Murder Most Royal

‘It’s what we do, isn’t it?’

From that moment, the Queen had understood the out-of-body experience of shock. 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.