Murder Most Royal

’

‘Flora isn’t popular on the estate, then?’ Rozie asked.

‘She was,’ Alan said, hesitating a little. ‘But that was before all this. You get to see a person in a new light sometimes. It’s no coincidence that this all happened after her mother died in the summer. The baroness was good at holding everything together. It’s falling apart now.’

They chatted on for a while about the fund that was being set up in Chris’s memory to give to his favourite wildlife charities. Rozie sensed that was all she was going to learn.

Laura Wallace had protected her secrets. If she had told them to anyone, it would have been to the man she shared her life with, and he was dead.

The Queen fiddled with her spectacles. ‘It’s unfortunate for us that Laura was so loyal to the baroness. Lee chose her friends well. She was like that herself, you know. My mother always said that you could tell her anything and be certain it would go no further. She was enormously fond of Lee.’ She frowned up at Rozie. ‘You seem surprised.

’

Rozie shook her head. ‘Only that there must have been a big age gap between them, ma’am. Two generations. The baroness must have been about the same age as the Prince of Wales.’

‘She was,’ the Queen said. ‘But my mother was never concerned about age. She always had great energy herself. She liked young people.’

‘And I suppose they shared a great love of gardening,’ Rozie said.

‘Oh, yes,’ the Queen said, her face lighting up at the memory. ‘She visited the gardens at Ladybridge almost every summer.

She thought very highly of Lee St Cyr’s design skills. She was delighted when Lee offered to help with the formal gardens here. They were both avid visitors to other people’s gardens. They used to share notes. When Lee went to Japan she wrote about ten pages. My mother read them out to me . . .’ She trailed off, lost in thought, momentarily.

‘Ma’am?’ Rozie asked.

The Queen’s eyes glittered with sudden intensity. ‘Lee didn’t confide in many people, but . . . Didn’t you say that when Laura Wallace gave Valentine that odd look, it was shortly before he went to boarding school?’

‘And he was eleven or twelve?’

‘It’s a bit old for a boy to go away to prep school in those days.

He would normally be seven or eight. But Lee hadn’t wanted him to go at all, had she?’

‘I get the impression she needed to get him away from the hall. Away from his father. If Valentine is nearly fifty now . . .’

‘He’s forty-seven, ma’am,’ Rozie said.