A Three Dog Problem Read online

  This book was written before the death of Prince Philip on April 9, 2021, at the age of 99. It is dedicated to him with affection and respect for a life well lived. And not a little nervousness. Would he have laughed and chucked it across the room with an exasperated grin? I hope he would.

  Contents

  Part 1. Sangfroid

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 2. The Breakages Business

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part 3. A Three Dog Problem

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part 4. Pentimenti

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Letter from Author

  Extract from Murder Most Royal

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Sangfroid

  ‘I will show your illustrious lordship what a woman can do.’

  Artemisia Gentileschi, 1593–c.1654

  OCTOBER 2016

  Prologue

  S

  ir Simon Holcroft was not a swimmer. As a trainee pilot in the Royal Navy, about a thousand years ago, the Queen’s Private Secretary had endured being dunked in the water on various training exercises. He could, if necessary, escape from a sinking helicopter in the Atlantic Ocean, but ploughing up and down an indoor pool held no allure for him. However, as he approached the grand old age of fifty-four, his trouser waistline was two inches larger than it should be and the palace GP was making noises about cholesterol levels. Something needed to give, and it wasn’t just the button above his flies.

  Sir Simon felt tired. He felt flabby. On yesterday’s long, uncomfortable car journey back from Scotland he had come to the conclusion that here was a man who had eaten too much Dundee cake and not offered to accompany the Queen on enough cross-country walks. His first thought on arriving back at his cottage in Kensington Palace was that he needed to jolt himself out of this slump.

  Those last few weeks in Balmoral had been bloody. It was as if the midges had been staging a Highland Games of their own. He had been busy most mornings with Prince Philip, discussing the details of the impending Reservicing Programme, and then up most nights on the phone, conferring with fellow courtiers about the Duke’s latest suggestions and questions, as well as adding several of his own. If they hadn’t done all their homework by the time they presented it to Parliament, the proverbial ordure would hit the fan like a fireworks display.

  Vigour was what he needed. And freshness. Despite his lack of enthusiasm, the Buckingham Palace swimming pool seemed like the best solution. Staff tended to avoid it when the royals were in residence. The problem was, when the family were away, he tended to be so too, and vice versa. However, catching sight of himself in an ill-advised full-length mirror in the bedroom at KP that night, he made the decision to take a risk and nip in early. He prayed that, with his midge-bitten body stretching the seams of his Vilebrequin trunks, he wouldn’t encounter a super-keen young equerry in peak physical condition or, worse, the Duke himself, fresh from a royal dip.

  Sir Simon walked across Hyde Park and down through Green Park – one of the few forty-minute commutes you could make through central London that was entirely green – in time to arrive the Palace by 6.30 a.m. He had stupidly put his trunks on under his trousers, which made both uncomfortable. He parked his briefcase on his office desk, hung his suit jacket on a wooden hanger on a hat stand, and took off his brogues. Neatly rolling his silk tie, which today featured tiny pink koalas, he placed it safely in the left shoe. Then, shouldering the backpack containing his swimming towel, he walked the short distance to the north-west pavilion in his socks. By now it was 6.45.

  The pavilion, attached to the North Wing that overlooked Green Park, had originally been designed as a conservatory by John Nash. Sir Simon always thought they should have kept it that way. His mother had been a plantswoman and he saw conservatories as paeans to the natural world, whereas heated swimming pools were a little bit naff. Nevertheless, the Queen’s father had decided to convert this one in the thirties for his little princesses to swim in, so there it was, with its Grecian pillars outside, and its somewhat-the-worse-for-wear art deco tiles within, as much in need of updating as so many nooks and crannies of the Palace that the public didn’t see.

  The pool area was reached from inside the main building through a door papered with instructions for what to do in case of fire and reminders that nobody should swim solo, which he ignored. The corridor beyond was already uncomfortably humid. He was glad he’d left his tie behind. In the men’s changing room, he divested himself of his shirt, socks and trousers and draped his towel across his arm. He noticed a cut-crystal tumbler abandoned on one of the benches. Odd, since the family had only arrived back from the Highlands last night. There must have been a homecoming celebration among the younger generation. All glass was banned in the pool area, but you didn’t tell princes and princesses what they could and couldn’t do in their granny’s home. Sir Simon made a mental note to tell Housekeeping so they could deal with it.

  He showered quickly and walked through into the pool area, with its windows overlooking the kissing plane trees in the garden, bracing himself for the shock of coolish water lapping against this too, too solid flesh.

  But the shock he got was quite different.

  At first his brain refused to register what it was seeing. Was it a blanket? A trick of the light? There was so much red. So much dark red against the green tiled floor. In the centre of the stain was a leg, bare to the knee, female. The image imprinted itself onto his retina. He blinked.

  His breath came short and punchy as he took two steps towards it. Another two, and he was standing in the gore itself and staring down at the full horror of it.

  A woman in a pale dress lay curled on her side in a puddle of darkness. Her lips were blue, her eyes open and unseeing. Her right arm reached towards her feet, palm-up. All were soaked and stained with congealed blood. Her left arm was stretched towards the water’s edge, where the dark puddle finally stopped. Sir Simon felt his own blood pulse, pounding a one-two, one-two rhythm in his ears.

  Gingerly, he knelt down and placed reluctant fingers against the neck. There was no pulse, and how could there be, with eyes like that? He longed to close the lids, but thought he probably shouldn’t. Her hair lay fanned around her head, a halo soaked in red. She looked surprised. Or was that his imagination? And so fragile that, had she been alive, he could have easily scooped her up and carried her to safety.

  Rising, he felt a sharp pain in his knee
. As he tried to wipe some of the sticky blood from his skin, his fingertips encountered grit. Examining it, he could just make out small shards of thick glass. Now his own blood, freshly seeping from a cut on his leg, was mingling with hers. He saw it then – the remains of a shattered tumbler, sitting like a crystal ruin in the crimson sea.

  He knew the face, knew the hair. What was she doing here, with a whisky tumbler? His body didn’t want to move, but he forced it back outside to seek help. Though he knew it was too late for any help worth having.

  Chapter 1

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER . . .

  ‘P

  hilip?’

  ‘Yes?’ The Duke of Edinburgh raised half an eyebrow from the folded Daily Telegraph, which was propped up against a pot of honey on the breakfast table.

  ‘You know that painting?’

  ‘Which painting? You have seven thousand,’ he said, just to be difficult.

  The Queen sighed inwardly. She had been about to explain. ‘The one of Britannia. That used to hang outside my bedroom.’

  ‘What, the ghastly little one by the Australian who couldn’t do boats? That one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I saw it yesterday in Portsmouth, at Semaphore House. At an exhibition of maritime art.’

  Philip stared pointedly at the editorial page of his paper and grunted, ‘That makes sense. For a yacht.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I was launching the navy’s new digital strategy and they’d put up a few paintings in the lobby.’ The digital strategy was a complicated business, bringing the Royal Navy up to date with the latest technology; the art exhibition had been more straightforward. ‘Mostly grey things of battleships. A J-Class yacht in full sail at Southampton, because there’s always one. And next to it, our Britannia, from ’63.’

  ‘How d’you know it was ours?’ He still didn’t look up.

  ‘Because it was that one,’ the Queen said sharply, feeling suddenly and vertiginously sad at his lack of interest. ‘I know my own paintings.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. All seven thousand of ’em. Well, tell the staff johnnies to hand it over.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Good.’

  The Queen sensed that the Daily Telegraph article was probably about Brexit, hence her husband’s more than usually prickly mood. Cameron gone. The party in disarray. The whole thing so fiendishly botched . . . A single painting by an unremarkable artist, presented long before Britain joined the Common Market, was hardly important. She glanced up at the landscapes by Stubbs, with their wonderful horses, that adorned the walls of the private dining room at the Palace. Philip himself had depicted her here, reading the paper, many years ago. And he had done it better, one could argue, than the man who had painted Britannia. But that picture had once been very precious to her.

  It had become a favourite in ways she had never shared with anyone. She intended to get it back.

  *

  A couple of hours later, Rozie Oshodi arrived at the Queen’s study in the North Wing to collect the morning’s red boxes containing Her Majesty’s official papers. Rozie had joined as the Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary a few months ago, after a short career in the army and then at a private bank. She was still relatively young for the role, but so far had performed admirably, including – and perhaps especially – in the more unconventional aspects of it.

  ‘Any news?’ the Queen asked, looking up from the final paper in the pile.

  Yesterday, Rozie had been tasked with finding out how the painting of the ex-royal yacht had ended up where it was and organising its swift return.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, but it’s not good.’

  ‘Oh?’ This was a surprise.

  ‘I spoke to the facilities manager at the naval base,’ Rozie explained, ‘and he tells me it’s a case of mistaken identity. The artist must have painted more than one version of Britannia in Australia. This one was lent to the exhibition by the Second Sea Lord. There’s no plaque on it or anything. It’s from the Ministry of Defence’s collection and it’s been hanging in his office for years.’

  The Queen eyed her APS thoughtfully through her bifocals.

  ‘Has it? The last time I saw it was in the nineteen nineties.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  There was a belligerent glimmer behind the royal spectacles. ‘The Second Sea Lord doesn’t have another version. He has mine. In a different frame. And he’s had it for a long time, you now tell me.’

  ‘Ah . . . yes. I see.’ From the look on her face, it was clear that Rozie didn’t.

  ‘Go back and find out what’s going on, would you?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am.’

  The Queen blotted her signature on the paper on her desk and put it back in its box. Her APS picked up the pile and left her to ponder.

  Chapter 2

  ‘T

  his place is a deathtrap.’

  ‘Oh, come on, James. You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘I am not.’ The Keeper of the Privy Purse glower-ed at the Private Secretary across the latter’s antique office desk. ‘Do you know how much vulcanised rubber they’ve discovered?’

  ‘I don’t even know what that is.’ Sir Simon’s raised left eyebrow managed to convey curiosity and amusement. As Private Secretary, he was responsible for managing the Queen’s official visits and relations with the Government, but he ended up taking an interest in everything that might affect her. And the deathtrap status or otherwise of Buckingham Palace most definitely fell into that category.

  His visitor, Sir James Ellington, was in charge of the royal finances. He had worked with Sir Simon for years, and it wasn’t unusual for him to make the brisk ten-minute walk from his desk high up in the South Wing to Sir Simon’s spacious, high-ceilinged ground-floor office in the North Wing, so he could complain about the latest fiasco. Behind every stiff upper lip lies an Englishman bursting to share his withering irritation in private. Sir Simon noticed that his friend was unusually exercised about the vulcanised rubber, though. Whatever it was.

  ‘You treat rubber with sulphur to harden it,’ Sir James explained, ‘and use it to make cable casings. At least, they did fifty years ago. It does the job, but over time it degrades, with exposure to air and light, and so on. It becomes brittle.’

  ‘A bit like you, this morning,’ Sir Simon observed.

  ‘Don’t. You have no idea.’

  ‘And so . . . What’s the problem with our brittle, vulcanised rubber?’

  ‘It’s falling apart. The cables should have been replaced decades ago. We knew it was bad, but when we had that leak in the attics last month, they discovered a nest of the blasted things that practically disintegrated on contact. It means the electrics around the building are being held together by a wing and a prayer. A hundred miles of them. One dodgy connection and . . . pffft.’ Sir James made a gesture with his elegant right hand to suggest smoke, or a minor explosion.

  Sir Simon briefly closed his eyes. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know the dangers of fire. The Windsor Castle disaster in ’92 had taken five years and several million pounds to put right. They had opened Buckingham Palace to the public each summer to help pay for the repairs. Unfortunately, when they’d done a survey of this place, to be on the safe side, they discovered it was even more hazardous. Plans to fix it were under way, but they kept discovering complications.

  ‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Move her out?’

  No need to specify who may or may not need to move.

  ‘We probably should, pronto. She won’t want to go, of course.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘We ran the idea up the flagpole last year and she didn’t exactly salute,’ Sir James mused, glumly. ‘I don’t blame her. If she did go, it would have to be to Windsor, so she could keep up her schedule, and we’d clog up the M4 with ambassadors and ministers and garden party guests zipping up and down. The castle itself would need to be reconfigured to cope. She’l
l soldier on as is, if she possibly can. If it ain’t broke . . .’

  ‘But it is broke, you say,’ Sir Simon pointed out.

  Sir James sighed. ‘It is, as you rightly remind me, broke.’ He raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘Buckingham Palace is broken. If it were a terraced house in Birmingham the experts would stick a notice on the front door and forbid the family to return until it was fixed. But it’s a working palace, so we can’t. We were just finalising the Reservicing Programme to work around her – this will add another million or two, no doubt. Oh, and I almost forgot: you know Mary, my secretary? The efficient one who always answers emails on time and knows everything in the Reservicing planning agenda and is a bit of a genius?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’s just handed in her notice. I didn’t hear all the details, but she was in floods of tears this morning. So—’

  He was cut off by the arrival of Rozie with the boxes, which she placed on a marble-topped console table by the door, ready for collection by the Cabinet Office later.

  ‘All good?’ Sir Simon asked her.

  ‘Mostly. How do I find out if we loaned the Ministry of Defence one of the Queen’s private paintings back in the nineties?’

  At this question of negligible interest, Sir James stood up and took his leave.

  *

  Rozie observed his departure with curiosity. Leaning forward, meanwhile, Sir Simon steepled his fingers and focused on the matter in hand. He was good at leaping from one problem to another – like a gymnast on the asymmetric bars, Rozie had often thought, or a squirrel on an obstacle course.

  ‘Hmm. Talk to the Royal Collection Trust,’ he suggested. ‘They look after her private art as well as Crown stuff, I think. Why do we care?’

  ‘The Boss saw it in Portsmouth,’ Rozie explained. ‘The MOD say it’s theirs. The thing is, she says it was a personal gift from the artist. You’d think she’d know.’

  ‘She tends to. What’s the MOD’s excuse?’

  ‘They’re suggesting there must be two of them.’

  Sir Simon whistled to himself. ‘Brave move on their part. Can you ask the artist?’