Murder Most Royal

‘About the new world order? She never does. She’s lived through a war that we can barely imagine. She’s lost an Empire and gained a Commonwealth. She survived Lady Di.’ He sat up straight. ‘I must be more Queen. Less self-indulgent. How can I help you?’

‘Did you see this?’ she asked. She showed him a headline on her phone:

POLICE QUESTION MAN, 47, UNDER CAUTION FOR MURDER OF ARISTOCRAT WHO WAS QUEEN’S NEIGHBOUR

‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘Sorry, forgot to tell you. Bloomfield called last night. A fisherman’s come forward. Lady Mundy used to keep a clinker at King’s Lynn, to sail on the Ouse. He saw Valentine St Cyr on the boat, heading out into the Wash on the twenty-first of December. That puts him in the exact place the hand probably went in. But more than that, he had consistently refused to say what he was doing that day. You’d think, if you were perfectly innocent in such suspicious circumstances, you’d let the police know before they found out for themselves and tell your side of the story, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps you’d deny it entirely. Anyway, he doesn’t deny it now. He claims he was scattering his mother’s ashes.

‘You’re seeing the Boss next, aren’t you? Do tell her. She’ll be horrified, because she’s known the man since he was a baby. But justice is justice. She’ll be reconciled, eventually.’

* * *

‘I see.’

The Queen seemed unsurprised when Rozie passed on the news about the ashes scattering. ‘Yes, that explains everything. He probably was.’

She stared at the blotter on her desk for quite some time. ‘I think I need to make a telephone call. I can’t imagine Valentine would come all the way to Norfolk and take the family boat out on his own. He came as rarely as he could, from what I understand.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Wait there.’

Rozie stood by, while the Queen asked the palace operator to put her through to Hugh St Cyr.

But in the end, it was Flora who came on the line.

‘Hello, Your Majesty. I’m afraid Dad’s visiting the stables. Can I help?’

The Queen was suitably sympathetic about the arrest of her brother, but Flora sounded defiant.

‘Valentine’ll be out in no time. He’s innocent, so they have nothing to charge him with. It’s just a bore that he has to be in the news. You know how it is.’

‘I do,’ the Queen said. ‘I’m sure the family’s rallying round.’

‘We absolutely are,’ Flora assured her.

‘Presumably you were all together when he took the boat out?’

There was a strangled cough, then silence. Poor Flora. The Queen felt her shock at being asked the question – and being asked it by her sovereign, suddenly, in conversation, and not by a police inspector, in an interview. She sounded rattled when she answered. ‘Yes, we were, ma’am. Of course we were. It was a family outing – long planned.’

‘Scattering Lee’s ashes, I understand. Another difficult day.’

Flora rallied, gaining confidence as she went. ‘Oh, it could have been worse, but I suppose it could have gone better. Mum didn’t want to be in the vault, poor thing. The idea drove her crazy. She wanted to be in the sea, and in her rose garden. She was very specific about it all. We’d already scattered the rose garden half. We arranged the boat bit around Val’s schedule, but I assure you it was all perfectly, perfectly innocent. It was a blustery day and we were quite incompetent sailors without Mum. When the wind kicked up, half the ashes ended up in our faces.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘It was almost funny, really, in a horrible sort of way. We were all busy brushing her off each other. Dad had ash in his eyebrows. Of course we should have checked the wind direction, but we were idiots. Our minds were on other things.’

The Queen could picture the scene exactly. Now she was in her stride, Flora told the story with a hint of a groan and her usual panache. It sounded like exactly the sort of anecdote she would tell, in fact. The Queen was surprised – or rather, she would have been surprised if she didn’t have her current suspicions – that the girl had waited until now to talk about it.

She felt growing certainty about how the deed was done, but as things stood, the wrong person entirely had died. And that was rather a ‘deal-breaker’, as Harry would say, when it came to getting to the bottom of a murder.

* * *

An hour later, Sir Simon returned to deliver his report and discuss the prime minister’s upcoming trip to America. After a discussion of the special relationship, which seemed to be worryingly less special with each new US incumbent, he handed the Queen a basket of private correspondence to look through, and tapped a big, padded envelope at the top.

‘It’s just arrived. Rozie asked me to bring it to your attention, ma’am. Apparently, the archivist has found the letters from the Queen Mother that you asked about. One of the junior equerries was travelling from Windsor this morning and he brought them with him.’

‘Goodness!’ the Queen said. ‘How quick. She must have worked through the night.’

‘The archivist? She’s very diligent, ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Simon.’