Anyway, all of this was absolute conjecture, made up of Ginette’s last known movements, her family history, Rodriguez’s reputation for physical violence, a face in the crowd, a secret memorandum in her red boxes and . . . little more.
As she had done in the limousine on the Place de la Concorde, the Queen reflected that she would seem quite unhinged if she shared this half-formed theory with any of the men in moustaches. They would think her mad, and interfering in ways that were quite possibly dangerous to the Constitution. They would want to know why she cared so much in the first place. It wasn’t as if she tried to solve every violent crime in London. And then they would wonder what else had gone on in Cresswell Place that night, and even though she didn’t exactly know herself, that was the last thing she wanted them to think about.
She needed to talk to Joan. And she needed to do it privately and face to face.
It was now the second week of September. They would be back in London in less than a fortnight, at which point Charles was going off to boarding school at Cheam, as his father had done. What a lucky boy, the Queen thought, to be surrounded by pals his own age, running about outside and learning Latin together, not stuck in a stuffy schoolroom, as she had been with her sister, and every heir to the throne before her. She would miss him terribly, and her heart ached at the thought. But then again, she and Philip were off on their next state visits soon, and wouldn’t he have more fun with his new friends than moping about the palace?
Once she’d safely delivered him, she could focus properly on the contents of this letter and decide what to do about it. Another week wouldn’t make much difference, would it, after all these months? She would have to be patient. Which, fortunately, was one of those things she was good at.
Meanwhile, there had been more to her original instructions to her APS. Had Joan understood the reference to Diana? It was rather recherché. Joan hadn’t mentioned any progress in that sensitive direction in her letter. As the Queen got up and dusted off her breeches, she wondered how she was getting on.
Standing at the end of the little cobbled street, Joan could see why the Dean of Bath might have chosen Cresswell Place for his London pad. Given what had happened there, she had pictured the mews as somewhere gloomy and unsettling, but in the late summer sun, it looked like one of the jolliest streets in London.
The low rows of houses were the colours of sugared almonds, except for a few that were hung with red tiles. Joan liked the look of these the best. They were slightly larger than the others. One had a pair of new-ish windows set into its roof and, glancing up and shielding her eyes from the sun, she wondered who had put them there. For an instant, she thought she saw the figure of someone behind the glass, looking down on her. She realised she might seem rude for staring, and looked away.
She was here to see if she could make any more sense of the witness reports from the police file. The Queen had said she wanted ‘D’ to make progress in Chelsea. Having read the reports, which she had fished out of a cabinet in the Private Office filing room, Joan didn’t think that Inspector Darbishire was particularly slow. Nevertheless, he was stumped, and had been for months. Despite all the male victim’s nefarious activities, there was still no evidence of anyone entering the house other than the victims themselves, the dean and his friends; and Darbishire was still convinced none of them could have done it. Nor did he have a robust theory that threw a spotlight on Lord Seymour, or one of the London gangsters on his list.
Joan had the feeling of anyone coming fresh to an inquiry that her quick mind might solve the case. She looked for the house numbers. Number 44, the dean’s house, looked unremarkable but rather sad. The curtains were drawn at the dusty windows. A little bay tree in a pot outside was brown and dead. The dean, presumably, didn’t want to live there any more and the landlords must have decided not to try and find anyone else. Darbishire still hadn’t managed to find out who owned the building, exactly. He had the company name, but had made no progress on who owned the company.
Number 43, by contrast, was bright and clean, with open windows, fresh gingham curtains and a young rose plant being trained around the door. It had lain empty back in March, but it was cheerfully occupied now. To its right was the house where Mrs Pinder and her husband had been living. A witness further down the street had guessed that the supposed gunshot might have come from here, or the once empty house beside it.
