He heard the edge of anxiety in her voice. “Pitt is quite well,” he said quickly. “But we are dealing with a case of such delicacy that I dare not mention it, except that it has to do with the Prince of Wales.
I need your assistance.”
“You have it. What may I do?” She did not raise her voice or alter her tone.
He knew it would disappoint her that it was merely information he wanted, and he regretted it. In the past she had involved herself in cases more daringly, and shown considerable flair. “There are several people I need to know more about than I can ask easily, and with the speed and discretion I require,” he told her.
“I see.” She looked away so he could not see her silver-gray eyes, or read the emotions in them.
“There has been a murder,” he confided as they came into the next room. “The victim is a woman of the streets, but she was found in a residence where even her presence would cause a scandal, let alone her bloodied corpse in the linen cupboard.”
Vespasia’s silver eyebrows rose. “Indeed? How unfortunate. Who is it you suspect?”
“It has to be one of three men.” He named them.
“I am surprised,” she confessed.
“You think none of them capable?”
She smiled. “I think none of them foolish enough, which is not the same thing at all.”
“What can you tell me of them, in the way of gossip, scandal, or anything else that may be of interest?”
“You mean of relevance,” she corrected him. “I am quite capable of reading between the lines, Victor.”
He was pleased that she should use his Christian name, and aware that it was ridiculous it should make such a difference to him. “What can you tell me?” he asked.
“I should be surprised if it is Julius Sorokine,” she began thoughtfully, speaking almost under her breath. “He is a young man perhaps too handsome for his own good. Much has come to him easily, though not personal happiness, I think. He has not extended himself because he has had little need. He has no temper and not the kind of vanity that lashes out against denial. He is too lazy, too much on the periphery of life, nor has he so far the emotional energy necessary for violence.” She looked a trifle sad as she said it, as if he had disappointed her.
If someone had asked her, would she have said the same of him:
“too much on the periphery of life?” Refraining from violence not through self-mastery but through emotional indolence? He had loved, and betrayed, but it was a long time ago. As always, he had chosen duty over passion.
No, that was not true. Passion was far too strong a word for what he had felt. The choice had not torn his heart. He remembered it with a certain shame, but not agony.
Vespasia was watching him, waiting for his attention to return.
“And Marquand?” he prompted.
“It is possible,” she conceded. “He is Julius’s half-brother, elder by a year or two, and driven by a certain jealousy. Of course Julius married Cahoon Dunkeld’s daughter, Wilhelmina. I believe she calls herself Minnie. A girl with a great talent to attract masculine admiration, which she exercises freely. What the unkind may call a trouble-maker.”
“And what would you call her, Lady Vespasia?” He concealed a very slight smile.
“An unhappy young woman who is having a prolonged tantrum,”
she replied without hesitation. “Too much like her father.”
“And what would you say of him?”
“You did not include him,” she pointed out.
“Only because his whereabouts are accounted for.”
“Perfectly capable of killing anyone,” she said without hesitation.
“But far too intelligent to do so. If he is guilty, I would say he lost his temper, which is considerable, and did so more by accident than design.”
“You do not cut a woman’s throat in the linen cupboard by accident.”
Her eyes widened only very slightly. “No, that is true. Then I doubt it was Dunkeld. If you had told me he beat his wife, I should have believed you.”
“Why?”
“Because he is a man who takes his possessions very seriously.”
“I see. That leaves Hamilton Quase.”
“A very civilized man,” she observed.
“Too civilized for violence?”
“Certainly not! The most outwardly civilized are the most capable of appearing to be something different from reality. I am quite sure you know that as well as I do.” There was a slight reproof in her voice.
“I apologize,” he said sincerely.
“Thank you. If Mr. Quase were to have done such a thing, I believe he would have had a reason for it that seemed to him to be adequate. But he is a man who takes risks and will pay highly for what he wants.”
“Really!” He had put Quase down as a man who dreamed rather than acted, finding most of his reality at the bottom of a bottle. “And what does he want?” he asked.
“A few years ago I should have said it was Liliane Forbes,” she said. “Now, of course, I do not know. Perhaps it has not changed.”
“He is married to her,” he observed.
“There is more to possessing a woman than the legality of marriage, Victor,” she corrected him. “Quase was very much in love with her, or else he would not have behaved as he did over her brother’s death. A very messy affair. If Eden Forbes had lived, Liliane would very probably have married Julius Sorokine, and a great many things would be different.”
Now he was genuinely interested. “Watson Forbes’s son?”
“His only son.”
“What happened to him?”
She frowned, her voice dropping even lower as they stood in front of a large, very ugly portrait of a woman. “The details are very un-clear,” she answered. “He died in Africa, boat overturned in a river.
Hippopotami, crocodiles, or something of the sort. Watson Forbes was shattered, as was Liliane. It was Hamilton Quase who dealt with the whole, very miserable matter. Kept it as discreet as possible, saw to the funeral and so on. Liliane had been in love with Julius, but after a decent period of mourning, she married Quase instead.”
“Gratitude?” Narraway inquired. “And if Quase rose to the occasion, and Sorokine did not, perhaps she chose the better man?”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t think so?”
She smiled at him. “I think she paid a debt of gratitude, but that is only a supposition. I don’t know.”
“How do you know so much about it? Were you there?”
“In Africa? Good gracious, no. It holds no enchantment for me,”
she replied. “But I have an excellent friend, Zenobia Gunne, who has explored in all manner of places, including long stretches of the Congo and Zambezi rivers, certainly in much of Southern Africa. It was she who told me.”
“Nobby Gunne,” Narraway said with a smile, remembering a remarkable woman who was unafraid of lions, elephants, tsetse flies, or malaria, but still able to be cut to the quick by disloyalty and wounded by the suffering of others. “If she says that is what happened, then I will take it as so.”
“It is of very little use, though, I fear,” Vespasia said unhappily. “I know a little of the wives, but it is only trivial: matters of fashion and spite, who said what to whom, where love or dreams may have led. I cannot imagine that any of it was toward murder in a linen cupboard, no matter whose. It seems a preposterous story to me.”
“It is preposterous,” he agreed. “But regrettably true. Somerset Carlisle suggested that Watson Forbes was the greatest expert in the practicalities of the proposed railway, both diplomatically and with regard to engineering.”
“After Cecil Rhodes, you mean?” she said, amusement touching her lips. “I imagine Mr. Rhodes, with his boundless ambition and love of Empire, will be a keen backer of this project?” She started to move on from the picture. “As Prime Minister of Cape Colony, it will be vastly in his interest. All British Africa will be open to him by