Actually I did have an idea. I suspected that she’d found out about Coronet Domestics and I was about to be dispatched to darkest Gloucestershire to hold knitting wool and walk Pekinese dogs. I put on my one smart black and white suit and this time I presented myself at the correct visitors’ entrance on the left of the main forecourt, having successfully negotiated the bearskins on guard. I was escorted upstairs and around to the rear wing of the palace, to the queen’s private study, overlooking the gardens. It was a simple, peaceful room, perfectly mirroring Her Majesty’s personality. The only adornments were some lovely pieces of Wedgwood and a small marquetry table. One wouldn’t speculate how or where they were acquired.

Her Majesty was sitting, straight-backed and severe, at her writing desk, with spectacles perched on her nose, and she looked up as I was announced.

“Ah, Georgiana, my dear. Do come and sit down. A bad business.” She shook her head, then turned her face for the obligatory cheek kiss and curtsy. “I was most distressed when I heard the news.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” I perched on the striped Regency chair opposite her.

“It’s not your fault,” she said curtly. “You can’t always be watching that fool of a brother. I take it he is innocent?”

I heaved an enormous sigh of relief. She hadn’t heard about my domestic adventures, then. “Of course he’s innocent, ma’am. You know Binky—can you imagine him drowning somebody in a bath?”

“Frankly, no. Shooting somebody by accident, perhaps.” She shook her head again. “So what’s being done for him, that’s what I want to know.”

“His solicitor has been notified. His wife has arrived and is currently tackling the police.”

“Then if they are his entire defense team, I don’t hold out much hope for a happy outcome,” she said. “I’d like to help but the king says we must not intervene. We must be seen to have complete faith in our country’s legal system and not pull rank just because it’s a family member.”

“I quite understand, ma’am.”

She peered at me over her glasses. “I’m counting on you, Georgiana. Your brother is a decent sort of fellow, but not overly endowed with brains, I fear. You, on the other hand, have always had more than your share of wit and intelligence. Use them on your brother’s behalf or I’m afraid he’ll end up confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.”

This was all too true. “I am doing what I can, Your Majesty, but it’s not easy.”

“I’m sure it’s not. This French person who drowned—do you have any idea who might have wanted to drown him in your bathtub?”