Murder Most Royal

Before she finished the thought, her torch was lighting up the pristine driver’s side of the engine grille. She unhooked the remaining bungee cord, pulled back the tarpaulin and shone her torch on the Freelander offside corner. Her heart rate leaped as she saw the way the headlamp unit jutted at an unexpected angle. The whole corner of the chassis was crushed, and the bumper panel below it was hanging half off. There was a large, crumpled dent in the bonnet. A dent, Rozie thought, about the size of a small, adult woman.

The headlights of a distant car lit up the treetops as it approached. Rozie could hear its engine above the wind. She reached into her coat pocket for her phone to take a picture of the damage – but her hand found nothing. The car drew closer. Her phone, meanwhile, must be on the dining table where she had left it, playing ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ to an empty room.

Rozie turned off her torch and waited. The car moved on. She was about to head back to the lodge when she heard pounding feet, and looked round to see a large black shape heading through the darkness for her at speed. Shit! He had a dog. Of course he did. Everybody had a dog round here. It stopped in front of her and barked fit to wake the dead. She tensed every muscle, waiting for Julian to appear.

Except, he didn’t come. Rozie noticed for the first time that the back door to the cottage was wide open. A thin light poured out from an inner room. The old Labrador seemed agitated. She could have sworn that, if anything, it was asking her to come inside.

Given what she had just found, common sense said to run and call the police. However, there was something wrong about the way that back door was wide open in the dead of winter. Her army training told her to assess the situation for risk, and investigate.

The curtains to the room beside the kitchen were only partly drawn. Torch in hand, her senses on hyper-alert, Rozie crept towards the window and peered through. The room beyond was similar to Katie’s living room in size, lit by a single table lamp with a wonky shade. The floor near the lamp was littered with dirty plates and a couple of empty wine bottles on their sides. She could just make out the stockinged feet of a man lying prone behind a battered sofa. The dog had gone back inside to sit beside him.

Rozie cautiously followed. The open door led into a small kitchen, where a shotgun lay on a table next to a neat array of cleaning rods and oils. More empty wine bottles neatly lined the skirting board in double rows. Beyond them, an open door gave on to the living room. Rozie saw the man as soon as she entered. She crouched down by his head and took in the pale, unshaven face.

So this was Julian Cassidy. Rozie recognised him now. The last time she had seen him, he had had a light beard and he had been rifle shooting beside her at the Queen’s Prize at Bisley, about five years ago. She wasn’t surprised he’d remembered her: black women tended to stand out in the rarified circles of rifle competitions. White men not so much. Cassidy had been friendly, she remembered, and as handy with a rifle as she was. Even though they hadn’t won, they had celebrated hard that day.

She placed her fingers against his neck and found a faintly beating pulse. Whatever had happened to him, he wasn’t going to do her any harm, tonight at least.

Chapter 18

The Queen looked up from the last paper in her boxes and watched as a swirling, eddying cloud of knot birds made its way across a pale grey sky. The little sandpipers, named after King Canute of advancing tide fame, always amazed her with the complicated patterns they created overhead, forming living shapes that bent and melted in front of one’s eyes. They were a reminder of the limits of a sovereign’s powers, and also the great outdoors, and the fact that she wasn’t in it. The latter was a situation that she decided to remedy.

Along the corridor, the main reception rooms were quiet. The family and their guests, it seemed, were all outside already. She had assumed they were all on a happy hack across the fields, only for Mrs Maddox to inform her that the younger ones had gone shopping in Burnham Market. The constant desire to be in small, enclosed, overheated spaces was something she had never fully understood, when one could be spending time instead with animals. No matter. It gave her an excellent opportunity to visit the stud again.