Murder Most Royal

In that time, the Queen finished her tea and eyed up the charger thoughtfully. ‘Ah,’ she muttered to herself. But nobody heard.

‘Do you know,’ Sir Simon said to Rozie, leaning back in his office chair as he tried to remember what it was like to feel relaxed, ‘this time last year the words Trump and Brexit were curiosities? We were all so sure we knew what was going to happen. We didn’t question ourselves for a moment.’

‘You’ve been teaching me history,’ Rozie said. ‘“Events, dear boy, events.”’

‘Ah, yes, Macmillan.

He didn’t exactly say it that way, but he should have. Events, dear Rozie. I underestimated the events.’

‘The Boss doesn’t seem unduly worried,’ Rozie pointed out.

‘About the new world order? She never does. She’s lived through a war that we can barely imagine. She’s lost an Empire and gained a Commonwealth. She survived Lady Di.’ He sat up straight. ‘I must be more Queen. Less self-indulgent. How can I help you?’

‘Did you see this?’ she asked. She showed him a headline on her phone:

POLICE QUESTION MAN, 47, UNDER CAUTION FOR MURDER OF ARISTOCRAT WHO WAS QUEEN’S NEIGHBOUR

‘Oh, that,’ he said.

‘Sorry, forgot to tell you. Bloomfield called last night. A fisherman’s come forward. Lady Mundy used to keep a clinker at King’s Lynn, to sail on the Ouse. He saw Valentine St Cyr on the boat, heading out into the Wash on the twenty-first of December. That puts him in the exact place the hand probably went in. But more than that, he had consistently refused to say what he was doing that day. You’d think, if you were perfectly innocent in such suspicious circumstances, you’d let the police know before they found out for themselves and tell your side of the story, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps you’d deny it entirely. Anyway, he doesn’t deny it now. He claims he was scattering his mother’s ashes.

‘You’re seeing the Boss next, aren’t you? Do tell her. She’ll be horrified, because she’s known the man since he was a baby.

But justice is justice. She’ll be reconciled, eventually.’

The Queen seemed unsurprised when Rozie passed on the news about the ashes scattering. ‘Yes, that explains everything. He probably was.’

She stared at the blotter on her desk for quite some time. ‘I think I need to make a telephone call. I can’t imagine Valentine would come all the way to Norfolk and take the family boat out on his own. He came as rarely as he could, from what I understand.