Death and the Princess (16 page)

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I suppose I could try.’

‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ said Jeremy Styles.

‘But who these days would want to inherit the earth?’

‘That,’ said Styles, ‘is the meek.’

‘Thank God. I’m safe then,’ I said.

But I was so disturbed by the prospect of tomorrow evening that I forgot to ask Jeremy Styles to keep me posted about his dates with the Princess. In the event, it didn’t matter. In a couple of days the case was solved, and I was able to stop playing Paul Pry into other people’s love-lives. I was beginning to feel like I did in my early days on the beat, shining my torch into the back seats of cars.

Anyway I watched a bit of Jeremy Styles’s play from the back of the stalls — it was quite funny, but I much prefer the sort of play where you can hope for some minor character to pop in and say ‘Anyone for tennis?’ One prolonged singles match does get tiring. So I went home and heated up something from the deep freezer, and then I rang Jan in Newcastle (she has the sort of digs with a phone in the hall) and I brought her up to date on the developments in the case, which added a hefty sum to my telephone bill. She in her turn gave me some details (she’s good at that sort of thing) about the past life of Edwina, Lady Glencoe.

‘You can’t say you aren’t mixing in the best circles,’ she said.

‘Highest, perhaps,’ I countered. ‘High as well-hung pheasant.’

‘You’re just an inverted snob. I bet before you go to bed you’ll go and look them all up in Debrett, and
drool
over the company you’ll be keeping.’

I didn’t, in fact. Actually I went straight to bed, to sleep fitfully and drowse dreadingly on the subject of tomorrow’s State Visit. Jan, later on, was the first to point out that it would have been very much better if I had done what she had foretold.

CHAPTER 13

State Visit

The Principality of Liechtenburg consists of ten or twelve square miles of Disneyland buildings perched on the edge of some crag in the middle of the Alps, ruled over by a monarch who adds new shades of diminution to the word ‘princeling’. It is the sort of state fit to have an American musical made out of it, and not much else. The present Prince’s ancestors had so skilfully played off Austria against France, and both against Switzerland, that he had been allowed to keep his little pocket-handkerchief of edelweiss-bespattered rock, and in the twentieth century it had become a fictitious place of residence for the beautiful people, an accommodation address for the tax-dodging businessman, a sort of numbered bank-box to the world. In the normal course of events the Prince of vaguely ridiculous little states like Liechtenburg would hardly be in line for the honour of a State Visit. These days, however, Liechtenburg seemed to correspond cosily with Britain’s vision of itself. So here were the Prince and the Princess, with three of their children, their Hofmeister, their Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and seven or eight regular or specially appointed members of their court. As some wit said, the streets of Liechtenburg must suddenly have seemed very empty.

The Prince of Liechtenburg (which is a landlocked state) nevertheless had a yacht, stationed at Nice, which was nominally the Liechtenburg Navy. This yacht was commanded by an Admiral (who in the winter months doubled as Master of the Horse), and the Admiral sailed the yacht from Nice to Harwich at the commencement of
the State Visit. At Harwich the Prince and his entourage were welcomed on behalf of the Queen by one of her cousins, who transferred the party into the Royal Train and accompanied them to Liverpool Street Station. Here they were to be met by the Queen and all sorts of royal and governmental personages, and thence the visitors would take their places in the carriage procession which would make its way through the narrow streets around the station (which only needed that to make them impossible), and eventually into the Strand for the triumphal drive through central London, along streets thronged with early tourists (continentals still under the impression that Britain was cheap), and thence to the safety of Buckingham Palace.

The security during the procession was not, thank Heaven, my affair. I was merely to wait in the vicinity of the Princess Helena at Liverpool Street Station, and then go off duty until the Gala.

So there we all were, assembled under the grimy arches of that least welcoming of railway stations. How shall I describe the glittering scene for you? How shall I describe the glittering scene without lapsing into BBC commentator’s prose? I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll give it a big miss. Can we take it that the Queen was looking regal in a turquoise shantung something or other, that the Duke was looking gallant and handsome in the uniform of the 42nd Lancers, and the Prince of Wales was looking fairly gallant and fairly handsome in the uniform of the Third Welsh Borderers, and the Princess of Wales was looking absolutely yummy? Oh, and the Queen Mum was looking as usual in one of those feathery hats and pale blue outfits of the kind she’s been wearing since the days when she called on Snobby Driscoll’s mum, and which as a matter of fact I rather like?

Let’s skip all that stuff, and just say that the Prince of Liechtenburg (a grey-haired, rather distinguished,
scholarly-looking man) alighted from the train, was welcomed, and walked through the station with the Queen to take his place in the first carriage. After that, all went according to Protocol: the Princess of Liechtenburg (who looked as if she might be a dab hand with an apfel strudel) paired off with the Duke, and so on down to my little Helena, who rode in the sixth carriage with the second son of the Liechtenburg Prince — a boy of fourteen whom it was no doubt thought she would be safe with, though in situations less overwhelmingly public I’m not so sure.

But before she got to her coach the Princess Helena had one other duty to perform. Alighting from the train just ahead of the Court and governmental personnel, presumably in some sort of honorary position that was neither fish nor fowl, was her father, and the Princess left her teenage Prince for a moment and went to hug her progenitor. The gesture was not, I suspected, sincere, but she did it sincerely. Cameras clicked. Then she made her way demurely through the station to her carriage, as usual arousing a very special (vaguely lecherous) cheer.

My duty was over. I lingered behind and took a better look at her father, Prince Rupert of Krackenburg-Hoffmansthal: he was indeed tall and melancholy — with, at first glance, the look of a poet or a musician, a somewhat troubled look, as if plagued by
Angst
or constipation. Then one saw the full lips and the roving eye, and realized he had another side to his nature — less a Werther than Werther’s contemporaries, the sons of George III.

‘Off course I haff been here before,’ I heard him say to the Buckingham Palace equerry, in that remarkably harsh and unattractive voice that the Princess had mentioned to me. ‘I voss here many time viss my late vife. Yes, indid. London holds many unhappy memories for me!’

He laughed a hollow laugh, like the scraping together of rusty knives, and disappeared through the station arches to the waiting world outside.

Me, I got into a police car and made my way through all the cordoned-off side streets, and three-quarters of an hour later was standing outside Buckingham Palace as the carriage procession arrived, in a Mall moderately thronged with observers — for even minuscule royalty gets a better turn-out than important Presidents. One by one the carriages, with their waving figures like models in mechanical clocks, turned into the Palace. The Princess Helena was talking animatedly to her young Prince, who was obviously planning to marry her when he got older. She nevertheless kept up her quota of waves, and even gave a special one for me when she saw me by the gates. The old heart missed a beat again. Clever girl. Then the coach disappeared round the side of the Palace, and I knew she was safely cocooned in all that plush and gilt until it was time to go to the Gala.

Normally the first evening of a State Visit would have been devoted to a State Banquet. But that evening was the only one on which Covent Garden could produce a suitable gala opera, and since the Prince had especially expressed the wish to see an opera (and the Queen had had perforce to grit her teeth and bear it), the banquet had been postponed to the second day. The Prince had spent his young manhood in post-war Vienna, had worshipped at the feet of Ljuba Welitsch, Lisa Della Casa, Hilde Gueden. Liechtenburg did not run to an Opera, though it did have a cinema show on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The opera was to be Meyerbeer’s
L’Africaine
— hardly the obvious choice, since it is one aria surrounded by five acts of padding and lots of pretty scenery, but it happened to be what the Royal Opera were performing at the time.

So I spent the afternoon at Covent Garden,
familiarizing myself with the place and the security arrangements. I had been there before, of course, but of late years only in the upper reaches, and that seldom. The Royal party was to occupy the central section of the Grand Tier, where they could both see and be seen. At interval they were to go to the private room behind the Royal Box, where they would mingle with the Covent Garden top brass. No possible danger there. Operatic people get more than enough sublimation for their violent impulses. The security arrangements at the Garden were supervised by the Palace, and they were, of course, impeccable. After I had got the lie of the land in that part of the house, I asked about the arrangements for Lady Glencoe’s party. The official whom I questioned seemed to be suppressing with difficulty raised eyebrows and lewd innuendoes. He pointed out to me three boxes where Lady Glencoe’s intimate party would sit. After the performance they would go back to the Crush Bar, where they would be joined by the rest of the invitees, by the directors and by the odd critic and performer, for this was an official House party. Most of those attending would have been sitting in other parts of the house, or in some cases (Jeremy Styles, for example), would not have attended the opera at all.

‘Does she have this sort of party often?’ I asked.

‘Not infrequently,’ sniffed the functionary. ‘After the House’s more social evenings, as a rule. She is on the Board to help with such things: the social side is considered important, and Lady Glencoe is very good at gathering . . . notables.’

‘So that’s why she’s on the Board?’

‘Yes. The workings of the Board are as mysterious as those of the Masons. Lady Glencoe is rumoured to be tone-deaf, which must make the evenings she is forced to spend here a considerable trial to her.’

‘Would you have a list of her personal guests tonight?’

‘Naturally. We wouldn’t let just anyone into those areas of the House. Would you like to see it?’

The list, of course, confirmed the suspicions of Jeremy Styles, who obviously knew his Helena very well indeed. Invited by Lady Glencoe herself to the after-the-performance party were Henry Bayle, MP, the Honourable Edwin Montague Frere, and Mr James McAphee (better known as Jimmy), whose name I recognized as that of a roustabout Charlton Athletic player whose reputation for violence and foul language rivalled that of your average English supporter. Also gracing the occasion would be Prince Rupert of Krackenburg-Hoffmansthal, and of course the Princess Helena herself.

Well, forewarned is forearmed. There was one thing I could do, and I did it: I rang up McAphee and made it clear to him that if there were any trouble at the party I would not only arrest him, but also oppose bail, and he would be out of the Cup qualifying game on Saturday. I won’t burden you with what he said to me, which is the sort of thing that gets books banned in Home Counties libraries, but I’m no mean hand at that sort of thing myself too, and in the end we came to some sort of unamicable agreement.

So there we were, all prepared. At half past six I was in attendance at Kensington Palace, and the journey to the Opera House was uneventful. The Royals arrived one by one, and gathered in the room behind the Royal Box. At five to seven the Queen and the Duke and the Prince and Princess arrived, and at seven (Meyerbeer provides an awfully long evening’s music) the Royal party took their places. This time it was quite literally a glittering occasion: you’ve never in your life seen so many diamond tiaras, shimmering dresses, bosoms weighed down with the family emeralds, portly chests sporting decorations for services in the field or in Whitehall. The opera definitely
took second place as spectacle to what was to be witnessed in the front of the house. I suspected that ninety per cent of those there wouldn’t, in fact, have been able to tell
Tristan
from
The Tales of Hoffmann,
but they certainly woke up and became lively at interval.

I won’t burden you with details of the performance. I stood at the back of the dress circle and watched bits of it, and the story made
The Pirates of Penzance
look like a masterpiece of realistic theatre. The music had stirring bits, jolly bits and totally ludicrous bits. The Queen succeeded in looking interested. She did not succeed in looking as if she were enjoying herself. The audience was more interested in what was going on in the Grand Tier than in what was going on on stage. At interval, as I said, the Royals did not go into the Crush Bar to mingle with
hoi polloi
(though that is hardly the most apt description, since tickets sold for about £25 a pop), but went instead to the private room, and chatted with the operatic bigwigs. I attended them in my security capacity — there was nothing to fear there, but lots to overhear. The Princess talked to the Prince of Liechtenburg’s eldest son, on whom she seemed to be having an effect even more striking than that on his younger brother. I had read my evening papers. They were speculating (undeterred by the fact that the two had never clapped eyes on each other before today) on a romance between the pair. I was quite sure that Helena had read her evening papers too. This was the sort of speculation she fed on, greedily, unashamedly, and which in her turn she liked to feed.

I managed to get close to Prince Rupert, bending his height proprietorially over a rather delicious specimen of our minor royals. He looked like a stork waiting to gobble a tasty morsel of sea-food. Funny how eating and drinking images seemed to cluster around Helena’s father. Perhaps Helena’s mother felt she had been sucked dry and then cast off. Prince Rupert was saying: