Murder Most Royal

‘I was so absolutely . . . How could he . . .? I couldn’t understand it. My muscles wouldn’t move. Not to speak, protest . . . anything. And so I let it happen. I thought if I didn’t – I still think so – that I would die. Silly, isn’t it? Surely he wouldn’t have killed me here, in my house? And yet . . .’ She looked into the mirror, but neither at herself nor the Queen, who was watching her reflection ‘. . . I watched from far, far away, as if I wasn’t here at all. I thought, when he’d finished, I’d come back to myself, but . . .’ She took a tissue from a box, carefully blotted her lips and fixed on a smile. ‘When it was over, I adjusted my petticoat and carried on with my cocktail party, because, what else could I do?’ She had since hosted a magnificent dinner party which was the talk of the town.

‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’ she had implored the Queen. ‘I only told you because . . . I don’t know why I told you. I’m so sorry. I just . . . I needed to . . . But I don’t want . . . Anyway, I’m much better now.’

One minute, her hostess looked as if she would crumble at a touch, and the next, when a maid knocked on the door to see if they needed anything, she was a model of brisk efficiency. ‘Keep calm and carry on!’ she’d concluded, with that brittle smile. ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it?’

From that moment, the Queen had understood the out-of-body experience of shock. She had experienced an echo of it herself, just listening to the story. Later, she had since wondered if that was what predators like that senior politician counted on. What a woman did in the moment, how a woman felt, was entirely unpredictable and personal. The horror made rational behaviour more unlikely than not. If only it was as easy as ‘putting a door between them’.

Moira had called Lee naive, but the Queen couldn’t help feeling that it was Moira whose naivety was showing. How fortunate she was that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

Moira was still floundering. The Queen decided to move the conversation on from Astrid. ‘Did Lee ever tell Valentine the story?’ she asked. ‘Or anyone else apart from you and Laura Wallace?’

Moira tugged on her vape again. ‘I wouldn’t know. She had no intention of doing so at the time. We never spoke of it again and it was because she didn’t want to. It was as if she’d put it in a locked box and thrown away the key. I suppose when she was dying she might have said something to Valentine, but I can’t think why she would.’

‘Isn’t there something important about knowing one’s ancestry?’ the Queen wondered. ‘Not titles, I mean, but whatever runs in the blood?’

‘In Valentine’s case, it was vital for him not to know. Think what was at stake! His identity, his heredity, his trust in his mother’s honour . . . everything. But he did give Ned a very odd look at the funeral. Something was going on between them. Ned seemed . . .’ Moira paused to think. ‘Amused. I remember he went over to Valentine and that boyfriend of his and was charm itself. I must say, I was very surprised when Ned got the invitation in the first place. Astrid said Ned was, too. He was very tickled about it. It made me wonder about Lee.’

‘Oh? In what way?’

‘Well, I’d always assumed that it was Lee who was trying to pull the St Cyr family together, but actually, given the rapprochement at her funeral, I wondered if she’d been the one keeping them apart.’

Chapter 28

The Queen had stayed longer than she intended. As the car whisked her back along the road, past old villages and modern caravan parks, she thought back to the ambassador’s wife and the senior politician. He had risen further in his country’s ranks and tried, more than once, to become an ambassador to the UK himself. It had even been suggested that he should be given an honorary knighthood – yet somehow, all his efforts were frustrated. Recommendations on his behalf would arrive in one of the boxes. For one reason or another, the answer was always an implacable no.

For years, the Queen had wondered why her hostess had felt able to share such private information. She certainly hadn’t asked for it, but perhaps the stress of preparing for a royal visit, on top of everything else, had given the poor woman the absolute need to talk to someone. ‘I know I can trust you,’ she had said in the only reference to the desperate moment the two of them had shared – and it was true. As monarch, one was used to keeping secrets; people told you things because they knew they would go no further. What had Moira said? ‘You . . . and the Pope.’ Friends and acquaintances, staff, too, shared the most extraordinary information. It was as if they thought of one’s private space as a confessional.