Murder Most Royal

DECEMBER 2016

The girl on the beach emerged into the light and stared out across the mudflats at the horizon. She had been checking the hides at the end of the path to the wildlife reserve at Snettisham, on the Norfolk coast, to see how they had weathered the night’s heavy storm. By day, the huts were home to birdwatchers who came from miles around to observe the geese and gulls and waders. By night, they were an occasional refuge from the cold sea breeze for beers and . . . more intimate activities. The last big storm surge had smashed up some of the hides and carried them into the lagoons beyond. This time, she was glad to see, the little piggies at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had built their home out of more solid wood.

Back outside, the girl studied the skyline. One of the things she loved about this place was that here, at the edge of East Anglia, on the eastern most coast of the United Kingdom, the beach stubbornly faced due west. It looked out on to the Wash, a bay formed like a rectangular bite out of the coastline between Norfolk and Lincolnshire, where a clutch of rivers ran into the North Sea. No pale pink sunrise here; instead, the sun had risen above the lagoons at her back. Ahead, a bank of cloud sat low and heavy, but the watery light gave it a pale gold glow that was mirrored in the mudflats, so that it was hard to tell where the earth ended and the air began.

Not far from the lagoons, a little further along the shore to her left, lay the marshy fringes of the Sandringham Estate. Normally, the Queen was there by now, with Christmas so close, but the girl hadn’t heard of her arrival yet, which was strange. The Queen, like the sunrise and the tides, was generally a reliable way of marking time.

She glanced upwards, where a trailing skein of pink-footed geese flew in arrowhead formation, home from the sea. Higher still, and closer, a hen harrier circled in the air. There was a brutal, brooding quality to Snettisham Beach. The concrete pathway at her feet, and the skeletal wooden structures jutting out into the mudflats beyond the shingle, were relics of her great-grandfather’s war. Shingle mining for airbase runways had helped create the lagoons, where ducks and geese and waders now gathered in their thousands, filling the air with their hoots and honks and quacks. The gulls had deserted the land for decades, her father said, after the constant bombardment of artillery practice into the sea. Their return was a triumph of nature. And goodness knew, Nature needed her little triumphs. She was up against so much.

Most of the birds themselves were out of sight, but they’d been busy. The expansive mudflats ahead were the scene of a recent massacre, pitted with thousands upon thousands of footprints of all sizes, where goldeneyes and sandpipers had landed once the tide receded, to feast on the creatures who lived in the sand.

Suddenly, a black-and-white bundle of fur caught the girl’s eye as it raced from right to left across the mud. She recognised it: a collie-cocker cross from a litter in the village last year who belonged to someone she didn’t consider a friend. With no sign of its owner, the puppy sped towards the nearest wooden structure, its attention caught by something bobbing in the sky-coloured seawater that eddied around the nearest rotten post.

The storm had littered the beach with all sorts of detritus, natural and man-made. Dead fish were dumped with plastic bottles and dense, bright tangles of fraying fishing nets. She thought of jellyfish. They washed up here, too. The stupid young dog could easily try to eat one and get stung and poisoned in the process.

‘Hey!’ she shouted. The puppy ignored her. ‘Come here!’

She began to run. Arms pumping, she hurtled across the scrubby band of lichen and samphire that led down to the shingle. Now she was on the mudflats, too, the subterranean water seeping into each footprint left by her Doc Martens in the sand.

‘Stop that, you idiot!’

The puppy was worrying at an amorphous, soggy shape. He turned to look at her just as she grabbed at his collar. She yanked him away.

The floating object was a plastic bag: an old supermarket one, stretched and torn, its handles knotted, with two pale tentacles poking through. Grabbing a stick that floated nearby, she used the tip to lift it out of the puppy’s reach and looked nervously inside. Not a jellyfish, no: some other sea creature, pale and bloated, wrapped in seaweed. She intended to take the bag back with her for disposal later, but as she walked back towards the beach, the puppy straining against his collar at her feet, the contents slithered through a rip and plopped onto the damp, dark sand.

The girl assumed at first that it was a mutant, pale-coloured starfish, but on closer inspection, moving the seaweed aside with her stick, she realised it was something different. She marvelled for a moment at how almost-human it looked, with those tentacles like fingers at one end. Then she saw a glint of gold. Somehow one of the tentacles had got caught up in something metal, round and shiny. She peered closer and counted the baggy, waxy ‘tentacles’: one, two, three, four, five. The golden glint came from a ring on the little finger. The ‘tentacles’ had peeling human fingernails.

She dropped the broken bag and screamed fit to fill the sky.

Chapter 1

The Queen felt absolutely dreadful in body and spirit. She regarded Sir Simon Holcroft’s retreating back with a mixture of regret and hopeless fury, then retrieved a fresh handkerchief from the open handbag beside her study desk to wipe her streaming nose.

The doctor is adamant . . . A train journey is out of the question . . . The duke should not be travelling at all . . .

If her headache hadn’t been pounding quite so forcefully, she would have found the right words to persuade her private secretary of the simple fact that one always took the train to Sandringham. The journey from London to King’s Lynn had been in the diary for months. The station master and his team would be expecting her in four and a half hours, and would have polished every bit of brass, swept every square inch of platform and no doubt had their uniforms dry-cleaned to look their best for the occasion. One didn’t throw all one’s plans in the air over a sniffle. If no bones were broken, if no close family had recently died, one soldiered on.

But her headache had pounded. Her little speech had been marred by a severe bout of coughing. Philip had not been there to back her up because he was tucked up in bed, as he had been all yesterday. He had no doubt caught the infernal bug from one of the great-grandchildren at the pre-Christmas party they had thrown at Buckingham Palace for the wider family. ‘Little Petri dishes’, he called them. It wasn’t their fault, of course, but they inevitably caught everything going at nursery school and prep school, and passed it around like pudgy-cheeked biological weapons. Which young family should she blame? They had all seemed perfectly healthy at the time.

She picked up the telephone on her study desk and asked the switchboard to put her through to the duke.

He was awake, but groggy.

‘What? Speak up, woman! You sound as though you’re at the bottom of a lake.’

‘I said . . .’ she paused to blow her nose ‘. . . that Simon says we must fly to Sandringham tomorrow instead of taking the train today.’ She left out the bit where Sir Simon had suggested Philip should remain at the palace full stop.

‘In the helicopter?’ he barked.

‘We can hardly use a 747.’ Her head hurt and she was feeling tetchy.

‘In the navy we were banned . . .’ wheeze ‘. . . from flying with a cold. Bloody dangerous.’

‘You won’t be piloting the flight.’

‘If it bursts my eardrums you can personally blame Simon from me. Bloody fool. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

The Queen refrained from pointing out that Sir Simon was an ex-naval helicopter pilot and the GP who had advised him was thoroughly sound. He had his reasons for counselling in favour of a quick journey by air instead of a long one by rail. Philip was ninety-five – hard to believe, but true. He shouldn’t really be out of bed at all, with his raging temperature. Oh, what a year this had been, and what a fitting end to it. Despite her delightful birthday celebrations in the spring, she would be glad to see the back of 2016.

‘The decision is made, I’m afraid. We’ll fly tomorrow.’

She pretended she didn’t hear Philip’s wheezy in-breath before what would no doubt be a catalogue of complaints, and put the phone down. Christmas was fast approaching and she just wanted to be quietly tucked up in the familiar rural comfort of Sandringham, and to be able to focus on her paperwork without it swimming in front of her eyes.

The autumn and early winter had been fraught with uncertainty. The Brexit referendum and the US elections had revealed deep divisions in Whitehall and Washington that it would take a very steady hand to repair. Through it all, the Queen had played host to presidents and politicians, she had been a greeter of ambassadors, a pinner-on of medals and a host for charity events – mostly at Buckingham Palace, the place she thought of as the gilded office block on the roundabout. Now Norfolk drew her with its wide-open spaces and enfolding pines, its teeming marshes, vast English skies and freewheeling birds.

She had been dreaming of it for days. Sandringham was Christmas. Her father had spent it there, and his father before him, and his father before him. When the children were small, it had been easier to celebrate at Windsor for a while, but her own childhood Christmases were Norfolk ones.

The following day the helicopter whisked the royal couple, blankets on their knees, dogs at their feet, past Cambridge, past the magnificent medieval towers of Ely Cathedral, the ‘ship of the fens’, and on, north-eastwards towards King’s Lynn. Soon, wetlands gave way to farmland that was patched with pine woods, with paddocks and flint cottages. Below them, briefly, was the shell-pink Regency villa at Abbottswood, where she was surprised to see a herd of deer ambling slowly across the lawn. Next came the stubbly, immaculate fields and scattered copses of the Muncaster Estate, whose furthest reaches bordered one of the royal farms, and then at last the fields, dykes and villages of the Sandringham Estate itself. As the helicopter made its turn, the Queen saw a glint of seawater in the distant Wash and a minute later Sandringham House appeared behind a ridge of pines, with its formal and informal gardens, its lakes and its sweeping lawns amply big enough for them to land.

The house, built for Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales, was a Victorian architect’s red-brick, beturreted idea of what a Jacobean house should be, and people who cared a lot about architecture were generally appalled by it. The Queen, like her father before her, was enormously fond of its idiosyncratic nooks and crannies. Philip, who had strong views about architecture, had once unsuccessfully proposed to have it knocked down. However, what really mattered were the twenty thousand acres of bog, marsh, woodland, arable land and orchards that made up the surrounding estate. The Queen was a natural countrywoman and here she and Philip could quietly be farmers. Not the kind who mended fences in the lashing rain and were on lambing at dawn, true, but together, they looked after and loved it because it was a small part of the planet that was theirs. Here, in north Norfolk, they could actively participate in trying to make the world a better place: for wildlife, for the consumers of their crops, for the people who worked the land, for the future. It was a quiet legacy – one they didn’t talk about in public (Charles’s experience on that front illustrated why) – but one they cared about very much.

In her office at the ‘working’ end of the house, Rozie Oshodi looked up from her laptop screen in time to see the helicopter skirt the edge of the treeline before coming in to land. As the Queen’s assistant private secretary, Rozie had arrived by train earlier that morning. For now, the suite of staff rooms, with its functional Edwardian furniture – and to an extent the whole house, and in a way, the nation – was her domain. According to Rozie’s mother it was, anyway. Sir Simon, who ran the Private Office with the combined skills of the admiral and ambassador he might have been, had gone to the Highlands for the first part of the holiday. He and his wife Sarah had been given the use of a cottage at Balmoral for the Christmas break in recognition of his sterling work over the autumn, and as a result, for two precious weeks, Rozie was in charge. ‘It’s all down to you,’ her mother had said. ‘No pressure. But think, you’re like the first black Thomas Cromwell. You’re the right-hand woman. The eyes and ears. Don’t mess it up.’ She’d never had her mother down as a big fan of Tudor history. Hilary Mantel had a lot to answer for.

This close to Christmas, Rozie didn’t expect to have much to do. With no monasteries to dissolve or royal marriages to broker, the main job of the Private Office was to liaise with the Government, manage communications and organise the Queen’s public schedule. But Whitehall and Downing Street had effectively shut down for the holidays; the media were fixated on holiday stories; the Queen’s next public event was in three weeks, and even that was only a tea party in the village. Thomas Cromwell would have found it all very tame. Rozie had mostly been catching up with the residue of emails that had somehow never made the ‘urgent’ list in her inbox. However, an hour ago a new one had come in. Perhaps this break wasn’t going to be as quiet as she’d anticipated, after all.

Lined up outside the entrance hall, Mrs Maddox, the immaculate housekeeper, and her team were waiting to welcome the royal couple back. Today, the interior smelled deliciously of woodsmoke from the fire that popped and crackled in the saloon behind them, where the family would gather later for drinks and games. The dogs happily padded inside, keen to be back, while Philip took himself straight off to bed.

The Queen had just enough energy to do justice to a couple of freshly made mince pies and a pot of Darjeeling in the light and airy drawing room at the back of the house, whose large bay windows overlooked the lawn. In one of the bays a Christmas tree was already in place, its branches partly decorated on a red and gold theme, ready to be completed when the rest of the family arrived tomorrow. Normally, she chose the tree herself, but this year there hadn’t been time. A small price to pay for a cosy afternoon indoors, which she very much needed.

She had just finished talking to Mrs Maddox about the next few days’ arrangements when Rozie appeared at the drawing room door. As her efficient APS curtsied, the Queen noticed that, rather ominously, she held a closed laptop under her arm. ‘Your Majesty, do you have a moment?’

‘Is there a problem?’ the Queen asked, hoping there wasn’t.

‘Not exactly, but there’s something you ought to know about.’

‘Oh, dear.’ They caught each other’s eye, and the Queen sighed. ‘The small drawing room, I think.’

She led the way to the room next door, whose floral, silk-lined walls gave it a gentle, feminine air, somewhat in contrast to the lively bird sculptures that Prince Philip chose to keep there: reminders of one of his chief pleasures of the estate.

Rozie closed the door behind them. The Queen looked up at her. Rozie, a striking young woman of thirty, was over six feet tall in her signature heels. At her age, and at a shrinking five foot two, the Queen was used to looking up at almost everybody . . . figuratively speaking. She didn’t find it problematic, except when she had to shout up at tall, deaf dukes and ministers. Fortunately, her APS’s hearing was excellent.

‘All right. What is it? Nothing to do with the new president?’

‘No, ma’am. The police have been in touch. I’m afraid there’s been a discovery.’

‘Oh?’

‘A hand was found yesterday morning, in the mudflats at Snettisham Beach.’

The Queen was startled. ‘A human hand?’

‘Yes, ma’am. It was washed up by a storm, wrapped in a plastic bag.’

‘My goodness. No sense of where it came from?’

‘Ocado, ma’am, since you ask. They deliver food from Waitrose.’

‘I meant the hand.’

The APS frowned. ‘Not yet. They hope to identify the victim soon. One of the fingers was wearing an unusual ring, which may help.’

‘So, a woman’s hand?’

Rozie shook her head. ‘A man’s. It’s a signet ring.’

At last, the Queen understood the presence of the laptop. Sir Simon would have come without it, but fortunately – in the circumstances – he wasn’t here. Her private secretary liked to spare her any ‘unpleasantness’. But after ninety years, an abdication, a world war, the early loss of her father and a rich selection of family scandals, she was more capable of dealing with unpleasantness than most. Rozie was more realistic. Women understood each other, the Queen found. They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and didn’t underestimate the strengths.

‘May I see?’ she asked.

Rozie placed the laptop on a little writing desk in front of the window. When she opened it, the screen came to life, revealing four grisly images. The Queen put on her bifocals to examine them more closely. They had been taken in a forensic laboratory and showed what was unmistakably a male left hand and wrist with a pattern of fair hairs below the knuckles, the skin deadly white, bloated, but largely intact. It looked, absolutely, like a gruesome theatre prop, or a model for a practical joke. Her eyes rested on the final image showing the little finger in close-up. Set tight into the ghostly flesh was the gold ring Rozie had mentioned. It was indeed unusual: large for its type, featuring a reddish-black oval stone carved with a crest.

Rozie explained the situation. ‘The hand was found by a local girl, ma’am. She was out dog-walking from what I understand. They’re working on the identification now. It shouldn’t take longer than a few days, even with the Christmas holiday. They think it may belong to a drug dealer because a holdall containing drugs washed up further down the beach. There’s a theory the victim may have been kidnapped and the hand cut off as some sort of message, or possibly for ransom. It was done with some violence, but there’s no proof the owner is actually dead. They’re casting the net widely. They—’

‘I can save them the trouble,’ the Queen said, looking up.

Rozie frowned. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Of casting the net widely. This is the hand of Edward St Cyr.’

The Queen briefly closed her eyes. Ned, she thought to herself. Dear God. Ned.

Rozie looked astonished. ‘You know him? From this?’

In answer, the Queen pointed to the top left-hand photograph. ‘Do you see that flat-topped middle finger? He cut off the tip doing some carpentry when he was a teenager. But it’s the signet ring, of course . . . Bloodstone. Quite distinctive. And that carving is of a swan from the family crest.’ She peered again at the final picture. The ring was a garish thing; she had never liked it. All the men in the St Cyr family wore one like it, but none of the others had lost the tip of their middle finger. Ned must have been about sixteen when he did it, such an eager, inventive boy. That was over half a century ago.

‘I take it he wasn’t a local drug baron, ma’am,’ Rozie ventured.

‘No,’ the Queen agreed, looking up at her. ‘He was the grandson of an actual baron. Not that that means he was necessarily a stranger to drugs of course. Or is,’ she corrected herself. It was troubling, this idea, as Rozie suggested, that he might not be dead – but he probably was, surely? And God knew what state he must be in if he wasn’t. ‘I hope they get to the bottom of it soon.’

‘This will certainly speed them up, ma’am.’

The Queen’s blue eyes met Rozie’s brown ones. ‘We needn’t say exactly who recognised the ring.’

‘Of course.’ After a year in her service, Rozie knew the drill: the Queen categorically did not solve, or even help solve crimes. She was merely an interested observer. However, as Rozie had learned, her interest sometimes went deeper than most people knew. ‘Is there anything else you’d like me to do?’ she asked.

‘Not this time.’ The Queen was firm. ‘I think that will be enough.’

Terrible though the news was, she reflected with relief that Snettisham, though close, was a nature reserve run by the RSPB. This was not, to put it bluntly, her problem. And just before Christmas, after a devil of a year, nor did she want it to be.

‘Certainly, ma’am.’ Rozie closed the laptop and left the Boss to get on with her day.

Chapter 2

The Queen accompanied Mrs Maddox on a quick tour of the house to check that everything had been set up to her satisfaction, which as always, under this housekeeper’s care, it had been. Afterwards, she was drawn back to the saloon, with its inviting smell of woodsmoke. Most of Sandringham’s rooms were quite small and intimate by royal standards, but the saloon was designed to impress. It was double height, with a plasterwork ceiling, a minstrels’ gallery and a grand piano. The tapestries and royal portraits on the walls might have made it look like a museum, which it effectively was when she wasn’t here, but modern sofas, cream walls and soft lamplight gave it a cosy, welcoming air. The crackling fire in the hearth – the only one in the house these days – was a Christmas highlight.

Among plentiful photographs of family, the ornaments were mainly horse bronzes and silver statuettes. If it was possible to be surrounded by too many representations of the horse, the Queen hadn’t yet discovered how. Beyond the windows she caught a glimpse of the splendid new life-size statue of one of her favourite racehorses, the magnificent Estimate, which had recently been installed at the far end of the courtyard opposite the front porch and rounded out her collection rather nicely. For now, though, she approached a baize-covered table next to the piano, where a wooden jigsaw had been set out. Jigsaws were a feature of her six-week stay at Sandringham and she studied this one carefully. It was a Constable painting, she noted – lots of open sky and feathery trees. Tomorrow it would be disassembled, ready to be made again. There was no additional picture, which added a certain piquancy to the challenge. One had to rely on memory and patience – something not all members of the family possessed in equal measure.

She had hoped to distract herself with the picture, but her mind inevitably drifted back to Ned St Cyr. He was two years older than Charles, which would make him seventy now. Three-score years and ten, she thought. A biblical lifetime, although now one could easily live to a hundred, as witnessed by her own mother and all the centenary birthday telegrams one sent these days.

Poor, dear Ned. In her mind, he was still a schoolboy. He had been a regular visitor here in the fifties, in the company of his glamorous mother and her family, with his shock of strawberry blond hair and always a winning smile, usually in apology for something he had just done, or was about to do. He had once persuaded a youthful Charles that it would be a good idea to hide a few of the jigsaw pieces for a joke. Philip’s expression when Charles admitted to it after a fortnight had been something to behold.

Ned, when he visited the next time, took his scolding with good grace. He had arrived with a home-made bird table, she seemed to remember, to be given as penance, and a couple of jokes from school that had made Philip hoot with laughter.

Ned usually got away with his naughtiness. Like his mother and his beloved uncle Patrick, his charm and charisma made him ‘one of those special people’, as her own mother always put it, and she should know, because the Queen Mother had been the very definition of ‘one of those special people’ herself.

Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps Ned had died at sea and a boat propeller had somehow caused the hand to become detached. Except, no – there was the bag. Somebody must have . . .

She prayed that at least they would find the body soon, otherwise intact. She really must not indulge her worst imaginings. The Queen brought her mind back to the jigsaw and tried to lose herself, unsuccessfully, in Constable’s feathery trees.

Back at her desk, Rozie stared in frustration at her computer screen. After a stint as a captain in the Royal Horse Artillery and a couple of years on a fast-track role in the City, she could strip and reassemble a rifle blindfold, disarm an attacker, tack up a horse and break down a P & L statement – but the kind of estate she grew up on in West London did not feature farms and country houses, and there was still a lot the royal family took for granted that she had yet to learn.

In this case, she had googled ‘Edward Sincere’ and looked him up in every directory she could think of, starting with Debrett’s, but there was no aristocrat with that name. She couldn’t ask the house staff, because they were all rushing around like blue-arsed flies, as Prince Philip would say, getting ready for the arrival of multi-generational royals tomorrow. But there was one person who would certainly be able to help, if she could bear to ask for it.

Sir Simon Holcroft hadn’t risen to the heights of private secretary without being a bit of a control freak. He had exhorted her to call him in Scotland ‘at any time, day or night’ if she had any questions or concerns of any kind. For her part, Rozie hadn’t survived several years as a black female officer in the British Army without developing a strong sense of self-sufficiency, so she had equally vowed to herself that she wouldn’t. Yet the Queen had been here for less than two hours, and already Rozie’s finger was hovering over Sir Simon’s number in her phone. She could hardly call the police to identify the victim if she didn’t know who he was. And one didn’t ask Her Majesty for the same information twice.

Damn.

Sir Simon was all charm. There was the clinking of glasses and the hum of congenial chatter in the background. He sounded as if he was in a bar or social club of some sort, having a good time.

‘Rozie, Rozie. Edward Sincere, d’you say? How did you spell it?’

Rozie frowned. How many ways could you spell Sin—? Damn.

He voiced the thought as it entered her brain. ‘Don’t tell me it was “S-i-n-c-e—”

‘Yes it was,’ she said crossly, tapping a nail on the leather-topped desk in front of her.

‘Have I taught you nothing about the British upper classes? Think “Chumley”.’

Rozie did. It was spelled Cholmondeley. He had taught her how to sidestep the pitfalls that were the ‘Beevors’ (Belvoir), ‘Orltrups’ (Althorp), ‘Bookloos’ (Buccleuch) and ‘Sinjons’ (St John). She should have known.

‘Is it “Saint” Something?’

‘Exactly. S-t C-y-r.’ He spelled it out for her. ‘It’s the family name of Baron Mundy. They’re based at Ladybridge Hall. It’s a lovely place with a moat, not very large, about a forty-minute drive from you. The Mundys are ancient Norfolk aristocracy. They were first ennobled by King John in the thirteenth century,’ he went on. Of course, Sir Simon, the amateur historian, would know. ‘He was the king who famously lost the Crown Jewels in the Wash. Why?’

‘Why what?’ Rozie asked. She was still thinking about the Crown Jewels, lost at sea, a bit like the hand with the signet ring.

‘Why d’you need to know?’

‘Nothing to worry about,’ she said firmly. It was true: the recent discovery was hardly the Private Office’s business. Now she had the name right, the police could take care of it.

‘Nothing is ever nothing to worry about,’ Sir Simon countered, unhelpfully. Rozie couldn’t hear the clinking glasses in the background anymore. He had gone somewhere quiet to concentrate. She reluctantly explained about the hand and the ring.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he said. ‘How grotesque.’ He was silent for a minute, contemplating the news. ‘Was it literally just the hand? No sign of any other body parts?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Be very careful, Rozie.’ He was suddenly deadly serious. ‘Keep the Boss out of it, whatever it takes.’

‘Absolutely,’ she agreed, crossing her fingers. Rozie knew that keeping the Boss out of anything the Boss wanted to be into was very unlikely, regardless of what she did or didn’t do. Sir Simon didn’t know Her Majesty in quite the way she did. ‘She mentioned that the victim was a baron’s grandson.’

‘Not this baron,’ Sir Simon said. ‘Distant cousin, I think. However, we should probably call Ladybridge Hall; let Lord Mundy know.’

‘Why?’ Rozie asked. ‘If he’s a distant cousin?’

‘He’s a friend of the Boss. And family’s family. He won’t want to hear this on the news and then find out the identification came from someone at Sandringham and we didn’t tell him first.’

After a brief call to her contact at the Norfolk constabulary HQ to update them on the identity, Rozie called Ladybridge Hall. She had half hoped to speak to an underling such as herself who could pass on the grisly details, but it was the Right Honourable the Lord Mundy himself (she had looked it up to make sure of his title) who answered the phone. He was silent for a long time, pondering the news. Having said her piece as gently as she could, Rozie wondered if he was still on the line.

‘Are you all right, My Lord?’

‘Goodness me.’ He sounded breathless. ‘I need to sit down. Oh, my goodness.’

‘I’m sorry to be the one to—’

‘Oh, no, my dear, don’t apologise. And do call me Hugh. Thank you for calling. Very considerate of you.’ He had the cut-glass accent and almost exaggerated good manners of his class, reminding Rozie of the many earls and dukes she had encountered in this job. But they usually sounded formal and composed, whereas he seemed all at sea. ‘So you’ve informed the police?’

‘Yes, just now.’

‘Oh, dear me.’ His voice fluttered up and down. ‘Oh my goodness. A hand, you say? I saw him only recently . . . We hadn’t spoken for years, as you probably know.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Rozie admitted. Sir Simon probably did.

‘But after my wife’s funeral in the summer . . . He was very decent about it. I sensed that he wanted to extend an olive branch. Do they have any idea how . . .?’

‘It’s early days,’ Rozie explained. ‘The police don’t really know anything yet.’

‘Well, you’re very kind to inform me. I . . . Excuse me. I don’t know what to . . . How did Her Majesty find out about it?’

‘The hand was found near Sandringham. The police told us as a courtesy.’

‘Near Sandringham . . . How ghastly. Her Majesty must be . . . Do give her my sympathies. We’re supposed to be seeing her after Christmas, but if this makes things difficult, I quite understand. How did they know it was Edward, by the way?’

Rozie took a breath. ‘It was the ring, My Lord.’ She couldn’t call him Hugh. She hadn’t yet developed Sir Simon’s ease at hobnobbing with the aristocracy.

‘My goodness . . . The ring . . . I have one myself, just like it . . .’

He tailed off again and Rozie pictured him staring at his own left hand.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. There’s nothing you . . . Oh, my goodness. Thank you for calling, my dear. Please wish Her Majesty a happy Christmas on our behalf. I hope she feels better soon.’

Rozie was a bit startled by this last remark. How did he know the Queen was unwell? Then she remembered that it had been reported in The Times because of the cancelled train trip.

‘I’ll tell her,’ she assured him, but she wouldn’t. The last thing the Boss would want was people outside the family circle remarking on her ill health.

Afterwards, she went back to her laptop and typed in ‘Edward St Cyr’.

Wikipedia informed her that he was born in 1946, the only grandson of the tenth Baron Mundy. After growing up at the St Cyr family seat and brief sojourns in Greece, London and California in the 1970s, where he had managed two failed rock bands, he had joined his mother at a small estate called Abbottswood, south of King’s Lynn, where he hosted a couple of controversial rock concerts and, later, what was briefly the second-most popular literary festival in Norfolk. He had been married and divorced three times, his second wife being the nanny to the children with his first. There were links here to various newspaper articles about the scandal, which Rozie ignored. He was on the boards of various charities, two of which were anti-addiction and one that supported the welfare of refugees in Greece.

While she was at it, she looked up the current Lord Mundy. Hugh was the son of Ralph, the eleventh baron, who in turn was the nephew of Edward’s grandfather, the tenth baron, who had died without a living male heir. That made Hugh and Edward St Cyr second cousins. Sir Simon was right again. Rozie thought about the equivalent in her own family. She had a raft of second and third cousins, some in Nigeria, some in Texas and New York, and some in Peckham, South London. Thanks to social media, and the endless family chats set up by her mum and her aunties, she couldn’t avoid hearing what most of them were up to: the ‘good students’ (Rozie was one of these), the ‘bad boys’, the pastors, the finance whizz-kids, the Gen Z tech gurus, the ones who were settling down with kids (‘See, Rozie?’ as her mother would say), and the ones who, to her mother’s gentle despair, were trying to get their own lives under control before they created more Oshodis. It wasn’t quite the same thing as being ‘an ancient Norfolk family’, but a big family – yeah, she got that. And yes, if something happened to one of them, her mum would absolutely want to know.

A subsequent search on Google Images brought up pictures of a tall, rangy man with skin the colour of milky tea, a sharp nose, ruddy cheeks and straight, bushy eyebrows over eyes as blue and piercing as the Queen’s.

In earlier pictures, Edward lounged moodily as a young man against bougainvillea-clad white walls, barefoot in bell-bottom jeans and faded T-shirts, accompanied by women in minidresses with Brigitte Bardot hair. Later, alongside a variety of slim, blonde companions in tight-fitting dresses, he seemed to favour pink and purple jackets that were just this side of fancy dress.

By the most recent photographs, he seemed to have adopted the more relaxed country style of a waxed jacket over a denim shirt, a battered trilby hat and a fringed cotton scarf that brought out the colour of his eyes. His face could look forbidding, accentuated by those eyebrows and prominent nose, but when he smiled, showing bright, white, un-British dentistry, he had a charisma that drew you instantly to him, even in the images where his hair had faded from burnished copper to spun gold.

In the latest photograph she could find, he was standing at the rear of an old Land Rover Defender, painted pink, with three dogs sitting in the back. He was resting his arm against the open door and the signet ring was clearly visible on the little finger of his left hand. It made her shiver.

Chapter 3

After supper, which the Queen ate in the dining room with her lady-in-waiting, Philip called down from his bed.

‘I hear Ned St Cyr has been chopped into pieces. What on God’s earth?’

He sounded utterly appalled, and slightly better.

‘Not exactly. They found one piece.’ The Queen was enjoying a post-prandial whisky in the saloon with her lady-in-waiting before going up to bed herself. Who had told him? Gossip spread among the staff like wildfire and tended to mutate like Chinese whispers. Goodness knew what they were saying in the servants’ hall.

‘D’you remember that white ball he and Patrick did here for your mother?’

The Queen did. It was in the early sixties, when they still saw him on a regular basis. Ned must have been in his late teens, no more, but he and his uncle Patrick were already in partnership as party organisers to the gentry in about five counties. The idea for the ball at Sandringham had come in part from Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in New York, and in part from portraits of royal princesses by Franz Winterhalter, who romantically depicted them in off-the-shoulder white dresses with generous crinolines. There was one such picture of the young Queen Victoria opposite the chair where the Queen was sitting now. Her own mother had dazzled like a film star that night in several tiers of ivory tulle. Ned had gone to enormous lengths to decorate the house with flowers from the famous white garden at Ladybridge, along with elaborate paper decorations he had made himself and hung in every room. The night had been magical . . . until an over-oiled guest had managed to throw up in one of the pianos, but that was hardly Ned’s fault.

‘It was months before that piano was right again,’ Philip muttered. ‘Years. There was always something with Ned. He is dead, I take it?’

‘I’ll come up,’ the Queen said. This was not a conversation to have over the phone, with her lady-in-waiting listening intently and a footman standing at the door.

On the way upstairs, an image came to her of Ned’s glamorous mother, Georgina – Patrick’s oldest sister – descending this very staircase in velvet Dior that night. Georgina had been a frequent guest at Sandringham in the fifties and sixties. She was about the Queen’s age, a star of her starry generation. She rode, she farmed, she gardened to an international standard, she collected modern art (she was one of the first people to spot the potential of a young artist called David Hockney), she looked equally fashionable in Parisian couture or tweeds and a cardigan with pockets for her secateurs. She had once famously combined several of her passions by sitting for a portrait in a ball gown astride her favourite hunter in the drawing room at Ladybridge. Ned, an only child, adored her, and Georgina was a very indulgent mother. The Queen, who had tried to be one too, but with many absences and less opportunity to do so, had sometimes been a little jealous of their relationship.

Philip was sitting up against the pillows looking much less grey than he had this morning. The country air was already having its effect.

‘Ah, hello, Cabbage. So. As I said, we assume he’s dead?’

‘It’s hard to imagine otherwise,’ she agreed.

‘Astonishing. Ned was one of the most alive people you could meet.’

The Queen went over and perched on the edge of the bed, until her hip protested and she took Philip’s suggestion of a nearby armchair.

‘Of course, we know who did it,’ Philip said.

‘Do we?’

‘One of the family.’

‘Mmmm,’ the Queen said, which was her usual response when she didn’t necessarily agree.

‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face. D’you want a handkerchief, by the way? Yours is glowing like a beacon.’

‘No thank you. I’ll manage.’

‘It’s always the family, one way or another. I pitied those wives of his. Not surprised they didn’t last the distance. The man shagged half the county.’ The duke was thoughtful. ‘Or he owed money. He liked to give the impression of living off the fat of the land, but Abbottswood was hopeless for farming. Too many woods and wetlands. I often wondered how he managed to heat his pink monstrosity of a villa. We flew over it this morning, did you notice?’

‘Yes. I always thought it was rather pretty,’ the Queen admitted.

‘Pink’s a Suffolk colour,’ the duke protested. ‘And did you spot those deer on the lawn?’

‘Yes, that was very odd,’ she agreed.

‘Right up to the house. Eating everything in sight, I shouldn’t wonder. God knows what that was about. Another of his godforsaken projects, no doubt. Do you remember the rock concerts? The commune? And that bloody book festival stuffed up the roads in half the county until the council shut it down. He was always in the papers for some violation. Didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t care who tried to stop him. I—’ Philip was interrupted by a cough and for a while his body was convulsed with them. But the Queen noticed his eyes cloud as he recovered, and it wasn’t just his cold that made him pause before he carried on. ‘God, the man was butchered, Lilibet. Wasn’t he?’ As if it had really hit him for the first time. ‘What did they do to him?’

In a dressing room at Clarence House near Buckingham Palace, where he was reviewing some of the evening dress suggestions of his valet, the Prince of Wales greeted a footman bearing a telephone (he did not believe in mobiles) and accepted a call from the Princess Royal.

‘Charles speaking,’ he announced crisply.

‘Of course it’s you.’ Like their father, Princess Anne did not suffer fools gladly. ‘Listen, have you heard about the hand on the beach?’

‘No. What beach?’

‘Snettisham. Found yesterday, identified this morning. It was on the news just now. We’ll have to rally round Mummy. It’s the last thing she needs.’

‘What hand?’

‘Ned St Cyr. Georgina St Cyr’s son. That awful boy who used to chase you around the dining table at Sandringham.’

‘He didn’t chase me,’ Charles protested.

‘He did. Anyway, he’s dead. Or minus an extremity at the very least.’

‘Do they know how he died?’

‘I assume losing your left hand doesn’t help,’ Anne answered caustically. ‘According to the news, he’s been missing for several days. Poor Astrid’ll be devastated.’

‘Astrid who? Why?’ Charles asked, still getting to grips with the news. Anne was, not for the first time, three fields ahead and going at a gallop.

‘Astrid Westover. Ned’s fiancée, the one who reported him missing.’

‘He was getting married again?’ Charles hadn’t seen the man for decades, and had only the sketchiest awareness of his circumstances.

‘Yes, Zara knows her. She used to be an eventer. Good seat, terrible hands. I went to Pony Club with her mother, back in the Dark Ages,’ Anne explained. ‘Astrid’s an interesting character. She’s only in her thirties – younger than Ned’s eldest. Zara says she’s an influencer, whatever the hell that is.’

‘I’d like to think . . . someone like me, perhaps,’ Charles suggested, aware that he was straying from the point.

‘Take it from me, you are categorically not, and never will be, an influencer.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t worry, you’re well out of it. According to Zara, it’s all Instagram and filters and taking pictures of your breakfast.’

‘Breakfast? And that influences people?’ Charles pictured his boiled egg. Did they paint them? How curious.

‘Apparently it influenced Ned. Although Astrid does it with horses. He tried to go out with me, back in the day, you know,’ Anne added, pensively.

‘Did he?’

‘Said he’d take me to Corfu and show me a good time. I was tempted for about thirty seconds. He drove a Porsche Spyder and liked to think he was James Dean. He did look a bit like him in a good light, I suppose.’

‘But you turned him down?’

‘God yes! I took one ride in that Spyder and I swear he’d have killed me in ten minutes. Runs in the family.’

‘Does it?’

‘Absolutely. Think of his poor uncle Patrick in the Cobra. Anyway, Mummy’ll be terribly upset. We’ll have to rally round, as I said. Be supportive but not mention it. I thought I’d warn you.’

‘Thank you.’ Charles made a mental note to be as supportive as possible. ‘By the way, what d’you think of an embroidered sherwani jacket for after dinner? Silk and cashmere. It’s got quite a fashionable cachet, and it’s also very comfortable.’

‘Awful idea. Papa will have a fit. Bin it.’

Charles looked regretfully at the shimmering midnight-blue garment hanging in front of him. Anne was probably right. But when he was in charge at Sandringham, there was going to be a revolution in the indoor dress code that Beau Brummell himself would be proud of. Absently, he handed the handset back and returned to the matter in hand.

Thirty miles away from Sandringham, the daughter of the current Baron Mundy, Flora Osborne, had been contemplating the results of her labours in the flower room at Ladybridge Hall. She reached across a trug containing several large sprigs of holly and bunches of freshly cut mistletoe to answer the phone that she had placed out of reach of the splashing tap.

‘Val! Is everything OK?’

‘Are you busy?’ her brother demanded as she tucked the phone next to her ear.

‘Not exactly. Just finishing the greenery arrangements for the Long Gallery. It always uses up about six times as much foliage as I originally cut.’

‘Have you heard about cousin Ned?’

‘No, what? Have they found him? I was starting to get rather worried.’

‘You should be.’

Flora’s expression grew darker as she heard the news about the body part. She abandoned the holly she’d been holding and listened hard.

‘Do they know where it went into the water?’ Her voice was low, her mouth dry. She didn’t know whether or not to be reassured by the answer that the police seemed to know very little at this stage.

‘I was wondering . . .’ Valentine said. ‘Shall I call them? Explain about us? I mean, it’ll look rather—’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s none of their business where we go, what we do. None at all.’

‘If you think so.’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘If the police ask us,’ he began tentatively, ‘I suppose I can just say . . . I mean . . . we have nothing to hide.’

‘Absolutely,’ Flora agreed. ‘But they won’t ask, why would they? I only met him in June. You the same, I suppose.’

‘Well . . . yes, but I—’

‘Say nothing,’ Flora insisted. ‘It’s not up to us to do the police’s job for them. Now, let’s talk about nice things. You’re coming with us on the thirtieth, yes? And you’re staying here overnight? Are you sure you don’t want to come for Christmas? You’re always welcome here, you know. Both of you.’

There was a brief bark of laughter down the line. ‘I don’t think so. Roland and I have plans. We’re dining at Claridge’s. Roland says he has a surprise for me.’

‘You don’t think . . .?’

‘I think nothing, Florette. If anything happens, I’ll tell you when I see you. Now go have fun with your greenery. Let Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane.’

Flora frowned. ‘Didn’t Macbeth die when that happened?’

‘I was thinking more of the aesthetics. I know you don’t do greenery by halves.’

‘Val?’ she said, uncertain of herself for the first time. ‘Does it matter that I feel lighter? I’ve suddenly realised I do. Does that make me a bad person?’

‘Nothing will make you a bad person,’ he reassured her. ‘Give my love to the girls. How’s the old man getting on, by the way?’

‘Still not well. It’s like he’s been knocked for six. He was even worse this afternoon. He spent an age in the chapel. Frankly, I’m dreading Christmas.’

Her brother’s voice was kind. ‘I’m sure you’ll make it wonderful for everyone. You’ve got Mummy’s template to follow. Just put your spin on it.’

‘Sure,’ she said. But she wasn’t really listening. Her thoughts were still with the hand in the water. When the call ended she found herself washing her own hands under the freezing water from the tap, even though they were already clean.

In his cottage on the Sandringham Estate, Julian Cassidy swirled the tot of whisky round his glass, inhaled its peaty smell and downed it in a couple of gulps. This was his third and it was taking the edge off.

It was funny – you thought you’d reached your lowest ebb, and then something came along to make you sink lower. Julian felt as if the inrushing tide was washing over his head. On his bookshelves a thicket of Christmas cards were interspersed with others congratulating him on his New Job! and New Home! Many featured crowns and corgis. ‘Proud of you, son.’ ‘Enjoy the moment.’ ‘Don’t shoot any royals!!!! Haha!!!!!’

For a minute, he allowed himself to imagine how it could have been, sitting back on this sofa with a beautiful woman snuggled up beside him, a glass of wine, her body heat, a head full of plans and a clear, bright future.

Then the thought disintegrated. One minute was all it took.

He relived that moment again and again, as he had done since it happened. There was only one answer. He eyed the bottle. But he was distracted by a whimpering sound. Billy, his elderly black Labrador, was sitting at the door, eyeing it keenly, desperate to go out. Julian eased himself up off the sofa and accompanied the dog outside, where he nosed around in the bushes for a while before doing his business.

The sharpness of the night air brought with it a moment of clarity. He realised how fuddled he was. The only noticeable effect of the whisky had been to amplify his sadness. He would stick to wine from now on.

‘Hey, boy,’ he called softly to the dog across the garden.

Billy trotted back to him, his dark eyes glistening in the moonlight, full of love and trust.

‘C’mon, let’s go inside.’

Chapter 4

The next morning was Christmas Eve. After breakfast, warmly wrapped up in a tweed coat and fleece-lined boots, the Queen made a quick tour of key parts of the estate to wish season’s greetings to the staff who were still at work. At least, that was the official reason. In reality, she was desperate to see the animals. From the cows in the barn to the mares at the stud, and even the pigeons in their loft at Wolferton, she didn’t feel she was truly here until she had breathed in the bracing odour of cow manure and straw, or rested her hand on a warm and velvety equine neck.

Drawing up at the stud, she was pleased to see that her timing was good. As she got out of the car, she spotted the brood mares and their foals returning two by two from the paddocks in the huge, old walled garden, where they had been getting a blast of fresh air. She stopped to watch them briefly, enchanted as ever by the sight of the leggy foals, who had grown dramatically since the last time she saw them. Each one was the progeny of a line of distinguished racehorses. They weren’t yet weaned, but already some stood out to her as potential champions. It took a combination of proportions, strength, character and temperament. Having watched foals grow up into racehorses for as long as she could remember, by now she had a sixth sense for spotting the perfect blend.

Estimate herself, who had recently been immortalised in bronze, drew up the rear with a foal who already showed a lot of promise. He had his mother’s spark and ears that pricked with intelligence. The Queen called them both over and gave them all the Polo mints from her pockets. On her return to the house, she realised she was surprisingly tired, but rallied at the thought of the family members who were on their way. One was really so very lucky to be able to gather so many of them together – children and grandchildren, and now little great-grandchildren, too. True, right now the thought of a quiet afternoon in front of Pointless on TV had a certain appeal, but that was only the head cold talking. As soon as they arrived, she would feel better, she was sure.

From ten o’clock onwards, a succession of Range Rovers began delivering their contents to the front door in strictly managed order of seniority. The junior cousins were first, followed by her youngest son Edward, the Earl of Wessex and other Wessexes, large and small, then Andrew and his girls and, shortly afterwards, Anne and her husband, accompanied by Prince Harry, who had got a lift with them from St James’s Palace.

The Queen tried not to think about the people who were not coming. Zara, her eldest granddaughter, such a lovely, sensible girl and a mother herself now, was not well. Also missing were William and his family, who had chosen to spend Christmas with Catherine’s family in Berkshire. A Middleton Christmas was quite something, apparently. Full of jollity and good cheer. The Queen felt thoroughly put in her place when William had described it. In what way jollity and good cheer were lacking at Sandringham, she didn’t know. However, a part of her rather admired her grandson for taking a stand. One needed fortitude for the job he would one day hold. It took a loyal spouse, too, and that necessitated care and compromise along the way. Catherine would have her family Christmas. The monarch would make do. There was always FaceTime.

Among the freshly polished royal vehicles, a mud-spattered old Subaru estate car incongruously drew up in the courtyard and its driver got out alone. The Queen happened to be looking out of the saloon window as he did so. She turned to the butler who was standing beside her.

‘What’s the chief constable of Norfolk doing here?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ he said, looking as surprised as she was. ‘I’ll redirect him round the back.’

The Queen shook her head. Surely the most senior policeman in Norfolk wouldn’t visit Sandringham on a day like today unless it was very important? It must be to do with Ned St Cyr, and yet it had only been twenty-four hours since she had identified the hand. Was that enough for significant progress? She didn’t know whether to hope or dread what he might say.

‘Show him in, would you? One might as well say hello.’

The lugubrious, angular man who came in from the cold, shrugging off his waxed jacket and handing it to a waiting footman, looked astonished to be ushered into the saloon itself, and to find Her Majesty waiting for him. The circumstances were unusual, but this was by no means the first time they had met. Nigel Bloomfield had been head of the Norfolk constabulary for five years. He was a keen and thoughtful officer who had joined as the son of local farmers and risen quickly through the ranks. The Queen admired him for sticking with the Norfolk force and not seeking flashier jobs elsewhere. ‘They call Yorkshire God’s own county,’ he’d said once, ‘but we know where it is really, don’t we, ma’am?’ She was pleased that his loyalty hadn’t held him back. He was well regarded among other senior officers she knew. She found him both imperturbable and affable, which was an attractive combination, despite his general demeanour of a disappointed bloodhound.

‘Chief Constable! It’s good to see you,’ she announced. ‘Very kind of you to come on Christmas Eve.’

He bowed at the neck, and apologised for his off-duty outfit of neatly pressed corduroy trousers and smart red jumper.

‘I’m off to a carol concert later. My wife’s singing with a choir in Burnham Market. I hope you don’t mind, ma’am.’

‘Not at all,’ the Queen said. ‘Very appropriate.’

‘I was hoping to give your private secretary a quick update before Christmas. I got a bit held up, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ll have trouble seeing Sir Simon. He’s in Scotland,’ the Queen informed him.

Bloomfield frowned. ‘He rang first thing to find out how the team were getting on, ma’am. He sounded very keen to know all the details. I assumed he was here.’

‘Sir Simon’s on holiday,’ the Queen said sharply, making a mental note to tell the man in no uncertain terms, when he got back, not to do Rozie’s job for her while he happened to be away. ‘And I’m afraid Captain Oshodi, my APS, is getting ready to play football. My grandson has inveigled her on to his team. Can I help?’

Bloomfield took a couple of seconds to process the information. However, he gathered himself.

‘Quite possibly you can, ma’am. You’re familiar with the victim, I gather. I don’t want to intrude into your day. I’m sure you must be . . .’

He was somewhat distracted by whatever was going on behind her – almost certainly one or several of her children and grandchildren popping their heads round the door from the armoury corridor that led to the drawing room, to see who on earth this new arrival was.

‘You’re right, we’re very busy. But I have five minutes. Where can we . . .? Ah yes, follow me.’

In the company of the dogs, she led him to the far end of the room, where a doorway was almost invisibly silhouetted in the panelling beside the fireplace. It led to a small, dark, book-lined room with a desk. The Queen turned on the light and closed the door behind them.

‘So. An update,’ she said. ‘How encouraging.’ She didn’t sit down, because stand-up meetings tended to be quicker.

Bloomfield was still adjusting to his surroundings. He paused to look down at his trousers, where Vulcan was energetically sniffing his leg, and bent to give the corgi a reassuring stroke. The Queen had a lot of time for people who instinctively fondled the ears of friendly dogs. He straightened. ‘I wish I had better news, ma’am. Edward St Cyr was last seen in London on the fourteenth of December. My senior investigating officer is up there now. Mr St Cyr spent the night at his flat in Hampstead, prior to a meeting the following morning. He was certainly in a hurry. He was caught speeding twice on the A13 in his Maserati.’

‘He was rather known for speeding, I seem to remember.’

‘Ah. We can’t say for sure if he attended the meeting on the fifteenth. However, he wasn’t at Stansted Airport to meet his fiancée that afternoon. She couldn’t get hold of him, so she reported him missing the next day, which by then was the sixteenth, eight days ago. We weren’t unduly worried because he was known to go off grid occasionally. People go missing more often than you might think, ma’am.’

‘Oh, I know,’ the Queen said. She was familiar with the statistics, which were grim. It was alarming to discover how many of those who were subsequently found had good reasons for staying away.

‘Of course, this identification casts a new light on everything,’ Bloomfield said. ‘The Maserati’s still parked outside the flat; the friends have heard nothing; St Cyr’s phone hasn’t been used since he first went up to London. There’s no record of him leaving the country. We’re confident the DNA analysis will confirm the hand is his.’

‘Oh, dear. Does anyone at Abbottswood have any light to shed on what happened?’

‘No, ma’am. Mr St Cyr lived alone, unless his fiancée was visiting. There’s a cleaning lady who comes in three times a week, a local cook who obliges on request, and a groundsman who lives in the gatehouse, but he wasn’t there.’

The Queen nodded. A few decades ago, a place like Abbottswood would have bristled with servants, but it didn’t surprise her that Ned might rattle round his house these days. He was divorced, his children grown-up, and long gone were the days when the gentry could afford live-in staff, unless they found ways to make those houses pay. Which, as Philip had pointed out last night, Ned had serially failed to do. The poor man must have been quite lonely. She herself, she knew, would go stark, staring mad if left entirely to her own devices. She thrived on company.

‘What was his meeting about? Does anyone know?’

‘Not yet. It’s marked in his diary as “RIP”.’

‘“RIP”? How unsettling.’

‘Yes, ma’am. We have reason to believe it was a location. He used that sort of annotation for events in his diary. He seems to have gone out on schedule, expecting to come back. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink and there were no signs of violence. We’ll find out what he was up to soon enough. We’re checking local CCTV in Hampstead. Forensics are already hard at work on his home computer here at Abbottswood. He kept all his passwords on a sticky note he stuck to the monitor, would you believe? His security all round was very . . .’ The chief constable sighed. ‘You mustn’t speak ill of the dead and so on, but I sincerely wish we’d had the chance to talk him through a few basic procedures. Still, it speeds things up for us significantly. And it helps that whoever did this is making it easier for us, too.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, the hatchet job on the hand, for starters,’ Bloomfield explained. ‘It was done, presumably, with the intention of making the body harder to identify.’

‘It rather backfired in that case, didn’t it?’ the Queen observed archly.

He nodded. ‘Precisely, ma’am. None too bright, our killer. Or killers, plural. They want the victim to be anonymous so they remove the, um . . . ah . . . distinguishing extremity, and decide to dispose of it out at sea. They put it in a plastic bag and instead of sinking to the seabed and being devoured by the creatures of the deep, it floats. It’s washed ashore by the storm, and in an entirely avoidable irony, it’s the only body part we have.’

The Queen winced. ‘Where do you think the rest of him is?’

‘Far away,’ he said decisively. ‘The whole idea was that nobody would think of St Cyr when they found the body. I imagine the, ah, head is not in good condition either. It could be buried the other side of London, or it might also be at sea. We may well find it washed up in Sweden in a couple of months. I’m sorry, ma’am. I realise he was a family friend.’

‘Not exactly,’ she said, reeling slightly at the thought of the head, which she hadn’t considered. Ned’s golden hair had always been a glory. ‘We hadn’t seen him for many years. But his mother was.’ She glanced across at the spot on the floor where Willow, the last remaining corgi, was enjoying a patch of winter sun on the carpet. Georgina had been a dog person, too. Always English or red setters, glamorous and slightly mad, always at least four of them. Thank God she was no longer around to hear any of this.

‘I’m surprised,’ she added, ‘that the Met aren’t dealing with the case, if Ned disappeared in London.’

‘He was reported missing in Norfolk, ma’am. There was an exchange of views about it between the forces, put it that way, but my team prevailed. And despite the signs, I sense this is a Norfolk crime at its heart.’

‘Oh?’

‘The hand was found up here, after all,’ Bloomfield pointed out. ‘St Cyr grew up here, lived here, ran all his businesses from his place at Abbottswood. I knew him through his charity work. Always took a keen interest in what I was up to in my role as head of the Drugs Task Force. He was surprisingly well informed for a man of his—’ He caught the Queen’s eye and coughed again. ‘Ahem . . . his generation. He let us use Abbottswood for meetings and events. It was obviously his home, not just some bolthole he used at weekends.’

‘I see.’ She wondered suddenly if the chief constable thought that one saw Sandringham as a bolthole. But surely not? So much of her family’s life was bound up in it.

‘Anyway, we’ll know a lot more when forensics make their report,’ he went on. ‘I expect they’ll give us an idea about what happened to him first and where the bag went in the water, too. It’s amazing how much they can deduce from temperature and tides. The cold weather helps, of course. If the hand had been in that plastic bag under a hot sun it would have been quite a different story.’ He saw the Queen’s bleak response to that last statement and sought to reassure her. ‘I’ve got fifty people working on this night and day. Whatever happened, ma’am, we’ll find it soon enough. I guarantee we’ll have it wrapped up for you as quickly as any force in the country.’

The Queen sensed a note of competition in his voice. Norfolk was not, on the whole, known for its speed and efficiency. No doubt its major investigation unit could compete with the best in Manchester, say, or Edinburgh or Belfast, but as a county in general it had a reputation as slow and steady. Which was exactly how she liked it. Still, Bloomfield’s intention was a good one, if slightly misplaced.

‘Not for me. For his family,’ she said. ‘And for the sake of justice. Thank you, Chief Constable.’

She arranged for him to be looked after by the kitchen staff before heading off to his wife’s carol concert. The investigation sounded as if it was in good hands, which was where she wanted it to stay. Finally, she could focus on her own family, who would be wondering what on earth had happened to her.

Chapter 5

In the festive drawing room, the recent arrival of Charles and Camilla meant that the family, such as it was this year, was complete. Those who were there soon fell into familiar patterns, built up over many years and generations. Outside, the traditional football match was already underway against the local village of Castle Rising, the Sandringham team of staff and groundsmen captained by Harry in William’s absence. Indoors, the little ones gathered around the Christmas tree to hang the decorations that were set out for them in ancient cardboard boxes, some of which dated back to Queen Victoria, watched over by the painted pheasant on the drawing room ceiling. The Queen was content to observe from a nearby chair, sipping a hot tea and lemon and giving suggestions for where choice ornaments should go.

Anne came to sit beside her.

‘Mummy, I’m so sorry.’ Her tone was sombre.

‘What about?’

‘The hand!’

‘Oh, that.’

‘You must be feeling awful.’

‘I wasn’t.’ For a pleasant half-hour, filled with children’s chatter, the Queen had managed to put it from her mind.

‘Did you hear that Astrid’s gone missing too?’

‘Who’s Astrid?’ the Queen asked.

‘Ned’s girlfriend . . . fiancée. Moira Westover’s girl.’

‘Oh, I see. How dreadful. How do you know?’

‘It was on the radio,’ Anne explained. ‘We heard a news update as we were driving down. She was the one who reported Ned missing a week ago.’

‘Oh, dear,’ the Queen sighed. The chief constable hadn’t mentioned it. Another complication. She thought of the Westover family. It was awful enough trying to deal with a difficult emotional situation, but to do it in the public eye made it more distressing. She knew better than anyone how that felt.

Presents were opened after tea, in the German tradition, preserved since Prince Albert’s day. Four generations of royals gathered in the drawing room, in suits and smart dresses (there were more costume changes at Sandringham than during a busy West End performance). The early winter darkness emphasised the cosiness of a room lit by candles, lamps and a galaxy of fairy lights on the tree.

There was a great air of anticipation as the youngest children ceremoniously handed out parcels from the laden trestle tables. Not that any of the adults were expecting high-tech gadgets or vintage watches. The children’s presents tended to be traditional and generous, but the rest of the family had long since learned that when you sit in a room surrounded by antique Venetian fans and one of the best Fabergé collections in the world, where the hostess has recently been presented with a life-size statue of one of her favourite racehorses, you couldn’t hope to compete. Or rather, the competition was quite a different one: to see who could be the most entertaining on a budget. The winner (and the family were competitive to a fault, so there was usually a winner) was the one who came up with the best joke.

Last year’s present from Catherine to Harry, a grow-your-own girlfriend kit, had been a particular hit. Harry himself was a master when it came to cheeky presents. The Queen greatly enjoyed the ‘Ain’t Life A Bitch’ shower cap he had given her. He admitted that this time he had bought William a bald wig with an inch of hair fuzz around the edges, and was hugely disappointed not to get to see him open it.

Catherine’s grow-your-own present to Harry would not have worked this year. His very-much-real girlfriend was in Canada working on her TV series, so he was here on his own, but he was so obviously in love it was cheering just to look at him. The tips of his ears turned pink whenever her name was mentioned. William would inevitably have teased him mercilessly about her, as an elder brother’s right, so perhaps it was easier in that way at least that he wasn’t here.

The Queen appreciated Harry’s latest present to her, which was a floppy waxed fishing hat designed to make her look like a famous lady detective from the television. ‘You’re the spitting image,’ he assured her. But actually, it was also very practical for bad weather, and reminded her pleasantly of her mother, who had a whole collection of hats such as these. ‘I’ll wear it when I solve my next case,’ she joked, and everyone grinned at the absurdity of the idea. Which was rather reassuring.

Her favourite gift, though, came from the absent little Prince George. Along with a framed, indecipherable crayon drawing was a mug that made her laugh out loud as soon as she opened it.

‘What is it?’ Anne asked.

The Queen showed it to her daughter. It depicted a row of plump grey birds with green and purple markings at the neck. The message printed above them said, I may look like I’m listening to you, but in my head, I’m thinking about pigeons.

‘Ha! Well done, Catherine,’ Anne observed. ‘I sense a mother’s hand in this.’

‘I think, actually, that drawing of his is supposed to be a pigeon,’ the Queen reflected. ‘I thought it might be a giraffe at first.’

‘Definitely pigeon,’ Anne agreed. ‘A man after your own heart.’

Like her father and his father before him, the Queen was an ardent pigeon fancier. The family tended to think of it as her little hobby, but pigeon racing was a sport almost as old as Christianity. She had always liked the idea that the National Flying Club referred to pigeons. These birds could fly for thousands of miles with an unerring homing instinct that science was still exploring. Something to do with magnetism and iron filings in their beaks, apparently. And they were much cheaper than racehorses, and just as interesting to breed. The Queen was thoroughly looking forward to sharing her hobby with her great-grandson. Well done, Catherine, indeed.

Afterwards, they all retired upstairs. The children were prepared for bed with the help of an assortment of nannies and stockings were hung in anticipation of a visit from Father Christmas, while the adults dressed for dinner. Tonight was the big occasion: black tie and evening gowns, diamonds and silk shoes, a chance to let loose in relaxed company, which was precious and rare.

Philip, showing enormous fortitude and the power of ibuprofen, arrived in the saloon for cocktails looking like a fashion plate. For her part, no amount of makeup and sparkles could disguise the Queen’s pink nose and red eyes, and now her voice was becoming so hoarse she could hardly talk. However, a little Dubonnet Zaza cocktail with a twist of orange helped her see the world in a rosier light.

Charles made his way across the saloon towards her and she raised her glass to him. The cocktail was hitting the spot.

He looked at her slightly mournfully. ‘I wanted to let you know, I understand how bad you must be feeling.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s just a cold. I’ll feel better tomorrow.’

‘No, I meant about the hand.’

‘Oh.’

‘On the beach.’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it all day.’

‘Ah.’

‘But I promise we won’t talk about it.’

‘Good.’

‘Did you know,’ he added, after a minuscule pause, ‘that the police were searching Ned’s place in London? I saw it on the news while I was getting changed.’

‘Oh, are they?’ the Queen asked, adding firmly, ‘Isn’t Harry looking well?’

‘Is he? Yes, I suppose he is. They were wearing hazmat suits. You know, those white ones like beekeepers’ outfits.’

‘Who?’

‘The police. In Ned’s flat in Hampstead. Goodness knows why, given the hand turned up in Norfolk. I was wondering if it might be a kidnap attempt gone wrong. Do you remember that Getty boy’s ear? Horrendous business. Got lost in the post. You could hardly make it up.’

‘No, you couldn’t. Ah! Sophie!’ The Queen rather desperately hailed the Countess of Wessex, Edward’s wife, who was halfway across the room. ‘Are the children all right? Did they enjoy the day?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’ Sophie joined them, wearing a slub silk evening gown that the Queen was pleased to note she had seen before; she didn’t approve of clothes horses and waste. ‘Did you hear the news about the missing man?’ Sophie asked. ‘He lived near here, didn’t he? I was just talking to Mrs Maddox about it and she said her daughter used to work at the Fen-Time Festival on his estate a few years ago. She met Stephen Fry there. D’you know, I think she had a bit of a thing for him?’

‘For Stephen Fry?’

‘No, Edward St Cyr. I don’t think I ever met him. Did you know him well?’

Mercifully, the gong went, which meant dinner. The royal couple led the other adults into the dining room. Its pistachio wall colour, known as Braemar green, had been chosen by the Queen Mother to remind her of a favourite Scottish castle. It gave the room a jolly, feminine air that summoned up Mummy’s spirit and sense of fun. The Queen had once overheard a guest suggesting it looked like an ice-cream parlour at Harrods, but surely that wasn’t a bad thing? As always, the room was lit by candles alone, whose flickering glow, she hoped, could make even the most ravaged of cold-ridden faces look reasonably attractive. An artificial silver Christmas tree twinkled near the window. The wine was excellent and the venison was cooked to perfection. But every time the conversation veered away from the St Cyrs, it somehow veered back.

‘Of course, it’s a raging husband the police should be looking for,’ Andrew suggested. ‘Ned St Cyr famously had an eye for a posh girl in jodhpurs.’ He grinned at his sister, who told him to shut up.

‘Was he an artist?’ Camilla asked. ‘They said on the news his London place was an artist’s studio.’

Anne started to explain, digging back in her memory to her teenage years. ‘Ned’s father was the artist. Simon Longbourn? Or Paul? I don’t remember. Mummy, what was Georgina’s husband called?’

But nobody could remember, or rather, they couldn’t agree. Simon, or possibly Paul, had given Georgina the surname Longbourn on her marriage during the war. They had all lived at Ladybridge Hall together, along with Georgina’s younger sisters and her dashing little brother, Patrick, and Ned had been Ned Longbourn until the age of eight when Paul, or possibly Simon, divorced Georgina and fled to Greece, where he painted and drank until the drink finally killed him and young Ned inherited the studio flat in Hampstead and the captain’s house on Corfu. It was questionable whether Georgina noticed. She was always more interested in her horses and helping her father look after the estate. After the divorce, she reverted to her maiden name and Ned took it too. He’d inherited his mother’s red-gold hair and Roman nose, her charisma, her love of fast cars, her occasional temper, her charm . . . The two properties were the only things his father ever gave him, as far as they knew.

‘After her father died, Georgina bought Abbottswood,’ Philip explained, ‘Nice Regency villa. Not on the scale of Ladybridge, obviously. The Yanks had had the place during the war and the house was a wreck, but the grounds were good. Designed by Repton, apparently.’ Philip’s knowledge of the house and its surroundings surprised no one at the table. If he was interested in something he tended to know everything about it, and local architecture was one of his hobbies. ‘Georgina retired there like something out of Dickens, though she was only in her forties. Only rode to hounds and hardly spoke to anyone. She never forgave her cousin Ralph for casting her out of Ladybridge when her brother died and he inherited instead. Though what else he was supposed to do, God knows.’

‘Couldn’t she have lived on the estate somewhere?’ one of the younger princesses asked.

‘Possibly. But you didn’t know Georgina. She was the eldest child, the only one with any common sense, and she’d been practically running the estate for years. She’d have been staring down the new baron’s ruddy neck and second-guessing every decision he made. I’m not surprised Ralph practically bankrupted himself to get rid of her. Ned never forgave him, either. Ralph died forty years ago, but if his hand had ended up in the water . . .’

The Queen shot her husband a look.

‘What kind of person was he?’ Camilla wanted to know.

‘Ned? Wayward,’ Charles said with some disdain.

‘Headstrong,’ added Philip.

‘They’re saying he was a visionary in the servants’ hall,’ Sophie Wessex suggested, which caused all heads to look at her. ‘That’s what Mrs Maddox was telling me. He’d started this new project to turn Abbottswood into a nature refuge. He was planning to make it a centre for endangered species.’

‘Oh?’ Philip said, frowning. ‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘It was a recent thing. Mrs Maddox sounded quite excited. As I say, I think she’s a fan.’

Beatrice, sitting across the table from the Queen, looked confused. ‘If he lived quite close, how come Eugenie and I never met him?’

‘Or me?’ Harry agreed.

‘We rather lost touch over the years,’ the Queen said vaguely.

‘Ha!’ Philip said. ‘You mean, he dropped us like a hot potato.’

‘He dropped us?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Seriously?’

‘He grew up as Little Lord Fauntleroy at Ladybridge, then, after he and Georgina got chucked out, he went off to Greece, had an ersatz epiphany and came back a bloody communist. He saw us as fuddy-duddies. Too straight down the line for his bohemian tastes. He loved your great-aunt Margaret. We preferred Ralph’s son Hugh. Dull but stable. You know Hugh. Dresses like a scarecrow, farms sheep and writes about John Donne. It was Lee, his wife, we were particularly fond of, mind you. Very attractive blonde from Yorkshire. Green-fingered girl. She died in the summer. Much too young.’

‘My age,’ Charles observed, swilling his claret around his glass before finishing it in a gulp and gesturing for a refill. ‘We shared a birthday. We always used to send each other a basket of hyacinths.’ He looked wistful. ‘Ned introduced her to Hugh, I think. Thank God she didn’t end up with him.’

‘Didn’t you say Ned tried to go out with you, Mummy?’ Peter Phillips asked Anne.

‘Mmm, he did,’ Anne agreed. ‘Ned didn’t drop me. But he was very unpredictable. Mad, bad and dangerous to know and all that. Abbottswood was famous for rock concerts in the seventies. I think Led Zeppelin played there once.’

‘Gosh!’ Beatrice was impressed.

‘Mind you, he settled down eventually,’ Anne said. ‘The last time I saw him was at a country fair a couple of years ago, looking at vegan dog food.’

‘I heard his disappearance might be to do with drugs,’ Eugenie suggested. ‘That was on the news, too.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be him taking them,’ Anne said firmly. ‘One of his best friends overdosed in Greece and Ned became evangelical about it. He made Abbottswood a sort of rehabilitation centre for a while.’

‘Until one of the inmates practically burned the place down,’ Charles reminded her.

‘Hmph!’ Philip snorted. ‘He was good at attracting acolytes; not so good at actually providing them with decent therapy. He was always trying out some hare-brained scheme and going off half-cocked. Half Don Juan, half Don Quixote. He never could see a thing through.’

‘He sounds interesting,’ Beatrice said with a grin.

‘He was interesting. Too interesting,’ Philip grumbled. ‘That was his problem. Too busy trying to impress his mother.’

‘How very Freudian,’ the Queen said, fairly certain that this was the correct use of the term, and also that it might encourage Philip to drop the subject at last.

Luckily, the dining room doors opened at precisely this moment to allow a procession of footmen to deliver towering individual chocolate soufflés dusted with icing sugar and decorated with filigree chocolate holly leaves. There were suitable noises of appreciation and conversation moved on to other things. This meal was one of the Queen’s favourites of the year, and finally she could get on with enjoying it.

Chapter 6

The following morning the Queen felt worse.

Her head hammered. She put it down to the champagne, and possibly the Zaza cocktail. She could barely open her eyes.

In the corridor outside her room, children raced up and down, triumphantly calling out ‘He’s been!’ to one another before being loudly shushed. Meanwhile, there was something the Queen needed to do. Whatever it was, she couldn’t do it.

Lying in bed, eyes closed, she tried to think. It couldn’t be down to the drink. She hadn’t overindulged, not really. Not nearly enough to feel like this, anyway. And it couldn’t be her head cold. (What was it she was supposed to be doing?) Philip was a day ahead of her in that regard and he’d looked and felt much better last night. In fact, he’d said he was looking forward to getting some fresh air this morning at the early service.

Her eyes shot open. The dull morning light was blinding.

No!

She sat up sharply, before woozily collapsing back into her pillows.

The early service! This was Sunday, and Christmas morning. She was supposed to be at St Mary Magdalene’s at nine for private worship, and back at eleven for the public service and the family walkabout. It was more than a tradition, it was a duty, and she had attended the eleven o’clock service either here or at Windsor every single year of her reign, without fail. It was simply impossible to imagine not attending. What would her grandmother, Queen Mary, say?

She sat up again and tried to call for her maid. She still had about an hour to get ready. But her voice was barely a croak and she had to ring the bell. The doctor was called by video link, swiftly diagnosed full-blown flu and forbade her to leave the house. Philip, who was already dressed and breakfasted, took one look at her and agreed, which was most disheartening. So did Charles, who was so astonished at the news of his mother being incapacitated that he had to come and see for himself. Really, her bedroom was turning into Piccadilly Circus, or something out of The Madness of King George. If she hadn’t been almost incapable of speech, she would have had quite a lot to say about it.

Eventually, after a large breakfast and a short walk for the children to burn off some energy after their stocking-opening shenanigans, the rest of the family disappeared for a blissfully quiet couple of hours to go to church and talk to the crowds. If it had been possible for the Queen to feel more dreadful than she did at the thought of letting down the visitors at the gate, who had been waiting for hours in sub-zero temperatures to see her, she would have done so, but instead she took her time getting ready, accompanied by her dresser and the sound of carols on the radio.

She took the chance to write a brief note to Moira Westover, whose daughter Astrid had so mysteriously disappeared, and to Hugh St Cyr, Ned’s cousin at Ladybridge Hall, commiserating on ‘what must be most unsettling times for you all’. She wanted to say your bereavement, but they didn’t know for certain yet that it was a bereavement. Anyway, poor Hugh had grief much closer to home to contend with, since the death of his beloved wife just short of their golden wedding anniversary. Whereas he hadn’t spoken to Ned for years, as far as she knew. Was it harder, she wondered, to lose someone who had already made themselves absent from your life? There were no heart-warming memories, no consolation of shared experience. It was easy to tell yourself that it didn’t matter, but was it true?

Later, the rector arrived to give her private communion – there were advantages to being head of the Church of England – and everyone reconvened in the dining room for a meal of roast turkey, seven types of organic vegetable from various royal farms and gardens, a flaming Christmas pudding and, for those with the stomach for it, plenty of fine wine and champagne. There were party crowns and, by tradition, the Queen was the only one who didn’t wear one. As a girl, she had found it so very funny when her father didn’t and everyone else did. They finished just in time to gather round the television set in the saloon at three, to watch the message she had recorded earlier at Buckingham Palace.

‘I looked perfectly well then,’ she said, observing herself from her vantage point on the nearest sofa.

‘That was before the little Petri dishes got going. Which one of you buggers was it?’ Philip demanded, glancing round.

‘You look lovely now,’ Sophie said gamely. You could always rely on Sophie to say the right thing, even if in the teeth of the evidence.

Familiar with what she was going to say to the nation and the Commonwealth, the Queen let her gaze drift from the television to a small gap in the panelling, marking the hidden door. The room where she had spoken to the chief constable was the one where her father and grandfather used to record their Christmas messages for the radio. They were broadcast live to an empire that seemed to power the world. How quickly that idea had become history, and both her life and her father’s had been spent managing the transition.

For a moment, she pictured him beside her again, his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. These feelings didn’t completely fade, even after so many decades. He had died in his bedroom upstairs, aged only fifty-six, and she had been far away, in Africa. Halfway across the world.

‘Mummy, are you all right?’ Anne asked.

‘It’s just this dreadful flu. Pass me my handbag and I’ll find a handkerchief.’

‘One thing you can be sure of,’ Mrs Maddox said to a select audience in the housekeeper’s sitting room a few hours later, ‘it wasn’t one of the family.’

Mrs Maddox was a commanding presence, with an inscrutable expression and a helmet of immaculately cut, bobbed hair that made her look uncannily like Anna Wintour – should the editor of Vogue ever forgo sunglasses and don a festive plastic tiara. The resemblance had been noted by many a Sandringham guest, so often, in fact, that the family now took bets on how long it would take someone to mention it.

‘What? A prince, you mean?’ one of the butlers asked, to brief sniggering, quickly shushed.

‘No, really, Mr Roberts! One of his family.’

This evening, the housekeeper was holding court with the household staff while the royals, for a brief moment, looked after themselves. Rozie, who had spent the day missing the spice and flavour of her mother’s cooking in her family’s flat in West London, and the equal spice of her cousins’ friendly, bickering conversation around the table, was grateful to be asked along. Technically, she was too senior to join the ‘downstairs’ staff, but at Sandringham such distinctions seemed to shift like the tides.

‘Why’s that, then?’ the butler asked.

‘Because,’ the man sitting beside Rozie said, ‘if you want to inherit, you need a body.’ This was Rick Jackson, one of the Queen’s long-standing protection officers and chief inspector at the Met. ‘Or you have to wait seven years before you can declare the man dead.’

Mrs Maddox nodded. ‘Precisely, Mr Jackson. So, anyone hoping to inherit from Mr St Cyr would be trying to provide an identifiable body, not hide one.’

‘So where d’you think it is then?’ a lady’s maid wondered.

‘Me personally?’ Jackson queried. ‘Limed. In a quarry somewhere. I think the hand was a trophy. Then they got scared they had it, so they threw it away. Or they got told to. There are a million better ways of doing it, though.’

‘Surely not?’ Mrs Maddox interjected. ‘Mr St Cyr was hardly some sort of gangster. If you go back enough generations, I think he’s related to the Queen.’

‘That’s hasn’t stopped anyone before,’ Jackson pointed out. ‘In some periods of history, it was a motive.’

‘It needn’t have been for the inheritance, mind you,’ Rozie mused, returning to the original point. ‘There are other reasons for killing a relative.’

‘True,’ Mrs Maddox agreed. ‘But I can’t see why anyone would want to in this case.’

‘Three bitter divorces,’ the lady’s maid pointed out.

‘Yes, but the last one was twenty years ago,’ Mrs Maddox observed. ‘Poor man. He was unlucky in love. He told me about it one evening at the festival. He lost the love of his life at twenty-one and never really loved a woman again. He was a true romantic.’

‘Not exactly,’ the lady’s maid scoffed. ‘The way he treated his wives was shocking. My friend used to work for Christina, the third one. He had this system. When he came to get divorced, he suddenly had no money. He was living on thin air, no savings, practically bankrupt, and he couldn’t afford to give them a decent settlement. Then as soon as everything was finalised, back came the nice cars, the trips to Greece to his old house, which was now owned by a friend of his. Convenient.’

Mrs Maddox looked disapproving. ‘I can’t imagine him doing that. He talked so fondly about all his children.’

The lady’s maid shrugged. ‘Easy to do that when you’re not paying for their keep. He told them it was good for them to look after themselves, like he’d had to. Those poor kids. But I agree with you, Mrs Maddox, this isn’t a woman’s crime.’

‘What’s a woman’s crime when it’s at home?’ the butler asked. ‘Some of the nastiest murders in history’ve been done by women.’

‘Name one.’

The butler thought for a minute. ‘John the Baptist. We saw the play once. Salome did the dance of the seven veils and when she was asked what she wanted, she said John the Baptist’s head. And she got it, on a plate. I remember those veils.’

‘Sure,’ Mr Jackson said from beside Rozie. ‘But I bet it was a man that cut it off and gave it to her. Women tend to be more impulsive. Or more indirect.’

‘Women tend to be the victims,’ the lady’s maid put in gloomily.

‘Actually, they don’t,’ Mr Jackson said. ‘Overall, victims of homicide are eighty per cent men. But those killed by a partner are eighty per cent women, I’ll give you that.’

‘That’s it!’ Mrs Maddox announced, unknowingly mirroring the Queen’s reaction. ‘Enough murder talk on Christmas Day. Now, will somebody make me a negroni and let’s talk about something else?’

Chapter 7

After a feverish night, the Queen woke early. The sky beyond her bedroom window was a watercolour wash of pink and lavender, infused from below with frosty light. She sat quietly against her pillows for some time, waiting for her headache to abate and grateful, for once, that there wasn’t room at Sandringham for her personal piper.

Downstairs, the more active members of the family were gathering for a hearty fry-up, ready for the traditional Boxing Day shoot. Some of the women would be joining the men, while others had breakfast in their rooms and took the chance to recover from two days of festivities. Shooting was largely a man’s sport anyway, in the Queen’s experience. At least, it had been in her father’s day.

This morning, the royal party assembling in the gun lobby would be a slimmed-down version of Sandringham in its pomp. Since Philip’s heart operation he travelled as an observer only. William was still keen on the tradition, but of course he wasn’t here. And Harry had developed a sensitivity to blood sports and wasn’t going out with the guns today.

The tide of history was on Harry’s side, she thought. When she and Philip were young it had seemed quite natural to combine a love of field sports and wildlife conservation – necessary, even – and yet that combination had now become a paradox. Charles, aware of this, had given up the hunt and tried to be seen less and less with a shotgun in his hands. The Queen wondered where this loss of tradition would stop. So much of the countryside worked the way it did, with hedgerows and copses as cover for birds, because sportsmen kept it that way. What would happen without keepers and sporting farmers to look after it? By the time little George took over, would it be one big theme park with ‘royalty’ rides, or, God forbid, a massive golf course with sterile putting greens?

At least there was one advantage to Harry’s sudden aversion to blood sports: it meant he could keep her company and help her with the jigsaw. She was looking forward to hearing more about the girlfriend. Her grandson’s general air of bonhomie reminded her somewhat of herself when one of Philip’s letters arrived after the war. It was cheering to see him so happy. She had never doubted the essential, transformative effect of love.

Rozie was woken by the alarm at 7 a.m. Heavy curtains blocked out the sky, and it took her a moment to remember where she was. She needed a pee and a drink of water. She needed to be elsewhere. She probably shouldn’t have brought that second bottle of champagne up to the room last night.

As she sat up slowly to examine the extent of her hangover, a heavy arm threw itself across her from the other side of the bed.

‘Don’t go.’

‘I have to,’ she said, remembering the late-night text she had received from Sir Simon. ‘You, do too. You’re the one who set the alarm, remember?’

‘Yes, but it’s so comfortable.’ The owner of the arm had the same peevish stubbornness of her sister when Rozie used to try and wake her up to go running in the mornings.

‘Prince Philip’ll be expecting you.’

‘I can dress very fast. I’m sure we’ve got twenty minutes to spare.’

‘I can dress fast too, but I’ve got to get back to my room, remember?’

‘Borrow something of mine,’ he grumbled. ‘We’re the same kind of size.’ He nuzzled her shoulder, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.

It was tempting, though. Henry Marshal-Ward was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, fit in every sense, with a cushy staff job as a temporary equerry to the Queen. Rozie didn’t have time for a full-on boyfriend and Henry didn’t come with strings attached, so occasional hook-ups suited them both. Especially here, where he had a room inside the main house, within drunken staggering distance of the servants’ hall last night, while she was billeted in the overflow accommodation on the estate, half a mile down the road. However, royal shoot attire was very strict, even for observers like her, and it didn’t include black lace bodycon party dresses or a boyfriend’s borrowed tracksuit. She needed to go and change.

Sir Simon’s drunken text from the night before suggested that he, too, would be nursing a hangover this morning. He’d been talking to one of the ghillies in Balmoral, who had heard on the grapevine that the Sandringham shoot would contain some friends and neighbours of the family, to make up for missing royals:

There’s a possibilility likelihood that one or more of these people may be connected to St Cry. Find out what you can. Be discreet. We may need to do some damage control later. Good lick.

Rozie reached over to switch on the light. As its glow caught the Roman profile and the tousled curls of his strawberry blond hair, she was reminded of her Google Images search from three days before.

‘You’re not related to Edward St Cyr, are you?’

‘The missing man? Um, yuh,’ Henry said. ‘I think he’s like my second cousin twice removed. I’m related to most people, though, one way or another, if you go back far enough.’

‘I bet you’re not related to my family,’ Rozie challenged him.

‘Well, no, I don’t have any ancestors in Lagos that I know of. Wouldn’t swear to it, though.’

‘You don’t have a ring like his,’ she observed.

‘No. We’re the Shropshire branch of the family. It’s the Norfolk St Cyrs who go in for the bloodstone ring. We always thought big stones like that were rather naff.’ He raised his left hand, which bore a small gold ring on the little finger, similar to many that Rozie saw on the hands of royals and senior household staff.

‘So is it naff not to wear a ring?’ she asked, looking at her own long, nimble fingers.

‘No,’ Henry told her, tracing one of his fingers down her arm from shoulder to wrist. ‘I like your fingers bare. Like this bit.’ He slid his hand under the sheet.

She threw a pillow at him and crawled out of bed.

The shooting party set out together across the estate in a motley collection of Range Rovers, Land Rover Defenders and an ancient shooting bus, in the direction of Wolferton, towards the marshes. To avoid paparazzi lenses, they drove down a series of tracks made for military vehicles during the war, observed only by a hovering kestrel and the occasional pheasant that whirred up from the ground like a helicopter before breasting the hedgerows on the breeze.

Overnight, a hoar frost had layered every twig, leaf and seed head with heavy ice. The almost horizontal rays of a pale sun, penetrating a light layer of low cloud, made the wide fields of stubble glint and twinkle. Rozie could see why the royals got out of bed for this. In fact, she felt sorry for anyone who had chosen not to come out with them. If there was a way of doing it without dressing up in tweed and shooting the funny, silly, colourful pheasants out of the sky, she’d be all for it. Not that she would share that particular train of thought with anyone here.

She stood at the edge of the field where the first drive was due to begin. The guns were having their safety briefing on one side while the observers and pickers-up shared conversation and slugs of sloe gin in a huddle on the other. Henry, her equerry-with-benefits, was among the guns. Everyone seemed to have been to school with one another, or knew one another’s parents. Like Henry, they had all been on shoots since childhood and knew exactly what to do. Rozie knew her way around a rifle, but had only started rough shooting with shotguns in the summer, and never on anything as formal as this, with whistles and clickers and pegs to show each gun where to stand, and matching pairs of shotguns that cost more than her university education. It was like going back a century in time.

‘Hullo. How are you getting on?’

She looked round to see the friendly face of Lady Caroline Cadwallader, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, hands thrust into the pockets of her tweed jacket.

Rozie explained her mission from Sir Simon.

‘In case it’s one of us, d’you mean, who did it?’ Lady Caroline asked.

‘No, just—’

‘It is, isn’t it? You want to spare the Queen embarrassment. Well, I knew Ned, so you can put me on your list, but I hadn’t seen him in an age. We moved in the same circles as teenagers. Our mothers came out together.’

‘Came out?’ Rozie asked.

‘As debs, not lesbians,’ Lady Caroline clarified breezily. ‘In 1939. What a year. So many of the men they danced with that summer were dead five years later. One of my uncles was shot down over Belgium and another was lost in the North Sea. Georgina’s father was never the same. He came back a shadow of the man they sent to war. Anyway, what was I saying?’

Rozie reminded her, and Lady Caroline peered out across the field.

‘Ha! I don’t think the Queen’s set are the sort who have people dismembered. We’ve entertained the odd guest at Buckingham Palace I’ve had my doubts about, but that was official business.’ She surveyed the line of men and women taking up position at their pegs. ‘To be honest, most people you can see probably are connected to Ned one way or another. I mean, take that man there.’ She pointed to a broad-backed, middle-aged man positioned just beyond Prince Charles. ‘That’s Gerry Harcourt-Worthorpe, the Earl of Mayfield. He married Ned’s first wife, Nancy, after Ned took up with the nanny.’

‘Oh, right. Is Nancy here too?’ Rozie wondered.

‘No, no. She went off to New Zealand. The marriage to Gerry was pretty awful, I gather. She married a sheep farmer and third time lucky, as far as I know. Ned’s eldest boy and girl are proud New Zealanders these days. The boy builds bunkers for billionaires. I can’t remember his name. Fascinating job, though, don’t you think? When the apocalypse comes, all the private jets will be heading to Auckland. Gerry might be one of them. He’s one of those few old-money people who actually still possess it. His parents were frightful snobs. They used to refer to the Queen and Prince Philip as the German and the Greek. Although, strictly speaking, they should have called Prince Philip the Dane, I suppose. The Greeks had sort of borrowed the Danish royal family because they didn’t have one of their own. Who else?’ She scanned the line of guns until she got to the end and handed Rozie her binoculars. ‘Ah, and see the woman two pegs along, in lilac tweed, with the fur-trimmed hat?’

‘Yes.’

‘I assumed it was a novelty outfit the first time I met her. That’s Helena Fisher. You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she’s a phenomenal shot. She’s half Swedish, half American, and she was on the national Olympic team, I can’t remember which. Her husband Matt runs Muncaster, which is the next estate along. It’s between here and Abbottswood, so I assume they knew Ned quite well.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Ned was very charismatic and Helena’s charming and attractive, so if he had anything to do with it . . . She’s much younger than him, of course. She can’t be more than forty-five. But, as we know, age was no barrier to Ned’s interest in a woman. Matt’s an average shot, so he’s over with the pickers-up somewhere. I overheard Prince Philip saying he felt obliged to invite them because we poached his bean counter for the estate. I think that’s the bean counter there, see? At the end of the line, in the bright yellow ear defenders. You could see them from space! I assumed Prince Philip meant he was an accountant, but apparently he really does count beans.’

‘Why?’ Rozie asked.

‘He’s some sort of conservation manager. His thing is organic farming. Of course, that’s catnip for the Prince of Wales. He has to show how good the organic yields are or something. Hence—’

‘He counts them. Not individually, I presume,’ Rozie said.

‘By the tonne, I imagine,’ Lady Caroline agreed. ‘And blackcurrants, too. Did you know they supply them for Ribena? I’m surprised he’s shooting with the guns today. Staff don’t usually . . . But I’m sure Prince Philip has his reasons. And that’s it, as far as I know,’ Lady Caroline concluded. ‘Oh, look, they’re about to start and the duke is glaring at me because I’m talking.’

She gave Rozie an unrepentant grin and headed back to the group of wives and other guests who were watching from a suitably safe distance. Rozie noticed the bean counter with the yellow ear defenders had turned his head and was looking in her direction. It was a little unnerving. Had he not seen a six-foot black woman in tweeds before? She stared back at him until he looked away.

After the third drive, Rozie decided she had had enough of tweed for the day. She was contemplating the long walk back across farmland and paddocks to her lodgings, when a Range Rover stopped beside her. Princess Anne was at the wheel.

‘Oh, good! It’s you,’ she said. ‘Hop in.’

Rozie did as she was told.

‘I was hoping to catch you,’ Anne went on, negotiating the car down the muddy track. ‘Any more news from the police?’

‘Not that I’ve heard,’ Rozie said.

‘Lady Caroline mentioned that you’re on the lookout for potential murderers among us.’

‘Not exactly, ma’am. I just thought it would be useful to know who knew the victim.’

‘Do they know what Ned was doing in town?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I wonder if it was a gangland thing,’ Anne said. ‘Ned mixed with some dodgy types back in the seventies. It’s not hard to picture them luring him to London. Though God knows what for, after all this time.’

‘It’s interesting that whoever did it came back to Norfolk,’ Rozie said, glancing beyond the stubble and dykes towards the marshes that led to the Wash. ‘Something must have drawn him here.’

‘Lunch!’ Anne declared.

Up ahead, an isolated building too small to be a house, and too delicate to be a farm building, stood solitary behind a sea of winter wheat. Already, various cars were disgorging their occupants on the track nearby and Anne swung her Range Rover alongside them.

‘You’ll join us, I take it?’ she asked as they got out.

‘I was going to head back. I don’t think I—’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Anne said. ‘You’re here now. Come on.’

They walked into the relative warmth of the building, at one end of which a team of chefs stood guard over a vast array of cold meats, pies, hot soups and sizzling sausages. Guests were already assembling around a long table, laid with silver cutlery and cut glass. Anne was hailed by various people and left Rozie to her own devices. Henry wasn’t there yet, but she noticed Matt Fisher and the Earl of Mayfield sitting next to Prince Philip at the far end. Bearing in mind what Sir Simon had said, Rozie joined them.

The conversation was something to do with new opportunities for farmers now they weren’t going to be ‘tied up in Brussels red tape’. The Earl of Mayfield, fuelled by Bloody Marys and red wine, was holding court.

‘Of course, if people like Ned St Cyr had their way, poor bastard, we wouldn’t have farms at all. It would all be trees.’

‘What?’ Prince Philip asked.

‘Didn’t you know? He was trying to take his land straight back to the Middle Ages. I think he may actually have gone insane. It’s this new fad that involves letting your grounds go to rack and ruin.’ He speared a sausage with a furious fork. ‘The idea is you let the place run wild. No mowing, no management. Makes the countryside look a bloody mess. There’s a place doing it not far from us. They get deer in to manage the advancing forestation, if you can imagine that.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Philip said. ‘He was wilding. I know a bit about that. Explains the deer. I had the impression Ned was setting up some kind of zoo.’

‘You might as well call it that,’ the earl said dismissively. ‘They want half the country to be wooded over and wild animals left to roam it. They’re supposed to look after themselves, summer and winter, without needing food or vets or accommodation. And somehow they don’t breed themselves into starvation. Of course, the natural way – the medieval way – would be wolves. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if Ned intended to reintroduce those, too. And meanwhile, the land is turned to scrub.’

‘I’ve been looking into the idea of wilding,’ Philip mused. ‘It has its merits – if done in the right places.’

‘You don’t really think so?’ the earl asked, astonished.

‘That so-called “scrub”, as you put it, blackthorn and dog rose, is a haven for wildlife. Some extraordinary results have been achieved in Holland. Several species are coming back from the brink of extinction.’

‘Norfolk is the breadbasket of England, for Christ’s sake. You can’t feed the nation on blackthorn and butterflies.’

‘You can’t feed a nation without pollinators,’ Philip said. ‘They absolutely thrive in these places. It’s fascinating.’

‘Ha! You sound like your son, sir,’ the earl said with a smile.

Philip’s gaze was cool. ‘We have more in common than you may think.’

The earl caught a hint of steel in his voice and his florid face flushed further. ‘No doubt,’ he muttered, dropping the subject. They returned to the topic of Brexit. Rozie, who had more than enough of that in her day job, quietly left them to it.

The racing had just finished on Channel 4 when the shooting party got home, fresh-faced, tired and happy, eager for hot baths and tea. Philip found the Queen in the drawing room, soothing her throat with honey in hot water after an enjoyable afternoon shouting at the television set with her fellow racing aficionados. Having complained vigorously about the noisy Nerf gun battle raging along the corridors – which the Queen found rather unfair, in the circumstances – he was keen to update her on his day.

‘Extraordinary end to the fourth drive. Cassidy, the new bean counter, is a liability. He shot for Oxford, which is why I agreed he could join us today. I was hoping to see a fine performance. But he only got one bird in four and he practically shot Helena Fisher, who was on the next peg.’

‘What?’

‘An idiotic misfire. The fool forgot to check if both barrels had fired before swinging his gun around prior to unloading.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘No, but no thanks to Cassidy. You should have heard the beasting that Helena Fisher gave him. Vocabulary of a Royal Marine. Impressive. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. I discovered what Ned’s been up to. He was on a mission to manage his land with the help of wild animals. It’s known as wilding. I’ve been researching a bit about it recently.’

‘Wilding?’

‘According to the head keeper, it was the talk of the Fens in the summer,’ Philip said. He explained how it worked, and the use of wild animals to keep encroaching vegetation at bay.

‘I see.’

‘Helena Fisher filled me in on the details. Ned, being Ned, was intoxicated by the whole thing. Instead of waiting and planning like any sensible person, he’d ordered the animals in by the truckload. Beaver, boar, those deer we saw . . . To absolutely no one’s surprise, they got through his inadequate fencing in minutes, and they’ve been making his neighbours’ lives a misery. The beavers flooded half of Matt Fisher’s beet crop at Muncaster. There was an incident with wild boar, too, would you believe. They dug up every bit of lawn around the house. Left it looking like the Somme, two days before he was due to hold his daughter’s eighteenth in the garden. He threatened to kill Ned to anyone who’d listen.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it,’ the Queen said.

‘Really?’

‘Nobody would kill their neighbour because of a few wild animals, Philip.’

‘What do you mean? Show me a landowner whose fields have been turned to ponds by overactive beavers, and I’ll show you a man bent on homicide.’

‘In theory,’ she agreed. ‘But he wouldn’t actually go through with it.’

‘The trouble with you, Lilibet, is that you’re too forgiving. You overestimate the human spirit.’

‘The strength of the human spirit is what keeps me going.’

‘Matt wasn’t the only one, though. They were queueing up to criticise. Farmers don’t want the land turned into forest.’

‘You’d hardly kill someone for growing trees, either.’

‘D’you think? They kill locals by the dozen for trying to stop ’em being chopped down in the Amazon. Happens every day. It’s an international disgrace.’

How had they got from Abbottswood to the Amazon? the Queen wondered. When he was in this sort of mood, her conversations with her husband could be stretching.

‘Mind you, it wouldn’t be a farmer,’ Philip went on. ‘Too many other ways of disposing of the body parts. Take pigs, for example. Or a midden. Or a slurry pit. He wouldn’t have needed to resort to plastic bags in the Wash.’

‘Philip! I’d rather not have this conversation, and especially not just before dinner. Ned was such a charming little boy.’

‘He bloody wasn’t. He was a rascal. Anyway, it can’t have been Fisher because he’s been in Barbados since the beginning of December,’ her husband concluded. ‘Only got back the day before we arrived, and that was after the storm. Unless he ordered a hit while he was away and they brought the hand down to prove they’d done it and lost it somehow.’

‘Philip! I mean it!’

Her page interrupted them to tell her that her APS was on the phone. She walked over to the old-fashioned instrument on a table near the door and picked up the receiver.

‘Yes? What is it?’ There was a long pause while she listened. ‘Ah. That was quick. Are they sure? Thank you, Rozie.’ Sad and somewhat disturbed, she put the phone down.

‘News from the chief constable?’ Philip asked.

‘Yes. They’ve brought a man in for questioning who calls himself Jack Lions. He’s Ned’s son from his second marriage – the one with the nanny. Rozie will have more details in the morning.’

‘So they’ve got him!’ Philip looked mildly triumphant, as if their recent conversation hadn’t happened. ‘You see? I told you. It’s always the family.’

Chapter 8

The arrest had been sudden and violent.

As always, a full raft of papers was delivered to Sandringham in the morning and laid out in the saloon for everyone to read. Several featured news of the arrest in a suburb west of London, accompanied by old photographs of a semi-shaven, surly, long-haired man, unmistakably a St Cyr by birth, with his tall, rangy frame and strawberry blond curls, dressed in dirty clothes and heavy boots, marching for climate change or posing with a spade in a shady allotment, looking as if he may have been planting tomatoes or burying something unspeakable in the dirt.

‘Poor bastard,’ Philip said, brandishing the Telegraph at the others over coffee after breakfast. ‘Ned, I mean. Georgina must be turning in her grave.’

‘Has he actually been charged?’ Anne asked.

‘Not yet. But according to this kiss-and-tell so-called friend—’ Philip waved the paper again ‘—Lions was a magnet for trouble right back to his school days. Expelled for taking cannabis. Fell in with a crowd of drop-outs and eco-warriors. Hasn’t held down a proper job for longer than a few weeks. Unless you count teaching drumming in a tent at music festivals, which, frankly, I don’t.’

‘Why did he do it?’ the Queen wondered.

‘According to this, he was mentally unbalanced. Psychotic episode, they’re suggesting.’

‘Don’t those episodes happen quite suddenly?’ she asked. ‘I thought Ned had been invited to a meeting. It sounded rather organised.’

‘Who knows? Perhaps the boy lost his temper. If he was on drugs, he might have been capable of anything.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Anyway, the whole thing’s done and dusted,’ Philip said. ‘I’m glad Bloomfield has it squared away. Good man.’

The group spent several minutes discussing what might have driven a blood relative to such an act of unspeakable violence. The Queen, who found it all extremely unsavoury, eventually had to put her foot down and insist that they refrain from discussing murder over coffee. She had a strong suspicion that everyone resumed the subject, though, as soon as she departed, coughing and aching, for the relative peace of her office overlooking the garden.

After two days off, which was as many as she ever took, it was back to the business of being Queen. However, her official paperwork was thin, as most Government officials were still on holiday. She had finished it and was surreptitiously catching up on a couple of stories in the Racing Post when Rozie arrived, skirting round the dogs’ elaborate feeding stations in the office in order to reach her desk.

‘The chief constable rang again just now, ma’am,’ Rozie announced. ‘He’s offered to update you on the Lions arrest in person. He said he’s going to be in the area in a couple of hours. He could drop by, if you like.’

The Queen pursed her lips. ‘Oh, he could, could he? Hasn’t he seen enough of Sandringham recently? I think we can spare him a second trip.’

Rozie nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll get him to—’

‘Wait.’ The Queen relented. She still found it extraordinary to think that one of Georgina’s grandsons could have killed her only child. It was heartbreaking, but she wanted to try and understand it. ‘You might as well let him come. I wouldn’t mind a word or two.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Oh, and, Rozie . . . do explain to him where to park this time.’

The Queen met Bloomfield in the Long Library, which sat behind the dining room and overlooked the ponds beyond the lawn. Its book-lined walls gave few clues that it had started life as a bowling alley. Her great-grandfather was not entirely serious when he was Prince of Wales. The Queen had to admit to herself, she would have rather liked a bowling alley. The books that replaced it had been chosen for the attractiveness of their gilded spines and she had yet to read most of them.

‘Horrible business, ma’am,’ the chief constable agreed. He was in uniform this time, perched on the edge of his chair, as lugubrious as ever. ‘We’re still getting to the bottom of it. Lions is as guilty as sin. You can tell he wants to talk, but he won’t.’

‘Have you charged him with his father’s murder?’ she asked.

‘Not yet. We’re working on it. Give the team twenty-four hours and I think we’ll be ready. All very sad. I don’t think he meant to do it. Now he’s stuck with it for the rest of his life.’

‘I see that he’d changed his name.’

‘Ah! Well, that’s a bit of a clue,’ Bloomfield said. ‘He was christened Orlando George Ellington Longbourn St Cyr, but he changed it by deed poll to Jack Lions ten years ago. His mother’s maiden name. It was a mark of estrangement from his father. Of course, Edward St Cyr had done a similar thing himself, in a way.’

‘He had,’ the Queen agreed.

‘Anyway, Lions wanted nothing to do with the whole St Cyr connection. When his schoolmates were going to university, he was living in a squat. The thing is, though, his mother became addicted to prescription drugs. Jack wrote to his dad in a fury several months ago because St Cyr refused to help with her latest rehab stint. Jack pointed out St Cyr is on the board of three anti-addiction charities. St Cyr wrote back saying if he needed cash, he could get a job on his rewilding project.’

‘Did he?’

‘After that, they spoke by phone. I doubt Lions wanted his opinions recorded. You ask for a parent’s love, and they offer you outdoor labour at minimum wage.’

‘How did you find him?’ the Queen asked.

‘He was always on our radar. For a man born with the proverbial silver spoon, he has quite a criminal record. Taking vehicles without consent, possession of Class B drugs, affray . . . He started off as a hunt saboteur but he’s been involved with increasingly extreme fringe elements on the animal rights front. But what clinched it was the RIP meeting in the diary.’

‘Oh?’

‘This is where we give thanks for the wonders of modern technology,’ Bloomfield said proudly. ‘A cross-check of the number plate recognition cameras showed that on the fifteenth, a van belonging to one of Lions’s close associates was parked behind a building occupied by Rich Indie Productions in Soho. RIP. You see, ma’am?’

The Queen was quite capable of working out a three-letter acronym. Her life revolved around them, after all. ‘Yes, Chief Constable. I do.’

Bloomfield noted a mild tone of irritation in her voice. ‘Of course. Anyway, the owner of the van, a man called Simon Lefevre, did two years in jail for firearms offences. The next day it was caught on camera again, heading west out of London on the A4, with none other than Lions himself in the passenger seat.’

‘I see.’

‘That’s why we had to make sure the arrest was done safely. We couldn’t be sure Lions wasn’t armed. We’d have arrested Lefevre, too, but he’s disappeared, along with the van. We’ll find him soon enough.’

The Queen accepted that this was very diligent deskwork by the vast team who were working on the case. She was fascinated by how it was attention to the small details, such as vehicle number plates of an associate – not even the main suspect – that enabled a breakthrough. The crime shows she watched on television usually involved brilliant sudden deductions, but the reports she read in her papers often featured almost impossible amounts of data, patiently filtered by unsung heroes at their desks. Even so, ‘parking nearby’ and ‘driving west’ didn’t constitute conclusive proof of guilt in her view.

‘Has Mr Lions admitted anything?’ she asked.

‘Not yet. But his alibi fell apart straightaway. He claimed to be at home all day with his girlfriend and their baby. His phone records supported it, but unfortunately for him, her mother put up several videos on Facebook of herself with her daughter and baby granddaughter at a pub in Nottingham. That’s the thing about parents on social media – you can’t trust them. I think it’s only a matter of time before we get a full confession. As I say, Lions needs to talk, you can feel it. You know, I feel almost sorry for the lad. New partner, young baby . . .’

‘And you think he did it in a sudden rage?’

‘I doubt he intended violence, but something snapped and he lost it. If he had a knife on him, it’s easy to do something you regret. Happens all the time.’

And then he had the presence of mind, the Queen thought, to make sure his phone records did not betray him, before taking the body to Norfolk – for reasons unknown – and dismembering it. His own father.

‘I see,’ she said sadly, though she didn’t, really.

‘Drugs,’ Bloomfield said with sombre finality. ‘He was worried about his mother, but he seems to be in denial about his own addiction. He was almost certainly under the influence when he acted. I’ve seen it so many times. It’s nice to think he’d get some help in prison, but he won’t. Cutbacks. But that’s politics, ma’am. That’s for the home secretary, not me. Anyway, I mustn’t keep you.’

After he’d gone, she reflected on what the men and women of the police forces must see, day in, day out, to make it easy for them to imagine a man dismembering a parent in the way he suggested Jack Lions had done, when she could not. Not at all. She also found it difficult to be pleased that they had got their man. An image of the new mother and her child refused to dislodge itself from her mind, especially at this time of year, when2 a newborn baby was very much the theme. All she could see was a wasted life and a missing father, and that was nothing to be glad about.

Chapter 9

The next couple of days between Christmas and New Year were busy ones for Mrs Maddox, as some guests left to visit family elsewhere and others arrived to take their place. Philip got steadily better. He spent time closeted in his own library with Charles, the estate manager and the newly hired bean counter, discussing the future of Sandringham, which would soon be under his son’s control. Voices were raised and fists were thumped during the more dramatic moments. The Queen knew that Charles found the whole thing exhausting, but his father thrived on it.

Rozie stared at herself in the mirror of Henry Marshal-Ward’s little wardrobe. The plain blue dress was from an upmarket retailer called Fold that her sister used for special occasions. The neck was high, the silhouette demure, and the skirt came down to her calves. Her shoes were modest ballet flats. She missed her normal uniform of pencil skirt and heels. This dress had the advantage of being quick to put on, though. At Sandringham, you had to learn the art of the rapid change.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

Henry, who was busy doing up the buttons of his sexy dress uniform, glanced up to give her the once-over.

‘Like a very expensive nun.’

She sighed. ‘Is that a good thing?’

She was learning, once again, about the shifting tides at Sandringham. Normally there was a clear distinction between senior household staff and their royal bosses. It was old-fashioned and hierarchical and to start with it made Rozie feel uncomfortable, but it kept things simple. However, on days like today, when the Queen was throwing a small drinks party and there were too many guests for the family to entertain easily, it became a question of all hands on deck. Many of the junior royals had already left to visit other family and friends, so Rozie and Henry would be expected to make small talk with the guests who might otherwise feel left out. She hadn’t felt this nervous in months.

‘Just put on a high voice and say, “And what do you do?”’ Henry suggested with a smirk. ‘Tell them . . .’ he did the voice again ‘. . . “I’ve just shagged Her Majesty’s assistant equerry and he was very good in bed.’

She shot him a look.

‘It’s a Sandringham tradition,’ he protested.

‘What, shagging equerries?’

‘Shagging people you can’t keep your hands off. What do you think the guest lodges in the grounds were for?’

‘Guests of the shoot?’

‘Mistresses. Mistresses who could shoot were ideal.’

‘I wonder what they think of me,’ Rozie mused. ‘At my lodgings, I mean. Constantly not turning up for breakfast.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it. What happens at Sandringham stays at Sandringham. Are you ready?’

Rozie wondered what her mother would think, seeing her daughter on the arm of a Guards officer, ready to go and mix with royalty. Her grandfather had started out in Peckham, washing bodies in the mortuary. His daughter had got a nursing degree and was a respected community worker. Rozie had already turned down a proposal of marriage from a viscount, but he was incredibly drunk and said how much she reminded him of Grace Jones – which could be a compliment coming from some people, but felt pretty racist under the circumstances. Perhaps today she’d be sharing a sherry with a murderer. Sir Simon was right: you never knew what to expect in this job.

Today’s pre-lunch drinks was one the Queen had been slightly dreading, not helped by the lingering effects of her cold. It was a chance to see friends and neighbours, but it was difficult to know what to say when one of these had recently lost his beloved wife and his estranged, dismembered cousin was in the news. The Queen wanted to show her support to Lord Mundy, but she was more of a doer than an orator, and she was never quite sure what to say.

Charles, much to his credit, had intuited something of the sort and offered to postpone his trip to Scotland for Hogmanay, so he could be at her side for their visit. He had been a big fan of Lee’s, too.

‘Are you sure you’re up to this, Mummy?’

‘Of course,’ she told him, stoically.

She had wondered if the baron would come at all, and for much of the party there was no sign of him. Lee had always been the more social of the two, and it was possible he had decided to stay at home with his beloved sheep. And then she spotted him at the far side of the saloon, heading towards her, accompanied by his two children, who were in their forties, and a man about his son’s age whom she didn’t know.

Rozie had told the Queen about Hugh’s frailness on the phone before Christmas. Even so, his appearance was quite shocking. He looked hollowed out by grief. His son Valentine towered over him, of similar build and looks, with the prominent St Cyr nose and piercing blue eyes, but still fit in middle age. He was nervously twisting the bloodstone signet ring on his little finger. Valentine saw the Queen looking and clasped his hands behind his back.

‘It’s so kind of you to invite us, Your Majesty,’ his sister Flora said, curtseying unselfconsciously and bobbing up to flick a tendril of hair out of her eyes. ‘Isn’t it dreadful about Uncle Ned? And Mummy gone, too. I can’t tell you what a nightmare Christmas was.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘Anyway, how are you?’

Something about her over-bright eyes suggested the pain behind her smooth civility. It was Flora who had the vim, the Queen sensed, just like her mother. She looked like her mother, too, beetle-browed, with rosy cheeks and a ready smile, her unruly brown hair flecked with grey. The Queen assured her she was very well, thank you, which was a lie, but the only possible reply in the circumstances. Philip grunted about feeling like death, which was more honest, but unhelpful.

‘May I present Roland Peng,’ Valentine said.

At which the attractive, beautifully attired man beside him bowed neatly and murmured, ‘Your Majesty.’ He seemed polite and un-starstruck, which made him promising company.

‘Roland’s staying with us for the weekend,’ Flora explained.

‘My business partner,’ Valentine clarified.

‘Another horticulturalist,’ Flora added, smiling. ‘Like Mummy.’

The Queen turned to the man in question. ‘Oh, really? And what exactly is it that you do?’

‘I grow plants without soil or daylight,’ Mr Peng said with a smile and a raised eyebrow, as if anticipating surprise. ‘At least, I invest in businesses that do.’

‘Ah! Hydroponics!’ The voice was Charles’s, and the Queen glanced round to see him stepping in to join them. ‘How fascinating. Where are you doing it? I gather they can grow salad in the desert. Are you having much success?’

‘As a matter of fact, we are,’ Peng said, his smile broadening at a fellow plant-lover. ‘We have sites in Nevada and California. So far it’s going very well.’

‘And you do all this from Norfolk?’

‘No,’ Peng admitted. ‘From London and Singapore. I have family there.’ He turned to the Queen. ‘My grandfather shares a passion with you, ma’am,’ he told the Queen.

‘Oh? Not salad in the desert, I take it.’

‘Not at all. He’s a fellow pigeon fancier. I know you keep a loft here. My grandfather has bought one of your star pigeons at auction, China Blue.’

‘Did he? How wonderful. I remember China Blue. How is she getting on?’

‘Very well. He’s busy breeding champions from her.’

The Queen certainly did remember. After a stellar racing career, the prize pigeon surprised everyone by selling at auction for a six-figure sum. Pigeon prices were escalating at unheard-of rates. Roland Peng’s grandfather clearly had expensive hobbies. It might explain his grandson’s ease in the setting of Sandringham. They chatted briefly, but Roland had the good manners to notice that the Queen really wanted to talk to her friend, Hugh. He made his excuses and guided Valentine to the next group, where the Queen saw Rozie seamlessly engage them in conversation. She learned fast, that girl, the Queen noticed with satisfaction.

Lord Mundy, who had been silent up to now, shuffled forward to stand beside his daughter.

‘I’m so sorry about Lee,’ the Queen murmured, focusing her attention on him and taking the opportunity to say it in person at last. ‘I wish I could have been at her memorial service. I gather it was very moving.’

The baron’s eyes glazed with tears. ‘It was. We filled the church with every flower from the garden. Every last one. We could hardly fit them in, could we, Flora?’

‘No,’ Flora said, without elaborating further. Her brittle brevity was eloquent enough. The Queen’s heart went out to the girl.

‘How difficult for you all.’

‘Actually,’ Hugh said, ‘there were some silver linings, of a sort. Ned came to the funeral, which was very big of him. The first time he’d seen us in a quarter of a century – the first time he’d spoken to me in person for longer than that. But he’d got in touch when Lee was very ill.’

‘Did he? Sounds unlike him,’ Philip said.

‘I think he was softening as he grew older,’ the baron suggested. ‘And he had intimations of his own mortality. He was suddenly concerned that he might not be welcome in the family vault. But I assured him he was. Bygones, and so on. On the financial front, I’m afraid I was less forthcoming. He asked for help with his rewilding affairs, but I simply couldn’t oblige.’

‘Oh, goodness, no,’ Flora chipped in. ‘The hall’s a money pit. We spend our whole lives trying to think of ways to keep it from falling down. Thank God for the gardens – the visitors provide most of our income in the summer. But we’re going to have to give in and open up the interiors as well next season. I’m working on it now. It’ll be all health and safety, green gloss and a cake shop.’ She made a face of comic despair.

‘Ah, yes,’ the Queen said, thinking of her own visitors’ centre down the drive. ‘We know all about that.’

Flora’s eyes widened with a flash of embarrassment that quickly passed. ‘Of course you do, ma’am. We must come to you for advice. You do it so beautifully.’

‘Flora’s doing a magnificent job,’ her father said. ‘In fact, Lee and I talked about letting her inherit Ladybridge when the time comes.’

‘Ned was horrified,’ Flora said. ‘You’d think he’d have been the first to approve. If his mother had been allowed to inherit, he’d be in charge now himself. Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone off the rails so much.’

‘That’s rather what we thought.’

‘He was awful to his children, so neglectful. Even so, to think what that man did!’ she added furiously. ‘His own son! I mean, can you imagine?’

No, the Queen couldn’t.

‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Flora went on. ‘He must have been high on drugs or something. And we’re actually related. It’s quite terrifying, really. You do wonder if such things are genetic, don’t you? You just can’t help it. We saw Ned just before he disappeared and you’d think he had another twenty years in him.’ She looked at the royal couple shrewdly. ‘Or thirty.’

‘You saw him recently?’ the Queen asked.

‘We met up a few times. We were just starting to mend fences. Not literally. Ned and broken fences seemed to be a bit of a theme lately. We had lunch the day before he vanished. The police were horribly suspicious. A couple of them came round, took one look at the armoury in the hall and asked us a thousand questions. They seem to think we might have grabbed a halberd from one of the walls, dashed up to London and—’

‘Were you aware of the recent pigeon club scandal, ma’am?’

The Queen, who had become absorbed by this sudden talk of Ned’s last known movements, was shocked to find Roland Peng standing in front of her again, leading her gently but firmly away from the others.

‘No,’ she said, somewhat annoyed. She could see what he was doing: deliberately trying to distract her from the upsetting thought of Ned’s last hours. And she was upset, but right at that moment she was as gripped as anyone else.

Anyway, it was too late. Roland had her cornered now, and told her a long and involved story, told to him by his grandfather in Singapore, about drug gangs in the UK who bought their way into pigeon racing clubs so they could use the sale of prize pigeons for nefarious money-laundering purposes. Roland wondered if the practice had yet reached Norfolk. She assured him it hadn’t. The fellow pigeon fanciers she encountered in East Anglia were some of the most straightforward people she knew. By the time she had reassured him not to worry, Hugh St Cyr was talking about the future of British farming in the wake of the loss of EU subsidies, and the conversation had moved on.

When the front door was shut behind them, Charles came to join his mother in the saloon. ‘Well, that went better than I feared. Poor Hugh, though. He looked practically at death’s door.’ And, as if prompted by that thought: ‘You’re not too exhausted, are you, Mummy?’

‘No, I can just about stand, thank you,’ she told him drily. ‘So tell me, what was Flora saying about Ned’s visit? I was distracted by pigeons.’

‘Nothing much. Only that they must have been some of the last people to see him alive. Papa asked point-blank if they had an alibi for the next day – I think he was joking – and Flora said she and her father spent several hours with the vicar, so unless he’s in on it . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it, because the police have their man, thank goodness.’

The Queen nodded. She still wasn’t so sure.

Chapter 10

Her suspicions proved correct. When Rozie arrived in the office with the boxes the following morning, she announced that Jack Lions had been released. Perhaps ‘parking nearby’ had not been enough of a reason to detain him. Given his relationship to the victim, the Queen was relieved. She saw this as a positive development, although no doubt Bloomfield and his team would be disappointed.

However, as they were preparing to entertain their guests in the ballroom for New Year’s Eve, Rozie updated the royal couple with some worrying information.

‘Apparently Mr Lions has given the Sunday Recorder an exclusive interview, ma’am. It will be in the paper tomorrow. They wanted to let us know, because your name will be mentioned.’

‘Mine? Why?’ the Queen wondered.

‘They wouldn’t say. They were only informing us as a matter of courtesy.’

‘Do you have any idea what it might be?’

Rozie had just had a short and difficult conversation with the chief constable, who in turn had just had a short and difficult conversation with his team at the major crimes unit HQ. Both were sorry. It was maddening that the Queen had been landed in it like this, with no warning at all.

‘It turns out that Lions did have an alibi for the fifteenth,’ Rozie explained.

‘A good one?’

‘Er, yes, ma’am. It was provided by a Met officer who was working undercover with a group of animal rights activists. He recognised Mr Lions from a news item about the arrest. It turned out he was at a meeting in North London all day, to coordinate a campaign against a couple of medical laboratories. The Met officer saw him there in person. CCTV footage confirmed it, and once they presented him with the evidence, he admitted it straightaway.’

‘Why not say so before?’ Prince Philip wondered. ‘Surely planning to attack a laboratory is better than being accused of chopping up your own father?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Rozie agreed. ‘They thought Lions seemed to be spinning out his detention deliberately. Apparently, he had a huge smile on his face when he made his admission. As if he had scored some sort of point.’

‘What sort of point?’

Rozie shook her head. ‘I asked, and they don’t know.’

The Queen pursed her lips. ‘Given what he was really doing, I think I have an inkling.’

She sighed and hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.

It was worse.

Nobody dared read the tabloid in question too ostentatiously in the morning, but surreptitiously, it was snatched up and perused by everyone in the house.

‘The bastard!’ Philip said, the first to voice his opinion. ‘The absolute bastard.’

‘It had nothing to do with you!’ Sophie Wessex complained to the Queen, affronted on her behalf.

‘Those pictures of Bloomfield arriving at Sandringham on Christmas Eve . . .’ Anne pointed out tersely. ‘Not ideal.’

‘They like to give the impression that we orchestrated the whole thing!’ Philip exploded. ‘Or at the very least that the police are our toadies, rushing around to save our reputations as if the country is some sort of tinpot dictatorship. All we ever do is cut bloody ribbons at their bloody police stations. And give them medals for saving the public’s bloody lives. Bastard,’ he muttered again.

The Queen was the last to see the paper, having overexerted herself the night before, and spent the morning incapacitated by the remnants of the flu. At ninety, her body occasionally reminded her that she needed to take care of it.

The paper didn’t help. The extensive exclusive interview with Jack Lions was splashed across pages four, five and six, accompanied by several photographs of Sandringham House, herself at a window (taken about ten years ago in Scotland), as if she was spying on events through a curtain, the chief constable arriving at Sandringham in his Subaru, and an alarming image of several officers of the Met Police in full body armour, as if dozens of them had been dispatched to drag Mr Lions into the street.

But it wasn’t! she thought. However, that was beside the point.

And there it was: the reason for the failure to produce an alibi earlier, the waiting, the triumphant smile on his release. Vandalising a laboratory was small beer in the mind of an animal rights activist compared with dragging the royal family themselves into the debate. The next four paragraphs were about previous kings and their love of hunting, coupled with images of various family members on a stag hunt near Balmoral and King Edward VII shooting a tiger from the back of an elephant. In Mr Lions’s circles, he would be a hero.

Back in the saloon, everyone was nervously waiting for her reaction, which was silent, but dour.

‘It’s outrageous,’ Edward said. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

But they all knew the answer: never complain, never explain. However difficult, frustrating and infuriating that could be.

‘Should we call Sir Simon?’ someone asked.

‘No,’ the Queen said decisively. ‘Rozie can deal with it. She knows the form.’

‘This won’t be the end of it,’ Anne muttered.

The Queen agreed. Cold-ridden and otherwise occupied, she had hoped she could avoid involvement with this case. Now, the press had placed her at the heart of it, whether she liked it or not.