Free Death at Glamis Castle by Robin Paige

shouldn’t try.
    â€œI take it that we are searching for someone or something.” Charles straightened. “The object of our search?”
    Kirk-Smythe produced a photograph of a serious-looking, mustached young man seated on a stone wall, wearing a tweed hunting suit, a tweed cap, and a high white collar. “This man,” he said quietly. “Here at Glamis, he goes under the name of Lord Osborne.”
    The colonel stared at the photograph blankly for a moment; then, as recognition dawned, so did disbelief. “But he’s . . . he’s dead !” he sputtered incomprehendingly. “Died years ago. And his name isn’t Osborne! It’s—”
    â€œYou’re correct on both counts, Colonel Paddington,” Kirk-Smythe interrupted, returning the photograph to his pocket. “He died on January 14, 1892, to be precise. I have been instructed by His Royal Majesty that the fiction of this man’s death be protected at all costs.” He paused, giving his words special weight, and repeated: “ At all costs, gentlemen.”
    â€œI’ll be damned.” The colonel sucked in his breath. “I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
    But for Charles, the information that the man was still alive was less a shocking surprise than the confirmation of a long-held suspicion. The photograph was one that he himself, in his role as a friend and photographer of the Royal Family, had taken on a holiday visit to Sandringham in 1890. Its subject was Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, known to his family and friends as Eddy. The eldest son of the then-Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Eddy was heir presumptive to the throne and stood next in the line of succession after his father, who was now King Edward.
    But the prince had led a wayward life, and by the age of twenty-five, his reputation as a notorious playboy was the cause of much headshaking and public rebuke. Charles himself, in his investigation into a blackmail plot against young Winston Churchill and his mother Jennie, had uncovered the details of Eddy’s illegal marriage to a Roman Catholic commoner named Annie Crook, who was still living, and the birth of a daughter, now under the care of the artist, Walter Sickert. Worse, during the dreadful days of the Ripper killings, there had been endless rumors that the Prince—who was derisively known as Collars and Cuffs to the newspapers—was involved in the murders, and that he might even have been the Ripper himself.
    And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the Prince had been caught up in a terrible scandal in a male brothel on Cleveland Street, involving a group of young boys, postal employees, and several of Eddy’s close friends. The Prince of Wales himself had taken charge of concealing his son’s criminal and immoral acts, with the help of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Eddy’s father managed to keep his son out of the dock, packing him off to India, where his frivolities were less likely to make the London papers.
    Given all this, it was widely felt that the Prince was utterly unfit to be King, and there were those in the Court who were convinced that if Eddy remained in the line of succession, the monarchy would surely fall. So when news came in early 1892 of the Prince’s sudden and completely unexpected death, most were vastly relieved, feeling that the Crown itself had been saved. Some, however, believed that his death, which had taken place in the privacy of Sandringham, was far too convenient. Many said openly that it wasn’t illness that had felled him, and a few even said that he must have been murdered—poisoned, perhaps. Others had whispered that perhaps the Prince had not died at all but had been shut away somewhere, so that his younger brother George, a more acceptable and better-behaved heir, could step into his place.
    But all this had happened a full decade ago. Prince Albert Victor was a