“No one ever talks about Georgina,” I said, looking down at it and wondering where she got it, where she wore it, whether it ever saw the light of day. “I feel rude manhandling all her private stuff.”
“She’s quite dead. She’ll never know,” Bea said. “Let’s get cracking.”
She threw open the double doors to reveal a massive formal living room with a thick, powder-blue fabric covering the walls. The four of us got to work pulling back those draperies, too, exposing enormous windows that looked out onto the park. Though the dimensions of the room were gracious, it felt claustrophobic because Georgina had been, charitably speaking, a bit of a hoarder. It was crammed to the edges with bric-a-brac: a ceremonial plate from the Netherlands; ceramics painted with the vista of a Tuscan village; a didgeridoo propped up in the corner next to a grand piano, both of which Cilla immediately banned Gaz from touching; a ceremonial mask that looked to have been carved out of ivory (“No, no, no,” Bea tsked at it, scribbling furiously); two enormous Asian urns that came up to my knees; and countless crystal animal figurines, the likes of which you might win at the county fair. The rug was big and Persian, the couches were wood-and-velvet Louis XV–style antiques, and the coffee tables were pocked with drink rings and cigarette burns.
Even the walls hadn’t escaped her overdecorating. I noticed a Magritte, several exquisite landscapes, and a small but disturbing Dalí (“She hung this on purpose?” Bea screeched). Presiding over the room: a massive oil portrait of the coronation of Georgina and Eleanor’s father, King Richard IV, with “God Save the King” on a plaque on the bottom of the frame. God hadn’t listened; Richard fell off a boat and drowned a year later.
“Cor,” Cilla breathed, gawking at the sheer number of paperweights and collectibles cluttering an impressive oak desk that sat in one corner near an equally big smoke-stained fireplace. It still had ashes in the grate, as if someone had simply carried Georgina’s body out of the building and locked the door. “This whole place is like a badly curated museum. I wonder if any of this was cataloged when she died.”
“It must have been, right? Otherwise why would they even let us in here?” I yanked the trunk of an elephant lamp. Nothing happened. “One of you could waltz out of here with this under your coat and no one would be the wiser.”
“Including whoever stole it, because that is ghastly,” Bea said.
“I think it’s neat. All of it,” I said protectively, fishing out my phone and snapping some photos of the room for posterity. “I might not want to live in the middle of it forever, but Georgina clearly led an intriguing life.”
“For a time,” Cilla said. She peered down at a set of carved wood coasters with Georgina’s monogram in them. They were obviously handmade. “I don’t think she left the house much in the last, oh, twenty years she lived here.”
“Probably why everyone bought that bit about Emma being a recluse,” Gaz reasoned. “They already had one in the family.”
I clambered over a pile of reference books and opened a rolltop desk that was missing a plank. Inside was a jumble of framed photos that was relieved to be free, judging by how quickly it spilled out across the table. One was of Georgina and Eleanor as children, with their grandmother, Queen Victoria II. Eleanor had inherited her gimlet stare; Georgina, her curls and curves. There were other shots of the girls as they grew, and then a time jump to an older Georgina beaming widely on the prow of a motorboat next to a handsome blond man, Georgina blowing a kiss to the camera as she rode a camel, Georgina in what looked like France with a stylish dark-haired man, Georgina smoking coquettishly and nursing a scotch as three younger gents hovered. For the second time that day, I wondered who’d taken these shots—these intimate moments that did not seem to belong to a princess who locked herself in a redbrick tower.
“It occurs to me that Georgina is basically the Freddie of her family,” I said, carefully setting down the final photo on top of the pile.
“More or less,” Bea said. “Freddie at least grew up knowing his position. Georgina didn’t become the spare until her uncle died. She was a lot freer before that than Freddie has ever been.” She tapped