A Death in Diamonds полностью

It certainly was important evidence, the Queen thought, walking up and down her study now, thinking hard. It gave the precise times both victims entered the house and corroborated the alibis of the dean’s guests from the Artemis Club – who must have left the club together about half an hour after ‘Hamlet’ did. But the team didn’t seem to consider that for a crucial five or ten minutes, they hadn’t been concentrating.

Perhaps ‘Hamlet’s arrival was important after all: he had inadvertently distracted the key witnesses.

If Darbishire could interview them properly, using whatever techniques the police were trained in these days, he might be able to get them to remember something they’d missed. But he wasn’t allowed anywhere near them.

She could see why. There was a lot of national security at stake in all sorts of different ways.

But murder was murder, and the secret of the report on her desk was that it was a muddle. It wasn’t good enough. She had to do something about it.

Sir Hugh was intransigent.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. We can’t.’

‘We must, Hugh.’

Her private secretary looked at her dolefully from behind his thick spectacles. ‘I admire your commitment to truth and justice, but I’m not sure you’ve fully understood the possible repercussions . . .’

‘It might be difficult for us, yes, but the police need to know—’

‘You do understand to whom “Hamlet” refers, ma’am?’

‘Of course I do!’ she said, irritably.

‘The news will leak. It always does. The Met police are the worst. Whatever the truth turns out to be, there will be rumours, there always are. People will say there’s no smoke without fire. You may never live it down.’

‘I’m sure he had his reasons for being there. Have you asked him?’

‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Have you?’

There was a short silence.

‘Not in so many words,’ the Queen admitted. ‘But I raised it in Scotland. Before I knew where he’d gone.’

‘And did he explain himself?’

‘No.’

‘Ah. There we are.’

‘But—’

‘Ma’am, if I may say so, it’s better not to ask. Not to know. Your . . . ahem, “Hamlet” might be aware of that. If asked subsequently, we have plausible deniability. We—’

‘What on earth’s that, Hugh?’

‘Plausible deniability? It was developed by President Truman, ma’am, for covert operations. The idea is that if anyone asks awkward questions, you can honestly say you didn’t know.’

‘But I want to know!’

Her private secretary raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, ma’am. What you want and what’s good for the country are two different things. I think you might find that if you did know, you may wish you’d never asked.’

She regarded him bleakly. What would her grandmother think? What was dutiful and what was selfish? She no longer knew.

He took pity. ‘I’m not saying you would regret it, ma’am, but it’s possible you might. And that if we do nothing, this might all go away in time, and we’ll be grateful for stones unturned. You never know what you’ll find underneath them.’

‘But—’

This time he tapped his fingertips together – a sure sign of exasperation. ‘I know you want to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing – for the country – is not to do anything. Please trust me on this.’

She didn’t trust him.

But nor could she be absolutely certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t right. If she overruled him, or went behind his back, and talk about Philip got out as a result, true or otherwise, the consequences could be catastrophic. With her visit to North America coming up, the last thing any of them needed were unfounded rumours. She would be doing the traitors’ job for them, and doing it better than they ever could.

At this moment, she felt certain that Sir Hugh wasn’t in concert with those men in any way. He was trying so very hard to protect her. She trusted that.

‘All right,’ she agreed with a heavy heart. ‘At least until I’m back from America.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. We can certainly discuss it then.’

‘And thank you, Hugh, for looking after me.’

Her private secretary smiled gravely. ‘Your best interests are all I ever seek to serve. Shall I take the boxes with me, ma’am?’

‘Joan can pick them up later,’ she said lightly.

The Queen pictured Inspector Darbishire at his desk, hamstrung by his ignorance of the slim manila folder sitting in the bottom box, like an unexploded bomb. For now, he was on his own. And so was she.

In the privacy of the little filing room, Joan extracted the folder from the top of the second red box, where the Queen had strategically placed it, and read it in the ladies’ lavatories while most people were at lunch.

One of the advantages of Joan’s memory was that she didn’t need to take notes. She read rapidly, and could picture every word on every page if necessary. So she was able to return the folder to Sir Hugh’s office and then think about its consequences while sitting on her new bed after work, up high in one of Buckingham Palace’s attic rooms.