Murder Most Royal

‘There’s nothing like a winter’s afternoon when the sun finally makes an appearance.’

Hugh offered to take them on a quick tour round the moat. The clouds were rolling back rapidly now to reveal an ever-increasing patch of pale blue sky. A light breeze ruffled the grasses in the distant meadows.

They rounded the eastern side of the house and turned to the south, where the moat was bordered by a formal rose garden before a lengthy slope led down to the tree-fringed river below. There was an eerie peacefulness to the scene, pierced occasionally by stern calling and counter-calling from sheep in a distant field.

‘Oh, you have sheep, too!’ Lady Caroline said to Hugh. Her thoughts were on a very different track from the Queen’s, and much sunnier. ‘You are brave. My brother keeps them and he can’t make a penny out of them. He does it for the love.’

‘So do we,’ Hugh agreed. ‘These are Norfolk Horns. They used to be practically extinct. The fleeces are wonderful quality, but worth nothing in these days of synthetic clothes, of course. They make excellent meat, too. We were devastated to lose our poor, dear shepherdess last year.’

‘Do you have much to do with the tenants?’ the Queen asked.

‘Socially, d’you mean? Oh, goodness, it varies. We entertain them a few times a year,’ Hugh said. ‘It was always more Lee’s domain than mine. “Hearts and minds”, she called it. Like the army, you know. Oh, look, up there.’ He pointed across the meadow, above the river, where a heron was gliding silently on outstretched wings. ‘Some are friends and some are absolute bastards.’

‘Herons?’ she asked.

‘No, tenants. I’m sure you find the same thing. They all loved Lee, though,’ he added softly. ‘And I’m sure they’ll come round to Flora, too. She only wants the best for Ladybridge.’

They kept walking around the moat until they were level with the buildings at the other end of the hall from the drawbridge, where the works on Flora’s future cake shop were evident from missing window frames and loose tarpaulins at ground level, one of which flapped forlornly in the breeze.

‘It’s like the Forth Bridge,’ Hugh commented. ‘Never finished.’

‘And yet always itself,’ Lady Caroline said. ‘I’m sure St Cyrs have been thinking it wasn’t quite done from the moment they moved in, don’t you?’

Hugh grinned. ‘You’re probably right.’

Back in the saloon, the family were clustered in front of the television set, watching the inauguration of the forty-fifth president. He was seventy, as commentators felt it necessary to mention – the same age as Ned, yet obviously with much life ahead of him and much to do. Not all of it popular, if the protests taking place around the world and the lack of famous faces in the crowd were anything to go by. But the Queen was taken with Senator Blunt’s opening remarks about the ‘commonplace and miraculous’ tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

People rather took that for granted these days, she thought. As a keen student of history, she was highly aware that transfers of power could be bloody and dangerous. Her namesake had lived in constant fear of it in the sixteenth century. Her distant cousin, Nicholas II, had lost his whole family to a revolution. The War of Independence, Partition . . . the list was brutal and long, and close to home. Philip’s family in Greece had had to run for their lives. The ‘commonplace miracle’ of peaceful transfer was much to be treasured. If her own entry in the history books could say only one thing, it would be this: for three-score years and ten, as far as she could manage it, transfers of power to countries in her beloved Commonwealth had happened peacefully. They had not always been happy, or to governments one thoroughly approved of, but you could not have everything.

The Queen wasn’t alone with Rozie for the rest of the day. Sir Simon was supposed to be bringing in the boxes the following morning, but she was relieved to see that Rozie arranged to do it herself. Rozie still had that set to her shoulders.

‘Did you learn anything useful?’ the Queen asked, without even making a pretence at opening the first box.

‘I think so,’ Rozie said. She explained how cold and evasive Flora had seemed about Chris Wallace. ‘She said his wife was close to the baroness, and that their children grew up together. But nothing about him being turfed out. She absolutely denied it. Then she seemed to get distracted by the poison garden.’

‘Is that still there?’

‘Well, no. Flora said she had to get rid of it because of the visitors. I can see why. Her brother nearly died of wolfsbane poisoning when he was little, apparently.’

‘The baron wanted it all dug up in a fury, even though his wife was fond of the garden.’

The Queen was surprised. ‘How unlike Hugh.’ She thought a bit longer. ‘How very unlike Hugh. How interesting.