The stages, although not necessarily linear, were defined as: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance.
After the reception she and Roy Grace had had from Lady Greaves just two days ago, Sweeney was surprised when the door opened and she was greeted as if the very recent widow was actually pleased to see her. As if she had fast-tracked all the stages to reach acceptance.
Lady Greaves was similarly dressed to before, in black: ‘widow’s weeds’, Sweeney thought, the old phrase sounding a bit irreverent in her mind. But it was often these little snippets of gallows humour that helped get her through the grim tasks her role demanded.
Lady Greaves’ grey hair was styled as the last time, as if she had just come from the hairdresser, and she wore make-up that was heavily applied. But Sweeney took it as a positive sign she was taking care of her appearance. She followed her through into the drawing room they had been in two days earlier. The roll-top desk in the corner was now opened up and she saw a pile of letters, all, judging by the ones she could see from the opened envelopes, handwritten. Letters of condolence.
After instructing the maid to get coffee for two, when they were settled on facing sofas, Lady Greaves quizzed Sweeney on the police progress in the investigation.
‘We have one very good witness, Lady Greaves,’ she answered.
‘I hope your team are not pursuing the theory of Peregrine being the target?’
‘Well, the thing is, a murder enquiry is partly a process of elimination,’ Polly Sweeney said with her usual tact.
The maid appeared with the coffee and they waited in silence until she had departed. Then Lady Greaves said, ‘Quite so.’
Sweeney, remaining pleasant, said, ‘I’d like you to help me in every way you can. I plan to interview you now and will record the details on my laptop on a statement form, which I will ask you to read and sign as an accurate record. This information needs to be accurate to the best of your knowledge as you may be asked to give evidence at any subsequent trial.’
After a moment’s hesitation, the widow nodded.
Polly gave her a reassuring smile before continuing. ‘Lady Greaves, what I need to know from you is more about your husband’s background. He was in the Navy, correct?’
‘He was, on a Short Service Commission. He spent much of his career there in Navy Intelligence.’
‘Could he ever in his service career have fallen out badly with someone? For instance, was he ever involved in any courts martial where someone might have held a grudge against him?’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘No — absolutely not — nothing of that—’
Then she stopped in mid-sentence. And for the first time Sweeney spotted a chink of self-doubt.
‘He did spend some time on attachment with the Government Communications HQ. Would that make him a spy?’ she asked, jokingly. ‘Perry loved codes — and cryptic puzzles. He would do the Times crossword every day and got annoyed if it took him more than ten minutes.’ She laughed, drily. ‘He kept a notebook — well, more of a diary — and he wrote everything in that in code — codes were a bit of a hobby of his.’ She fell silent for a moment, as though she was struggling with a thought she couldn’t process. Then she said, ‘I don’t know if I should even tell you this as it is only going to feed your misplaced theory.’
Sweeney said nothing. Lady Greaves picked up her dainty bone china coffee cup and sipped. Then she said, ‘It was about two weeks ago, Peregrine came home in a very disturbed frame of mind. He told me that he’d heard something astonishing. Utterly astonishing. So astonishing he just did not want to believe it — could not believe it.’ She fell silent again.
After some moments, Sweeney prompted her. ‘Did he tell you anything more?’
‘He said he was going to his study to write it up in his diary. In code, of course. I asked him to tell me what it was, but he said that if it was true, it would be utterly explosive. Then he said he could not believe it was true and he didn’t want to set off any kind of rumour mill.’
‘And he still wouldn’t tell you?’
‘You need to understand that Peregrine was a principled man, honoured to serve the late Queen and now their current Majesties. As well as being a very private man. He’d often get a bee in his bonnet about one thing or another in the Royal Household, but he never liked to talk about issues until after they were resolved. I used to beg him to share things with me, but it simply wasn’t his nature. He always used to quote that old Royal Navy maxim: Loose lips sink ships.’
‘You have his diary?’ Sweeney asked.
‘It’s in his study.’
‘Would you let us borrow it?’
Margot Greaves shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not. But you’d need a damned good code-breaker to read it. I’ve had a go — I enjoy a bit of Sudoku, all that stuff. But I’ve never been able to finish a Times crossword, let alone decipher a page of his diary.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘He could have recorded all kinds of affairs in it. And I wouldn’t have had a clue!’
‘Let’s hope he didn’t,’ Polly Sweeney said, and smiled back as she continued the interview.
‘He wasn’t that kind of a man,’ Margot Greaves retorted. ‘Trust me. All he cared about was his duty to The King and The Queen. He was that rarest of people — a truly good human being.’
46
Friday 24 November 2023
There was a game Lorraine McKnight played some nights, when she lay awake in the small hours, worried, her brain whirring, unable to get back to sleep. These sleepless episodes were happening more and more just recently, and they had started, she supposed, soon after the renovations to Buckingham Palace had commenced.
A trustee of the National Gallery and the former Head of Fine Art at Sotheby’s, she had been the Director of the Royal Collection for the past eight years. In this role she was responsible for all the paintings and miniatures, prints, drawings, sculptures, furniture, ceramics, glass, silver, gold, jewels, books, manuscripts, textiles, photographs and historic weapons and armour held by the Royal Family and curated by the Royal Collection Trust. There were well over one million items, spread over thirteen palaces and houses, and it was one of the most important art collections in the world.
Her game, rather than counting sheep, was to try to tot up the combined value of everything she was responsible for in her current role. And she was responsible for every single item. After just a few minutes it usually did work and she would be fast asleep. But not last night. She’d lain awake for a long time thinking back to some hours earlier when she’d discovered Sir Jason Finch down in the vaults where some of the Royal Collection’s most valuable works of art and pieces of jewellery were being stored for safety during the renovations.
He’d seemed embarrassed by her presence, almost like a schoolboy caught in the act of doing something furtive. And, she had reflected repeatedly during the long night, he seemed to have gone to unnecessary lengths to explain — almost as if he had a pre-prepared excuse for being down there. But as, effectively, the Chief Finance Officer, the completely trusted Keeper of the Privy Purse did not need an excuse — he was entitled to go anywhere in the damned Palace that he chose.
Now, at 8.55 a.m., after having walked their boys to school, the statuesque forty-seven-year-old was on her morning commute, pedalling the ancient sit-up-and-beg bike she loved, in breezy sunshine across Hyde Park.