Death and the Princess Read Free

more technical, and I was able to advise her on the pronunciation of ‘gerontology’. She was awfully grateful, she said, because she must have been getting it wrong for years and no one had told her. At the end she was quite effusive.
    ‘I can see we’re going to get on awfully well,’ she said. ‘Most of the other policemen have been just that bit stuffy. I mean, always trying to stop one. I do think at my age you’ve got to have just a bit of freedom, don’t you?’
    She opened those enormous eyes still wider, in appeal.
    ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘Now, in that connection, Ma’am — ’
    But we were interrupted by the lady-in-waiting. She knocked discreetly and entered in what must have been her characteristic way: silent, thin-lipped, fussy, disapproving.
    ‘The car leaves in ten minutes, Your Royal Highness,’ she drawled. ‘One doesn’t want to be late.’
    One didn’t mind in the least being late, I suspected, if one was the Princess Helena. There was something almost of petulance in her reaction.
    ‘Oh dear, what a shame! Just when we were beginning to be friends. You’re not coming with us, I suppose.’
    ‘No, Ma’am. Sergeant Joplin will be with you today.’
    ‘Is he nice?’ She caught a look from her lady-in-waiting, and pouted still more. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll have lots of opportunities in the future. I must fly!’
    And she danced out, followed by her grey shadow. Within a matter of seconds a secretarial flunkey came in to show me out. I had the feeling of being caught up in an infinitely smooth-running piece of machinery, the ultimate in unobtrusive efficiency. Inside the Palace, the Princess was cocooned. But I did not get the impression she was a young lady who would be happy for long in a cocoon.

CHAPTER 2
    The Loyal Subject
    After my interview with the Princess Helena amid the tatty splendours of Kensington Palace, I mortified the flesh with a lunch of sausage and mash in the Scotland Yard canteen. I smothered the sausages with tomatoketchup and read the Daily Grub, and that way brought myself sufficiently down to earth for my interview with Joe Grierley. Joe may appreciate my couthness on occasion, but he can sniff out uppitiness like a monomaniacal beagle.
    As I pushed back my chair to go up to Joe’s office, I caught sight of the Princess herself on the Grub’s back page. She was in the rear of a gaggle of royals trooping in to a Royal film show — but she was the one the Grub pictured. She was looking very demure. The film sounded dire.
    When I had settled myself comfortably into an armchair in Joe’s office, prepared for a long talk, he looked at me roguishly.
    ‘Enjoy yourself?’ he said, in his gravelly, cockles-and-mussels voice.
    ‘So-so,’ I said. ‘Not really my scene, however difficult you may find that to believe. Contrary to the received opinion around here, I did not have duchesses cooing over my cradle, or exiled royalty showering me with monogrammed christening-spoons.’
    ‘You disappoint me,’ said Joe, with a fruity chuckle. Joe has the figure for fruity chuckles, being a square, genial cockney who has run very much to tummy. He was born in Stepney, has one of the sharpest and fastest brains in the business, and a sense of humour too, though rather one of the breasts and buttocks variety. We get on well, but I know he thinks me cold and ‘sarky’. It’s true I never went much on seaside postcards.
    ‘And what’s your opinion of the young lady?’ Joe asked.
    ‘A corker,’ I said. ‘Which should be obvious to the bleariest old eye. Beyond that, I’m saying nothing till I have the whole story out of you. I presume something’s in the air.’
    ‘We’re sniffing,’ he admitted, ‘and faintly rotten smells are being wafted to us over the winds. Otherwise, as Isaid, we wouldn’t have landed this in your lap.’
    ‘So I should hope,’ I said, for I was not yet mollified. ‘So I should bloody hope.’
    ‘Now, now,’ said Joe, settling