Gracie retreated to the wall again, hoping to resume her previous invisibility.
“He still relies on you, though, doesn’t he, Papa?” Mrs. Sorokine took up the previous conversation as if nothing had happened. “I think there will be no question of his complete support.”
“Let us hope so,” Mr. Dunkeld replied. He did not look as pleased with her as Gracie would have expected. After all, she was in a way complimenting him.
“There is no one else with better credentials,” Mrs. Quase said with forced cheerfulness. “In fact, I’m not sure there is really anyone else at all.”
“There will always be other offers,” Mr. Sorokine pointed out.
“But I agree, they are not nearly as good.”
“I expect they’ll try, though, don’t you?” Again Mrs. Sorokine was looking at her father. “The Prince of Wales’s support will make all the difference, won’t it?”
“Obviously!” Dunkeld said with considerable sharpness. “That is what we are here for. You do not need to keep repeating what is already obvious.”
“We can hardly be complacent.” Mrs. Dunkeld spoke for the first time. “After all, however good we are at building railways, apparently one of us killed that poor woman.”
“She was a street whore, Elsa,” Dunkeld said brusquely. “Don’t speak of her as if she were some poor girl attacked on her way to church.”
Mrs. Dunkeld looked at him with a sudden flare of fury in her blue eyes. “So were the victims of the Whitechapel murderer. They’d have hanged him just the same, if they had caught him.”
Mrs. Quase gave a gasp. Mrs. Marquand was ashen.
Mrs. Sorokine raised both her hands in mock applause. “Oh, bravo, Stepmother! That’s the perfect remark to season the fish course! Now we shall feel so much more like choosing game. What is it, pheasant in aspic, jugged hare, or a little venison perhaps? Nothing like talk of a good hanging to improve the appetite.”
“Yours anyway, it would seem!” Mrs. Dunkeld shot back at her. “It is idiotic to sit here and talk of the plans for a railway the length of Africa when one of us is a lunatic who kills women, and the police are here and not going to leave until they find out which one of us it is.”
“We are all powerfully aware of that,” Dunkeld said freezingly, his face set hard. “It appears to have escaped your intelligence that we are trying our best to have a civilized meal and behave with some dignity until such time as that is. Always assuming that idiot policeman is capable of doing anything more than sitting in his chair and asking endless, stupid questions. He doesn’t appear to be any further forward than he was the morning he arrived.”
Gracie was so furious she almost choked on her own breath, perhaps partly because she had a terrible fear that Mr. Dunkeld was right about Mr. Pitt’s lack of progress. They had as evidence the Queen’s sheets, the knife, the bottles, and knew about the broken dish tha wasn’t supposed to exist, and buckets and buckets of water, but none of it made any sense. She ached to be able to snap back at him that they wouldn’t know anything about what progress Pitt was making anyway, until he was ready to arrest someone, but she could do nothing but stand there against the wall as if she were a bundle of clothes on a peg.
Almost unbelievably, it was Mrs. Sorokine who said what Gracie wanted to say. “He might know all kinds of things, Papa. He would hardly be likely to tell us. After all, we are the suspects.”
“Only if he’s a fool!” Dunkeld snapped at her. “I wasn’t even in Africa when the first woman was killed, which I shall remind him, if he is idiotic enough to suspect me. And no woman could have done such a thing.”
Hamilton Quase put his wineglass down with a shaking hand, slopping some of it over, even though it was half empty. “You seem to be assuming it was the same person. I don’t know why! It doesn’t have to be. Unfortunately slashing prostitutes to death is not a unique propensity.”
“Straining coincidence a little far, don’t you think?” Dunkeld’s face was twisted with sarcasm. “Exactly the same way, with the same three men present? Even Pitt could get far enough to see the un-likelihood of that. But if he can’t, then I shall have to give him a little assistance.”
“Perhaps you should tell him who the Whitechapel murderer is at the same time?” Quase suggested bitingly. “The whole country would be glad to know. Except whoever it is, of course.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Mr. Marquand observed contemptuously.
“None of us were in London in the autumn of 1888.”
“Except Papa,” Mrs. Sorokine said. “You were here, because I was too, and I saw you. We all knew what happened to those women, everybody did.” She smiled dazzlingly, her eyes too bright. “And in case you think that is irrelevant, my point is that when something hideous happens, people get to know about it, and could copy it closely enough, if they were sufficiently insane, or sufficiently evil.”
“I have finished all the fish I desire to eat.” Mrs. Quase laid her implements on the plate and turned toward Gracie. “Would you remove my plate, and begin to serve the next course? You have no need to fear interrupting the conversation. It is finished.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gracie said obediently.
“And get me some more wine,” Mr. Quase added, holding up the almost empty bottle so she could see the label.
“No! Thank you,” Mrs. Quase cut across him. “We have sufficient. Just clear away the plates.”
“If my wife doesn’t want the wine, she doesn’t need to have it.”
Quase swiveled in his chair unsteadily until he was facing Gracie. “I do. Fetch it. Take this, so you get the right one.” He thrust the bottle out toward her.
Mr. Sorokine stood up and took it from him. “Just clear the dishes,” he told Gracie. “The footman will bring whatever wine we are having with the next course. It may be red, or at least something different.”
Gracie took the bottle, relieved at being rescued. “Yes, sir.” She turned to give it to Ada just beyond the door, then began to collect the plates with Biddie’s help.
By the time she had taken them to the kitchen and returned, the next course was served and they were all eating again, or pretending to.
Mrs. Sorokine seemed too excited to do more than take the occasional mouthful. She went on making oblique remarks to her father, as if deliberately baiting him. Sometimes he ignored her, once or twice he responded sharply, almost viciously.
Gracie saw Mrs. Dunkeld flinch, as if the barbs had been directed at her. There was an unhappiness in her face in repose, a kind of stillness as if she were concentrating on mastering pain. It made Gracie wonder how much she was afraid, and whether it was all for herself or for a tragedy that had yet to happen and could overtake them all. Did she actually have some idea which of the men sitting at the table around her had done this nightmarish thing?
When Mrs. Sorokine was not looking at her father, her eyes flashed to Simnel Marquand. Gracie did not see her once look at her husband. What did that mean? That she did not want to, or that she did not dare?
Olga Marquand remained almost silent.
The course was cleared and the roast beef served, then the puddings, and lastly the biscuits, cheese, and fruit. Gracie managed to fetch and carry without dropping anything or getting anything seriously wrong until the very end, when Ada bumped her elbow and she sent a pile of dirty plates crashing down the stairs. Nothing was broken, but Gracie spent the next half hour cleaning it up and washing the stains out of the carpet.
“Uppity little cow!” Ada observed with satisfaction as she walked around her, lifting her skirts aside with care.
With difficulty, Gracie refrained from reaching out and tripping her. At the moment her mind was busy trying to understand the chaotic emotions she had seen at the dinner table and attempting to decode what Mrs. Sorokine had really meant when she was talking to her father. Gracie was quite certain it had to do with the questions she had been asking all day. She had deduced something, and she was trying to tell them all, perhaps to frighten someone into an action that would betray him.
It was a dangerous thing to do, but there seemed to be something in Mrs. Sorokine that was starved for excitement, however dangerous, or even morally wrong.
Or else maybe it wasn’t excitement, but fear, hidden as well as she was able to, because the man who had done this was someone she loved. Was that why she could not look at her husband?
Perhaps she was brave, and very honest, even at such a cost.
Gracie fetched, carried, and cleaned, still thinking of it. It all made Ada pretty unimportant: just irritating and
