Murder Most Royal

As she knotted her headscarf under her chin in preparation for leaving the house, she wondered idly whether poor, nervous Arthur Raspberry would be there, and thought back to his redoubtable little sister, Ivy. She had been at the beach at Snettisham, of course, the fateful day of the hand washing up on the shore. The Raspberrys and Snettisham . . . Judy was not the only member of the family to see something interesting on the beach. The Queen pictured the scene after the storm, with the plastic bag bobbing on the water, and the terrified girl.

That was the day the drugs washed up, too, not all of which were recovered. Sir Simon had mentioned that a package had gone missing from the bigger bag. But after Ivy’s discovery, the beach would have been full of police officers and forensic teams. That mental image gave the Queen pause for thought.

The Land Rover was waiting for her in the forecourt, but her chief personal protection officer was not. Normally, when she was preparing to go out, he lurked outside, ready to accompany her in the car or follow on as required, but there was no sign of him She turned to the nearest footman.

‘Do you know where Chief Inspector Jackson is?’

‘Do you mean Inspector Depiscopo, ma’am? He took over your protection from Mr Jackson yesterday. I’ll find out for you.’

The Queen berated herself for forgetting. Her PPOs regularly rotated shifts and Jackson had gone back to London yesterday. Jackson, she had known for years, but Depiscopo was new.

He was part of a Government scheme to save money by rotating officers across a range of VIPs. So far it had annoyed all concerned and cost a fortune in additional overtime, because traditional royal PPOs didn’t think of their role in strict terms of ‘on’ and ‘off’, but the new policemen definitely did. Nor did they understand where to be and when, and how one liked to work. She waited impatiently for a couple of minutes and decided to drive the Land Rover by herself.

‘He knows where to find me,’ she said tersely.

The footman gulped and nodded. Depiscopo wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

At the stud, the Queen spent some pleasant time watching the mares with their foals in the Walled Garden. Like her, the foals had an official birthday in addition to their real one, and theirs was always the first of January. One of the jobs of a breeder was to encourage them to be conceived in time to be born as early in the year before as possible.