Murder Most Royal

‘Do we know anything about the swimmer?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Rozie said. ‘He came from a village south of here, called Vickery.’

‘That’s on the Ladybridge Estate.’

Rozie nodded. ‘The thing is, Katie’s a wild swimmer, too. She says that if you’re very experienced, as he was, you know not to go out alone in freezing water, and not to stay out too long. She’s not convinced it was an accident, and she doesn’t think the person who gave her the article does, either.’

The Queen felt very bleak. New Year’s Eve had been so full of happiness and hope at Sandringham, as they danced into the small hours.

The following morning had been marred by Jack Lions’s interview, but that had been an annoyance, really, nothing more. To think that, only a few miles away, a man’s life was ending in such a tragic way.

There was a pause while she called Willow to her and stroked under the corgi’s warm ears. That was the day she had found out about Judy Raspberry. She had been convinced that the hit-and-run was part of a bigger picture.

Someone was covering their tracks. Yet wherever she looked for conspiracies she found coincidences. She had been too sure of herself. Even after ninety years, she needed to learn humility sometimes.

But the suspicious death of someone connected to the St Cyr family seat? That didn’t smack of coincidence at all. Her moment of humility passed. She patted the dog and looked at Rozie.

‘Has Katie arranged to talk to . . .’ she consulted the article once more ‘. . . The Dix Dunkers?’

Rozie nodded.

‘She’s meeting one of them tomorrow, ma’am.’

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

The little village of Vickery, much like West Newton, consisted of neat cottages lined up along well-tended roads. It looked as if it had just been swept and clipped, ready to star in the sort of Christmas movie where the heroine, home for the holidays, discovers the sexy wickedness of Hugh Grant and chooses – inexplicably – to settle down with someone safe at the end of the third reel. Rozie used to watch those kind of movies with her sister when they were both tired from studying, curled up on the duvet side by side, waiting for their mother to shout at them to turn off the light.

She had always dismissed the settings as unreal, but now she knew that wasn’t true: they existed, when wealthy landlords wanted them to.

It was Rozie, not Katie, who was visiting the organiser of the Dix Dunkers. Katie had called to say she’d had a bad night and could barely make it down the stairs.