by Rhys Bowen
“I knocked and went into her room, miss, and . . . and . . . she wasn’t alone. A man was in bed with her, miss, and he was, and they were . . . you know.”
“I can guess,” I said with a sigh. “Rule number one. Always wait until someone says ‘Come in’ in the future.”
“Yes, miss,” she said.
So it was the burgundy velvet again. I did my own hair and went down to dinner. Tonight was to be a more formal occasion, as it was originally expected that various crowned heads would have arrived. Count Dragomir had had his way and insisted on the same degree of formality because there were place cards at the table and I was told I was to be escorted into the banqueting hall by Anton.
As I waited for him to join me, I was joined instead by Lady Middlesex and in her wake Miss Deer-Harte.
“Isn’t this too exciting,” the latter said. “So kind of Her Highness to insist that we join in the festivities. I’ve never been to an occasion like this. So glittering, isn’t it? Like a storybook. You look very nice, my dear.”
“Same dress as she wore last night, I notice,” Lady Middlesex said bluntly.
“But very nice. Elegant,” Miss Deer-Harte said, smiling kindly. She was wearing a simple flowery afternoon dress, quite wrong for the occasion.
“I hope I can sleep tonight,” she whispered to me. “One can only go so long without sleep but the door to my room does not lock and with all that creeping around . . .”
The dinner gong sounded. Anton came to take my arm.
“What-ho, old thing,” he said.
“Did you go to the same English public school as your brother?” I asked.
“Yes, only I was expelled,” he said. “Or rather, politely asked to leave. Smoking in the bathrooms one time too many, I’m afraid. But I did pick up the lingo rather well.” He grinned at me. “Your friend Belinda, she is a cracker, isn’t she? A real live wire.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Too bad she is not royal.”
“Her father is a baronet,” I said. “She is an honorable.”
He sighed. “Probably not good enough, I’m afraid. Father is such a stickler for doing the right thing and family comes first and all that bosh. As if it matters who I marry. Nick will be king and produce sons and I’ll never see the throne anyway.”
“Would you want to?”
“I suppose I prefer my free and easy life, actually,” he said. “I’ve been studying chemistry in Heidelberg. Good fun.”
“You’re lucky,” I said. “I’d have loved to go to university.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m a girl. I’m supposed to marry. Nobody was willing to pay for me.”
“Too bad.”
A trumpet sounded. The doors to the dining hall were opened by two of those servants in the splendid black and silver livery and we processed through. This time I was seated with Hannelore on one side of me and Anton on the other. Nicholas sat opposite with Matty on one side, and Field Marshal Pirin had again managed to position himself on the other. If anything, Pirin was wearing even more medals and orders this time. He looked first at me, then at Hannelore and his face lit up.
“This is good. Two pretty girls tonight for me to feast the eyes upon. Very nice. Feast for eyes and feast for stomach at same time.” His smile was disconcerting. As my mother had said the night before, he was mentally undressing us.
“Beware that horrid man. He was pinching my bottom yesterday,” Hannelore whispered to me.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already encountered him and I’m avoiding him,” I whispered back.
I noticed Anton looking around, obviously trying to locate Belinda, who was nowhere in sight, presumably sitting at a far end of the table with the lesser mortals. I couldn’t help glancing at Matty and my gaze went straight to her mouth and neck. They looked perfectly normal but then she was wearing a high-necked dress. She caught my eye and then looked down uncomfortably. I found myself checking out the guests at the table to see if any of them showed obvious bite marks on their necks. One woman at the far end was wearing a lot of strands of pearls, but apart from that their necks seemed to be pristine. Maybe vampires bit each other. What did I know?
The meal began, course after course of rich food, culminating in a procession carrying a whole roast wild boar with an apple in its mouth.
“Not the one we shot today,” Anton said. “Ours was much bigger.”
“Who actually shot it?”
“I did”—Anton lowered his voice—“but we let Siegfried think that he did. He cares about these things, you know.”
Throughout the meal Dragomir had been hovering in the background, directing servants like an orchestra conductor. As the main course came to an end he appeared at Nicholas’s shoulder and banged on the table with a mallet.
“Highnesses, lords and ladies, please rise,” he announced in French, then in German. “His Royal Highness Prince Nicholas wishes to drink a toast to the health of his bride and to her wonderful country.”
Nicholas rose to his feet. “If the toasts are to begin, then more champagne, if you please,” he said. “How can I toast my beautiful bride with anything less?”
“Forgive me. Of course. Champagne.” Dragomir barked instructions and bottles were produced, opened with satisfying pops and poured. And so the toasts began. An endless stream of toasts. At home toasting at formal banquets is a stylized and decorous affair with the toastmaster drawling out, “Pray be upstanding for the loyal toast,” and everyone murmuring, “The king, God bless him.” Here it was what my mother would have called a beanfeast. Anybody who felt like it could leap up and toast whomever they pleased. So there was a great deal of scraping of chairs and shouted toasts up and down the table.
Dragomir, as toastmaster, tried to keep control of things, banging his mallet with a flourish before each speech. The toasts were conducted in a mixture of French, German and English as hardly any of the party spoke either Romanian or Bulgarian. If the two parties were close enough together they clashed glasses. If they were far apart they raised glasses and drank together, the rest of the diners often joining in with a swig of their own to show solidarity. One by one the men rose to make their speeches and toast their guests. Maria was the only woman who dared to rise and toasted her attendants, so I had to stand up and reach across the table to clink glasses with her. Then Nicholas rose to toast his groomsmen. “These men have watched me grow up from disreputable youth to serious manhood,” Nicky said and various men at the table hooted and laughed. “And so I toast you now, you who know my darkest secrets. I drink to my dear brother, Anton, to Prince Siegfried, to Count Von Stashauer, to Baron . . .” Young men rose to their feet as he named them, twelve in all, reaching out to clink glasses with Nicholas. He was speaking in German and I couldn’t take in all the names, until I was aware he had switched to English and was saying, “ . . . and to my old friend who has valiantly arrived in spite of all obstacles in his path, the Honorable Darcy O’Mara from Ireland.”
I looked down the table and there at the far end I saw Darcy rise to his feet and raise a glass. If my heart had beaten fast at finding what seemed to be a vampire bending over me, it was positively racing now. As Darcy took a sip from his wine, he caught my eye and raised the glass again in a toast to me. I went crimson. I wish I could get over this girlish habit of blushing. It’s so obvious with my light complexion. I was actually glad for once when Field Marshal Pirin rose unsteadily to his feet.
I had noticed that he’d been drinking more than his share of red wine all evening, holding up his glass to be refilled again and again. He had had a good swig at all the toasts whether they applied to him or not. Now he grabbed his glass and launched into a speech in what had to be Bulgarian. I don’t think anyone else understood, but he went on and on, his speech slurred a little, his face beetroot red, then he thumped the table and finished with what was obviously a toast to Bulgaria and Romania. He drained his glass in one large glug. Then his eyes opened wide in surpri
se, he made a gagging noise in his throat and he fell forward into what remained of his plate of wild boar.
The company behaved exactly as one would have expected of those who were brought up to be royal. A few eyebrows were raised and then guests went back to their meal and their conversation as if nothing had happened, while Dragomir fussed around, directing the servants to lift the unconscious man and carry him through to a couch in the anteroom. Nicholas had also risen to his feet.
“Please excuse me, I should see if there’s anything I can do for him,” he said quietly.
At the far end of the table Lady Middlesex had also risen. “I don’t suppose there’s a doctor in the house. Let me take a look at him. I was a nurse in the Great War, you know.” And she strode down the room after them. I noticed that Miss Deer-Harte followed in her wake.
I could hear the murmurs of conversation.
“He was drinking far too much,” Siegfried said. He had been sitting on the other side of Field Marshal Pirin. “Every time the servers came past he had them refill his wineglass.”
“The man drinks like a fish,” Anton agreed, “but I’ve never seen him pass out before.”
“He was disgusting,” Hannelore muttered to me. “The way he eats. No manners. And the wrong forks.”
I noticed that Darcy had also excused himself from the table and was making his way toward the anteroom. Ice cream was served, then the cheese board was brought around and still neither Nicholas or Darcy reappeared.
When the meal was almost over, Nicholas came back to the table, leaned across and muttered something to Anton in German. I looked to Anton for a translation. He had a strange expression on his face. Before he could say anything Nicholas spoke in a loud, clear voice to the dinner guests.
“I regret to inform you that Field Marshal Pirin has been taken seriously ill,” Nicholas said carefully. “May I suggest that, given the circumstances, we ask you all to leave the table and retire to the withdrawing room. I’m sure our hosts, Prince Siegfried and Princess Maria Theresa, will be good enough to arrange for coffee and drinks to be served there.”
The only sound was that of the scraping of chairs as the dinner guests rose to their feet.
“Please follow me,” Matty said with regal composure that I had to admire.
Anton pulled out my chair for me and I stood with the rest, feeling rather sick and shaky that the event had taken place so close to me. Anton was staring into that anteroom with a strange expression on his face—a mixture of horror and delight.
“Was it his heart, did your brother say?” I asked.
He took my arm and drew me close to him. “Don’t say anything to the others, but old Pirin has kicked the bucket,” Anton muttered into my ear.
“He’s dead, you mean?”
He nodded but put a warning finger up to his lips. “I can’t say I’m exactly sorry. Couldn’t stand the bastard, but Papa is not going to be thrilled. I suppose I should go in there and support my brother, although I can’t stand the sight of dead bodies in general and I’m sure that Pirin’s will be more revolting than most of them.”
He held out his arm to me. “I should probably be gentlemanly and escort you to the safety of the drawing room first, in case you faint or something.”
“Do I look as if I’m about to faint?” I asked.
“You look a little green,” he said, “but I expect I do too. At least he had the courtesy to wait until the meal was over before he died. I’d have hated to miss that wild boar.” And he gave me a grin that reminded me of a naughty schoolboy.
“I’m all right. I’ll find my own way,” I said. “I expect your brother would like to have you with him.”
Everyone was behaving with the greatest decorum, leaving the table quietly, some of them glancing across at the archway to the anteroom where Pirin’s feet could be seen sticking off the end of the couch. I heard my mother’s clear voice over the discreet murmur. “The way that man wolfed down his food and drink he was a heart attack waiting to happen.”
I wanted desperately to be with Darcy, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to intrude, as a mere guest at the castle. But I lingered as long as I dared until most of the company had passed through the big double doors and then slowly followed Anton toward the anteroom. As I neared the entrance of the anteroom I heard Lady Middlesex’s strident voice saying, “Heart attack, my foot. It is quite clear that the man was poisoned.”
Chapter 17
Bran Castle plus dead body
Still November 17
I needed no further reason to enter that room. After all, I had experienced more of my share of murder than most young women of my station in life. I was just about to follow Anton inside when Darcy came out, almost colliding with me.
“Hello,” he said. “I was just coming to find you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?” I demanded.
“At the time of our last conversation I had no idea that you were planning to attend the wedding,” he said. “And your terrifying sister-in-law made it quite clear I was never to communicate with you again.”
“So when did you ever do what anyone told you?” I asked.
He smiled and I felt some of the tension of the past days melting away. Now that he was here I felt that I could tackle vampires, werewolves or brigands. I was brought back to frightening reality when Darcy pushed past me and grabbed the nearest footman who was starting to clear the table.
“No,” he said. “Leave it. Leave everything.” The servants looked up at him, confused and suspicious. Darcy poked his head back into the anteroom and beckoned to Dragomir. “I need your help right away,” he said. “I don’t speak Romanian or whatever they speak in these parts. Please tell the servants not to touch anything and to leave the table exactly as it is.”
Dragomir stared at him suspiciously. Darcy repeated the command in remarkably good French.
“May I ask what authority you have here? You are from the police, monsieur?” Dragomir asked.
“Let’s just say I have some experience in these matters and my one wish is that we handle this in a way that does not embarrass the royal houses of Romania or Bulgaria,” Darcy said. “The servants should not be told the truth at this point. This is a most delicate matter and is not to be spoken about, is that clear?”
Dragomir looked long and hard at him, then nodded and barked a command at the servants. The men hastily put down the plates they were collecting and stepped back from the table.
“Tell them that nobody else is to come into the dining room, and tell them I would like to speak to them shortly so they should not go anywhere.”
That command was also repeated, although in surly and unwilling fashion, and I saw inquiring glances directed at Darcy, who didn’t appear to notice.
“We should go back in there.” Darcy turned to me. “Nicholas will find himself in a pretty pickle, I’m afraid, if we don’t do something quickly.”
“Is it true, do you think?” I whispered to Darcy. “Was Field Marshal Pirin poisoned?”
“Absolutely,” Darcy said in a low voice. “All the signs point to cyanide. Flushed face, staring eyes.”
“He always had a flushed face,” I said.
“And the unmistakable smell of bitter almonds,” Darcy finished. “That’s why it’s important that nothing is touched on that table.”
With that he stepped back into the anteroom with me at his heels. Field Marshal Pirin’s body lay on the couch exactly as Darcy had described him, his face bright red and his eyes open and bulging horribly. He was a big man and the couch was delicate gilt and brocade so that his feet hung over the end and one arm was dangling to the floor. I shuddered and forced myself not to turn away. The other occupants of the room appeared to be frozen in a tableau around the body: Nicholas staring down at Pirin, Anton standing behind Nicholas while Lady Middlesex and Miss Deer-Harte hovered near Pirin’s highly polished boots. Miss Deer-Harte looked as if she wanted to do nothing more than escape.
“You must telephone for the police at once,” Lady Middlesex said. “There is a murderer in our midst.”
“Impossible, madam,” Dragomir said, reappearing behind us. “The telephone line has come down with all this snow. We are cut off from the outside world.”
“And there is not a police station within reach to which you could send a man?”
“A man could probably go on skis over the pass,” Dragomir said, “but I advise that we should not summon the police, even if we could, before Their Majesties have been told.”
“But there has been a murder,” Lady Middlesex said. “We need someone who can find the culprit before he gets away.”
“As to that, madam,” Dragomir said, “anyone who tried to leave the castle would not get far in snow like this. Besides, there is only one way out of the castle and a guard is at the gate at all times.”
“Then for heaven’s sake make sure the guard knows that nobody is to leave,” Lady Middlesex said angrily. “Really, you foreigners. Too slipshod in everything.”
“Lady Middlesex, I’m sure Prince Nicholas would appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast the facts all over the castle at the moment,” Darcy said. “I assure you that we will do everything in our power to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. And nobody is going to be slipshod.”
“And you are . . . ?” she asked, turning to focus on him. If she’d had a lorgnette she would have stared at him through it. One almost expected her to utter the words “a handbag?”
“He is my groomsman and good friend Darcy O’Mara, Lord Kilhenny’s son,” Nicholas said shortly. “A good man to have around if you’re in trouble. He was at school with me—the backbone of our rugby team.”
“Oh, well, in that case.” Lady Middlesex was quite happy now. Anyone who was the backbone of an English public school rugby team had to be all right. “So what do you want us to do?”
“I’ve told the servants not to touch the table,” Darcy said. “One of the first things is to have the cause of death confirmed by a competent physician. I don’t suppose there is one of those within reach, is there?” He repeated the question in French.
