Murder Most Royal

If no bones were broken, if no close family had recently died, one soldiered on.

She picked up the telephone on her study desk and asked the switchboard to put her through to the duke.

He was awake, but groggy.

‘What? Speak up, woman! You sound as though you’re at the bottom of a lake.’

‘In the helicopter?’ he barked.

‘We can hardly use a 747.’ Her head hurt and she was feeling tetchy.

‘In the navy we were banned . . .’ wheeze ‘. . . from flying with a cold. Bloody dangerous.’

‘You won’t be piloting the flight.

’

‘If it bursts my eardrums you can personally blame Simon from me. Bloody fool. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

The Queen refrained from pointing out that Sir Simon was an ex-naval helicopter pilot and the GP who had advised him was thoroughly sound. He had his reasons for counselling in favour of a quick journey by air instead of a long one by rail. Philip was ninety-five – hard to believe, but true. He shouldn’t really be out of bed at all, with his raging temperature.

Oh, what a year this had been, and what a fitting end to it. Despite her delightful birthday celebrations in the spring, she would be glad to see the back of 2016.

‘The decision is made, I’m afraid. We’ll fly tomorrow.’

She pretended she didn’t hear Philip’s wheezy in-breath before what would no doubt be a catalogue of complaints, and put the phone down. Christmas was fast approaching and she just wanted to be quietly tucked up in the familiar rural comfort of Sandringham, and to be able to focus on her paperwork without it swimming in front of her eyes.

The autumn and early winter had been fraught with uncertainty. The Brexit referendum and the US elections had revealed deep divisions in Whitehall and Washington that it would take a very steady hand to repair. Through it all, the Queen had played host to presidents and politicians, she had been a greeter of ambassadors, a pinner-on of medals and a host for charity events – mostly at Buckingham Palace, the place she thought of as the gilded office block on the roundabout.

Now Norfolk drew her with its wide-open spaces and enfolding pines, its teeming marshes, vast English skies and freewheeling birds.

The following day the helicopter whisked the royal couple, blankets on their knees, dogs at their feet, past Cambridge, past the magnificent medieval towers of Ely Cathedral, the ‘ship of the fens’, and on, north-eastwards towards King’s Lynn.