Murder Most Royal

His flat in London is only a twenty-minute drive from Mr St Cyr’s flat in Hampstead. He was supposed to be working from home, but he could have gone out and come back again.’

‘What about his sister?’ the Queen asked. She remembered Flora from the Christmas visit as the sibling with the vim. She had been the last person in the family to see him.

Rozie consulted her notes again. ‘I checked the reports for all the family, ma’am. Flora and her father were at Ladybridge Hall all day on the fifteenth.’

‘We know one more thing, ma’am. One of Katie’s knitting friends saw Mr Cassidy at the Feathers pub a few days ago. He’d had a couple of glasses, and he was telling anyone who’d listen that he was the last person to talk to the victim, and that he’d shouted nonsense down the phone.’

‘Something about the scuffle, which Mr Cassidy said he’d already apologised for, and the promise that it would rain in hell. People were asking, and he said he had no idea what it was supposed to mean. If he was making it up, it was a strange thing to do. ‘I mentioned it to the chief constable and asked if we should be worried about him. It seemed a reasonable enough question.’

‘I didn’t tell him about the car because, as I say, Julian had already reported it. Technically, they know as much as we do.’

‘Exactly,’ the Queen said. ‘If we have something useful to add, we will, but at the moment, we seem to be going around in circles.’

Rozie looked uncomfortable. ‘And unfortunately there’s a problem.’

‘Someone in Dersingham seems to have noticed Katie’s interest in Mrs Raspberry’s hit-and-run.’

The Queen pursed her lips. ‘Oh, dear. What happened?’

‘They put a note through her letterbox late last night. It said that she’d been looking in the wrong place.’

‘Your name was never mentioned, though, ma’am. Hopefully, they’ll assume she was doing it for her own reasons.’

‘Hmm. Did they give any alternative suggestions?’

TRAGIC DEATH AT BURNHAM OVERY STAITHE

On the morning of New Year’s Day, the body of an elderly man, 79, was pulled from the sea near Scolt Head Island. He was identified as Chris Wallace, the long-standing member of a wild swimming group called the Dix Dunkers. He had been trying to reach the island from the beach at Burnham Overy Staithe and succumbed to hypothermia in the freezing water.

The article went on to remind readers how exceptionally attractive the area was, and how dangerous it was to swim alone, especially in winter when the water was dangerously cold.

The Queen looked up at Rozie.

‘Do we know anything about the swimmer?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Rozie said. ‘He came from a village south of here, called Vickery.’

‘That’s on the Ladybridge Estate.’

Rozie nodded. ‘The thing is, Katie’s a wild swimmer, too. She says that if you’re very experienced, as he was, you know not to go out alone in freezing water, and not to stay out too long. She’s not convinced it was an accident, and she doesn’t think the person who gave her the article does, either.’

The Queen felt very bleak. New Year’s Eve had been so full of happiness and hope at Sandringham, as they danced into the small hours. The following morning had been marred by Jack Lions’s interview, but that had been an annoyance, really, nothing more. To think that, only a few miles away, a man’s life was ending in such a tragic way.

There was a pause while she called Willow to her and stroked under the corgi’s warm ears. That was the day she had found out about Judy Raspberry. She had been convinced that the hit-and-run was part of a bigger picture. Someone was covering their tracks. Yet wherever she looked for conspiracies she found coincidences. She had been too sure of herself. Even after ninety years, she needed to learn humility sometimes.

But the suspicious death of someone connected to the St Cyr family seat? That didn’t smack of coincidence at all. Her moment of humility passed. She patted the dog and looked at Rozie.

‘Has Katie arranged to talk to . . .’ she consulted the article once more ‘. . . The Dix Dunkers?’

Rozie nodded. ‘She’s meeting one of them tomorrow, ma’am.’

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

The little village of Vickery, much like West Newton, consisted of neat cottages lined up along well-tended roads. It looked as if it had just been swept and clipped, ready to star in the sort of Christmas movie where the heroine, home for the holidays, discovers the sexy wickedness of Hugh Grant and chooses – inexplicably – to settle down with someone safe at the end of the third reel. Rozie used to watch those kind of movies with her sister when they were both tired from studying, curled up on the duvet side by side, waiting for their mother to shout at them to turn off the light.