Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

It had been such a common sight in her youth, but these days they chased man-made trails, not foxes. Thanks to Jack Lions and his ilk, a thousand years of tradition had been reduced to a schoolboy game.

‘Ah. Trouble ahead, ma’am. Not to worry.’

The driver of the Queen’s Range Rover slowed down to let two cars past. Horns blared, whistles blew and flags waved from the windows. The Queen recognised the noise: these were saboteurs, keen to find the hounds and distract them. They were convinced that the hunts still went for foxes, either deliberately or if the hounds happened to find one by accident, and did whatever they could to put them off the scent.

The result was a disturbing cacophony of noise that unsettled everyone in the car. Once it had passed, the Range Rover sped up again smoothly for half a mile. Then, without warning, it braked sharply.

‘There’s someone in the road ahead.’

‘Another saboteur?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am. A body.’

From his vantage point in the meadow, Ollie Knight saw a hand rise out of the moat.

It reminded him of a film he’d seen about King Arthur. There should be a sword somewhere. Except, this hand was inside a diving suit, and it was signalling that they had found something. It didn’t take long for the divers in the moat to bring their discovery to the spot where the forensic team were waiting. It took three men to lift it. As far as Ollie could tell, it was a man-sized tube made of sacking, wrapped in a heavy chain. As it rose above the water, a human arm slipped out of the sacking, bloated and discoloured, ending at the wrist. Ollie was transfixed. When he eventually looked up to see who else was watching, the face at the upper window was gone.

A few yards ahead of the Range Rover, a girl of about sixteen or seventeen lay on her side near the verge. She was wearing riding boots and a hard hat, and a bright yellow vest over her jacket, but in the sharp light and shadows of the winter sun, she would still have been easy to miss. The driver had done well to spot her in time.

The girl’s limbs were akimbo and her face was very pale.

‘You need to find her mount,’ the Queen said. ‘It must be round here somewhere.’

The driver looked round unhappily. He clearly didn’t want to stay where they were, but they couldn’t go on and leave the girl in place. Rozie was already leaping out of the car to see how badly hurt she was. The new protection officer, Depiscopo, had a panicked look in his eye that belied the set to his jaw.