Murder Most Royal

‘I honestly thought it was a deer, escaped from the bog, or a badger. I didn’t see anything, but there was suddenly just this . . . thud. And a sort of paleness against the windscreen. I panicked. I slowed down and looked behind me and I couldn’t see anything in the road, and then I saw a dark shape and I thought perhaps it had been a badger after all.’

‘You didn’t stop,’ the Queen repeated, sharply.

‘I couldn’t.’ He flushed.

She saw how wretched he looked and added, ‘I think we’d better sit down after all.’

She took the armchair he had originally offered her, and he slumped into the heavy office chair beside the desk.

‘You seem to know about me and Helena,’ he said dully. ‘We’d arranged this night away. We tried to go somewhere nobody would see us. There’s this little place near Holkham . . . We drove back separately. I’d had a couple of glasses of Shiraz at lunch and I knew if the police breathalysed me I’d lose my licence, and this brand-new job I had here, which was everything I’d worked for, and . . . Everything was so good.’ He looked at the Queen with baleful, bloodhound eyes. ‘It was all so good,’ he repeated, ‘and I didn’t want to lose it all over a bloody badger.’

‘A badger.’ The Queen gave him an implacable stare. ‘And the next day? You must have found out by then what had really happened.’

He looked down and said nothing.

‘You could have gone to the police then. They were asking for witnesses.’

‘Yes.’ His eyes rose to meet hers eventually. ‘I could. But by then . . .’ He shrugged and looked defeated. ‘She was in hospital. There was nothing I could do.’

‘Judy Raspberry was not a badger, Mr Cassidy.’

‘I know that!’ His shame came out as a defensive bark. ‘But I made one mistake. I tried to cover it up, but . . . It’s happened and it’s ruined my life anyway. I can’t change anything.’ He shrugged again, helplessly. ‘Helena gave the witness statement. Now, she won’t talk to me.’

The Queen regarded him in silence for a while.

He muttered something so incoherent she didn’t catch it.

‘I said, I suppose you need my resignation in the morning, ma’am.’

‘I need honesty, and trust, Mr Cassidy. I need a certain amount of moral courage. When you’ve decided what to do, we’ll talk again.’

She made her own way out of the office, leaving him standing in a daze.

It had been a very difficult afternoon. She hoped there was chocolate biscuit cake for tea.

The following day was Sunday, which was designated for reflection. The Bishop of Guildford, who was visiting that weekend, gave what was no doubt an excellent sermon, but the Queen’s thoughts were elsewhere and she caught one sentence in ten. Fortunately, Philip would no doubt give a summary of its salient points over sherry before lunch. She would simply have to nod in agreement.

With two weeks to go until she returned to London, the Queen was keenly aware of time passing. She knew more clearly than ever what must have happened to Ned, and why. But she didn’t have a scrap of hard evidence. It still wasn’t enough to take to the chief constable. Or was it? As always with such cases, she was very keen to solve it, and equally keen not to be seen to do the police’s job for them. It was a difficult tightrope to walk.

After lunch, she joined the small shooting party who were going out after partridge. The sky was full of thick, grey cloud, promising more snow and lending an eerie light to the afternoon. She was surrounded by friends and dogs, which was delightful, but they found her much more quiet than usual. Philip asked if she was sickening for something again, but it wasn’t that. She was thinking over what she did and didn’t know, and of what she was and wasn’t certain – which were not exactly the same thing.

There was an edge to the house party this weekend, which included a couple of political grandees. It wasn’t only the Queen who was preoccupied. The new president of the United States had decided to launch the tone of his presidency by denying media reports of the size of the crowd at his inauguration. The Queen thought of the crowds that assembled in the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace on big occasions, and was silently grateful. Sir Simon was despairing. He was not a fan of a leadership style that involved bringing basic truths into question, and the prime minister was lining up to meet him at the end of the week.

Meanwhile Philip was edgy, too. This was their last stay at Sandringham during which he was in charge of the estate, as he had been for sixty-five years. Next year, Charles would no doubt be showing off his own new leadership style. She had every confidence in their son, and so did Philip, really, but relinquishing control was not his strong suit. The mood would pass. She would weather it. She was good at weathering things.