Murder Most Royal

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?’

‘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.’

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.

And as the car drove on, she saw serried rows of wine bottles in her mind’s eye.

‘I’d like to visit the estate office before we go to Sandringham House,’ she said to Lady Caroline. ‘The car can come back for me. And can you let Mrs Maddox know I’ll be a little late for tea? There’s something I must do.’

The car paused outside the red-brick building while the Queen knocked on the estate office door. Once inside, passing several shocked staff, she asked Julian Cassidy if she could see him alone. Her unannounced arrival was unusual, but she sensed that he was more weary than surprised. She noticed the slackness of his tie, the saggy skin, the poorly ironed shirt, the unkempt hair that badly needed a cut, through which he was running a distracted hand. He reminded her a little of the foreign secretary on a bad day. He was a man with a lot on his mind.

Cassidy led her into his cosy office, with its old-fashioned furniture, its smell of dog, and its view of pine and birch trees.

‘Can I offer you a seat, ma’am?’ He indicated a sturdy Edwardian armchair, but the Queen refused. This would be a stand-up conversation.

‘Mrs Raspberry was knocked over a week before Christmas,’ she began. He said nothing and feigned confusion, but she saw the wariness that settled over him as he stood facing her. ‘Someone was speeding through Dersingham in the dark. It was just after a bend in the road. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that they didn’t see her, but they would have felt something.’ Cassidy was still as a statue. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing. ‘The impact must have caused damage to the car.’ She waited.

‘I imagine it must,’ he said eventually.

‘Whoever hit her had probably been drinking. That’s why he was going too fast, why he didn’t react in time, why he didn’t stop.’

He swallowed. ‘That may be true. I was asked about the accident because my own car was damaged two days later, actually.’

‘Helena Fisher was your witness, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes. She happened to be passing . . .’

‘Was she? And did she happen to be passing two days before, when you did indeed speed through Dersingham?’

Cassidy ran his hand through his hair again. His right eye was slightly bloodshot. She watched as he fought a look of rising panic. He reminded her of Arthur Raspberry for a moment. But she had far more sympathy for the teenager.

‘I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.’

‘I mean that Judy Raspberry deserves better than your conspiracy with your lover. It was one of the shortest days of the year. I don’t think you meant to hit her, but you were on your way home from a boozy lunch and it was already dark, you weren’t concentrating on the road, and the next thing you knew—’

‘I—’ He stared at her. There was a long silence that filled the stuffy room. He licked his dry lips.