Murder Most Royal

‘Did you ever think he could be a murderer?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ the Queen said, not entirely truthfully.

‘There isn’t any hope that Mr St Cyr’s still alive, is there?’ Mr Day asked.

‘I can’t help picturing him in a shallow grave somewhere,’ Mrs Day added solemnly.

‘It’s dreadful when there isn’t a body, isn’t it?’ the Queen suggested. ‘Everyone is left with so much uncertainty. The family can’t move on in so many practical ways.’

‘It’s nasty,’ Mrs Day said. ‘Sadistic, I’d say. To kill someone is something, but to hide the body . . . that somehow makes it worse, don’t you think?’

‘There’s no burial, no peace. It’s un-Christian. I suppose if you’re a murderer you don’t care about things like that.’

‘I suppose not,’ the Queen agreed. ‘Although no doubt you’ve heard the rumour.’

Mrs Day sat up straighter. ‘What rumour’s that, ma’am?’

‘The one that says he never did go up to London.’

‘No! Who said that?’

‘I can’t remember where I heard it.’ The Queen looked vague. ‘Sandringham is a fount of gossip. But someone said they knew for a fact the person who left Abbottswood that day in his car wasn’t him.’

‘Goodness! Who was it?’

The Queen shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine, can you?’

‘Do the police know?’

‘I’m not sure,’ the Queen said, innocently.

‘You know what they think of gossip, pet,’ Mr Day said to his wife. ‘The way they treated poor Judy.’

‘True.’ Mrs Day rolled her eyes. She frowned with concentration, trying to remember Ned’s last movements, based on what they’d heard. ‘It could’ve been a parcel delivery man who saw the car. Fred Sayle supplies heating oil. He could’ve spotted someone driving out as he was going in . . .’

‘Perhaps they felt they wouldn’t be believed,’ the Queen said. ‘Or they didn’t trust their own judgement. I wish one knew more, so one could do something about it.’

The Queen gave a perfectly honest reply. ‘Without any evidence, I don’t think I could help.’

Mrs Day was still thinking hard. The Queen decided that this was a good time to leave her to it. One useful thing about being the monarch – something that was often as much of a burden as a gift – was that every little thing you said was weighed and measured. She would be astonished if there were no ripples from the pebble she had cast into this particular pond.

‘It’s a difficult issue, isn’t it? If you discuss it with anyone, please don’t mention me. I don’t approve of gossip.’

‘Ooh, I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,’ Mrs Day said reverently.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

This ringside view was part of his reward for the tip-off of where to look for the body. Mrs Day had rung him in great anticipation three days ago.

‘I’d have gone to the police straightaway, but after all the names they called Mrs Raspberry, they can sing for it, quite frankly. Somebody needs to find out if this is true. You will promise me you’ll look into it, won’t you?’

Ollie hadn’t promised, but he’d looked into it anyway.

It took a lot to persuade a cash-strapped police force to dredge a moat. The ‘how the body got there’ was the relatively easy part. His first thought, like Mrs Day’s, was that Ned might be buried at Abbottswood somewhere, and the police had missed it. But a bit of digging had quickly thrown up the fact that nobody who knew Ned well had seen him since he visited the hall for lunch with his much-hated family. Not only had he not left Abbottswood, there was no guarantee he’d even arrived home. Flora Osborne could easily have lied about seeing him wave goodbye. His cousin Valentine could have pretended to be him in London.

The ‘why’ was the hard part. If Ned had died at Ladybridge, who stood to gain? After all, he was the poor relation. It had taken hours of careful research to find evidence that Ned and Valentine might be related, based on the timing of Valentine’s birth. If Ned was Valentine’s father . . . bombshell: no more legitimate male St Cyrs to carry on the title. If he was using this knowledge to blackmail them for money for his new project, for example, then there was your motive. One DNA test was all it would take. Maybe the police had already done it. Ollie didn’t have any proof of any of this, but as a theory it held water.

Yesterday, a police dog team had searched the hall from top to bottom, with no joy. But it didn’t take a genius to see where the body would be. It turned out there were a couple of ground-floor rooms with empty windows facing the moat. Ollie was stationed opposite them now. Presumably, the body had been weighted to ensure it sank to the bottom and stayed there, so without winds or tides to shift it around, it was unlikely to have moved from the spot.

So far, the hardest part had been getting the swans out of the way.