Joan couldn’t tell if the Pinders were still in residence at number 42. A large Rover saloon was parked in front of it, obscuring much of the view. Darbishire’s report mentioned that there had been a falling-out with the academics who lived opposite at number 22, but gave no reason for it. Joan turned to see that this was the red-tiled house with the new-ish windows. The academics had left, according to the report, but someone was in there now. Meanwhile, the house to the right of that one, where the suspicious ‘Gregsons’ had lived, sat with windows and front door wide open. The ground floor had been gutted and a pair of plasterers were working on the inside, whistling loudly.
A low-slung Jaguar sports car came rumbling up the street and Joan stood out of the way to let it go by. She took one more look at all the houses, waiting to see if she could spot what the police had missed, but right now, the mews looked an impossible place for murder.
A walk around the nearby stucco villas of the Boltons taught her only that this was where she would want to live if she ever married a very, very rich man, and that it would be easy to escape from their gardens into the lovely square where she was standing via one of the side passages that ran from front to back.
Yes, getting away wouldn’t have been particularly difficult for whoever had done it. It was getting in that was the trouble.
Back at home, Joan considered her next task, which was to find out about what really happened at the Artemis Club. She felt disloyal doing it, but knew that the Queen wouldn’t have asked unless she was absolutely certain it needed to be done. Presumably, if Prince Philip hadn’t come home from the club when he claimed, the Queen must have known this for months. Joan had a strong feeling Her Majesty needed an innocent explanation. But what if she couldn’t provide one?
She would cross that bridge when she came to it. First, she had to find someone who would talk. She spent several days researching the club as discreetly as she could, collecting various items that Auntie Eva had sourced for her from a theatrical costumier friend, and watching the staff going in and out of the back entrance after dark.
The following Saturday, under glowering skies over Piccadilly, a forgettable pot-washer showed up with mud-brown hair, thick glasses and hands rubbed red raw from washing dishes. She entered the club at seven thirty behind a couple of sous-chefs, back from a ciggie break, wound her way up the sticky, badly lit servants’ stairs, and found the manager’s office without too much trouble.
‘The agency sent me,’ she said, staring down at the cracked lino floor. The club rooms, she imagined, were lavishly carpeted and lit with crystal lamps, but here, every expense was spared.
‘What? Trumptons? Just now? Why?’
The harried manager barely looked up from the paperwork he was doing.
‘I dunno why,’ Joan said. ‘Only that you were three down and could I make it, sharpish, time and a half?’
The manager looked up properly at this. ‘Ha! Time and a half? You must be joking. We’re two down, not three, but . . . Normal agency wages. Tonight and tomorrow, yes? Give your name to Mr Holland in Accounts. No going past the baize door.’ This suited Joan. ‘You know where the aprons are?’
‘I’ll manage,’ she said.
She shut the office door and looked down the dingy corridor towards the sound of shouting and clanging pans coming from the club kitchen. She had no idea where the aprons were, but she would work it out. At the palace, they were always having trouble finding enough kitchen staff for big occasions. Joan had rightly guessed that on a Saturday night the club would be keen for whatever help it could get. And it would give her sore hands (she had rubbed salt into them at length) the weekend to recover. In the school holidays, she had occasionally helped out in the college kitchens at Cambridge. It was hot, busy, hard-going and thankless work: ideal for her purposes.
She headed down the corridor and into the kitchen.
‘I’m ’ere from the agency,’ she said again, in her best Cockney accent.
A tall, aggressive-looking man in chef’s whites looked at her through a gap in several piles of unwashed plates.
‘Thank God.’
He gestured towards a door that turned out to be the cupboard with the aprons. Joan put one on, wrapped her hair in a scarf and set to work, humming cheerfully to herself. The pressure-cooker atmosphere of the kitchen at peak service time took her back to her days in Cambridge. Soon she had reduced the teetering piles of dirty plates to neat stacks of clean ones, ready to go. She was quick at buffing glasses to a shine and good at taking on new greasy piles without complaint. The chefs de partie and even the front of house manager were grateful for her ability to get on with things without making a fuss.
