Murder Most Royal полностью

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.’

‘Oh?’

‘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. What was your other question?’

‘How did Ned die?’

‘In the most old-fashioned way possible. He was poisoned, I imagine.’

Rozie nodded. Of course. In the true St Cyr tradition.

‘The thing about poison is it’s difficult to use if you want it to be untraceable,’ the Queen said. ‘I’ve read enough detective novels to know that much. If you don’t intend the body ever to be found intact, it’s much easier. Then he was hidden away, stripped of his distinctive clothes, his phone, his keys. The killer could return later, to dispose of the body at their leisure. The important thing was to create a distraction for the next few hours.’

‘So when Flora said she saw Ned drive her father away from Ladybridge . . .’

‘She saw someone in Ned’s car, in his distinctive coat and hat. Or else she was lying.’

Rozie tried to imagine the sheer audaciousness of it. She hadn’t associated the St Cyr family with bravura. Eccentricity yes, but . . . On the other hand, was there anything you could put past the aristocracy? Even so . . .

‘If you’re right, ma’am, and the killer took on Mr St Cyr’s identity, they could have been caught out in his Land Rover, his car, his house, his flat. The risk . . . So many things could have gone wrong.’

‘It was a risk worth taking, apparently,’ the Queen said. “Better to reign in hell.” Perhaps things did go wrong. But here we are: the police still don’t know where to find the body. Without it, they have nothing. And of course, if they had it, it would explain everything.’

‘Do you know where it is, ma’am?’

‘I think so. There’s only one logical place it can be.’

‘I . . . I still can’t really believe it. It’s hard to imagine . . .’

‘That was the idea.’

‘But yes, I see what you mean,’ Rozie said. ‘If you’re right, I’d know where I’d look.’

‘Good. Now I just have to persuade the chief constable to look there, too.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. They’re saying we’re a hotbed of drugs now.’

‘Good morning.’

The Queen made herself comfortable opposite her husband in the saloon and accepted the offer of coffee from her page. Philip looked up from the Recorder and grunted back.

‘May I see?’ she asked.

He handed her the paper with a flick of the wrist. ‘Bastards. Every one of ’em. The drivel they’re paid to write.’

The Queen studied the article in question.

The piece was surprisingly accurate. It described the money-laundering scheme, pointed out that the clubs in question tended to be in the west of the country, and suggested that she had expressed concern about her own doorstep, in the east. It then went on to describe the royal loft and its management in glowing terms.