TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

KENSINGTON PALACE

I don’t want to think anymore. Everything is just too horrible. I just wish I could get away from here, go to Granddad, curl up in a nice warm bed and never get up again.

Needless to say, I did not sleep well. There were still odd shouts and explosions from Guy Fawkes Night revelers. I awoke several times from vague nightmares with my heart pounding. When I got up and pulled back the curtains to look down onto the courtyard and the archway I was peering into blackness. Only in the major’s bathroom window at the far end did a light still glow. Maybe he too was worried about what had happened and could not sleep. He probably realized more than any of us what was at stake if the press got hold of the story and dragged Prince George’s name through the mud. Did he secretly suspect the prince? I wondered. Did he actually know whether the prince had fathered Bobo’s child and where it was now? Was I really being kept in the dark while I was expected to help the police to solve the case?

In the morning I was up early again. The early November rain had turned to the more classic November fog and I looked out onto a sea of swirling whiteness. This would have been better weather in which to dump a body, I thought. It could have lain there for ages before it was discovered. Which made me wonder about the time of death. I hadn’t asked that question, had I? The only doors leading from that courtyard were the back doors to Princess Louise’s suite and to that of the major. I was sure that both exits were hardly ever used and it was possible that a body could have lain unnoticed for a good while under that archway. I’d have to ask the servants if any of them had had to pass the entrance to the courtyard at any time during that day.

Naturally there was no sign of Queenie. I had bathed the evening before so I dressed and went downstairs. The house was in the normal bustle one finds before its upper-class occupants have arisen. Fires were being laid, floors were being swept, maids were staggering under scuttles full of coal. They looked up in horror when they saw me, murmuring, “I’m sorry, my lady,” as if it were their fault that I had interrupted them at work.

“Please don’t mind me,” I said when a skinny young girl looked as if she might pass out on encountering me while she carried in the coal. “I couldn’t sleep and my maid isn’t awake yet.”

“Should I ask one of the parlor maids to bring you tea?” the girl asked. “In your bedroom or the morning room, perhaps? The fire is already going in there.”