we’ve all been trying to forget. Cahoon wasn’t even there, so it couldn’t have been him.”
“Then it must have been Hamilton,” she said simply. “Except that I don’t know it wasn’t you. Perhaps you were desperate to escape the hold she had over you. You might have been tired of endless lust and betrayal. You couldn’t help yourself. Every time she teased you, you responded like a trained dog. Maybe you despised yourself, and that was the only freedom you could achieve.”
“You are a passionless, pathetic woman, just as Cahoon says you are.” The words were forced out between his teeth, his voice shaking.
“Because I don’t go around in a red dress, taunting people?” she retaliated, but the charge stung. She knew Cahoon no longer wanted her. If he wanted anyone at all, it was Amelia Parr. She had seen that in his eyes, but it still hurt that he should say so to another man. It was a complete denial of her as having any value.
“Because you go around in a blue dress, ice cold, and afraid of your own shadow,” he replied. “And, God forgive you, you’re alive!”
“So are you!” she shot back. “And perhaps if you’d resisted your appetites instead of indulging them, Minnie would be too. Have you ever considered that? If Julius killed her, perhaps you drove him to it?”
She had nearly said perhaps Olga did it. The words had almost slipped out.
He was white-faced, blotches of color on his cheeks. “Are you saying that if your wife prefers someone else it is just cause for you to murder her?”
“You had better hope not, or Olga may feel justified in killing you,” she answered him. “I would not blame her.” That was a lie. Rage against Simnel for accusing Julius, and the disloyalty of it, twisted inside her. And the bitter fear that he could be right was there, tiny, thin as a wire in the gut, but undeniable. She hated herself for it even more, but it was there.
Did she love Julius? Was love an unshakable loyalty, no matter what the evidence? A denial of your own values, your intelligence?
Was it something that refuses to believe the ugly and shallow, that sees only the clean in a person, the desire to be brave, kind, funny, and gentle? Or does it also see the fears and the failures, the dreams broken, and still love the person? Is it tender to the bruised hope?
Would she still care if Julius were nothing like her vision of him?
Was that love, or obsession, because his face had a beauty that haunted her mind, his smile and his hands, the pitch of his voice?
Was it really her own dreams she clung to, and loved? How easy, and how unreal.
The door opened and Liliane came in, followed the moment after by Olga. Elsa made polite remarks. Simnel muttered something meaningless and turned away. No one knew what to say that was honest or anything more than platitudes to break the silence.
Elsa looked at the other women and wondered how many compromises they had made. Were they, in facing reality, in loving men in spite of their weaknesses or failures, more honest than she?
Doesn’t all love have a little blindness? How else does it survive?
Isn’t believing in the possibilities of the good and the beautiful what inspires it into being?
Cahoon came in, and Hamilton Quase. They both looked haggard, skin blotched and hollow, Cahoon especially because he was also scratched by his razor. There was a curious lifelessness about him, as though he were physically smaller. Hamilton had obviously already drunk more than was good for him. An air of miserable belligerence suggested he intended to continue. He deliberately avoided Liliane’s anxious gaze.
Dinner was ghastly. The places were set for six, and the absence of Julius and Minnie was glaring. The women did not wear black because they had not brought anything black with them, and the previous night they had dined in their rooms. Instead, they had chosen the darkest shades they had and a complete absence of jewelry. Conversation was halting and desperately artificial until Cahoon shattered the pretense.
“Has anybody seen that fool of a policeman since this morning?”
he asked.
No one answered him. Eventually Simnel shook his head, his mouth full.
“It should be over by tomorrow,” Cahoon went on. “I don’t know why he couldn’t have settled it today.”
“Will we all leave?” Olga asked, looking from one to another of them.
Hamilton leaned back in his chair and regarded Cahoon over-earnestly.
“No,” Cahoon was terse. “The course of history does not stop for individual deaths, even of kings and queens, certainly not simply of those we love. I shall complete the negotiations with His Royal Highness, which will take only a little longer. After that we may all leave.
Of course we shall have to find a suitable diplomat to take Julius’s place.”
“In fact, business as usual,” Elsa said coldly. “Why should we let mere death or damnation get in the way of a railway?”
“Don’t drink any more wine, Elsa. It isn’t good for you,” Cahoon said, without turning to look at her.
“Did Julius admit to killing Minnie?” Hamilton asked, suddenly sitting up straight again. “I assume he didn’t, and that was why the policeman was still wandering around asking questions. I heard he saw the Prince of Wales again today, and the Princess.”
Cahoon sat very still. His knuckles were white where his hand gripped the stem of his wineglass. “I imagine it is true,” he said, clearing his throat to try to release the tension half strangling his voice.
“He is following the trail of detection that Minnie followed, only, God damn him to hell, he is too late to save her.”
“Detection?” Simnel said sharply.
“Don’t be so stupid!” Cahoon said savagely. “If Minnie hadn’t discovered the truth about that woman’s death, Julius wouldn’t have killed her too! Even that buffoon Pitt can work that out!”
“What detection?” The words were out of Elsa’s mouth before she thought of the consequences, then it was too late.
Cahoon turned in his seat to stare at her. He seemed to be considering an angry or dismissive answer, then changed his mind. “It had to do with monogrammed sheets, broken china, and a great deal of blood.”
Everyone around the table froze, food halfway to their mouths, glasses in midair. Liliane let out a little gasp, and choked it off. Hamilton put down his fork slowly.
Elsa waited. She knew from Cahoon’s face that he was going to tell them.
“It seems there was a piece of china broken,” Cahoon began.
“Limoges porcelain, to be exact. Quite distinctive. The servants swept up the pieces and removed them. .”
“From where?” Hamilton asked. “Not the linen cupboard!”
Elsa could feel high, hysterical laughter welling up inside her and put her hand over her mouth to stifle it.
Simnel leaned forward. “Are you saying it was from Julius’s room, and Minnie knew that? Why would the servants clear it up, anyway?”
A muscle ticked dangerously in Cahoon’s jaw. “No, of course not Julius’s room. It seems that the wretched woman either was killed in the Queen’s bedroom, or else it-”
“What?” Simnel exploded.
Liliane dropped her fork with a clatter.
Olga gave a cry that was instantly swallowed back, and the emotion behind it could have been anything.
“Her Majesty is at Osborne,” Cahoon pointed out. “It would be easy enough for Julius to have taken the wretched woman there-”
“But why?” Hamilton insisted. “It makes no sense!”
“A gentleman guest in Buckingham Palace rapes and guts a whore, and you’re looking for sense!” Cahoon shouted at him, his rage and pain at last breaking loose. “The drink has rotted your brain, Quase. I’m talking about what Minnie found out, not trying to explain it!”
Elsa could not bear it. She refused to believe Julius was the man Cahoon was painting him to be. “If Minnie told you all this, why didn’t you protect her yourself?” she accused him. “You blame Pitt for not arresting Julius sooner, but you didn’t tell him this, did you?”
Cahoon ignored her, but she knew from the tide of blood up his neck that he had heard. “Minnie realized the woman could not have been killed in the cupboard,” he said steadily. “And that the broken porcelain was the
