Your Royal Hostage (15 page)

It was some hours after this that Jemima, pouring another whisky for Pompey as she described her recce, remembered where she had seen Beagle. The recollection, including the group of disparate worshippers at the shrine of St Francis - St Francis, patron saint of animals, animal love, interesting that, there seemed to be a lot of it about, even within the cathedral's precincts - the recollection did not then seem important enough to relate. But it did seem important enough to file away in her memory, like one small piece of the mosaic on the cathedral walls. She thought of saying to Pompey: 'What was that photographer called? The one who was a friend of the murdered man? The one with the alibi?' That too would wait, if not for ever.

Thus it was part of her general thought process on the subject of the Princess, her security, and the past threat posed by Innoright, that she observed aloud to Pompey: 'They're at the opera tonight. I shall have to throw you out in order to get ready for Covent Garden. Royal Gala!'

'You to your garden and I to mine,' observed Pompey wistfully.

'Still, they'll be safe enough at the opera,' said Jemima.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Evening in a Good Cause

Against the red velvet frame of the box, Monkey looked both substantial and dignified in his white tie and tails. Moreover the crackling white waistcoast stretched smoothly over his broad chest unlike those of some of his contemporaries, sorted out from disuse for the occasion of the Royal Gala. But Monkey was used to white-tied City dinners; he was also used to benefits in aid of good causes of which the present Royal Gala might seem to be just one more example. Monkey even sported on his chest a minor medal incurred for philanthropic work and donations - in another life before Innoright.

For Monkey, however, it was not just one more evening in a good cause. Or not in the sense that the world generally would understand the phrase. The presence of Lamb beside him, thin shoulders peering out of a plain pale-pink satin dress with shoestring straps, signified that. Lamb herself was as appropriately dressed as Monkey. If her dress was slightly dowdy, an unusual lotus pattern diamond circlet sat upon her dark head.
Ione
Quentin, who had l
ent the dress (as a lady-in-wait
ing, she had numbers of such inconspicuous long dresses available, this one being cut sufficiently straight to accommodate Lamb's much slimmer figure) had also insisted on Lamb wearing the tiara.

'Mum's tiara,' said Lamb doubtfully, weighing it in her hand. The box in which the circlet had been housed was ancient battered red morocco, and the red velvet interior, unlike that of the Covent Garden box, distinctly shabby. But the diamonds shone in all their 
yellowish eighteenth-century lustre. 'I thought you usually wore it at this kind of bash.'

'P.A. won't mind. P.A. won't
notice.'
Ione
, as so often with her sister, was determinedly cheerful. 'She's the veritable star of the show this evening. No other Royals going. Well, one or two royal-ish ones. The younger lot. But P.A. outranks them all. The Duchess, who frankly loathes the opera, has got one of her frequent convenient illnesses. P.A. loves that, of course; after all the Gab is for her - him too, naturally. Even if it was all rather last minute, slotted into the schedule. I told you.'

'Yes, you told me.' Lamb continued to weigh the tiara as though it represented a subject she was weighing up in her mind.

'Go on, Lee
lee, put it on.'
Ione
used the name from their childhood as she seldom did nowadays; it seemed to upset Lydia, reminding her of their mother who had never called her anything else. 'Besides it will help me to keep an eye on you. Also, I want to see what's his name. What is his name? The dirty old man who's taking you.'

'He's not a dirty old man.' Suddenly Lamb wore her intense look, the one that made Ione's heart sink, and
Ione
cursed herself. 'He's a very fine person who does a lot of good in the world, unlike all your lot with their show-off jewels. Princess Amy should meet
him
instead of that awful Gala committee. Do you know how much suffering -'

'But darling, it was a joke. I'm sure P. A. would
love
to meet him. You
said
he was a
dom,
do you remember?'
Ione
hastily retrieved the tiara from Lamb's agitated hands and replaced it in the shabby box. 'And anyway I looked him up and saw that he married a sister of Mum's friend, Penelope, my godmother; wife deceased; no
children; never remarried. So I
said he must be looking for
a
young wife and you said, no, that's not what he's looking for, a wife, he's a Dirty Old Man. It was a joke,' concluded
Ione
patiently.

In the end Lamb wore the tiara. Ever since her illness she often did what people wanted in small things in order to save her energies for resistance when it really mattered. Lamb smiled to herself as she allowed
Ione
to fasten it on. She thought she might sell the tiara and give the money to Innoright. After everything was over. Then what would clever Nonie do? The tiara had after all been left to them jointly.
Ione
saw the smile on her sister's sad little face and was not reassured.

It would undoubtedly have surprised Lamb to learn that Ione's supposition concerning Mr Edward James Arthur Monck
mbe's
intentions were not really so wide of the mark. Or perhaps fantasies would be a better word than intentions. As Major Pat Smylie-Porter sometimes confidently dreamt of the day when he would marry
Ione
Quentin, Edward Monck also secretly dreamt from time to time of taking her sister as a second wife. He would review the years without his beloved Cynthia, she who had been so very different (not only physically) from Lamb and whose pointless death of an embolism during a minor operation had driven him on his first steps down the path of obsession. First making money — what else was there to do?-— then giving it away - what else was there to do with it? Cynthia had left no children - finally Innoright, his own protest against a cruel world, and the Underground Plan, its supreme expression.

His mission accomplished, the Underground Plan accomplished, might he not allow himself at last the indulgence of a second bride, a child wife, one would combine in those two things, two attributes so long missing from his life?

Tonight was not the night for such dreams. Edward Monck a.k.a. Monkey, took one more quick look at Lamb's pale skin glimpsed above the smooth satin which virtually matched it and pointed his thoughts back sternly to the matter in hand.

At that moment there was a hush then a rustle in the audience. The starched white waistcoats crackled as their inhabitants struggled to their feet. Long skirts were retrieved uncomfortably from beneath the next-door seat. Like animals feeding together, who turn their heads in unison at a sudden noise, the whole audience now craned in one direction.

Princess Amy, a tiny shining figure, appeared in the Royal Box, in the centre of the right-hand tier of boxes facing the stage, followed by Prince Ferdinand, darkly handsome with the green sash of some appropriately Ruritanian order across his chest.

While flunkeys in the flamboyant Opera House uniform were visibly hovering round them, the more discreet figures of
Ione
Que
ntin and Major Pat Smylie-Porter, the latter with several medals of a genuinely military nature on his chest as well as others gained in the royal service, could be discerned behind them.

Unlike Monkey and Lamb in their box on the opposite side, framed in red velvet alone, Princess Amy and Prince Ferdinand stood in a bower of blue flowers, swags cascading from the rim of the box itself, and great pilasters of blue surrounding them on either side. Was the blue a delicate tribute to Amy herself? But then speculation about such a comparatively minor matter as the flowers faded in favour of universally admiring exclamations concerning the Princess herself. Or rather almost universally admiring: an exception to the general chorus of admiration would have to be made in the case of Chicken and Pussy, sharing a second-tier box.

'Little Madam,' said Pussy to Chicken, putting down her impressive-looking binoculars. Lately she had taken to using Fox's phrase for Amy, rolling it succulently on her tongue, in prefer
ence to her own 'spoilt brat', ‘I
believe that was a fur stole that was being stowed away at the back. And after what she said on television! They're all the same. Hypocrites. I'd like to give her one.'

'You may soon have an opportunity,' murmured Chicken drily. But her words, as she intended, were drowned by the sound of the National Anthem. Chicken, believing herself to be potentially far more ruthless than Pussy — in a good cause and at the right moment - disapproved of the latter's habit of indulging in such blatantly vicious talk. Chicken rustled the score which as an opera lover (if mainly on Radio 3) she had brought in order to calm her nerves. With her usual forethought Chicken had taken care to remove all personal marks from the score; nevertheless she was aware that if anyone cared to look closely with their own binoculars into what was in effect a corner balcony box, next to the stage itself, they might be surprised to see an Indian woman sedulously following the musical score.

For some at least of Pussy's ill
temper and Chicken's irritation
was caused by the unaccustomed style of dress in which both women were attired: Indian and bejewelled would be the best way of describing it. As a matter of fact. Chicken and Pussy, with the connivance and advice of Fox, looked surprisingly convincing. It was true that neither of them would be taken for the kind of lissom Maharani of popular imagination (or the
Heat and Dust
style of film). But Pussy's dour build and basically dark complexion had needed very little adaptation to give her the characteristic phlegmatic look of an Eastern female; Chicken presented at first sight more of a problem. But: 'Nothing we can't overcome,' Fox insisted; his enthusiasm making him suddenly seem stronger, more forceful — or perhaps he merely displayed something more of his real character. So Pussy in voluminous turquoise. Chicken in neater red, inhabited their eyrie and gazed — across, to the right and downwards
-
at Princess Amy in the Royal Box. An observer might also have noticed that there were only two people in a box meant for four; although of course the restricted balcony view made this a practical measure. But who looked into a balcony box on the night of a gala?

These dissentient voices apart, it was generally agreed at the time — not only afterwards when such a retrospective judgement became perhaps inevitable - that 'little Amy' had never looked more beautiful. Expert analysis would indeed be needed to realize that what actually glittered at Amy's round white neck, at her little white ears, at the not inconsiderable cleft between her plump white breasts, and filleting her elaborately ringleted blonde hair, were the famous Russian sapphires belonging to Ferdel's great-grandmother (she who had or had not danced with Rasputin but had certainly known how to amass a wearable fortune in jewellery). Probably only Susanna Blanding, opera glasses trained, immediately recognized them for what they were. 'The so-called "Rasputin sapphires". Unlucky?' she murmured to Curt, without expecting an answer from this normally comatose source.

At the time it was Amy herself, eyes shining in palpable triumph at the applause her appearance evoked, rather than the provenance of her
parure,
which aroused the happily startled gasps of admiration.

She raised her plump little white hand - no ring but the engagement one — in a gracious royal wave and said something to Prince Ferdinand.

Once again it would need expert analysis - from lip-readers -to reveal what Princess Amy actually said. Fortunately there were none present, despite the increasing employment of them at such events as royal weddings so that the avid public might share the last-minute thoughts - or even, daring hope, last-minute
second
thoughts of the latest bride.

It was fortunate there was no lip-reader present because what Amy actually said to Ferdel as she smiled and waved was: 'You never told me that bitch was going to be here.'

There had indeed been a moment of more than usual awkwardness - or a moment of highly enjoyable drama, depending on your point of view - when Mirabella Prey's large limousine, of hearse-like length in the American style, had swung in to the pavement in front of the Royal Opera House just as the royal car was expected. There was no doubt in the minds of the numerous cameramen present, both for the newspapers and television, that enjoyable drama was the way to look at it; these representatives of television including Rick Vancy and Jemima Shore for
tus
(looking for some footage for their Wedding Special).

As their driver, jovial Harry, he of the
tus
London tour, would exclaim appreciatively later to his mates: 'Did you see her? Did you
see
her? Cor.' He shook his curly head under its blue cap, leaving no doubt that what he - along with millions watching the
tv
news - had seen was a ringside view of Mirabella's magnificent body.

Surely even that body had never been seen to greater advantag
e-certainly not in Beagle's infin
itely cruder nude photographs. Tonight Mirabella's spangled white crepe dress paid no more than a graceful tribute to the idea of concealing her small high breasts. In othe
r places the dress was stretched
so tight that the two slits on either side of the skirt revealed not only those celebrated long legs but also delicious brown thighs: the slits at least could be justified by the need to manoeuvre out of the car, which would otherwise have been quite impossible.