Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

On Wednesday, the Queen had her first encounter of the new year with the Prime Minister. It was just a phone call at this point; one didn’t ask a busy politician to travel all the way to Norfolk for the afternoon. And one was quite relieved they didn’t want to.

Sir Simon had warned her the conversation might be a difficult one. The PM had been ‘thinking’, apparently. There was certainly a lot to think about. It turned out that the state visit she had proposed to the new president of the USA, which had been mooted in the autumn to happen some time in the spring, was now rising rapidly up the agenda.

‘The president is very keen to show his support for Britain, ma’am. As we are to him.’

‘He’d like me to be the first foreign leader that he meets after his inauguration. He’s thinking about later this month. We’re working on the details.’ The PM sounded delighted by this, and proud. ‘As we’ve discussed before, I’d like to show our appreciation by offering him a state visit as soon as possible.

Perhaps in the summer.’

As they had indeed discussed before, the Queen thought it a dreadful idea.

‘Presidents don’t usually visit until their second year of office at least,’ she reminded her.

‘This will show how important the special relationship is to us, ma’am.’

The relationship was special to the PM, the Queen knew, because she needed a trade deal with America to make up for the ones she would be losing with the European Union.

The Queen did not appreciate a VIP tour of her palaces being trotted out as a bonbon for foreign leaders the country desperately needed to impress.

This was partly because the first time she had done it – to the magnificently ungrateful General De Gaulle – it had been an abject failure. She preferred such visits to be a mark of mutual respect. However, it was not her decision. The political atmosphere, both here and across the Atlantic, was fraught at the moment. Perhaps such a visit could help to calm choppy waters. If she could use her hospitality to contribute in any way, of course she would.

More to the point, Ned’s body was still undiscovered. Judy Raspberry was hooked up to various machines in hospital. If Julian Cassidy and Helena Fisher had conspired to achieve this, the Queen couldn’t for the life of her work out why. She refused to believe that it was because of the trampling of a lawn or, however fond she was of dogs, the death of a cockapoo.