Dorchester Terrace (24 page)

“I don’t know,” Pitt answered. “It seems possible, even more so than I thought. She died of an overdose of laudanum.” He saw Narraway flinch but he did not interrupt. “According to the postmortem, it was many times the medically correct amount,” Pitt continued. “Miss Freemarsh said that the bottle was kept locked in a cupboard in the maid’s pantry, and was higher than Mrs. Montserrat could have reached, even had she had the key. I checked and she is right. I questioned the lady’s maid, Tucker, and she agrees. I searched the house, and while it is not impossible that someone broke in, there is nothing that indicates it.”

Narraway bit his lip, his face troubled. “I assume there is no possibility she could have accidentally been given a large dose? Or that she deliberately took it?”

“No, the doctor has assured me that it couldn’t have been done unknowingly. And she didn’t handle the bottle herself, which rules out deliberately too, unless Tucker helped her.”

“A killing performed out of mercy to hasten what was inevitable, but before Serafina betrayed all that she had valued?” Narraway asked. “Not a pleasant thought, but imaginable, in extreme circumstances?” His lips tightened into a bitter line. “I think I would be grateful if someone were to do that for me.”

Pitt considered it. He tried to picture the frail, elderly maid, after a lifetime of service, doing her desperate mistress the last kindness she
could, the final act of loyalty to the past. It made perfect sense, and yet, thinking of Tucker’s face, he could not believe it.

“No. After having spoken to Tucker, I don’t believe that she would do such a thing.”

“Not even to save Serafina from having the same thing done to her by somebody else, perhaps more brutally? Not a quiet going to sleep from which she didn’t waken, but perhaps strangling, or suffocating with a quick, hard pillow over the face?” Narraway asked. “This would have been gentle. If not Tucker, perhaps the niece, Miss Freemarsh? She could have done it as easily.”

“I thought of that,” Pitt replied. “But I don’t think the niece has any understanding of what Serafina accomplished in the past, or any profound loyalty to her. The possibility that someone else coerced Tucker into it is more likely, but I don’t believe that either.”

“Reason? Instinct?”

“Instinct,” Pitt replied. “But they could have gotten to the niece. That’s possible. And I think she’s lying about the circumstances of Mrs. Montserrat’s death, at least to some degree. There are two reasons I can see as to why she might lie. One, a certain amount of fairly natural resentment could blossom out of spending one’s youth as a dependent, a companion and housekeeper, while childbearing years slip away.”

Narraway winced. “You make it sound pretty grim.”

“It is pretty grim. But it’s better than not having a roof over your head,” Pitt pointed out. “Which may well have been her only alternative. I’ll have it looked into, just in case it matters.”

“And the other reason?”

“I think she has a lover.”

Narraway smiled. “So her life is not as grim as you painted it, after all?”

“Depends on who he is, and what he’s after,” Pitt responded drily. The thought flickered through his head that Narraway seemed to know comparatively little about women. It was a surprise to perceive how having a wife, and also children, was such a large advantage in that sense.

Narraway was watching him, his face grave, an intense sadness in his eyes.

“Poor Serafina,” he said softly. “Murdered after all.” He rubbed the heel of his hand across his face. “Damn! If someone killed her, it means she knew things that still matter. She had all sorts of connections in the whole Balkan area: Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, and of course most of all in northern Italy. She was part of all the nationalist uprisings from ’48 onward. If there’s something brewing now, she might have known who was involved: connections, old debts.”

Pitt did not have to weigh whether he should tell Narraway about the current assassination threat. It was never a possibility in his mind that Narraway would betray anything.

“We have word that there might be an assassination attempt on Duke Alois Habsburg when he visits here in a couple of weeks,” he said very quietly. He did not yet want to tell Narraway what a bloody and violent plan it was.

“Alois Habsburg?” Narraway was stunned. “For God’s sake, why?” He took a deep breath. “Is he far more important than we ever supposed? What does the Foreign Office say?”

“That I have a severe case of inflated imagination,” Pitt replied. “Due, in all likelihood, to having been promoted beyond my ability.”

Narraway swore, with a vocabulary Pitt had not known he possessed.

“But Evan Blantyre is taking it very seriously, and has already given me a great deal of help,” Pitt added.

“Blantyre? Good. He knows as much about the Austrian Empire as anyone, probably more than the Foreign Secretary. If he thinks it’s serious, then it is. God, what a mess! But I don’t understand: Why Duke Alois?” He bit his lip. “Have you considered the possibility that Special Branch is actually the target, and Duke Alois is incidental?”

“Yes,” Pitt said softly. “He may be simply a convenient pawn, the man in the right place at the right time. Perhaps it doesn’t matter who’s killed, as long as it’s done here.”

“But could he be a troublemaker, like Crown Prince Rudolf?” Narraway asked doubtfully. “Socialist sympathies? Does he write articles
for left-leaning papers, with dangerous philosophical ideas, or subversive elements of any sort?”

“No,” Pitt replied. “As far as we can find out, he’s a totally harmless dabbler in science and philosophy. If he hadn’t been distantly royal, and with money, he probably would have been a university professor.”

Narraway frowned. “There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about this, Pitt, and you need to find out damn quickly. How much help is Blantyre being? And why?”

Pitt smiled bitterly. “I thought of that too, but the answer’s fairly simple. He sees the pivotal position of Austria in Europe, and the increasingly fragile threads that hold the empire together. One really good hole ripped in it, such as would be caused by a major scandal—something that, say, forced the Austrians to react violently against one of the smaller member nations like Croatia—and the whole fabric could unravel.”

Narraway looked skeptical. “Croatia has caused trouble for years,” he pointed out. “And Blantyre, of all people, knows that.”

“There is something new in it,” Pitt argued. “Blantyre pointed it out to me. We now have a unified Germany, with the strong, energetic power of Prussia at the head. If Slavic Croatia seems to be the victim of German-speaking Austria’s aggression, Slavic Russia will very naturally come to its aid. Newly unified German-speaking Teutonic Prussia will come to Vienna’s aid, and we will have a European war in the making that we might not be able to stop.”

“God Almighty!” Narraway said in horror as the enormity of it dawned on him. “Then guard Alois with your life, if necessary. Use Blantyre, use everybody. I’ll do all I can, starting with finding out what happened to poor Serafina Montserrat, particularly whether she knew anything about this.” His face was ashen but there was a tension in his body, as if every nerve in him had come alive. His breathing was faster. There was a tiny muscle jumping in his temple, and his slender hands were locked rigidly together as he leaned forward. “We have to succeed.”

“I know,” Pitt agreed quietly.

“And Serafina’s death?” Narraway asked. Then, when Pitt did not
answer immediately, he continued. “I have nothing to do, at least nothing that matters. Let me look into that. It may be important, but even if it has nothing to do with politics and is merely some miserable domestic tragedy, she deserves better than having it be ignored.”

Pitt stared at him for several seconds.

“I assure you, I have solved the occasional crime before now,” Narraway said, his eyes bright with amusement. “You will be challenging me no more to step into your shoes than I have you stepping into mine.”

Pitt drew breath to apologize, then changed his mind and simply smiled.

“Of course. She does deserve better.”

C
HARLOTTE REASONED THAT JUST
because Pitt could not tell her about his current case, that did not mean that she could not use her own intelligence and considerable deductive powers to work out what she could do to be of use to him anyway.

It was perfectly obvious that Evan Blantyre was important to Pitt. At dinner at the Blantyres’ house, the men had spent the rest of the evening in the dining room with the door closed, and had given instructions to the butler not to interrupt them unless sent for. When they had finally emerged, they had seemed in close agreement about something. Pitt had expressed a gratitude that was far deeper than the thanks one owes for a good dinner and a pleasant evening.

On the way home he had said nothing, but Charlotte had seen that the tension in him had eased somewhat; certainly that night he had slept better than for over a week.

Therefore she judged it a good idea to cultivate a friendship with Adriana Blantyre. This was not in the least difficult, since she had liked her instinctively, and found her unusually interesting. Having grown up in Croatia and then northern Italy, Adriana had a different perspective on many things. And she was certainly a very agreeable person, in spite of the anxiety that was often in her face, and the sense Charlotte had that there were secrets within her that she shared
with no one. Perhaps that was because those secrets were rooted in experiences an Englishwoman could not even imagine.

So Charlotte had invited Adriana to visit an exhibition of watercolors with her that afternoon. Adriana had accepted without hesitation.

They met at two o’clock on the steps of the gallery and went inside together. They laughed a little as they clutched at their hats, the wind picking up even the heavy cloth of winter skirts, whose edges were dampened by rain.

Adriana was dressed in a warm wine color, which lent a glow to her pale skin. It was a beautifully cut costume with a slightly sporty air, which made one think of a hunting dress. Her hat was narrow-brimmed, tipped well forward, and had a towering crown. It looked vaguely Austrian. Charlotte saw at least a dozen other women glance at Adriana and then look away, their faces filled with disapproval and envy. Everyone else looked dull in comparison, and they knew it.

Adriana saw, and seemed a little abashed.

“Too much?” she asked almost under her breath.

“Not at all,” Charlotte said with amusement. “You may guarantee that at least three of them will go straight to their milliners tomorrow morning and demand something like it. On some it will look wonderful, and on others absurd. Hats are the hardest things to get right, don’t you think?”

Adriana hesitated a moment to make sure that Charlotte was serious, then her face relaxed into a wide smile. “Yes, I do. But with hair like yours it seems a shame to wear a hat at all. But I suppose you must, at least out in the street—oh, and in church, of course.” She laughed lightly. “I wonder if God had the faintest idea how many hours we would spend in front of the glass rather than on our knees, fussing over what to wear to worship Him.”

“In what to be seen while worshipping Him,” Charlotte corrected her. “But if He is a man, as everyone says, then He probably did not think of it.” She smiled, and walked side by side with Adriana across the wide entrance hall and into the first display room. “But if He is a woman, or had a wife, then He would certainly know,” she continued
softly, so as not to be overheard. “Presumably He invented our hair. He must have at least some idea how long it takes to pin it up!”

“Every picture I have seen of Eve, she has hair long enough to sit on!” Adriana exclaimed. “To cover her … womanly attributes. I don’t think mine would ever grow so long.”

“Of course, a number of gentlemen have very little hair at all, especially in their advancing years,” Charlotte replied. “You should feel free to have as wide a skirt and as large a hat as you please.”

They went around the paintings slowly, looking at each one with care.

“Oh, look!” Adriana said in sudden excitement. “That is just like a bridge I used to know near where I was born.” She stood transfixed in front of a small, delicate pastoral scene. It was simple: a small river meandering over its bed and disappearing beneath a stone bridge, the light shining in the water beyond. Cows grazed nearby, so perfectly depicted that it seemed as if at any moment they would amble out of the painting.

Charlotte looked at Adriana and saw a range of emotions in her face. She seemed very close to both laughter and tears.

“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte said sincerely. “You must find it very different here. I sometimes wish I had grown up in the country, but if I had, I think I would miss it so terribly that I might never reconcile myself to paved streets and houses close to each other—not to mention noise, and smoke in the winter.”

“Oh, there’s mud in the country,” Adriana assured her. “And cold. And in the winter it can be unbearably tedious, believe me. And so much darkness everywhere! It closes in on you in every direction, almost without relief. You would miss the theater, and parties, and gossip about famous people, rather than just the talk of your neighbors: Mrs. This about her grandchildren; Mr. That about his gout; Miss So-and-so about her aunt, and how bad the cook is.”

Charlotte looked at her closely, trying to see how much she meant what she was saying, and how much she was very lightly mocking. After several seconds, she was still uncertain. That was invigorating. It was a bore to always be able to read people.

“Perhaps one should have a city home for the winter to go to
the theater and operas and parties,” she said with an answering half-seriousness, “and a country home for the summer, to go for rides and walks, to dine in the garden, and … whatever else one chooses to do.”

“But you are English.” Adriana was close to laughter now. “So you spend the summer in town and go to your country estate for the winter, where you gallop around the fields behind a pack of dogs, and apparently enjoy yourself enormously.”