Murder Most Royal

’

‘A tall man in a distinctive hat and scarf was seen,’ The Queen corrected her. ‘Haven’t you noticed how the St Cyr men look alike?’

Rozie had. ‘But what about the texts he sent to Astrid? She’d have known if it wasn’t her fiancé sending them.’

The Queen gave her a gimlet stare.

It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Rozie stood her ground. ‘If it was someone else using his phone, they did a very good job, ma’am. Astrid mentioned that the texts were quite intimate.’ She didn’t want to embarrass the Boss, but modern sexting between couples could be pretty explicit.

It was if it was any good, anyway. Although . . .

‘Mmm?’ the Queen murmured, seeing Rozie hesitate.

‘I suppose if you had access to the text history, you could recreate the style. You’d just have to scroll up.’ It might not be so hard after all. Not for one conversation, at least. Creepy, but not difficult.

‘So we can’t be certain it was Ned who texted Astrid that evening.’

But someone did. And they did it from Ned’s phone, in his studio.

Rozie consulted her notes.

‘I don’t see who. According to Valentine, both he and Roland Peng were in his studio at the time. Lord Mundy, Flora and her daughters were at the hall. They’re all witnesses for each other. Then Lord Mundy had the late-night meeting with Mr Wallace. Flora saw him arrive.’

The Queen nodded to herself. ‘Mr Wallace is not here either to confirm or deny that story. A car arrived at the hall, certainly. It might have been a taxi from the station, however.

I think where the St Cyrs are concerned, we must assume that everyone is prepared to lie for the sake of protecting the family, really. The thing is, who saw or spoke to Ned after they did?’

Rozie thought it through. It seemed unlikely, but it made sense. The problem had always been how Ned managed to disappear in London. If he never went there, a lot of questions answered themselves. And it made more sense of the location of the hand. She put her notebook down.

‘There’s two things I don’t get.’

‘If it wasn’t Ned, why haven’t the police worked this out? Wouldn’t DNA and fingerprints prove what really happened?’

‘You would have thought so,’ the Queen said with a brief sigh. ‘It’s why I’ve spent so long wondering if I might be wrong. If I’m right, whoever did this was very careful and very clever. I imagine they watched a lot of crime scene programmes. They’re fascinating. And the police didn’t think about the dogs.