Murder Most Royal

They rounded a couple of large greenhouses and the twisted chimneys of the hall came back into view to their left, with the gatehouse further away to the right. Flora stopped and pointed.

‘There,’ she said, as if Rozie had asked her a question.

‘I’m sorry?’

Flora was very still and thoughtful.

‘That’s where I saw Ned for the last time, driving away with Dad in his ridiculous pink Land Rover. He called it the Pink Panther, you know. It was painted to match his house. He waved his trilby at me.’ She imitated the movement with her right hand. ‘I honestly thought the next time I’d see him would be at his wedding.’ She hesitated. ‘Can I tell you an awful secret?’

‘Go on.’

Flora smiled slightly. ‘It’s such a relief not to be hated. He pretended he didn’t, but he’d resented us for so long. I used to feel his presence like an angry ghost. And now he actually is dead, the spirit has lifted. And I feel my mother’s presence instead. Isn’t that utterly bizarre?’

Rozie glanced across at the ancient bricks and stones of the hall, sitting serenely above the moat that mirrored the sky.

‘I can imagine this place would encourage you to think that way.’

‘It is ridiculous. That’s what you’re thinking. I’m a romantic idiot.’

Rozie had in fact been wondering if Flora – practical, competent, sharp-thinking Flora – was putting on an act. If so, it was a neat double bluff. She certainly felt as if she had been more of an audience than a confidante.

‘I don’t think you’re an idiot at all,’ she said, and wondered how the Queen was getting on.

* * *

The Queen was letting Lady Caroline do most of the talking again.

‘Do you know? I haven’t been here since I was eighteen. I was here with Lee. It must have been before you got married. Do you mind if we have a quick look in the Long Gallery? I remember thinking it was one of my favourite rooms in Norfolk.’

They walked down a long, panelled corridor from the hall’s east wing, where the family’s living accommodation was, past a series of large tapestries featuring knights and ladies in a mythical green landscape with a river running through it, whose banks were dotted with spring flowers.

‘Were these here before?’ the Queen asked.

‘Yes,’ Hugh said, ‘but I had them cleaned last year, for Lee. Arthur and Guinevere. Lee always loved those landscapes. She said they reminded her of her gardens. Water and flowers and so on. I had them hung in her suite when she was bed-bound. They gave her a lot of pleasure in her final weeks.’

His grief was so different from Astrid Westover’s, the Queen thought. He held it in, and held on to it. It was etched onto his face.

He guided them to the Long Gallery on the second floor of the south wing, where Elizabethans would have taken their exercise in bad weather. It was a bright, sunny space with a plaster ceiling, longer than a tennis court and lined with the family portraits Georgina St Cyr had moved to make way for her modern art collection downstairs. They stood and looked out through mullioned windows over the meadow and the riverbank beyond.

‘I remember Ned bringing me up here,’ Lady Caroline said. ‘This was where the ghostly servant walks, isn’t it? Ned tried to scare me about it. Failed miserably. I love ghosts. We rode bicycles around here like mad things. It was tremendous fun. Lee was there, too, I remember. Ned was very soppy about her. It was before you were married. Didn’t he go out with her, too?’

Hugh looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘They knew each other,’ he acknowledged gruffly. ‘Ned met her at the Agricultural College, but I knew her brother from Oxford. Once we met, we decided on marriage very quickly. I never regretted it for a day.’

How Ned must have hated you, the Queen thought. Getting the estate and the girl. She could almost feel the resentment sunk into the sloping floor. Not a ghost, exactly, but a malignant presence. Ned’s stubborn fury made more sense now. If he had decided to kill his cousin, half a century ago, she could almost have understood. His fury had persisted for decades, but according to his fiancée he had finally moved beyond it. Was she right? Had she been telling the truth? Anyway, now the fate of Ladybridge was in Hugh’s hands.

‘You mentioned at Christmas,’ she said, ‘that Flora is inheriting, not Valentine.’

‘Ah, yes, ma’am.’ Hugh looked uncomfortable. ‘I should have discussed it with you first. I intended to but I was somewhat distracted . . .’

‘Does Valentine mind?’ Lady Caroline asked.

‘He’ll get the title, of course. He’s good with tenancies and financing and so on, but he’s embraced city life. He doesn’t want to while away his days in East Anglia worrying about milk yields and badgers and foot and mouth.’

‘Most sons come round eventually.’