‘Alan and I, along with Jonathan, have been risking a good deal on your behalf. We have, all three of us, withheld information from the police. That is very much against the law. We have done so to try to save you from their attentions and, worse, from the attentions of the media.’

  She was at least listening now. I went on. ‘You’ve had a dreadful experience. I won’t try to pretend that I understand how you feel, because I never had children. I do not, from personal experience, know what you’re going through, but I do know it’s been horrific, and my heart bleeds for you. But my dear, think how much worse it would be if the press made a meal of it!’

  ‘And you think you can do something to stop that.’ Her voice was flat, her face full of cynicism.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘We can only try. If we can present the police with a solution to the crime before they even know you’re involved, we have a chance. You know yourself that if they come here to question you, or even ask you to come to them, some of the gutter press are going to get hold of it. They’re completely unscrupulous about how they get information, and how they use it.’

  ‘And how do the pair of you propose to solve the crime all by your sweet selves?’ Her voice dripped sarcasm. I tried hard to keep my temper. She’s under a terrible strain, I kept repeating to myself.

  ‘The three of us. Don’t forget Jonathan. And don’t forget that he was one of Scotland Yard’s best detectives before he was disabled. And Alan was the senior police official in Belleshire until he retired. And even I have some detective instincts; I’ve helped solve a number of crimes, as you may not know. The point is, though, that we can do nothing without your help. That’s what we’re here to ask f
or. Your help and cooperation.’

  There. I’d made my speech. Now it was up to her.

  She sat for a long time, looking anywhere but at us. Expressions flitted across her face so fast I couldn’t interpret them, but none of them were happy.

  Finally she said, ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Because we’re your only hope.’ Alan spoke for the first time. ‘I must tell you that if you can’t help us, we will have no choice but to go to Scotland Yard with what little information we have. And then—’

  ‘“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of . . .” Fleet Street,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Oh, I may not have gone to the right schools, but I’m not completely ignorant.’ She made a gesture of hopelessness. ‘All right. I don’t see that you can do the least good, but all right. I’m so tired,’ she added, and suddenly began to cry.

  I couldn’t think what to do. The Green Park is not an ideal place to have a good cry, especially not for an employee of the palace. There were no hotels or cafés nearby into which Jemima could be hustled. Alan solved the problem. He strode to the street and, with the lordly manner he can command when necessary, hailed a cab.

  ‘Not supposed to stop here,’ the cabbie called through the window.

  ‘Emergency! A woman is ill!’ A constable was approaching, but before he could send the cab on its way the three of us had bundled inside.

  ‘Hospital, then, mate?’ asked the cabbie.

  ‘No. Drive on while I think a moment.’

  I handed a fistful of tissues to Jemima, who was sobbing by now, and said, ‘Tom and Lynn. Phone them, Alan, and see if they’re home.’ I gave the address to the driver, while trying to come up with plan B if the Andersons weren’t there.

  ‘Lynn will be waiting for us.’ Alan clicked the phone off.

  ‘You’re taking me to see someone?’ wailed Jemima. ‘I can’t—’

  ‘You can’t cry comfortably in public, and you can hardly go back to work in that condition. These are very old friends of ours, and I assure you they won’t turn a hair.’

  Jemima drew a long, wobbly breath, and her next sob morphed into a hiccup.

  Lynn was waiting at the door, and showed Jemima to a bedroom immediately. ‘You just cry as long as you like, and when you’re ready to face the world again, there’s the bathroom. The towels are fresh.’

  She closed the door and gestured with her head, and we all retreated to the sitting room.

  ‘Now. Before you say a word, tea or a drink?’

  ‘After the kind of day we’ve had, a drink, please!’ Alan nodded his agreement, and Lynn returned with a large tray, laden with glasses, a variety of bottles, a siphon, a pitcher of water and an ice bucket.

  ‘I still keep to American ways in that respect, anyway,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’

  I poured myself a tot of bourbon and added one ice cube. ‘Where’s Tom?’ I asked when I had taken a restorative sip.

  ‘Out doing whatever mysterious things he does in the name of “business”. I don’t ask. I called him, though, and he’s coming home. Meanwhile, tell me what’s going on. If you can,’ she added.

  I looked at Alan. He nodded. We both knew that Lynn was utterly trustworthy. We quickly summarized the unhappy story. ‘Since we learned all this, Alan and I have been trying to talk to someone, anyone, at the palace. The only remote contact we had was absolutely no help. So we finally decided we had to try to get Jemima to talk. With the result you see.’

  ‘The Cliff Notes version. OK,’ said Lynn, leaving Alan bewildered.

  ‘American college term. I’ll explain later,’ I said.

  ‘But did she tell you anything before she dissolved?’

  ‘Not a thing. She was hostile at first, and then when we finally broke down her resistance, everything came crashing down on her.’

  ‘And this interesting interview took place where? Surely not in the palace!’

  ‘No. We met her in Green Park.’

  ‘Good heavens! Out there in front of God and everybody?’

  Alan smiled. ‘I doubt God cared very much. He’s seen worse. We were more concerned about “everybody”. Some of the palace staff might have been there, one never knows. And Jemima has a reputation for creating scenes. They have not been well received by her employers.’

  Lynn choked slightly on her gin and tonic. ‘I will never cease to be amazed at the English gift for understatement. You’re saying the Queen was not amused?’

  ‘I trust the Queen knew nothing about it. I get the impression they keep her well wrapped in cotton wool. But Jemima’s superiors, whoever they may be – we’ve not met them – threw her daughter out on one occasion and said she wasn’t welcome back.’

  ‘Her daughter. The one who was killed.’ Lynn was no longer smiling.

  ‘Yes. And we’re no nearer knowing who did it than we were when this all started.’

  ‘So the obvious question is, did Jemima do it herself?’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Jemima had come into the room unnoticed, with Tom in the doorway right behind her. Alan was the one who coped. ‘Well, that’s good to know, because it was always a possibility, wasn’t it? And what can we get you to drink? Do sit down.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit down, and I don’t want a drink. I’m leaving.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Alan stood and loomed over her, all six-feet-something of him. ‘Not until we get some answers.’

  ‘You have no right to keep me here! Accusing me of murdering my own child!’

  ‘So call the police,’ said Tom, who is not a small man himself.

  ‘My dear girl, show some sense,’ said Lynn. ‘The minute the police learn about you and your daughter, you’re going to be their very first suspect. And don’t tell us you couldn’t have done it. Of course you could. Easily. She trusted you. You could have approached her with a pillow, and she’d have thought you were playing.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But you’re going to have to,’ I said, trying not to sound as exasperated as I was. ‘To us, or to the official police. And they won’t be offering you refreshments, I can tell you that. Look here, Jemima. I don’t think you killed your daughter, and neither do the rest of us. We all suspect that the man who was involved with her also killed her. We need to know who that man was. Now, choose your drink, and answer some questions like a sensible woman.’

  Reluctantly, she poured herself a healthy tot of gin, added some tonic, and sat back, looking at her lap.

  ‘Yes.’ Alan sounded very much like a policeman. ‘Let’s go back a few months, to the first time Jemima ran away from home and came to see you in London. That was about a year ago?’

  ‘A bit less. Last July.’

  ‘Tell us about it.’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing to tell, really. She came, with some idiotic story about how dull it was in Bramber, and how she wanted to live in London. I told her it was impossible. She flew into a temper and stormed out.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Alan. ‘We know all that. I want the details, please, from when she first arrived. Were you expecting her?’

  ‘No! I don’t . . . I didn’t encourage her to visit me here. I went home whenever I could, but that week I was particularly busy. There was an Investiture coming up, and you know I have duties for that sort of thing. No, she simply turned up, about ten, I think. In the morning, anyway. I suppose she caught the first train out of Shoreham or South Lancing. She came straight to the palace and rang me up from just outside.

  ‘I told her I was too busy to spend time with her, but she insisted, so I managed to get her into a tour. I thought we could talk a bit while we went round, and I’d still be available if I was needed. It didn’t work. She went on and on about how she hated Bramber. We’d been over it all before. I live at the palace. I’d rather have taken a job that let me live where I pleased, but jobs aren’t so easy to find, and there’s a good deal of prestige attached to a palace j
ob. And flats in London cost the earth. I told her all that. I’d told her before, but she wouldn’t see reason. She stormed and shouted, and I lost my temper and shouted, too. And that’s when she simply ran out of the room and vanished.’

  ‘And this was at what time?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking at the clock. I was upset.’

  ‘But you were also busy. Think about when you were able to get back to work.’

  ‘Well, not then! Because Mrs Sedgewick, my boss, had heard the row. She was in the Ballroom checking some of the arrangements for the Investiture, and we were in the State Dining Room, not that far away. I’d told Melissa to keep her voice down, but she was getting louder and louder, and her language . . . well, that sort of thing just isn’t supposed to happen in the palace. Mrs Sedgewick was just coming to tell me off when Melissa ran out of the room. Then we had to hunt for her. People simply cannot roam about the palace as they please, and it’s a huge place. Over seven hundred rooms, you know. It’s a rabbit warren.’

  ‘How long did it take you to find her?’ Alan persisted.

  ‘That was the thing! It seemed like for ever. There are guards stationed in all the rooms open to the public, but she’d gone through a door that was supposed to be locked, and right off the tour route. And something had gone wrong with the CCTV cameras that day.’

  Alan raised his eyebrows. ‘Some serious breaches of security there.’

  ‘Yes, well, it happens, doesn’t it? It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. You remember that man, years ago, who made it all the way to Her Majesty’s bedroom? Everyone does their best, but the only way a building that size and that complex can be truly secured is to keep all the doors and windows locked, and every single person, including all the employees and guests, checked in and out every single time, and make sure all the technology works perfectly all the time. It’s impossible.’

  Alan brushed that aside. ‘So Melissa was missing for how long?’ he persisted.