St. James's Infirmary: The Royal Palace has become a playground for murder Paperback – January 13, 2022

Near a royal palace beside a royal park there is a body. It is broken in two, folded in half. It lays deep underground in aquarium gloom. It had been submerged soundlessly in an oak cask of vintage wine, its decay arrested but slowly adding strange taste and bouquet. It is a discarded irrelevance, the inconvenient residue of crass violence. It might moulder undiscovered for a century, fearless of reprisal or justice, indifferent to discovery, the wine set down as an investment. This small body is not a royal person, though it knew royalty. It once curtseyed as royalty passed by in the corridors of the palace, ate food prepared in the Queen's kitchen, drank the same waters, inhaled the same dust motes and occasionally felt the same warm sun on a cheek that shared kisses…but with subjects, not royalty. And in this royal palace there were kept many secrets. Some were consigned to history with the passing of dead kings, some were casually aired over crystal tumblers of malt whiskey, others whispered downstairs, and one or two, so sublimely closeted and laced with peril, that only nervous glances betrayed their existence. And the people in the palace were also sad when the body in the barrel was found for the departed was loved by many of the servants. There were friends who mourned and one special friend who was called a murderer. And in that grieving assembly there was one whose hands were washed in blood Read more