The peaceful afternoon was a relief after the stress of the last two days, and she returned to the hotel feeling mildly happier. She had the entire evening ahead of her to do nothing but read and forget that two days of trailing about behind the King and Queen lay ahead of her.
As Adele crossed the cobbles to the wide footpath in front of the hotel, she saw a tall, slender man with white whiskers step down from a cab and cross the pavement at a smart clip, his silver-topped cane swinging.
Adele did not call out to Pureton. There was a slight chance he was not here to find her and bring her back to the royal yacht. She would not remind him of her presence here in Dublin, if that was the case.
Instead, she followed Pureton into the hotel at a discreet distance.
The King’s Assistant Private Secretary paused in front of the desk. “Where is he?” he demanded of the clerk.
The clerk gave a near-bow and pointed toward the stairs. “The next floor, my lord. To the right at the top of the stairs.”
Adele moved up the stairs behind Pureton, struggling to keep up with his long-legged pace. The narrow stairs were extraordinarily busy compared to her arrival at the hotel. Footmen and gentlemen climbed up and down them at a great pace, brushing past her with murmured apologies.
Her heart picked up speed. Who was the “he” of whom Pureton had demanded the location?
She turned to the right at the top of the stairs, only a few paces behind Pureton. The corridor was much wider on this floor, with a thick, wall-to-wall carpet that didn’t quite hush the frantic conversations of a dozen people farther along. Clearly, this was where the “he” Pureton sought was to be found.
Adele glided along the dove-grey carpet, keeping her chin up as if she had every right to be there. It was entirely possible she did have that right—and until she learned otherwise, she was making it her business. This was something Melville had drilled into her more than ounce.
“You have a natural curiosity you must exploit, Lady Adele,” he’d told her. “There is no situation that is none of your business, anymore. Not until you’ve thoroughly established the matter is innocent.”
A maid in a black uniform and white pinafore slumped upon a chair which had been placed on the other side of the corridor from the open door of one of the rooms. She had her cap in her hands and was steadily ruining its stiffness by wringing it and squeezing it. She was very upset, her round face red and her cheeks wet with tears. She sniffled, while one of the footmen inadequately patted her shoulder, and used the cap to dab at her eyes.
Both of them stared into the open doorway. The view seemed to be upsetting the maid, which made Adele wonder why the footman didn’t move her chair out of the way of the view through the door or remove her from the scene altogether.
She moved up to the girl’s other side and held out her handkerchief. “Here, my dear. Use this. The starch in your cap will just make your eyes hurt even more.”
The girl looked up at her, blinking. Her eyes were very red. “Th-thank you,” she whispered and took the handkerchief.
Adele glanced through the open door. The room was considerably larger than hers upon the third floor, and there were at least six men in it that she glimpsed through the door. Five of them were moving about the room, examining drawers and cupboards and the contents of a gentleman’s valise lying open upon a stand similar to the one holding Adele’s trunk.
The sixth man lay upon the floor, his head turned toward the door, his cheek upon the polished floorboards. His eyes were open, showing true Celtic black, which matched his fine white skin and thick, black hair.
Someone had slashed his belly open. The pool of blood stretched from his body to the door itself and was now soaking into the dove grey carpet of the hallway.
Pureton made his way into the room around the wide puddle, stepping over the body to speak to one of the older of the men in the room in a soft voice.
“Was it the blood in the carpet that made you check?” Adele asked the maid very softly.
“Yes, m’m,” the maid replied. Her breath hitched. “He was just lying there…!”
Adele gave her shoulder a squeeze. “How frightful for you. Was he still alive when you found him?”
The footman gave her a sharp look. “Now see here—”
But the maid’s eyes widened and fresh tears fell. “Oh, oh! Yes, he was! He begged me to fetch the doctor! Over and over. Then he…he…stopped.” She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.
Adele peered through the door, studying the men. At least one of them was an Irish police officer, one of the Garda, for he wore a black uniform and his helmet sat upon the end of the bed, which Adele could just glimpse at the edge of the doorway. He was speaking quietly to Pureton.
Another man in a civilian suit searched through the drawers of a chest against the wall, his toes within an inch of the blood. He didn’t seem to notice the puddle. Clearly, someone accustomed to such sights. That would make him another type of policeman, Adele judged.
He gave a soft sound as he pulled something out of the drawer. He turned and waved it, to catch the Chief Inspector’s attention. It looked like a very large stack of money.
“How much?” the Chief Inspector said.
The man thumbed through the crisp notes. “Five hundred pounds.”
Five hundred? Adele could feel her jaw loosen in surprise.
One of the six men in
