Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,73

ma chérie?”

I bristled at the words “my dear.” I had come to believe that there is at least one obnoxious policeman in every country and he was facing me. “I saw Field Marshal Pirin give a long, rambling toast, take a swig of his wine and then seem to be choking and pitch face forward across the table.”

“He seemed to be choking, you say. Was it possible that he was indeed choking and a simple slap on the back could have revived him?”

“He had finished eating at the time,” I said. “There had been speeches and toasts for some minutes. Besides, he was dead almost immediately. Initially it was suspected that he had had a heart attack.”

“But someone thought it might be murder?”

“I did,” Lady Middlesex said. “I’m Lady Middlesex, the wife of the British high commissioner in Mesopotamia. My husband has represented the British Crown all over the world. I know poison when I see it.”

“And what poison would that be?”

“Why, cyanide, of course. Red face, staring eyes and the odor of bitter almonds. A classic case. I saw it once before in the Argentine.”

Patrascue turned back to me. “Did you see somebody administer this poison?”

“No. I saw nobody come near the table except the servers and Count Dragomir.”

Dragomir made a coughing noise in his throat and said, “I resent the implication that I was somehow involved in this farce. Why would I want to kill a man I had never met before? It is my duty to make sure all servers perform flawlessly. Naturally I was standing behind the table, in a position where I could watch them all.”

“And yet you saw nothing amiss?” Patrascue asked.

“The men performed flawlessly as always.”

“We have no idea how the poison was administered,” Nicholas said. “I sat beside him. All food and drink was served from the same platters and carafes and with great speed. It would have been impossible to select a poisoned morsel for a particular person.”

“Then I would suggest that it was placed in his glass before the meal,” Patrascue said smugly.

“But we were told cyanide acted almost immediately,” I said. “The field marshal had cleared his plate, had second helpings and had his wineglass filled countless times from the same carafe as everybody else.”

“If the poison was indeed cyanide,” Patrascue said. “I take it no doctor was present to make an accurate diagnosis. Amateurs are frequently wrong in my experience.”

“There is no physician in the castle, unfortunately,” Anton said. “But I have studied a bit of medicine at the University of Heidelberg and I can tell you that the telltale odor of bitter almonds was present and the face was flushed.”

“Ah, a so-called expert,” Patrascue said. “It is unfortunate that the body has already been transported away from the castle, or I myself could have determined what poison had been administered. I hope that somebody had the sense to put aside the utensils this person used at the dinner table. I shall send them off for testing and then we shall know.”

“They did and they have been taken with the body to be examined by a competent laboratory,” Nicholas said. I thought I detected a note of glee in his voice. “Naturally we didn’t expect a trained policeman like yourself to arrive so soon, given the condition of the pass.”

“Ah.” Patrascue tried to come up with a response to something that might have been a compliment. “Then the next step is to interview those who served the meal. Count Dragomir, you are in charge of the running of this place, are you not?”

“You know very well that I am,” Dragomir replied curtly. No love lost between those two, I thought.

“Then please be good enough to have those men who served at dinner brought to the library instantly for questioning.”

“If we do that, then word will spread around the castle rather rapidly that the field marshal is dead, and probably murdered. That is the last thing we want at this moment,” Nicholas said. “The men were questioned discreetly last night.”

“And it is as I told Their Highnesses,” Dragomir said. “These are all local men, simple men who have been in the service of this castle for most of their lives. Why would any of them want to poison a foreign field marshal, even if they had the means to do so?”

“Money,” Patrascue said. “Enough money can persuade a man to go against his conscience and to perform in a most ruthless manner. How many footmen were there serving at