PJ Vogt

Closed for business.

I'm sorry for the disappointing response.

We do appreciate you getting in touch.

Huh.

Okay.

We fanned out.

Next, we tried six degrees of separation.

We hit up every friend of ours who was British or knew a British person, anyone remotely famous or who knew a remotely famous person.

Shockingly, one person we knew had an old friend who had married into an obscure branch of the extended royal universe.

She and her spouse, a member of the royal household, had been to the palace many times, but neither had ever seen this pool.

Weird.

One lovely British woman I met at a dinner, literally this devolved into just asking strangers at dinners about the royals, told me, oh, this will be an easy question to answer.

There's lots of students, actually, who intern at the palace, and she said she knew at least one.

So she texted her friend, a former palace intern.

The friend confirms over text, yes, there's a pool, but then immediately clammed up.

They said they couldn't really talk about their time there, even though this was years ago.

What were these monarchs hiding in their murky marine depths?

Our next move was to go to the archives.

Producer Garrett Graham read newspaper clips about the palace until his eyes bled.

And then we started watching the documentaries.