Murder Most Royal

And just before Christmas, after a devil of a year, nor did she want it to be.

‘Certainly, ma’am.’ Rozie closed the laptop and left the Boss to get on with her day.

The Queen accompanied Mrs Maddox on a quick tour of the house to check that everything had been set up to her satisfaction, which as always, under this housekeeper’s care, it had been. Afterwards, she was drawn back to the saloon, with its inviting smell of woodsmoke. Most of Sandringham’s rooms were quite small and intimate by royal standards, but the saloon was designed to impress.

It was double height, with a plasterwork ceiling, a minstrels’ gallery and a grand piano. The tapestries and royal portraits on the walls might have made it look like a museum, which it effectively was when she wasn’t here, but modern sofas, cream walls and soft lamplight gave it a cosy, welcoming air. The crackling fire in the hearth – the only one in the house these days – was a Christmas highlight.

Among plentiful photographs of family, the ornaments were mainly horse bronzes and silver statuettes.

If it was possible to be surrounded by too many representations of the horse, the Queen hadn’t yet discovered how. Beyond the windows she caught a glimpse of the splendid new life-size statue of one of her favourite racehorses, the magnificent Estimate, which had recently been installed at the far end of the courtyard opposite the front porch and rounded out her collection rather nicely. For now, though, she approached a baize-covered table next to the piano, where a wooden jigsaw had been set out. Jigsaws were a feature of her six-week stay at Sandringham and she studied this one carefully. It was a Constable painting, she noted – lots of open sky and feathery trees. Tomorrow it would be disassembled, ready to be made again. There was no additional picture, which added a certain piquancy to the challenge. One had to rely on memory and patience – something not all members of the family possessed in equal measure.

She had hoped to distract herself with the picture, but her mind inevitably drifted back to Ned St Cyr. He was two years older than Charles, which would make him seventy now. Three-score years and ten, she thought. A biblical lifetime, although now one could easily live to a hundred, as witnessed by her own mother and all the centenary birthday telegrams one sent these days.

Ned, when he visited the next time, took his scolding with good grace.