Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

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‘Topiary?’ Flora asked. ‘Sorry, we don’t have much of that. It tends to be in formal gardens. Apart from the maze, ours are very . . . You’ll see.’

They trudged over the drawbridge and round the gravel path that skirted the outside of the moat and led down a bank, towards a meadow fringed with willows. Rozie soon saw why Flora had insisted on wellingtons for them both: the ground was soggy and they disappeared in it up to their ankles.

‘Do you do a lot of work on the estate?’ Rozie asked.

Flora nodded. ‘Oh, yes. It keeps me busy and we can’t afford nearly enough professionals to do it all. There are the gardens and the new visitor plans. Dad manages the agricultural side of the farm, but I love the sheep. We lost our shepherdess last year. I can’t do everything with them yet, but it turns out I have a knack for it.’

Rozie could see some of the sheep Flora was referring to in a distant field, beyond the line of willows. Black and white, they dotted the landscape like something out of one of those jigsaws the Queen liked to do.

They were approaching a series of ponds linked by a stream that fed into the river. She explained that it was a nineteenth-century water garden that her mother had revived. They stood on a little wooden humpback bridge and looked into the fast-flowing stream.

‘I heard you had a bit of a tragedy recently,’ Rozie said.

‘Golly, which one?’ Flora asked.

‘A man called Chris Wallace.’

‘Oh, him. Yes, that was absolutely shocking. How did you know?’

‘It’s all around Dersingham, I’m afraid.’

Flora tutted. ‘Lord, the local gossips. He was devastated about his wife. Like Dad, really. I suppose that’s why he went to see him.’

‘I heard he’d been asked to move out.’

Flora turned to look sharply at Rozie. ‘Goodness, no. Laura Wallace was one of Mum’s best friends. Her children were like brothers and sisters to us when we were little.

‘Sorry, Dersingham’s a hotbed of gossip, as you say,’ Rozie backtracked, shaking her head and grinning in a placatory way. ‘The crochet group is bad, but the embroiderers . . . you have no idea.’

It seemed to work. Flora warmed up again. She showed Rozie the white gardens enclosed among lichen-covered walls and low-cut hedges, for which Georgina St Cyr had become famous.