Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

‘She tried to see Mrs Raspberry in the hospital but it was impossible,’ Rozie said. ‘She’s on a special ward and visitors are tightly controlled. She’s pretty safe for now.’

‘Thank goodness. What else?’

‘I’ve made some progress. Not the type you were hoping for, though, ma’am.’

Rozie realised this had become a bit of a refrain. She told the Queen about the discovery of the dented Freelander. And the fact that she had found Julian Cassidy, practically comatose with drink, on his living room floor, surrounded by empty wine bottles.

‘Have you reported it? The car, I mean?’ she asked.

‘There’s no point,’ Rozie said. ‘The police already know. He was clever. I found out he reported it himself, two days later. He said he’d hit a deer that suddenly leaped out at him on the road to Muncaster, and it had made him crash into a tree. The second crash was real enough. He got Helena Fisher to back him up. She said she was driving the other way and saw it happen. They even called someone out to try and find the deer and put it down humanely.

‘No injured deer was found, I assume,’ the Queen said.

‘You saw the damage to the car. Does his story seem plausible?’

Rozie sighed. ‘Just about, I suppose. I don’t believe it, though.’

‘And he’d been drinking?’

‘Heavily. And repeatedly. You don’t get through all those bottles in one night.’

The Queen grimaced. ‘First the scuffle with Ned. Now the wine. We had high hopes for the bean counter.’

‘If he did hit Mrs Raspberry, I don’t see how he could have done it deliberately.

‘Hmmm,’ the Queen said. ‘Not alone, certainly.’ And yet, he seemed to be drinking himself into oblivion. She was reminded of young Arthur for a moment: another hopeless criminal who couldn’t live with himself. Still, why on earth would he do it?

‘There’s something else, ma’am. On the subject of Helena Fisher.’

‘The police found the body of a wild boar buried on her estate yesterday. It was shot with a rifle, right between the eyes.’

‘One of Ned’s boar?’ the Queen asked.

‘It looks as though they escaped into Muncaster’s woods. Helena Fisher says she was walking with her dogs and one of them disturbed the boar somehow, and it didn’t survive the attack.’

‘The cockapoo,’ the Queen said to herself.

‘She was worried for the others. And herself. She admitted asking Mr Cassidy to help her, because her husband was away and he was the first person she thought of who has a rifle.