Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

Everyone seemed to have been to school with one another, or knew one another’s parents. Like Henry, they had all been on shoots since childhood and knew exactly what to do. Rozie knew her way around a rifle, but had only started rough shooting with shotguns in the summer, and never on anything as formal as this, with whistles and clickers and pegs to show each gun where to stand, and matching pairs of shotguns that cost more than her university education. It was like going back a century in time.

‘Hullo.

How are you getting on?’

She looked round to see the friendly face of Lady Caroline Cadwallader, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, hands thrust into the pockets of her tweed jacket.

Rozie explained her mission from Sir Simon.

‘In case it’s one of us, d’you mean, who did it?’ Lady Caroline asked.

‘It is, isn’t it? You want to spare the Queen embarrassment. Well, I knew Ned, so you can put me on your list, but I hadn’t seen him in an age. We moved in the same circles as teenagers. Our mothers came out together.

’

‘Came out?’ Rozie asked.

‘As debs, not lesbians,’ Lady Caroline clarified breezily. ‘In 1939. What a year. So many of the men they danced with that summer were dead five years later. One of my uncles was shot down over Belgium and another was lost in the North Sea. Georgina’s father was never the same. He came back a shadow of the man they sent to war. Anyway, what was I saying?’

Rozie reminded her, and Lady Caroline peered out across the field.

‘Oh, right.

Is Nancy here too?’ Rozie wondered.

‘No, no. She went off to New Zealand. The marriage to Gerry was pretty awful, I gather. She married a sheep farmer and third time lucky, as far as I know. Ned’s eldest boy and girl are proud New Zealanders these days. The boy builds bunkers for billionaires. I can’t remember his name. Fascinating job, though, don’t you think? When the apocalypse comes, all the private jets will be heading to Auckland. Gerry might be one of them. He’s one of those few old-money people who actually still possess it.

His parents were frightful snobs. They used to refer to the Queen and Prince Philip as the German and the Greek. Although, strictly speaking, they should have called Prince Philip the Dane, I suppose. The Greeks had sort of borrowed the Danish royal family because they didn’t have one of their own. Who else?’ She scanned the line of guns until she got to the end and handed Rozie her binoculars.