reputation, financial standing, ambitions, friends, and enemies. Pitt must explore their natures, their angers and fears, their knowledge of one another. One of them had slashed a woman to death. Underneath the courteous, intelligent exterior there had to be a madman driven by a hatred so bestial he could not control it even within the Palace walls.
Pitt spoke to Hamilton Quase first. He was obliged to draw him from a conversation with Marquand, but he could not find Julius Sorokine, and he was not going to address Dunkeld again so soon.
He had something of a plan. It was not enough to give him confidence, merely a place to begin. He sat in a large armchair in the room Tyndale had given him. He was facing Hamilton Quase in one of the other chairs. Quase crossed his legs elegantly and waited. He looked tired, his eyes bloodshot and his skin, beneath the darkening of sun and wind, was mottled by too much drink. He kept his hands still in his lap, but Pitt thought that were he to hold them more loosely, they might tremble.
“Will you describe the party to me, Mr. Quase?” Pitt began bluntly. “From the beginning. Who arranged it? Whose idea was it?”
Quase looked slightly surprised. “You don’t think the murder of that unfortunate woman was planned, surely? Why on earth would anyone do something so. . so stupid? And dangerous.” He had a good voice, stronger than one might have expected from his slightly unsteady air.
“What do you think?” Pitt returned.
Quase’s eyebrows rose even higher. “I’ve no idea who did it, if that’s what you are asking.”
Pitt smiled very slightly. “If you did know, why would you not have told me?”
Quase smiled back with a sudden flash of humor. “Is there some kind of penalty for the first one of us to answer a question? Do we lose?”
“Lose what?”
“The struggle, the battle of wits,” Quase replied.
“Then I have won,” Pitt told him.
“Oh. . yes.” Quase smiled back. “I answered you. Does it feel like a victory?”
“Not at all. Why would we be battling? Are we not on the same side?”
“That depends upon how far we go,” Quase answered. “I don’t know who killed the woman, or why. I suppose I wish you to find out, but there are answers that I would not like.”
“There will probably be answers that no one likes,” Pitt agreed.
“Murder affects far more than the murderer and the victim.” He leaned back a little, as if relaxing in his chair. “We all have loves and hates, and secrets. That doesn’t affect the questions I have to ask, and go on asking until I know who killed her, and can prove it.”
Quase looked at him with mild amusement. There was something else in his eyes, which Pitt found too complicated to read, but it was a kind of unhappiness, as if an old wound were aching again. “Then you had better begin,” he said quietly. “I warn you, I have absolutely no idea who killed her, and still less why. She seemed a perfectly harmless sort of tart.”
“Did she?” Pitt was feeling his way carefully. It was an odd investigation. The victim was someone who was a stranger to all of those who could possibly be guilty of killing her. No one admitted to ever having seen her before. “What was she like?” he asked. “For that matter, what was her name?”
Quase frowned, but there was a crooked smile on his lips. “Sadie, I think. I didn’t actually. . er. . speak to her, if you like? She was not here for my amusement, except most indirectly.”
“Whose?”
Again Quase was slightly surprised. “His Royal Highness’s, of course.”
“Why was she especially for him?”
“Actually, she seemed intelligent,” Quase said frankly. “She had quite a ready wit. Not cruel at all, just very quick. She could read and write, and she had a considerable knowledge of men and of human nature. I mean emotional as well as the more obvious aspects.”
“A courtesan rather than a whore?” Pitt asked. He should have expected that.
“Elegantly put,” Quase agreed. “Yes. She wasn’t actually particularly pretty. I’ve certainly seen many prettier. Good skin and eyes, but otherwise very ordinary. It was her personality, her laugh, her suppleness of mind as well as body. And she sang very well. She really was entertaining.” A sadness passed over his face, and for a moment it was as if his attention was far away.
Pitt winced, wondering how much of what he was saying was the truth and what the omissions were. Perhaps it was the things he was not telling that would have been the most revealing.
“Poor creature,” Quase said quietly. “She was so alive.”
Pitt breathed in and out slowly, suddenly struck by the belief that Quase was speaking not of this woman, but of some other. He dismissed it as fantasy. He must be more tired than he thought. It was getting toward late afternoon and he would not go home tonight; perhaps not tomorrow either. “You observed her very closely,” he said at last.
“What?” Quase looked up.
“You observed her very closely,” Pitt repeated. “She must have been in the room for some time, and spoken quite a lot.”
“No. Just an impression.”
Quase was lying.
“You had seen her before?” Pitt asked. “Perhaps purchased her services on some other occasion? Please don’t deny it if it is true. It will not be too difficult to find out, and then a great deal of other information would emerge as well.” The threat was veiled but perfectly clear.
Quase smiled broadly, but his eyes were pinched with hurt. “A waste of your efforts, Mr. Pitt. I have many vices. I am a moral coward at times. I debase myself to serve men who have higher office than I and lower morality, and I know it. Certainly I drink too much. But I do not frequent the whorehouses of London, or of anywhere else. As you may have noticed, I have a very beautiful wife.” He drew in his breath and let it out with a sigh of pain. “And unlike some men, I find that quite sufficient.”
Pitt believed him. Some sense of delicacy prevented him from pursuing the subject. “I understand Mr. Sorokine went to bed early also. Is that correct?” he asked instead.
A flash of appreciation lit Quase’s eyes and then vanished. “Yes.
And alone, if that is what you are asking. Whether he remained alone or not I have no idea.”
“So there were three women for Mr. Marquand, Mr. Dunkeld, and His Royal Highness,” Pitt concluded.
“It would appear so,” Quase agreed. “I stayed up until they retired, which was around midnight. What happened after that I have no idea. As far as I am concerned the women earned their fee by being extremely entertaining company and making a somewhat plodding evening pass with pleasure.”
“A plodding evening?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.
“His Royal Highness, when sober, can be heavy going,” Quase told him with a flicker of a smile. “And when drunk, even heavier. A bit like plowing a field after a week’s rain. Dunkeld is a bully, as you may have observed. Marquand is good enough, I suppose, although I find his rivalry with Sorokine rather a bore. They are half- brothers-
I assume you knew that. Sorokine himself can be rather a bore because he is absorbed in his own problems, which he wears heavily.
And before you ask me, I don’t know, but I assume they are largely to do with his wife, whose behavior with Marquand is outrageous.”
“And would not tell me if you did,” Pitt added.
“Precisely,” Quase agreed.
“So it was an enjoyable evening? No quarrels? No tension as to who should have which woman?”
Quase laughed outright. “Between whom, for God’s sake? His Royal Highness took what he wished, Dunkeld would choose between the other two, and Marquand would have what was left. If you really need me to tell you that, then you haven’t the wits to find out what the menu was, let alone who killed that poor creature!”
“It is not only what I learn, Mr. Quase, it is who tells me, and how,” Pitt retorted, then immediately wished he had not. He had defended himself, and thus betrayed his need to do so. Too late to pull it back. “Thank you. Would you ask Mr. Marquand to come, please?”
Five minutes later Simnel Marquand came in and closed the door behind him. “I really can’t help you,” he said
