Royal Blood

by Rhys Bowen

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got held up by—” I broke off as I noticed that there was one person at the table I hadn’t expected. Prince Siegfried was sitting beside Dragomir.

  “Lady Georgiana.” He nodded his head.

  I looked at Nicholas. He raised his eyebrows. “Siegfried sensed that something was wrong and insisted on seeing Field Marshal Pirin, so naturally I had to tell him the truth and apologize for our secrecy in keeping this matter hushed up.”

  Siegfried pursed those cod lips. “This most serious matter was brought to my attention, and I now have to decide whether it should be brought out into the open, or kept from my parents.”

  I glanced at Dragomir. Had he been the one who had spilled the beans to Siegfried? And if he was the murderer, would that have been a wise thing to do?

  “I have explained to His Highness the delicacy of the situation regarding the stability of my nation and the Balkans as a whole,” Nicholas said in a clipped voice. It was clear there had been an argument about this already.

  “And I have explained to His Highness that this is my country and I have to make sure that we behave as we would expect any citizen to behave—and that includes reporting a murder to the proper authorities.”

  “Obviously we may have to do that eventually,” Anton said in a soothing manner, “but if we can solve it among ourselves here, then nobody else needs to know and the wedding can take place as planned. Surely that is what you wish, Siegfried?”

  “Of course.”

  Dragomir cleared his throat. “But surely the simplest thing to do would be to claim that a communist or anarchist managed to climb into the castle, administer the poison and then make his getaway undetected.”

  “The simplest thing,” Nicholas said, “would be to treat the death as a heart attack, which is what everyone else believes anyway. If they decide on an autopsy, it will be hard to trace the cyanide after that amount of time.”

  “If we are to believe your diagnosis that cyanide was administered,” Siegfried said carefully, “then we must do our duty and find the person who committed this shocking act. Just because the occupants of this castle are royal does not put us above the justice system of our country.”

  “Well spoken, Your Highness,” said a deep voice in guttural French, and a figure stepped from the darkness at the far end of the library. If I had been asked to describe Dracula, this man would have fit the bill perfectly. Tall, thin, hollow cheeked, hollow eyed and very pale, he was dressed head to toe in black, which accentuated the whiteness of his skin. For one ridiculous moment it crossed my mind to wonder whether Vlad the Impaler was still alive and still ruled this castle and the people in it. The man moved toward us with smooth, menacing steps. Then he looked around at us and smiled. “If the personages at this table were not of such exalted rank, I should think that I was witnessing a conspiracy and have you all arrested on the spot,” he said. “However, as His Highness Prince Siegfried has just so wisely said, even royal personages are not above the law. If I understood correctly, and I admit that my English is not as fluent as it should be, you were planning to cover up a murder so that there would be no unpleasantness and the wedding could take place as planned. Am I right?”

  “Who the devil are you?” Nicholas asked coldly.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Patrascue, head of the Romanian secret police.” He pulled up a chair and squeezed himself in between Nicholas and Dragomir. “Given the importance of the occasion and the presence of foreign royalty, I elected to travel with Their Majesties to this royal wedding. How fortunate that I did, wasn’t it? I had only just arrived when one of my men reported to me that he had overheard a conversation about a murder and a body being whisked away.”

  I looked across at Lady Middlesex, who had gone a little pink.

  “So perhaps one of you would be good enough to tell me who died.”

  “Field Marshal Pirin,” Siegfried said. “Head of the Bulgarian armed forces.”

  “Also senior adviser to my father and a powerful force in the politics of the region.”

  “Ah, so we are looking at a political murder, are we?” Patrascue licked his lips. “Very well. Understand this. I will be conducting the investigation and you will be answering my questions—royal or not. Do not think that your exalted rank puts you above the law in Romania. Dear me, no. Our country is a constitutional monarchy and you really have very little power.”

  “You have to understand,” Anton said, “that we were not attempting to cover up a murder just so that a wedding can take place. This man’s death could have significance for the future of my country and this entire region.”

  “And you are . . . ?” Patrascue asked insolently.

  “I happen to be Prince Anton of Bulgaria,” Anton said coldly. “In case you don’t know, you are sitting next to Prince Nicholas, my older brother, heir to the throne and bridegroom.”

  “My felicitations.” Patrascue nodded to Nicholas. “And these other people—your fellow conspirators. Why are they here?”

  “I am Lady Georgiana, cousin to King George of England,” I said, reverting to my imitation of my great-grandmother, as I always do when I feel threatened. “I am here representing Their Majesties at this wedding. These two ladies are my companions, sent to accompany me by Queen Mary.”

  “And the reason you sit here now? I did not think the power of the British Empire extended to central Europe.” Patrascue eyed me insolently.

  “Actually I’m here as a relative,” I said. “As a descendant of Queen Victoria I am related to the Bulgarian royal family and more remotely to the Romanian one. Also I was sitting opposite Field Marshal Pirin at the fateful dinner, and thus witnessed everything. My companion Lady Middlesex was the first to suspect that his death was not a heart attack.”

  “You say you witnessed everything,” Patrascue went on. “What exactly did you see, ma chérie?”

  I bristled at the words “my dear.” I had come to believe that there is at least one obnoxious policeman in every country and he was facing me. “I saw Field Marshal Pirin give a long, rambling toast, take a swig of his wine and then seem to be choking and pitch face forward across the table.”

  “He seemed to be choking, you say. Was it possible that he was indeed choking and a simple slap on the back could have revived him?”

  “He had finished eating at the time,” I said. “There had been speeches and toasts for some minutes. Besides, he was dead almost immediately. Initially it was suspected that he had had a heart attack.”

  “But someone thought it might be murder?”

  “I did,” Lady Middlesex said. “I’m Lady Middlesex, the wife of the British high commissioner in Mesopotamia. My husband has represented the British Crown all over the world. I know poison when I see it.”

  “And what poison would that be?”

  “Why, cyanide, of course. Red face, staring eyes and the odor of bitter almonds. A classic case. I saw it once before in the Argentine.”

  Patrascue turned back to me. “Did you see somebody administer this poison?”

  “No. I saw nobody come near the table except the servers and Count Dragomir.”

  Dragomir made a coughing noise in his throat and said, “I resent the implication that I was somehow involved in this farce. Why would I want to kill a man I had never met before? It is my duty to make sure all servers perform flawlessly. Naturally I was standing behind the table, in a position where I could watch them all.”

  “And yet you saw nothing amiss?” Patrascue asked.

  “The men performed flawlessly as always.”

  “We have no idea how the poison was administered,” Nicholas said. “I sat beside him. All food and drink was served from the same platters and carafes and with great speed. It would have been impossible to select a poisoned morsel for a particular person.”

  “Then I would suggest that it was placed in his glass before the meal,” Patrascue said smugly.

  “But we were told cyanide acted almost imm
ediately,” I said. “The field marshal had cleared his plate, had second helpings and had his wineglass filled countless times from the same carafe as everybody else.”

  “If the poison was indeed cyanide,” Patrascue said. “I take it no doctor was present to make an accurate diagnosis. Amateurs are frequently wrong in my experience.”

  “There is no physician in the castle, unfortunately,” Anton said. “But I have studied a bit of medicine at the University of Heidelberg and I can tell you that the telltale odor of bitter almonds was present and the face was flushed.”

  “Ah, a so-called expert,” Patrascue said. “It is unfortunate that the body has already been transported away from the castle, or I myself could have determined what poison had been administered. I hope that somebody had the sense to put aside the utensils this person used at the dinner table. I shall send them off for testing and then we shall know.”

  “They did and they have been taken with the body to be examined by a competent laboratory,” Nicholas said. I thought I detected a note of glee in his voice. “Naturally we didn’t expect a trained policeman like yourself to arrive so soon, given the condition of the pass.”

  “Ah.” Patrascue tried to come up with a response to something that might have been a compliment. “Then the next step is to interview those who served the meal. Count Dragomir, you are in charge of the running of this place, are you not?”

  “You know very well that I am,” Dragomir replied curtly. No love lost between those two, I thought.

  “Then please be good enough to have those men who served at dinner brought to the library instantly for questioning.”

  “If we do that, then word will spread around the castle rather rapidly that the field marshal is dead, and probably murdered. That is the last thing we want at this moment,” Nicholas said. “The men were questioned discreetly last night.”

  “And it is as I told Their Highnesses,” Dragomir said. “These are all local men, simple men who have been in the service of this castle for most of their lives. Why would any of them want to poison a foreign field marshal, even if they had the means to do so?”

  “Money,” Patrascue said. “Enough money can persuade a man to go against his conscience and to perform in a most ruthless manner. How many footmen were there serving at dinner last night?”

  “There were twelve,” Dragomir said. “But we would only be concerned with those who served the field marshal. Those who waited on the other side of the table would never have come near him.”

  “Ah, I see.” Patrascue nodded jerkily. “And it would be impossible to lean across this table?”

  “Any servant who leaned across a table would be instantly dismissed,” Dragomir said. “Our standards of etiquette are of the very highest.”

  “I will speak with these men, one at a time,” Patrascue said. “I will swear them to secrecy. They know enough of my reputation to realize what would happen to them if they were rash enough to lie to me or to break their vow. And if one of them has accepted money to commit this heinous act, then I shall make him confess, I promise you.” He smiled unpleasantly. I noticed his teeth were unnaturally pointed.

  “Of course we could have made a mistake all along,” Anton said in a different, breezy voice. “As you say, we are only amateurs. Perhaps we were misinterpreting what was only a simple heart attack after all. It was this lady who suggested that she smelled the odor of bitter almonds, and we know that ladies are inclined to be hysterical in the presence of a body.”

  “I absolutely resent—” Lady Middlesex began. I kicked her hard, under the table. She looked at me in astonishment and shut up.

  “As soon as the car bearing Field Marshal Pirin’s body reaches civilization we shall know the truth,” Anton went on smoothly. “Why don’t we wait until a competent physician has given his assessment of the situation? It would be a tragedy if false rumors leaked out to my country and a regional war began for nothing. It wouldn’t make you look good either, if you started a witch hunt for something that turned out to be a simple heart attack.”

  Patrascue stared at him, trying to assess the implications of what he was saying. There was a pitcher of water on the table. He reached forward, poured himself a glass and drank from it.

  “There is something in what you are saying,” he said. “I have no wish to destabilize this region or cause any unpleasantness with our neighbors at this moment of joy and celebration. We will await the doctor’s opinion. But in the meantime I will keep my eyes and ears open. Nobody will be above my scrutiny. Nobody!”

  He put down his empty glass firmly on the table. The participants rose to their feet. Except for me. I was staring hard as if I were seeing a vision. I had just realized something that threw a whole new light onto this situation.

  Chapter 23

  I stood staring at the table until the others had left. In my mind’s eye I could visualize Field Marshal Pirin giving his drunken, rambling toast. He had reached for a glass, and he was holding it in his left hand. Hannelore had mentioned that his table manners were abysmal and he never used the correct fork. Apparently he didn’t use the correct glass either. It was not his glass at all he had grabbed for, but Prince Nicholas’s.

  It took me a moment to grasp the implication of this. The intended murder victim was not Pirin at all, but Nicholas. And the reason Nicholas hadn’t drunk his own wine and died was that he had switched to champagne when the toasts started and had not touched his red wine after that. This would indicate that the glass had originally been free of cyanide during the main course when Nicky was drinking red wine with the wild boar. Somehow, someone had introduced the cyanide after that, unfortunately not realizing that Nicholas was going to call for champagne for his toasts. And if someone had introduced the cyanide, it had to be one of the servers or Dragomir.

  Wait a minute, I thought. I was discounting the other diners at the table. Pirin obviously wouldn’t have put cyanide into a glass he was going to drink himself. On Nicholas’s other side was his bride and she was hardly likely to want to kill off her bridegroom. Opposite him was his brother, Anton, and as Dragomir had said, it was frightfully bad form to reach across the table. It would have been noticed instantly. And besides, the brothers seemed to be on good terms. Anton wouldn’t have wanted his brother dead. I paused, considering this. Anton had made jokes about not being the heir and having no purpose in life. Did he secretly wish that he’d be king someday and not his brother? And of all the people around, he would have had a knowledge of poisons. After all, he had told me that he was studying chemistry in Heidelberg. And he was the one who had persuaded Patrascue to do nothing for now. Which would give him ample time to dispose of any traces of cyanide if he needed to.

  “Lady Georgiana!” Lady Middlesex’s strident voice cut through my thoughts. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “What? Oh—yes,” I stammered. Now there was the question of whom to tell. I wished that Darcy hadn’t gone away.

  Lady Middlesex grabbed my arm with her bony fingers. “We must go somewhere to plan strategy.”

  “Strategy?”

  She looked around. “Obviously we must make sure that everything is kept from that odious little policeman. We must work fast before he makes a complete mess of everything. Typical bungling foreigner. No clue how to run things properly. It is up to us now to unmask the murderer.”

  “I don’t see how we’re ever going to do that,” I said. “I was there, facing Field Marshal Pirin all the time. If it was Dragomir or one of the footmen who slipped the cyanide into the glass, he was very slick and I don’t see how we’d ever find out who did it.”

  “That’s if it was Dragomir or one of the servants,” Lady Middlesex said knowingly. She drew me closer. “Deer-Harte thinks she saw something. Of course, she is prone to flights of fancy, as we know.”

  “I am an excellent observer, Lady M,” Miss Deer-Harte said, “and I know what I saw.”

  “What did you see, Miss Deer-Harte?” I asked.

 
Her face went pink. “As you recall on the first night here I was not invited to join the company for dinner. Lady M thought it wouldn’t be right for a mere companion. I was told my supper would be sent up to my room. But after a while I thought that it wasn’t fair to one of the servants to have to walk up all these stairs with my tray, so I decided to come down and fetch it myself. Well”—she paused and looked around again—“as I passed the banqueting hall I heard the sound of merry voices, so naturally I lingered and took a little peek inside.”

  “This was the first night,” I interrupted. “The night before Pirin was murdered.”

  “It was, but what I saw could be significant. There was somebody watching from the shadows on the far side of the hall. He was dressed in black and he was standing half hidden behind one of the arches. He just stood there, not moving and watching. I thought it was odd at the time. I remember thinking, ‘That young man is up to no good.’ ”

  “You always think things like that, Deer-Harte,” Lady Middlesex said. “You think that everyone is up to no good.”

  “But in this case I was proven right, wasn’t I? And I’d like to wager that he was the same young man I saw creeping along the corridor in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see his face clearly on either occasion, but the build and demeanor were the same. And the way he was slinking along, he was clearly up to no good.”

  “I am inclined to think she’s been letting her imagination run away with her again,” Lady Middlesex said, “but at the moment we are grasping at straws, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t believe it was simply imagination,” I said. “What color hair did he have?”

  She frowned, thinking. “It looked light to me. Yes, definitely light. Why do you ask?”

  “Because a strange man came into my room on the first night, and then my maid came to me in great distress the next night to report that a man was in her room.”

  “A young man with light hair?”

  “Exactly. A good-looking young man with a Teutonic face.”

  “I didn’t see his face, but I definitely saw the hair,” Miss Deer-Harte said.