Murder Most Royal by SJ Bennett

Author:SJ Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter 19

T

he house party at Sandringham got through a few bottles of its own that evening. After breakfast the next morning, while several of the guests were sleeping it off, the Queen took the dogs for a walk on her own so she could think. A circuit of the lakes generally suited this purpose. They weren’t large – more oversized ponds, really – and had been created with islands, rockeries and rich planting, so the eye would always have something to admire. Her great-grandfather once said he would have liked to be a landscape gardener if he hadn’t been king. The Queen did not personally agree, but thought what a jolly job it must be: out in the fresh air much of the time, surrounded by nature, making things. She had yet to meet a landscape gardener whose company she didn’t enjoy.

Yesterday, she’d asked Mrs Maddox whether there were any rumours about Mrs Fisher and the bean counter. Astrid Westover had suggested ‘the awful man from Muncaster’ threatened Ned because of the death of Mrs Fisher’s cockapoo. The Queen had assumed Astrid was alluding to Matt Fisher, but now she wondered if the ‘awful man’ was Cassidy, and Astrid had been referring to the scuffle in the pub car park that Sir Simon had mentioned. It is quite an emotional involvement, to shoot a boar and then threaten a man because the animal has caused the death of your ex-employer’s wife’s pet dog. Then to hide a damaged car and get that same ex-employer’s wife to confirm when the accident happened. The Queen was starting to see Cassidy with new eyes.

The housekeeper had readily confirmed the Queen’s suspicions. According to the servants’ hall at Muncaster, the affair had started in the summer. Apparently it was in revenge for Mr Fisher’s relationship with his art adviser. The Queen reflected that one missed all the country gossip when one was in London. Although, of course, the city was a rumour-factory of its own.

So, Cassidy and Mrs Fisher were much more than casual acquaintances. It must indeed have been Cassidy who threatened Ned over the poor cockapoo. The Queen thought about Ned’s dogs, too, and the chaos in the sitting room at Abbottswood after his disappearance, which the police seemed unconcerned by. Then there was the telephone call to Julian Cassidy for no obvious reason, the day before he disappeared. None of it connected and it was quite exhausting to try and fit it all together. The only reason she had got involved at all was because she felt certain that the hit-and-run on Judy Raspberry was important, and that it didn’t have anything to do with the goings-on at Muncaster. One liked to think one’s neighbours and staff were not homicidal. Now, if anything, she had more evidence than the chief constable that they might be. Perhaps she should leave it to the police after all. But people kept telling her things.

She was halfway round the ponds when she was surprised to see a young person of indeterminate sex in jeans and a hoodie walking rapidly towards her.

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