by Anne Perry
“Then don’t look for it!” he said sharply. “That’s an order. Do you hear me?”
She sat very stiffly. “Yes, sir, course I ’ear yer. Can I go now, then? If they in’t gonner work out ’oo I am, then I in’t better be ’ere longer’n I can explain, ’ad I?”
He watched her go with a sense of misgiving, as if the solution he had first grasped were already slipping out of his hands, and out of control.
He took another piece of toast and ate it without being aware of the taste.
Could Minnie have confided in anyone else, perhaps asked them questions that might have indicated her train of thought? Perhaps it did not matter to the case, but it mattered to him that he understood what had happened and saw all the pieces fit together. It was more than simple hurt pride that Minnie Sorokine had organized all the elements into a clear picture and made sense of them, and he had not. As long as he did not see the connections, he would fear that somewhere there was a mistake, and the conclusion might be wrong. It nagged at his mind that they were proving a crime of uncontrollable insanity, committed with careful and intricate forethought. Were there two minds at work here?
Who would Minnie confide in, apart from her father? The men had been busy with the project, unavailable to her most of the day. She would not have spoken to Elsa; relations between them were strained.
Olga Marquand was consumed in her own unhappiness, and must have hated Minnie enough to have destroyed her herself, if she could have. That meant it had to be Liliane. Was Liliane any less afraid now?
Pitt found her outside in the gardens alone, walking close to the flower beds. Their vividness and perfect order seemed a mockery of the agitated way she moved and the distracted look in her face under her broad-brimmed hat, which shaded her complexion from the glare of the sun.
He caught up with her, speaking when he was still two or three yards away, because he could see from her attitude that she was unaware of his approach.
“Good morning, Mrs. Quase.”
She froze, and then turned slowly. In the warmth and perfume of the silent garden she was even more beautiful than in the formal setting. Her eyes were golden brown, and what was visible of her hair shone like polished copper, but lighter and softer.
“Good morning, Inspector,” she replied. “Are you lost?”
“Not literally,” he replied. “I was hoping to speak to you for a few moments.” He was not asking permission, merely phrasing his intention courteously.
“Metaphorically?” she asked, then instantly wondered if she had used a word he did not know. She saw from his smile that that was not so. She blushed, but it would have been clumsy to apologize. She hurried on instead. “I thought you were sure it was Julius. Cahoon seemed to think so. But the poor man is really devastated with grief. I am amazed he did no more than beat Julius senseless.”
She looked away from him, across the ordered clumps of flowers and the perfectly cut lawn, which was smooth as a table of green velvet. There was a gentle buzzing of bees, and now and again a waft of perfume in the sun. “We are not very civilized, are we?” she observed. “The veneer is no thicker than a coat of paint. You would be amazed what hideousness lies underneath such a commonplace thing.”
“It seems Mrs. Sorokine saw through the paint very clearly,” he replied. She had given him the perfect opening.
Her shoulders tightened. There was a small pulse beating in her throat. “You think that is why she was killed? She saw something in one of us that whoever it was could not live with? Or could not let her live with?”
“Yes. Don’t you?” he asked.
“I suppose it is the only answer that makes sense.”
Was she assuming he meant the murder of the prostitute and therefore did not say so, or was she afraid it was other things, a different secret?
“Was she always curious about people’s actions and reasons?” he pressed. “The day before yesterday she was asking a great many questions, particularly of the servants.”
She frowned. “Was she? I didn’t know. I hardly saw her. She certainly made a lot of oblique remarks at dinner, as if she were determined to provoke someone. I thought then it was Cahoon, but obviously it was Julius.”
“Did she speak to you before dinner, Mrs. Quase? Or to anyone else, do you know?”
She considered for several moments before replying. A butterfly drifted across the flower heads and settled in the heart of one. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.
“She asked my husband if he had given the Prince of Wales any wine, as a gift,” she replied. “Then she asked Mrs. Marquand the same thing.”
“And had either of you, so far as you know?”
“No. I assume it was Cahoon. If it had been Julius, she would either have known the answer already, or have asked him.”
So Minnie had known about the wine bottles, or else guessed their use!
“Thank you, Mrs. Quase.”
She looked at him curiously. “What has wine to do with it? There is any amount of the best wine in the world in the cellars here.”
“I think it was the bottles she was interested in, not the wine. Did she mention broken china to you?”
“No. Why?” She shivered. “Why does it matter now, Inspector? Isn’t it all over? Poor Minnie asked too many questions, and found out something she would have been happier not to know. I know that is foolish. One can protect people one loves from some things, small mistakes, but not murder. I suppose he is mad.” She looked away from Pitt, over the flowers. “I knew Julius before he met Minnie, you know. I could have married him, but my father was against it. Perhaps he was wiser than I.” There was pain in her voice, surprisingly harsh.
“Was that in Africa?” he asked.
She stiffened, almost imperceptibly. Her voice was husky, so quiet he barely heard her. “Yes.”
He remembered that her brother had died there. Was that the tragedy that touched her now? “And you met Mr. Quase, and married him instead,” he said. “Do you believe your father had some knowledge of Mr. Sorokine’s nature that decided him against your marriage?”
“He didn’t say so. It…it was a difficult time for us. My brother died in terrible circumstances…in the river.” She struggled to keep control of her voice as she turned away from him. “Hamilton was marvelous. He helped us both. He dealt with the arrangements, saw to everything for us. I grew to appreciate his strength and his kindness, and his extraordinary loyalty. After that…Julius seemed…shallow. I realized how right my father’s judgment was.” She stood motionless, her back and shoulders rigid. “Poor Minnie, so strong, so sure of herself, so…so full of passion and spirit…and in the end so foolish.”
Everything she said was true, but Pitt wondered if she had liked Minnie. There was nothing he could read in her to tell him.
“Mrs. Quase, did she say anything to you about what she learned from all her questions? I need to know.”
“Why? It’s over, and Minnie’s dead.” There was a curious finality in her voice.
“It’s not all over,” he corrected her. He disliked speaking to her back. He could see nothing of her expression. Was that on purpose? “I have not proved what happened,” he went on. “Or why the prostitute was killed, and all sorts of other things that seem to make very little sense.”
“Does it really matter?” There was fear undisguised in her voice now.
“Yes. Don’t you want to clear it all up, before you leave?”
She turned even further from him. “I imagine we will leave quite soon. I don’t know how we can continue without Julius. And I expect Cahoon will hardly feel like going on, at least for some time.”
“Will that grieve you very much? Or your husband and Mr. Marquand?”
She was surprised into looking back toward him. “I don’t know. It was always Cahoon who cared about it most. I expect he will find another diplomat to take Julius’s place.”
“Did Mrs. Sorokine say anything to you about her deductions?” he asked yet
again.
Her eyes cleared. “She said she knew where it had happened,” she replied. “Rather a pointless remark, considering that we all know it happened in the linen cupboard. I thought she was simply trying to get attention. I’m ashamed to say that now.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Quase. Did she mention broken china?”
“No.” There was dismissal in her face. “But then that’s hardly very dramatic, is it?” She turned away and started to walk slowly along the grass.
He did not follow her. Instead he went back toward the entrance to the Palace again, turning her words over and over in his mind. There seemed only one possible conclusion: Sadie had not been killed in the cupboard where she was found, in spite of the blood.
But as soon as he made sense of one set of facts, it made nonsense of another. The sheets were soaked with blood, and even a lunatic would not have killed her in one place and then carried the naked, bleeding body to the cupboard.
Had she been attacked, even fatally, and then carried, perhaps rolled up in sheets, to the cupboard, in order not to have been found in a place linked to any one person? And then the Queen’s sheets, in which she had been carried, were put in the laundry, in the hope they would never be found and looked at closely enough to be identified? That was beginning to make more sense.
So where had she been killed? In whose bed? Surely Julius Sorokine’s. How had Minnie known?
He was back inside the Palace again. Painstakingly he spoke to all the staff Gracie had seen Minnie with the day before she died. Each one repeated what she had told him.
Minnie had followed a curious trail with growing excitement. She had asked about sheets. She had been intensely interested in the shards of broken china, where they had come from and their color and shape. This she had apparently inquired of Mr. Tyndale, and met with a brief and dismissive answer. She had also been interested in the footmen coming and going with buckets of water. She had asked about wine, what was drunk and where it came from, yet there was nothing to suggest she knew of the port bottles Gracie had found.
The other focus of her questions had been the arrival and departure of the women, and the delivery of the large wooden box of books and papers for Cahoon Dunkeld. Exactly what had happened when, and where were the books now?
Pitt was totally confused. Three women had arrived, two had left, and the third had been found dead. The carter had never been alone and unaccounted for anywhere near the upstairs floor, let alone any of the bedrooms. What, if any of it, was relevant to Sadie’s death?
He went over the facts again in his mind. The one thing that seemed to arise again and again, but of which he had no physical proof, were the shards of broken china that Tyndale had so vehemently refused to discuss with Gracie. Something about them had frightened him even more than the presence of prostitutes in the guest wing of the Palace, even when one of them was murdered. Either it was something so precious it was beyond Pitt’s ability to imagine, or else its breakage, added to the other evidence, meant something so appalling it had to be concealed at all costs.
His imagination could create nothing so disastrous. No matter how difficult or distasteful, or how absurd, he must try to find the pieces. And he must do it discreetly. Tyndale would know where they were put, and if he knew Pitt was looking, he might destroy them.
On the other hand, that might be the only way to find a score of pieces of china in a place as vast as this. Time was very short indeed. As early as tomorrow he might be forced to charge Julius Sorokine, and the case would be closed. There would be no trial, no weighing of evidence, and certainly no defense. Pitt’s own doubts were the only voice Sorokine would ever have to speak for him.
That left Pitt no alternative. He was aware that Narraway was uncomfortable still questioning the evidence. As well, there was a certain kind of disloyalty in pursuing something that could embarrass the Prince, and which would without doubt rebound against Narraway himself, possibly against the whole of Special Branch. Pitt might pay for it, and he was very conscious that he might ultimately give Narraway no option but to dismiss him.
If that happened, he would find it very hard to gain another job he would love as he did this, or for which he had any capability, and no one else would keep his family. Had he the right to make them pay for his moral decisions?
If he accepted the evidence as it was and let Julius Sorokine go to Bedlam for killing the two women, a living hell of both body and mind, what would Pitt himself become? A man Charlotte could still love? Or one she would slowly grow to dislike and in the end to despise, mourning for what he had once been?
It was a high price to pay, but even as he was turning it over in his mind, he knew the decision was made. He sent for Gracie again, deliberately using Tyndale to find her.
“Yes, sir?” she said hopefully, when she came in. “Yer got suffink?”
“We have to find the broken china,” he replied.
“You mean the dish, or whatever it were? Mr. Tyndale’s real scared about that.” Her eyes were grave with doubt. “’E’ll ’ave seen to it as it’s ’id good.”
“I know. He might be the only person who knows where the pieces are,” he agreed. “He won’t tell me, but if he thinks I am going to search every corner of this place until I find them, then he might be alarmed into destroying them completely, ground into unrecognizable powder.”
“Yer want me ter tell ’im as yer lookin’ for it, an’ mebbe ask ’im for it again?” she said.
“Yes, please. Tell him I’m going to get help in if I need it, because I’ve realized it’s crucial to the case.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know. Minnie Sorokine seemed to think so. And if it isn’t, why hide it?” He looked at her small, curious face and realized she felt like a betrayer, tricking a man who had risked his own safety and comfort to befriend her. “I’m sorry,” he added gently. “I have to be sure Sorokine is guilty. I think they’ll arrest him formally tomorrow, and after that there’ll be no one to speak for him. There’ll be no trial.”
She was very pale. “I know. They’ll just put ’im in Bedlam in the filth an’ the screamin’.” She took a deep breath and let it out a little shakily. “I’ll go an’ tell ’im.” She looked close to tears. She turned quickly and went out of the door, small and very stiff, in a dress that had been altered but was still too big for her. He knew he had torn her loyalties as he had his own.
He found it far from easy to watch Tyndale after Gracie had spoken to him, without it being obvious that he was doing so. Several times he had to hang back and leave Gracie to appear busy with a tray in her hands, or a mop and a bundle of laundry.
It was nearly two hours after he had asked her help before she came to him with a parcel of broken china concealed in a cardboard box, and passed it to him wordlessly. She looked white and miserable. The fact that she said nothing, expressed no recrimination at all, made it worse.
Together they walked back up the stairs to his room and put it down on the table. She stood in front of it, not even allowing him to question whether she was going to remain or not.
Very carefully he unwrapped the newspaper around the pieces and looked at the debris. It was exactly as Walton had said: small pieces of broken china, some of it not more than chips and dust, other pieces as large as an inch across. There was blue and gold paint on them in an exquisitely delicate pattern: tiny little lattice in gold, leaves and the edge of what looked like a woman’s dress. The largest piece was curved as if from the side of a pedestal.
Gracie picked up a lump that was mostly white, and turned it over in her fingers. “Looks like it were the bottom, or summink,” she said thoughtfully. “But why make all that fuss over a broke dish? Why ’ide it instead o’ just throwin’ it out like anythin’ else wot’s bust. D’ yer think it’s summink special? Royal, like?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly, picking up another piece, which was quite large and of irregular shape. “The painting on it is beautiful, but I d
on’t know what it could be.” He turned it over. “It seems to have a painted inside as well as outside. And that bit looks too flat for a bowl. I wonder if it’s a lid? How could anyone break something this badly? It’s completely smashed.”
“Throw it at the wall,” Gracie said, screwing her face up. “Yer don’t bust summink like this by just droppin’ it, even on a stone floor. An’ it come from upstairs. Wood floor’d just break it ter pieces, but this is like someone trod on it, on purpose, like.” She stared at it in dismay. “’Oo’d do summink rotten like that, just break a dish wot’s beautiful inter little bits, on purpose?”
“I don’t know, but I think perhaps we need to.” Pitt pushed his fingers around the broken shards carefully, searching for anything large enough to identify. “There’s not much, is there. Have you ever broken a large dish, Gracie?”
She blushed unhappily. “Yeah.” She did not add any details.
“Was this how much of it was left?”
“No. Were a lot more. But I broke cups before, an’ they weren’t this much in bits, not the good porcelain ones. D’yer reckon as this weren’t a reg’lar plate, Mr. Pitt?”
“Yes, I do, Gracie. I just can’t work out what it was.” He pulled out a small, round piece, three-quarters of an inch at its widest. He turned it over, looking at it carefully. It was mostly plain white, but there was a little bit of writing on one side—the letters IMO and what looked like an E, incomplete.
It was part of a word, and suddenly he knew what the word was: “Limoges.” He had seen it before written on exquisite porcelain: candlesticks, chargers, vases, bowls, and figurines. Long ago in the police he had dealt with theft of such works of art.
“It was an ornament,” he said quietly. He turned over the piece in his hand again. “I think this was part of the base. The name was on it. The gold was probably the rim. The blue would be part of a picture.”
“Is it very precious?” she asked, her face tight in sympathy with whoever had broken it. “Somebody’s gonna lose their place ’ere ’cos they smashed it?”
