by Anne Perry
They were oddly as Pitt had expected: too much furniture, all large and beautifully carved, pictures, ornaments, and photographs everywhere. The sunlight slanted in through high heavily curtained windows and made colored patterns on the carpets.
“There,” the Princess said, pointing to an ornate mantel. On it stood a beautiful Limoges pedestal dish, with gold leaf around the edges, trellises woven of gold, and in the center a painting of a romantic couple on a garden seat. It was not the sky that was deep blue, but his coat, and a robe around her shoulders and down to the ground at the back.
The Princess turned and looked at Pitt, her eyes wide, questioning.
“Was there a matching pair?” he asked, feeling foolish.
“No,” the lady-in-waiting answered for the Princess, perhaps fearing she had not heard.
Pitt walked around, making a pretense of looking for a space from which another dish could have been taken, but not expecting to find it. He was puzzled, beaten a second time. He looked at the bed. Did it have the beautifully monogrammed sheets on, like the stained and crumpled ones Gracie had found in the laundry? He dared not look.
There was no possible excuse for it, and what did it matter?
He bent and touched the heavy tapestry curtains, feeling the tex-ture of the cloth. It moved very slightly, and he saw a darker patch on the carpet below. It looked like a stain. He bent and put his finger to it. It was dry. He licked his finger and touched it again. His finger came away smeared with brownish-red.
A charge rippled through him like electricity. It was blood. He looked at the skirt to the bed, exploring it with his fingers. He found a seam where there appeared to be no reason for one. He straightened up and moved quickly to the same place on the other side. Here the skirt was even, and there was no seam. A piece had been removed and its absence disguised. More blood? An accident? An illness?
But it was not yet completely caked in. It could not be more than a few days old-in other words, it occurred since the Queen had left and been at Osborne on the Isle of Wight.
He walked back to the Limoges plate again and bent down to the floor below the mantel. It was old, beautiful, weathered by time and years of polishing. But in between the boards there was a fine white dust, as of broken porcelain. Something had been smashed here.
He turned very slowly and stared around the room. They were all watching him, the Princess, the lady-in-waiting, and both footmen.
With the horror of certainty, he knew what had happened: For whatever reason, whoever had done it, this was where Sadie had been murdered.
She had been moved from here to the linen cupboard for the most obvious of reasons. But why the extra blood in the port bottles?
To make it look as if she had been killed in the cupboard, so no one would look any further? Was it animal blood from the kitchen? Had someone used the port bottles simply to carry it upstairs?
Three bottles seemed excessive. There had not been that much blood in the cupboard. Had they poured the rest away?
His mind was racing-on fire.
Who had? Certainly not the Prince. He had still been slow-moving with the remnants of a drunken hangover when Pitt had seen him the morning after. The answer was obvious: Cahoon Dunkeld.
The Prince had woken to a horror almost beyond belief: Not only was there a dead woman beside him, but he was in his mother’s bed. He must have been hysterical. He had sent for Dunkeld, who had come instantly and done all he could to contain the situation, disguise it, and even find someone to blame-his son-in-law, Julius Sorokine, whom he hated anyway: for not loving Minnie, and perhaps for taking Elsa’s love, real or imagined.
And of course the Prince’s debt to Dunkeld could never be paid.
Even all the support he could give for the Cape-to-Cairo railway would be a small thing in comparison with what Dunkeld had done for him. It was the most brilliant piece of opportunism Pitt had ever seen. He despised Dunkeld’s morality, and at the same time admired his nerve and his invention.
Did Minnie Sorokine have any idea how her father had used the crime?
And if the Prince of Wales was guilty, what could be done about it? Even as the question formed in Pitt’s mind, he knew the answer.
The Prince would be put away quietly. They would claim some illness for him-perhaps typhoid, like his father! There would be no scandal.
As with Julius Sorokine, he would simply disappear. There would be a tragic notice of his death. No one would ever know the full truth.
He thanked the Princess and walked out of the room, his mouth dry, his legs trembling, hands slick with sweat and yet cold.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simnel marquand looked exhausted, as if there were nothing of life or passion left inside him. He was in the yellow sitting room with Elsa. They stood side by side, staring through the high windows at the formal gardens in their bright, rigid beauty.
“God knows!” he said bitterly. “Personally I think the man is totally incompetent. If he were worth anything, Minnie would still be alive.” The pain in his voice was lacerating.
Elsa avoided looking at him. To do so would be intrusive, like watching someone whose bodily functions were out of control. And yet she was angry with him for blaming Pitt. “What would you have done?” she asked him, her voice almost level in spite of the pitch of her own emotions.
“I wouldn’t have spent my time infuriating the Prince of Wales, and the entire staff, about some damn plate!” He almost choked on the words. “The man’s a buffoon!”
It was really Julius she was trying to defend, but she spoke as if it were Pitt. “What could he have read from the evidence? There was nothing to prove who killed the woman, or even why anyone should want to.”
“Minnie worked it out!” he shouted in accusation. “She deduced it from the evidence.”
“What evidence?” Now she swung round to face him, as hurt and desperate as he was. The only difference between them was that Minnie, whom he had loved, was dead, and Julius was still alive, at least for a short while longer.
He did not answer. There were shadows around his eyes and the skin there was puffy, as if he were ill. She knew he had been obsessed with Minnie, beyond his ability to control it. She had seen men be like that over gambling, growing to hate it and yet unable to stop until they had lost everything.
Would she lose everything when they took Julius away and shut him up for the rest of his life? Was he really the man she thought she knew and loved, or a creature that existed only in her own hungers?
It was absurd, she and Simnel standing together in this beautiful room, total strangers at heart, attacking each other, while suffering the same pain.
“If you knew he was going to kill Minnie, why didn’t you do something yourself?” she asked. It was a cruel question, but he deserved it for accepting so quickly and so blindly that Julius was guilty.
Julius was his brother! He should have had some loyalty, whether they were rivals or not. Minnie had destroyed his judgment, the things in him that were best.
“For God’s sake!” he burst out. “Don’t you think I would have if I’d known? I loved her! Minnie was. . she was the most passionately, marvelously alive person I’ve ever seen. It is as if he had destroyed life itself!”
“Don’t you suppose he knew how alive she was?” she asked, hurting herself as she was saying it.
“He didn’t love her,” Simnel replied very quietly. “He didn’t deserve her.”
“You say that as if loving and deserving were the same thing,” she retaliated. They avoided looking at each other again. “In that case, Olga deserves you. Or hadn’t you thought of that?”
“You can’t help who you love,” he said between his teeth. “You can’t love to order. If you had ever really loved anyone, not simply chosen to marry them as the safest and most profitable alliance you could make, then you would know that.”
She could not accuse him of cruelty-she had been just as cruel herself. “The marriage where I loved was
not offered to me,” she answered him. “Any more than it was to you, or perhaps to Minnie. You are totally naive if you think we can choose to do or undo at will. Or that what you want will turn out the way you believed it would. Olga wanted you. It looks as if she still does, but do you suppose that will go on forever?”
“I loved Minnie,” he said again. “I don’t think you understand that. You never loved her. She knew you didn’t. You were jealous of the affection Cahoon had for her. He admired her in a way he never did you.”
Both of these things were true, but strangely it was the charge that she had not loved Minnie that cut deeper. She should at least have tried. She had been so lost in her own loneliness, too consumed in herself to imagine what Minnie felt. She looked at it now, honestly, and found it ugly. No wonder Cahoon had not loved her. She did not love herself very much either.
“I know,” she replied aloud. “But did you love Minnie? Or did you love the way she made you feel: passionate and alive yourself? And hate it! She made you behave like a fool. You loved her so much you didn’t care if everyone knew-and they did. You betrayed both your wife and your brother. Is that who you wanted to be, what you admired in yourself?” At last she turned to look at him.
His face was white. “You really did hate her, didn’t you?” he said very softly. “Why? Over Cahoon, or over Julius?”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t the arrogance to assume it was over you! Has it occurred to you that most married women will feel for each other when they are betrayed? Perhaps I hated her for what she did to Olga, as well as to Julius.”
His eyes were glittering. “Enough to kill her for it?”
“I thought you believed Julius did it-your own brother?” It was an accusation, all her fear and anger making her voice knife-edged.
“Well, it wasn’t me, and she was the one person Cahoon really loved,” he pointed out. “If it wasn’t Julius, then it must have been Hamilton. And why the hell would he? Face it, Elsa, whoever it is has killed at least three times: Minnie, that poor whore who only came here as part of her job, and the other wretched woman in Africa that we’ve all been trying to forget. Cahoon wasn’t even there, so it couldn’t have been him.”
“Then it must have been Hamilton,” she said simply. “Except that I don’t know it wasn’t you. Perhaps you were desperate to escape the hold she had over you. You might have been tired of endless lust and betrayal. You couldn’t help yourself. Every time she teased you, you responded like a trained dog. Maybe you despised yourself, and that was the only freedom you could achieve.”
“You are a passionless, pathetic woman, just as Cahoon says you are.” The words were forced out between his teeth, his voice shaking.
“Because I don’t go around in a red dress, taunting people?” she retaliated, but the charge stung. She knew Cahoon no longer wanted her. If he wanted anyone at all, it was Amelia Parr. She had seen that in his eyes, but it still hurt that he should say so to another man. It was a complete denial of her as having any value.
“Because you go around in a blue dress, ice cold, and afraid of your own shadow,” he replied. “And, God forgive you, you’re alive!”
“So are you!” she shot back. “And perhaps if you’d resisted your appetites instead of indulging them, Minnie would be too. Have you ever considered that? If Julius killed her, perhaps you drove him to it?”
She had nearly said perhaps Olga did it. The words had almost slipped out.
He was white-faced, blotches of color on his cheeks. “Are you saying that if your wife prefers someone else it is just cause for you to murder her?”
“You had better hope not, or Olga may feel justified in killing you,” she answered him. “I would not blame her.” That was a lie. Rage against Simnel for accusing Julius, and the disloyalty of it, twisted inside her. And the bitter fear that he could be right was there, tiny, thin as a wire in the gut, but undeniable. She hated herself for it even more, but it was there.
Did she love Julius? Was love an unshakable loyalty, no matter what the evidence? A denial of your own values, your intelligence?
Was it something that refuses to believe the ugly and shallow, that sees only the clean in a person, the desire to be brave, kind, funny, and gentle? Or does it also see the fears and the failures, the dreams broken, and still love the person? Is it tender to the bruised hope?
Would she still care if Julius were nothing like her vision of him?
Was that love, or obsession, because his face had a beauty that haunted her mind, his smile and his hands, the pitch of his voice?
Was it really her own dreams she clung to, and loved? How easy, and how unreal.
The door opened and Liliane came in, followed the moment after by Olga. Elsa made polite remarks. Simnel muttered something meaningless and turned away. No one knew what to say that was honest or anything more than platitudes to break the silence.
Elsa looked at the other women and wondered how many compromises they had made. Were they, in facing reality, in loving men in spite of their weaknesses or failures, more honest than she?
Doesn’t all love have a little blindness? How else does it survive?
Isn’t believing in the possibilities of the good and the beautiful what inspires it into being?
Cahoon came in, and Hamilton Quase. They both looked haggard, skin blotched and hollow, Cahoon especially because he was also scratched by his razor. There was a curious lifelessness about him, as though he were physically smaller. Hamilton had obviously already drunk more than was good for him. An air of miserable belligerence suggested he intended to continue. He deliberately avoided Liliane’s anxious gaze.
Dinner was ghastly. The places were set for six, and the absence of Julius and Minnie was glaring. The women did not wear black because they had not brought anything black with them, and the previous night they had dined in their rooms. Instead, they had chosen the darkest shades they had and a complete absence of jewelry. Conversation was halting and desperately artificial until Cahoon shattered the pretense.
“Has anybody seen that fool of a policeman since this morning?”
he asked.
No one answered him. Eventually Simnel shook his head, his mouth full.
“It should be over by tomorrow,” Cahoon went on. “I don’t know why he couldn’t have settled it today.”
“Will we all leave?” Olga asked, looking from one to another of them.
Hamilton leaned back in his chair and regarded Cahoon over-earnestly.
“No,” Cahoon was terse. “The course of history does not stop for individual deaths, even of kings and queens, certainly not simply of those we love. I shall complete the negotiations with His Royal Highness, which will take only a little longer. After that we may all leave.
Of course we shall have to find a suitable diplomat to take Julius’s place.”
“In fact, business as usual,” Elsa said coldly. “Why should we let mere death or damnation get in the way of a railway?”
“Don’t drink any more wine, Elsa. It isn’t good for you,” Cahoon said, without turning to look at her.
“Did Julius admit to killing Minnie?” Hamilton asked, suddenly sitting up straight again. “I assume he didn’t, and that was why the policeman was still wandering around asking questions. I heard he saw the Prince of Wales again today, and the Princess.”
Cahoon sat very still. His knuckles were white where his hand gripped the stem of his wineglass. “I imagine it is true,” he said, clearing his throat to try to release the tension half strangling his voice.
“He is following the trail of detection that Minnie followed, only, God damn him to hell, he is too late to save her.”
“Detection?” Simnel said sharply.
“Don’t be so stupid!” Cahoon said savagely. “If Minnie hadn’t discovered the truth about that woman’s death, Julius wouldn’t have killed her too! Even that buffoon Pitt can work that out!”
“What detection?” The words were out of Elsa’s mo
uth before she thought of the consequences, then it was too late.
Cahoon turned in his seat to stare at her. He seemed to be considering an angry or dismissive answer, then changed his mind. “It had to do with monogrammed sheets, broken china, and a great deal of blood.”
Everyone around the table froze, food halfway to their mouths, glasses in midair. Liliane let out a little gasp, and choked it off. Hamilton put down his fork slowly.
Elsa waited. She knew from Cahoon’s face that he was going to tell them.
“It seems there was a piece of china broken,” Cahoon began.
“Limoges porcelain, to be exact. Quite distinctive. The servants swept up the pieces and removed them. .”
“From where?” Hamilton asked. “Not the linen cupboard!”
Elsa could feel high, hysterical laughter welling up inside her and put her hand over her mouth to stifle it.
Simnel leaned forward. “Are you saying it was from Julius’s room, and Minnie knew that? Why would the servants clear it up, anyway?”
A muscle ticked dangerously in Cahoon’s jaw. “No, of course not Julius’s room. It seems that the wretched woman either was killed in the Queen’s bedroom, or else it-”
“What?” Simnel exploded.
Liliane dropped her fork with a clatter.
Olga gave a cry that was instantly swallowed back, and the emotion behind it could have been anything.
“Her Majesty is at Osborne,” Cahoon pointed out. “It would be easy enough for Julius to have taken the wretched woman there-”
“But why?” Hamilton insisted. “It makes no sense!”
“A gentleman guest in Buckingham Palace rapes and guts a whore, and you’re looking for sense!” Cahoon shouted at him, his rage and pain at last breaking loose. “The drink has rotted your brain, Quase. I’m talking about what Minnie found out, not trying to explain it!”
Elsa could not bear it. She refused to believe Julius was the man Cahoon was painting him to be. “If Minnie told you all this, why didn’t you protect her yourself?” she accused him. “You blame Pitt for not arresting Julius sooner, but you didn’t tell him this, did you?”
