Murder Most Royal

Chapter 32

Ollie Knight, the young stringer for the Recorder, next to a van parked on the meadow, watching as a team of police divers dressed in dry suits and yellow face masks prepared to lower themselves into the moat at Ladybridge Hall.

This ringside view was part of his reward for the tip-off of where to look for the body. Mrs Day had rung him in great anticipation three days ago.

‘I’d have gone to the police straightaway, but after all the names they called Mrs Raspberry, they can sing for it, quite frankly. Somebody needs to find out if this is true. You will promise me you’ll look into it, won’t you?’

Ollie hadn’t promised, but he’d looked into it anyway.

It took a lot to persuade a cash-strapped police force to dredge a moat. The ‘how the body got there’ was the relatively easy part. His first thought, like Mrs Day’s, was that Ned might be buried at Abbottswood somewhere, and the police had missed it. But a bit of digging had quickly thrown up the fact that nobody who knew Ned well had seen him since he visited the hall for lunch with his much-hated family. Not only had he not left Abbottswood, there was no guarantee he’d even arrived home. Flora Osborne could easily have lied about seeing him wave goodbye. His cousin Valentine could have pretended to be him in London.

The thing was, once you started, you kept finding holes in the story the police had constructed. Ollie had spoken to the man who, according to a short interview he gave to the Recorder, was the last person to talk to Ned St Cyr alive. Mr Shah was the newsagent in Highgate where St Cyr had bought the items for his breakfast. He told Ollie he recognised him from his height, his clothes and the colour of his eyes. It had not occurred to him it might not be Mr St Cyr, who he knew vaguely. The man at the takeaway, same story. The footage from the traffic cameras wouldn’t be conclusive.

The ‘why’ was the hard part. If Ned had died at Ladybridge, who stood to gain? After all, he was the poor relation. It had taken hours of careful research to find evidence that Ned and Valentine might be related, based on the timing of Valentine’s birth. If Ned was Valentine’s father . . . bombshell: no more legitimate male St Cyrs to carry on the title. If he was using this knowledge to blackmail them for money for his new project, for example, then there was your motive. One DNA test was all it would take. Maybe the police had already done it. Ollie didn’t have any proof of any of this, but as a theory it held water.

He didn’t know what the family alibis were, but if he was right, there would be holes. The police would already know about them, or they would find them. Ollie needed something to give them, beyond tittle-tattle, and in the end it was the age-old standby: fingerprints. He simply asked if Ned’s prints were on the steering wheel of the car he’d used to drive away from the hall. Ollie’s contact in the Norfolk force admitted they were heavily smudged, but this was explained by the driving gloves found in his Maserati in London. Ollie trawled through the archives of the Recorder and unearthed several images of St Cyr in or beside various cars through the ages. He had stopped wearing gloves in the 1980s. What about prints on the items he had bought from Mr Shah? All smudges. Nothing conclusive. Now they were starting to take him seriously. Hence this ringside view reward.

Yesterday, a police dog team had searched the hall from top to bottom, with no joy. But it didn’t take a genius to see where the body would be. It turned out there were a couple of ground-floor rooms with empty windows facing the moat. Ollie was stationed opposite them now. Presumably, the body had been weighted to ensure it sank to the bottom and stayed there, so without winds or tides to shift it around, it was unlikely to have moved from the spot.

So far, the hardest part had been getting the swans out of the way. Ollie had done a bit of research on swans for the long-form magazine article he’d be writing later. According to what he’d read, they used to be a major delicacy at medieval banquets, as a result of which the Queen could claim ownership of all swans not owned by a couple of livery companies in open waters. Presumably moat-based swans didn’t count. More pertinently for a day like today, they could be vicious if they felt under threat. If you weren’t careful, they could break your arm.

The divers were taking forever to adjust their kit before getting into the water. Ollie trained his binoculars on the house while he waited. Was that a ghostly face at one of the windows? He sharpened the focus. He wouldn’t swear to it, but it looked like Flora Osborne. What would she be thinking now?

The last guests of the season at Sandringham were finishing their stay. While Philip took them on a final shoot, the Queen was on her way to Newmarket for lunch with her racing manager and various trainers she knew and liked. Having heard about the recent police breakthrough in the St Cyr case, and their expectation of at least one imminent arrest, she could relax at last. She had been looking forward to the day tremendously. There was nothing like a good meal and an afternoon spent viewing horses and discussing the racing calendar with people who knew exactly what they were talking about.

January was drawing to a close. In a week, she would be heading back to London, and the gilded office block on the roundabout. Now that she knew the police were busy at Ladybridge, she was perfectly sanguine about this. Julian Cassidy, too, had handed himself in yesterday. She didn’t know what would happen to him, but now that he had done the decent thing, she would support him as best she could. Whatever he did now, it would be better than drinking himself into an early grave. Meanwhile, despite the flu at the beginning, Norfolk had done its job and given her and Philip the dose of fresh air they needed. She felt ready to tackle whatever the new year had to throw at her.

Lady Caroline would be joining her at the racecourse, travelling from Cambridge, where her brother was master of one of the colleges. And so, once again, it was Rozie who kept the Queen company on the journey. They alternated between discussing the next few weeks’ events in the royal diary and quietly waiting for news from Ladybridge. The Queen was hopeful that by the end of the day they would have a body and a murderer in custody. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying on the royal part. She had done what she could.

‘Is that it?’ she asked, as the phone on the leather armrest beside Rozie lit up with an incoming message.

‘No, ma’am. I’m sorry.’ It was Rozie’s sister, asking if she was free for cocktails in Kensington next weekend. Rozie discreetly flicked the message away.

The car had turned off the main road to avoid a traffic jam ahead. It wound its way through country lanes for a couple of miles, where the sun created jagged shafts of light through the naked branches of overhanging trees. Several fields away, the Queen caught sight of scarlet coats moving at speed in the distance. The hunt must be out. It was extraordinary, after all the controversy of recent years, that they could still do it. It had been such a common sight in her youth, but these days they chased man-made trails, not foxes. Thanks to Jack Lions and his ilk, a thousand years of tradition had been reduced to a schoolboy game.

‘Ah. Trouble ahead, ma’am. Not to worry.’

The driver of the Queen’s Range Rover slowed down to let two cars past. Horns blared, whistles blew and flags waved from the windows. The Queen recognised the noise: these were saboteurs, keen to find the hounds and distract them. They were convinced that the hunts still went for foxes, either deliberately or if the hounds happened to find one by accident, and did whatever they could to put them off the scent. The result was a disturbing cacophony of noise that unsettled everyone in the car. Once it had passed, the Range Rover sped up again smoothly for half a mile. Then, without warning, it braked sharply.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s someone in the road ahead.’

‘Another saboteur?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am. A body.’

From his vantage point in the meadow, Ollie Knight saw a hand rise out of the moat. It reminded him of a film he’d seen about King Arthur. There should be a sword somewhere. Except, this hand was inside a diving suit, and it was signalling that they had found something. It didn’t take long for the divers in the moat to bring their discovery to the spot where the forensic team were waiting. It took three men to lift it. As far as Ollie could tell, it was a man-sized tube made of sacking, wrapped in a heavy chain. As it rose above the water, a human arm slipped out of the sacking, bloated and discoloured, ending at the wrist. Ollie was transfixed. When he eventually looked up to see who else was watching, the face at the upper window was gone.

A few yards ahead of the Range Rover, a girl of about sixteen or seventeen lay on her side near the verge. She was wearing riding boots and a hard hat, and a bright yellow vest over her jacket, but in the sharp light and shadows of the winter sun, she would still have been easy to miss. The driver had done well to spot her in time. The girl’s limbs were akimbo and her face was very pale.

‘You need to find her mount,’ the Queen said. ‘It must be round here somewhere.’

The driver looked round unhappily. He clearly didn’t want to stay where they were, but they couldn’t go on and leave the girl in place. Rozie was already leaping out of the car to see how badly hurt she was. The new protection officer, Depiscopo, had a panicked look in his eye that belied the set to his jaw. He called Rozie back, but she ignored him.

‘There’s a pulse,’ she called. ‘But she’s out cold. Is someone calling an ambulance? I’m going to find the horse.’

Rozie moved the girl gently into the recovery position and ran round the bend in the road. A minute later, she was back.

‘Shit. There’s another one. An older woman, out cold, too. The cars must have scared their horses. I think her leg’s broken and she’s losing blood. We need to block the road before someone comes.’

A brief interval followed, while Depiscopo radioed for help. The trouble was, as the Queen saw instantly, that help would normally come from the south, towards Newmarket, and the main road that way was blocked with traffic. Rozie had already grabbed a medical kit from the back of the car and taken it to deal with the older casualty. Depiscopo assessed the situation and instructed the Queen’s driver to get out and warn any passing traffic about the danger, while he reversed the Range Rover up a little track they had passed fifty yards earlier to get it, and Her Majesty, out of the way. The Queen knew that officially, what he should do was ignore the injured women and drive on. Jackson would have done it without a qualm; the sovereign’s safety was paramount. But she took advantage of the new officer’s uncertainty. Like all her staff, he would be trained in first aid. Thank goodness they were there.

He parked the car at the top of the track, on a little ridge out of sight of the road, next to an empty field. She was increasingly worried that Rozie would be busy ministering to the older rider or rounding up the horses, and might get hit by a passing car in the process.

‘I’ll be perfectly all right here,’ she said, because she would be. ‘Go and see what you can do.’

Depiscopo wavered.

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK, ma’am? I’ll be one minute. Please stay in the car.’

The Queen assured him that she would be perfectly safe. He ran down the track.

But he was not back after one minute, or even five. Meanwhile, the Range Rover was getting cold and it was eerily quiet. On top of that, her knee was giving her gip. Outside, high above the trees, two lapwings flew in a complicated dance against the bright blue sky. She opened the door and stepped out to get a better look, and the fresh air on her face made her feel instantly better.

She couldn’t see what was happening in the road below because Depiscopo had carefully chosen a parking spot masked by pines and hedges. To her left, there was a stile set into a rough stone wall, with a large paddock beyond. Her gammy knee ached for exercise. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a walk in the country, but it hadn’t rained for days and the path to the stile was dry. She changed out of her patent shoes into more practical boots that she always kept in the back of the car and retrieved a silk scarf that she kept in the back-seat armrest for emergencies, knotting it under her chin. Though she couldn’t see the road, the view across the fields from here was delightful. There were worse places to wait.

Heading for the stile, her leg felt better with each step and when she reached the field – which turned out to be a rough paddock – she saw two ponies grazing in the middle. Depiscopo could easily find her here. He might panic for a moment when he saw the empty Range Rover, but it would be obvious where she had gone.

She had nearly reached the nearest pony, picking her way carefully across tussocks of grass and watching out for rabbit holes, when the sound of hooves grew rapidly louder and she glanced to her left to see a grey stallion sail over the hedge marking the northern boundary, before landing heavily not fifty feet from her. Its rider wore immaculate hunting pink and a hard hat. He must be part of the distant drag hunt. But they were miles away by now.

‘Are you lost?’ the Queen called out cheerily.

He trotted towards her without speaking. As he grew closer, her absolute astonishment was mirrored by his.

‘Hugh?’

‘Your Majesty?’

‘But I thought—’

Lord Mundy brought his horse to a halt and dismounted, keeping the reins in one gloved hand and his riding crop in the other. His horse breathed heavily beside him. Hugh looked very different without his ancient tweed and baling twine. The smart red jacket and white stock under his chin brought back memories of younger days, when he had been a dashing huntsman. He beamed at her and bowed.

‘Of all the fields in all the world, ma’am . . . What are you doing here?’

‘Avoiding an accident. I might ask the same thing.’

‘I took a wrong turning and lost the pack twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Thought I heard the horn, raced over three fields and now, God knows where I am. I’m out of practice. But it’s been a good morning.’

‘Has it?’ The Queen was starting to regret several of the decisions of the last ten minutes. There was still no sign of Rozie, the driver or her protection officer. ‘Don’t you have the police with you at Ladybridge?’

‘Ah. You heard about that. I slipped away. No need to watch ’em spook the swans and muck up the moat.’

‘Did they let you go?’

‘Not specifically. But I saw no reason to watch and wait. If we don’t hunt – even a drag hunt like this – we’ll lose the right to do it at all.’

The Queen wondered if she had heard him right. Hugh seemed to be in an excellent mood, and more concerned about a drag hunt than a murder hunt on his own property. Once again, she had been so confident of her ideas . . . and now she was doubting them. Had she made a huge mistake? She had been so certain that by now it would all be over.

‘I hope you find the others soon. I need to get back to the car,’ she said, nodding and smiling at him, backing gently away, resisting the urge to run.

Hugh nodded and smiled back. But he and his horse were standing between her and the stile, and he didn’t get out of the way.

‘How did you know, ma’am?’ he asked politely. ‘That the police would be at Ladybridge?’

‘They keep me informed of everything,’ she said evenly. ‘It was a courtesy. You and I are friends, Hugh, after all.’

He nodded at that, but he was giving her a very unnerving, piercing stare. This was not the grim, grey baron, knocked sideways by grief. A keen intelligence danced behind those blue eyes. She decided she had not underestimated him.

‘Informed of everything . . .’ he said thoughtfully.

‘I hope Flora’s all right. Is she dealing with the police alone? I gather they had Valentine in custody earlier. That must be—’

The baron’s smile stayed fixed. ‘Flora can look after herself. Valentine has done nothing wrong. Therefore, the police will find nothing. It’s not my job to interfere.’

‘Hugh! Really!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘If anything happened, it was warranted. It’s water under the bridge.’

There was a strange serenity to him, as if what was going on had nothing to do with him. The Queen was offended by it.

‘I know what happened fifty years ago. Chris Wallace died because he knew, too. That is not water under the bridge, Hugh.’

Hugh stiffened. ‘Chris Wallace took his own life, poor bastard. That wasn’t my fault. Leave him out of this.’

‘But he is in it,’ the Queen said with some passion. ‘He’s at the heart of it. You thought he knew what Ned had done to Lee, so you tried to upset him so much he wouldn’t think straight to accuse you of revenge when Ned disappeared. But what makes it so tragic is that the police won’t care about what Ned did to Lee. They’ll assume his death was simple revenge for Valentine’s paternity.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The police have done the DNA test. They know, Hugh.’

He looked dismissive. ‘If they find a body at Ladybridge, so what? They can’t prove who put it there. For God’s sake, ma’am. Ned’s been missing for weeks.’

The Queen was exasperated by his stubborn refusal to face the truth. ‘As soon as they start looking for evidence, they’ll find it. His stomach will still contain the poison you used to knock him out. It was hemlock, wasn’t it? In honour of the ghost. Lee’s gardening books would have told you where to find it on the estate. It grows wild near our riverbanks. It probably does near yours. You could have saved it from the summer.’

Hugh hesitated. He seemed to appreciate her acknowledgement of that little touch.

‘If you disposed of his clothes on the estate, they’ll find traces of those, too,’ she persisted. ‘Your alibi for the fourteenth, when you were supposed to be seeing Mrs Capelton, won’t hold. It can’t, because you were busy pretending to be your cousin.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I can understand your reasons,’ she said, warming to her theme. ‘I abhor it, but I can see your biblical sense of justice. What I really can’t forgive is that you had a duty of care to Mr Wallace, and instead of protecting him you hounded him to his death, so you could get away with what you did to Ned.’

She spoke with more heat than she intended to. When she finished, a light went on in the baron’s eyes. She realised she had said too much and took a step backwards. He moved towards her, still holding the reins of his horse. She glanced over the wall to her left in the fervent hope of seeing the cavalry riding up the track, but there was only a solitary hare, who looked as nervous as she was.

‘You told them all of this?’

‘I did not,’ she said, which was strictly true, if not entirely accurate.

‘I often wondered if Lee had spoken to your mother.’

‘I have no idea what—’

Hugh took another step towards her. He was taller than she remembered. Or rather, taller than he seemed at Christmas. The grief was real, but the stoop was gone. He used his height to intimidate her, and she was very aware of the riding crop in his left hand. Then he seemed to change his mind and hauled himself back onto his hunter.

Rozie had finally found both horses further up the road and brought them under control. There was still no sign of police or ambulance, but both riders were breathing, the bleeding of the older woman had been staunched with a tourniquet on her leg, and a small queue of traffic at either end of the accident had been prevented from running them over. The Queen’s driver was managing the flow of cars while her protection officer attended to the injured. Rozie counted them.

‘Who’s looking after the Boss?’

Depiscopo looked up from the teenager, whom he’d been reassuring that help was on the way.

‘Shit.’

He hauled himself up and started to run, but Rozie was already ahead of him.

Hugh sat tall in the saddle and the Queen realised just how much he had been faking his recent infirmity. At full height, his St Cyr characteristics stood out more strongly. The nose, the eyes, the chin, the remnants of golden hair . . . With a trilby hat and a bright blue scarf, it would be easy to mistake him for Ned.

He was breathing more stertorously than his horse.

‘Why did you have to butt in?’ he bellowed. ‘I told you! Chris Wallace has nothing to do with me. He was just a tenant with mental problems. What I do with my property is my affair. If you thought you knew something, you should have come to me.’

‘Why?’ the Queen asked, astonished.

‘I could have explained. You would have understood. You say the police know Ned fathered Val, but you know me, for God’s sake. I wouldn’t have killed him for that. I could have told the police as much, if they’d asked me. Certainly, I’d have punched Ned’s lights out, with pleasure. Any man would. No man would have judged me. But I promised Lee I wouldn’t touch him.’ He was agitated. The Queen sensed that the dredging of the moat was coming home to him at last. A body with poison in the stomach was something he couldn’t talk his way out of.

‘Then she started to die and you felt released from your vow’.

Hugh glared at her. ‘You say you know what happened,’ he resumed. ‘You have no idea.’ The horse pawed the ground and Hugh took no care to calm it, or himself. He boiled with rage. ‘He held her down,’ he growled, his eyes boring into hers. ‘Lee was too frightened to struggle. He clamped his hand so hard over her throat while he was . . . doing it . . . that she thought she was going to die. Years later, if I put my hands tenderly anywhere near her neck, she would panic as if she was drowning. He did that to her.’

‘And so you cut his hand off,’ the Queen muttered, understanding at last.

Hugh glared at her. ‘She deserved no less. It was over. He was dead by then anyway. No one need have known. But now . . . D’you realise what you’ve done?’ he said. Astride his jumpy horse, he towered above her. ‘It’s all right for you. You’ve got the next three generations sewn up. What about my children? My grandchildren? The police might have dredged up a skeleton in a few generations. It would have been impossible to prove how it got there. It would have been a St Cyr family mystery, that’s all. I did everything to protect them.’

‘You killed a man and drove another to his death, Hugh.’

He ignored her. ‘Now it will be a scandal.’

‘That’s hardly my fault.’

‘Is it mine?’ He was shouting now, white with anger. ‘What will Flora do? Visit her father in some common jail? How could she survive it? What about Ladybridge? Don’t you care?’

The Queen felt she had already said more than enough. The skittish horse, sensing its rider’s nervous energy, reared up in fear. More than ever, the Queen felt very small and very alone. How stupid she had been to let her passions get the better of her. She stretched out an authoritative arm to calm the animal, but Hugh dug in his heels and backed the horse up, as if lining up for a charge.

‘You’ve had a good life, ma’am. But this is all your fault. You bloody interfering, old . . .’

He had lost all reason. The horse reared again, nose flared, eyes wide, panicking now under his unsteady guidance. In two seconds, it could mow her down. The look in Hugh’s eyes was implacable.

‘Oi!’

Ricky Depiscopo charged towards the wall that led to the field. He’d spotted the horse and rider, then the telltale headscarf that meant the Boss. They’d seemed to be chatting amicably enough at first, thank God. He’d been thinking that perhaps she wouldn’t notice how long they’d left her. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind. Except now the horse was rearing and the Boss, who was so good with them, was stepping back. Shit. She was raising her arms. He reached under his jacket, where his gun was holstered.

‘Stay back! Police!’

The rider turned to look at him, just as a figure streaked past him and headed for the wall.

‘Stop or I’ll fire!’

Depiscopo wondered if he was overreacting. He was trained for terrorists and nutters going after ministers. Nothing in his training had included a large and frightened horse in a muddy field and the Sovereign of the Realm. He aimed his weapon at the rider’s head and hesitated.

Rozie, meanwhile, had vaulted the wall and now she flew across the tussocks of grass to reach the Queen. All she could think was that the Boss had to be safe. She had no weapon to make that happen, so she placed herself bodily between the Boss and those terrifying hooves.

A shot rang out.

The rider glanced back at the policeman who stood at the field’s edge, weapon in hand, then at Rozie. He seemed to make a decision. His body rocked back and forward in the saddle. He lifted a hand and Depiscopo fired before he had the chance to reach whatever weapon he might be going for. But the policeman missed. In the time it took him to correct his aim, the rider wheeled the horse around, undid his chinstrap and threw off his hard hat. Depiscopo fired again and missed again as the horse moved off at speed.

The rider gave the Queen one last, brief glance over his shoulder. Then they all watched as he turned back and headed at a gallop for the furthest corner of the paddock, where the hedging was highest. There was no way he would make it over. He flicked the horse’s flank twice with his crop and leaned forward in the saddle. Two paces from the hedge, he took off with all his strength, but it was an impossible task. There was a sickening scream, and then silence.

Chapter 33

‘Dead, ma’am.’

Sir Simon stood respectfully to attention. The Queen, sitting at a card table in the drawing room at Sandringham, sipped at a restorative brandy. It had been impossible to continue her journey to Newmarket after what had happened. Sir Simon was merely confirming what she already knew.

‘Was it instant, did they say?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Massive head trauma.’ Sir Simon shrugged helplessly. He was so super-smooth most of the time that it was easy to forget that his professional manner hid a sensitive soul.

‘And the horse?’ the Queen asked.

‘The horse is fine. Uninjured, as far as I know.’

‘Oh, good.’ The Queen didn’t want to be heartless, but the animal hadn’t killed anyone – or not deliberately, anyway. She had been worried about the horse.

‘What I don’t understand is why Lord Mundy was there at all. Shouldn’t he have been under arrest?’ she asked. ‘Or at least under some sort of police supervision?’

‘I’ve spoken to the chief constable about that. They thought he was under supervision. He slipped away somehow, and when he was challenged by a junior constable at the gatehouse, he simply said this was his land and he would do what he liked, and barged his way through.’

‘But wasn’t he a suspected murderer by then?’

‘They didn’t want to make the same mistake as they did with Jack Lions. They were waiting to see if they really would recover a body, and if they did, they weren’t absolutely sure which member of the family to arrest. An excess of caution, ma’am. The chief constable is extremely apologetic.’

‘He does have rather a habit of landing me in it.’

‘I think he realises that. When I rang to find out what the hell had happened, he offered to resign.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ the Queen said, sipping her brandy, ‘he’s a good policeman. It’s always the good ones who offer to resign and the bad ones who don’t. Anyway, they have the body now. I’ll expect his report when he’s ready.’

Sir Simon promised she would have it. After the day he had just had, he was looking forward to a drink himself.

The following morning, the Recorder crowed its exclusive:

The second of February was Candlemas: halfway between the middle of winter and the spring equinox. The festival marked forty days since the birth of Jesus, when he was presented as a baby in the Temple. Nearly six weeks since Christmas, and approaching the full length of time the Queen allowed herself at Sandringham. It had been a precious, restorative time – a sort of hibernation. She always thought of these days as an opportunity to take in the things she loved, so that the next few months could be about giving what was needed. The land was the same. Bare earth was already giving way to snowdrops and Candlemas marked the day when they could be brought into the house to brighten up each room with the promise of spring. The Queen wasn’t superstitious, but she found these traditions reassuring: the ebb and flow of nature, the repetition and renewal of life.

There were two large bowls of snowdrops in the Long Library when the chief constable arrived to explain the goings-on at Ladybridge. Seventy-two hours had passed since the removal of the body from the moat and the sudden death of the thirteenth Baron Mundy. He wondered how Her Majesty would take what he had to say. She must still be recovering from her bruising encounter in the field. The tale he had to tell was a gruesome one and he didn’t want to cause her any further distress, but these were friends of hers: she would want to know. It was why he wanted to tell her himself, so he could do it as delicately as possible.

He was shown in by one of the good-looking younger equerries, who told him the Queen had half an hour to give him before she needed to return to her guests. She swept in soon afterwards, in a tartan skirt and a cardigan, preceded by the dogs and accompanied by her APS. Her Majesty looked surprisingly chipper, he thought, for a woman who had been through such a terrifying encounter. This was encouraging. He noted the APS’s studied indifference to the equerry, meanwhile, and his to her, and wondered in passing who else knew they were sleeping together.

‘Chief Constable, I’m glad you’re here,’ the Queen said. ‘Do sit down, here by the window. And what do you have to tell me?’

Bloomfield couldn’t resist a little dig at a rival police force, who provided the protection officers. ‘I’m very sorry about what happened to you on Friday, ma’am,’ he said, settling in. ‘It must have been upsetting. The Met really should have looked after you more carefully.’

‘One is rarely upset, Chief Constable,’ the Queen said firmly. ‘I’m assured it won’t happen again. I must say, I wasn’t expecting to meet Hugh where I did.’

He realised he was being put in his place. ‘Erm, yes. I apologise. I know you’ve been very gracious about it.’

‘Let’s move on,’ she said. ‘Tell me, what have you found?’

Bloomfield nodded, grateful to be on more solid ground. ‘I understand Lord Mundy admitted to you that he killed his cousin. That must have been a terrible shock.’

‘Oh, yes, it was.’

‘The reason why is pretty obvious: Ned fathered his son.’

The Queen felt an odd duty to pass on the dead man’s own rebuttal of that particular charge.

‘Even so, it’s hard to imagine a man like Hugh going as far as to kill Ned for it,’ she suggested, curious to see his reaction.

As anticipated, Bloomfield brushed the words aside. ‘It’s a strong motive for murder, ma’am. Although to be fair, we don’t usually expect to see it in people of his . . . er . . . age.’

‘Even older people have strong feelings, Chief Constable.’

‘I suppose they do. But people don’t usually wait forty-eight years to act on them, ma’am. That’s what threw us off the scent, even when we knew about Valentine. The baron obviously did a lot of thinking in those forty-seven years. The death was the easy part. The hard part was the alibi. He must have been working on it for months. Once Mr Knight pointed out that we had no real proof Ned ever left the hall, everything else fell into place. With the exception of one stubborn witness. But that was quickly resolved.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mrs Capleton was the woman in question, ma’am. She’s the sort of person you can generally absolutely rely on. Churchwarden, stalwart of the WI. She was adamant Mundy had been with her all afternoon. But she rang us yesterday. We were already wondering about her by then. She’d had a crisis of conscience – something the vicar had said in church, apparently. Mundy had spun her a clever line.’

‘Really?’

‘He’d appealed to her humanity. He popped round on Boxing Day and said he was in a spot of bother with his daughter. On the fourteenth of December he’d gone into Ely to “satisfy his manly urges”, he told her. I think that’s the way she put it. He was a widower, and he said he knew she would be sympathetic, which she was, but he didn’t think his family would understand. He swore her to secrecy and she felt she was doing the right thing by not betraying his trust. It never occurred to her that he might actually be the person we were looking for.’

‘I see. I didn’t know Ely was a hotspot for such activities,’ the Queen noted.

‘It isn’t, any more than anywhere else, ma’am. But she was hardly going to check that out. Meanwhile, he was letting himself into St Cyr’s house with the man’s own keys, using his phone and his computer to create the sense that St Cyr had been there, and packing a bag. We haven’t found much DNA at Abbottswood – not more than could be accounted for by a casual visit, which Mundy admitted to. But Mundy had ordered hairnets, plastic caps, surgical gloves, the works, on his computer. He had planned this, ma’am. Planned it down to the last detail. It’s the only way he could have done it. And he didn’t slip up once.’

‘Well, there were always the—’ The Queen stopped herself and smiled. ‘Didn’t he? Not once?’

‘No. He gave the impression of bumbling – that was the clever thing – but in fact there was a sharp mind and endless research and preparation. He made sure he picked a day when Abbottswood would otherwise be empty, and the fiancée was abroad. He even took a broken phone charger up to London with him, so it would look natural that St Cyr’s phone had run out of power. Otherwise, it would have looked strange that he wasn’t using it at this mysterious meeting of his the next day. In fact, Mundy must have ditched it as soon as he’d used it to text Miss Westover. After that, he raced for home. We’ve checked the train times. It was just doable. We’d always suspected someone else might have been at the flat. The issue that bothered us was how the killer got St Cyr out of it and what they did with the body. But Mundy didn’t have to worry about that. The body was already where he needed it to be.’

‘And where was that?’ the Queen asked, though having seen a flapping tarpaulin at the hall, she thought she knew.

‘In one of the medieval rooms that was undergoing building work at Ladybridge Hall, ma’am. The windows were partially open to the elements. The perfect place to store a body in winter: cool and ventilated, like birds in a game larder. Forensics suggest it was wrapped in plastic and hidden behind some building equipment. Mundy complained of a head cold on the seventeenth, so he didn’t join his family when they went to the ballet. The servants were at the other end of the house. Nobody usually enters that older part of the house. Mundy had plenty of time for what he needed to do. He wrapped it in chains so it would sink and lowered it through an open window. All the evidence adds up.’

‘Do you know if Ned died quickly?’ the Queen asked. It was possible to imagine various scenarios. She had tried hard not to picture some of them.

‘There was poison in the stomach, ma’am. But also, his neck was snapped. He may have been hit on the head as well at that time. We think he was dead before Mundy left him. Later, his skull was caved in with a blunt instrument. A cricket bat, we’re pretty certain. The divers found one of those in the moat, too.’

The Queen patted her knee and Willow the corgi came over to sit on her lap. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘It’s the cutting off of the hand that makes no sense to me,’ Bloomfield said. ‘It was the only body part that was missing. Mundy had smashed the skull, but the right hand was intact. He hadn’t tried hard to make the body unidentifiable – and of course there was no point, given where we found it. It must have been something to do with the ring, but I doubt we’ll ever know exactly.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ the Queen agreed. She didn’t discuss her conversation with Hugh. Instead, she mentioned something else, which she suspected might also have contributed to the act. ‘I’ve been thinking. Ned was about to end up in the moat. The ring was a symbol of family belonging. I suppose Hugh had to put the body in the moat because it was the easiest place to hide it . . .’

‘But he didn’t want Ned to belong. Is that it, ma’am?’ Bloomfield nodded soberly. ‘And I suppose it would have given him an excuse to mutilate the body. It reminds me, the choice of the plastic bag . . . I always found that intriguing. Something cheap and throwaway. It was an odd thing to take on that journey to scatter his wife’s ashes, don’t you think? Perhaps he chose it subconsciously—’

‘To grant Ned the least honour,’ the Queen finished for him, nodding to herself. ‘That could well be it.’

‘“The least honour”, ma’am. Exactly.’

‘But it had the effect of preserving the hand in the storm, didn’t it? I wonder if he meant to take it out, but was almost caught in the act by one of his children. I can picture him panicking and throwing the whole thing in.’

Bloomfield nodded. ‘“This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine”,’ he quoted.

The Queen looked at him politely. ‘Shakespeare? Macbeth, I assume, if it’s about hands.’

‘Spot on, ma’am. I did it at school. I was Duncan, but I never forgot the boy who played Macbeth talking about washing his hands of blood. It was chilling, even in a sixth-form production. As you mention, Hugh must have disposed of the bag under the noses of his children. I think Flora might have suspected something.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘She was always keen, in interviews, to support whatever alibi her father or brother gave. She was out in the boat with them that day, so when the hand washed up she could have put two and two together and realised one of them was probably guilty. Presumably she thought it was Valentine, who was younger and fitter, and in London.’

‘And yet, she knew both of them very well,’ the Queen said. ‘She might equally have suspected her father’s hidden depths.’

‘I’m not going to pursue it. She has enough to deal with now. She said she thinks her father was thinking of her when he headed for that high fence. He knew what we’d find. He wanted to spare her a trial and all the scandal. That must be very difficult to live with.’

‘I wonder,’ the Queen said. Sitting on his high horse, however much he ranted and raved about his children, Hugh had still been thinking of himself. His lust for vengeance had been as strong as ever. She had always thought of him as the mature cousin of the two, but it was really Ned who was more settled in the end. Hugh was stuck in the past and Ned was thinking of the future. Now Flora had to live with the consequences. She must see how the poor girl was getting on.

She thanked Bloomfield and his expansive team for all their work on the case.

‘We got there in the end, ma’am,’ he said happily. ‘I’m not sure we’d have looked in the moat without the help of the industrious Mr Knight. Thank goodness for the hard work of the British media, eh, ma’am?’

‘Absolutely,’ the Queen agreed. ‘What would we do without them?’

Chapter 34

‘What will you do?’ the Queen asked.

Flora shoved her hands in her pockets and looked towards the statue of Estimate. It was another blue winter’s day, cloudless, with a low sun that cast long shadows.

‘Carry on,’ she said. ‘I don’t really have much of a choice. And I don’t want one.’ She squinted up at the sky. ‘The girls will do brilliant things with Ladybridge one day. I can see them making something extraordinary out of it for the twenty-second century. It’s got this far – I just need to keep it going.’

The Queen knew exactly what she meant. They headed round the side of the house, towards the north garden, overlooked by the Queen’s bedroom, whose box-edged rose beds Flora’s mother had helped design. The dogs ran ahead, paws crunching on the gravel path.

‘Will Valentine help you?’

Flora smiled. ‘He will, actually. Ladybridge is in his . . . Ha! I was going to say blood.’

‘I gather things weren’t always easy between him and Hugh,’ the Queen said gently.

‘No. But he didn’t know why. He was hardly short of friends who had stuffed-up relations with their parents, though. It seemed normal. He didn’t think about it much until Mummy’s funeral. He’s suspected since then that he wasn’t Dad’s child. Some look of Ned’s. He said he just knew. He didn’t know what to think of Mummy, though. And he couldn’t ask Dad, for obvious reasons. That’s what he was trying to find out from Ned – how it all happened. He couldn’t imagine Mummy being unfaithful. It was just too weird. But I suppose . . .’ Flora shrugged. ‘You think you know someone. Even your own mother. And maybe you don’t, completely. They were happy for fifty years. I suppose that’s all you can ask.’

The Queen could have explained, but chose not to. It wouldn’t help.

‘Did Ned explain anything to him about his birth? How it came about?’

‘No, he wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t even admit it. He said Valentine was going to make a great thirteenth baron. Val got the impression he didn’t want to get in the way of that, but he was pretty disgusted. Just between the two of them, he could have embraced his own child. Mummy was gone by then: it wouldn’t have hurt her to explain the truth.’

‘Perhaps Ned was trying not to break family bonds, after all this time,’ the Queen said diplomatically.

Flora was dismissive. ‘If he cared about Val, he had an odd way of showing it. He said he’d heard about Val and Roland and he hoped Val was going to do the decent thing and find “a nice young filly”, like he had himself, and settle down before it was too late. Val was crushed. He felt like he’d lost two fathers.’

‘He has you,’ the Queen said.

Flora paused on the path and gave the Queen a warm, frank smile and a quick, not unwelcome hug. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘He does, doesn’t he? And he has Roland. He can make his own family. We keep being told we have a lot to live up to and a lot to live down. We’re just going to hold our heads high, and live.’

‘You will survive,’ the Queen told her. ‘Your father knew Ladybridge would be in safe hands. Now, let’s find your mother’s rose beds. There isn’t much to see at the moment, but in summer they’ll be quite splendid.’

When she returned to the house, Julian Cassidy was waiting to see her, as arranged. She received him in the small drawing room. It was a stand-up meeting.

‘I gather you’re leaving us.’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The bean counter looked defeated.

‘Well done for making the right decision.’

He had handed himself in two days ago. There would be a hefty fine, and a possible prison sentence for “failure to stop and report an accident.” His belated confession made jail unlikely, but his job was untenable.

‘I’m sorry for letting you down’, he said.

‘It’s Mrs Raspberry’s forgiveness you need, I hope you earn it.’ She wondered if this would be the end or the making of the man. Either was possible.

‘Good luck’ she said, and meant it. He had a long road ahead of him.

Chapter 35

On Sunday, Rozie watched the Queen hand out prizes to local schoolchildren after church at West Newton. Back at Sandringham House, the maids and dressers were busy packing for tomorrow’s return to London. Massed clumps of snowdrops fringed the paths through the tree canopy on the estate. Spring was, if not quite here, then certainly announcing its intentions.

Tomorrow was the 6th of February, when the Queen would mark her sapphire jubilee: the sixty-fifth anniversary of her accession. Her ministers and the press always seemed to find it a cause for congratulations, but to the Boss, Rozie knew, it was, more than anything, the day her father died. She would mark it privately here, before travelling by train to London and a crowded calendar in another busy year.

After the visit, the Queen was, as usual, hosting a lunch. Rozie wasn’t needed, so she called at Katie Briggs’s cottage and drove north-east with her to Burnham Overy Staithe beach, for one last blitz of sea air, sweeping views and vast Norfolk skies. They walked the mile from the car park, along the track that skirted the salt marshes to the gap at Gun Hill, and sat on the sand near the grassy dunes, wrapped in their coats, while Daphne ran joyful rings around them. Ahead, the sea stretched north to Greenland, with little in between. Low waves crashed onto the shore with seductive regularity. Rozie savoured the moment to hold on to when she was back in town, between the frenetic politics of Whitehall and the traffic din of Hyde Park Corner.

‘OK, so tell me,’ Katie said, having checked that there were no dog walkers within listening distance. ‘Truthfully. Did he nearly kill her? That’s the gossip I heard.’

Rozie pictured the scene on the way to Newmarket: the rearing horse, the running police officer, herself running faster, how terrified she had been.

‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I thought so at the time. But the way the Boss was looking at that horse – I don’t think it would have dared.’

‘I assume Depiscopo’s on guard duty at some depot in the Outer Hebrides.’

‘I don’t think he’s going to be on royal duty in a hurry,’ Rozie agreed.

‘What was he thinking?’

‘He wasn’t. He was focused on the women in the road. He assumed the Boss would do what she was told. He hadn’t worked for her long, unlike Rick Jackson, who’d known her for fifteen years.’

‘It worries me,’ Katie said, ‘this new policy of sharing the protection officers around.’

‘It worries everyone. But the Boss can look after herself. I’ve seen her do it.’

There was something else, though Rozie didn’t say it. She would look after the Boss. She had been there when it mattered. She had put herself in harm’s way – of course she had – and it had felt entirely natural. The Boss needed her, and she was up to the challenge. This business about feeling on the edge of things was all in her head. Edges were good, anyway. Edges were sharp.

That moment facing down the stallion had given her the same sort of buzz she got from swimming in open water. You couldn’t rescue a queen from a murderous madman every day, but you could swim. The water reconnected her with her sense of self and purpose. If she had brought her kit, she’d be in it now.

Along to their left was the low, grassy mass of Scolt Head Island, from where they could hear the hoots and honks of nesting birds. This was where Chris Wallace had walked into the sea. How could he have said goodbye to the world in such a lovely place? Rozie wrapped her arms around herself, resting her chin against her knees and gazing out across the water.

Katie put an arm on Rozie’s shoulder.

‘I know what you mean.’

‘What?’ Rozie asked, surprised. But Katie’s expression showed she understood.

They sat in silence for a while, until the puppy’s need to play roused Rozie from her funk and got her running along the beach, filling her lungs with air, grateful to have this moment.

It wasn’t St Barts, and she’d never imagined that somewhere so biting cold and far from a cocktail bar could become one of her happy places, but between this sea and sky, north Norfolk took a lot of beating.

The Queen had a very pleasant tea with Judy Raspberry, who was convalescing at home. Half the contents of the Sandringham shop seemed to have been put in a hamper for her. As well as a mug about pigeons. Judy was delighted with the mug most of all.

Supper that night was not in the candlelit dining room, but at Wood Farm, where Philip was already making himself at home, in anticipation of his retirement. He cooked them both steak, supplemented by a selection of vegetables prepared by one of the chefs. The wine was, as always, excellent. Dessert was chocolate mousse, which he avoided and she devoured. Afterwards they washed up together, before settling down in front of the television to watch a comedy show.

‘What would your father have made of this?’ Philip wondered aloud, looking round the rather ordinary room with a fond, proprietorial eye.

‘I think he’d have found it very comfortable.’

‘Good enough for his daughter?’

‘Well, I do have the house down the road.’

‘Bought and paid for.’ Philip smiled.

It was true: Sandringham was her own, and not the Crown’s. Her father had had to buy it from his brother when he became king, because as private property it was naturally inherited by the older son, and David – or Edward VIII as he briefly titled himself – had insisted on being paid for it, even though he loathed the place as much as his younger brother loved it. Without the abdication, what would have become of it, and her?

She had so very nearly lived a very different life. One’s destiny hinged on such small accidents of fate: a meeting with a glamorous American divorcée, in this case. A man who gave up his throne for her. A brother who reluctantly took his place. A little girl – herself – who would have been very happy living out of the spotlight. Instead, what a whirlwind it had been. And it had lasted for nearly a century.

She marvelled briefly on how hard humans tried to shape the future, herself included, and how much it was really in the lap of the gods. But she wasn’t excessively given to introspection: that way, madness lay. She allowed Philip to pour her a glass of whisky and determined to enjoy these last few hours quietly, before she headed back to the city, and her other life.