A Death in Diamonds

They moved on to her itinerary for the day, which was set out in five-minute increments from now until midnight, describing exactly where she would be and whom she would expect to meet, from the workers at a Renault factory to the Mayor of Paris. She noticed that there were two comfort breaks, of five minutes each, and planned to limit her liquid intake accordingly.

At the end, she mentioned the oysters.

Two sets of bushy eyebrows furrowed in horror and the lips of Jeremy Radnor-Milne pursed in confusion under his thin black moustache.

‘Shellfish,’ Sir Hugh explained in hushed tones, before turning back to the Queen.

‘Did you eat any, ma’am?’

‘No. I was terribly rude. I had some of the sauce mignonette.’

Radnor-Milne’s jaw had dropped. He gaped like a fish. ‘I . . . I . . . I don’t see why on earth they would have—’

‘Some chef must have got carried away with the menu,’ Urquhart snapped, puffed up with indignation on her behalf. ‘I’ll have a word.’

‘Please don’t bother,’ the Queen said. ‘It’s too late now.’

She had been watching them closely. The men in moustaches all seemed equally aghast, just as they had done two days ago when her speech went missing. These were men whose service her father had prized, and she relied on them completely in order to carry out her job. One of them, she now knew, was lying to her. What about the other two?

Chapter 3

Bobo Macdonald – Margaret, or Miss Macdonald to everyone except the immediate royal family – had a few whiskers of her own, but she was very much not one of the men in moustaches. She was the Queen’s dresser and more: her original nursery nursemaid, her confidante, the only person except her sister to have shared a childhood bedroom with the young princess, and the only one trusted nowadays to prepare and preserve her clothes. There was nowhere Bobo didn’t travel with her mistress. She had even accompanied the royal couple on honeymoon.

That evening, she was on duty while the Queen got ready for her last night in France.

‘What do you think?’

The Queen was peering at herself anxiously in the cheval mirror in her dressing room at the ambassadorial residence. Her third evening gown of the visit was a new step: the first time she had ever worn a body-skimming column dress, instead of one with her signature full skirts, like her mother’s.

The silk glittered in the lamplight, heavy with handsewn crystals. It was a beautiful creation, but was it too much? Or not enough? Its designer, Hardy Amies, had also created the peacock-blue gown she had worn last night. When he showed her the sketch for it, she had wondered about the strong colour. He suggested it worked because ‘you are a femme de trente ans, ma’am’. It was the unkindest thing he had ever said to her, and she had told him so.

Perhaps to make up for it, Mr Amies had put her in this shimmering silver column, which was just the sort of thing Marilyn Monroe might pick. Could this femme de trente ans get away with it?

‘You look magnificent. Your best frock yet. Och, you know you do, Lilibet. Look at you!’

At least Bobo was convinced about this one. The Queen turned to check her silhouette from different angles. She missed the comforting swish of net skirts. Last November, when she had met Miss Monroe at a film premiere, the actress had been in a golden figure-hugging dress that might as well have been a bathing suit. The Queen herself had chosen a black velvet crinoline, narrow at the waist and roomy everywhere else, and was grateful for the confidence it gave her. Poor Marilyn in her golden frock had chewed all her lipstick off by the time they shook hands.

She had been the sweetest thing to talk to, though. Marilyn was staying near Windsor at the time, and they talked about how nice it would be to meet up there too, not that either of them had the time. The Queen had the impression of a bold but fragile creature, like a young racehorse or a wild deer. She had wanted to lend her a fur and wrap her up.

Anyway, that was then. Now, she was the one in the slinky dress. She needed a second opinion. ‘Bobo, can you call the duke for me?’

To everyone but the Queen, Prince Philip was ‘the Duke of Edinburgh’, or ‘sir’. He didn’t have a Bobo of his own to call him by a nickname and be treated as a trusted friend. Certainly not since he had recently lost his own much-missed private secretary in a divorce scandal. At least he had her.

Bobo spoke to the page outside the door, who passed on the message to Philip in his dressing room. The reply came back that he would be a couple of minutes, which gave the Queen time to touch up her lipstick and put on the jewellery that Bobo had laid out for her. While she fiddled with the earrings at her dressing table, Bobo sought to calm her mistress’s rare attack of nerves.

‘Did you see the newspaper headlines? The French are calling themselves monarchists! It’s just you and the Chelsea murders on the front pages at home.’