Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

‘One of his best friends overdosed in Greece and Ned became evangelical about it. He made Abbottswood a sort of rehabilitation centre for a while.’

‘Until one of the inmates practically burned the place down,’ Charles reminded her.

‘He sounds interesting,’ Beatrice said with a grin.

‘How very Freudian,’ the Queen said, fairly certain that this was the correct use of the term, and also that it might encourage Philip to drop the subject at last.

Luckily, the dining room doors opened at precisely this moment to allow a procession of footmen to deliver towering individual chocolate soufflés dusted with icing sugar and decorated with filigree chocolate holly leaves.

There were suitable noises of appreciation and conversation moved on to other things. This meal was one of the Queen’s favourites of the year, and finally she could get on with enjoying it.

The following morning the Queen felt worse.

Her head hammered. She put it down to the champagne, and possibly the Zaza cocktail. She could barely open her eyes.

Her eyes shot open. The dull morning light was blinding.

She sat up sharply, before woozily collapsing back into her pillows.

Eventually, after a large breakfast and a short walk for the children to burn off some energy after their stocking-opening shenanigans, the rest of the family disappeared for a blissfully quiet couple of hours to go to church and talk to the crowds. If it had been possible for the Queen to feel more dreadful than she did at the thought of letting down the visitors at the gate, who had been waiting for hours in sub-zero temperatures to see her, she would have done so, but instead she took her time getting ready, accompanied by her dresser and the sound of carols on the radio.

Later, the rector arrived to give her private communion – there were advantages to being head of the Church of England – and everyone reconvened in the dining room for a meal of roast turkey, seven types of organic vegetable from various royal farms and gardens, a flaming Christmas pudding and, for those with the stomach for it, plenty of fine wine and champagne.

There were party crowns and, by tradition, the Queen was the only one who didn’t wear one. As a girl, she had found it so very funny when her father didn’t and everyone else did. They finished just in time to gather round the television set in the saloon at three, to watch the message she had recorded earlier at Buckingham Palace.