was.
“Alois Habsburg?” Narraway was stunned. “For God’s sake, why?” He took a deep breath. “Is he far more important than we ever supposed? What does the Foreign Office say?”
“That I have a severe case of inflated imagination,” Pitt replied. “Due, in all likelihood, to having been promoted beyond my ability.”
Narraway swore, with a vocabulary Pitt had not known he possessed.
“But Evan Blantyre is taking it very seriously, and has already given me a great deal of help,” Pitt added.
“Blantyre? Good. He knows as much about the Austrian Empire as anyone, probably more than the Foreign Secretary. If he thinks it’s serious, then it is. God, what a mess! But I don’t understand: Why Duke Alois?” He bit his lip. “Have you considered the possibility that Special Branch is actually the target, and Duke Alois is incidental?”
“Yes,” Pitt said softly. “He may be simply a convenient pawn, the man in the right place at the right time. Perhaps it doesn’t matter who’s killed, as long as it’s done here.”
“But could he be a troublemaker, like Crown Prince Rudolf?” Narraway asked doubtfully. “Socialist sympathies? Does he write articles for left-leaning papers, with dangerous philosophical ideas, or subversive elements of any sort?”
“No,” Pitt replied. “As far as we can find out, he’s a totally harmless dabbler in science and philosophy. If he hadn’t been distantly royal, and with money, he probably would have been a university professor.”
Narraway frowned. “There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about this, Pitt, and you need to find out damn quickly. How much help is Blantyre being? And why?”
Pitt smiled bitterly. “I thought of that too, but the answer’s fairly simple. He sees the pivotal position of Austria in Europe, and the increasingly fragile threads that hold the empire together. One really good hole ripped in it, such as would be caused by a major scandal-something that, say, forced the Austrians to react violently against one of the smaller member nations like Croatia-and the whole fabric could unravel.”
Narraway looked skeptical. “Croatia has caused trouble for years,” he pointed out. “And Blantyre, of all people, knows that.”
“There is something new in it,” Pitt argued. “Blantyre pointed it out to me. We now have a unified Germany, with the strong, energetic power of Prussia at the head. If Slavic Croatia seems to be the victim of German- speaking Austria’s aggression, Slavic Russia will very naturally come to its aid. Newly unified German-speaking Teutonic Prussia will come to Vienna’s aid, and we will have a European war in the making that we might not be able to stop.”
“God Almighty!” Narraway said in horror as the enormity of it dawned on him. “Then guard Alois with your life, if necessary. Use Blantyre, use everybody. I’ll do all I can, starting with finding out what happened to poor Serafina Montserrat, particularly whether she knew anything about this.” His face was ashen but there was a tension in his body, as if every nerve in him had come alive. His breathing was faster. There was a tiny muscle jumping in his temple, and his slender hands were locked rigidly together as he leaned forward. “We have to succeed.”
“I know,” Pitt agreed quietly.
“And Serafina’s death?” Narraway asked. Then, when Pitt did not answer immediately, he continued. “I have nothing to do, at least nothing that matters. Let me look into that. It may be important, but even if it has nothing to do with politics and is merely some miserable domestic tragedy, she deserves better than having it be ignored.”
Pitt stared at him for several seconds.
“I assure you, I have solved the occasional crime before now,” Narraway said, his eyes bright with amusement. “You will be challenging me no more to step into your shoes than I have you stepping into mine.”
Pitt drew breath to apologize, then changed his mind and simply smiled.
“Of course. She does deserve better.”
Charlotte reasoned that just because Pitt could not tell her about his current case, that did not mean that she could not use her own intelligence and considerable deductive powers to work out what she could do to be of use to him anyway.
It was perfectly obvious that Evan Blantyre was important to Pitt. At dinner at the Blantyres’ house, the men had spent the rest of the evening in the dining room with the door closed, and had given instructions to the butler not to interrupt them unless sent for. When they had finally emerged, they had seemed in close agreement about something. Pitt had expressed a gratitude that was far deeper than the thanks one owes for a good dinner and a pleasant evening.
On the way home he had said nothing, but Charlotte had seen that the tension in him had eased somewhat; certainly that night he had slept better than for over a week.
Therefore she judged it a good idea to cultivate a friendship with Adriana Blantyre. This was not in the least difficult, since she had liked her instinctively, and found her unusually interesting. Having grown up in Croatia and then northern Italy, Adriana had a different perspective on many things. And she was certainly a very agreeable person, in spite of the anxiety that was often in her face, and the sense Charlotte had that there were secrets within her that she shared with no one. Perhaps that was because those secrets were rooted in experiences an Englishwoman could not even imagine.
So Charlotte had invited Adriana to visit an exhibition of watercolors with her that afternoon. Adriana had accepted without hesitation.
They met at two o’clock on the steps of the gallery and went inside together. They laughed a little as they clutched at their hats, the wind picking up even the heavy cloth of winter skirts, whose edges were dampened by rain.
Adriana was dressed in a warm wine color, which lent a glow to her pale skin. It was a beautifully cut costume with a slightly sporty air, which made one think of a hunting dress. Her hat was narrow-brimmed, tipped well forward, and had a towering crown. It looked vaguely Austrian. Charlotte saw at least a dozen other women glance at Adriana and then look away, their faces filled with disapproval and envy. Everyone else looked dull in comparison, and they knew it.
Adriana saw, and seemed a little abashed.
“Too much?” she asked almost under her breath.
“Not at all,” Charlotte said with amusement. “You may guarantee that at least three of them will go straight to their milliners tomorrow morning and demand something like it. On some it will look wonderful, and on others absurd. Hats are the hardest things to get right, don’t you think?”
Adriana hesitated a moment to make sure that Charlotte was serious, then her face relaxed into a wide smile. “Yes, I do. But with hair like yours it seems a shame to wear a hat at all. But I suppose you must, at least out in the street-oh, and in church, of course.” She laughed lightly. “I wonder if God had the faintest idea how many hours we would spend in front of the glass rather than on our knees, fussing over what to wear to worship Him.”
“In what to be seen while worshipping Him,” Charlotte corrected her. “But if He is a man, as everyone says, then He probably did not think of it.” She smiled, and walked side by side with Adriana across the wide entrance hall and into the first display room. “But if He is a woman, or had a wife, then He would certainly know,” she continued softly, so as not to be overheard. “Presumably He invented our hair. He must have at least some idea how long it takes to pin it up!”
“Every picture I have seen of Eve, she has hair long enough to sit on!” Adriana exclaimed. “To cover her … womanly attributes. I don’t think mine would ever grow so long.”
“Of course, a number of gentlemen have very little hair at all, especially in their advancing years,” Charlotte replied. “You should feel free to have as wide a skirt and as large a hat as you please.”
They went around the paintings slowly, looking at each one with care.
“Oh, look!” Adriana said in sudden excitement. “That is just like a bridge I used to know near where I was born.” She stood transfixed in front of a small, delicate pastoral scene. It was simple: a small river meandering over its bed and disappearing beneath a stone bridge, the light shining in the water beyond. Cows grazed nearby, so perfectly depicted that it seemed as if at any moment they would amble out of the painting.
Charlotte looked at Adriana and saw a range of emotions in her face. She seemed very close to both laughter
