Buckingham Palace Gardens (29 page)

“It's not all over,” he corrected her. He disliked speaking to her back. He could see nothing of her expression. Was that on purpose? “I have not proved what happened,” he went on. “Or why the prostitute was killed, and all sorts of other things that seem to make very little sense.”

“Does it really matter?” There was fear undisguised in her voice now.

“Yes. Don't you want to clear it all up, before you leave?”

She turned even further from him. “I imagine we will leave quite soon. I don't know how we can continue without Julius. And I expect Cahoon will hardly feel like going on, at least for some time.”

“Will that grieve you very much? Or your husband and Mr. Marquand?”

She was surprised into looking back toward him. “I don't know. It was always Cahoon who cared about it most. I expect he will find another diplomat to take Julius's place.”

“Did Mrs. Sorokine say anything to you about her deductions?” he asked yet again.

Her eyes cleared. “She said she knew where it had happened,” she replied. “Rather a pointless remark, considering that we all know it happened in the linen cupboard. I thought she was simply trying to get attention. I'm ashamed to say that now.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Quase. Did she mention broken china?”

“No.” There was dismissal in her face. “But then that's hardly very dramatic, is it?” She turned away and started to walk slowly along the grass.

He did not follow her. Instead he went back toward the entrance to the Palace again, turning her words over and over in his mind. There seemed only one possible conclusion: Sadie had not been killed in the cupboard where she was found, in spite of the blood.

But as soon as he made sense of one set of facts, it made nonsense of another. The sheets were soaked with blood, and even a lunatic would not have killed her in one place and then carried the naked, bleeding body to the cupboard.

Had she been attacked, even fatally, and then carried, perhaps rolled up in sheets, to the cupboard, in order not to have been found in a place linked to any one person? And then the Queen's sheets, in which she had been carried, were put in the laundry, in the hope they would never be found and looked at closely enough to be identified? That was beginning to make more sense.

So where had she been killed? In whose bed? Surely Julius Sorokine's. How had Minnie known?

He was back inside the Palace again. Painstakingly he spoke to all the staff Gracie had seen Minnie with the day before she died. Each one repeated what she had told him.

Minnie had followed a curious trail with growing excitement. She had asked about sheets. She had been intensely interested in the shards of broken china, where they had come from and their color and shape. This she had apparently inquired of Mr. Tyndale, and met with a brief and dismissive answer. She had also been interested in the footmen coming and going with buckets of water. She had asked about wine, what was drunk and where it came from, yet there was nothing to suggest she knew of the port bottles Gracie had found.

The other focus of her questions had been the arrival and departure of the women, and the delivery of the large wooden box of books and papers for Cahoon Dunkeld. Exactly what had happened when, and where were the books now?

Pitt was totally confused. Three women had arrived, two had left, and the third had been found dead. The carter had never been alone and unaccounted for anywhere near the upstairs floor, let alone any of the bedrooms. What, if any of it, was relevant to Sadie's death?

He went over the facts again in his mind. The one thing that seemed to arise again and again, but of which he had no physical proof, were the shards of broken china that Tyndale had so vehemently refused to discuss with Gracie. Something about them had frightened him even more than the presence of prostitutes in the guest wing of the Palace, even when one of them was murdered. Either it was something so precious it was beyond Pitt's ability to imagine, or else its breakage, added to the other evidence, meant something so appalling it had to be concealed at all costs.

His imagination could create nothing so disastrous. No matter how difficult or distasteful, or how absurd, he must try to find the pieces. And he must do it discreetly. Tyndale would know where they were put, and if he knew Pitt was looking, he might destroy them.

On the other hand, that might be the only way to find a score of pieces of china in a place as vast as this. Time was very short indeed. As early as tomorrow he might be forced to charge Julius Sorokine, and the case would be closed. There would be no trial, no weighing of evidence, and certainly no defense. Pitt's own doubts were the only voice Sorokine would ever have to speak for him.

That left Pitt no alternative. He was aware that Narraway was uncomfortable still questioning the evidence. As well, there was a certain kind of disloyalty in pursuing something that could embarrass the Prince, and which would without doubt rebound against Narraway himself, possibly against the whole of Special Branch. Pitt might pay for it, and he was very conscious that he might ultimately give Narraway no option but to dismiss him.

If that happened, he would find it very hard to gain another job he would love as he did this, or for which he had any capability, and no one else would keep his family. Had he the right to make them pay for his moral decisions?

If he accepted the evidence as it was and let Julius Sorokine go to Bedlam for killing the two women, a living hell of both body and mind, what would Pitt himself become? A man Charlotte could still love? Or one she would slowly grow to dislike and in the end to despise, mourning for what he had once been?

It was a high price to pay, but even as he was turning it over in his mind, he knew the decision was made. He sent for Gracie again, deliberately using Tyndale to find her.

“Yes, sir?” she said hopefully, when she came in. “Yer got suffink?”

“We have to find the broken china,” he replied.

“You mean the dish, or whatever it were? Mr. Tyndale's real scared about that.” Her eyes were grave with doubt. “'E'll 'ave seen to it as it's 'id good.”

“I know. He might be the only person who knows where the pieces are,” he agreed. “He won't tell me, but if he thinks I am going to search every corner of this place until I find them, then he might be alarmed into destroying them completely, ground into unrecognizable powder.”

“Yer want me ter tell 'im as yer lookin' for it, an' mebbe ask 'im for it again?” she said.

“Yes, please. Tell him I'm going to get help in if I need it, because I've realized it's crucial to the case.”

“Is it?”

“I don't know. Minnie Sorokine seemed to think so. And if it isn't, why hide it?” He looked at her small, curious face and realized she felt like a betrayer, tricking a man who had risked his own safety and comfort to befriend her. “I'm sorry,” he added gently. “I have to be sure Sorokine is guilty. I think they'll arrest him formally tomorrow, and after that there'll be no one to speak for him. There'll be no trial.”

She was very pale. “I know. They'll just put 'im in Bedlam in the filth an' the screamin'.” She took a deep breath and let it out a little shakily. “I'll go an' tell 'im.” She looked close to tears. She turned quickly and went out of the door, small and very stiff, in a dress that had been altered but was still too big for her. He knew he had torn her loyalties as he had his own.

He found it far from easy to watch Tyndale after Gracie had spoken to him, without it being obvious that he was doing so. Several times he had to hang back and leave Gracie to appear busy with a tray in her hands, or a mop and a bundle of laundry.

It was nearly two hours after he had asked her help before she came to him with a parcel of broken china concealed in a cardboard box, and passed it to him wordlessly. She looked white and miserable. The fact that she said nothing, expressed no recrimination at all, made it worse.

Together they walked back up the stairs to his room and put it down on the table. She stood in front of it, not even allowing him to question whether she was going to remain or not.

Very carefully he unwrapped the newspaper around the pieces and looked at the debris. It was exactly as Walton had said: small pieces of broken china, some of it not more than chips and dust, other pieces as large as an inch across. There was blue and gold paint on them in an exquisitely delicate pattern: tiny little lattice in gold, leaves and the edge of what looked like a woman's dress. The largest piece was curved as if from the side of a pedestal.

Gracie picked up a lump that was mostly white, and turned it over in her fingers. “Looks like it were the bottom, or summink,” she said thoughtfully. “But why make all that fuss over a broke dish? Why 'ide it instead o' just throwin' it out like anythin' else wot's bust. D' yer think it's summink special? Royal, like?”

“I don't know,” Pitt said honestly, picking up another piece, which was quite large and of irregular shape. “The painting on it is beautiful, but I don't know what it could be.” He turned it over. “It seems to have a painted inside as well as outside. And that bit looks too flat for a bowl. I wonder if it's a lid? How could anyone break something this badly? It's completely smashed.”

“Throw it at the wall,” Gracie said, screwing her face up. “Yer don't bust summink like this by just droppin' it, even on a stone floor. An' it come from upstairs. Wood floor'd just break it ter pieces, but this is like someone trod on it, on purpose, like.” She stared at it in dismay. “'Oo'd do summink rotten like that, just break a dish wot's beautiful inter little bits, on purpose?”

“I don't know, but I think perhaps we need to.” Pitt pushed his fingers around the broken shards carefully, searching for anything large enough to identify. “There's not much, is there. Have you ever broken a large dish, Gracie?”

She blushed unhappily. “Yeah.” She did not add any details.

“Was this how much of it was left?”

“No. Were a lot more. But I broke cups before, an' they weren't this much in bits, not the good porcelain ones. D'yer reckon as this weren't a reg'lar plate, Mr. Pitt?”

“Yes, I do, Gracie. I just can't work out what it was.” He pulled out a small, round piece, three-quarters of an inch at its widest. He turned it over, looking at it carefully. It was mostly plain white, but there was a little bit of writing on one side—the letters
IMO
and what looked like an
E,
incomplete.

It was part of a word, and suddenly he knew what the word was: “Limoges.” He had seen it before written on exquisite porcelain: candlesticks, chargers, vases, bowls, and figurines. Long ago in the police he had dealt with theft of such works of art.

“It was an ornament,” he said quietly. He turned over the piece in his hand again. “I think this was part of the base. The name was on it. The gold was probably the rim. The blue would be part of a picture.”

“Is it very precious?” she asked, her face tight in sympathy with whoever had broken it. “Somebody's gonna lose their place 'ere 'cos they smashed it?”

“Do you think that is enough to explain Mr. Tyndale hiding it?” Pitt said instead of answering her.

She shook her head, a stiff, tiny gesture.

“It seems to have been broken the night Sadie was murdered,” he went on, thinking ahead. “It has to have had something to do with it. That's the only thing that would explain why he would go to so much trouble to conceal it.”

“'Ooever it belongs ter is goin' ter be pretty angry,” she said seriously.

“He's not hiding it from them; they'll find out anyway,” he said. “He's hiding it from us.”

“D'yer think so?” She frowned.

“Yes, otherwise he could have told us in confidence, and we would have thought no more of it. Domestic breakage is hardly Special Branch business. I wonder where it came from, whose room it was in?”

“D'yer reckon as that poor cow stole it?” Gracie looked doubtful. “'Ow would she 'a got it out? Dishes in't easy ter carry without someone seein' 'em.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “And why would Mr. Tyndale wish to protect a prostitute who was also a thief? I think the fact that it is broken is what matters.”

“Yer gonna ask Mr. Tyndale?” She was looking at him now in intense concentration.

“Yes, I am.”

Pitt spent a little more time searching for other pieces large enough to give a better idea of the shape and diameter of the plate, and formed the opinion that it was possibly a pedestal dish rather than a flat one. Some of the pieces were too thick to be part of an ordinary plate.

He put them in the box again and carried them down to the butler's pantry, where he found Tyndale with ledgers open and a pen in his hand. Apparently he was working on the cellar records. He looked up. Pitt came in and closed the door.

“What may I do for you, Mr. Pitt?” Tyndale said coolly.

Pitt leaned against the wall. “Tell me where the Limoges pedestal dish was, and how it came to be broken,” he replied.

The color bleached from Tyndale's face and his voice came only with an effort. “I'm sorry, sir, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Her Majesty has literally thousands of pieces of porcelain. If one has been broken, I know nothing of it. I don't believe it was in this wing. If it were, one of the maids would have told me.”

“Mrs. Sorokine knew where it came from,” Pitt told him.

Tyndale looked even whiter. Pitt was afraid he was on the verge of some kind of attack, possibly his heart. “I'm sorry.” He meant it, but he could not afford the mercy he would have liked. “Julius Sorokine faces a lifetime in an asylum, without trial. Before I let that happen to anyone, I am going to be certain beyond any sane or reasonable doubt that he is responsible for the deaths of these women. I am going to find out who smashed a Limoges plate the night Sadie was killed. I can do it quietly, with your help, Mr. Tyndale, or I can question every manservant in the place, and find out whatever it was Mrs. Sorokine found out, and which very likely cost her her life!”