perfect-for an act it was, she was certain. She wouldn’t have put it past Lillian to have arrived at breakfast dressed in jodhpurs, cracking a whip against her highly polished boots, despite the absence of a stables for forty miles or more. Instead, Lillian had opted for the simple wool sheath bedecked with a king’s ransom in pearls at neck and wrist: the uniform of the bored society matron. But not, Natasha recognized, quite the done thing for breakfast in a country manor house.
“Well,” said Natasha, dabbing at invisible crumbs before putting her napkin by her plate, “I’m off. Time to mobilize George. We’re going into Cambridge today to have a look in the Fitzwilliam, perhaps visit some of his old haunts.”
Ignoring the pleading look in Sarah’s eyes that said more plainly than words,
Lillian aimed an insincere but well-bred “Enjoy your day” at Natasha’s back. Natasha turned at the door, smiling, and said, “Oh, never fear.” Lillian’s newspaper shielded her from the chilly smile, which was just as well. With a kindly wink at Sarah, Natasha was gone.
6. SECOND SEATING
“I CAN SEE WHAT he sees in Mrs. Romano,” Albert was complaining, “but why the deuce does he put up with Paulo?”
“Deuce?” drawled Ruthven, from behind his paper. “Do you know, I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone use that expression.”
“Occupational hazard,” muttered Albert. “Too many drawing-room dramas.”
“I thought you were excellent in
Albert looked at her. For one thing, he had never actually been in
“Thank you,” he said at last. Lillian, he decided, was probably always so fashionably late to the theatre it was doubtful she’d ever actually seen a play.
“To answer your question: ‘Package Deal,’” Ruthven went on, turning a page of the
“I rang for coffee ten minutes ago. Where in hell is he? My head is splitting.”
Indeed, all the excesses of the day before were written large on Albert’s prematurely aged face. Ruthven began calculating, not for the first time, when Albert might drink himself out of the running in the contest for heir apparent. The old man was in bad shape but his youngest son was in demonstrably worse.
Complacently, Ruthven surveyed his own solid paunch, giving his biceps an unobtrusive flex. Sound mind in a healthy body, that’s the ticket, he thought. If Albert drank himself to death, Sarah ate herself to death, and George orgied himself to death, it would nicely clear the field without his having to lift a finger. The appearance of Violet had put something of a damper on this happy prospect, but that, he was convinced, was a temporary inconvenience, soon disposed of. The flood of faxes into his laptop, starting at nine this morning, had only buoyed his hopes in that regard.
At the thought, he turned to his wife.
“Lillian, my dear. Would you be so kind as to see if you can persuade Mrs. Romano to replenish the sideboard, if her worthless son cannot be found?”
“I?” The raising of one of Lillian’s painted eyebrows would have quelled a lesser man, but Ruthven was this morning determined to have a private word with his brother before Albert’s habitual cycle of drunkenness began for the day. He estimated that he had less than an hour before Albert began his “hair of the dog” regimen.
With the perception born of long years in marital harness, Lillian read the significance of Ruthven’s nod in Albert’s direction.
Stifling further protest, she set off in search of the kitchen, rather like Magellan seeking a new passage to the Spice Islands.
She could be gone for days, thought Ruthven, not without a frisson of pleasure. He took the precaution of shutting the double-paneled doors after her. He knew Sir Adrian always took a breakfast tray in bed, but God knew if his inamorata was with him or if she might appear downstairs at any moment. He’d seen George leave with the delectable Natasha. Sarah, Lillian had told him, had rushed from the room without explanation shortly before his own appearance.
Albert, meanwhile, had laid his head on the table, displaying to full effect the tonsure that had started to form in the center of his hair. He was emitting periodic mewling noises.
“Buck up, old sport. This is important,” said Ruthven.
This was greeted with a weak moan. “Not so loud,” Albert whispered.
“Here, drink mine, I haven’t touched it yet. Come on, man, pull yourself together.”
Albert accepted the proffered coffee with trembling hands. He doubted it would help his heaving stomach but his pounding head was winning, for the moment, the pain war.
“My office came through this morning with everything you could want to know, and more, about the Winthrop murder. Here-” he removed several folded sheets from his inner jacket pocket-“is just a sample. It’s Violet, all right. And the story’s even more sensational than I recalled.”
Albert took the pages and unfolded them, fumbling for his glasses. The fax machine had rendered the small newsprint almost unintelligible. The top sheet was dominated by a photo of a woman sitting sidesaddle in full hunting regalia atop a horse awash in a sea of beagles. Even allowing for the bleary quality of the reproduction, he could see she was strikingly beautiful, with the widely spaced eyes, high cheekbones, and chiseled jawline bestowed by the gods on only a blessed few. She even seemed to have a tiny cleft in her chin, which was rather gilding the lily, thought Albert. The only thing marring the impression of exquisite porcelain fragility were the hands holding the reins, Violet’s hands-not as pronouncedly veined and bony as they were today but still unmistakably large and out of proportion.
“How old was she then?” asked Albert.
“Early twenties. Twenty-one, I think one of the papers said.”
“‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?’” The headline over the photo was at complete odds with this image of heavenly near-perfection. The headline asked, simply, “Lady Murderess?”
Albert squinted at the page, holding it up to the light from the mullioned windows behind him, able to make out only the words in bold in the caption and the dateline: November 15-Edinburgh. The caption read, unhelpfully: “Lady Winthrop last fall, on Dundee Prince near the Winthrop estate in Gloucester.”
“There’s more, loads more,” Ruthven was saying, “photos and the lot, but on the next page is a summary from shortly after the inquest adjourned.”
“I can’t make it out,” said Albert.
“Here.” Ruthven took back the pages. Adjusting his glasses lower on his nose, he scanned the type until he found the section he wanted.
“It begins by announcing the verdict of ‘Murder by person or persons unknown,’ and the adjournment of the hearing. There never was an official finding beyond that, apparently. The coroner concluded that the police were stumped-reading between the lines, you understand. There was the usual jargon about pursuing various lines of enquiry-and pretty much it was left at that. Lady Winthrop herself was never called to give testimony; she got her physician to stipulate she was prostrate with grief. All nonsense, of course. If she’d been a charwoman they’d have brought her to the inquest on a litter. I haven’t been in Fleet Street all these years without knowing how these things go.”
Albert, now holding his temples, made a “speed-it-up” gesture with his index fingers.
“Very well,” said Ruthven. “On the night of November 10, the Winthrop household-it was Sir Winthrop’s estate near Edinburgh- was awakened by a crash of glass and furniture from the direction of the old man’s study. This according to the testimony of one Mrs. Grant-Agnes, the head cook. Much of what she actually said was summarized-the reporter, I gather, having trouble rendering her brogue into received English. But the substance
