Buckingham Palace Gardens (13 page)

“Did she?” Pitt was feeling his way carefully. It was an odd investigation. The victim was someone who was a stranger to all of those who could possibly be guilty of killing her. No one admitted to ever having seen her before. “What was she like?” he asked. “For that matter, what was her name?”

Quase frowned, but there was a crooked smile on his lips. “Sadie, I think. I didn't actually…er…speak to her, if you like? She was not here for my amusement, except most indirectly.”

“Whose?”

Again Quase was slightly surprised. “His Royal Highness's, of course.”

“Why was she especially for him?”

“Actually, she seemed intelligent,” Quase said frankly. “She had quite a ready wit. Not cruel at all, just very quick. She could read and write, and she had a considerable knowledge of men and of human nature. I mean emotional as well as the more obvious aspects.”

“A courtesan rather than a whore?” Pitt asked. He should have expected that.

“Elegantly put,” Quase agreed. “Yes. She wasn't actually particularly pretty. I've certainly seen many prettier. Good skin and eyes, but otherwise very ordinary. It was her personality, her laugh, her suppleness of mind as well as body. And she sang very well. She really was entertaining.” A sadness passed over his face, and for a moment it was as if his attention was far away.

Pitt winced, wondering how much of what he was saying was the truth and what the omissions were. Perhaps it was the things he was not telling that would have been the most revealing.

“Poor creature,” Quase said quietly. “She was so alive.”

Pitt breathed in and out slowly, suddenly struck by the belief that Quase was speaking not of this woman, but of some other. He dismissed it as fantasy. He must be more tired than he thought. It was getting toward late afternoon and he would not go home tonight; perhaps not tomorrow either. “You observed her very closely,” he said at last.

“What?” Quase looked up.

“You observed her very closely,” Pitt repeated. “She must have been in the room for some time, and spoken quite a lot.”

“No. Just an impression.”

Quase was lying.

“You had seen her before?” Pitt asked. “Perhaps purchased her services on some other occasion? Please don't deny it if it is true. It will not be too difficult to find out, and then a great deal of other information would emerge as well.” The threat was veiled but perfectly clear.

Quase smiled broadly, but his eyes were pinched with hurt. “A waste of your efforts, Mr. Pitt. I have many vices. I am a moral coward at times. I debase myself to serve men who have higher office than I and lower morality, and I know it. Certainly I drink too much. But I do not frequent the whorehouses of London, or of anywhere else. As you may have noticed, I have a very beautiful wife.” He drew in his breath and let it out with a sigh of pain. “And unlike some men, I find that quite sufficient.”

Pitt believed him. Some sense of delicacy prevented him from pursuing the subject. “I understand Mr. Sorokine went to bed early also. Is that correct?” he asked instead.

A flash of appreciation lit Quase's eyes and then vanished. “Yes. And alone, if that is what you are asking. Whether he remained alone or not I have no idea.”

“So there were three women for Mr. Marquand, Mr. Dunkeld, and His Royal Highness,” Pitt concluded.

“It would appear so,” Quase agreed. “I stayed up until they retired, which was around midnight. What happened after that I have no idea. As far as I am concerned the women earned their fee by being extremely entertaining company and making a somewhat plodding evening pass with pleasure.”

“A plodding evening?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.

“His Royal Highness, when sober, can be heavy going,” Quase told him with a flicker of a smile. “And when drunk, even heavier. A bit like plowing a field after a week's rain. Dunkeld is a bully, as you may have observed. Marquand is good enough, I suppose, although I find his rivalry with Sorokine rather a bore. They are half-brothers—I assume you knew that. Sorokine himself can be rather a bore because he is absorbed in his own problems, which he wears heavily. And before you ask me, I don't know, but I assume they are largely to do with his wife, whose behavior with Marquand is outrageous.”

“And would not tell me if you did,” Pitt added.

“Precisely,” Quase agreed.

“So it was an enjoyable evening? No quarrels? No tension as to who should have which woman?”

Quase laughed outright. “Between whom, for God's sake? His Royal Highness took what he wished, Dunkeld would choose between the other two, and Marquand would have what was left. If you really need me to tell you that, then you haven't the wits to find out what the menu was, let alone who killed that poor creature!”

“It is not only what I learn, Mr. Quase, it is who tells me, and how,” Pitt retorted, then immediately wished he had not. He had defended himself, and thus betrayed his need to do so. Too late to pull it back. “Thank you. Would you ask Mr. Marquand to come, please?”

Five minutes later Simnel Marquand came in and closed the door behind him. “I really can't help you,” he said before he had even crossed the floor. He sat down, less gracefully and less comfortably than Hamilton Quase. He was a good-looking man with an intelligent and sensual face. He dressed well, but without that effortless elegance of a man who, once having understood fashion, can follow it or ignore it as he pleases.

“I did not see the poor woman after I went to bed,” he explained. “And I have no idea what happened to her. I didn't see anyone around in the corridor, and I understand you have already accounted for the servants. It seems inexplicable to me.” He spoke as if that were the end of the matter.

“It seems so,” Pitt agreed. “And yet it must be simply that we have not found the explanation. The facts are inescapable. Three women came for the evening, two left, and the third was found dead in the linen cupboard. The servants are accounted for and the only other person to come beyond the kitchen and be alone even for a few moments was the carter who helped the footman carry Mr. Dunkeld's box up the stairs. He was alone for only a matter of minutes, and was not upstairs in the bedroom corridor. Also, he had not a spot of blood on him when he left. If you had seen the poor woman's body, you would know that could not be the case with whoever killed her.”

Marquand was pale, his body unnaturally still. It obviously disturbed him that Pitt was so graphic. He had strong hands, slender but with square tips to the fingers. Just now they were clenched with an effort to stop them trembling.

“I did not kill her, and I have no idea who did,” he repeated.

Pitt smiled. “I had not been hopeful that you could tell me, Mr. Marquand. But you could describe the party of that evening.”

“It was just a…” Marquand began, then stopped. “Yes, I imagine you have never attended such a…an evening?”

“No,” Pitt agreed soberly. The sarcastic observation was on his tongue, and he refrained from making it only because he had to. “Presumably the ladies retired to bed early, and then the…women were conducted in?”

Marquand's lips tightened and a very slight color stained his cheeks. “You make it sound vulgar,” he said critically.

Pitt leaned back. He could not get Olga Marquand's dark, sad face out of his mind. And yet that was foolish. She was probably quite used to these arrangements and would surely know that accommodating the Prince of Wales was largely what her husband was here to achieve.

“Then explain it to me,” he invited.

Marquand's eyes opened wide. “For God's sake, man, are you envious?” he said in amazement. “I can assure you, you could have had as much fun at a singsong at your local public house! More at a good evening in the music halls, pleasures which are not open to His Royal Highness, for obvious reasons. The ladies retired, not that they wouldn't have stayed, if society permitted such liberty. We drank, probably too much, sang a few songs, told some very bawdy jokes, and laughed too loudly.”

Pitt imagined it. “Are you telling me that you all went to bed separately?” he inquired, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“No, of course not,” Marquand snapped. “The Prince took the woman who was later found dead. Sarah, or Sally, or whatever her name was…”

“Sadie,” Pitt supplied.

“All right, Sadie. I took Molly and Dunkeld took Bella. I never saw the others again. Are you sure that one of the other women could not have killed Sadie? In a jealous rage, or some other kind of quarrel, possibly over money? That seems quite likely.”

Pitt decided to play the game. “Is that what you think could have happened?” he asked.

Marquand stared at him. “Why not? It makes more sense than any of us having killed her! Do you think one of us took leave of our senses—for half an hour, hacked the poor creature to bits—then returned to bed, and woke up in the morning back in perfect control, ate breakfast, and resumed discussions on the Cape-to-Cairo railway?” He did not bother to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“I would certainly prefer it to be one of the other women,” Pitt conceded. “Let us say, for the sake of the story, that it was Bella. She left Mr. Dunkeld's bed, crept along the passage awakening no one, happened to run into Sadie, who had chanced to have left the Prince's bed, stark naked. They found the linen cupboard and decided to go into it, perhaps for privacy. Then they had a furious quarrel, which fortunately no one else heard, and Bella, who happened to have had the forethought to take with her one of the knives from the butler's pantry, cut Sadie's throat and disemboweled her. Fortunately she kept from getting any blood on her dress or her hands or arms. Then she quietly left again, with Molly, whom she had found, and was conducted out of the Palace and went home. Something like that?”

Marquand's face was scarlet, his eyes blazing. Twice he started to speak, then realized that what he was going to say was absurd, and stopped again.

“Perhaps you would tell me a little more of the temper, the mood of the evening, Mr. Marquand?” Pitt asked, aware that his tone was now supremely condescending. “Was there any ill-feeling between any of the men, or they and one of the women?”

Marquand was about to deny it, then changed his mind. “You place me in an invidious position,” he complained. “It would be preposterous to imagine that the Prince of Wales could do such a thing. I know that I did not, but I cannot prove it. Dunkeld was presumably with the other woman, Bella, except when he went to unpack his damned box of books, and it seems he can prove it.” The inflection in his voice changed slightly, a razor edge of strain. “My brother, Julius, retired early and alone. He did not wish to stay with us, and did not give his reasons. The Prince of Wales was not pleased, but it fell something short of actual unpleasantness.”

“Mrs. Sorokine is very handsome,” Pitt remarked as casually as he could. “Probably he preferred her company to that of a street woman.”

The tide of color washed up Marquand's face again. “You are extremely offensive, sir! I can only assume in your excuse that you know no better!”

“How would you prefer me to phrase it, sir?” Pitt asked.

“Julius went to bed in a self-righteous temper,” Marquand said harshly, hatred flaring momentarily in his eyes. “His wife did not see him until luncheon the following day.”

Pitt was disconcerted by the strength of emotion, and embarrassed to have witnessed it.

“Did he tell you this, or did she?” he asked.

“What?” The color in Marquand's face did not subside. “She did. And before you ask me, I have nothing further to say on the subject. Julius is my brother. I tell you only so much truth as honor obliges me to. I will not lie, even for him.”

“I understand. And of course Mrs. Sorokine is your sister-in-law,” Pitt conceded. Actually he did not understand. Was Marquand's anger against his brother because he had placed him in a situation where he was forced to lie or betray him? Or was it against circumstances, the Prince and his expectations, even Dunkeld for engineering this whole situation? Or his own wife for making him feel guilty because he attended the party, and perhaps enjoyed it?

Pitt elicited a few more details of fact, and then excused him. He then asked to see Julius Sorokine, even though he had left early and would apparently know far less than the other men.

Julius came in casually, but there was an unmistakable anxiety in him. He was taller than his brother, and moved with the kind of grace that could not be learned. His ease was a gift of nature. He sat down opposite Pitt and waited to be questioned.

“Why did you leave the party earlier than everyone else, Mr. Sorokine?” Pitt asked bluntly.

The question seemed to embarrass Sorokine, and it flashed suddenly into Pitt's mind that perhaps rather than spend at least some of the time with one of the prostitutes his father-in-law had provided, he had been with another woman altogether, of his own choosing. Perhaps that was why the handsome Minnie Sorokine had been confiding in her brother-in-law.

“Did you have an assignation with someone else?” Pitt asked abruptly. “If so, they can account for your time, and it need not be repeated to your wife.”

Julius laughed outright, in spite of his discomfort. It was a warm, uncompromising sound. “I wish it were so, but I'm afraid not. I was totally alone. Even my manservant cannot account for more than the first half hour or so, which cannot be the relevant time, since the women were all still at the party.”

“Why did you leave early?” Pitt asked. “Were you ill? You seem well enough today.”

“I was perfectly well,” Sorokine replied. He looked self-conscious. “I simply preferred not to indulge in that kind of pleasure.”

Pitt's eyes widened a little, not certain if he was leaping to unwarranted conclusions.