‘A man’s entitled to enter his own home whenever it suits him. And I wasn’t late. It might have been a shade after midnight. If anyone asks you, send ’em to me. Hey! Charles! Wait for your sister, you little monster!’
He stalked off, leaving the Queen standing.
She bit the inside of her lip, hard, and smiled gamely for her mother when she turned to see if anything was wrong.
That night, lying awake in bed, the Queen felt very alone.
She worried for her family. The thing was . . . The Queen normally tried not to follow dark thoughts to their conclusion, because honestly how could one keep going if one did? But, the thing
If they somehow got rid of her, then what about Charles, what about Anne? What about Margaret, if her own little family was gone? It was awful to contemplate, but the Queen regularly had to review the secret official plans for just such contingencies. Royal families had been wiped out before. Her cousins in Russia had been obliterated forty years ago; other thrones had been lost this century in Germany, Bulgaria, Portugal, Romania, Italy; Philip’s own family was sent into exile from Greece when he was a baby. She pictured him, a refugee on a boat, tucked up in a simple crate of oranges, reliant on the kindness of strangers. The dangers were real and recent.
She didn’t just have herself to think of. She worried about Charles, who was a sensitive child, already becoming aware of the duties that awaited him and the sacrifices he’d be asked to make. Brave little Anne did seem indestructible, as Philip said, but even she had her vulnerabilities. Which brought one back to Inspector Darbishire’s report.
The Queen propped herself against her pillows, contemplating her precious daughter. Back in the spring, Anne had suddenly come down with a terrible earache, an awful thing that she had probably picked up in the palace swimming pool. It had floored her with pain. Anne never cried usually, unless something happened to one of the animals, but that evening there had been floods of tears, and ‘Make it stop, Mummy!’ after bath time, which was heartrending.
The Queen had spent an extra half-hour with her, singing and reading from the
It was the last day of March, she remembered: the Sunday before she drove to Broadlands, where Philip would join her later, and from where they would ultimately leave together for Paris.
On that Sunday night, she had watched the clock tick down the hours, thinking of poor Anne’s misery, until she had given up even trying to nod off again. She had picked up her Bible to read some verses from Psalms and the Song of Solomon, which she usually found soothing.
When she next looked up from the text, it was four thirty in the morning. Something had disturbed her: a noise in the passage outside her bedroom. She had listened keenly, wondering if Anne needed her, but in fact it was Philip, coming in. She had heard him muttering something to the footman at his bedroom door, down the corridor from hers. Then, finally, she had slept.
The next day she was extremely busy, and in the evening everyone had been distracted by a
She had honestly forgotten about it, until the date of the thirty-first of March was mentioned in Paris, in the context of the Chelsea murders. After the brief, unexpected jerk of his hand with the delicate cufflink, Philip had smoothly used her as his alibi for the night.
But the footmen in the corridor knew better. And so must the guard at the palace gate that night, and the three or four other servants he would have encountered on his way in. One could rely on loyalty and discretion up to a point. It was dangerous to rely on it forever.
