Murder Most Royal

’ The owner of the arm had the same peevish stubbornness of her sister when Rozie used to try and wake her up to go running in the mornings.

‘Prince Philip’ll be expecting you.’

‘I can dress very fast. I’m sure we’ve got twenty minutes to spare.’

‘I can dress fast too, but I’ve got to get back to my room, remember?’

‘Borrow something of mine,’ he grumbled. ‘We’re the same kind of size.’ He nuzzled her shoulder, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.

It was tempting, though. Henry Marshal-Ward was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, fit in every sense, with a cushy staff job as a temporary equerry to the Queen. Rozie didn’t have time for a full-on boyfriend and Henry didn’t come with strings attached, so occasional hook-ups suited them both. Especially here, where he had a room inside the main house, within drunken staggering distance of the servants’ hall last night, while she was billeted in the overflow accommodation on the estate, half a mile down the road. However, royal shoot attire was very strict, even for observers like her, and it didn’t include black lace bodycon party dresses or a boyfriend’s borrowed tracksuit. She needed to go and change.

Sir Simon’s drunken text from the night before suggested that he, too, would be nursing a hangover this morning. He’d been talking to one of the ghillies in Balmoral, who had heard on the grapevine that the Sandringham shoot would contain some friends and neighbours of the family, to make up for missing royals:

Rozie reached over to switch on the light. As its glow caught the Roman profile and the tousled curls of his strawberry blond hair, she was reminded of her Google Images search from three days before.

‘You’re not related to Edward St Cyr, are you?’

‘The missing man? Um, yuh,’ Henry said. ‘I think he’s like my second cousin twice removed. I’m related to most people, though, one way or another, if you go back far enough.’

‘I bet you’re not related to my family,’ Rozie challenged him.

‘Well, no, I don’t have any ancestors in Lagos that I know of. Wouldn’t swear to it, though.’

‘You don’t have a ring like his,’ she observed.

‘No. We’re the Shropshire branch of the family. It’s the Norfolk St Cyrs who go in for the bloodstone ring. We always thought big stones like that were rather naff.’ He raised his left hand, which bore a small gold ring on the little finger, similar to many that Rozie saw on the hands of royals and senior household staff.

‘No,’ Henry told her, tracing one of his fingers down her arm from shoulder to wrist. ‘I like your fingers bare. Like this bit.’ He slid his hand under the sheet.

She threw a pillow at him and crawled out of bed.

The shooting party set out together across the estate in a motley collection of Range Rovers, Land Rover Defenders and an ancient shooting bus, in the direction of Wolferton, towards the marshes. To avoid paparazzi lenses, they drove down a series of tracks made for military vehicles during the war, observed only by a hovering kestrel and the occasional pheasant that whirred up from the ground like a helicopter before breasting the hedgerows on the breeze.

Overnight, a hoar frost had layered every twig, leaf and seed head with heavy ice. The almost horizontal rays of a pale sun, penetrating a light layer of low cloud, made the wide fields of stubble glint and twinkle. Rozie could see why the royals got out of bed for this. In fact, she felt sorry for anyone who had chosen not to come out with them. If there was a way of doing it without dressing up in tweed and shooting the funny, silly, colourful pheasants out of the sky, she’d be all for it. Not that she would share that particular train of thought with anyone here.

She stood at the edge of the field where the first drive was due to begin. The guns were having their safety briefing on one side while the observers and pickers-up shared conversation and slugs of sloe gin in a huddle on the other. Henry, her equerry-with-benefits, was among the guns. Everyone seemed to have been to school with one another, or knew one another’s parents. Like Henry, they had all been on shoots since childhood and knew exactly what to do. Rozie knew her way around a rifle, but had only started rough shooting with shotguns in the summer, and never on anything as formal as this, with whistles and clickers and pegs to show each gun where to stand, and matching pairs of shotguns that cost more than her university education. It was like going back a century in time.

‘Hullo. How are you getting on?’

She looked round to see the friendly face of Lady Caroline Cadwallader, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, hands thrust into the pockets of her tweed jacket.

Rozie explained her mission from Sir Simon.

‘In case it’s one of us, d’you mean, who did it?’ Lady Caroline asked.

‘It is, isn’t it? You want to spare the Queen embarrassment.