Murder Most Royal

The Queen went upstairs to change. By the time little George was in charge, it would be entirely up to him how to run the estate, of course. One left it in as good order as one could, and hoped for the best. Who would win? she wondered. The farmers who wanted every bit of utility from ever-depleted soil, or the wilders who seemed to think the nation could live on bees and birdsong? She could see that both had the best interests of the land at heart, and one could only hope they would find a way of working it out together. It saddened her, and struck her as somewhat ridiculous, that they were constantly at each other’s throats. They were really so close to each other in what they loved and cared about, if only they knew.

Chapter 20

On Wednesday, the Queen had her first encounter of the new year with the Prime Minister. It was just a phone call at this point; one didn’t ask a busy politician to travel all the way to Norfolk for the afternoon. And one was quite relieved they didn’t want to.

Sir Simon had warned her the conversation might be a difficult one. The PM had been ‘thinking’, apparently. There was certainly a lot to think about. It turned out that the state visit she had proposed to the new president of the USA, which had been mooted in the autumn to happen some time in the spring, was now rising rapidly up the agenda.

‘The president is very keen to show his support for Britain, ma’am. As we are to him.’

‘I see.’

‘He’d like me to be the first foreign leader that he meets after his inauguration. He’s thinking about later this month. We’re working on the details.’ The PM sounded delighted by this, and proud. ‘As we’ve discussed before, I’d like to show our appreciation by offering him a state visit as soon as possible. Perhaps in the summer.’

As they had indeed discussed before, the Queen thought it a dreadful idea.

‘Presidents don’t usually visit until their second year of office at least,’ she reminded her.

‘This will show how important the special relationship is to us, ma’am.’

The relationship was special to the PM, the Queen knew, because she needed a trade deal with America to make up for the ones she would be losing with the European Union.

The Queen did not appreciate a VIP tour of her palaces being trotted out as a bonbon for foreign leaders the country desperately needed to impress. This was partly because the first time she had done it – to the magnificently ungrateful General De Gaulle – it had been an abject failure. She preferred such visits to be a mark of mutual respect. However, it was not her decision. The political atmosphere, both here and across the Atlantic, was fraught at the moment. Perhaps such a visit could help to calm choppy waters. If she could use her hospitality to contribute in any way, of course she would.

* * *

It was choppy waters closer to home that preoccupied her more now, anyway. Nearly three weeks had gone by since Ivy Raspberry made her ghastly discovery. After such a promising start, the police seemed to be back where they started. And despite all Rozie’s work and Katie’s help from the village, so did she. Meanwhile, newspaper speculation was rife; the Recorder had published every photograph it could find of royals and St Cyrs together, of which there were many. Often, the pictures were of older generations with shotguns broken over their arms, looking pleased after a game shoot. According to Rozie, who looked (the Queen didn’t), the comments under the online versions of these were not favourable to the monarchy.

More to the point, Ned’s body was still undiscovered. Judy Raspberry was hooked up to various machines in hospital. If Julian Cassidy and Helena Fisher had conspired to achieve this, the Queen couldn’t for the life of her work out why. She refused to believe that it was because of the trampling of a lawn or, however fond she was of dogs, the death of a cockapoo.

According to Ivy, the article Judy was writing – the one that had inspired Mrs Day to wonder if the hit-and-run was organised – turned out to be prompted by a boy on the beach not much older than Ivy herself. Everywhere the Queen looked for dark conspiracies, she found commonplace events. They were sad enough for the individuals concerned, but hardly motive for murder. And certainly not the sort of murder planned as cleverly as this one, where a man had been made to disappear.

Was Ned’s death entirely accidental after all? the Queen wondered. Had he walked out of his flat and fallen into a building site? Was he in the River Thames? Had he chosen to drop out of sight? And yet there was the hand. It always came back to the hand.

* * *

The Queen and Rozie had an hour planned in the diary after lunch to go through the next few weeks’ events.

‘Do you have any news?’ she asked, without much hope.