Murder Most Royal

And the fact that she had found Julian Cassidy, practically comatose with drink, on his living room floor, surrounded by empty wine bottles.

‘Have you reported it? The car, I mean?’ she asked.

‘There’s no point,’ Rozie said. ‘The police already know. He was clever. I found out he reported it himself, two days later. He said he’d hit a deer that suddenly leaped out at him on the road to Muncaster, and it had made him crash into a tree. The second crash was real enough. He got Helena Fisher to back him up. She said she was driving the other way and saw it happen. They even called someone out to try and find the deer and put it down humanely.’

‘No injured deer was found, I assume,’ the Queen said.

‘You saw the damage to the car. Does his story seem plausible?’

Rozie sighed. ‘Just about, I suppose. I don’t believe it, though.’

‘And he’d been drinking?’

‘Heavily. And repeatedly. You don’t get through all those bottles in one night.’

The Queen grimaced. ‘First the scuffle with Ned. Now the wine. We had high hopes for the bean counter.’

‘If he did hit Mrs Raspberry, I don’t see how he could have done it deliberately.’

‘Hmmm,’ the Queen said. ‘Not alone, certainly.’ And yet, he seemed to be drinking himself into oblivion. She was reminded of young Arthur for a moment: another hopeless criminal who couldn’t live with himself. Still, why on earth would he do it?

‘There’s something else, ma’am. On the subject of Helena Fisher.’

‘The police found the body of a wild boar buried on her estate yesterday. It was shot with a rifle, right between the eyes.’

‘One of Ned’s boar?’ the Queen asked. ‘I gather they’d gone missing.’

‘It looks as though they escaped into Muncaster’s woods. Helena Fisher says she was walking with her dogs and one of them disturbed the boar somehow, and it didn’t survive the attack.’

‘The cockapoo,’ the Queen said to herself.

‘She was worried for the others. And herself. She admitted asking Mr Cassidy to help her, because her husband was away and he was the first person she thought of who has a rifle. They apparently hunted the boar down together the next day. I know he’s good enough to have done it, and not that many people are.’

‘Why didn’t she simply get Ned to take his animals back?’

‘She said she didn’t trust him not to let them escape again. Relations had broken down. She was angry and upset and did the first thing that occurred to her. That’s her story, anyway. Cassidy backs it up.’

‘They’re quite a double act, those two,’ the Queen said thoughtfully.

The house party at Sandringham got through a few bottles of its own that evening. After breakfast the next morning, while several of the guests were sleeping it off, the Queen took the dogs for a walk on her own so she could think. A circuit of the lakes generally suited this purpose. They weren’t large – more oversized ponds, really – and had been created with islands, rockeries and rich planting, so the eye would always have something to admire. Her great-grandfather once said he would have liked to be a landscape gardener if he hadn’t been king. The Queen did not personally agree, but thought what a jolly job it must be: out in the fresh air much of the time, surrounded by nature, making things. She had yet to meet a landscape gardener whose company she didn’t enjoy.

Yesterday, she’d asked Mrs Maddox whether there were any rumours about Mrs Fisher and the bean counter. Astrid Westover had suggested ‘the awful man from Muncaster’ threatened Ned because of the death of Mrs Fisher’s cockapoo. The Queen had assumed Astrid was alluding to Matt Fisher, but now she wondered if the ‘awful man’ was Cassidy, and Astrid had been referring to the scuffle in the pub car park that Sir Simon had mentioned. It is quite an emotional involvement, to shoot a boar and then threaten a man because the animal has caused the death of your ex-employer’s wife’s pet dog. Then to hide a damaged car and get that same ex-employer’s wife to confirm when the accident happened. The Queen was starting to see Cassidy with new eyes.

The housekeeper had readily confirmed the Queen’s suspicions. According to the servants’ hall at Muncaster, the affair had started in the summer. Apparently it was in revenge for Mr Fisher’s relationship with his art adviser. The Queen reflected that one missed all the country gossip when one was in London. Although, of course, the city was a rumour-factory of its own.

She was halfway round the ponds when she was surprised to see a young person of indeterminate sex in jeans and a hoodie walking rapidly towards her. Closer up, the flash of a blue fringe under the hood reminded her that this was the redoubtable Ivy, Arthur’s sister, whose views on royalty the Queen had not forgotten.

‘Good morning,’ she said, somewhat stiffly.