Death and the Princess (13 page)

‘Who was she?’

‘Factory worker and part-time whore down the East End, Limehouse way. Foul-mouthed, didn’t give a damn. I don’t think she knew who my father was, but she always said it was a sailor off a Danish boat. Or Swedish, she was never quite sure. I don’t think communication was too good, but it produced me. She called me Mel, by the way, on the birth certificate, after some American singer or
other of the time. James made sure I changed it to Malcolm, so that got rid of about the only thing she ever gave me. I haven’t set eyes on her since I left school.’

‘You left home when you left school, did you?’

‘Yes. First opportunity.’

‘Why? To make it easier to become a gentleman?’

‘Oh no, it wasn’t as premeditated as that, at first. But I was working as a waiter, first in a scruffy Greek café, then in a rather good Italian restaurant in Soho. The pay was all right. But half the kids I’d known at school were out of work, and these days no one can say they’re safe. So it came to me gradually that what I needed was a job that was a hundred per cent safe, where I could learn what I wanted to learn. I knew it would take time, I knew it would be like going back to school again. But I thought it was worth it. So I took a whacking drop in pay and came here. I’ve never regretted it.’

‘So what precisely was it you wanted?’

‘Oh God — how to explain? You know, when I was a waiter in that Italian restaurant, people used to come in — men — at lunch-time, doing business and that: smart, or well-dressed, anyway, public-school accents — ordering the right things, knowing about wine. Probably not out of the top drawer, otherwise they’d have been in a top-drawer restaurant, but still able to pass, When these men talked, half of what they said wasn’t in the words: there was a sort of sign language underneath the words. They used it to signal to each other, and it showed they were of the same kind. Gentlemen. Natural rulers. People with a history. It made no difference that half of them probably had awful little jobs with PR firms. They were still part of the gentleman network. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to talk right, to dress right, to eat and drink right. Waiting showed me a door to this new world. I wanted to go through into it. I wanted to understand those signs.
Eventually, perhaps, to be able to make them myself. Do you blame me?’

I sighed. It seemed a sad little ambition.

‘Of course not. But as you say, it does seem a bit out of date. Obviously you don’t believe that Britain has become classless.’

Malcolm Woodley laughed. ‘People who say that are always upper-middle or better themselves. The view from under the bridge is different.’

‘And that was what you got from Brudenell?’

‘Roughly. Of course, eventually I’d have gone on to someone with more finesse, someone more sophisticated, with better contacts. But he was good at all the obvious things: the food, and the clothes. That manner I have — remote — you know — ?’

‘I know.’

‘He taught me that. He said I had to learn not to give myself away before I could learn to relax again. And he was right. Without that . . . unapproachableness, I’d have made myself a laughing-stock a thousand times over.’

‘Had he begun to introduce you round, then — I mean, get you into his set?’

‘He didn’t have a set. But we had put our toes into the water. It was hellish difficult. Say I’d gone to one of his little supper parties after the opera, or say we’d gone to the theatre together: the implications would have been totally obvious. And very damaging to James. Certainly one thing he could not afford to do was to “come out”. So we had to be more subtle. If we went to the theatre we had to meet by chance in the bar at interval — then he could introduce me to anyone he knew. He could come to a restaurant knowing I’d be already sitting there — “Hello, old boy, fancy seeing you!” You know the drill. We must have had more stagey chance meetings than the couple in
Brief Encounter.
But it was beginning to work. I could
pass. At first I had to stay very quiet; then I could start talking a bit. Soon I’ll be able to take the initiative, make friends of my own.’

‘You were beginning not to need him?’

‘If you like to put it like that, though that certainly doesn’t mean I wanted to get rid of him. But I knew where to buy clothes, and what to buy. I couldn’t afford it, but then — few and good is the motto, isn’t it? The eating and the drinking came easily. I’d picked up most of the drill, and James only had to teach me the philosophy behind the drill. When I’ve got a bit more confidence I’ll start constructing a background for myself. Mum in Limehouse will not find a place in it. Well, that’s it. That’s my story, for what it’s worth.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘That clears the air. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, which is Mr James Brudenell.’

Malcolm Woodley sat up on the bed, and looked at me through cold, narrowed eyes.

‘What about you coming clean first, then? You think it was murder, don’t you?’

‘If you mean the Police as a whole, we haven’t made up our minds yet. If you mean me personally, yes, I do.’

‘So do I,’ said the boy frankly.

‘Good. Now we both know what we’re talking about. Why do you think that?’

‘Well, first of all, from what we’ve heard downstairs, it was either suicide or murder. James was hardly the type to point a gun playfully at his head and then accidentally pull the trigger. James didn’t live dangerously: he was a woolly vest and galoshes man. But the fact is, he wasn’t the type to commit suicide either. He wouldn’t have had the nerve. And anyway, he was perfectly happy. I don’t suppose he’d ever been so happy in his life. He loved his job, and he loved me. There was no reason.’

‘So things hadn’t gone wrong between you?’

‘Certainly they hadn’t. As I say, I’d pretty soon have
been thinking of going on to someone else, but he definitely hadn’t twigged that. You know, granted that he was a fussy, repressed little twit, he was really beginning to get a bit of enjoyment out of life. Now and again you’d have said he was a cat with two tails.’

‘You wouldn’t consider it possible that he was being blackmailed — for example, by someone else he had been involved with?’

‘He hadn’t been involved with anyone else. I was the first, I told you, and I was the only. Blackmail? It’s a laugh. He would have told me.’

‘You weren’t blackmailing him yourself?’

‘That’s a stupid question. I wanted things from him, but money wasn’t one of them. You say your sergeant noticed us: did he say it looked as if I was blackmailing him?’

‘No, he didn’t. And I don’t think it looks like that. But in fact, I’ve always thought blackmail was a red herring. Now, when were you last together?’

‘James and I? Just a couple of nights ago. Wednesday. I went to his flat. It wasn’t something that happened very often. James was obsessed with the neighbours, though in fact it was a very shut-in place: nobody seemed to have much contact with anybody else. I hardly saw a soul, the times I went there.’

‘Where did you meet, as a rule?’

‘Mostly James came to my place. It’s a room in Pimlico, and it was very much
infra
his
dig,
but he pretended he got a delicious sense of slumming it. Sometimes we drove out at weekends to one of the less popular country houses open to the public, or to a little-known restaurant. We once actually had a weekend in Brighton — off-season, separate rooms.’

‘What did you do on Wednesday?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. We usually began with what you might call tuition. That could take all shapes
and forms. On Wednesday we talked about schools. James had lent me a book about public schools. We talked, and he told me the sort of things they don’t put in books. The marks of a Winchester man, the special codes of a Harrovian. He had a bit of a complex about schools: he wished he’d gone to one of the major ones. Then we ate one of his ladylike little suppers, talked a bit, went to bed, and I went home about one o’clock.’

‘What about his mood? Not depressed, or anything?’

‘No, I tell you, he was happier these days than he’d ever been, I’d guess. In fact, he seemed a bit cock-of-the-walk about something or other.’

I groaned: ‘Don’t tell me — I can see it coming. The silly bugger didn’t tell you what it was.’

‘That’s right.’

‘All my cases are like that. Look, search your mind. Didn’t he give you
any
indication?’

‘Well, not really. I
presumed
it had something to do with his job here — at the Palace.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he didn’t tell me anything about it. If anything happened to him (and not much did), he’d generally tell me all about it. But not if it was anything to do with the Princess. Or the Royal family in general. It wouldn’t have done. Close as a clam he was. He called it “Proper Discretion”. I once approached the subject of the Princess’s love-life. Never again. He shut me up good and proper.’

‘So he didn’t say anything at all about why he was in a perky mood?’

‘Perky doesn’t quite describe it. He was, sort of indignant too — not outraged, but very tetchy. Not with me, but . . . with I don’t know who.’ He sat there in thought, trying to recreate the scene. ‘When I got there I was completely whacked, and I said so. Only I called it utterly exhausted. We’d had a delegation in the
afternoon of the Countrywoman’s Guild of Needle-workers, and they’d stayed to tea, by arrangement, of course. Unbelievable, they were. Then the Princess had given a small dinner-party, before going out to the theatre. That MP friend of hers was there, and I wouldn’t mind betting she went on with him afterwards. Anyway, I said I was whacked, and James said he’d done a
very
good day’s work (you know how he talked). I didn’t ask what, because that was forbidden territory, but he did say, just after that, and quite out of the blue: “I do
hate
people who take
advantage.”
And then: “People should realize I occupy a position of
trust.
” ’

‘And that was all?’

‘That was all I remember. We started in on the lesson then.’

‘Tell me, when you were there, did you go into the study?’

‘Oh yes. I always borrow an improving book from his collection.’

‘Did you notice whether he had a big scrapbook open on the little table?’

Malcolm Woodley screwed up his eyes. ‘Yes, it was there. It took up all the table. It’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? He pasted in newspaper cuttings of the Princess, acres of them, just as though he was some besotted ageing Elvis fan.’

‘Yes, I’ve looked at it. He didn’t comment on the book on Wednesday?’

‘No. He wouldn’t. I think he was a bit embarrassed about it.’

We chewed the cud a bit more, but that in fact was about all I got out of young Woodley. By the end I felt he wasn’t such an unendearing individual after all. I wondered what was to become of him. Gentlemen without money have one advantage over pseudo-gentlemen without money: they have contacts — family, school-fellows,
the old boy network. Probably Limehouse has pretty much the same sort of network. In fact, I believe that’s the only way you can get work in the docks. But I did have an awful feeling that young Woodley was in danger of falling resoundingly between two stools.

I had a cosy chat with Joplin in the car, on the way back to the Yard. Mr Brudenell’s little romance was of course no secret below stairs, but on this subject they could add nothing to young Woodley’s own frank account. General opinion of the Princess was mixed. All the staff liked her, but a good half of them thought she needed a good smacking. ‘She’s a spoiled little minx,’ the under cook had said, ‘wilful and cunning as a fox, but she’s only got to look at you, and smile, and she gets over your defences, and you smile back and do exactly what she wants.’ As far as her boy-friends were concerned, three were known at the Palace. There had been an early, servile preference for the Honourable Edwin Frere, but this had soon effectively evaporated on closer acquaintance with the gentleman himself. The favourite was now Jeremy Styles, whose performances as Mr Darcy and Steerforth in television serials had apparently given him, in the eyes of the domestic staff, the patina of an honorary gentleman.

Oh well, perhaps there was hope yet for Young Woodley.

CHAPTER 11

High Places

By now Joplin and I both had ‘doubles’ at the Palace, policemen who could take over our security duties when necessary. However, next morning I had no alternative
but to attend the Princess on an official function. She was visiting the Local Government Offices at Kilburn Town Hall, and since Kilburn contained a large Irish population, everyone was jittery. It seemed necessary for the senior man to be there. Even the lady-in-waiting came out of her upper-class carapace and expressed the opinion in the car that the Irish were ‘lower than animals’ — though since the only living thing I’d ever heard her express favourable opinions of were horses and dogs, this description didn’t seem to me to have quite the cutting force she intended. Anyway, the local Irish apparently had other things on their minds that day than minor royalty, and apart from a boycott by some Labour councillors the visit went off very well, and we were back at Kensington Palace by half past twelve. It was an unexpectedly sunny early February day: daffodils were certainly not out, but there seemed to be daffodils in the air. I think the stirrings of spring affected the Princess too.

‘Why,’ she said, as we got out of the car, ‘don’t you have lunch with me?’

‘I — er — ’

‘Oh
do.
I always have lunch with my security man at some time or other. Except McPhail. I didn’t feel equal to that. But I do
love
policemen, you know, generally.’

‘You remember I have another engagement for lunch, Your Royal Highness,’ drawled Lady Dorothy, with warning and disapproval in the drawl.

‘Quite, Dorothy,’ said the Princess flatly. Thwarted, the lady-in-waiting trudged off towards the Palace. ‘As if,’ said the divine Helena, ‘I’d think of sharing you.’

‘Well, I — ’

‘Marvellous. Then we’ll eat about one.’