Ben fiddled with a switch for a moment, head hung down. ‘You haven’t said it yet.’
Aleksey huffed at the way their minds seemed to run seamlessly together. No, he hadn’t said it. Did it really need to be stated?
Far from their little lighthouse friend being incidental to these events, he was right at its core.
Billy was the rightful Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and heir to the throne, and notbeloved. And perhaps, more importantly, they now had the diary and the letters to prove it.
Two things that could destroy the entire royal family: a teenage girl’s diary, and a stack of faded letters.
For the first time ever, Aleksey did not feel a desire to phone Phillipa and air his opinions on her husband. He felt nothing but a profound sense of pity for everyone involved. ‘William condemned her, Ben. By trying to save her, by rescuing her from the lobotomy, he forced them to kill her.’
‘Why now then? Why has all this stirred up again all these years later. Everyone is so old.’
Aleksey stood up, careful not to wake the dog sleeping beneath the warmth of his coat. ‘I think that’s the whole point. This is a conspiracy of the old ones. It was all taken care of long before any of us were even born. Jenna dead. Billy left in the asylum—as far as they knew. And Nanny One paid off and living quietly back in her family cottage on Benhar.’
‘Jesus. Until she wasn’t—until old age and senility got her.’
‘Yes. Phillipa went back after her visit and told them that the nanny wasgaga. She may have unwittingly condemned her to death. Do you remember what she told us the old woman said?’
Ben’s brows lowered and he shook his head slowly.
‘She told Phillipa that she’d been visited by the king and Phillipa assumed she was just mixing up her decades.’
‘Bloody hell. That wasBillyshe was talking about?’
‘Imagine—Phillipa at tea with her mother-in-law and dropping that little nugget into the conversation. They probably assumed Billy died many, many years ago.’
‘So, hearing that, they dispatch this Raiden bloke to clean up the mess.’
‘I think so. He starts with the nanny. She confirms to him that Billy is still alive. He starts to hunt him, but can’t find him. He searches the asylum and sees toys placed on the beds, as I did—one for each of the children Billy knew. He was the last. The only one left.’
‘Billynomates. God, it’s so sad.’
‘Somehow Simon Raiden made the connection between the asylum and the lighthouse.’
‘Maybe Phillipa told someone she’d seen the bear there?’
‘Possibly. Yes. So, he was asking about the lighthouse keepers, just as we were, and someone would then have dropped Oily’s name.’ He knew about the power of money and recalled two fifty pound notes.
‘And then Oily told him about the letters.’
‘He searches the lighthouse and, frustrated, believing it was just easier to let us bring the proof to him, he takes Harry. Head for the western side, to the dock. We will go in over the rocks this time.’
Ben was quiet for a while until he asked tentatively, ‘Do you think Phillipa knows? Is she involved in this somehow? She has a lot to lose—everything really.’ He hesitated then added, ‘If I was about to lose everything—you—there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do. Anyone I wouldn’t kill.’
Aleksey gave him a fond nudge. But he had already considered this. He could not imagine what Phillipa would think if, having devoted her whole life to achieving one object, it were to be snatched from her hands just as it was about to come to fruition. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t think she does.’
Aleksey laughed weakly. ‘Are you her new defender, Benjamin?’
‘No, but you said I was a good judge of character. I don’t think she knows.’
‘No. I don’t either. But then I didn’t think Billy was the future King of England when you were helping him take his slippers off either.’
At exactly the same time, the same realisation hit them—Aleksey could see the knowledge in Ben’s eyes. This wasn’t about diaries or letters at all. As with the photographs of Adolf Hitler alive in Argentina, the evidence would be dismissed as fake.
This was just about Billy.
