Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,75
in life. Did he secretly wish that he’d be king someday and not his brother? And of all the people around, he would have had a knowledge of poisons. After all, he had told me that he was studying chemistry in Heidelberg. And he was the one who had persuaded Patrascue to do nothing for now. Which would give him ample time to dispose of any traces of cyanide if he needed to.
“Lady Georgiana!” Lady Middlesex’s strident voice cut through my thoughts. “Aren’t you coming?”
“What? Oh—yes,” I stammered. Now there was the question of whom to tell. I wished that Darcy hadn’t gone away.
Lady Middlesex grabbed my arm with her bony fingers. “We must go somewhere to plan strategy.”
“Strategy?”
She looked around. “Obviously we must make sure that everything is kept from that odious little policeman. We must work fast before he makes a complete mess of everything. Typical bungling foreigner. No clue how to run things properly. It is up to us now to unmask the murderer.”
“I don’t see how we’re ever going to do that,” I said. “I was there, facing Field Marshal Pirin all the time. If it was Dragomir or one of the footmen who slipped the cyanide into the glass, he was very slick and I don’t see how we’d ever find out who did it.”
“That’s if it was Dragomir or one of the servants,” Lady Middlesex said knowingly. She drew me closer. “Deer-Harte thinks she saw something. Of course, she is prone to flights of fancy, as we know.”
“I am an excellent observer, Lady M,” Miss Deer-Harte said, “and I know what I saw.”
“What did you see, Miss Deer-Harte?” I asked.
Her face went pink. “As you recall on the first night here I was not invited to join the company for dinner. Lady M thought it wouldn’t be right for a mere companion. I was told my supper would be sent up to my room. But after a while I thought that it wasn’t fair to one of the servants to have to walk up all these stairs with my tray, so I decided to come down and fetch it myself. Well”—she paused and looked around again—“as I passed the banqueting hall I heard the sound of merry voices, so naturally I lingered and took a little peek inside.”
“This was the first night,” I interrupted. “The night before Pirin was murdered.”
“It was, but what I saw could be significant. There was somebody watching from the shadows on the far side of the hall. He was dressed in black and he was standing half hidden behind one of the arches. He just stood there, not moving and watching. I thought it was odd at the time. I remember thinking, ‘That young man is up to no good.’ ”
“You always think things like that, Deer-Harte,” Lady Middlesex said. “You think that everyone is up to no good.”
“But in this case I was proven right, wasn’t I? And I’d like to wager that he was the same young man I saw creeping along the corridor in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see his face clearly on either occasion, but the build and demeanor were the same. And the way he was slinking along, he was clearly up to no good.”
“I am inclined to think she’s been letting her imagination run away with her again,” Lady Middlesex said, “but at the moment we are grasping at straws, aren’t we?”
“I don’t believe it was simply imagination,” I said. “What color hair did he have?”
She frowned, thinking. “It looked light to me. Yes, definitely light. Why do you ask?”
“Because a strange man came into my room on the first night, and then my maid came to me in great distress the next night to report that a man was in her room.”
“A young man with light hair?”
“Exactly. A good-looking young man with a Teutonic face.”
“I didn’t see his face, but I definitely saw the hair,” Miss Deer-Harte said.
“He came into your room?” Lady Middlesex demanded. “With what intention? Burglary or designs on your person?”
“I didn’t take the time to ask him. I rather fear the latter,” I said. “He was bending over me with a smile on his face. But when I sat up he disappeared hastily.”
“And your maid? Did he have designs on her person too? Clearly a man of great depravity.”
The thought struck me that a man would indeed have to be desperate to have designs on Queenie’s person. I knew it was deadly serious but I