Murder Most Royal

The Queen fiddled with her spectacles. ‘It’s unfortunate for us that Laura was so loyal to the baroness. Lee chose her friends well. She was like that herself, you know. My mother always said that you could tell her anything and be certain it would go no further. She was enormously fond of Lee.’ She frowned up at Rozie. ‘You seem surprised.’

Rozie shook her head. ‘Only that there must have been a big age gap between them, ma’am. Two generations. The baroness must have been about the same age as the Prince of Wales.’

‘She was,’ the Queen said. ‘But my mother was never concerned about age. She always had great energy herself. She liked young people.’

‘And I suppose they shared a great love of gardening,’ Rozie said.

‘Oh, yes,’ the Queen said, her face lighting up at the memory. ‘She visited the gardens at Ladybridge almost every summer. She thought very highly of Lee St Cyr’s design skills. She was delighted when Lee offered to help with the formal gardens here. They were both avid visitors to other people’s gardens. They used to share notes. When Lee went to Japan she wrote about ten pages. My mother read them out to me . . .’ She trailed off, lost in thought, momentarily.

‘Ma’am?’ Rozie asked.

The Queen’s eyes glittered with sudden intensity. ‘Lee didn’t confide in many people, but . . . Didn’t you say that when Laura Wallace gave Valentine that odd look, it was shortly before he went to boarding school?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he was eleven or twelve?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s a bit old for a boy to go away to prep school in those days. He would normally be seven or eight. But Lee hadn’t wanted him to go at all, had she?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘I get the impression she needed to get him away from the hall. Away from his father. If Valentine is nearly fifty now . . .’

‘He’s forty-seven, ma’am,’ Rozie said.

‘Then whatever happened would have been around thirty-five years ago, which would make it . . .’

‘Nineteen eighty-one,’ Rozie added helpfully.

‘Hmm.’ The Queen continued to play with her spectacles for a little bit while she thought the thing through. ‘My mother’s correspondence is not in the most perfect state,’ she admitted. Margaret had been living with their mother at the end of her life and had disposed of some of it. The Queen Mother wasn’t always entirely discreet. However, she had been a prolific letter writer and there was still a lot left. ‘You’ll need to talk to the archivist at Windsor. You know her, don’t you?’

Rozie did. She was a friendly woman and fellow owner of a Mini Cooper. They had bonded over cars when the Boss was there over Easter.

‘Good,’ the Queen said. ‘You might ask for all the letters my mother received from anyone in Norfolk three years either side of 1980. Ask for any that she sent, too. Sometimes they end up in the collection. Do explain that time is of the essence.’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

‘It’s a long shot,’ the Queen observed grimly.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

After Rozie left, the Queen turned to gaze out of the window. She didn’t return to her private correspondence for quite some time.

Chapter 26

The Queen’s mobile telephone wasn’t working. The grandchildren had insisted she have one, and had recorded a rude message on her answering machine, which she hadn’t found out about for ages. Not that it particularly mattered, because they were the only people who called her on it. She liked to use it to catch up on the news sometimes, which is what she intended to do now, while drinking her morning cup of Darjeeling in bed.

It was the twenty-first of January and, the day after the inauguration, in cities around the world, women were massing to protest the words and actions of a president who had cheerfully admitted to grabbing them in private places. What was the world coming to? The Queen had known all sorts of world leaders who almost certainly (or definitely) had done such things, but none so far who had bragged about it. She was curious, and somewhat cheered, to see women banding together for the marches. Or, she would have been, if she could have seen anything – but her phone was a blank block.

She called her dresser and pointed out the problem.

‘Oh! I’m so sorry, ma’am. Someone forgot to charge it last night. I’ll do that for you now.’

It took a few minutes to locate the charger and get the inert block to start up again. In that time, the Queen finished her tea and eyed up the charger thoughtfully. ‘Ah,’ she muttered to herself. But nobody heard.

* * *

‘Do you know,’ Sir Simon said to Rozie, leaning back in his office chair as he tried to remember what it was like to feel relaxed, ‘this time last year the words Trump and Brexit were curiosities? We were all so sure we knew what was going to happen. We didn’t question ourselves for a moment.’

‘You’ve been teaching me history,’ Rozie said. ‘“Events, dear boy, events.”’

‘Ah, yes, Macmillan. He didn’t exactly say it that way, but he should have. Events, dear Rozie. I underestimated the events.’

‘The Boss doesn’t seem unduly worried,’ Rozie pointed out.