The Second Assassin Read online

  ‘I don’t want your socks. I want your money,’ said Walsh. ‘Three cards.’ He took them and then it was Jane’s turn. She drew three as well and came up with a pair of jacks. She bet two dollars.

  ‘You think the king is coming to make some kind of deal with Roosevelt?’ Jane asked, looking across at Birdwell.

  The skinny reporter lifted his narrow shoulders. ‘Hard to say. There’s never been a British king on American soil before so it must mean something.’

  ‘I can tell you what it means,’ said Walsh. ‘It means that we’re already up to our armpits in crap from the World’s Fair out in the Meadows and now we’re going to be buried in more crap pasted with pictures of the Limey royals – that’s what it means.’ He shook his head. ‘Billingsly’s probably going to come up with a whole new goddamn menu for us to memorise. Quail a la queenie and king crab cakes.’ He drew two cards, frowned at his hand and folded again.

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,’ said Jane. A few minutes later Pelay took the hand with three queens and Jane went home to her office and Ponce de Leon the parrot.

  * * *

  Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles stepped out of his office on the ground floor of Buckingham Palace, his outstretched arms loaded down with half a dozen red leather dispatch boxes for His Majesty’s attention and, no doubt, the meddlesome attentions of Her Majesty as well. The thin, tall and slightly stooped man turned right and headed down the long gloomy corridor. It was ten minutes to ten and, like everything else in the ill-lit pile that was the royal residence in London, the enormous size of the building had to be factored into any estimation of personal punctuality.

  From his office at one end of the Privy Purse Corridor, Lascelles had to walk the entire length of the north-east wing, passing all the Household Offices, then wait for the ancient and interminably slow King’s Lift, which would then, if it didn’t stop halfway up, deposit him in the King’s Corridor, directly in front of His Majesty’s study.

  Hardinge, the king’s private secretary, had made a study of the journey over a period of two years and had discovered that the regular 10:00 a.m. delivery of the dispatch boxes required a lead time of a full ten minutes if the lift was on the upper floor and had to be summoned, and seven minutes if the lift was already on the main floor. According to Pendrell, the deputy master of the household, it was even worse for the kitchens; the average distance travelled by a Buck House meal was the better part of half a mile and the elapsed time for a bowl of soup to go from royal ladle to royal lips was roughly eighteen minutes.

  Delivering the boxes was usually Hardinge’s job, but Sir Alexander Hardinge, KCB, GCVO, Military Cross and Bar was, damn his bloody eyes, indisposed after what his note that morning had cryptically referred to as a ‘trying’ weekend in the country. If Lascelles knew anything about it, he was fairly sure that the trying part of the weekend had involved far too much Scotch and God only knew what with one or more of his young friends from the grenadiers.

  Lascelles reached the tiny elevator just in time to be bowled over as Elizabeth and her younger sister came charging out into the corridor, shrieking with laughter.

  Both the young princesses were dressed in plaid wool skirts and light-blue wool sweaters against the ever-present chill of the palace. Neither the skirts nor the sweaters were particularly becoming, not surprising given the somewhat rural background of their mother.

  ‘Dreadfully sorry, Tommy!’ said Elizabeth. She helped Lascelles retrieve the scattered boxes while Margaret watched solemnly, a thumb tucked wetly into the corner of her mouth like one of Churchill’s cigars. With the boxes back in Lascelles’s arms Princess Elizabeth gave him a quick little curtsy, pushed the button to open the narrow elevator door, then grabbed her sister’s hand and skipped away down the corridor.

  The tall man smiled, watching the future Queen of England race away, thinking fondly of his own two children, John and Lavinia, and wondering briefly what the future held for them. Lascelles stepped into the elevator, vowing that if either one of them showed the slightest sign of marrying into the royal family he’d have them committed to the Cane Hill Asylum just outside Croydon. Grinning broadly, he nudged the UP button with his elbow and the coffin-size lift began to move.

  Not for the first time Tommy Lascelles found himself wondering just what he was doing as an assistant private secretary to yet another royal. He’d spent nine years as assistant private secretary to the Prince of Wales and then, fool that he was, he’d taken on the job again when the prince became, however briefly, Edward VIII. By that point, already in his late forties, he really had very few employment choices. Both unwilling and unable to support a family on his military pension, he reluctantly accepted the post as assistant private secretary to George VI. At the time he’d assumed, optimistically, that nothing could be as bad as being APS to George’s older brother, Edward. He was wrong.

  Having had reasonably close relations with the royal family for the last twenty years, Lascelles had come to the reluctant conclusion there was something inherently ‘wrong’ about virtually all of them. Edward, now the Duke of Windsor, had appalling taste in women and certain personal practices Lascelles found both revolting and embarrassing. Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, was almost cretinously stupid and the duke’s sister, Mary, married to Lascelles’s uncle the Duke of Harewood, was interested in virtually nothing but horses and had the intellect to match her passion.

  Prince John, never mentioned in the press and rarely within the family, had been born a ‘backward’ child and epileptic. Dead of the terrible disease at fourteen, almost twenty years ago, he was buried secretly on the family estate at Sandringham and all but forgotten.

  The only one of the lot with any spirit or real backbone was the other George, the Duke of Kent, and even he was something of a spendthrift, especially when it came to exotic, expensive bijous and bric-a-brac. There were also tales concerning the young man’s late-night catting about in the London clubs that belied his supposedly happy marriage.

  George, the present king, was sovereign purely by the disastrous default of Edward’s abdication. He had a childhood stutter that had left him horribly lacking in confidence. A kind man certainly, and a doting father to his daughters, but terribly unhappy with the role unhappily thrust on him by fate. Like Edward, the king’s taste in women was magnificently naïve at best, although there were plenty of people at the palace who would tell you that it wasn’t the king’s taste at all – it was the Scots belle of Glamis Castle who’d set her sights on the poor stammering man right from the start.

  The elevator reached the upper floor and thumped to a stop. The door opened and Lascelles stepped out into the King’s Corridor. Directly behind the lift was the Throne Room and directly in front of him, across the long, slightly tatty carpet, was the King’s Study. Balancing the boxes on one arm Lascelles first checked the bow tie at the tall collar of his morning suit then gently tapped at the door.

  ‘Enter,’ a woman’s voice called out.

  He opened the door and stepped into the room. The study was large, high ceilinged and memorable only for the tall bow window that looked out across the wall and over to Green Park. The window was set with French doors leading out onto a small balustraded balcony. The French doors, like all the windows at Buckingham Palace, were fitted with long, heavy curtains in deep red. A door on the left side of the study led into the king’s private dining room, while an identical door opposite led into the king’s bedroom.

  There were three comfortable-looking green-and-gold armchairs arranged around the marble fireplace, a matching settee and several small tables. The dark oak floor was covered with a balding but obviously valuable Persian carpet and a number of paintings were hung on the walls. Lascelles had attended to the needs of the room’s previous tenant and knew that every single picture had been changed at the queen’s direction and according to her baldly sentimental tastes.

  One in particular, a Frank Holl titled No Tidings from the Sea, was fit only
for a biscuit tin and depicted a sobbing woman who has been out all night looking for her sailor husband in a storm. Given the torrent of tears on the woman’s face and the grizzling of a small girl clinging to her grandmother’s skirts it could be assumed that the sailor husband has been found dead.

  Another painting, Sir Joseph Noel Paton’s The Return from the Crimea, was equally mawkish, depicting a one-armed corporal back from the war, bloody bandage around his head, his mother weeping on his shoulder and his wife kneeling at his feet, embracing him. Paton had been appointed official painter for Scotland by Victoria and the hanging of the picture in the King’s Study was as much a trophy for the Bitch of Glamis as was the Russian helmet at the foot of Paton’s amputee soldier.

  As Lascelles came into the room the queen, dressed in yet another of her ghastly kilts, was arranging a vase of her favourite pink Betty Prior Polyantha roses on the mantelpiece. The king, dressed in a plain grey suit, was seated behind the cluttered desk that stood in front of the bow window. The desk was large, gilt-edged with a matching lyre-back chair and laden with stacks of paper. There were a pair of wicker IN and OUT baskets, a small ormolu clock, two telephones, a silver inkstand, a framed photograph of the queen and the children, an adjustable brass lamp and, on the leather-bound blotting pad, a large, overflowing cut glass ashtray that held one of the king’s smoking, ever-present Players cigarettes.

  As it had been since Victoria’s time, the blotter on the desk was jet black to ensure absolute privacy. Glancing past the king’s shoulder Lascelles could see over the wall to the upper deck of a bus moving along Constitution Hill and found himself wishing almost desperately that he was on it. The king gestured to a small table adjoining the desk and Lascelles gratefully put down the red leather boxes.

  ‘Well, Tommy?’ Once again it was the queen who spoke, forcing Lascelles to turn his head uncomfortably, unwilling as he was to look away from the king but forced by protocol to recognise the queen.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘Anything of interest in this morning’s boxes?’

  As though they contained copies of the Times, thought Lascelles, or in her case, the Picture Post. ‘A number of bills requiring His Majesty’s signature and seal,’ he answered quietly.

  ‘What about the trip?’ asked the queen, proffering a small half-smile in his direction. Presumably she was asking about the upcoming royal tour of North America and not a jaunt out to the greenhouses at Windsor Castle for more Betty Priors.

  ‘Yes. Wha-wha-t about the trip?’ the king repeated. He picked up his Players and drew on it, holding it in the European style, just the way his brother Edward did. ‘And do sit dow-down, Tommy, you make me awfully ner-nervous looming over me like that.’ Once again the queen was putting him in an awkward position. The king had given him leave to sit but the fact that the queen remained standing prevented it. Lascelles stood his ground.

  ‘Presumably the problem with that funny little man in Canada has been solved,’ said the queen.

  The funny little man in question was Mackenzie King, the prime minister, who was also that country’s foreign minister and who had insisted on accompanying Their Royal Highnesses on the entire tour, including the few days they would be spending in the United States. Normally on such a tour they would have been accompanied by the governor general, but Tweedsmuir had graciously stepped aside, making himself unavailable by arranging to be on a fishing holiday.

  ‘Yes, madam, the problem has been solved.’ Lascelles nodded. ‘Lord Tweedsmuir shall not attend.’

  The queen nodded and turned back to her vase of roses.

  ‘That’s ra-ra-rather a shame,’ said the king. ‘I’ve enjoyed his st-st-stories. Particularly the one about the sub-submarine.’

  ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps, sir.’

  ‘Common stuff, if you ask me,’ muttered the queen, fiddling with her flowers.

  ‘An-anything else of con-consequence, Tommy?’ asked the king.

  ‘The itinerary has been set,’ Lascelles answered. ‘Eight cities in Canada with a one-day rest at Banff in the Rocky Mountains, then the United States. Two days in Washington, a day in New York City to attend their World’s Fair and then a rest day with the president at his country estate on the Hudson River.’ Lascelles paused. ‘Following that, the royal train proceeds to Halifax and Their Royal Highnesses board ship for England.’

  ‘Sounds a bit gru-grueling,’ said the king with a sigh. ‘I’m not terribly good at this sort of thing, as you well know, Tommy.’

  ‘You’ll do fine, sir. The Canadians are a friendly lot. I spent quite a bit of time there some years ago.’

  ‘I do hope there’s very little of the tour spent in motor cars,’ said the queen. ‘Bertie suffers dreadfully from car sickness, as you are aware.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Lascelles, knowing perfectly well that it was the queen who hated car travel, not the king. ‘Virtually all travel will be aboard the royal train.’ Lascelles also knew perfectly well that this wasn’t entirely true but any last-minute changes by the queen would be like ripples in a pond, inconveniencing literally thousands of people on two continents. ‘We have also been informed that the interior refitting of the Repulse has now been completed and she’ll be ready on schedule.’

  The queen gave the spray of flowers a final adjustment then walked across the room to stand behind her husband, one hand on his shoulder. ‘Bertie and I have been discussing that.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ said Lascelles, his heart sinking.

  ‘Yes. The king feels that it would be improper for him to use a warship like the Repulse considering the situation with Mr Hitler.’

  Give her credit for political shrewdness, even if it was almost certainly self-serving, thought Lascelles. Repulse was a battle cruiser, and even refitted as she now was, hardly the sort of ship one wanted to cross the North Atlantic in. Repulse was also one of the few ships in the Royal Navy capable of catching the German navy’s new fleet of pocket battleships, which had been recently spotted lurking around the Spanish coast.

  ‘Actually it was Bu-Bu-Buffy’s idea really, although I quite agree with her.’

  ‘Perhaps I should begin looking for alternate transportation,’ Lascelles said finally. Tens of thousands of pounds wasted, not to mention several months of work. At this stage of the game the only other option would be to charter a transatlantic liner and God only knew what that would cost. Since the tour had been suggested more than a year ago the king had offered up one excuse after another and Lascelles had come to the conclusion that His Highness didn’t want to go at all.

  ‘I know it’s a bo-bother,’ said the king. He raised a hand and placed it over the queen’s. ‘Bu-but Buffy is right, you know.’ The look on the king’s narrow face was almost pleading. Lascelles flinched and felt colour rise in his cheeks. He hated it when the king and queen used their pet names for each other in his presence. Not only was it embarrassing, it was also distinctly un-royal.

  The queen smiled brightly. ‘Perhaps you could talk to those nice people at Cunard,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’d be most happy to help.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Lascelles, suppressing a sigh. ‘I’ll attend to it immediately.’ He bowed to the king, bowed again in a slightly lesser movement to the queen and withdrew.

  ‘I really don’t know why you keep that man around,’ said the queen, pushing at her flowers again.

  ‘To-Tommy is a tradition. He worked for Fa-Fa- Father, he worked for my bro-brother and now he works for me. For me.’

  ‘All the more reason to be quit of him,’ answered the queen. ‘Doesn’t do to have a man know too many family secrets.’

  The king stabbed out his cigarette angrily. ‘I’m too bloody stupid to have any secrets, don’t you see?’ Temper flaring, his stutter vanished instantly.

  ‘Now, Bertie,’ cautioned the queen.

  ‘There’s no “Now, Bertie” about it. David was the handsome one, the smart one, the one who was good at sums and reading,
and Mary was the pretty one. We visited Great-granmama at Balmoral once and she didn’t even mention me in her diary.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘I was a funk at school, worse in the navy and I’m no bloody good as the King of bloody England either!’ He swept the dispatch cases off the writing table and onto the floor.

  ‘Now, Bertie,’ the queen repeated. She bent and began retrieving the red leather boxes. ‘You may well have been a funk at school, and your stomach troubles kept you out of the war, but at least you had the good sense to marry me, unlike your dear brother who gave up the throne for an American… tart!’ She stacked the cases back on the desk and patted her husband on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s this damnable trip that has me worried,’ he muttered. ‘I shall make a fu-fu-funk of it as well.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bertie. You’ll do admirably, and besides, I’ll be with you every step of the way so there’s really nothing to worry about, is there?’

  ‘I just wish things could be the way they were before!’

  ‘Well, dear, they can’t, and that’s that, I’m afraid. You’re the king, I’m the queen and we have our duty to do.’ She patted his shoulder again. ‘Why don’t you go to the nursery and see what Lilibet and Margaret Rose are getting up to?’ She placed one plump and dimpled hand on the pile of dispatch cases. ‘I’ll look through these and see if anything really merits your attention.’ Puffing on his Players the king stared at the cases for a moment then stood and left the room without another word. The queen smiled, closed and locked the door behind him and then sat down at the writing table. She opened the first case and began to read.

  Chapter Two

  Thursday, March 16, 1939

  Palm Beach, Florida

  The short, fat-faced little man wearing wire-framed spectacles and the black suit and collar of a Catholic priest stood on the seawall of the large and very private estate at 1095 North Ocean Drive. Small hands clasped behind his back, he stared out at the quiet sea and contemplated his future, the ways of men and destiny.