Chapter 7: Tuesday 16 May 2023, PM – Epilogue

The beach at Honoré Bay was pristine, the water itself blue and unclouded, and although the sunlight was beginning to redden, the peaceful waves lapped nothing noticeably dead up onto the golden sands.

"The procession was over, the barriers were breached, and instead of going all the way down the Mall toward the Palace with rest of them, these two protestors wriggled through into St James' Park," Richard Poole was saying to Simon Mistry as they sat in the bar overlooking the street. Jacob William had found his way to the table and was even now on daddy's lap, dividing his attention between his father and his father's new friend.

Juliet was easing herself into a chair at a nearby table, taking the weight of her latest pregnancy off her tired feet as Fidel got her a tall, refreshing one. Rosie was parading Amélie around the restaurant with Dwayne shadowing them discreetly, just in case. No one was close enough to overhear, for the moment.

"It may have been a tryst," Mistry suggested.

"It wasn't," Poole replied. "They had been waving placards before, and now they were carrying a bundle."

"So you notified the super," Mistry said.

"Yes, and then I went after them. You know St James'; there's a warren of paths and several places to meet unnoticed when all the attention is focused on the Mall. I spent the rest of the day and half the night wading through the shrubbery asking questions. None of those I found were in possession, but I did find the casing of a drone battery." He sighed and smiled down at his little son, who was gazing upward adoringly at his dad. "I wasn't the Great Detective this time, Jacks. Just an ordinary police plod."

"That's the nature of the business, isn't it," Mistry put in. "Keep the peace, put down any public hysteria, restore stability. A chance to detect doesn't happen every day."

"No," said Poole, ruffing his son's hair. "It doesn't. But," he continued, to Mistry, "I've, um, already said I'm a bit compulsive, so I went on with it, through the Sunday. That's when Scofield stepped in, going on about there being a plot."

"By that time there were rumors of a drone," Mistry reminded him. "But was there a plot?"

Richard Poole looked half exasperated and half embarrassed. "There was. The feeblest, most absurd attempt on the throne you've ever heard of in your life!"

Meanwhile, over at the bar, Camille's world was in harmony again: the woman was nothing more than another of those bossy patronnes; Richard was back on Saint-Marie minus a pair of badly fitting trousers; DCI Morton was conspicuous by her absence; and on the large flatscreen maman had rented from Owen's, the replay of the coronation was scrolling by, both its allure and its pageantry safely in the past.

"I recorded it all, petite, as we agreed," Catherine murmured to her daughter as Camille gathered the beer on to a tray. "If we watch it enough, we shall find Reechard among the police, I am sure of it. I never doubted him for a moment, you know."

"No, no, maman, of course not," Camille murmured back. Neither had she. Nor would she. Ever.

Well, hardly ever.

". . . So you see, nothing could possibly come of anything so far-fetched," Richard was saying as Camille swayed through the clustering customers, bringing the drink to the table. "By the time the Commissioner got involved there was hardly anything serious enough to report. But orders are orders."

"Indeed they are," Mistry agreed. "But Richard, sending up a drone right then might have disrupted the flypast. Your patrolling St James' when you did will have prevented a horrific disaster."

Poole considered, briefly. "I suppose . . . but there simply wasn't time to explain all that to Scofield."

"Do you think a British republic might happen someday?"

"You mean, might it happen again?" Poole hrumphed. Looking at what some other nations had as rulers . . . "Someday, perhaps," he admitted. "But not because of a lot of malcontents waving placards about."

"And now, Simon," interrupted Camille, cracking open the first bottles, "we can welcome you to our island properly." She smiled at DCI Mistry and poured his beer into a glass, a gesture which, at Catherine's, was reserved as a sign of utmost respect. "Unless you prefer tea?"

"No!" Mistry told her, reaching for the glass.

"Yes!" Poole contradicted, inching his bottle away from Jacks, who was flailing to get it.

"Englishmen!" Camille huffed, and after a swift, hot glance at her husband from under her lashes, she swung back to the bar to prepare it.

Both men watched her go. Two children had done nothing to alter her slim, graceful beauty, which was even more enticing once her French jealousy was allayed. Even so, Richard Poole knew his ordeal was not yet over. It was obvious from that one look that he was going to have to pay his wife for her worry in attentions, particularly at home, in privacy. According to past experience he would pay, and pay, and probably pay again. Orders are orders.

"Don't tell anyone," Poole confessed gruffly after a moment of appreciative silence, "but I was sooo glad to get back here. I probably won't be home for Trooping the Colour."

Mistry laughed outright, and stole another glance around the room with its fairy lights, its laid-back, mostly sober patrons and its homey, welcoming charm. He had met Catherine and liked her, even as he added her presence to his case files. At the same time, he could appreciate why Richard might worry about having mislaid those chocolates.

"So, is this the second interview, then?" Poole was asking him, casually.

Mistry took a swallow of the good local beer. "There won't be one. 'Delayed' is just Joy's way of saying you're in the clear, unless something extraordinary turns up. Which I don't believe it will."

"Have you known her long?"

"A good many years," Mistry admitted. "She's tenacious, single-minded, like a terrier with an old shoe. But she has admirable qualities." He looked across at Poole's face in the lights of the bar, where lines of laughter and contentment were beginning to erase those of hard work and hopelessness. "For example, how do you stand on the issue coming up in the courts now?"

"You mean certain private parties thinking they can hire Met Police as personal bodyguards." The hard lines were creeping back to Poole's face before Mistry's eyes. "I am a public servant, not a mercenary," Poole snapped, as if he had been personally insulted.

"You're Not for Rent, then," Mistry noted. "Joy will be pleased to hear it."

Poole sneaked a cautious glance around the room. "Where is she, by the way?"

...

DCI Jocelyn Morton had just put in a long, frustrating call to the Met Commissioner's office. The staffer on duty had said he'd file a request with the Commissioner, but that was all. No matter how Morton phrased her questions or who she mentioned, there was simply no joy to be had there.

After hanging up she stalked out of the Port Royal hotel bar to the beach, to stand looking out over the bay and blowing smoke from the last of her cigarettes. There was a moon, but she ignored it; stars shone out over the distant horizon of a luminous ocean, but she paid no heed. After two and a quarter minutes of dark contemplation, she dropped the wasted fag to the sand and stepped over to an empty lounge beside a small table. A young man, rather hesitantly, slipped up beside her from the hotel terrace nearby, and DCI Morton ordered yet another drink.

One Week Later

"Well," said the Correspondence Coordinator for Her Royal Highness of Wales at Kensington Palace, "I think we can safely say there's nothing at all wrong with them."

It seemed that one DCI Mistry, DPS, had spoken to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, who in turn had spoken to the joint Chiefs of Security for Clarence House and Kensington Palace, who had privately agreed there was no need to alarm anyone in the Family about this, and had therefore quietly dropped the whole muddlesome question of the unordered buttery chocolates.

The Deputy Correspondence Coordinator at Kensington agreed. "Jessie over at Clarence says the same thing. Nothing wrong at all that she can see. Or I can see. Or should that be 'that I can taste'? What was the name of that policeman again?"

The Correspondence Coordinator moved a stack of letters patiently waiting for her attention, searched for a moment and replied "Detective Inspector Richard Pole, no, Poole. Honoré Police Station, His Majesty's Overseas Territory of Saint-Marie . . . wherever that is."

The Deputy Correspondence Coordinator bent to her task, creating a new document to be printed and posted:

"Dear Inspector Pole,

Her Royal Highness has asked me to thank you for your kind remembrance . . ."

As she typed, the Correspondence Coordinator tidily slipped the empty chocolates box off her desk into the recycling bin, and got on with her work.

THE END

...

Notes:

The first British republic or Commonwealth of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales was from 19 May 1649 to 8 May 1660, beginning with the execution of Charles I and ending in the restoration of his son Charles II to the throne. During this time there was no stable government in the UK and Ireland, except what Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was able to impose as a dictator in all but name. Historians generally agree it was not a success.

The big issue in the British courts right after the coronation was this: is it lawful, or even fitting, for the Met Police to act as security for private individuals, whether at home or abroad, funded as they are by the ordinary British taxpayer? The courts ruled it was not legal or fitting, and Richard obviously agrees.