“Is it possible, sir, that you were deeply asleep, and he could have fought with her in your room, broken the dish there, and even torn her clothes there?”
“I. .” He thought about it for a moment or two, and realized that Pitt was using a polite term for asking if he could have been so drunk that he had been insensible. But it was still an escape. “I suppose so,”
he said grudgingly.
“Then may I look and see if he left any trace, sir, any evidence that would prove it?”
“I can’t see why it matters. I’ve told you, it could have happened,”
the Prince said crossly.
“It is a matter of justice, sir.”
They stood facing each other, staring. Perhaps it was the reference to justice that broke the stalemate.
“Very well, if you insist,” the Prince snapped.
“Thank you, sir,” Pitt accepted.
But he found nothing of any interest whatever in the Prince of Wales’s rooms. There was not even any obvious gap where the Limoges dish might have been. His bedroom and dressing room were gracious, comfortable, but not unlike the rooms of any middle-aged gentleman of his privilege and enormous wealth. Certainly there were no shards of porcelain or crystal embedded in the carpet, and no stains of any sort, blood or wine. Nothing was torn, scraped, or otherwise damaged. If any crime had been committed here, it had been done entirely without leaving a trace.
Pitt left feeling confused and as if somehow he had also been beaten in a game of wits. It felt like a hollow pain inside him. He had escaped a danger, faced a man who had the power to damage him seriously, if not ruin him, and he had found nothing at all. In fact he had made a fool of himself.
He walked slowly along the corridor back toward the guest wing, trying to scramble his thoughts together and make sense out of a mi-asma of facts that seemed to be without meaning.
He became aware of a calm and very discreet woman standing where the corner turned.
“Mr. Pitt,” she said quietly.
He focused his attention. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, would like to speak with you, if you can spare a few moments,” she said. It was a gracious way of phrasing what amounted to a command.
Pitt found the Princess in her sitting room as before. She was dressed in a high-necked tea gown with a froth of lace at the throat.
She sat with her back ramrod straight and her head high. She was a beautiful woman, but more than by her coloring or regularity of feature, he was impressed by her dignity. She was what he expected and wished royalty to be. He stood to attention automatically.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt,” she said with a very slight smile. “I hear that poor Mrs. Sorokine has also become a victim of tragedy. I am so sorry. She was an unfortunate young woman.” She did not explain the remark, but regarded him as if she assumed he would understand the subtleness of her implication.
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “I am afraid so.” He inclined his head to make his agreement clearer.
“Is it true that Mr. Sorokine is responsible?” she asked.
He gestured confusion by spreading his hands outward an inch or two. “It appears so.”
She understood. “But you are not certain?”
“Not yet, ma’am.”
“Do you expect to be?”
“I wish to be. I wish very much to be.”
She nodded slowly. Apparently she had understood. There was a flash of what could have been gratitude in her eyes, including a shred of the faintest, self-mocking humor. “I am sure. Is there any way in which I might assist you? I see that you have just been speaking with His Royal Highness.”
“Yes, ma’am. There was a piece of Limoges porcelain broken and I was inquiring whether he knew where it was normally kept. None of the servants appears to recognize it.”
“And it has to do with the death of one of these poor women?”
she asked. “What was it like?”
“It is hard to tell from what is left, ma’am, but it seems to have been a pedestal plate.” He outlined it with his hands. “With a lot of gold lattice, I think around the rim, and a picture in the middle with bright cobalt blue.” He spoke slowly, but he was still not sure, from the look of total bewilderment in her eyes, if she had understood him at all. “Blue, like the sky.” He looked upwards. “And gold around the edge.” He made a circle in the air with his finger.
“I hear you, Mr. Pitt,” she said softly. “Your diction is excellent.
But I am puzzled. There is exactly such a dish in Her Majesty’s own bedroom. She is very fond of it, not for itself particularly, but because it was a gift from one of the princesses, when she was quite young.”
She must have misunderstood him after all. And yet meeting his steady gaze she appeared to be perfectly certain not only of what she had said, but also the enormity of its meaning. He struggled to think of something to say that was not absurd.
The Princess rose to her feet. “I think, Mr. Pitt, that we had better go and see if Her Majesty’s plate has indeed been broken. When she returns, we should have some explanation, and apology for her, if it has. Will you come with me, please?”
“Yes. . ma’am.” He obeyed, walking quickly around her to reach the door before she did and open it for her. He did not know whether he was exultant that she had told him where the dish belonged, or if it terrified him even more. If it was the Queen’s dish, how had it come to be smashed? Had the Prince taken it? Why, for heaven’s sake? Was he completely mad? If the Princess of Wales realized what it meant, what would she do? Had Pitt, in his blindness, fallen into the middle of a Palace plot? Was the Prince of Wales insane? Did the Princess know it and intend to use Pitt somehow to expose it?
No. That was all delirious thinking. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Probably it was some thieving servant after all. That made infinitely more sense.
He followed a pace behind her along the wide corridors into another wing altogether. She spoke briefly to a servant and then to another. Finally he followed her, with two liveried footmen and a lady-in-waiting, into Queen Victoria’s rooms.
They were oddly as Pitt had expected: too much furniture, all large and beautifully carved, pictures, ornaments, and photographs everywhere. The sunlight slanted in through high heavily curtained windows and made colored patterns on the carpets.
“There,” the Princess said, pointing to an ornate mantel. On it stood a beautiful Limoges pedestal dish, with gold leaf around the edges, trellises woven of gold, and in the center a painting of a romantic couple on a garden seat. It was not the sky that was deep blue, but his coat, and a robe around her shoulders and down to the ground at the back.
The Princess turned and looked at Pitt, her eyes wide, questioning.
“Was there a matching pair?” he asked, feeling foolish.
“No,” the lady-in-waiting answered for the Princess, perhaps fearing she had not heard.
Pitt walked around, making a pretense of looking for a space from which another dish could have been taken, but not expecting to find it. He was puzzled, beaten a second time. He looked at the bed. Did it have the beautifully monogrammed sheets on, like the stained and crumpled ones Gracie had found in the laundry? He dared not look.
There was no possible excuse for it, and what did it matter?
He bent and touched the heavy tapestry curtains, feeling the tex-ture of the cloth. It moved very slightly, and he saw a darker patch on the carpet below. It looked like a stain. He bent and put his finger to it. It was dry. He licked his finger and touched it again. His finger came away smeared with brownish-red.
A charge rippled through him like electricity. It was blood. He looked at the skirt to the bed, exploring it with his fingers. He found a seam where there appeared to be no reason for one. He straightened up and moved quickly to the same place on the other side. Here the skirt was even, and there was no seam. A piece had been removed and its absence disguised. More blood? An accident? An illness?
But it was not yet completely caked in. It could not be more than a few days old-in other words, it occurred since the Queen had left and been at Osborne on the Isle of Wight.
