Murder Most Royal

‘What sort of mood was he in when you saw him?’ Lady Caroline asked. ‘Did you have any sense he was in trouble?’

The Queen was really very grateful for Lady Caroline.

‘I thought he seemed rather grim,’ Hugh said. ‘But perhaps that’s because he knew he’d be asking me for money over coffee.’

Flora disagreed. ‘He was in full flow, most of the time. He was happy to lecture us on how to run the place, which seemed to amount to not running it. He wanted us to let Mundy Forest run wild, and he wanted Ladybridge to be an “inland wetland centre”, whatever that is. I pointed out it’s pretty wet already, what with the moat and the river. He wasn’t remotely interested in what we’re actually doing.’ She sighed. ‘I had hoped he’d come with Astrid, and we did ask if she might be around, but of course she was away in Spain. She’s very good on social media. I wanted to ask her advice about Instagram. Ladybridge is so photogenic.’

‘So you know her?’ the Queen asked.

‘I was at Pony Club with her eldest sister. I thought she was crazy to be marrying a man twice her age, until I saw them together at Abbottswood. I think it would have worked, actually.’

‘I know what you mean,’ the Queen agreed. ‘Not that I did see them together, exactly.’

‘The wedding would’ve been in three weeks,’ Eden, the youngest girl, piped up morosely.

‘Oh, dear. I suppose so,’ Lady Caroline agreed.

‘Ned invited us. He said now the family were back together, it was kind of important. I had this incredible Burberry dress I was going to wear . . .’

‘Figgy!’ her eldest sister Emerald said warningly.

‘What? It was a really nice dress.’

Emerald went puce. The Queen sensed a certain tension between the siblings that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Eden was a successful model at sixteen and a bit of a wild child. Her picture had been on the cover of a recent Harper’s Bazaar, dressed in a scrap of green silk that left little to the imagination. Sophie Wessex had shown it to her. The Queen thought the girl looked too thin in the picture, but had refrained from saying so, because her grandmother had said the same thing about the debs after the war, and it made one sound old. Today, her chosen outfit was a slightly stained vintage coat with frogging, that looked as if it might have once belonged to a slender Cossack officer. It covered her from neck to ankle and, despite the staining, she looked very good in it.

‘This was the exact last place we saw him,’ Emerald said. ‘In this room. He sat right where you’re sitting now, ma’am.’

‘Goodness,’ the Queen said. ‘How alarming. It must have been very awkward for you when the police came, asking questions.’

‘They were here for ages,’ Eden said. ‘They wanted to see all the weapons in the armoury passage. They asked loads of questions. By the end I was starting to think I’d done it myself.’

‘They wanted to know about our alibis the next day,’ Elinor, the middle girl, explained. ‘I didn’t really have one. I was out on a hack on Skylark most of the day. I’m sure I’d have had time to dash up to London by train and do something terrible.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Emerald said, with a curled lip. ‘That train takes forever. You couldn’t even have driven it.’

‘I could.’

‘You can’t get out of second gear.’

‘I could if I had an automatic,’ Elinor grumbled. She appealed to the Queen. ‘They only let me drive the 2CV, which is literally fifty years old and squeaks if you go over twenty miles an hour. And it’s broken right now. But I bet if I had a sports car I could have—’

‘Elinor did not kill our cousin,’ Flora assured the Queen briskly. ‘She hardly knew the man.’

‘And what about the rest of you?’ the Queen asked, with a hint of a smile to suggest she was joking, which she wasn’t.

‘Eden had a shoot in London,’ Emerald said promptly. The Queen pictured tweeds and shotguns and was surprised at the location, but quickly realised Emerald meant magazines. ‘I drove her up after the lunch, because she’s still a child. Yes, you are, Figgy, so shut up. I suppose we could have done something to him in town, but we were with the magazine people all day next day. Those things go on for absolutely hours. We weren’t home until teatime.’

‘I still wasn’t back from my ride,’ Elinor said sullenly. Nobody seemed interested.

‘I don’t remember where I was,’ Lord Mundy said.

‘Yes, you do, Dad,’ Flora reminded him. ‘You went for tea with Mrs Capelton.’

‘No, that was the day before. Ned dropped me off after lunch. She’s in charge of making the new kneelers for St Agnes in memory of Lee. She’s a wonderful woman but it took me two and a half hours to get away. I had to walk home in the dark.’

‘Who visited you that night, Grandpa?’ Elinor asked. ‘I saw the taxi in the courtyard.’

‘That I do remember. It was poor Mr Wallace. He was in a very fragile state. I tried to reassure him, but I’m not sure how effective I was.’

‘He did look grim,’ Flora agreed. ‘And then you and I had a marathon session on the church refurbishment accounts with the vicar the next day.’