He walked back to the Limoges plate again and bent down to the floor below the mantel. It was old, beautiful, weathered by time and years of polishing. But in between the boards there was a fine white dust, as of broken porcelain. Something had been smashed here.
He turned very slowly and stared around the room. They were all watching him, the Princess, the lady-in- waiting, and both footmen.
With the horror of certainty, he knew what had happened: For whatever reason, whoever had done it, this was where Sadie had been murdered.
She had been moved from here to the linen cupboard for the most obvious of reasons. But why the extra blood in the port bottles?
To make it look as if she had been killed in the cupboard, so no one would look any further? Was it animal blood from the kitchen? Had someone used the port bottles simply to carry it upstairs?
Three bottles seemed excessive. There had not been that much blood in the cupboard. Had they poured the rest away?
His mind was racing-on fire.
Who had? Certainly not the Prince. He had still been slow-moving with the remnants of a drunken hangover when Pitt had seen him the morning after. The answer was obvious: Cahoon Dunkeld.
The Prince had woken to a horror almost beyond belief: Not only was there a dead woman beside him, but he was in his mother’s bed. He must have been hysterical. He had sent for Dunkeld, who had come instantly and done all he could to contain the situation, disguise it, and even find someone to blame-his son-in-law, Julius Sorokine, whom he hated anyway: for not loving Minnie, and perhaps for taking Elsa’s love, real or imagined.
And of course the Prince’s debt to Dunkeld could never be paid.
Even all the support he could give for the Cape-to-Cairo railway would be a small thing in comparison with what Dunkeld had done for him. It was the most brilliant piece of opportunism Pitt had ever seen. He despised Dunkeld’s morality, and at the same time admired his nerve and his invention.
Did Minnie Sorokine have any idea how her father had used the crime?
And if the Prince of Wales was guilty, what could be done about it? Even as the question formed in Pitt’s mind, he knew the answer.
The Prince would be put away quietly. They would claim some illness for him-perhaps typhoid, like his father! There would be no scandal.
As with Julius Sorokine, he would simply disappear. There would be a tragic notice of his death. No one would ever know the full truth.
He thanked the Princess and walked out of the room, his mouth dry, his legs trembling, hands slick with sweat and yet cold.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simnel marquand looked exhausted, as if there were nothing of life or passion left inside him. He was in the yellow sitting room with Elsa. They stood side by side, staring through the high windows at the formal gardens in their bright, rigid beauty.
“God knows!” he said bitterly. “Personally I think the man is totally incompetent. If he were worth anything, Minnie would still be alive.” The pain in his voice was lacerating.
Elsa avoided looking at him. To do so would be intrusive, like watching someone whose bodily functions were out of control. And yet she was angry with him for blaming Pitt. “What would you have done?” she asked him, her voice almost level in spite of the pitch of her own emotions.
“I wouldn’t have spent my time infuriating the Prince of Wales, and the entire staff, about some damn plate!” He almost choked on the words. “The man’s a buffoon!”
It was really Julius she was trying to defend, but she spoke as if it were Pitt. “What could he have read from the evidence? There was nothing to prove who killed the woman, or even why anyone should want to.”
“Minnie worked it out!” he shouted in accusation. “She deduced it from the evidence.”
“What evidence?” Now she swung round to face him, as hurt and desperate as he was. The only difference between them was that Minnie, whom he had loved, was dead, and Julius was still alive, at least for a short while longer.
He did not answer. There were shadows around his eyes and the skin there was puffy, as if he were ill. She knew he had been obsessed with Minnie, beyond his ability to control it. She had seen men be like that over gambling, growing to hate it and yet unable to stop until they had lost everything.
Would she lose everything when they took Julius away and shut him up for the rest of his life? Was he really the man she thought she knew and loved, or a creature that existed only in her own hungers?
It was absurd, she and Simnel standing together in this beautiful room, total strangers at heart, attacking each other, while suffering the same pain.
“If you knew he was going to kill Minnie, why didn’t you do something yourself?” she asked. It was a cruel question, but he deserved it for accepting so quickly and so blindly that Julius was guilty.
Julius was his brother! He should have had some loyalty, whether they were rivals or not. Minnie had destroyed his judgment, the things in him that were best.
“For God’s sake!” he burst out. “Don’t you think I would have if I’d known? I loved her! Minnie was. . she was the most passionately, marvelously alive person I’ve ever seen. It is as if he had destroyed life itself!”
“Don’t you suppose he knew how alive she was?” she asked, hurting herself as she was saying it.
“He didn’t love her,” Simnel replied very quietly. “He didn’t deserve her.”
“You say that as if loving and deserving were the same thing,” she retaliated. They avoided looking at each other again. “In that case, Olga deserves you. Or hadn’t you thought of that?”
“You can’t help who you love,” he said between his teeth. “You can’t love to order. If you had ever really loved anyone, not simply chosen to marry them as the safest and most profitable alliance you could make, then you would know that.”
She could not accuse him of cruelty-she had been just as cruel herself. “The marriage where I loved was not offered to me,” she answered him. “Any more than it was to you, or perhaps to Minnie. You are totally naive if you think we can choose to do or undo at will. Or that what you want will turn out the way you believed it would. Olga wanted you. It looks as if she still does, but do you suppose that will go on forever?”
“I loved Minnie,” he said again. “I don’t think you understand that. You never loved her. She knew you didn’t. You were jealous of the affection Cahoon had for her. He admired her in a way he never did you.”
Both of these things were true, but strangely it was the charge that she had not loved Minnie that cut deeper. She should at least have tried. She had been so lost in her own loneliness, too consumed in herself to imagine what Minnie felt. She looked at it now, honestly, and found it ugly. No wonder Cahoon had not loved her. She did not love herself very much either.
“I know,” she replied aloud. “But did you love Minnie? Or did you love the way she made you feel: passionate and alive yourself? And hate it! She made you behave like a fool. You loved her so much you didn’t care if everyone knew-and they did. You betrayed both your wife and your brother. Is that who you wanted to be, what you admired in yourself?” At last she turned to look at him.
His face was white. “You really did hate her, didn’t you?” he said very softly. “Why? Over Cahoon, or over Julius?”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t the arrogance to assume it was over you! Has it occurred to you that most married women will feel for each other when they are betrayed? Perhaps I hated her for what she did to Olga, as well as to Julius.”
His eyes were glittering. “Enough to kill her for it?”
“I thought you believed Julius did it-your own brother?” It was an accusation, all her fear and anger making her voice knife-edged.
“Well, it wasn’t me, and she was the one person Cahoon really loved,” he pointed out. “If it wasn’t Julius, then it must have been Hamilton. And why the hell would he? Face it, Elsa, whoever it is has killed at least three times: Minnie, that poor whore who only came here as part of her job, and the other wretched woman in Africa that
