Coronation Year, page 29
“It was the same when people rang up and asked for a room. If you were in your office, and there was a chance you might overhear, he’d put through the call. But if you weren’t nearby, he’d tell the callers the same thing: The hotel was full up, but the Cranbourn might well have room.”
“How much were they paying him?” Jamie asked.
“Half a crown per reservation. I expect he made a tidy sum for himself over the years. It also had the added benefit of making it that much harder for Edie to stay in business. He seemed to believe, at least until recently, that you might be driven to sell up if you couldn’t keep the hotel profitable. He even enlisted an old friend from Newcastle to try and persuade you. Jack Turnbull. Man’s been in and out of prison half a dozen times for all manner of offenses.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name,” Edie said.
“He used an alias. David Bamford.”
“My heavens. I never suspected.”
“What if Edie had agreed to sell the hotel to Bamford? What then?” Jamie asked.
“I doubt Brooks ever got that far. He definitely didn’t have the cash to buy it outright. In any event, you soon sent Bamford packing, and that’s when Brooks’s plans changed.”
“When he decided to kill me,” Edie said flatly.
“Yes. He seemed quite proud of his little plot, if you can believe it, and surprised as anything that it unraveled so easily.”
“How did he get hold of the explosives?” Jamie asked.
“From a neighbor back in South Shields. Seems to be the sort of type who likes to rabbit on about his dangerous job handling dynamite for the local colliery. Brooks got him talking, asked if anyone would notice if a smallish quantity of mining explosive were to go missing, and promised he’d pay well for the stuff, no questions asked. Said he needed it to collapse an old bomb shelter in a property he’d bought. The neighbor convinced Brooks that bigger was better, and sent him back to London with two suitcases in hand, each with twenty-five pounds of dynamite packed inside, neat as pie.”
“So he fetched the explosives when he was home visiting his mother?” Edie asked.
“Yes, only she wasn’t sick, and he didn’t visit her. Went straight there and back, and spent the rest of his time off in his bedsit here in London. I expect that’s when he prepared the other parts of the device. The alarm clock needed modifying, and he had to wire up the batteries and solder the terminals and so on.”
“He told me his father was a chemist,” Edie now said, so calm that Jamie could scarcely believe it. “Is that where he got the knockout drops for the champagne?”
“His father was a miner, but Brooks himself worked for the local chemist when he was still in school. Sweeping the floor, fetching and carrying, delivering parcels. I managed to get the name of the place out of him. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he paid a visit not so long ago, and that a bottle of chloral hydrate, or something not so very different, has since gone missing. As for the ether he used to knock you out, he might have bought it anywhere.”
“My goodness. It just gets worse and worse,” Edie fretted.
“Stella’s photograph,” Jamie remembered. “Was it Brooks who tore it up?”
“I expect so. He had no shortage of nasty things to say about her. And you, as well, though I won’t insult you by repeating any of it.”
“Is that all?” Jamie asked wearily.
“Just about. The threats to the papers came from Brooks—I think he already confessed to that when you were in the tunnels with him.”
“How did the professor end up back at the hotel?” Edie now asked.
At this, Gordon flushed brick red. “That was my fault. Do you remember the threats we found in his notebooks? About rivers of blood and so forth?”
Edie winced. “How could I forget such a thing?”
“It turned out they weren’t threats. They were translations, taken from letters written by supporters of Mary Queen of Scots. Apparently he’d come across the letters some years ago, in the archives where he used to work, and he’d only just begun to translate them from the original Scots and French. It was pure chance that they sounded so similar to the threats concocted by Brooks. It was enough for me to let him go, though I did have one of my constables take him to another hotel. I suppose he must have returned here in the wee hours.”
“So that’s it?” Jamie asked.
Gordon shrugged. “Just about. It all fits together, at least from what I can tell.”
“What happens now?”
“Now I get down to the hard work of putting together a case against him, although he’s made my job that much easier by providing me with so much evidence. Would you believe he didn’t even bother with gloves while he put together the bomb? I expect you’ll both be called upon to give evidence at his trial, but that won’t be for some months. He’ll remain on remand, so you don’t have to worry about him showing up at your front door.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Edie said, glancing at her watch. “Good heavens—it’s a quarter past nine. We’ve missed the queen’s speech on the wireless.”
“I’m sure they’ll repeat it on the news tomorrow,” Jamie reassured her. “And we haven’t missed the fireworks.”
They said good night to Gordon, and then Edie insisted on making the rounds through the dining room and lounge and library, and only once she was certain her guests were in need of nothing did she agree to put on her raincoat and walk with Jamie to the river.
“A walk will do us both good,” he insisted.
“Very well. But only because I’m not ready for this day to end.”
Hand in hand they hurried along Northumberland Avenue, its streets still thronged with merrymakers, and though the Bailey bridge was jam-packed Jamie was still able to find a spot for them.
The fireworks had just begun when Edie rose on her tiptoes and spoke directly in his ear. “I ought to have told you before, although I think you already know. I love you.”
“Your insisting on staying with me while I dealt with the bomb did rather tip your hand,” he teased. “I love you, too. May I kiss you now?”
Her eyes were shining as she looked up at him. “Yes,” she said, and she set her hand over his heart, and he bent his head and kissed her as strangers squeezed by, and the river flowed on, and the coronation fireworks boomed and bloomed in the rain-swept skies so far above.
Epilogue
Edie
November 19, 1953
It was to be a private visit; on that point The Palace had been exceedingly clear. After the event, naturally, Her Majesty the Queen’s decision to join Miss Howard and her colleagues at the Blue Lion for afternoon tea could be shared with the press, but certainly not beforehand.
In the weeks since her first communications with The Palace—she had taken to thinking of it as such, with initial capitals and a distinct personality of its own—Edie had learned a number of things. She now knew how to address the queen properly (“Your Majesty” upon first introduction, then a broad, rather American-sounding “ma’am” thereafter); how to converse with her (no direct questions, no attempts at overfamiliarity, no requests for her signature or endorsement, and absolutely no touching of the royal person, beyond Her Majesty’s hand when it was offered, and then only as a light grasp, remembering that H.M. was expected to shake many hands over the course of the day and an overhearty grip would lead to discomfort); and how to prepare the Blue Lion for the private and unofficial royal visit (one room with facilities should be set aside for Her Majesty’s express use; the chair provided for H.M. at teatime should be of the same style and disposition of the other guests’ chairs, with a firm seat and supportive back, and a low stool or table at its side where H.M. might deposit her handbag).
Edie had asked if she, and Cook, might be acquainted with Her Majesty’s preferences in regard to afternoon tea, but The Palace had responded with maddening obliqueness, saying only that H.M. would be perfectly happy with a conventional English afternoon tea, and the only foodstuffs to be avoided were shellfish, excessive spice, garlic, and onions (excepting spring onions, which were acceptable in moderation).
Together Edie and Cook had decided upon a simple menu of two types of sandwiches (cucumber and egg-and-cress) and two varieties of scone (one plain, one with currants). The scones would be served with strawberry jam and clotted cream, and last of all there would be a loaf of the hotel’s traditional gingerbread, decorated for the occasion with a small paper banner, strung between wooden skewers, that was inscribed (rather shakily) with WELCOME H.M. QEII TO THE BLUE LION.
This embellishment flouted The Palace’s rules, which had specified no excessive decorations, but it had been made particularly for the occasion by Dolly, who was so excited and nervous that Edie had taken the precaution of unearthing an ancient bottle of smelling salts from the first-aid box in her office and securing them in her jacket pocket.
In a few minutes the queen herself would arrive for tea at the Blue Lion, and in anticipation of that moment Edie now stood outside its front door, which had been carefully propped open so as to facilitate to-ing and fro-ing. The street had been blocked off an hour or so earlier, and something like a dozen policemen now stood guard at intervals along the pavement. Edie was flanked by Dolly and Mick, and in Dolly’s trembling grasp was a small posy for the queen, a pretty confection of carnations and gypsophila.
The poor dear’s hands were shaking so badly that the bouquet was in danger of losing its petals, and after sending a silent prayer to the heavens that the girl would not faint at the queen’s feet, Edie looked to Mick and whispered, “If she . . .”
“I’ll catch her. You carry on with Her Maj.”
Before she could thank him, three motorcars turned onto the street and drew to a stately halt, and as they did so every one of the surrounding policemen stood to attention as if magnetized by some great external force. The second of the cars was an enormous claret-colored Rolls-Royce that bore a small heraldic shield above its windscreen. A man came from nowhere to open its rear passenger door, startling Edie, and suddenly the queen was there, approaching Edie, and she was smiling and extending her elegantly gloved hand in greeting.
There she was, Queen Elizabeth herself, no longer Gloriana on her Coronation Day but a young and very pretty woman dressed in a gorgeously tailored jacket and full skirt, a smart little crescent of ink-blue straw and netting perched upon her head, a triple strand of gleaming pearls at her throat, and pinned to her lapel a brooch of diamonds that framed an enormous oval sapphire.
“Good afternoon, Miss Howard. How do you do?”
Edie took the queen’s hand in hers and sank into what she hoped was a reasonably steady curtsy. “I am very well, thank you. Welcome to the Blue Lion, Your Majesty. May I introduce you to Miss Dolly Withers, our youngest employee?”
By some miracle Dolly had recovered her sangfroid, or more correctly had discovered it, and she now swept into a curtsy that Margot Fonteyn herself might have envied. “Welcome to the Blue Lion, Your Majesty,” she said as she presented the little bouquet. “We are all of us very honored by your visit.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Withers. How very kind.”
“May I also introduce you to our doorman, Mr. Michael Nelligan?” Edie continued.
“How do you do, Mr. Nelligan?”
Mick had been standing at military attention but now executed a flawless bow. “I am well, Your Majesty. Thank you.”
The queen, followed by her lady-in-waiting, now entered the hotel, with Edie just behind. The rest of the staff were waiting in the dining room, along with her residents and two additional guests: Detective Inspector Bayliss and Archibald Owens, Master of the Worshipful Company of Cartwrights and Wainwrights, whose only condition for lending Jamie’s painting of their guild hall on Coronation Day had been an invitation to meet the queen.
There was just enough time for the royal guest to shake hands with each of Edie’s employees, though regrettably not to converse with them, with a few precious minutes set aside for her to meet Professor Thurloe, who had promised Edie not to air his complaints about the expense of the coronation and related festivities during the visit, as well as the Honorable Leopoldine Crane and the Honorable Albertine Crane. The brief moment of introduction left the sisters in a state of almost incandescent happiness.
Next was Master Owens, who took up rather too much time explaining the Cartwrights’ decision to commission a portrait of Her Majesty and her procession as a way of commemorating their own five-hundredth anniversary; but the queen listened patiently, granted him a smile that left him blinking in amazement, and moved smoothly on to the next person in line.
“This is Miss Stella Donati, ma’am,” Edie explained. “She is a photojournalist at Picture Weekly, and also one of the people who helped to prevent the, ah, unfortunate occurrence on the day of your coronation.”
“How do you do, Miss Donati? I believe you also took that splendid photograph of my crowning that appeared on the cover of your magazine. How terribly clever of you to have captured it so well.”
“Thank you, ma’am. It was truly an honor to be a witness.”
Detective Inspector Bayliss was next, his freckled face engulfed in blushes, his hamlike fist trembling as he shook the queen’s hand. “All in the line of duty, Your Majesty,” he replied when she thanked him for his gallantry. “It was this man, here, Mr. Geddes, who was the hero of the hour. Him and Miss Howard together. I only came along once they’d risked their lives to make sure everyone was safe.”
Edie had moved to stand next to Jamie, and it took an earnest effort not to join in, at that moment, and sing the praises of the man she loved. She refrained, though, for it would embarrass him as well as reduce the increasingly narrow window of time that was left for afternoon tea.
But the queen was not to be rushed. “I believe my father decorated you for gallantry during the war, Mr. Geddes.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“From the looks of this painting, you are a talented artist as well as a courageous man.”
“You are very kind, ma’am. Thank you.”
Jamie had taken his time in completing the commission, steadfastly ignoring the requests of Master Owens and the other guild members when they begged for updates or a peek at the work in progress. When Jamie had finally deemed it ready for viewing, Master Owens had declared it a triumph, as had the Royal Academy, which had already secured its loan for the Summer Exhibition of 1954.
Edie had no technical understanding of the manner in which Jamie worked, nor did she have more than a passing knowledge of the history of artistic conventions and approaches, but she could, she believed, tell the difference between something that was good and something that was truly great. And Second of June was, she believed, a masterpiece.
Although Jamie had watched the procession from the top floor of the hotel, he had adopted the point of view of someone standing at eye level to the queen in her golden coach, but at a distance, with the surrounding crowds an impressionistic blur. Of the great, shining baroque globe of the coach he had made a frame in which the queen, as beautiful as any fairy-tale heroine, was the enchanting center. Behind her rose the mass of Cartwrights’ Hall, which was recognizably itself yet somehow better, if such a thing were even possible, its stolid lines ennobled by Jamie’s flattering interpretation of its late-Victorian facade. The dull skies and rain-soaked pavement of the day had heightened the contrast between the sober dress of the crowds and the splendor of the royal procession, and he’d also managed to capture a sense of movement within the whole, as if at any moment the horses might again walk on, the queen might continue to wave, and the countless gems embedded in her diadem, jewelry, and gown might continue to dazzle and delight.
One of the waiting men in dark suits, whom she suspected was a courtier from The Palace, although he might possibly be a policeman of some description, now caught Edie’s eye and made a discreet show of tapping on his wristwatch.
“Would Your Majesty care to take tea with Mr. Geddes, Miss Donati, Detective Inspector Bayliss, and myself?” she asked.
“I should like that very much, thank you.”
They moved to the largest of the tables, the only one set for tea that afternoon, and waited while the queen and her lady-in-waiting took their seats, and then they sat down, with Edie to the queen’s right and Jamie to the left of the lady-in-waiting, and as they did so the rest of the Blue Lion’s staff, as well as the Hons and the professor, quietly departed the dining room. The teapot had already been filled, the tiered trays already set out in preparation, and as they waited the queen removed her gloves and tucked them into her handbag, which she set on the little table next to her chair.
“Shall I be mother?” the unnamed lady-in-waiting asked, gesturing to the teapot.
“Oh, do,” said the queen, and selected several sandwiches and pastries from the delicacies arrayed before her. “I understand there is a legend about the hotel that involves my predecessor?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Edie began, and recounted the story of Elizabeth I and the storm, and the chair that the earlier queen had used, now displayed on its platform nearby. “We did wonder if we might employ it again for your visit, but when we tested it the other day it felt, ah, a little shaky.” It had, alarmingly, all but collapsed under Dolly’s slight frame; hence the note of warning that now sat on the chair’s moth-eaten velvet cushion.
“How very sensible of you. These scones are delicious, by the way. Do pass on my compliments to your cook.”
“I will, ma’am. Thank you.”
“I gather that the individual who caused the difficulties here at your hotel has since been tried for his crimes. Is that correct, Detective Inspector Bayliss? May I ask what prompted him to take such an unfortunate course of action?”
“He is a distant cousin to Miss Howard, totally unknown to her, of course, and had become convinced that their shared ancestor had disinherited his branch of the family. It seems that he hoped to regain control of the hotel as a result of his schemes.”
