The Corpse of St James's (12 page)

‘And how do the pair of you propose to solve the crime all by your sweet selves?' Her voice dripped sarcasm. I tried hard to keep my temper. She's under a terrible strain, I kept repeating to myself.

‘The three of us. Don't forget Jonathan. And don't forget that he was one of Scotland Yard's best detectives before he was disabled. And Alan was the senior police official in Belleshire until he retired. And even I have some detective instincts; I've helped solve a number of crimes, as you may not know. The point is, though, that we can do nothing without your help. That's what we're here to ask for. Your help and cooperation.'

There. I'd made my speech. Now it was up to her.

She sat for a long time, looking anywhere but at us. Expressions flitted across her face so fast I couldn't interpret them, but none of them were happy.

Finally she said, ‘Why should I trust you?'

‘Because we're your only hope.' Alan spoke for the first time. ‘I must tell you that if you can't help us, we will have no choice but to go to Scotland Yard with what little information we have. And then—'

‘“Cry ‘Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of . . .” Fleet Street,' she said unexpectedly. ‘Oh, I may not have gone to the right schools, but I'm not completely ignorant.' She made a gesture of hopelessness. ‘All right. I don't see that you can do the least good, but all right. I'm so tired,' she added, and suddenly began to cry.

I couldn't think what to do. The Green Park is not an ideal place to have a good cry, especially not for an employee of the palace. There were no hotels or cafés nearby into which Jemima could be hustled. Alan solved the problem. He strode to the street and, with the lordly manner he can command when necessary, hailed a cab.

‘Not supposed to stop here,' the cabbie called through the window.

‘Emergency! A woman is ill!' A constable was approaching, but before he could send the cab on its way the three of us had bundled inside.

‘Hospital, then, mate?' asked the cabbie.

‘No. Drive on while I think a moment.'

I handed a fistful of tissues to Jemima, who was sobbing by now, and said, ‘Tom and Lynn. Phone them, Alan, and see if they're home.' I gave the address to the driver, while trying to come up with plan B if the Andersons weren't there.

‘Lynn will be waiting for us.' Alan clicked the phone off.

‘You're taking me to see someone?' wailed Jemima. ‘I can't—'

‘You can't cry comfortably in public, and you can hardly go back to work in that condition. These are very old friends of ours, and I assure you they won't turn a hair.'

Jemima drew a long, wobbly breath, and her next sob morphed into a hiccup.

Lynn was waiting at the door, and showed Jemima to a bedroom immediately. ‘You just cry as long as you like, and when you're ready to face the world again, there's the bathroom. The towels are fresh.'

She closed the door and gestured with her head, and we all retreated to the sitting room.

‘Now. Before you say a word, tea or a drink?'

‘After the kind of day we've had, a drink, please!' Alan nodded his agreement, and Lynn returned with a large tray, laden with glasses, a variety of bottles, a siphon, a pitcher of water and an ice bucket.

‘I still keep to American ways in that respect, anyway,' she said. ‘Help yourself.'

I poured myself a tot of bourbon and added one ice cube. ‘Where's Tom?' I asked when I had taken a restorative sip.

‘Out doing whatever mysterious things he does in the name of “business”. I don't ask. I called him, though, and he's coming home. Meanwhile, tell me what's going on. If you can,' she added.

I looked at Alan. He nodded. We both knew that Lynn was utterly trustworthy. We quickly summarized the unhappy story. ‘Since we learned all this, Alan and I have been trying to talk to someone, anyone, at the palace. The only remote contact we had was absolutely no help. So we finally decided we had to try to get Jemima to talk. With the result you see.'

‘The Cliff Notes version. OK,' said Lynn, leaving Alan bewildered.

‘American college term. I'll explain later,' I said.

‘But did she tell you anything before she dissolved?'

‘Not a thing. She was hostile at first, and then when we finally broke down her resistance, everything came crashing down on her.'

‘And this interesting interview took place where? Surely not in the palace!'

‘No. We met her in Green Park.'

‘Good heavens! Out there in front of God and everybody?'

Alan smiled. ‘I doubt God cared very much. He's seen worse. We were more concerned about “everybody”. Some of the palace staff might have been there, one never knows. And Jemima has a reputation for creating scenes. They have not been well received by her employers.'

Lynn choked slightly on her gin and tonic. ‘I will
never
cease to be amazed at the English gift for understatement. You're saying the Queen was not amused?'

‘I trust the Queen knew nothing about it. I get the impression they keep her well wrapped in cotton wool. But Jemima's superiors, whoever they may be – we've not met them – threw her daughter out on one occasion and said she wasn't welcome back.'

‘Her daughter. The one who was killed.' Lynn was no longer smiling.

‘Yes. And we're no nearer knowing who did it than we were when this all started.'

‘So the obvious question is, did Jemima do it herself?'

‘N
o, I didn't.'

Jemima had come into the room unnoticed, with Tom in the doorway right behind her. Alan was the one who coped. ‘Well, that's good to know, because it was always a possibility, wasn't it? And what can we get you to drink? Do sit down.'

‘I don't want to sit down, and I don't want a drink. I'm leaving.'

‘No, you're not.' Alan stood and loomed over her, all six-feet-something of him. ‘Not until we get some answers.'

‘You have no right to keep me here! Accusing me of murdering my own child!'

‘So call the police,' said Tom, who is not a small man himself.

‘My
dear
girl, show some sense,' said Lynn. ‘The minute the police learn about you and your daughter, you're going to be their very first suspect. And don't tell us you couldn't have done it. Of course you could. Easily. She trusted you. You could have approached her with a pillow, and she'd have thought you were playing.'

‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘But you're going to have to,' I said, trying not to sound as exasperated as I was. ‘To us, or to the official police. And they won't be offering you refreshments, I can tell you that. Look here, Jemima. I don't think you killed your daughter, and neither do the rest of us. We all suspect that the man who was involved with her also killed her. We need to know who that man was. Now, choose your drink, and answer some questions like a sensible woman.'

Reluctantly, she poured herself a healthy tot of gin, added some tonic, and sat back, looking at her lap.

‘Yes.' Alan sounded very much like a policeman. ‘Let's go back a few months, to the first time Jemima ran away from home and came to see you in London. That was about a year ago?'

‘A bit less. Last July.'

‘Tell us about it.'

She shrugged. ‘Nothing to tell, really. She came, with some idiotic story about how dull it was in Bramber, and how she wanted to live in London. I told her it was impossible. She flew into a temper and stormed out.'

‘No, no,' said Alan. ‘We know all that. I want the details, please, from when she first arrived. Were you expecting her?'

‘No! I don't . . . I didn't encourage her to visit me here. I went home whenever I could, but that week I was particularly busy. There was an Investiture coming up, and you know I have duties for that sort of thing. No, she simply turned up, about ten, I think. In the morning, anyway. I suppose she caught the first train out of Shoreham or South Lancing. She came straight to the palace and rang me up from just outside.

‘I told her I was too busy to spend time with her, but she insisted, so I managed to get her into a tour. I thought we could talk a bit while we went round, and I'd still be available if I was needed. It didn't work. She went on and on about how she hated Bramber. We'd been over it all before. I live at the palace. I'd rather have taken a job that let me live where I pleased, but jobs aren't so easy to find, and there's a good deal of prestige attached to a palace job. And flats in London cost the earth. I told her all that. I'd told her before, but she wouldn't see reason. She stormed and shouted, and I lost my temper and shouted, too. And that's when she simply ran out of the room and vanished.'

‘And this was at what time?'

‘I wasn't looking at the clock. I was upset.'

‘But you were also busy. Think about when you were able to get back to work.'

‘Well, not then! Because Mrs Sedgewick, my boss, had heard the row. She was in the Ballroom checking some of the arrangements for the Investiture, and we were in the State Dining Room, not that far away. I'd told Melissa to keep her voice down, but she was getting louder and louder, and her language . . . well, that sort of thing just isn't supposed to happen in the palace. Mrs Sedgewick was just coming to tell me off when Melissa ran out of the room. Then we had to hunt for her. People simply cannot roam about the palace as they please, and it's a huge place. Over seven hundred rooms, you know. It's a rabbit warren.'

‘How long did it take you to find her?' Alan persisted.

‘That was the thing! It seemed like for ever. There are guards stationed in all the rooms open to the public, but she'd gone through a door that was supposed to be locked, and right off the tour route. And something had gone wrong with the CCTV cameras that day.'

Alan raised his eyebrows. ‘Some serious breaches of security there.'

‘Yes, well, it happens, doesn't it? It's not the first time, and it won't be the last. You remember that man, years ago, who made it all the way to Her Majesty's bedroom? Everyone does their best, but the only way a building that size and that complex can be truly secured is to keep all the doors and windows locked, and every single person, including all the employees and guests, checked in and out every single time, and make sure all the technology works perfectly all the time. It's impossible.'

Alan brushed that aside. ‘So Melissa was missing for how long?' he persisted.

‘I tell you I don't know!' Jemima was getting exasperated. ‘Why does it matter? It was long enough to get me into serious trouble, I'll tell you.'

‘It matters,' I said quietly, ‘because of what she might have done and whom she might have met in that time.'

‘But . . . you can't mean . . .'

‘I don't know what I mean, except that we're talking about what might have been a critical time in Melissa's life. She was angry with you, she was fleeing pursuit in an extremely glamorous setting . . . and she was thirteen years old, a time of one's life when emotions are notoriously unstable. How was she, emotionally I mean, when you saw her next?'

Jemima bit her lip. ‘She was crying. Well, she was in a pretty unsympathetic atmosphere. They'd found her, finally, in the garden, trying to get away, but all the doors were locked, and . . . well, you've seen the wall.'

Indeed I had. High, solid, and topped with spikes and barbed wire. Not intended for climbing.

‘So they'd taken her to the security office, and since she was under age, they'd sent for me while they questioned her. And searched her, in case she'd stolen something. They hauled her over the coals for ages. It was dreadful! I was furious with her, but I was also pretty upset with the way they were treating her. I suppose it was after two before everything calmed down. Unless you count the rocket I got for at least another half an hour. I thought I was going to be sacked. Mrs Sedgewick would have done, I think, but
her
boss intervened, said it really wasn't my fault. I've been on probation ever since, though.'

‘And Melissa left on her rampage . . . when?' Alan was back to his timetable.

‘Oh. Well, I wasn't looking at my watch, but we'd started the tour at ten, and we weren't quite halfway through.'

‘So you see, you do have an idea about time. Apparently Melissa was at large in the palace for at least two hours.'

‘Something like that, I suppose.'

‘And did she meet and talk with anyone during that time?' I asked, not expecting any satisfactory answer.

Jemima shook her head. ‘I don't know. It wasn't one of the questions the security people asked. They wanted to know where she'd been, and she couldn't tell them much, not knowing the names of the palace rooms. She did mention some of the art, but the house is stiff with art. “A room with a lot of paintings and clocks” narrows it down to five or six, at best. But I wouldn't have thought her mind would be on a chat.'

‘Did the staff talk about the incident later?'

‘Oh, it was all over the house in an hour! They talked, all right, but not to me. I overheard bits now and then, but . . .'

She trailed off and I took up the conversation. ‘Jemima, have you any close friends at the palace?'

‘Not really.' She lifted her glass and took a healthy swallow. It was nearly empty. ‘The Lord Chamberlain's Office is a separate department from the rest of the household, and we don't mix much.' She looked down at her hands again.

‘It must get pretty lonely.'

‘I'm too busy to think about that very much.' She paused. ‘At least I was. Now I'll probably lose my job. I've been gone from my office for over an hour now, and you can be sure Mrs Sedgewick has noticed.'

‘We'll do our best to smooth that over,' said Alan. ‘But Jemima, we need you to think. You say you overheard comments about Melissa's escapade. What were people saying?'