Buckingham Palace Gardens

by Anne Perry

  Narraway did not answer immediately. He studied Forbes’s intense face, the powerful nose and curious, thin-lipped mouth, which was yet so expressive.

  In the end he waited so long it was Forbes who broke the silence. “Is that what the Empire is for?” he asked. “To change everything into something we can buy and sell?”

  Narraway was repulsed by the thought. It was worse than offensive, it was blasphemous. But he did not want Forbes to know that. That he should be so moved was a revelation he could not afford to make. “Exploitation?” he said calmly.

  “Isn’t it?” Forbes’s black eyebrows rose. He was watching Narraway intensely.

  “And you are against it?” Narraway allowed no more than a shred of sarcasm in his voice.

  Temper flared in Forbes’s face, then vanished. “A longer view,” he said softly. “What will Africa be a century from now? Dominion, friend, enemy, battleground?”

  Again Narraway said nothing.

  “We will not be alive then,” Forbes answered himself. “Is that all that matters, the basis of all judgment?”

  Narraway did not answer. “But you think Dunkeld will build it anyway?” he said instead.

  “Not easily, and not with my help, but yes, he will build it.” Again Forbes’s face was dark with emotion, but with such a conflicting mixture it was impossible to read.

  Over dinner they spoke of other things. Forbes was an interesting and hospitable host, and Narraway did not arrive home until close to midnight.

  IN THE MORNING Narraway was back at the Palace facing Pitt. There was a tray with tea on the table and Pitt sat opposite him. He looked weary, trapped. More than that, there was a disillusion in him that Narraway had not seen before. Suddenly he realized how being here oppressed Pitt, who had witnessed violence and degradation often enough, but never before on this level. It was not that these murders were more brutal than others, it was that they were here in a place he had considered inviolate.

  Perhaps it mattered also that the victims were women, the second one not wildly unlike Charlotte, at least in class and origin. Charlotte had something of the same warmth inside her, the same courage and quick tongue. She was just gentler, and perhaps immeasurably happier.

  This was breaking Pitt’s ideals of his monarch, and threatening his feelings dangerously.

  The ideals Narraway did not envy. He had lost his own illusions about people too long ago. Proximity had forced him into realism. It was hard to believe that Pitt had kept his naïveté so long. He must simply have refused to see what he did not wish. Narraway felt both impatience and pity for that.

  Then he thought of Charlotte’s face, her eyes, the curve of her mouth and her throat, and was drenched with loneliness. In that instant he would have traded all the knowledge and understanding he had in return for the innocence in Pitt that made Charlotte love him. Was it innocence or hope?

  And if the fact of these Palace murders crushed that, what was Pitt going to lose?

  Pitt finished his tea and set his cup down, waiting for Narraway to speak. His eyes were dark-rimmed, his skin shadowed, and there were tiny cuts on his jaw where he had shaved clumsily. Did violent death still churn his stomach too, in spite of how well he hid it? Did he share Narraway’s sense of guilt for not preventing Minnie Sorokine’s death?

  “Is Sorokine still locked in his room?” he asked.

  “Yes. There was no alternative,” Pitt replied unhappily.

  “Are you satisfied he killed her?” Narraway did not want to ask, but he needed the matter closed, and Pitt’s troubled face left him no choice. “Presumably she realized he had killed the first woman, and he could not afford to leave her alive because sooner or later she would betray him over it?”

  Pitt spoke slowly. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why aren’t you satisfied?” Narraway’s voice rose in spite of his effort to keep it level and under control. He was accustomed to anarchy, treason, and very considerable violence, but he had not met sexual aberration before. There was something uniquely repulsive about the intimacy of it, like the foul smell of some disease.

  “There was no blood on him,” Pitt spoke carefully, as if picking his way through chaotic thoughts. “None at all, except the little from the scratches on his face. Nothing of the dark gore that came from her.”

  Narraway’s stomach turned and he felt the chill of sweat on his skin. “He’d had all night to wash,” he pointed out.

  Pitt shook his head. “There was shaving water in the jug and basin, but it was all clean. Nothing in it but soap. And what about his clothes?”

  “He stripped to do it?” Narraway suggested. “There was no blood on anyone the first time either. It seems to be his pattern.”

  Pitt frowned. “The first time he might have planned it, but the second was because she challenged him. He would hardly have told her to wait there while he stripped off, then came back and killed her!”

  “Then what did he do?” Narraway demanded, frustration burning up inside him. Just as Pitt was still unfamiliar with the complexities of anarchy, so was he with the nature of murder.

  “I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “He was distressed over her death, but he looked totally sane to me. He denied it.”

  Narraway was startled. “Did you expect him to confess?”

  Pitt pushed his hair out of his eyes with a clumsy hand. “It’s not just what he said, it’s the way in which he spoke. I don’t know what I think.” His brow furrowed. “There’s something wrong with it, something about all of it that I haven’t understood. I’ve racked my mind, but all I see is the break in reasoning, the place where something should be to tie it together. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.”

  “Then for God’s sake, think!” Narraway said desperately. “Before it’s too late. We’ve got to make an arrest. This victim wasn’t a whore, she was Dunkeld’s daughter. We can’t afford to be wrong. If we are, and we have to admit it, it will be the end of Special Branch. We won’t ever have a case higher in the public eye than this, when it comes out. And it will.”

  “I won’t condemn the wrong man to a life in the hell of a madhouse,” Pitt told him, stubbornness setting hard in his face. “Have you ever been in one of those places? I have. He’ll be gibbering mad in a year or two, even if he isn’t to begin with. It would be cleaner and more humane to hang him in the first place. I can still hear the screaming of Bedlam in my nightmares sometimes.”

  Narraway leaned forward. “Pitt, we can’t afford any more dead women, whether we make or break the Cape-to-Cairo railway. One of those three men has murdered two women in four days. The Queen will be back here this week.”

  Pitt said nothing.

  Narraway waited again, his mind going back to what Forbes had said about Julius Sorokine. He seemed a civilized and intelligent man, even if a little indolent—or taking some of his privileges for granted. What could possibly have happened to turn him into a creature who had cut the throats and gouged open the bellies of two women? “Something started it,” he said aloud. “Find it.”

  Pitt looked up. “Two in four days? It started long before now. You aren’t sane one day and then a raving, blood-soaked murderer the next, unless something has happened to shatter your mind in between, and nothing did. They sat around talking about the African railway and planning the future full of wealth and achievement for all of them. They flirted, specifically Mrs. Sorokine with Mr. Marquand. And Mrs. Dunkeld is in love with Mr. Sorokine.”

  “And he with her?” Narraway asked quickly. Was that a thread to the truth?

  Pitt shrugged very slightly. “I don’t know. But none of it began while they were here, and I doubt anyone learned of it for the first time either. Even if they did, it doesn’t explain killing the prostitute. It’s not a crime of jealousy or even betrayal—it’s hatred born out of some kind of madness.”

  “Given that this particular insanity lies dormant most of the time, what wakens it out of control?” Narraway asked, the urgency
building up inside him again. “You’ve dealt with madness before, people who kill and go on killing until they are caught. I know evil, but not unreason. Help me, Pitt! If I search through Sorokine’s history, what am I looking for?”

  Pitt sighed; there was weariness and desperation in it. “Obviously another death like these: a woman with her throat and belly slashed. Before that, for violent quarrels, irrational hatred of women, someone who belittled him, jilted him, did something that he might have seen as betrayal. An explosive temper. It will have to have been covered up very carefully. He’s a diplomat. Look for someone else being blamed, or something unsolved, possibly described as an accident.”

  Narraway considered for several minutes. “I spoke to Watson Forbes,” he said finally. “He’s against the Cape-to-Cairo railway. He believes it will exploit Africa to its disadvantage, and ultimately to the disadvantage of the whole British Empire, possibly in the next century.”

  “Interesting,” Pitt admitted. “But I can’t see any connection with the murders. Can you?”

  “No. They don’t seem to have anything to do with the railway, just a ghastly coincidence that they exploded here in the Palace just as the railway is being discussed. But I don’t like coincidences. I’ve seen very few real ones.”

  “There are other things I need to make sense of,” Pitt went on. “If Mrs. Sorokine deduced from all these odd pieces of information exactly how her husband killed Sadie, and possibly why, then I want to know how she did it. They seem unrelated and nonsensical to me.”

  “What pieces?” Narraway asked.

  “Port bottles with blood in them, a broken dish, which nobody admits ever existed, buckets of water being carried hurriedly and discreetly up-and downstairs. The Queen’s own sheets slept on, and soaked in blood. How did whatever Minnie Sorokine knew of that prove to her that it was her husband who killed Sadie?”

  “Who was carrying buckets of water? Not Sorokine?”

  “No, household servants.”

  “Then what connection has it?”

  “I have no idea!”

  Narraway stood up. “I’ll look into his past. And the others, at least where they cross.”

  Fifteen minutes later he was outside in the sun and the wind. An hour after that he was talking to a friend who had amassed a fortune in shipping and spent a good deal of it buying and selling gems. He knew most of the cities of the Mediterranean, both of Europe and of Africa, and of course the great diamond cutting and dealing centers of the Middle East. His name was Maurice Kelter.

  “Sorokine,” he turned the name over experimentally. “What is it, Russian?”

  “Possibly,” Narraway replied, crossing his legs and leaning back in the broad leather chair. He was at his club, where he should have been at ease. “If it is, it will be third-or fourth-generation. He is a diplomat, tall, good-looking, probably around forty.”

  Kelter nodded, sipping at the whisky and soda at his elbow. “Yes. I know the fellow you mean. Married Dunkeld’s daughter, didn’t he? Lovely-looking woman. Bit of a handful. Why are you interested in him? Has something happened?”

  Narraway smiled, but it felt forced. “Things are happening all the time. What sort of thing did you think would be connected to Sorokine?”

  Kelter made a little grimace. “To be frank, probably indifference. I don’t think he’s ever stretched himself to the best he could be. Very pleasant chap, but things have come easy to him. Position, enough money, certainly women.”

  “Many women?” Narraway asked quickly.

  Kelter’s eyes opened wider. “Possibly. Why?”

  Narraway ignored the question. “Temper?” he asked.

  Kelter smiled. “Not that I heard of, but…do you want unsubstantiated rumor?”

  “If that’s all you have.” Narraway disliked innuendo, but that was often where lines of investigation began. “Temper?” he prompted again.

  Kelter put his whisky down. “There was a particularly ugly affair in Cape Town a few years ago. Half-caste woman was murdered. Throat cut, stomach slit open. Never found out who did it. Prostitute of sorts, so it wasn’t followed the way it would have been if she’d been decent, or white.”

  Narraway was skeptical. Could it really be so easy? “What was Sorokine’s involvement with it?”

  Kelter shrugged. “Don’t really know. Whispers. Apparently he knew the woman, had some kind of relationship with her.”

  “Did the police investigate him?”

  Kelter sighed. “We’re talking about a half-caste prostitute on the edges of Cape Town, Narraway. Nobody investigated it. People asked a few questions. Men came and went: miners, traders, explorers, adventurers, all nationalities, ex-patriots who couldn’t go home, drunks and fugitives, all sorts. It could have been anyone.”

  “Who said it was Sorokine?”

  Kelter frowned. “Now that I think of it, I’m not certain. It was not much more than looks and nods. I didn’t track it down because frankly I didn’t care. There were far more interesting things going on at the time.”

  Narraway did not pursue it with Kelter, but there were other people he knew from whom he could collect favors, and he sought them out now. It was not easy to keep the sense of urgency out of his manner. He knew that betraying his need would open him up to being lied to, and favors done him now would earn repayment later, perhaps at a time when he could not afford it.

  He walked into another crowded club room, the pungent cigar smoke in the air mixed with the smell of leather armchairs and old malt whisky. Sometimes he loved the game of question and counterquestion, perhaps partly because he was so good at it. He saw the respect in other men’s eyes, the guarded admiration, and the equally guarded fear. Today he was tired of it. The constant measuring of words, even gestures, the sheer loneliness of it weighed him down. Pitt might feel trapped in the suffocating ritual of the Palace now, but it was only for a short while—days at the most. Then he would go home again to Charlotte, to warmth and kindness, to an inner safety Narraway would never have. Even if all his illusions were broken, his lifetime’s loyalties destroyed, at heart Pitt could not be damaged. Nothing could touch what was safe inside him. Had he any idea how fortunate he was?

  He walked round a corner and found the man he was looking for. He sat down opposite him, knowing he was intruding on a few moments of peace and also that the man dared not refuse him.

  Yet if he did not play these games, what would he do? Through the long years he had developed no other skill that used his mind fully, or the sensitivities he had honed.

  Welling looked up and jerked himself out of the study in which he had been lost. “Who are you after?” he asked.

  “Sorokine,” Narraway replied.

  “Dead,” Welling told him. “Good man. Died about five years ago. Surprised you didn’t know that.” There was a faint glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes.

  “Julius Sorokine,” Narraway corrected him.

  Some of the pleasure died out of Welling’s face. “Oh. Yes. The son. Good man too, but a bit too handsome for his own well-being. Doesn’t have to work hard enough. Suppose that might change. Seemed to be putting a bit more energy into it a couple of months ago, then slacked off again.”

  “Slacked off?” Narraway was startled. This didn’t seem relevant to the murderer in Cape Town he was looking for, but it was interesting because it made no sense. Any anomaly should be pursued. “What was he doing?”

  “For God’s sake, Narraway, don’t treat me like a fool!” Welling said impatiently. “He’s negotiating for this damn railway for Dunkeld. Talking to the Belgians and the Germans, and all the odd African lands right the way up to Cairo.”

  “And he slacked off? Why?” Now Narraway was really interested in spite of himself. Suddenly Sorokine was more complex than he had assumed. “Did someone else approach him?” It was an ugly thought, a kind of betrayal that was peculiarly offensive, presumably for money.

  Welling smiled but his lips were turned down. “I doubt it. Th
ere’s no one else in a position to rival Dunkeld, since Watson Forbes isn’t interested. And Sorokine’s married to Dunkeld’s daughter anyway. It would be against his own interest.”

  “So why? Just lazy?”

  Welling shrugged. “I’ve nothing but rumors, bits of whisper not worth a lot.”

  “Sabotage?” Narraway suggested. Had someone looked into the old murder and found something? Or even a second crime somewhere, and blackmailed him over it? He found that hard to believe, simply because the murder appeared to be the product of eruptions of a darkness inside the mind that no one could control, no matter what the threat.

  “Sabotage is always possible.” Welling misunderstood him. “Seven thousand miles of track, mostly unprotected? Pardon me, but it’s a stupid question.”

  “Not of the track,” Narraway told him. “I meant of the project in the first place.”

  “By somehow removing Sorokine? I suppose it’s possible. But pretty short term, and hardly worth the trouble.” Welling sat up a little straighter in the chair, his eyes sharper. “What the hell are you really after, Narraway?”

  “What was being said, exactly?” Narraway ignored the question.

  “It’s serious?” Welling blinked. “What I heard was that Sorokine was uncertain in his loyalty to the project altogether. Someone had been talking to him about lateral lines, from the center to the sea, rather than a long spine up the back of Africa. The real future of the British Empire lies in sovereignty of the sea, not of Africa. Build railways to take inland timbers, ivory, gold, and so on, to the ports. Let the nations of Africa have their own transport, independently, build it and maintain it themselves, and we’ll ship the goods round the world. It’s what we’ve always done. We’ve explored the world, settled it, and traded with it. Africa was never a maritime continent. Keep it that way.” He was watching Narraway’s face more closely than he let on, eyes half-veiled.