Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,65

over and spilled the remnants of his wine when he collapsed, but there doesn’t seem to be any residue in his glass.”

“Is it possible to put cyanide into some kind of capsule, so that it wouldn’t work on the system until it was digested?”

Darcy nodded. “Possible, I suppose, but at the rate he was chomping and drinking, it seems likely he would have bitten through a capsule much earlier.”

I nodded. “I suppose he would.”

“Baffling,” Darcy said. “Well, now that the pass is open I can send out the utensils to the nearest laboratory for testing and perhaps we’ll know where the cyanide was hidden. But that still brings us to motive.”

“Oh, I can think of a lot of people who’d want Pirin dead,” I said.

“Can you?” He looked at me sharply.

“Well, he was an odious man, wasn’t he?” I laughed uneasily. “He ogled women, he insulted men. He called Nicholas by his first name, you know. In public. Imagine an English general calling the Prince of Wales David. Only Mrs. Simpson dares to do that.”

“I’m well aware that Nicholas and Anton disliked him,” Darcy said, “but they are both intelligent young men. They realized his importance to the stability of the region. And if one of them wanted to kill him, there would have been better opportunities. They were out hunting, I gather. Why not mistake him for a wild boar? For that matter why not push him out of the train on the way here?”

“You’re a bloodthirsty person at heart, aren’t you?” I asked.

He grinned. “Oh, no, my dear, I’m a romantic. But I’ve seen plenty of hard reality in my life. So who else would have wanted him dead?”

“What about the servers?” I asked. “Did you have a chance to talk to them?”

“Only very briefly, but I have their names, and again, I can have someone look into their backgrounds further when we are back in communication with the outside world. But as far as I could gather they all seemed to be as that Dragomir chap described them: local men, long in the employ of this castle and thus with no reason to be concerned with what happened in Bulgaria.”

“Which leaves Dragomir himself,” I said. “He was standing behind the table. I wouldn’t have noticed if he’d moved forward and dropped something onto Pirin’s plate or into his glass. What do you know about him?”

“Dragomir? Very little.”

“Do you know, for example, that he is not from Romania?”

“He’s not?”

“Siegfried told me. He said that was why he hadn’t risen higher in Romanian government. He comes from a border area that has changed hands several times. He could be in the pay of another government.”

Darcy’s eyes lit up. “He certainly could be. Good thinking, old bean.”

I had to laugh.

“What?”

“I didn’t know you thought of me as ‘old bean.’ I’d hoped for something a little more romantic.”

He moved closer to me and slipped his arms around my waist. “I’ll reserve those words for the bedroom at some more opportune moment,” he said and then he kissed me. “Mmm, what deliciously cold lips. They need warming up.” The second kiss was not so gentle and left us both breathing hard. “I suppose I should be getting back to help Nick and Anton,” Darcy said, releasing me with reluctance from the embrace. “Any minute now their father is going to want to visit the field marshal’s bedside. I’ve no idea how we’re going to pull this off, and I just wish that I had something concrete to tell them about Pirin’s death. I can ask Siegfried about Dragomir, but again I can’t find out much more about him until the telephone service is restored.”

“And Siegfried will want to know why you are interested in Dragomir’s past,” I said. “He may be obnoxious but he’s not stupid. He wanted to go up to the field marshal’s room to check on him last night, and I had to dissuade him with my feminine wiles.”

Darcy burst out laughing. “I don’t think that feminine wiles work particularly well on Siegfried,” he said.

We started to walk back up the slope to the castle.

“Siegfried talked about marriage again last night,” I said.

I’d expected him to find this amusing. Instead he said, “Perhaps you should accept. You might not get a better offer. Princess Georgie, maybe Queen Georgie one day.”

“Don’t say that, even in jest,” I said. “You wouldn’t wish me married to Siegfried, would you?”

“I’m sure he’d let you keep a lover, since his own interests lie elsewhere.”

“He